The LoopHole: May 20, 2008 Archive

Ever since running across an item about venture capital landed by a new company called Sprout, I'd been anxious to give it a try.

Sprout (www.sproutbuilder.com) is a free, web-based tool that lets you build Flash widgets from visual and sound elements you supply. Sounded promising. I only ever learned the most rudimentary Flash, and that was ten years ago.

My verdict so far is that Sprout is damn cool.

I'd been considering non-labor-intensive ways to package our new weekly show, so I tested Sprout by creating a widget for our previous (pilot) episode. This includes only a limited number of possible features -- down the line we could incorporate our polls, videos, and other things into it.

It's not endlessly flexible -- I've run into one or two applications I saw in my mind's eye that weren't actually possible, but I'm a convert. For ease of use and the polish you get in a final product, Sprout is a pretty nifty tool.