Webware

280 Slides is a notable online replacement for desktop presentation apps. It's fast, functional and very visual.

The Cappuccino Framework

In it, you can create a presentation, theme it, add graphics and video, and then present it, share it via Slideshare, or download it as a PowerPoint or PDF file. It's so smooth to use that it's hard to tell the difference in the experience between working in a traditional presentation app like Microsoft PowerPoint or Apple Keynote. It doesn't have a traditional app's over-the-top feature set, but it's so fast and easy to use you'll probably not notice that.

280 Slides is in beta, but I was able to create this three-slide presentation as easily as I would in Keynote, and more easily than if I had been using PowerPoint. Cappuccino turned 0.5.5 yesterday. Fellow CNET blogger Matt Asay calls it "exceptional"

280 Slides is written in JavaScript, in a new open-source framework that models how software gets written on Macs: something called Objective-J. Objective-J, the Cappuccino framework, and 280 Slides are the work of a small three-man start-up, 280North, composed of former Apple programming rock stars. This is one to watch.

Almost one year ago to the day, a start-up called SlideRocket began a private beta of its Web-based presentation creation service. With the company opening up its beta test to the public today, legions of frustrated PowerPoint users around the world must wonder whether their digital deliverance is not far away.

At first blush, the odds are against these guys having much impact. It's a young company, after all, and who has the spare cash to pay for Jerry Seinfeld television spots. (Though judging from Microsoft's uneven success with its latest batch of TV ads, that's hardly any guarantee of rave success.

But here's what I like about SlideRocket: This very Web-friendly application offers quite a creative alternative to PowerPoint, a steadfast albeit boring product that inspires more moans than a porn flick. If I've insulted any die-hard PowerPoint fans--all twenty seven of you--sorry, but the application reminds me of liver and onions: a dish which dutifully serves the purpose, but you wouldn't be caught dead serving it at a dinner party.

SlideRocket's designers have done a nice job with the graphics options and special effects that users can add to their slide show images. The support for multimedia (including video) is an additional nice touch. You can also include slides from a media pool shared by people you include as collaborators on the presentation. For an in-depth look at the product, check out the review turned in by my colleague, Josh Lowensohn.

I don't need to remind anyone that things are tough out there, and wouldn't it be a shame if this company didn't get a fair shake? As a user, I'm ready for something with a bit more sizzle. With enough time, I think SlideRocket could give Microsoft a serious run in the presentations software business. The wild card is capital. So it is that I have to wonder how long before the folks from Adobe start sniffing around. No secret that Adobe has big ambitions and increasingly bumps heads with Microsoft. What with its flashy (Flexy) Web-based tools, SlideRocket already speaks a common language with Adobe.

Bottom line: This one bears close watching.

Who said you couldn't bring the Web to TV? Slide's absurdly popular social-network application "SuperPoke" is coming to a new platform: MTV Networks' VH1, as part of a promotion for its new reality show I Love Money.

In a cross-promotional advertising deal, "actions" related to VH1's schlocky reality shows Flavor of Love, Rock of Love, and I Love New York will appear in the SuperPoke arsenal. In other words, you'll be able to post things on your friends' Facebook and MySpace profiles along the lines of "Josh has gotten romantical with Rob"--a reference to Flavor of Love--assuming the friends in question have installed SuperPoke.

'Yay! We're going to be on TV!'

But wait, there's more. SuperPoke will be invading your television. VH1 plans to hold a four-day-long "SuperPokeFest," in which 10,000 of those SuperPoke actions will be chosen via lottery and shown on-air.

Slide has had a couple of recent issues with the fact that one of its other applications, Top Friends, had a security hole in it; SuperPoke does not appear to have had such problems, so you can happily sheep-toss your way into oblivion. And if you're a chronic SuperPoker who's desperate to be chosen, fear not: VH1 has the courtesy to inform you in which time slot your SuperPoke will appear live.

Set those DVRs! The whole thing starts Wednesday! You'll be so uncool if you miss it!

At the end of the four-day Max Levchin lovefest, VH1 will premiere I Love Money, which contrary to the name is not about venture-happy Silicon Valley guys in khakis and blue button-down shirts. It's an "all-star" program featuring past contestants from Flavor of Love, Rock of Love, and I Love New York, and it gives a dozen contestants the chance to win $250,000. Which is totally small potatoes compared to Slide's reported $500 million valuation.

In other news, I'm going to go throw a sheep at whoever came up with this corny idea.

Slide founder Max Levchin talks with Forrester Research analyst Charlene Li at Web 2.0 Expo.

(Credit: Caroline McCarthy/CNET News.com)

SAN FRANCISCO--Max Levchin made a name for himself as the co-founder of transaction system PayPal, one of the Web's foremost utilitarian services. Then he made a name for himself again at the helm of Slide, which isn't exactly in the same space. Its flagship product, "SuperPoke," has become the poster child--er, poster sheep--for criticism of social-networking developer applications as a silly fad.

On Wednesday, after his keynote at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, I asked Levchin if he thought there were actually a chance for some social applications to emerge that are useful rather than goofy.

"There's definitely opportunity to build utilitarian, or pure utility, apps on Facebook," he said. So I asked him to give an example.

"Alcoholics Anonymous," Levchin said, without hesitation. "If you're trying to recover as an alcoholic, there's no easy way for you to join an anonymous group on Facebook. So creating an anonymous group type on Facebook for something that people have to get off their chest but don't really want to reveal their identity (in doing so)...it's pretty utilitarian. Grim, but utilitarian." Currently, Facebook's API doesn't permit developers to anonymize the social-networking experience.

I expressed my surprise with how little time it took Levchin to up with that kind of idea. He shrugged. "Maybe it's because I grew up in Russia."

I spent some of this weekend using SlideRocket, a new service that's aiming to replace your presentation software with its flashy (actually Flexy) Web-based tools. Is it a real PowerPoint or Apple Keynote killer in its current iteration? Not yet, but I think it's off to a great start.

The service has all the flash and fervor of some other Adobe Flex-based apps we've seen like BuzzWord, Scrapblog, and Picnik. The transitions and stock slide templates are enough to distract you from how potentially boring your presenter is and thought has been put into making things look good from the get-go, no matter your design prowess. In many ways, the final results are indistinguishable from Apple's well-known presentation software Keynote, which has been a part of the company's iWork suite for Macs for the last three years.

Let's start by talking about what makes SlideRocket different from presentation software you might be used to. For one thing it's very Web-friendly. As I mentioned last week in our coverage of the company's demo at the Under the Radar conference (coverage), it's been designed to integrate media and information services you're already using. Big names on the list include Yahoo maps, Flickr, and Google Docs; I foresee others being added in the future--as long as the service has a data API.

Need an image for that presentation? Grab one that has the right CC license right off of Flickr (click to enlarge.)

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Linking up to each of these services is handled with some grace, although I found performance to take a hit when adding several Flickr photos to a single slide since the service will check in with Flickr each time you load up the slide. It can be set to do the same thing for Google Documents, but this is actually a good thing in case the source data changes. I've been told local copies of the files will be able to be stored on SlideRocket's servers in the future to speed things up.

Speaking of local storage, SlideRocket has the beginnings of a very smart way to handle shared media. Similar to Keynote, all your files are put together in one place and can be sorted via keywords simply by name. The more time you spend categorizing it, the faster you'll be able to parse it, but the built-in search is instantaneous--which is very helpful. Users get up to 3GB of storage to share photos, music, and videos. These asset libraries are shared in the business editions.

So, how does it stack up against other Web-based presentation tools? ... Read more

My final Under the Radar session today focuses on tools for business collaboration. In the past year, Webware.com has covered each of these four applications, but now they're each back with something new to bring to the virtual table.

Blist, an easy, engaging online database, will be releasing a premium version for small and midsized businesses. The easy, rich database environment can be used for business needs such as data storage and applicant-tracking, and features 3D graphs, drag-and-drop query-building, and document storage inside a database.

Next week Blist will add the capability to use others' data structures as a template for your next "blist." In addition to monetizing for the enterprise crowd, Blist will start placing ads on the free version.

Cozimo is a video and image collaborative annotation tool (see coverage). It shares a few similarities with FeedbackFX with much more attention on real-time collaboration of rich media documents. Each member in a work group is assigned a layer where they draw and scribble comments, all of which are saved in the session even as it's synchronously presented to the group. Cozimo can also be used asynchronously through a collaboration widget that can be pasted onto any image on any Web site. Like other collaboration tools, there's internal IM, though VoIP services aren't yet part of the equation.

LiquidPlanner's collaborative project management software doesn't gauge your project's progress by how on-target you are; it measures its deficiencies (coverage). LiquidPlanner can calculate schedules and predict using mathematical probability when a project is likely to get done. It also cooks up a range of best and worst case scenarios to project the soonest you'll conclude assuming everything goes right, and how long you'll struggle if everything goes wrong.

LiquidPlanner calculates project management estimates.

SlideShare (coverage) is a site for uploading and sharing PowerPoint, PDFs, and OpenOffice presentations and also folds in some social networking elements like blogging and podcast hosting. CEO Rashmi Sinha said she sees her company traveling more along the LinkedIn model for generating contacts than a YouTube for all sorts of PowerPoint presentations. E-learning and business presentations make up the bulk of the content, but there's also a fair number of photo slide shows and even some more adult content. There's also a Facebook application for easy uploading.

Going forward, SlideShare will introduce a program for lead generation a la LinkedIn. They're also talking about ad deals to monetize the free service and will work on integrating Google Presently documents.

Flashy presentation tool SlideRocket is easily one of the best-looking services I've seen.

CEO Mitch Grasso's presentation at this afternoon's Under the Radar session about the virtual worker (using SlideRocket to present) got several oohs and ahhs. In many ways it takes a cue from Apple's Keynote product with great use of fonts, reflections, transparencies, and transitions to put together presentations that use hardware acceleration and cutting-edge design templates to impress clients, co-workers, and potentially your boss.

The app uses Adobe's Flex technology and has an offline client meaning users can create and edit presentations while away from a connection. There are perks to being online however, as you can grab live-updating data from Google Docs and Spreadsheets, photos from Flickr, and slides from the media pool shared by your collaborators. When it's actually time to view presentations, you can run them right through the app or share them with others as a Flash embed.

SlideRocket lets you keep slides from old presentations in a media pool in case you want to reuse them.

(Credit: SlideRocket)

Many were hoping Google would offer something as pretty and functional as this when its presentations service launched late last year--but the company underdelivered. SlideRocket has much more ambitious plans with an integrated theme and font marketplace that would end up as a community of people sharing their work.

While the service is in private beta for now, paid plans for both individuals and small businesses are already in the works. The app will run off a subscription at $12 a month for a single user, all the way up to $50 a month for business clients looking to hook up their entire team with an on-the-go replacement for Microsoft's PowerPoint.

We'll be getting a hands-on soon and possibly invites. For more information, check out the live demo here.

Did you know photo slide show service Slide.com is used to create over a million slide show widgets a day? With those slide shows comes serious business, pulling in a monster load of traffic. Taking a cue from that, photo host Photobucket has stepped up its in-house solution with a new slide show tool that's been significantly enhanced from the previous version.

Using some design elements from Flektor, which parent company Fox Interactive Media picked up alongside Photobucket in mid-2007, Photobucket users can now skin and theme their slide shows in various fashions to match the theme of the shots. As an added incentive to step up to the service's $25-a-year pro membership, paid users get an extra 20 shots on top of the 30 that everyone else gets.

Despite these new changes, I found the new slide show creation tool to be a little short on features. It's easy to skin the thing with one of the 20 new themes, but many of the themes don't offer control over transitions or skipping ahead through the photos. This might not be a big deal with a few shots, but once the number gets up to 50, it would be nice to have some form of navigation, regardless of what theme the creator has chosen.

I've embedded one of the new slide shows after the break. To check it out, click the pink "read more" link below.

The slide show editor is pretty simple to use, although it swipes a lot of look and feel from sister site Flektor.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

... Read more

The Facebook chat panel at the Web 2.0 Summit this morning was a time to talk about the Facebook platform and how it's changed the development and monetization of Web services. Several of the panel speakers have immensely popular apps on Facebook, and widgets for MySpace including Slide, RockYou, and iLike.

The two big question pitched to the devs were how Facebook has changed what they've done internally and what's on the horizon. "We looked at the Facebook platform and thought this could be the greatest paradigm in technology since the Internet itself," said Ali Partovi, the CEO of iLike. Partovi and company are one of the real success stories of the Facebook platform, and are currently up to over 700,000 daily active users with their iLike music-sharing application. Partovi also noted that when they launched their app the first weekend of the Facebook apps platform launch, the company had to rent a truck trailer full of servers to handle the traffic.

Partovi also said that iLike is currently pooling close to 100 percent of its resources on the Facebook app, and is actually launching new features first on the Facebook platform before it happens on iLike.com. Other developers on the panel said that their development focus for Facebook apps fell somewhere between 80 percent and 90 percent. Slide was the only one of the bunch that noted it's only spending 10 percent of the time working on Facebook in lieu of working on offerings for other social networking services like Bebo, MySpace, etc.

Also mentioned was the article by Kara Swisher of the Wall Street Journal's All Things Digital earlier this month that lambasted the Facebook app platform as being aimed at "toddlers." Lance Tokuda CEO and co-founder of RockYou said, "She's not a teenage girl...we're targeting the MySpace market...one day I'm going to build something just for her." A statement that eventually led to a chat about some of the more inane apps on the Facebook platform, and how involved users are wiling to let themselves get, both with time and money. One app in particular even lets people spend $10 of virtual currency to throw virtual feces at one of their Facebook friends (or enemies). ILike's Partovi links the "infancy" of these apps because of the age of the platform, and what developers have had the time to build. He also noted that apps for Windows weren't that great either when the operating system first launched.

So what has made this platform so successful? ... Read more