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.
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
Josh and I spent a day working the Under the Radar conference last week (see all stories). Actually, Josh was working; I was onstage hustling start-ups on and off the stage. We saw about 40 business-related Web 2.0 companies. Most of them were very early-stage, so you might not want to entrust your business to them. But there were several apps that were more developed, and a few that are worth looking at even though they're not.
As I wrote after the Demo conference, I am amazed by what people are doing with Flash and AIR apps. Two apps from Under the Radar, Blist and SlideRocket, are Flash apps. Neither are available to the public just yet, but when they ship be sure to check them out.
There were a lot of good apps at the show, but we selected five that really stood out. Watch the video to learn why, in addition to Blist and SlideRocket, we picked Orgoo, Vello, and Nuconomy as our Best Five apps from Under the Radar.
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.
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