Some time ago (June) I was invited to test out the beta version of sliderocket. It is described as “a new application that will transform the way people create, manage, and share presentations on the web“. It is basically a better version of PowerPoint on the net, running through Adobe’s Flex platform. Now that I have a couple of days free time I thought I would write a small post on how I have found using it, as there has been a lot of talk about it, here, here, here.

I found that sliderocket provides everything I need to design professional presentations and that it was easy to manage and share libraries of slides and assets. For me being able to manage assets that I use frequently in presentations allowed me to make presentations a lot easier, it took the stress out of hunting through disks for diagrams/photographs etc.  Sliderocket can also search Flickr and Yahoo Images from inside the application and can add images it finds to the asset library, it would be nice if it could also pull assets from istockphoto (using the users istock account)… 

One of the more useful aspects of sliderocket I found was that I could deliver a presentation without being at the meeting (using a speaker phone) but also that I could edit the presentation almost up to the point of delivering it as I need not forward it on ahead of me! This allowed me to work from my favourite place, home.

Sliderocket also provides that sense of security, that you have a backup of your presentation and that you need not worry about what version of PowerPoint the conference facilities have! How many time have you went to a conference and they haven’t had the newer version of PowerPoint that you require? Being able to import PowerPoint presentation into sliderocket made PowerPoint (for me at least) redundant.  This does assume that the conference facilities have a internet connection and lets face it, would you really want to use a location that doesn’t have internet access?  There is also talk of an export to PowerPoint function coming soon…

Anyway, there is a small four slide presentation here, this is obviously a small part of what it can do and how it can change the way you prepare and make presentations.