Image by sliderocket.com
I received an invitation to sliderocket.com today. I really like this app so I thought it’s a perfect subject for a brief analysis at the lab. Sliderocket is a presentation tool built with Flex that runs in your browser so it can really cover the whole presentation lifecycle from finding the right images, importing external data to distributing your presentations.
So I’m not gonna talk about the interface design of its basic presentation features. What really interests me are the new things you can do with your presentation when you’re on the browser. Sliderocket shows again how you can provide an extended experience and novel features when using an online service instead of keeping your things on the desktop.
Getting your data from the cloud
- You can serve images from flickr, suck in videos from youtube or integrate your Google spreadsheet data
- There’s also a quote plugin that leat’s you search a quotations database to find the right words to say :-)
Distribute and control
Another quite important feature that the guys have thought about is the distribution of your presentation:
- Hold online meetings, send invitations and present your stuff to colleages from far away without having to leave your desk
- User level permission system is also built into slide rocket
- Track statistics
- Recording and integrating audio is also possible so that you could comment slides and distribute them later
Embracing Openeness: Plugin Architecture
A plugin architecture is integrated into the service so that you can extend slides with custom flash plugins that get data from external resources. This can lead to innovative new features. In his short presentation Mitcho Grasso mentions a possible collaboration with weather channel. For example you could provide an intro slide to your presentation that shows the weather of the location that you are presenting from. This adds a new level of information to your presentation which is kind of nice when your presenting online to people.
Creating an ecosystem
The community around the service will be one of the key factors. The guys behing sliderocket.com try to build an ecosystem where designers can offer themes and developers can program plugins to enhance the service.
I’m really looking forward to see the plugin architecture and the innovation that will result out of that.