Product Review: SlideShark – PowerPoint Presentations on the iPad

We’ve searched long and hard for a comprehensive tool that would run Powerpoint presentations on iPad devices.  In particular we were looking for something that could run non-linear presentations – presentations where you could jump between slides that weren’t necessarily in sequential order.  We thought we had something when we came across SlideShark but while this was a sleek and handy  product, without the ability to run non-sequential presentations it isn’t everything we hoped it would be.

Using SlideShark

Using SlideShark is very easy.  You sign up for a free account at www.slideshark.com and download the free app on your iPad.  Then you can upload Powerpoint presentations to your online account from your PC or you can import them straight into the SlideShark app on your iPad if you have the presentation file attached to an email.  Files are converted to an iPad-optimized format almost immediately.

SlideShark.com User Account Interface

iPad SlideShark App Interface

When you start the app on your iPad it connects with your online account, letting you choose which presentations you want to synchronize between your online account and your iPad.  Once you’ve downloaded a presentation it is stored on your iPad and you can use it even when you’re offline.

The SharkSlide website promises that the product preserves animations, fonts, graphics and colours although there is some fine print that “Some PowerPoint features not supported.”  Here is a comparison of what we put together in PowerPoint and how it rendered in the SlideShark app on an iPad2:

PowerPoint 2003 Slideshow

iPad2 SlideShark Slideshow

PowerPoint 2003 Slideshow

iPad2 SlideShark Slideshow

The graphics converted beautifully and most of the fonts did, too, however you can see from the fonts screenshots that the ‘Adobe Fangsong’ font didn’t convert perfectly and the ‘Blackoak Std’ and ‘Rosewood Std Regular’ fonts didn’t convert at all.

The animations rendered equally well on the SlideShark app.  Our testing included animating textboxes with the fade, wipe and fly in animations and all converted perfectly.  The app also provides some interesting features, including starting at any slide in the presentation, hiding slides and using an on-screen pointer.  The app features a helpful tutorial that is shown as, fittingly enough, a presentation.

There are several account options mostly based on the amount of storage space you need in your account.  The free account provides 100MB of storage but you can upgrade to an additional 500MB for $49 per year or an additional 1GB for $98 per year.  There is also a team account which allows team collaboration, usage analytics and up to 5GB of storage among other things.

The Verdict

We liked the SharkSlide application and will happily add it our repertoire of tools.  However, the biggest feature that we were looking for, the ability to jump to slides that weren’t the next in order, wasn’t supported.  We’ll definately keep an eye on this app and hopefully one day the good folks at Brainshark, Inc. will add that Holy Grail feature that will complete this package.

Got something to say?  Leave a comment below, we’d love to hear from you!  Got a question that we can address on our blog?  Contact us through our website or email me directly and we’ll put our crack team to work and let you know when we post a reply.

Steve Hartley, Managing Partner

Fering Communications, Inc.
Website: www.feringcommunications.com
Email: steve.hartley@feringcommunications.com

When a Powerpoint Presentation Goes Bad

I sat through a webinar on www.authorstream.com last week given by an acclaimed Powerpoint and presentation expert.  The webinar was a huge dissappointment, with the presentation committing many of those common presentation blunders that anyone who has received the most basic presentation advice has been warned against.  Among the presenters biggest mistakes:

·         Make the Point and Move On:  The biggest focus in the first part of the presentation was on bad slides.  And bad slides were indeed presented.  There was the bullet slide, the slide with the complicated flowchart, the slide full of text.  Then there was the slide with the distracting background, the slide with many different fonts and sizes and the slide with the complex graph.  Then there was the slide with the distracting animations, the slide cluttered with needless graphics and ... well, you probably get the point.  There were probably 15 to 18 consecutive slides and significant discussion with each about bad slides.  After the first four or five bad slides the point was well made and it was time to move on to what a good slide looked like.

·         Read Your Audience:  There were about 65 – 70 people online for the webinar and there was a chat forum off to the side of the webinar screen where people were bantering back and forth.  By about the eighth bad slide in a row coupled with a full verbal description of what sins it committed, comments started trickling through about it being time to move on.  By the tenth slide, it had turned into a steady stream of comments.  By the twelfth bad slide the steady stream had turned into a torrent.  You should have a plan of how your presentation will flow when you’re putting it together – that’s one of the most important things you have to do before you even open up Powerpoint or whatever tool you use.  However, you have to be able to go with the flow during the actual presentation and if your audience is clearly disinterested or getting antsy, it’s time to think on your feet and modify your plan.  The webinar presenter should have quickly cycled through the last half dozen slides, stopping only momentarily to sum up in one short sentence what offended about the slide.

·         Tackle Adversity Head On:  We’ve all been there and it’s not fun:  You’re in the middle of a presentation and technical difficulties arise.  Your laptop goes to sleep or runs out of battery, the projector stops working properly, that embedded movie file just won’t start properly.  Here again you have to be quick on your feet.  In my experience it is best to confront the problem head on – don’t pretend it isn’t happening, the room full of people that you’re presenting to sees that it is.  Embrace what has happened, see if you can’t make a quick joke while you’re calmly (on the outside, frantically on the inside) resolving the issue.  Most people have been in a similar situation at some point in their lives and they’ll be more that a little sympathetic.  In the webinar, the presenters slides weren’t advancing properly.  He clicked to advance and nothing happened, so he clicked again and again and again, then his PC caught up and shot five or six slides ahead.  Then he started scrambling to get back to the slide he wanted to be on and the same thing happened and when his computer started responding it slingshot him back through slides that he had already presented.  I’ve experienced this exact issue – I’ve boiled the issue down to something between a Powerpoint presentation and the online meeting tool I use (GoToMeeting).  It still flusters me when it happens, but I know through experience that I just have to stall for a few moments and then everything will sort itself out.  The presenter either hadn’t encountered his particular issue before or failed to recognize what was happening.  Either way, he handled it poorly.  At this point in the presentation I stepped away to take a call from a client and when I returned just a few minutes later the webinar had been ended prematurely because of “technical difficulties”.

Presentations are usually very important times for you to shine when you’re trying to win a new account or order or climbing the corporate ladder.  Make sure that your presentations are focused, concise and precise and present them with confidence and grace.

Need help with an upcoming presentation?  Visit our website to contact us or email me directly, we’d love to help!

Steve Hartley, Managing Partner
Fering Communications, Inc.
Website: www.feringcommunications.com
Email: steve.hartley@feringcommunications.com