New Solution for Presenting PowerPoint on the iPad: SlideShark™

Until yesterday, there were no great options for presenting your PowerPoint presentations on the iPad. In the absence of a PowerPoint player or app from Microsoft, there had been a plethora of iOS apps that claimed to allow playback and editing of PowerPoint files on your iPad, but most of those fell far short of expectations. In our testing, we found that products like QuickOffice Pro HD, DocsToGo Premium, Google Docs, and SlideRocket would allow you to upload your PowerPoint file via their website or app and then display and/or edit them on your iPad. The problem with all of those products was that most of them didn’t do a very good job of translating anything beyond basic text slides. We found that graphics would become distorted, fonts would be substituted, animations would be removed, and charts would sometimes disappear.

Even Apple’s Keynote iPad app did not do a great job initially. We found that effects applied to elements in PowerPoint would be lost, charts would change in appearance, fonts would be substituted, and complex animations sequences would be lost. We were able to repair many of the conversion issues by revising the presentation in the Mac Desktop version of Keynote, but this did not seem like a long-term practical solution. Few users would have the time or even access to the software necessary to get a usable version onto their iPads.

Alternatively, there was the option of converting to a video format and playing back on the iPad, but hitting pause and play isn’t the most elegant way of advancing through your presentation.

Another popular option has been to convert presentations to a PDF. Converting the file utilizing this method maintained most of the formatting, and it is possible to save a version with animations, but any motion paths and interactivity within the file would be lost in the translation. Adobe finally released an iOS reader this week.

Yesterday, BrainShark™ released their free SlideShark™ app. We had been fortunate enough to be involved in the product beta testing program, and our early findings were hopeful. The final release didn’t vary much from those we had reviewed.

Uploading presentations is accomplished via a website and the process is very streamlined. If you don’t already have one, it will be necessary to open a free online account. Once you are logged in, you simply use the website to select and upload files that live on your computer. After you have uploaded the file to your secure account, you click on the “Available for iPad” check box then go to the SlideShark app on your iPad. When you open the app, you will see all of the presentations that you’ve made available. Underneath of each is a button to download the presentation to your device. Of course you will need an active internet connection (WiFi or 3G) for the download to function – but once complete, the button will change to read Present. Once this is accomplished, the file can be played back regardless of your connection status.

The app interface is clean and uncluttered. Playback and navigation are consistent with the iPad experience. We found the documentation and tutorial within the app, accessed by clicking the question mark , to be informative.

When comparing our PowerPoint original to playback on the iPad, we found that the results were excellent. Although not all PowerPoint features are supported, their claims are fairly consistent with the FAQ statement (“While the App is optimized for PowerPoint, there are a few features that are not supported. These include: hyperlinks on slides, embedded videos or animated gifs, slide transitions, triggers, and 3rd party components. There are also some advanced animations that may not be supported.”). The problem areas in our uploaded test file were with complex animations, video playback, and non-standard fonts (futura had been replaced by arial). And unlike other apps, repairing these minor discrepancies did not require software other than PowerPoint. Our tests utilized PowerPoint 2010 and the iPad2 running iOS 5.

Given the traction iPads are gaining for business presentations, we would give this new product from BrainShark a high recommendation.

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