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