We have a number of milestones to announce this week. First, our beta community has created over 1000 presentations containing over 10,000 slides. Our servers have been handling the load smoothly, so we’ll be sending out more invites soon. Thank you, everyone, for your continued patience.

We’ve released the first version of PowerPoint import and I’ve already used it a bunch. It’s a great way to get a running start on your next  presentation without having to recreate all your slides from scratch. We’ve also added automatic slide numbering and fixed a number of issues that users have been reporting.

I used SlideRocket to present to ten people in a conference room yesterday and ended up using their laptop. I was able to access my slides and present without a hitch, even though I wasn’t using my own computer. Of all the amazing benefits that SlideRocket provides, I think that’s my favorite. It’s so nice not to have to lug a laptop to every meeting.

Here’s a detailed list of what’s new in beta version 31:

• Added: PowerPoint Import
• Added: Paragraph spacing
• Added: Special merge fields {num} for slide number and {date} for date
• Added: Backspace key now deletes elements from slides
• Added: Indent, Left Margin and Right Margin settings for textboxes
• Added: Help menu now includes link to user manual
• Fixed: Applying new theme could wipe out slide contents
• Fixed: Bullet points were not continued after a blank line in textbox
• Fixed: Ungroup didn’t work
• Fixed: Rotated elements are now positioned correctly
• Fixed: Videos would stop playing after a few days
• Fixed: Builds on text boxes can now be set to “Entire Text” and “Each Word”

We’ll be adding more features soon, and please keep the feedback coming.

- mike