I stumbled across a great (rather old) blog post today by Lukas Mathis over at ignore the code.  Lukas writes about application design, and how this can influence output.  While I found the post because he compares the design of Microsoft’s PowerPoint vs. Apple’s Keynote (and I got the Google Alert…), I want to highlight the point of his post rather than the examples he chose – which is essentially that when the application creator values output, this is reflected in how the application gets used. As Lukas says:

It is of course possible to create crappy presentations in Keynote, and it’s possible to create beautiful presentations in PowerPoint. But Keynote provides much better templates; Apple really spent a lot of time creating beautiful, compelling templates. And Keynote’s user interface steers its users towards creating simple, beautiful, clear slides containing few points, pictures and little text, set in large type.

Powerpoint’s templates are crowded and garish to begin with, and its cluttered user interface pushes its users towards cluttered slides.

The lesson here is obvious: your application shapes its output. You can make it easy for your users to create awesome things, or you can make it easy for them to create crappy things. It’s not only your job to make your application usable, it’s also your job to make sure that the things your users build with your application are valuable.

At SlideRocket, we often use the tagline “Make Great Presentations.” We like this because it has multiple meanings – you can use SlideRocket to literally create presentations, and you can also use it to deliver those presentations beautifully in all kinds of ways.  To be honest, we’ve struggled with this a bit internally, because while we would love to guarantee that everyone who uses SlideRocket really does make great presentations, we know that isn’t always the case.

Reading this post, though, really inspired me, and helped me to think about SlideRocket and how much we value output. I know how much blood, sweat and tears (and some desk pounding) our development team, and in particular our founder Mitch Grasso, has put into making SlideRocket usable and beautiful. I know how much time has been spent making a web application that does not require its users to compromise in any way when making presentations.  Our whole team strives incredibly hard to make it really, really difficult for you to create or deliver a bad presentation – like these crazy slides.  When I look through our sample presentations, it makes me very proud to see what people have created using this software.

People have often said about SlideRocket, “It’s like Keynote for a PC, but online.” Well, reading this post, we take that with the highest compliment. It’s funny, we think of the creation aspect of what we do as a very small piece out of a big pie of presentation software problems we have tried to solve for, but if our foucs on usability helps people make beautiful presentations, that makes us happy. Do you agree?

According to the Nashua Telegraph, this week (February 9th to 13th) is officially Just Say No to PowerPoint Week.  We think this is an important holiday that bears recognition.  The Nashua Telegraph points to a few things everyone can do to fulfill his or her duty, and Just Say No:

“[This week] is a time to encourage those who rely on PowerPoint as a presentation crutch to get creative. Consider incorporating charades (“Sounds like ‘nudge’? Um, ‘budge’? Budge! Small word. It? It! Budge it? Budget!”) and giving candy to those who guess correctly…

If you’re not ready to broaden your creative horizons quite that far, try experimenting with the different bells and whistles PowerPoint has to offer. If you’re going to stand there and read slides at your audience, at least give them some snazzy clip art to enjoy.”

This last point is where we come in.  Now, you – dear PowerPoint user – have an alternative.  You can certainly explore said bells and whistles if you like.  There’s a lot of them, once (if?) you can find them. Then you can import that presentation into SlideRocket and really turn on the gas.  OR, you could just start in SlideRocket, instantly add awesome stock photography or Flickr images, use our plugin architecture to add quotes and effects, or hey – why not? – import (gasp!) HD videos and ensure that everyone who views your presentation can see them clearly.  Even in a web meeting.  Yup, you heard me. I said HD video in a web meeting without compromise.

So, proud presentation creators, stand strong during this week, and don’t Just Say No to PowerPoint; Say Yes to SlideRocket!

Want to see some examples?  Check out our demos page. Want to learn more? Join our weekly intro tutorial tomorrow (Wednesday, Februrary 11th) at 11 AM PT and we’ll help you celebrate this holiday for all it is worth.

Thanks to everyone who entered our ATP sponsored PhotoShow. We had some great entries and we’re very pleased to announce the winners.

Category A – Portfolio

1st Place – Denise Marcolina – Random Selection

Runner Up – Wendy Ardolino – Ardolino Photography

Category B – Photo Essay

1st Place – Dan Marcolina – Blurring the Lines

Runner Up – Sameer K Bobade – Beauty of Nature

We were really impressed by the way everyone used SlideRocket to creatively present their photos. Congratulations not only to the winners but to everyone who participated.

If you liked the PhotoShow then you’ll probably love our community sourced presentation, Presentation Horror Stories. Make a slide to tell your horror story and share it with community@sliderocket.com.