Chuck Dietrich

This is SlideRocket’s first year participating in VMworld and the sharing of cloud best practices and introduction of new technologies is impressive. VMworld clearly demonstrates how cloud computing is impacting the way each and every one of us works.

Work is no longer defined by office space, cubicle partitions or even geographic boundaries. A dramatic shift in the business software industry from a PC-centric era to a cloud-based, mobile and social media era of computing have made work possible anytime, anywhere and on any device. Business applications in the cloud have powered a new way to work that has transformed not only where we work but how we work, communicate and collaborate. (more…)

Four years ago almost to the day, SlideRocket founder Mitch Grasso launched SlideRocket from this blog with these words:

“This is SlideRocket Mission Control. We’re counting down to launch. SlideRocket will blow away your expectations of what can be done with web applications.”

SlideRocket Has Been Acquired by VMware

Today, we are thrilled to announce that SlideRocket has been acquired by VMware, marking a dramatic acceleration in SlideRocket’s mission to reinvent presentations and change the way businesses and individuals communicate. VMware and SlideRocket share an affinity for seizing big opportunities to reinvent how people work, and we are aligned in our vision for the future of cloud applications – it’s a future where work becomes collaborative, social, mobile, and even fun! (more…)

Last week, SlideRocket launched in the Google Chrome Web Store. It’s been a remarkable 7 days with 5,000 people a day signing up for SlideRocket through the Google Chrome Web Store. I want to congratulate the Chrome team and share our thoughts about this news.

First, I’m convinced the Chrome OS could change the future of computing. I am counting the days until I can pick up any device and instantly have everything I need to run my business at my fingertips. Working in the cloud is about simplicity and personalization anytime and anywhere. That’s the Chrome OS vision – anywhere access to your content,  applications, and web experience. Google’s vision is accelerated through the Chrome Web store, which is tightly integrated with the Chrome OS, Chrome browser, and Google Accounts. For instance, you can sign on to SlideRocket and start building, viewing and sharing presentations in a single click.

We’re honored that SlideRocket is the #1 Staff Pick, among the most popular apps, and has been installed 33,961 times from the store so far.  The response and feedback from our new Chrome users has been amazing, please keep your comments and reviews coming.

It’s just the beginning, and people love Chrome and the ability to easily install and use their favorite web apps. Again, huge congratulations to the Chrome team and also to our team here at SlideRocket.  And most of all, a big welcome to all our new Chrome users.  We’re very happy to have you on board.

SlideRocket in the Google Chrome Web Store

Cloud computing has been a term-du-jour for several years now, and proponents laud the on-demand model for its simplicity, cost savings, and technical advances. Those are great benefits of cloud computing, but we believe the biggest benefit of the cloud is choice.

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Choice fuels competition, and competition fuels innovation – and that means better products for customers. For years, Microsoft was dominant in the office applications space, and the company didn’t focus on innovating its Office suite, because it didn’t have to. Companies would buy Office no matter what. Now, however, cloud computing has driven a surge in innovation, with dozens of companies creating new office applications that run natively in the cloud, cost much less than packaged solutions, and deliver better functionality. Companies can pick and choose the cloud-based office apps they need – from Google docs, to Box.Net document management, to SlideRocket for presentations – and quickly assemble their own “suite” of best-of-breed products delivered on demand.

Look at what choice has done for presentations. Here are some of the ways SlideRocket has innovated on presentations – leveraging Internet technology and cloud delivery to make presentations more social, shareable, and interactive.

Centralized, dynamic content and branding control: SlideRocket makes it possible to create a unified presentation that’s on brand, on message, and always up-to-date. Because SlideRocket is “plugged into” the cloud, users can automatically update charts and financial numbers by feeding data from a Google spreadsheet directly into their slides in real time. What’s more, SlideRocket is a native web application, so it’s easy to insert rich media like photos, video, images, Twitter feeds, and real-time stock or information tickers into presentations. Unlike text-based, static slides, SlideRocket presentations leverage the strengths of the cloud – secure collaboration, real-time Web data, and rich media – so that presentations become an extension of your brand.

Analytics: Without cloud computing, you’d never know the answer to important questions like these: How do you know if your presentation was successful? Did your prospects view the presentation? How many times? Did they forward it to other decision makers? How much time did each person spend viewing each slide? SlideRocket leverages the connected cloud model to deliver this level of analytics for every presentation. Companies know immediately which topics are of interest to their prospects and customers and, therefore, can personalize presentations for the best results.

Secure collaboration and sharing: The cloud also makes collaborating and sharing infinitely easier than with desktop-based, packaged software. No more emailing attachments and suffering through version control. Because SlideRocket presentations are fully hosted in the cloud and don’t reside on your desktop, users can collaborate on slides in real time, click a button to share them with colleagues, prospects, or partners, and clearly see what changes other people have made. Of course, often, you don’t want other people to change your slides, so SlideRocket also offers locking and security features.

The cloud has enabled some amazing advances in office applications, providing people with a choice of innovate applications that help them work more efficiently. We’ve banded together with some of the most innovative cloud companies around – including Box.net, Zuora, Socialtext and more – to support and spread this important message of choice.

What will you choose? We choose the cloud.

A couple weeks ago, the Fifth Annual Small Business Summit took place in New York. The event is for small business owners and entrepreneurs looking to meet the challenges of the new economy head-on. The theme of the “Summit was Business & Technology: Strategies for the New Economy.” We were thrilled to be awarded as one of seven HOT TECH DEMO winners, honoring the ‘Hottest Technologies for Your Business’. It’s an honor to be recognized among innovative companies challenging the status quo and transforming the way business people work.

We also had the opportunity to speak with Ramon Ray, the well-known small business evangelist, editor of SmallBizTechnology.com and founder of the Small Business Summit. Ramon has a deep understanding of how technology is enabling small businesses to operate more efficiently and accelerate the growth of their business. Ramon has been making technology recommendations to business leaders over the past decade and I was very encouraged to hear his enthusiasm for SlideRocket and support that our web based presentation technology with analytics and management can be the killer sales and marketing tool.

The majority of the 40 million presentations that are delivered daily are from small business leaders.  Turning their presentations from lifeless ‘digital brochures’ (PowerPoint) to dynamic web content that can be centrally managed and measured can make a material impact on the effectiveness of their sales and marketing efforts. It’s great to have Ramon’s support in our quest to reinvent presentations.

Our voices are hoarse and we’re stuffed full of BBQ and Tex-Mex. That’s right – we had a great time at SXSW Interactive in Austin!  We’re delighted to be back in San Francisco to share all the excitement with our team.

We had a blast talking to people about SlideRocket and meeting many of our fans face-to-face. It was also a thrill to walk into packed sessions and see SlideRocket being used to help speakers deliver a compelling message in an engaging presentation.

A true highlight of SXSW Interactive was the BizSpark Accelerator competition. All 30 participating startups used SlideRocket to present their ideas for the next big thing in technology to industry judges. It was fun to see such variety in the presentations – from  straightforward, informational slides to those taking advantage of SlideRocket’s unique features including animation, live Twitter feeds and live audience polling.

You can now view all the presentations, including those from winning companies – Siri (Innovative Web Technologies), ShopSavvy (Entertainment Technology), bu.mp (Social Media Personal), and Mobile Roadie (Social Media Business) – in the SlideRocket Accelerator Presentation Gallery. Take a moment to check it out.

We are proud to announce that SlideRocket is a part of Google’s newly launched Google Apps Marketplace. Now over 2 M Google Apps customers can access SlideRocket right from Google’s universal navigation bar.

The integration between SlideRocket and Google Apps makes presentations more dynamic than ever.  Some great benefits include real-time updating of SlideRocket charts and graphs with data feeds from Google Spreadsheets, single sign-on, contact integration, and Google Presentation import. Combining the information and content in Google Apps with SlideRocket’s presentation design and management capabilities turns ordinary data into high-definition, visually captivating presentations that can be securely controlled and measured.

This is one more step in turning a common business tool into living, breathing and dynamic web content.

View a presentation with all of the information by clicking here. Or check out the press release here, for the full list of benefits.

We’ve said it once, and we’ll say it again. The days of boring, one-way presentations are over. Never again should you have to suffer through lifeless slideshows, whether it be in the office, the boardroom or the classroom.

Today, we unveil our new plug-in architecture and add several exciting, new interactive and real-time features to SlideRocket. We couldn’t be more excited about this announcement. We are not only furthering our quest to make presentations more engaging and collaborative, but also, by adding social features such as interactive polling, live Twitter steams, live stock tickers and other RSS feeds, we are enabling presenters to converse with their audience.

Why is this so innovative? Well, with the rapid upswing in the amount of presentations created, delivered and often suffered through everyday since the arrival of PowerPoint 25 years ago, we couldn’t help but question- when did it become okay to just get by with a few bullet points when so much else is possible with today’s technology?

The answer? It’s not okay anymore. Technology is evolving too rapidly to stick with the status quo. Today, we are taking the power into our own hands here at SlideRocket, turning presentations back into a two-way conversation. Our new polling capabilities and live Twitter feeds are just two examples of the dynamic, interactive (and interesting!) content you now have the option to include in your SlideRocket presentations. And it’s easy. So, why settle for anything less? We are reinventing both your professional and personal use of the presentation into an innovative and groundbreaking asset.

Wondering how these social features will help? We all know that a successful presentation is one that engages the audience, captures their attention and transforms their senses. With SlideRocket’s social features, presenters can now speak to the content that their audience wants to hear, get them enthused to hear more and prompt them to interact with both those onstage and other audience members alike.

Voila – now you have presentations, reinvented. Evolve.  Stop using your old, boring, static, digital brochures. Our customers are embracing these innovations, turning a common business tool into living, breathing and dynamic content. Take the next step- bring the community into your presentation with our new social features in order to create the most engaging, memorable presentations on the market. It will be your greatest tool.

Watch a presentation about the release here. The new plugin features will be available in the next release of SlideRocket scheduled for 2/20/2010.

We’re excited to let everyone know that SlideRocket is a part of the recently announced Turnkey Intelligence Activator system.

What is it, you ask? Well…if you are responsible for your organization’s cross-media marketing partnerships and promotions or are just looking for a way to streamline your businesses sponsorship process, you’ll want to give Activator a look.

This is the full list of industry leaders coming together to create this system:

Arbitron: the market leader for measuring radio

Nielsen: the market leader for measuring television

Repucom: the market leader for valuing brand exposures on screen

Critical Media: the market leader for capturing, indexing and valuing media clippings

TNS / ESPN Sports Poll: the market leader for national syndicated research in sports

SlideRocket: the market leader for presentations in a hosted, online environment

RazorGator: the market leader for tracking & reporting ticket and hospitality utilization

With the help of these partners, Turnkey is giving Activator users and their marketing partners a 24/7 interactive two-way channel to better communicate, coordinate & activate their partnerships. Using these industry-leading tools to measure both the media and non-media assets of sponsorship deals, users are bound to see ground-breaking results.

By providing SlideRocket’s presentation ecosystem in a hosted, online environment, we are enabling Activator users to assemble presentation results from many sources and to easily interpret and communicate them. With our online presentation application, your data comes together in a hosted and informative, multi-media environment – it’s cloud computing coming to aid sponsorships and other cross-media deals. Pretty cool stuff!

You can check out all of the details here: http://bit.ly/9Fg9VD

Competition in Silicon Valley, whether it is friendly or cutthroat in nature, is persistently linked to technological innovation. These struggles are inherent in the Valley – startups vying for market share, established businesses trying to squash the competition and both small and big companies alike pushing to develop the most marketable product.

At SlideRocket, we know what it’s like to be up against the big guys. As a result, we are constantly pushing ourselves to make our product the best and most innovative, while forming more meaningful relationships with our partners and customers.

In regards to a recent battle of big versus bigger, I came across this article by Michael Copeland over at Fortune- “Behind the Adobe-Apple Cold War”.

Before last week’s big Apple release, speculation was rampant regarding details of what we now know as the iPad. With, what Copeland quotes as, “Apple’s seemingly resolute refusal to put Flash on its mobile devices”, would Apple’s new device follow suit? The answer? Yes – there is no Flash support on the iPad.

Sources quoted in this Wired article site Jobs’ opinion that Flash will soon be replaced by HTML 5. Interestingly, while we can only speculate whether or not Jobs will budge on his stance, Kevin Lynch over at Adobe says that, “Flash is ready to work on the iPhone and new iPad — it just needs Apple’s support.” On Lynch’s blog, he goes further, saying in regards to HTML 5, “Even in the case of video, where Flash is enabling over 75% of video on the Web today, the coming HTML video implementations cannot agree on a common format across browsers, so users and content creators would be thrown back to the dark ages of video on the Web with incompatibility issues.”

What do you make of this apparent conflict between Apple and Adobe? I found the articles particularly interesting, especially since SlideRocket came up a few times.  One reader commented:

“Flash isn’t going away. While HTML and someday, HTML5, can play video, and provide basic interactions, its far from even close to matching the capabilities. Take a look at Aviary.com as a good example of whats’ possible in Flash. Image editing, Vector editing, Audio editing. Take a look at SlideRocket for a PowerPoint-like slide editor. There’s room for both, and neither HTML nor Flash will spell doom for the other.”

This reader makes some interesting points, which I support. Customers, whether they are developers, consumers or business users, always benefit from competition and choice. As a result, it’s critical that both Flash, HTML5 and possibly other rich media development options co-exist and push each other towards further innovation. In order to meet the needs of the market, it is equally important for major hardware and operating systems to support customer choice. In this case, that’s both Flash and HTML5. Both Apple and Adobe have been on either sides of the compatibility fence in this debate, and have both seen the mistakes of protectionist practices and, contrarily, the benefits of openness and serving their customers.

So, is it back to the dark ages? Seems like that’s a contradiction to the notion that competition in the Valley leads to technological innovation. But, as this saga continues to unfold, I think that we will be seeing some really interesting innovation emerging from both camps. In this industry, while people often start off in business as enemies, more often than not, companies come together for the sake of product development and happy customers. Our opinion on the matter: while it is fun to imagine the controversy continuing, I suspect that Apple and Adobe will eventually come together to address the wants and needs of consumers.

What do you think? This topic is getting a lot of interesting thought- check out some of the comments on this TechCrunch post by Erick Shoenfeld.