October 28th, 2008
SlideRocket opens up to the public
One of the most impressive Flex-based applications out there, SlideRocket, is now open for anyone to go and sign up. (Screenshot Gallery) They’ve been doing a private beta for the past few months but they launch today with some new features and a business model.
In talking with Mitch Grasso, the founder of SlideRocket, the plan was always to do a fremium model. They’ve got a free version which lets you have up to 250 megs of storage and gives you the basic online editor functionality. Then for more business users there are a couple of tiers - one for individuals and one for a group of people at a company - that includes more advanced features like collaboration and access to the offline presentation viewer which they built in Adobe AIR. It’s one of the first examples that I’ve seen of Adobe AIR being used as a pay-for extra.
Another notable feature is the marketplace. They’ve got a few partners including a stock photography site that will be populating the marketplace with content. SlideRocket users can purchase credits which can then be used to bring assets from the marketplace into their presentations. SlideRocket takes care of all the usage rights. In theory this could also end up being a way for other SlideRocket users to monetize their content but Mitch said right now they’re not opening it up for the general public to upload content.
The interface and the functionality remain mostly the same, but they’re still very impressive. SlideRocket supports importing from PowerPoint and lets you create more interactive applications by enabling SWF embedding. It remains one of the best examples of creating real applications inside of the web browser. Congrats to the team on the launch. You can sign up for a free account at SlideRocket.com.
Ryan Stewart, a Rich Internet Application developer and industry analyst, recently joined Adobe's Platform Team as a Rich Internet Application Evangelist. full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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