iPad App: "SlideShark: PowerPoint Presentations on the iPad"

This is a free app, but you must sign up for the online service in order to use it. You get 100MB of storage for free.

The SlideShark app allows you to display PPT slides on the iPad, while maintaining all the fonts, graphics, colors, and animations you used in the original PowerPoint. It also does a good job of making sure it is filling the screen, and you can easily switch between slides.

Getting slides from your desktop onto SlideShark can go one of two ways: You can either upload it directly to the SlideShark.com site on your desktop/laptop computer, or you can save the file into a Dropbox account and open it in the SlideShark app.

I tend to use the Dropbox-to-SlideShark method, so that I don't have to log into another service. I create the PPTx files on my desktop computer, then upload them into my Dropbox account (through the awesome Dropbox for iMac app). Then I open the Dropbox app on my iPad, select the PPTx file I want to open, and open it in SlideShark.

With this method, first SlideShark uploads the files to the online SlideShark server. Then it will appear as an "available" file for you to download on the SlideShark app. You have to click the download button to get the ppt onto your iPad to display it. Once it downloads, you can play it offline from your iPad.

Technically, your files live in the cloud, so at some point you need to be connected to the net in order to upload or download the files.

I have QuickOffice on my iPad for creating/editing ppt files. I was disappointed that things didn't turn out very well when displaying a pptx file I created on the desktop in the QuickOffice app. You can see the screenshot below:

There is a border around the slide, and it also displays the time and battery settings at the top. I also noticed the missing heart in the "Do you ♥ JSTOR..."

In this screenshot you can see how it appears in SlideShark.

It looks much better, doesn't give a big border to the image, displays a more true-to-original color, and fills the entire screen. It also displayed the unicode ♥ just fine. SlideShark will also properly display text and images that you've manipulated in PPT, and overall gives you the same appearance as if you were displaying it on a desktop computer.

You cannot edit slides in SlideShark, but if you need to display a ppt quickly with only your iPad around, it's a great option. It is very responsive to taps, plus you can swipe forward and back (in case you accidentally skip a slide). You can also tap and hold to bring up a red laser dot to point out things.

It's a free service, and I'd recommend it for displaying PPTs.  Especially if you have a bunch of stock PPTs on your computer that you wouldn't mind being able to display whenever you want to. I've used this app in presentations with image-heavy PPTx and graphs, and I was very satisfied with the performance.