SlideRocket puts the 'wow' into online presentations

Flashy presentation tool SlideRocket is easily one of the best-looking services I've seen.

CEO Mitch Grasso's presentation at this afternoon's Under the Radar session about the virtual worker (using SlideRocket to present) got several oohs and ahhs. In many ways it takes a cue from Apple's Keynote product with great use of fonts, reflections, transparencies, and transitions to put together presentations that use hardware acceleration and cutting-edge design templates to impress clients, co-workers, and potentially your boss.

The app uses Adobe's Flex technology and has an offline client meaning users can create and edit presentations while away from a connection. There are perks to being online however, as you can grab live-updating data from Google Docs and Spreadsheets, photos from Flickr, and slides from the media pool shared by your collaborators. When it's actually time to view presentations, you can run them right through the app or share them with others as a Flash embed.

Many were hoping Google would offer something as pretty and functional as this when its presentations service launched late last year--but the company underdelivered. SlideRocket has much more ambitious plans with an integrated theme and font marketplace that would end up as a community of people sharing their work.

While the service is in private beta for now, paid plans for both individuals and small businesses are already in the works. The app will run off a subscription at $12 a month for a single user, all the way up to $50 a month for business clients looking to hook up their entire team with an on-the-go replacement for Microsoft's PowerPoint.

We'll be getting a hands-on soon and possibly invites. For more information, check out the live demo here.