Arik Hesseldahl

Recent Posts by Arik Hesseldahl

StoryDesk Adds iPad-to-iPad Sharing of Presentations

It has become sort of hard to get excited with all the different apps that keep showing up on the iPad these days. There are so many that are similar to each other, especially when the app is aimed at business and enterprise users. I sort of expected the same thing when I agreed to take a meeting with StoryDesk, a New York-based outfit.

When StoryDesk CEO Jordan Stolper stopped by the office recently to show me the app, I expected some slightly tweaked version of PowerPoint presentations repurposed for the iPad, and was half expecting to drop into a nap during the meeting. I didn’t.

The deal with StoryDesk is pretty simple. Think of all the printed collateral you might hand out to clients. If you’re a fashion label, you might carry around a book of clothes you’re making for the coming season to hand out to retail buyers. The thing is, different buyers for different departments will look only at certain sections that apply to them. You end up carrying around a lot paper for nothing.

Also, once something is printed, you have to print new copies if any important information changes. If the price on a hot item of clothing comes down a bit, you’ll want those buyers to know it right away.

StoryDesk’s approach is to make what would be an otherwise dry PowerPoint deck a lot slicker and easier to navigate. Most presentations are linear — you have to page through them — making it a little tricky to jump around. You can view a StoryDesk file in order, or you can jump around as you talk.

The new feature, just announced to existing clients today, is iPad-to-iPad sharing. Rather than just show someone a presentation, send it to them via an email message, which in turn triggers a download to the iPad.

Once they have it, since the file is managed centrally via StoryDesk’s CloudEditor, any changes you make get pushed to everyone who has the app, so corrections or price changes go live to everyone who has it.

StoryDesk got started in 2010, and has proven pretty popular with fashion companies like Ralph Lauren and Hugo Boss (a page of a recent Boss StoryDesk presentation is pictured). Prior to StoryDesk, Stolper ran Gliider, an online travel search outfit that was acquired by Travel Ad Network in 2010.

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Nobody was excited about paying top dollar for a movie about WikiLeaks. A film about the origins of Pets.com would have done better.

— Gitesh Pandya of BoxOfficeGuru.com comments on the dreadful opening weekend box office numbers for “The Fifth Estate.”