It probably won't surprise you if I tell you that SlideRocket is my choice for the best company's presentation award of the Under the Radar conference as SlideRocket is all/just about... presentation! The San Francisco start-up built a Web-based presentation application "without compromise" that recreates PowerPoint in the browser using Flash/Flex.

At the conference, CEO Mitch Grasso actually built his slides "live" during his presentation and it looked very easy to do. I particularly liked the mashup capabilities e.g. Google Docs, Flickr, etc. Developers will be able to use SlideRocket's API to add plug-ins and offer all kind of add-ons, like templates et al, to enrich the presentation environment. I also liked the community marketplace aspect where you'll be able to get free or for a fee content/slides and more services. You can also set permissions (e.g. read only) for slides or whole presentations and share it publicly or among a team of co-workers. Looks like Grasso is building a platform out of SlideRocket!

Inspite signing the Weather Channel as its first corporate customer, SlideRocket is currently in "private beta" (the slogan du jour I guess). There will be a free version for consumers as well as a subscription offering for enterprises ($24/user/month to $50/user/month) and/or for more advanced features. Later this year, Grasso promised an offline version of the application, probably using Adobe AIR, that will allow to play and author SlideRocket presentations.

"We are not looking to replace Powerpoint on everyone's desktop just yet... It's fine with us if you want to author it in Powerpoint [import it in SlideRocket] and use all the advantages of the tools online... There are 500 million office users out there, I'll be more than happy to have 1% of that", said Grasso.