Today we broke out the Barry White to celebrate the unveiling of the completely redesigned and very sexy new Haiku Deck player  (Hai-5, McLovin‘!). You can now see everything that matters about a deck (description, author, views, category, slides, and public notes) at a glance, it’s easier and more fun to navigate the slides, and it’s easier to set stories free through social sharing.

Here’s a walk-through of what’s new and why we love it, (or, more accurately, luuuuurrrrrrvvvvvve) it.

New Haiku Deck Player at a Glance

Some features are new, and some are simply in a new place.

(You can explore yourself and check out the deck we’re showcasing, featuring communication tips from Haiku Deck Guru Lois Zachary, here.)

Everything we love about the new Haiku Deck player page

Easier Navigation

Whether you’re a sit-back-and-relax viewer or a quick-on-the-trigger keyboarder, there’s bound to be a slide viewing option you’ll love. Here are the options—give them all a try to see what works best for you!

1. Use the controls in the lower left corner. Click >> to advance one slide or << to go back. Press the Play button for an auto-play slideshow mode, and Pause if you’d like a little more time on a specific slide.

2. Click anywhere on the slide. Your cursor will display as either > (to advance) or < (to go back) depending on its position. Play around with it–we think it’s pretty slick.

3. Tap your spacebar to advance one slide.

4. Scroll over the orange progress bar at the bottom for a cool pop-up preview, then click to go to a specific slide.

Scroll through the orange bar for a pop-up preview of each slide

Easier Sharing

The best way to set your story free is to share your decks with your social networks, and our new player page makes this easier than ever. You can also share inspiring decks you discover to help great content and ideas spread.

You’ll now see icons for the most popular social sharing choices at top left. Hover over an icon to see how many times it’s been shared, and click to share the deck yourself.

Hover to see how many times a deck has been shared; click to share it

Facebook

Select whether you’d like to post the deck to your own timeline, a friend’s timeline, to a group, or a page from the Share dropdown. Add a comment, make any edits you’d like to the deck title and description, and  click Share Link.

Twitter

Check the account you’re signed in with in the top right (or sign in if you are prompted to do so), make any edits you’d like to the tweet text, and click Tweet.

Pinterest

You can pin individual slides from a deck. Select the board you’d like to pin to, add or edit a description, and click Pin It.

Email

Type in the email address you’d like to send to and a brief message, then click Send.

More Sharing Options

Hover over the + to display more options for sharing.

LinkedIn

Add your insight, make any edits you’d like to the deck title and description, and click Share.

Slideshare

Type your Slideshare username (not your email address) and password, then Share.

Note: This option is available for decks you have created when you are signed in. Read more about uploading to Slideshare here.

Embed

To embed a deck in a website or blog, click Embed, select HTML or WordPress, then copy and paste the string of code. Read more about embedding Haiku Decks here.

Download

To download a beautiful PDF handout that includes your Public Notes, click Download, then Download an Adobe Acrobat PDF copy of your Haiku Deck. Read more about why and how to add Public Notes here.

Sample page of PDF handout showing slides and public notes

Sharing to Other Sites

You can always simply copy the deck URL and post directly to any social site. Read more about ways to share here.

More Lovable Stuff

From the new player page, you can also view decks in full-screen mode, check out image credits, and, if you’re signed in, add or edit public notes to the decks you’ve created.

To fully enjoy the new player page in all its glory, we encourage you to take a spin through the outstanding Haiku Decks now starring in our Featured and Popular Galleries.

(And to submit your own, be sure to email us a link to gallery@haikudeck.com, or tweet it with the hashtag #hd.)

Now, back to Barry White….

We had such a great response to our Mother’s Day contest—thank you so much to everyone who participated!

Our Grand Prize Winner!

There were so many fantastic decks it was difficult to choose, but this one by Josh Zagorski (and his two super cute little boys) really touched our hearts. We hope their #1 mom loves it, along with her new iPad Mini! Congratulations, Jenn!

Created with Haiku Deck, the free presentation app for iPad

Awesome in Two Languages

This one, by JR Garcia, was notable both for its beautiful message in both English and Spanish as well as the extraordinary number of views it has received—wow! We were so impressed we decided to surprise JR with a $50 iTunes gift card. Be proud!

Created with Haiku Deck, the free presentation app for iPad

All-Around Awesome

And this one, by Jeff Brown, was a late entry but we really loved the style, humor, and creativity. Jeff also scores a $50 iTunes gift card, for general awesomeness.

Created with Haiku Deck, the free presentation app for iPad

More Inspiration

There were really so many fantastic entries—be sure to check them out on our Pinterest board, and it’s not too late to create your own Mother’s Day Haiku Deck message! Making mom feel celebrated and loved is an outright winner, we think.

Thanks again to all who participated–and a special Hai-5 to our amazing moms.

Created with Haiku Deck, the free presentation app for iPad

Teacher Appreciation Tips

Just for our teachers, we’ve collected a few power tips to make your lives easier, save you time, and keep you (and your students) inspired.

1. Managing Accounts

The easiest way to manage a classroom of iPads is to create a single email account for the entire class to use. You’ll need to sign in to the app on each individual iPad once–after that, the app will keep you signed in. Have students include their name(s) either in the deck title or on the first slide so you can easily keep track of their work. Once students have published their decks, you can sign in to the website using the class email account to view all of them in one place (click Gallery, then My Gallery). Read more about publishing and sharing here.

2. Turning Auto-Capitalization Off

If you’d like students to practice correct capitalization as they work, you might also want to adjust the auto-capitalization setting as you’re signing in to your classroom account on each iPad. From the Main Screen, tap the Settings wheel, then adjust the Use Auto-Capitalization? toggle to OFF. Read more about Main Screen settings here.

Toggling Auto-Capitalization On and Off

3. Teaching Digital Citizenship

Haiku Deck not only helps students focus their message and explore visual storytelling, it’s a great tool for teaching digital citizenship as well. The app’s unique  image search taps into more than 35 million beautiful, high-quality images that have been made available for (free) use under Creative Commons license, and proper attribution is pulled in automatically. From Play mode on the iPad, tap the CC logo in the bottom right corner to view the photographer as well as the type of Creative Commons license. (In Web view, look for the CC logo in the bottom black bar.) Read more about our Creative Commons image search here.

4. Image Searching

Haiku Deck does include an explicit terms filter, which prevents searches on naughty terms. Unfortunately, we can’t control how photographers tag their photos, and it is possible for some “inappropriate” images to appear in the search results. (This is why Haiku Deck has a 12+ rating in the app store; you can read more about that here.)

We’re working on ways to improve this, but in the meantime, we’ve been thrilled to see many forward-looking teachers using this as an opportunity to work with their students on digital responsibility as well as digital citizenship. There are also some creative workarounds if you’d like to use Haiku Deck with your students and are concerned about image results:

• Do some searching on your topic ahead of time to look for (and possibly discuss) trouble spots.
• Create a folder or set of pre-screened images in Google Drive, Flickr, or Dropbox for your students to access.
• Have students generate their own images by using the iPad camera (here’s an example), or by creating illustrations and pulling them in off the camera roll, like this one:

Sample Haiku Deck Using Student Artwork

5. Publishing Without Email

We heard from teachers that many classrooms don’t have access to email, so you can now publish straight to the website. Tap SHARE, then select one or more categories and tap PUBLISH, and your deck will be published to your Gallery on the Haiku Deck website. If you like, you can tap COPY URL to grab the link right from the app. You can read more about publishing and sharing here.

6. Adding Notes and Printing

By limiting the amount of text on each slide, Haiku Deck encourages students to keep their message focused and to discuss their topic (instead of reading slides word for word). They can take their decks to the next level by signing in to the website (using the class email account as described above), opening their deck in Web Edit View, and adding supporting details and even links to more resources. You can then click DOWNLOAD (look for the text buttons immediately below the deck) to create a great-looking PDF that you can save, email, or even print. Read more about adding Notes here.

Sample Haiku Deck with Notes

7. Embedding in a Classroom Blog or Site

If you have a class blog or website, you can easily embed your Haiku Decks right from the app or from the website. From the app, tap SHARE, then PUBLISH, then POST TO BLOG. From the website, look for the EMBED button right under the deck. In either case, simply copy the code string and paste to your blog. Read more about embedding Haiku Decks here, and see a couple of Haiku Decks embedded in this great post on Free Technology for Teachers.

8. Ideas

If you’d like to see how educators are using Haiku Deck for a wide range of teaching purposes, from fact gathering to creative expression, be sure to visit our Education Case Studies Pinterest board frequently–we add new examples every week.

Haiku Deck Education Case Studies Pinterest Board

More Inspiration

You also might enjoy reading about 4th graders creating sensory poems and character studies, Haiku Deck for vocabulary development, and Haiku Deck Goes New School. We also invite you to participate in our brand-new Haiku EDU community on Google+.

And if you’d like us to feature your work, please email link(s) to gallery@haikudeck.com, or tweet us using the hashtag #hdgallery.

Teacher, thank you so much for everything you do! And if you have a question we didn’t answer or a tip you’d like to share, let us know! Drop us a line any time at team@haikudeck.com.

@clevenole @dwhalen5 I use @haikudeck and think its the best thing since pizza delivery.

— Heather (@LaVieBoheme73) May 3, 2013

Maybe the sunshine was making us feel a little giddy, but we thought, wow, wouldn’t it be AMAZING if we tracked Heather down and DELIVERED A PIZZA to her?

This brainstorm quickly gathered momentum around the office, so we did a little Twitter recon to discover that Heather was attending a conference in Boston and that she was planning a happy hour meetup at a downtown brewery. Perfect!

Lisa, our awesome customer evangelist, made all the arrangements. She called the brewery, then she researched a nearby pizza place that had gotten great reviews on Yelp. She placed the order. Everything appeared to be falling into place. At the appointed time, we watched our Twitter feed with anticipation.

Unfortunately, our surprise didn’t quite work out as planned. The pizza guy showed up to a packed bar, and the person Lisa had made the arrangements with was nowhere to be found. Heather was on a tour of the brewery. We called the brewery, but were told no outside food was allowed. By the time we got a manager to agree to hold Heather’s pizzas for her in the kitchen, the delivery guy had left–with the pizzas {cue sad trombone}.

The moral of this story? Surprises are tricky to pull off, especially when you’re working across time zones with people you’ve never met before. Our little pizza stunt was THISCLOSE to being off-the-hook amazing, to totally wowing one of our fans with something unexpected and memorable. But even though it fell flat, our heart was (and is) in the right place.

So maybe cross-country pizza was pushing it, but we do promise to wow you with the things we can control–we are here to answer your questions, help you troubleshoot, and fix things that aren’t working for you.

New Haiku Deck Customer Support Page

We invite you to take a look at our newly revamped Support page, where you can submit a help request in a flash, post a feature request, or share your favorite tips and tricks. We know customer support can be incredibly frustrating–when the person you explained everything to disappears and you have to start over, when you’re told conflicting information, when nobody answers the phone (or the tweet, or the email). Although we’re not perfect, we really do make support a priority–so if you need help, we’re here for you!

P.S. Heather, thanks again for being a good sport about the mix-up—we owe you a pizza!

I’ve given my mom plenty of books and flowers over the years for Mother’s Day, and this time I took a different tack. I created a special Haiku Deck to tell her all the important things she’s taught me over the years (click to view):

Yes, that’s me on the right.

One of the best things I’ve learned from mom is that anything is possible (yes, we really did find that hearing aid on the beach the next day), so here’s what I propose: How about a Haiku Deck Mother’s Day tradition? It would be so amazing to see an outpouring of Haiku Decks capturing the most memorable lessons our moms have passed down. Let’s fill the world with beautiful Mother’s Day Haiku Decks that are as unique and inspiring as our moms.

As an added bonus, I’ll personally pick the most creative, inspiring deck and send an iPad mini to the winner’s mom. I’ll even spend 30 minutes on the phone to personally teach her how to use Haiku Deck. (On that note, you can read how my own mom Ellen inspires us to keep things simple, and get her famous brisket recipe in Haiku Deck form, on our blog.)

How to take part in Mother’s Day, Haiku Deck style:

1. Create a Haiku Deck of “Things I Learned from Mom.” It doesn’t have to be long; just heartfelt. You can use your own photos, photos from our Creative Commons image search, or a mix. (If you live in a place that isn’t celebrating Mother’s Day this month, no problem–you can still participate!)

2. Send a link to your deck to gallery@haikudeck.com, or tweet it using the hashtag #hdgallery, by Thursday, May 9th at midnight PDT.

3. Be sure to share your deck with your mom as well as with your friends, families, and social networks–we’ll be judging decks based on their content and creativity as well as how many views they’ve received.

4. We’ll showcase all entries we receive on our special Things I Learned from Mom Pinterest board and the best ones in our Gallery.

5. We’ll announce the winner on Friday, May 10th and ship an iPad mini (16GB wi-fi with an engraved personal message) to the winner’s mom. (Of course, making your mom feel special is pretty much a win-win.)

Oh, and on the anything’s possible note? Our team is *incredibly* honored to be nominated for two different Geekwire Awards. If you could take 5 seconds to click through and vote for us for App of the Year and Startup of the Year before voting closes TODAY (April 30), it would definitely make us smile big–and make my mom incredibly proud. As always, thank you for your support and for being part of our amazing creative community.

Sincerely,

Adam

Co-founder and CEO, Haiku Deck

4th graders using Haiku Deck at Acacia Elementary

Q&A with Fourth Grade Teacher Annie Lafont

Haiku Deck: What inspired you to try Haiku Deck?

Annie: At one of our staff development meetings this winter, Haiku Deck was introduced as an app that teachers could easily incorporate into their lessons. I immediately downloaded it because I saw the value in it (and it was free!).

Haiku Deck is easy to navigate and is a powerful presentation tool. Students have an easy time choosing pictures to go along with the text on their slides because the app instantly provides images based on keywords that are typed into the slides. Students can also use pictures from their own camera roll or customize the image search.

Haiku Deck: Could you tell us a little bit how you’ve been using it in your classroom?

Annie: One of my colleagues, Stephanie Given, shared a project that her students were working on. They were writing sensory poems, and the goal was to use descriptive language. I loved the idea and taught my students how to write sensory poems. Students were encouraged to include description, using the five senses.

Created with Haiku Deck, the free presentation app for iPad

Their goal was to paint a picture in the reader’s mind of what it was that was important or special to them. Haiku Deck was the perfect tool to bring their poems to life.

Created with Haiku Deck, the free presentation app for iPad

Students have also created a character analysis project using Haiku Deck. Students collaborated and then brainstormed words to describe characters in “The Secret of Nimh.” Students created a slide to describe each character.

Created with Haiku Deck, the free presentation app for iPad

“When publishing their work on the Haiku Deck site, students have a real audience and their work has a genuine purpose.”

Haiku Deck: What has the experience been like for you and your students?

Annie: I recently polled my students, asking them what their favorite iPad project has been this year, and most students chose Haiku Deck. One student said, “One of my favorite things on the iPads was when we used Haiku Deck. I got to learn how to write an amazing, really descriptive poem, and the presentation was my own.”

“Students felt a sense of ownership and pride when it was their turn to present their sensory poem to the class. The student audience was engaged and eager to watch the presentations.”

Haiku Deck: What tips do you have for teachers getting started with Haiku Deck?

Annie: Haiku Deck is fun and easy to learn. Students are able to create dramatic presentations with ease. Students feel a sense of pride when their presentations are displayed on the board. Also, when students create projects on Haiku Deck, their work can be uploaded to the Haiku Deck site. Since each deck has its own URL, students and teachers are able to create QR codes and share their projects easily.

“Students feel a sense of pride when their presentations are displayed on the board.”

Thank you Annie and Acacia Elementary for sharing your experiences! (Side note: We love how Annie has set up the classroom account as “Room 13 Rocks!” We totally agree—you can even follow them on Twitter!)

iPads in the Classroom: More Inspiration

We’ve collected more examples of sensory poems (from Acacia Room 13 and other schools) on this Pinterest board.

If you’re looking for more creative ways to enliven iPads in the classroom with Haiku Deck, be sure to check out our Education Case Studies Pinterest board, our showcase of great education-related Haiku Decks, and our Q&A with Haiku Deck Edu Guru Jeremy Macdonald.

Series A Funding Announced

SEATTLE, WA–(April 3, 2013) – Haiku Deck, a Seattle-based company that aims to transform presentation creation and sharing, announced today that it has secured $3 million in Series A funding. The investment was led by Trilogy Partnership with participation from Madrona Venture Group, Founders Co-op, tech entrepreneur Sarah Leary, and other angel investors.

Haiku Deck launched its iPad app to broad acclaim in August 2012 and has ranked #1 in productivity in 36 markets around the world. Last month Haiku Deck released version 2.0, with a powerful new set of business-focused features and functionality.

“We’ve gone from zero to half a million customers in just a few months, so it’s clear that Haiku Deck’s simple, fun approach to creating beautiful presentations is resonating,” said co-founder and CEO, Adam Tratt. “As mobile devices continue to change the way people work, we see a huge opportunity in helping everyone create the kind of presentation that used to require a design professional.”

Sample Haiku Deck chart illustrating iPad penetration by industry (source: Citrix)

Haiku Deck, hailed as the Instagram for Pitch Decks by Mashable, is gaining traction as a powerful, time-saving tool for traditional presentations and new formats including tablet-centric pitch decks, creative communication pieces, and rich content for blogs. Its innovative Creative Commons image search addresses a common pain point of finding and properly attributing free, high-quality images.

The funding will allow Haiku Deck to expand its lead in mobile-first presentation tools by growing the team, expanding to other platforms, and developing a premium offering.

“We believe Haiku Deck is well positioned to disrupt an industry that’s seen surprisingly little innovation in the past two decades,” said Yuval Neeman, Partner at Trilogy. “The consumer response and product reviews have been extraordinary, and we’re excited about the potential for this next phase of growth.” Haiku Deck received seed funding from Madrona Venture Group and angels after completing the TechStars program in Seattle.

Haiku Deck has been embraced by business leaders, entrepreneurs, educators, realtors, salespeople, marketers, and creative thinkers worldwide. Recent examples from the Haiku Deck Gallery include:

Tomorrow Ready CIO, by John Sheridan, Chief Technology Officer of Australia

Elon Musk Quotes from #SXSWI, by Karen Budell, Chief Content Officer, Imagine

Not Your Typical Graduate Job, by Andy Parker, founder of Incredibli

5 Sales Prospecting Techniques You Probably Never Tried, but Should, by Ago Cluytens

Teaching Frameworks for Creative Collaboration, presented at Educon 2.5

Visual Storytelling, by Ken Shelton

About Haiku Deck

Haiku Deck makes it simple and fun to create and share flawlessly beautiful presentations. Headquartered in Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood, Haiku Deck is a privately held company with the backing of prominent investors including Trilogy Partnership, Madrona Venture Group, Founder’s Co-op, and Techstars. The Seattle-based startup was founded by Adam Tratt and Kevin Leneway. For additional information and company images, visit www.haikudeck.com/newsroom.

Media Contact

Nicole Brunet

408-761-1803

media@haikudeck.com

Lists

In “Through the Noise,” Fenella Olynick uses short lists (and the striking Picaresque theme) effectively to deliver her “students matter, teachers care” message. (Learn more about creating lists here.)

Click to view the full Haiku Deck

Colorful Backgrounds

If you’ve experimented with solid-color slide backgrounds, you might have noticed that the palette of color choices has been expanded. We love mixing in solid-color slides to punctuate the flow of a presentation. Check out how Therese Beale uses them to make her message pop in “Message Gap: Three Clues You Have One.” (Learn how to select a solid-color background here.)

Click to view the full Haiku Deck

Copy Decks

In the Presentation Boot Camp we did with TruliaPro, we definitely appreciated the time-saving Copy Decks feature when we created this deck–which features five flexible “power templates”–and then published those templates separately. (Get a full recap of the webinar series, with links to all the templates and resources, here. You’ll find stuff that’s super useful even if you’re not in real estate!)

Click to view the full Haiku Deck

Image Resizing

When you’re using your own images, in-app cropping and resizing is a huge time saver. Look how beautifully Tercia Goh incorporated her Instagram photos in her gorgeous GlobalFootprints Travel Photography Project. (Find out more about image resizing here.)

Click to view the full Haiku Deck

Charts and Graphs

And we just can’t resist including this one. In “Improving Teaching,” Haiku Deck Guru Chris Seal of Millfield School in Somerset, UK used this pie chart to illustrate which presentation tools his students preferred. (He also created a fantastic Haiku Deck school snapshot that showcases all the new chart styles beautifully.) You can learn more about creating charts and graphs here.

Click to view the full Haiku Deck

Want to see your Haiku Deck featured in our Gallery or our Pinterest Boards? Send a link to your best work to gallery@haikudeck.com, or tweet it using the #hdgallery hashtag. And if you have any questions about the new features, or need even more presentation inspiration, we are always here to help. Send a question or comment any time to team@haikudeck.com.

What was hardest to get used to was…the silence! I wasn’t nervous about talking to 1,000+ people, but I realized how much I depend on visual and audio cues to develop a connection with my audience, to read how things are going, and adjust. It was as disconcerting as the first time I rehearsed my Ignite talk with the slides timed to auto-advance every 15 seconds. But, just like the Ignite talk or any new presentation experience, practicing was the key. By the third session, the host and I had developed a comfortable back-and-forth dialogue to keep things moving, even though we’ve never actually met in person! (Hai-5, Jovan!)

Session 1: Three Keys to Presentations that Wow

Click to view the full Haiku Deck with Notes

In the first session, Three Keys to Presentations that Wow, we covered some presentation best practices that are central to Haiku Deck, but that can be applied no matter what presentation tool you’re using: in a nutshell, keep things simple, beautiful, and fun. We also touched on the #1 mistake that most presenters make (and which I’ve certainly made myself in the past), which is treating your slides like content-rich documents instead of visual aids to illustrate and enrich your message. Using the Haiku Deck Notes feature is a great way to avoid this pitfall.

Session 2: Twelve Ways to Transform Your Real Estate Marketing

In the second session, Twelve Ways to Transform Your Real Estate Marketing with Haiku Deck, we touched on creative ways to build relationships, business, and thought leadership with exactly the kind of beautiful, standout communication pieces Haiku Deck is designed to create easily.

Click to view the full Haiku Deck with Notes

I also shared five “power templates” that can be used for inspiration (and adapted for just about any field):

• About Me
• Meet the Team
• Market Trends Report
• Neighborhood Showcase
• Share Expertise

(I’ve also started a Pinterest board to collect templates–we’d love your submissions and ideas!)

Session 3: Five Strategies for Renovating Your Listing Presentation

In the third session, Five Strategies for Renovating Your Listing Presentations, we covered ideas for rethinking the listing presentation, one of the most important tools for real estate professionals. I shared the story of how John James (now a Haiku Deck Guru) used Haiku Deck to rework his listing presentation—under time pressure—and scored a $1.4M listing, and we examined some strategies to help break out of the typical “formula.”

Click to view the full Haiku Deck with Notes

I also shared a couple of “before” and “after” slide renovations to illustrate the concepts we’d talked about (great inspiration no matter what field you’re in):

• Renovation 1 (Clara Utset, RealtyWorld, Miami)
• Renovation 2 (Oksana Tsarenko, Realty Direct, Portland)

If you’d like to discuss a webinar series for your team or organization, please get in touch: catherine (at) haikudeck (dot) com. These topics and materials could be easily tailored to just about any field.

Yes, we’ve released updates in the past, but this is a big one, and it’s packed with all kinds of awesome new stuff! It’s like Christmas, New Year’s, and a disco-ball dance party all in one.

What’s New In Haiku Deck 2.0

Created with Haiku Deck, the free presentation app for iPad

For all the details, read more about:

• Making the best-looking charts and graphs you’ve ever seen, using only your fingertips
• Creating numbered and bulleted lists
• Cropping and repositioning images, right from the app
• The new streamlined publishing and sharing flow
• Cool new features you can access from the Main screen

But really, what we MOST want you to do is download or update Haiku Deck 2.0 TODAY, try it out, send us your feedback, rate and review it, tell your friends about it, and set your story free!

Love,

Team Haiku Deck