Very cool– after reading on TextCrunch about Introducing SlideShare: Power Point + YouTube I checked out the site to see its one of those betas. But you can ask to get in, adn I got an account before I had finished lunch.
TextCrunch is right- this is YouTube for PowerPoint, even the interface is a dead ringer for the popular video sharing site. You upload those heavy, creaky, bullet laden PPTs (20 Mb limit), and Slideshare converts it to a Flash format, that can be embedded in a page (see below), direct URL linked (once the site goes public), tag shows, share them, and all the now run of the mill groovy social software stuff.
My “slidespace” showing slide shows I have uploaded
As you search, browse tags, and look at a Slideshare page, it is just the same function as YouTube:
And from here, you can thumb through the slides, flip to full screen mode (which looks great). They even consider slides as “micro-content”, so via the URl you can link directly to slide 15 in a show.
So for testing pleasure, I uploaded a PPT from 2003, that was used with my amigo colleagues Brian and D’Arcy when were serious about Learning Objects– the original was created with our audio as a Breeze presentation for the 2003 NMC Online Conference on Learning Objects; see the original Connecting Learning Objects with RSS, Trackback, and Weblogs— and here is the Slideshare version (sans audio; I just grabbed the quickest PPT I could find:
It may be a fantastic tool to bring PowerPoint into a ____.0 phase.
Hey Alan:
Just wanted to ping you back on this topic. Slideshare seems very interesting on many levels. I like the fact that they grab the text from the slides and make it searchable, the ease of use of the interface is great and the ability to comment on peoples presentations is the height of web 2.0 coolness.
but what happened to concern about content, especially for learning tools. Unless you strip out any animations, transitions or motion graphics, your presentation will look like crap when it’s transferred to flash by slideshare. And forget about audio and video. So were back to doing powerpoint with just text and images. bullet points being our “power tool.”
I wouldn’t be complaining so strongly if I didn’t know that it could be better. I worked with a company last spring who was capturing the RGB output of powerpoint slides which could be captured in a flash movie, if desired and loaded to a website for viewing. Granted, hyperlinks are still MIA in this scenario, but at least you get more of the rich format of a presentation.
Is text to be the dominant form of content in this day and age?
Dave
Dave-
I can see at least 2 paths to consider–
(1) You have a polished PPT with all the whistles, bells, and snazzy transitions. Now, you are SOL with slideshare, and might need to re-edit original content
(2) You create new stuff knowing slideshare’s limits
I’d say its way too early to form a concrete opinion. Slideshare just came out of beta, and I would not be surprised to see new features and functionality appear.
For me, I am not thatr invested since I do almost nothing in PPT 😉