Slideshare
I spent some time yesterday morning building a "backdrop" to a talk that I am giving tomorrow on "Investing In The Future". I wanted to share it with some people and thought that doing it via the web might be the best way. So I tried out Slideshare after getting advice from my twitter followers on what service was best for the job.
The Slideshare service is very straightforward. My only complaint is that it took at least twelve hours and possibly more (I went to bed before it finished) to convert from .ppt to flash. Based on my analysis of how YouTube got to be king of video sharing on the web and beat google, I think immediate gratification is an important feature and would highly encourage Slideshare to work on that.
As for as quality, you can assess that yourself. Sorry for the lack of audio track. I am providing that live and in person tomorrow.
Comments (Archived):
The slideshare website design seems pretty dodgy. Also, it’s a direct rip-off of the YouTube interface (which I suppose by extension I’m not a big fan of).Why isn’t Microsoft throwing tons of money at making the same thing for Silverlight? A silverlight host for ppts makes a much better technological match than a flash based host.
Sometimes the Big Guys get it right because Google Docs works better than Slideshare, especially for embedding.Also, FYI… your Mets are definitely NOT little guys. 3rd highest payroll in 2008 at $138 million!
I think Slideshare is great — I’ve used it a half-dozen times or so, but you’re right and it takes way too long to convert to Flash.When I can (meaning, when I’m posting somewhere that allows an iFrame), I like to use Google Docs. It converts instantaneously, and if something converts poorly, you can edit it!Google = Magic 🙂
Timing is everything :)lol ~ what do you say about “Maestro”?
12 Hours sounds extreme… I’ve had it take 30 min – an hour at the worst of times.My biggest beef is it’s font issues… I find it really hard to get a deck to upload without having some sort of font problem.It’s otherwise a great site…
Fred – you can export from Keynote directly into Flash. Open the PPT in Keynote, fix any sizing issues by resetting the page size in Inspector & export to Flash.10 minutes, round trip.
Fred,Long time reader of your blog. Glad to see you using SlideShare. Generally, it takes us only a few minutes to convert from ppt to SlideShare format. But we have been growing a bit too fast and running into capacity problems in last 2 weeks. We are adding severs and upgrading, and should be back to “immediate gratification” very soon!
Hi Fred,I’m now using Scribd’s iPaper to embed a slideshow. It’s working extremely well. The only drawback is the lack of network effect to take advantage of.Bottom line, I guess: if you just want to embed your slideshow and get visibility through a blog or other, use Scribd. If you want/need to build visibility through a peer production app, go with Slideshare despite the lower quality.
I suggest you to try paragraphr (dot com) as well. It is not an alternative of Slideshare, but probably good for having discussions with the presentation. See some chapters in Mass Niche (the first content at the site) as an example, though it has few comments. Here’s how:1. Save your ppt as jpg, gif, or png, using PPT’s file/save as menu.2. Register and log in at paragraphr. Start a book.3. Upload your jpg files(slides) one by one. (It will be seconds. It is not popular.)Or, you can save your jpg files elsewhere and link at paragraphr.3. Save your jpg files at an image host (like flickr).4. Insert a paragraph at paragraphr, and link to the image URL like !http://flickr.com/etc! (! before and after the image URL).5. Have discussions below each slide. (I am sorry It is not Disqus.)6. You may want to add text paragraphs around the slides, to have more active discussions.Let me know if you need help. If you want, send me the file and I will do it for you.
Keep It Simple! This is what I use to convert PPT to FLA. I use this on some very large mining clients websites to convert cool PPTs to Flash Video people can watch online. It’s not just a video, if you click it goes to the next slide.http://www.dreamingsoft.com…PPT to Flash Free Trial, can’t go wrong.
Can you upload the audio now?