Serendipity35

People are sharing photos on Flickr, bookmarks on del.icio.us, their favorite blogs with Bloglines, stories they enjoyed online with Digg, and videos on YouTube. It was only a matter of time before we started sharing all those PowerPoint presentations.

That's what SlideShare is all about. I read about it at a site for professional presenters called indezine, in an interview with Jonathan Boutelle, CTO of SlideShare.

It looks a lot like YouTube when you view a presentation - there's a "share" link to mail it to someone and there's a piece of code to embed it in a web page (that's what I did at the bottom of this blog entry with a sample I uploaded). Since you can tag your presentations, they are all searchable.

Currently they accept PowerPoint (.ppt and .pps files) & OpenOffice (.odp files). Apple users with KeyNote presentations can export to "ppt" format and upload that file.

As with YouTube and others, you should not use materials that you don't have copyright for, or have permission from the owner. SlideShare is a public space, so don't upload unless you want it out there. The max file size is currently 20mb and your original will be converted to a Flash file (again, like YouTube).

How do I see you using this free service?

Teachers can upload their own slideshows for students to view online and also have students upload assignments for classmates and others to view. It would certainly be an easy way to share your conference presentation with attendees. If you browse through the site, you'll see that people also upload weddings and parties and personal events to share with friends. The Web 2.0 types of uses are pretty apparent to anyone who has used the services like those in my opening paragraph.

You can get email notification when people comment on slideshows you have uploaded if you wish. You can an RSS feed so that you subscribe to a particular user on SlideShare, so students can subscribe to your presentations the way they might to your podcasts. (You just click on the RSS icon at the bottom of the person's slidespace.) You can bookmark slideshows that you want to remember, and you can also tag a show with your own keywords to help you remember what it contained.

I uploaded a simple PowerPoint about using quotations in presentations as a test. I can give someone the link - in this case it's http://slideshare.net/ronko4/thirty-quotations/ - or embed it in a web page as I did here:

There are plenty of shows to look at ranging from educational to silly (like the content in almost all these services) Take a look at this one on podcasting or this one on website credibility as examples of worthwhile presentations that are available. Since PowerPoint is so ubiquitous these days in classrooms, (I'm not saying that's a great thing BTW.) this services is a nice tool for educators.

Slideshare is the second product from Uzanto, whose first offering was MindCanvas in 2005.

And, of course, Slideshare has its own blog.