Useful Web Gizmos:
Slide/Presentation Sharing
Sites
Marie T. Ascher
Associate Director, USERS
Health Sciences Library
New York Medical College
13 May 2010
Description
This 30-minute session will introduce
participants to sites on the web which
allow users to upload, share, and search
slides and slide presentations.
Potential uses for slide sharing in
education and research will be described
and discussed.
Why share?
Marketing
Collaboration
Distribution
Storage
Embedding
Process
1. Upload
- to external servers, converts to Flash*
1. Publish
- title, tags, description, category, share
1. Track
- statistics on views, comments, ratings
Which one should you use? Let’s look at the features:
Some Popular Sites
(in alphabetical order)
* indicates noteworthy special features
authorSTREAM http://www.authorstream.com/
Supports: ppt, pps, pptx, ppsx
*Fast upload and conversion (to Flash)
Widget code for embedding immediately available
Need to buy video credits to convert PPTs to video
Public/Private options
Post to Twitter
*Present Live
Subscribe to "Channels" - create a maximum of two
Docstoc http://www.docstoc.com/
Max file size 50MB
Supports additional document types: pdf, doc, docx,
xls, xlsx, ppt, pptx, pps, ppsx, rtf, and txt
Folder upload allowed
Public/private options
Create, subscribe to, and contribute to channels
Add "friends"
*docstoc Sync / OneClick – easy upload
Scribd http://www.scribd.com/
Max file size 100MB
Supports even more file types: pdf, ps, doc, docx,
ppt, pps, ppts\X, xls, xlsx, odt, sxw, odp, sxi, ods, sxc,
rtf, txt
"Largest social publishing site"
*Scribd store
1HTML5 instead of Flash (coming soon)
Wordpress format embedding (and HTML)
Public/private options
SlideBoom http://www.slideboom.com/
Max file size 100MB
Supports: ppt, pptx, pps, ppsx
Free and Pro account types
Up to 100 presentations (limited) in free account
*Graphic commenting features
Wordpress plug-in
SlideServe http://www.slideserve.com/
Max file size 50MB
Supports: ppt, pps, pot
Conversion to Flash on user end
SlideShare http://www.slideshare.net
Max file size 100MB (500MB for videos)
Supports: pdf, ppt, pps, pptx, ppsx, pot, potx, odp, key, zip (Apple Keynote)
doc, docx, rtf, xls, odt, ods, Apple iWork Pages.
Slower load time (busier site?)
"Social" - profile, auto-shares (if selected) with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn
*Most popular slide sharing site, maximum visibility
Can insert YouTube videos into presentations
*Slidecasting
Wordpress and Blogger (and more!) embed formats
Other means of
sharing/sending/collaborating…
http://bit.ly/bxq5hm
ZohoShow http://show.zoho.com/
Max file size 30MB
Supports: ppt, pps, odp, sxi
Upload as read-write or read-only
No embeddable code generated, just a URL
Not as “social”
Google Docs http://docs.google.com
Max file size 10MB* for ppts to be converted, much
larger for those not to be converted
Multiple document types – Either uploaded in native
format or converted to Google Docs format for
collaborative editing
Embed via Publish function
Not as “social”
Specialized sites ?
Pathology…
Searching
Most of the sites have a rudimentary search
function
Sortable by most viewed, highest rated, most
recent, etc.
Search by license type: public domain, Creative
Commons
Ability to subscribe to channels or networks, friends
Slideshare and Scribd have the largest repositories
of presentations and documents
Search for “glaucoma”
authorSTREAM: 11 presentations
Docstoc: ~300 documents
Scribd: 358 documents
SlideBoom: 6 presentations
SlideServe: 3 presentations
SlideShare: 1119 presentations
Conclusion
Slide and presentation sharing sites (and
social document sharing sites) offer an
alternate and informal publication method
which is social, collaborative and offers
potential wide distribution.
These sites are easy to use and a
valuable resource for researchers and
academics.
Let’s discuss how YOU might
use…
Thank you!
marie_ascher@nymc.edu