You already learned how you can upload your presentations to SlideBoom -- but do you know that unless you enable the option, all downloads of the original PowerPoint presentation (PPT or PPTX) are disabled when you share the URL of your online presentation. Most of the time, you might be happy with this default behavior, but it is good to know that this can be changed on a presentation-to-presentation basis.
This and other similar options can be found within the Privacy options values within the Uploading your presentation screen within the SlideBoom site. If these options are only visible as a thin strip that you can see in Figure 1, click the downward pointing chevron to see all the options, as shown in Figure 2.
Figure 1: The Privacy options strip shows you options
Figure 2: Click the chevron, and you can edit the privacy options.
Thereafter, click the Submit button, and you are done.
Yury Uskov is a founder and CEO of iSpring Solutions Inc., an innovative software company with their development center in Russia. Yury has a Masters degree in Software Engineering and since 2001 have been working in rich media industry inspired with the idea of making the best solution for online presentation sharing. iSpring Solutions has already launched several Flash technology projects including iSpring, a PowerPoint to Flash converter, and SlideBoom, an online service for presentations sharing.
Geetesh: Tell us more about SlideBoom -- did you look at this as a natural evolution process after iSpring?
Yury: I’d rather mention two aspects. First is that iSpring users needed such a site to share their great presentations converted by desktop products. From this point of view SlideBoom is just a great companion to iSpring.
Secondly, it is not a secret that people use online services more and more each day. This growing tendency inspired us to build SlideBoom as an online alternative to iSpring. From this point of view, SlideBoom looks like a result of iSpring evolution process.
Geetesh: What sets SlideBoom apart from similar slide sharing sites?
Yury: Thanks for the good question. Other similar sites are usually good for sharing static presentations only, and this kills some advantages of PowerPoint presentations. SlideBoom is designed for sharing rich video-like presentations with animations, embedded Flash movies, audio narrations and video clips. The unique feature of SlideBoom is graphical annotations over presentation content, which could be saved with a presentation on the portal.
I can say that SlideBoom leads the second generation of PowerPoint sharing facilities (PowerPoint to Web 2.0) and I know that our competitors also work on similar solutions. We have developed iSpring technology since 2004, and have an advantage over competitors at least for 2-3 years.
We get feedback from people that use SlideBoom and most of them tell that SlideBoom is the service that they were looking for a long time. And I am sure there is a room for SlideBoom at the market, and it will have a great future.
You already learned how you can join SlideBoom and upload your presentations as part of this SlideBoom series. In this post, I'll go beyond the basics and show you how you can share your uploaded presentations with others:
First, make sure that you sign into your SlideBoom account.
Click the My Account button to load up your account page -- on this page, you can see all your presentations (see Figure 1).
Figure 1: Your account page at SlideBoom
Click on the presentation that you want to share -- this opens the presentation page URL on SlideBoom, as you can see in Figure 2.
Figure 2: Your presentation page at SlideBoom
Note the area towards the right side of the presentation window -- a zoomed-in view can be seen in Figure 3 below.
Figure 3: Share options at SlideBoom
I'll explain all the options you can see in Figure 3 here:
The Post option at the bottom has icons that can be clicked on -- this allows you to post uploaded presentations to community sites like MySpace, Facebook, Hi5, etc.
The Bookmark option lets you create a public or private bookmark at one of the many bookmarking sites such as del.icio.us, Digg, Technorati, etc.
The Presentation URL option let you copy the actual SlideBoom URL of the presentation.
The Embed into WordPress option provides code that lets you add SlideBoom presentations to your WordPress blog.
For other blogs, or any web site, you can use the Embed in your blog code -- copy the code and paste it to embed.
Finally, the Share by email option opens the Share by Email sheet that you can see in Figure 4. Add an email address, your name, and message -- and click the Send button.
Next time, I'll show you how you can make changes to your SlideBoom profile.
I already introduced you to SlideBoom and showed you how you can join as part of the SlideBoom series, I provided a brief introduction to this slide sharing site. In today's post, you'll learn how you can upload your first presentation to this site.
First create a simple presentation -- or use any of your existing PowerPoint presentations.
Then get to the SlideBoom site, and click the Sign In link towards the top right of the page. This brings you to the sign in page that you can see in Figure 1 -- log-in with your username and password. If you have forgotten your password, click the Forgot Password option. Figure 1: Sign in to upload presentations
Once you have signed in, click the Upload button to get to the Upload Presentation screen that you can see in Figure 2. Click the Browse button, select the presentation you want to upload, and then get back to the web page. Thereafter, click the Upload button that you can see in Figure 2.
Figure 2: Upload presentations
You can now see an indication of your upload process, as shown in Figure 3.
Figure 3: Uploading process
Once this is done, you can enter some meta info for the presentation -- add a title, description, some tags, choose a topic, change the language other than Autodetect if required, and finally select the privacy options. See Figure 4 to get an idea of the options available.
Figure 4: Add meta info at this stage
Click the Submit button, and you should be done -- and you can now click on the View Presentation button to view your presentation -- and share the uploaded presentation with others.
In the next post in this series, I'll show you how you can share your SlideBoom presentations.
In the last post in the SlideBoom series, I provided a brief introduction to this slide sharing site. In today's post, you'll learn how you can become a member of the SlideBoom site. Remember -- SlideBoom in its present form is a free service.
Follow these steps to join SlideBoom:
Visit the SlideBoom site, and click the prominent Join Now button that you can see in Figure 1.
Figure 1: Join Now button
This opens up the sign up form page that you can see in Figure 2 -- fill in all the form fields as required, and click the Sign Up button below the form when done. Make sure you save your sign up details such as the password in a safe place.
Figure 2: Sign Up form
That's all you need to do -- soon you'll receive a confirmation email from SlideBoom in your mail inbox -- you'll have to click a link in the email (see Figure 3) to activate your Slide Boom account.
Figure 3: Activate your SlideBoom account
In the next post in this series, I'll show you how you can sign in, and upload your presentations to the SlideBoom site.
SlideBoom is a web site where you can upload your PowerPoint presentations -- at the back-end, a PowerPoint to Flash converting engines makes Flash movies of all your PowerPoint slides. Each uploaded presentation is provided a page URL that you can share with others who want to see your presentation.
That was an easy introduction to SlideBoom. In a series of subsequent posts, we will look at several options that SlideBoom provides including how you can join SlideBoom, upload your presentations, share your uploaded presentations, etc. You can keep track of all these posts here...
Figure 1 shows you the SlideBoom homepage (click on it to see a larger preview) -- to get to this page, you need to visit the SlideBoom link in your web browser.
Figure 1: The SlideBoom homepageSlideBoom is from iSpring Solutions, Inc -- the same folks who create the iSpring range of PowerPoint to Flash conversion software. Read our review on iSpring Pro 3.5 here...
In my next post on SlideBoom, I'll show you how you can join as a member -- membership is free and allows you to upload your own PowerPoint presentations to the SlideBoom site.
