After yesterday’s short digression into some of the finer points of heuristic evaluation, today I’m returning to the matter at hand: an assessment of the features and functionality provided by the authorSTREAM and SlideShare hosted presentation distribution services.
Now read on…
authorSTREAM is a web-based PowerPoint presentation sharing platform from authorGEN Technologies. After creating a presentation in Microsoft 
PowerPoint, content creators can upload presentations to the authorSTREAM website. During the upload process the content is converted Adobe to Flash SWF format displayed via the Flash player. Content creators can use the provided HTML code to embed the presentation in a blog or website, as well to share the presentation via e-mail, and submit the content to YouTube. authorSTREAM also enables users to share their presentations via mobile devices that support MV4 playback such as the Apple iPod or iPhone.
Slideshare supports a range of import file types, including PowerPoint PPT, OpenOffice.org Impress, and PDF format. Broadly speaking, we can say that the SlideShare upload process shares many characteristics 
with other Web 2.0 tools, and is in fact very similar to the authorSTREAM submission procedure. Generally speaking, once a file is uploaded and converted to SWF, it is publicly available.
The content creators can choose to make the slide show available to be downloaded. Interestingly for a service provided by a for-profit organization Slideshare is linked with Creative Commons, so various attribution licenses are supported (click here for more thoughts on Open Source Software). In addition, these presentations can be retrieved at any computer without need for USB drives or other storage devices. In other words, presentations in Slideshare can be held before a conference for the presenters use and then reviewed afterwards by guests. Like YouTube, a presentation can be viewed in the small screen or take the full screen of a monitor.
Table
2 responses so far ↓
1
Umesh Sharma
// Jun 27, 2008 at 4:37 pm
Hello Michael,
This is Umesh from authorSTREAM.
Thank you for a nice comparison, we strongly believe that its not about either one or another. Both (or more) will do well if each concentrates on its use case and answers precisely to the question you mentioned for everyone as a user including me, “Whats in it for me?”
Anyways, i actually wanted to make one correction in the table you compiled, we do support PowerPoint Download if the Uploader Allows it. You can see this option at the bottom on Upload window when you upload a PowerPoint file, this is unchecked by default.
Thanks again, looking forward to see your PowerPoint files on authorSTREAM
2
Yury Uskov
// Jun 27, 2008 at 5:19 pm
Sounds nice, but… did you look at slideboom.com?
It looks like being was slightly superior to authorSTREAM in terms of PowerPoint related features and presentations quality.
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