So which service is better? Well, I guess that comes down to WIIFM – what’s in it for me. The broad sweep of features and functionality are pretty similar on both services: deficiencies in one are accommodated by lack of functionality in the other, so it really comes down to personal choice.

My user experience of authorSTREAM was slightly superior to that of SlideShare: upload and conversion times were lower on the former service, for example. Equally, the enhanced slide animation and transition support on authorSTREAM was a positive advantage, as was the ability to view presentations in full-screen mode via a third party environment (my blog in this case). I also prefer the extended functionality afforded by the desktop-based client client, as well as the better audio integration.

In the end… well, I recommend that you try both out yourself, and you decide which service meets your needs.

Since then, both services have been nice enough to keep me up-to-date with developments in their respective apps. As you can imagine, most of these updates are incremental changes in functionality, better app stability, and so on, but the latest update from SlideShare really excited me.

As an inveterate user of PowerPoint Add-ins (Camtasia, Presenter, PowerManual etc) I find the facility to generate e-learning content from within an authoring application to be an essential component of the Rapid E-Learning production process. As it happens, I’m presenting at an event tomorrow where my e-learning “wow factor” will be How to Create E-Learning Content in Four Mouse Clicks; and a PowerPoint add-in is an important part of that narrative.

You can now generate e-elearning objects in PowerPoint and publish them to the SlideShare website, using the new SS ribbon add-in. This looks like being a very cool tool indeed, and if I get all my shopping done, I’ll install and test over the next few days.

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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). As with other hosted Web 2.0 services (including YouTube), a presentation can be viewed in the small screen or take the full screen of a monitor.

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