January 29, 2009

Infusing YouTube Videos Into Your Powerpoint Presentations

SlideShare, a mix between PowerPoint and YouTube now allows you to embed YouTube videos into your Flash-based presentations.

Now you can:

1. Include personal introductions in your slideshows
2. Offer video that supports the contents of the rest of the presentation
3. Include demonstrations of a website’s features.

Until now, adding video in to your presentation meant that you had to include links to separate video files, which sort of defeated the purpose of having a really simple way to share PowerPoint presentations.

Keep in mind that it isn’t currently possible to make a video auto-play; also you must deal with YouTube’s standard "feature" of linking to a video’s YouTube address whenever you accidentally click outside of the "Play" arrow. Other than that, it’s a great addition to the service. Also notable, that while this is the first time SlideShare has supported embedded video, the site has allowed users to embed audio alongside their slideshows since 2007.

You can check out a sample slideshow below.





SlideShare also launched an impressive "cloud-based" feature that ties your native PowerPoint client your SlideShare account.

Similar online services include SlideRocket, DocStoc, Scribd, SlideSix, and SlideBoom.

Cybercast credit: SlideShare and YouTube

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