SlideShow Mashups Say It All in the Cloud

What's a SlideShow Mashup?

It's all in the cloud. Imagine an online slide-show having Web images, YouTube videos, text, links and all the frills and thrills of a PowerPoint presentation--all in one. Possible? YES! Watch this one and read on..

iJustine

Uploaded on authorSTREAM by caliber | Upload your own presentation

How to create a SlideShow Mashup

The recently launched authorSTREAM Desktop is a nifty app, which lets you create compelling slide mashups. This add-in ribbon for Microsoft PowerPoint can search and fetch images from Microsoft Bing and videos from Google's YouTube, directly from within PowerPoint, while you are creating a presentation. You don’t even need to use a browser; all can be done directly from within PowerPoint. Here's a video showing how:

What are the benefits of a Mashed up SlideShow?

One single PowerPoint (read powerful) slideshow mashup containing images, videos and information will look much better on your blog or on your website than if you scatter all those images and videos on one page. Your blog post will look shorter and nicer, and will load quicker with only a single slideshow mashup embed.

Furthermore, if you want to send multiple Youtube videos on a subject/idea/artist/place--whatever--to your contacts, you can simply insert the videos that you want into one PowerPoint presentation using authorSTREAM Desktop, upload the presentation to authorSTREAM, and simply send the mashup link to your contacts. This saves a lot of email bandwidth and at the same time, sharing is accomplished without sending any heavy multimedia email attachments. Rather than being scattered all over YouTube, the videos can be grouped in one single easy-to-share online slideshow mashup. You can even send it as a greeting card.

With authorSTREAM Desktop, you can also select multiple images and insert them in separate slides automatically with a single command. This is a very useful option if you want to create a picture album.

Here's another slideshow mashup:

Enrique Iglesias

Uploaded on authorSTREAM by islides | Upload your own presentation

Update: A special section has been added in the 3rd August update on authorSTREAM: Slideshow Mashups

Now authorSTREAM Desktop to Search and Add Web Videos and Images in PowerPoint

authorSTREAM Desktop has been launched and we are very excited about it. The application can search and fetch images from Microsoft Bing, and video from Google's YouTube within PowerPoint, while you are creating a presentation. You can then choose the ones that you like and insert them in your slides.

You can also access your account on authorSTREAM.com using this PowerPoint add-in and upload your presentations to the platform from within PowerPoint itself.

Here's a video, in which Harman Singh, the CEO of authorGEN shows how he added images and videos to a blank presentation using the PowerPoint ribbon:

Using authorSTREAM Desktop

Uploaded on authorSTREAM by authorSTREAM | Upload your own presentation

Let's take a look at how authorSTREAM Desktop helps authors to enhance their presentations using rich media from the Web. The image below shows the authorSTREAM Desktop ribbon installed in PowerPoint:

Using the "Search" option, you can select either images from Microsoft Bing or videos from YouTube. A results' window will open and all you need to do is to pick one or more from the results and add them to the presentation.

Adding images in PPT presentations from the Web

Simply search using a descriptive keyword; for example, if you want an image about social media in one of the slides, you can just search for "social media", which will provide you with a lot of choices. You can add multiple images in one slide, or each one of them in a different slide using "Options" at the bottom. This is very useful for creating quick photo albums.

Adding Videos from YouTube

In the search box, type a keyword and click on the YouTube icon. This will fetch videos from YouTube, providing ample choices to insert in your slides. You can click on the little green triangular arrows to preview a video, which makes them pop up in a box for easy review.

After you have finished your presentation, just upload it to authorSTREAM from within PowerPoint using the "Upload PowerPoint" option:








authorSTREAM Desktop provides powerful media search capability within PowerPoint. We strongly advise you to respect intellectual property copyright and use any images and videos in accordance with international copyright laws and licences. We welcome your feedback!

PPT Presentation Channels - Now add Public Presentations

Keeping in view the overwhelming response we are getting for presentation channels, we've come up with a few feature improvements on the basis of your feedback. You can now add any public presentation to your channels. This feature will let you enhance your channels by adding themed, quality presentations uploaded by other users of authorSTREAM.

Now you also can choose from permission options for channel subscribers. Either you can let any channel subscriber add presentations to your channel, which can be moderated / no moderation as per permission set by you, or you can only allow a specific set of subscribers to add presentations to your channel.

We have also provided the option of tagging your channels, which will help users search and reach your channels easily using presentation channel search.

We're coming up with more customization in channels soon. Your feedback is very important to us and most welcome.

Update: We've added an array of features to channels over a period of time. Now, you can not only have limitless channels but even brand them to suit your style and need. Click here to learn more....

PowerPoint to Video Conversion - Choose Filetypes Now

We just improved the way you can convert PowerPoint to video files. Considering recent requests from users for multiple platform support, we just added this improvement. Read on...

PowerPoint to video conversion

Now you can convert your PowerPoint files to different video file formats like AVI, WMV, FLV and MP4 using your video credits at authorSTREAM. You need to select a target platform like TV/DVD, Web or iPod and you will be presented with various options to convert with the recommended one pre-selected.


You also get a "Zoom Video Size" option. Zoom will double the size of slides in video output thus providing you better experience on TV screens too. If you want your video to be bigger in size (which normally is the case when you want to play it on your DVD) then you should set zoom at 2X. X is the actual size of your PowerPoint slide; so, for example, if the slide was at 720 by 540, the video created at 2x will be 1440 by 1080 in size. We will add higher zoom factors soon for large LCD monitors.

Your converted videos will always be available for viewing or download in video conversion history.

We welcome your feedback!

Maintenance

authorSTREAM is down for maintenance. We shall be back within half an hour. Inconvenience regretted.

Update: authorSTREAM is Live now.