Hello developers! We just released version 2.0 of our API.  The new version 2.0 includes new methods for fetching user data:

• get_user_groups
• get_user_contacts
• get_user_tags

We’ve revised output to be more consistent and revised methods overall for reduced overlap in functionality. We’ve also implemented more reliable and higher quality search.

Version 1.0 of our API is still available, but we strongly advise developers to switch to the new version. All bug fixes and feature development will only take place on the newest version of the API. For more information we have a developers page that includes API kits. There is a new Ruby Wrapper Gem, but please note the API kits are not maintained by SlideShare. For support we have a google group.

While version 1.0 of the API is still available, we strongly encourage developers to adopt the new API. All bug fixes and additional feature development will take place solely in the most current version of the API.

In case you’ve missed the announcement at MacWorld, Apple released a new version of their productivity suite iWork ‘09.

This has resulted in a change in the way Keynote files are saved and our converter chokes on them when you upload one to SlideShare.

We’re working on the problem and should have a fix out soon, stay tuned!

SlideShare will be unavailable for a couple of hours for scheduled maintenance starting 8:30 PM PST 11th Jan. This is a major hosting move that has been planned for months. We’ll try to keep the downtime to the minimum. Please bear with us…

It’s been just over two years since SlideShare launched and we’ve spent all that time adding new features, fixing problems and most importantly, growing a large, loyal community!

Today we are proud to show you something we’ve been working on for the past few months. Our brand new home page! Check it out in the screenshot below or visit the site now!

If you’re still here with us, here’s what’s new:

• A more professional, clean, clutter-free design.
• The menu at the top is larger and presents logical options for you to browse through content.
• Prominent search box at the top and in the footer of the page making it easier for you to find what you want.
• Categories have been a part of SlideShare for a while now but we’re bringing them front and center to aid you to get to the content you want as fast as possible.
• We have a larger logo with our new tagline “Present Yourself.”
  
• Speaking of the logo, we’ve dropped the “beta!”
• Lots of little changes and tweaks, not to mention a lot of work still going on in the backend to improve you SlideShare experience!

As always, we look forward to your feedback! Let us know what to think, good and bad, so that we can continue to improve the site!

We apologize for the delay in announcing these results but they’re here finally! We’ve seen some amazing presentations from many participants, unfortunately we have to announce only 3 prize winners.

Our judges have spent some time looking through all the top entries and here are the ones they chose as best.

First Place

The best presentation in the contest and winner of an iPod Touch is “The Financial Crisis: An Historical Perspective” by Chris Hulls

What the judges had to say: “good, accurate, strong, good history”
Continue reading »

LinkedIn just launched a platform (see techcrunch post and linkedin blog post), and SlideShare is one of the first apps to go live! We have been working on this app for several months, and it is very exciting for us to see it working on the LinkedIn site. Here’s a video of our CEO Rashmi Sinha demoing the app:

SlideShare for LinkedIn lets you share slides with your network on LinkedIn, see slides from others on your network, and post comments on slides. It’s almost like a mini-SlideShare within LinkedIn. This is a powerful way to share expertise with your network on LinkedIn.

One really cool thing for existing SlideShare users is that linking your accounts is really easy, and if you do so all your SlideShare presentations will automatically appear in your LinkedIn profile.

Everyone at SlideShare pitched in, but special thanks to the core team (Gaurav, Kapil, Ashwan, Vineet,) who did an amazing job and pulled several all-nighters in the final stages of this project. They are monitoring the servers carefully right now. We’ll all be listening hard to feedback from our users over the next few days.

Special thanks to LinkedIn folk Jamie Templeton and Taylor Singletary for all the support they gave us on their awesome new app platform!

Go install the SlideShare app on LinkedIn!

The SlideShare community has been very enthusiastic about the explaining the credit crisis. Entries into the contest have been interesting, funny and thought provoking. To keep the spirit alive, submissions will accepted until Wednesday, October 29th and voting is extended until Friday, October 31st.

FireUploader is a firefox add-on that allows easy uploading/editing of content across several social media sharing sites.

We’ve been working with them over the last month, and last week their newest version that supports SlideShare was approved by Mozilla. Now it’s even easier to upload and share your slideshows!

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4724