We recently added the ability to upload PowerPoint 2007 files and today we’ve also added the ability to upload and share Word 2007 files (docx) from SlideShare.

With this, SlideShare is now probably the first site to support most major office file types including Keynote, Microsoft Office and OpenOffice!

Yes, you read that right! SlideShare now accepts PowerPoint 2007 files (pptx, ppsx and potx.) This is a feature that many of our users have been requesting and we’ve finally added it.

You don’t need to save as ppt or pdf any longer, upload your pptx files directly to SlideShare.

We have been testing it extensively over the last couple of weeks but there may still be some bugs or conversion issues, so please let us know via our feedback form: http://www.slideshare.net/feedback

The community response to the YouTube SlideShare embedding feature has been awesome. We’re glad that our users are liking this. Here’s something else to know…

VideoSlides in Second Navigation: To help you see the latest examples of YouTube videos inside SlideShare presentations, we have introduced a new navigation link called VideoSlides. Screeshot below. This will expose you to all the cool things the community is starting to do with with this.

Autoplay of the video: This is not supported at present, but we plan to add that in … stay tuned.

Many of the questions you have about this will be answered in the FAQs that we have put up on this page. The FAQ is reproduced below for the readers of this blog.

FAQs
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Q: How many YouTube videos can be embedded inside a presentation? Is there a limit?
A: At present, you have a limit of 5 videos per presentation. As this feature stabilises, we will enhance this limit, or even remove it altogether (depending on user feedback).

Q: How can I insert the videos at the desired position? Isn’t it complicated?
A:Trust us, this is a breeze! Our software automatically detects how many slides your presentation contains and displays all possible positions in the dropdown selector. Something like - “Before Slide 1″, “After Slide 1″, “After Slide 2″, “After Slide 3″ etc. Just choose whatever position you want.

Q: You mention that the inserted YouTube video will show up in a separate slide inside the SlideShare player. Do I have to add a blank slide to the presentation file that I upload to SlideShare?
A: Not at all. The separate slide for the video is automatically inserted for you. You should upload your presentation file as it is.

Q: YouTube is great, but I use another video site? Can I embed other videos as well?
A: At present, we support only YouTube videos. We plan to extend this to other popular video sites. Let us know which ones you need and we’ll examine its feasibility.

Q: The YouTube video plays fine, but there is some latency if multiple videos are embedded in a presentation. Why is this so?
A: SlideShare is using YouTube’s APIs for the video embedding feature. We think embedding 1or 2 videos in the presentation should suffice for most use cases and should work absolutely smoothly. We have also tested with larger number of videos- this works as well, though you might get some loading latency or instability, specially if you click through the slides very quickly. Go at a gentle pace, we promise you- it will be fine. Rest assured, we shall improve this as time progresses.

Q: The limit of 5 videos per presentation- is there a restriction about where the videos can be inserted? Can I insert all 5 videos between two specific slides? Or do they need to be spaced out throughout?
A: You can insert the 5 videos WHEREVER you want to- they could all be bunched up together between two specific slides as well.

Check out this example. This slide deck has one presentation slide followed by 5 YouTube videos one after the other. Thus you could make this work like a multivideo player for YouTube if you wanted to (maybe interspersed with some text on slides in between).

Q: Will the embedded videos also show up in presentations embedded in blogs?
A: Absolutely.

Q: Your mention that embedding a YouTube video inside a SlideShare presentation is just like embedding a video inside a blogpost. How is that?
A: While building this feature, we tried to mimic the way people embed videos inside blogposts (since everyone knows how to do that). You first compose the blogpost, publish it and then add the embed code to the blogpost wherever you want the video to show up and update the post. Correct?

Similarly, just publish your presentation on SlideShare as you always do. Then add the video URL (using our simple interface) and the presentation gets updated with the video. You can add the video(s) anytime and also remove them whenever you want to. Your uploaded presentation is independent of the videos and will get updated with your latest actions in a jiffy.

Q: Can I add a video to a presentation that I uploaded to SlideShare one month ago? One year ago?
A: You can add the video to any SlideShare presentation irrespective of when it was uploaded to SlideShare.

Q: What player controls can I use? Will Youtube’s video controls be retained? Can I make the video full-screen when it plays?
A: Use the SlideShare player controls to advance slides as usual. When you get to a video slide, use the YouTube player controls to play or pause the video. Video full-screen works as usual.

Q: If there is more than one video in the presentation can I start playing all of them? Will it buffer multiple videos?
A: No, the player will allow you to play only one video at a time. If you advance past a video slide while paused, it will continue to buffer that video. If you start playing a second video, you will lose your position in the first!

Well, kind of. Many presentations have video in them. Some presentations are shared as video. Sometimes there is a demo that you might want to embed into your presentation. Sometimes its a movie clip.

Starting today you can embed YouTube videos into SlideShare! Yes, its really easy. After uploading your video, go to “Edit” and choose the Edit YouTube video tab. Choose the slide and paste the embed code for the video. We will add a slide in that spot with the video embedded.

You can embed multiple videos into the slide. But please be gentle. This is in Beta.

For FAQs, examples & other details, check out this page http://www.slideshare.net/youtube-in-slideshare

What can you do with it.
- Add a movie clip into your presentation to illustrate a point
- Create a presentation which is compilation of multiple videos (maybe its the talks from five speakers at a conference)
- Just embed a talk. If you have a video talk and want to share on SlideShare, just embed a slide.

Bert Decker, the well known communications expert has used this feature to do a commentary on Obama’s inauguration speech.

TechCrunch wrote about this feature here:

Last week we asked you “where next?” And we got a range of answers (some more popular than others) but no one guessed what we really were up to!

Today we launch the SlideShare ribbon for Microsoft PowerPoint 2007, a way of bringing SlideShare right into your desktop, or as TechCrunch put it, “sending PowerPoint to the cloud.”. You can now manage all your SlideShare uploads from PowerPoint, search through presentations on SlideShare, browse your contacts and groups’ presentations and also download them into PowerPoint. Such an integration, as ReadWriteWeb points out, “casts all desktop software in a new light - no matter how ‘unsocial’ a particular app may seem.”

Take a look at this video for a quick overview of some of the features in the SlideShare ribbon:

You can download and install the SlideShare ribbon from this page: http://www.slideshare.net/developers/apps/pptribbon

Update: This news has quickly spread across the web… check out some commentary

TechCrunch : slideshare sends powerpoint to the cloud link

ReadWriteWeb : SlideShare presents your newest social app: powerpoint! link

Bert Decker’s Blog : I think this is the first time a Web 2.0 property has been embedded so deeply into desktop productivity software. link

Lifehacker : The plug-in, adds basic “Open/Publish/Manage” buttons to a new SlideShare tab, as well as buttons for finding related material on the sharing site (for design inspiration, perhaps?) and letting you see how many co-workers, or general surfers, have checked out your shared stuff. link

Nitin Badjatia : I think one of the primary reasons this happens is that most PowerPoint presentations are developed in a vacuum. The lone PowerPoint ‘artiste’ slaves away, late at night, slapping together random thoughts and cheesy graphics into a massive deck that often misses the point. SlideShare, the online slide deck sharing site (sort of a YouTube for slideware), has just released a PowerPoint plug-in, that may bring the lonely deck-developer into the social realm. With the add-on, deck-developers will be able to share their works of art directly from the very non-social PowerPoint, and more importantly, be able to search for inspiration directly from within PowerPoint link

Internet Evolution : I typically don’t have to fight mosquitoes carrying malaria and yellow fever, nor have to deal with excessive tropical heat or move millions of cubic feet of dirt and rock. What I do have to deal with is inordinate layers of “bluereaucracy” and posting presentations on the Interwebs. To make the latter easier, SlideShare has come up with a PowerPoint plugin that lets users edit and publish presentations directly to their SlideShare accounts, reports TechCrunch. The new feature also allows one to automagically notify others of the new presos via Twitter. Very cool. link

Web Worker Daily : I was able to not only review and edit the slide show within PowerPoint but also perform the upload, tagging and title/description write-up with no need to use a web browser. Basically, SlideShare is one of the first services to embed web hosting access so deeply within an Office application. link

One of the most requested features from our users has been the direct upload of Apple Keynote files.

Today we’re enthused to announce that SlideShare now supports Keynote files too. No more saving as PDF or a Microsoft PowerPoint file just to upload to SlideShare!

Check out the slideshow below to see how it works:

All you need to do is compress your Keynote file as a ZIP and then upload that ZIP to SlideShare. It really couldn’t be simpler.

It has taken us a while to build this, but finally we’re there. And while we’re not completely sure of this, SlideShare might just be the first website to support the direct upload and conversion of Keynote files.

Update: Not only does this mean Keynote users can finally publish on the web. This also means that keynote users can finally download presentations FROM the web. It’s a wonderful thing to see a presentation style you like online (that has a creative commons license), download it, and remix it with your own work.

We’d love to hear any feedback, and if you have or any problems with the upload and conversion, please send a message to us from: http://www.slideshare.net/feedback

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!

Our dev team has released an interesting feature to add to your Slideshare experience. The slideshare player now has an ‘autoplay’ button that plays the presentation for you (without having to click through individual slides).

See the button below in the screenshot, which will be visible on all presentations on SlideShare. We await your feedback- let us know what you think of this! Did you face any problems while using this?

Note: This is currently only on the SlideShare player on the site.. we’re adding this to the embed player in a few days… stay tuned.