It’s still in the early stages (.2 release), but this should make creating slideshare mashups and integrations much easier for Java developers. The code and documentation is available for download on code.google.com/p/jslideshare

Big thanks to Lucio Benfante for making this! It still doesn’t support all the SlideShare API methods yet, but it looks very promising.

This is kind of funny! I chanced across this slide deck on slideshare today… and the front slide caught my attention; specially the attribution statement - “This Slideshow Originated as one of those Email Messages that “goes around.” Please Help us Locate the Original Image Source(s) so we can Provide Attribution.” Wow! Thats something all of us have experienced - the footloose, orphaned ppts that are emailed across every day in chain mails (aka “Send All in address book”). What if you uploaded some of those to slideshare, or you happened to borrow some ideas or pictures from the lot. How would you attribute its original creators…. lets think of ideas:

How about - “…slide deck is attributed to the community of mass-mail spammers of the world…may their soul rest in peace..” or “…attributed to the whosoever is the original creator…” or “… attributed to the wisdom of the crowds…..” (web2.0 style). Maybe the folks at Creative Commons could help us in this endeavor. Why- this might turn out to be a new attribution type to add to the ones that CC already has?

Please get your creative juices flowing and add your suggestions in the comments…. we’ll compile a list …

Check out these tweets…. need we say more?

Thanks Stan Mazo… using slideshare is environment friendly as well - you save bandwidth & storage costs that would otherwise get consumed with these large ppt files zipping around the internet’s pipes and choking precious bandwidth. Also, your email inbox will be a lot cleaner, you will get lesser email bounce-backs… the benefits are many.

We just rolled out a bunch of features and bug fixes…

Subscribe to follow-up comments: You can now subscribe to all followup comments for a particular slideshow. Just tick the “subscribe to followup comments” checkbox when you are posting your comment- all subsequent comments (starting from yours) will be mailed to you. This way you can track the conversation that is happening on a slideshow. And off course, you can unsubscribe from this anytime you wish to. (screeshots below)

No related slideshows in the player: Many of our users have asked for this feature. If you wish to exclude the related slideshows that show up at the end of the embedded player, just use the custom link (below the embed code on the slideshow page). The ajax light-box contains the code for the embed player without the related slideshows at the end. Just copy/paste that code and your concern will be addressed. (screeshots below)

Missing profile image bug fix: The profile image was not showing up for some users for the last couple of weeks; we have received many complaints about this. This annoying (& stubborn) bug has now been fixed. Users with missing profile photos (that uploaded successfully but did not show up on the profile page) will have to reupload the image again, though. Apologies for the trouble!

Jobs at SlideShare: We have updated the jobs/recruitment page. SlideShare is recruiting currently for our San Francisco office. In case this is of interest to you (or to someone whom you might know), please get back to us with your resume.

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Your presentations are important, especially if you are representing your organization to potential clients, the press, or the public. For a high-stakes presentation, a professional designer is usually worth the money. If you pay a professional to design your Web site and printed materials, why not do the same for a PowerPoint presentation?

However, many presentations are less critical. You may not have the money. Or you may need to get the presentation out tonight. For whatever the reason, you may find yourself designing your own presentation. Yet you want it to look good and communicate effectively. How does a non-designer accomplish this task?

I’ve been studying this topic for a while, because I’m not a designer. So I’ve looked, listened, and read a lot. I’ve come up with 5 steps that you can take to create a presentation that will work, even if you’re not a designer. Of course, you can’t reduce design to 5 steps, but if you use them, you’ll see a vast difference in your presentations. Why not try them yourself?

Before you start, keep in mind two overriding principles:

• Keep it simple. The simpler your slides, the better they’ll look.
• Design for your audience. Just as you craft your message for your audience, you should design for them. Think how different a presentation for 4th graders would be from a presentation for college students, accountants, or artists.

1. Create a custom color scheme

Start each presentation by doing something most people have never done - setting a color scheme. Why create a color scheme?

• The default colors look old and tired. PowerPoint 2007 is a little better, but not much.
• Your colors should support your other materials, such as your Web site and printed brochures.
• Your colors should be consistent throughout your presentation and without a color scheme, you’ll often find yourself changing colors of individual objects on slide after slide after slide. That’s a waste of time.

Rather than tell you step-by-step how to create a color scheme (or theme colors in PowerPoint 2007), which you can look up in Help, I’ll explain some ways to find the colors you need. That’s the hard part for non-designers. You’ll need to decide on a main fill color and up to three accent colors.

The first place to go is to your Web site. It’s more likely to be professionally designed. One secret for us non-artistic types is to piggyback on the work of artists.

The second place is your print materials. You may have to ask your graphic designer. If that doesn’t work, you can scan the material, open the resulting file, and use the free Colourificator, one of several programs that lets you point to a color on your screen (with an “eyedropper”) and discover its RGB stats.

You can download detailed instructions for finding the colors on your Web site and print materials, and converting them to the red-green-blue (RGB) format that PowerPoint uses from my Web site, at www.ellenfinkelstein.com/events/colors.html.

Finally, if you’re starting from scratch, use an online tool that generates color schemes. One of those is Color Toy 2.0. Do some research on the psychology of color, that is, how certain colors evoke emotions. You can find a great deal by doing a Web search.

Professional designers often create a sampler slide that contains AutoShapes filled with the custom color scheme, special treatments, design elements (such as images or special curves and shapes), and so on. This is a great way to try out various colors and fills and see what you like and which colors go well together. An extra advantage is that you can simply copy objects from the sampler slide to your other slides. At the end of the authoring process, you can hide the sample slide so that it doesn’t display to your audience. Here’s a simple sample sampler. (Try saying that 5 times fast!)

2. Format the slide master

You use the slide master to format a background (if any), choose fonts, specify text placement, and add images or design elements that will appear on all slides. This step can make or break your presentation’s look.

Let’s start with text. Have you ever noticed how slide titles in some presentations jump from slide to slide, giving you a slight eye strain or headache? This can happen for 3 reasons – avoid them all:

• Moving the title placeholder manually on individual slides. To fix this, display the slide and choose Format> Slide Layout. In the Slide Layout task pane, find the selected layout. Hover the cursor over it, click the down arrow, and choose Reapply Layout. (In PowerPoint 2007, right-click an empty area of the slide and choose Reset Slide.) This tip could save you hours spent adjusting individual placeholders!

  

• By default, titles are usually centered on a slide; and because the titles are different lengths, their left edge constantly changes. Instead, left-justify the titles and they’ll stay in the same place.
• Some titles are 1 line and others are 2 lines. You’ll see the titles jump down when you display a 2-line title after a 1-line title. Instead, specify a bottom vertical justification and that bottom-left corner will stay steady. On the Text box tab of the Format Placeholder dialog box, set the Text Anchor Point to Bottom. (In 2007, use the Text Box category of the Format Shape dialog box and set the Vertical alignment to Bottom.)

Choose a very readable font. Research has shown that sans-serif fonts like Arial, Verdana, and Tahoma are easier to read on-screen, so they’re good options. When you pick a font, stick to it throughout the presentation. Use black or dark blue text against light backgrounds and yellow or white text against dark backgrounds.

Please don’t put your company’s logo on every slide, which is what happens when you put it on the slide master. This will either be annoying, or the audience will soon tune out and ignore it. You wouldn’t put a logo on every page of a printed report, but only on the title page; similarly, leave the logo for the title slide and maybe the last slide.

3. Choose a background

To background or not to background? That is the question. Top designers today are creating slides with plain white (or black) backgrounds rather than the colorful, full-fashioned ones we’re used to. White can be both business-like and artsy; black is definitely artsy.

White is definitely the new blue in presentation backgrounds, for several reasons:

• Brighter LCD projectors mean that you don’t have to turn off the lights in most rooms. With the lights on, white isn’t as glaring as it used to be.
• Web sites usually use a white background and presentation design has followed this trend.
• A plain background enhances the effect of images, which may be overwhelmed by a fancy background.

Don’t use one of those old backgrounds that come with PowerPoint that everyone has seen a million times. And don’t try to create an elaborate background from scratch; we non-artists aren’t very successful with that. Instead, if you feel that you need a background, try a subtle background gradient (Slide 1), simple top and bottom rectangles (Slide 2), or a full-slide photo.

Full-slide photos may not play nicely with text. Remember that your text needs to be very clear against the photo. What to do?

• Reduce the contrast and brightness of the photo, to create a washout (Slide 3)
• Colorize the photo so that it becomes shades of one color. Change the photo to grayscale and cover it with a semi-transparent rectangle of the color you want. (Slide 4)
• Make the text placeholders semi-transparent (Slide 5)
• Use the full photo only on the title slide and then crop it to a sidebar on the left for the rest of the presentation (Slides 6 and 7)

Feel free to override your background whenever you need to use a full-slide photo.

Experiment with plain white and black backgrounds. Once you try these out, you’ll feel liberated from backgrounds! (Slides 8 and 9.)

4. Tell ‘n’ show

Tell ‘n’ show is my term for a concept of slide design in which you use text to clearly tell the audience the point you’re making on the slide, and then use a graphic to show what you’re saying. Cliff Atkinson uses this concept in his well-known book Beyond Bullet Points. Michael Alley does the same for the academic world. (See his article, "Rethinking the Design of Presentation Slides.") Whenever you’re trying to get across a point and help your audience both understand and remember what you’re saying, tell ‘n’ show will help.

To makeover a boring slide into a tell ‘n’ show slide, do the following:

• Rewrite the title so that it actually says something. For example, change "HR Salaries by Division" to "HR salaries up 26-34%."
• Add a graphic that shows what you’re saying. In this example, it would probably be a graph/chart (Slides 10 and 11)

Examples of graphics are photographs, tables, charts, and diagrams. If necessary, divide a slide with several bullets into several individual slides. Take a presentation that is mostly bulleted text, do a tell ‘n’ show makeover, and you’ll be amazed at the difference.

With rare exception, you should use photos, not clip art (line art). Clip art usually appears humorous, and rarely adds to a slide. A nice technique is to find a photo with a solid (usually white) background and make the background transparent. Use the Set Transparent Color button on the Picture toolbar and click the background. (In PowerPoint 2007, choose the Picture Tools Format tab> Adjust group> Recolor drop-down list> Set Transparent Color.) (Slides 12, 13, and 14)

5. Use simple layouts

Non-designers have a great deal of trouble laying out a slide in an appealing manner. Designers use a grid to help them. However, if you don’t want to work with a grid, I have some other suggestions:

• Look at magazine ads, billboards, and brochures for layout ideas, find a couple that you like, and use them.
• Again, keep it simple. An easy layout is a half-slide vertical photo. Crop the photo as necessary and vertically center the text next to it. It always looks good. (Slide 15)

Do a Makeover

All of these techniques are feasible for non-artists. Take your text-heavy, bullet-heavy slides and do a makeover using the principles in this article. You’ll see a definite improvement!

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One of our Chinese users, Oliver Ding has uploaded this slideshow , which is a call for people to help out the victims of the tragic earthquake that rocked central China’s Wenchuan County on the 12th of May, leaving behind thousands of dead. We deeply mourn the tragedy and would request our users to do their little bit in this regard. Please head over to these two sites - PledgeBank & CnReviews.com to learn how you could help out in contributing.

We also request everyone to join the China EarthQuake Group that Oliver has created. We have featured his pledge as the Slideshow of the Day.

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We are compiling a bunch of suggestions (quick tips) about Slidecasting in order to smoothen the process of creating an audio file and synching it to the slide deck.

I have a question to our users who are creating slidecasts- if your audio is a recorded talk or commentary, how are you doing it? I mean, are you recording it on your computer using the windows voice recorder, or using audacity? If you are recording it live during the event, do you use a portable voice recorder (i.e. Olympus & Sony have these), or maybe a mobile phone, a camera, or some other instrument thereof. How much does it cost to procure such a recorder, where can you buy it… those kind of questions. Please let us know in the comments section for this post… we are going to compile this and put it on slideshare.

Any other tips, tricks, suggestions about slidecasting, recording audio, synching it etc are welcome.. we are all ears … we want to improve the slidecasting experience.

We bring you an extra Slide Tips this week - an article by Rick Altman with some timely analysis of a presentation from Hillary Clinton.
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As part of her narrative on being the more electable candidate, the campaign for Senator Hillary Clinton distributed a PowerPoint slide deck to Democratic members of the House of Representatives on May 9, to be viewed, she hopes, by many uncommitted super delegates.

I wish the campaign had hired a presentations coach. If Hill & Bill Inc. had sought my advice, at a minimum, I would have pushed for an entirely different approach to the design and execution of this self-running presentation. But if I’m being completely honest, I would have advised them against sending out the slide deck at all.

Those of us who do not work in and around the capitol rotunda did not get to see the actual slides, we just saw low-resolution representations. But there were enough pixels for us to conclude that Senator Clinton did indeed succumb to Death by PowerPoint.

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The slides contained a weak attempt at branding, via a slide header that contained the campaign logo. Beyond that, however, the slides exhibited a near-total lack of cohesion and design. Let us count the ways…

• Headlines shout at you in all caps and all have underlines. I can only wonder how many congressional aides clicked on them, expecting to be taken somewhere.
• The headline isn’t even a headline – it’s more like a running header. The slides do not actually contain true headlines.
• Photo use is haphazard with one photo of the senator stuffed into the lower-left corner on two different slides and then a non-descript and incongruous photo of the capitol building dropped onto another slide.
• The table on Slide 4 is too much for any busy professional to deal with and the pac-man chart next to it does nothing to illuminate.
• We’re not sure where the bar graphs on Slides 6-7 came from, or the pie chart on Slide 8, but they are clearly pasted images. How do we know this? Because on all three slides, the images were pasted onto the slide on top of the text! It is particularly egregious and embarrassing on Slide 8.
• Slide 9 lacks any sort of punch befitting a concluding slide. It repeats the photo from Slide 2, repeats the running header, and offers a concluding sentence that appears to have been massacred by a committee on political correctness. Slide 9 also displays the line “Paid for by Hillary Clinton for President.” We hope they didn’t pay much for it.

As I said, we did not see the actual slide deck, so we cannot say for sure whether the Clinton team attempted to create builds to sequence some of the chunkier data, like the charts and graphs. If we give her content creators the benefit of the doubt and assume that they did create builds for the more dense slides, then they are guilty of creating no navigational assistance whatsoever for the viewers working through the slides. In other words, as they click through a build, they would have no way of knowing when that slide’s sequenced information was concluded.

The Makeover

There is nothing in the original slide deck to move someone to take action – there is only an appeal to the intellectual component of the argument, and as we all know, that is rarely enough to compel someone to action.
The irony in all of this is that this visually unappealing and unemotional slide deck was put together by the same campaign that created a killer website, replete with thousands of excellent photos. In about 90 minutes, I was able to produce an entire makeover of the slides, relying just on low-res screen grabs of website photos.

I did not concern myself too much with a slide master or a color scheme, as I knew the layout of each slide would be determined by the photo I chose for it. But I did set a standard for typeface (Verdana) and size (28 for titles, 20 for text). The other common element I employed is a favorite technique for helping blend text with a photo—the gradually changing transparent fill. Over areas that need less contrast and a darker background, I create a black rectangle and set its transparency to go from 0 (solid black) to 100% (completely transparent). I then set the text over the less transparent part.
You can see this effect in the first “We must fight for those seats” slide and the “Fighting for Seniors” slide.

The remake of the table slide was the most arduous, requiring first a photo with sufficient open space and then a trip into my image-editing software to blur out the background. As is my usual practice, once I create a table of data, I promptly ungroup it so I can better sequence it (PowerPoint’s animation for tables is pathetic).

Still Not Good Enough

While I think that the makeover is much better than the original effort (if you can call it “effort”), there is still a fundamental disconnect that is taking place here with this campaign to appeal to super-delegates.

In short, this message should not have been created as slideware; it should have been a PDF document. Without a live person advocating these positions, the bulleted content is insufficient for fleshing out the argument, in the original slide deck or the improved one.

Clinton’s arguments are too nuanced to be made by static bullet slides, especially poorly designed ones. They require deeper discussion and development, and if that is not going to be made by a live presenter, it needs to be made by printed words. This deliverable should have been a completely formatted document, created in InDesign or Xpress, or at a minimum, Publisher, with evocative photos, fully-formulated paragraphs, and integrated data charts. The whole thing should have been RIPed to a PDF file with relevant links to URLs for yet deeper analysis.

The data and the argument are potentially compelling, but I score this as a missed opportunity for the New York Senator…