Slideaware - An intrusive online slideviewer Tuesday, May 08, 2007

I'm been a keen advocate of Slideshare since discovering it about 9 months ago. It's an incredibly easy way to share slide decks online and I've used it a number of times to publish presentations I've done such as Sex & the Investor, which has been viewed nearly 2,000 times.

My only gripes with it is that you can't password protect presentations to restrict who can view them, nor use it to run remote presentations, which is a great shame.

So, I was interested to see how SlideAware would measure up when I read that you could password protect your slides and run live remote presentations, all for free (premium service for $12pm).

However, the service fell at the first hurdle as far as I'm concerned - in order to upload presentations you need to install a toolbar within Powerpoint.

Now, there are several services I've happily done this for including Zoho's Office but they weren't mandatory, which meant I could try the service out first before deciding if I wanted to install a "permanent" feature inside my application.

It's a shame that a simple FTP upload facility isn't available which would have allowed you to go toe-dipping with the later option to install the toolbar once you learnt how great it was. I can't tell whether this is a technical restriction or a sales technique - they may think I will be a stickier user if I have the toolbar installed and that frivolous users will be deterred.

Guess I'll keep looking.

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posted by John Wilson @ 7:50 AM Permanent Link ,

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