I have constantly been on the lookout for a quick and painless way to host Microsoft PowerPoint presentations. I have found a “quick and painless” solution in slideshare (slideshare.net). slideshare let’s you embed embed a presentation on your blog (like I have done below) or share it as a standalone link. Tagging lets you discover other interesting presentations and lets others discover yours. There are some pretty interesting presentations hosted on the site.

The site’s interface is clean, but it’s not intuitive – at least the first time you use it. You need to look around a bit to figure out what to do. I know, I said it’s quick and painless and it certainly is, but only from the second usage (when you already know how the interface works). There’s no auto-browse feature to move from one slide to the next; you need to manually browse through the slides. But is that a useful feature to have? Most auto-browse systems are either too fast or too slow and only end up causing user frustration. There is a full-screen option to make the viewing easy on your eyes.

Here’s a sample embedded-in-your-blog presentation from my Business Law course. It’s prudent to have a quick glance so that you know more about how the banking system works.

Immediate update:

I wrote too soon! It’s a good idea to get your facts right before you blog. The full-screen option is available only through the standalone link. It’s NOT available through the embedded object. To see this feature in action, check out Bankers & Customers + Dishonor of Cheques.