Presenting: Multimedia presentations for Blogger

Recently the folks at Blogger announced the ability to put mini-presentations into your blog. Don't yawn! You can put up presentations that have multimedia elements embedded in them, such as YouTube videos or scary glittery animations. It's easy - you can do it in less than 5 steps.

Let's give this a try. Now, if you've never gone to the trouble of Publishing a presentation with Google Docs before, it can be a little confusing, so I'll take you through it step by step.

1. Log in to Google Documents and create a presentation (New -> Presentation) then, after you have created your presentation it will appear in your documents list as shown in the screenshot below.


2. Select the Publish option from the drop down. If you're using a tabbed browser, the Publish screen will open in a new tab. Click the Publish button.

3. You will now have the option to share your presentation in a mini format. Choose your favorite size from the drop down, then select the code. Here is the sample code for my presentation:

<iframe src="%27http://docs.google.com/EmbedSlideshow?docid=" dg2mm9w9_63fcqgn9cn="" frameborder="'0'" height="342" width="410"></iframe><br />

4. Now you are ready to take the code and place in in your blog as part of a blog post, or into an HTML/JavaScript page element. Paste the code into the post or content section of the page element and save. Voila! All done in less than 5 steps.

Your presentation should display something like this one I whipped up this morning before I had enough coffee:





What does this really mean for users of Blogger? Now you can easily add demos or tutorials to your blog, or even little illustrated stories. Instead of having to upload a static image or figure out how to post a YouTube video, bloggers can quickly whip up a presentation in Google Docs or import an existing document, convert it, then upload it.

Will this be abused by spammers and your evil twin? Yes. Is it a new way to share with clients, friends, and archenemies? Oh, yes.