In concluding this part of the E-Learning Curve Blog's series on Knowledge Work, I will describe the final characteristics that define a knowledge economy.
Systems of creation, production and distribution
The commonly-held notion that a knowledge economy is a services economy is misleading. As information and knowledge add value to basic products manufacturing and services are becoming increasingly integrated into complex chains of creation, production and distribution. At the core of the economy are goods producing industries, linked into value chains which see inputs coming from knowledge-based business services and goods related construction and energy industries, and outputs going to goods related distribution service industries[1].
Convergence or divergence
One feature of the emerging knowledge economy is increasing evidence that the nations of the world are polarizing, rather than converging, in economic terms. Standard growth theories suggest that economies subject to market forces should converge in terms of per capita GDP levels, either absolutely or relatively. But the reality is quite different.
Countries appear to be moving towards two peaks or nodes, one at high incomes and one at relatively low incomes. This polarisation of countries into different strata of economic activity and of living standards is becoming both pronounced and persistent – what is often referred to as “twin-peaks dynamics[2].” What the future will show as the knowledge economy unfolds remains to be seen, but there is little in the recent historical record to assure policy makers that market forces will deliver a continuing process of convergence to US levels. In such a world the consequences of policy failure or inaction can be dramatic.
Divergence and concentration
These same dynamics may cause changes in the industrial structure of knowledge economics. Many contend that increasing inequality can be observed at the international, national, regional, household and personal levels – that the rich are getting rich, while the poor are getting poorer. Some economists suggest that increasing returns from network economies and learning economies characteristic of knowledge economies will lead to industrial concentration – a world of winner takes all[3]. Others contend that the expansion of the knowledge driven economy will create a proliferation of material, firms and activities at all points and at all levels, suggesting that no one can expect to enjoy continued control of markets.
There may be temporary monopolies but they cannot last. And it is misconceived to think that the key lies in being at the point of delivery of the product: the low cost and ease of access to the delivery mechanism mean that the rents are driven down at the delivery level and instead migrate back up the value chain to those with genuinely scarce factors and competitive advantages[4].
Whichever proves true, the knowledge economy will see the development of new business models.
Footnotes:
[1] Sheehan, P. Tegart, G. (Eds.) (1998) Working for the Future: Technology and Employment in the Global Knowledge Economy. Victoria University Press.
[2] Sheehan, P. and Tegart, G. (Eds.) (1998) Working for the Future: Technology and Employment in the Global Knowledge Economy, Victoria University Press, p100. See also Quah, D. (1996) ‘Convergence Empirics Across Economies with (Some) Capital Mobility,’ Journal of Economic Growth, 1(1) pp. 95-125 [Internet] Available form: http://www.jstor.org/pss/2235377 [Accessed 20 August 2008]
[3] Arthur, W.B. (1996) ‘Increasing Returns and the New World of Business’, Harvard Business Review, July-August 1996, pp. 100-109
[4] Kay, J. In: DTI (1999) Economics of the Knowledge Driven Economy, Conference Proceedings, Department of Trade and Industry, London.
You may recall this post where I discussed a new Rapid E-Learning authoring tool I was beta-testing for a friend.
If, like me, you've spent extended periods of time creating manuals from other media formats, you'll appreciate the hard work and, to be honest, tedium involved in generating, formatting, proofing, and finally producing documentation to accompany ILT and WBT courseware. However, it's a necessary task, and generally something I just get on with doing, usually with a certain bad grace (if I can't delegate it to an intern or other downtrodden junior contributor).
In my first post on the topic, I suggested that the utility tool simplified this repetitive, time-consuming, and error-prone activity: in my estimation, it cut production time of documents converted from PowerPoint presentations by 80%.
Well the utility is now complete; it's called PowerManual, and I've created a quick (six-minute) How To demo which covers
Context
Introduction to PowerManual
Downloading the application from PowerManual.ie
Installing PowerManual
Creating a manual from a PowerPoint Presentation
Click here to view the demo in 800x600 Flash FLV format, or enjoy the YouTube version (below):
Today's post is really a (very) mini case study in the power of integrated corporate social networks, the benefits of long tails in learning, and the strength of weak social ties.
Now read on...
If you're not familiar with the latter two concepts here's a little background: the idea of the strength of weak ties is a theory from sociology; according to its originator Mark Granovetter
the argument asserts that our acquaintances (weak ties) are less likely to be socially involved with one another than are our close friends (strong ties). Thus the set of people made up of any individual and his or her acquaintances comprises a low-density network (one in which many of the possible relational lines are absent) whereas the set consisting of the same individual and his or her close friends will be densely knit (many of the possible lines are present).
It follows, then, that individuals with few weak ties will be deprived of information from distant parts of the social system and will be confined to the provincial news and views of their close friends. This deprivation will [...] insulate them from the latest ideas.
(1983, pp.201-202)
The concept of the long tail is something both Jay Cross and Tony Karrer have recently discussed and is example of how the Web (and particularly Web 2.0 technology) changes the way assets - whether physical artifacts like books, or knowledge and informational assets persist for an extended period beyond their supposed "sell-by" date:
Long tails for the enterprise occur when the power to create and publish is widely held, the content can be distributed at near-zero cost and a market exists that connects knowledge workers with a nearly infinite number of content creators.
(Kilian, D. 2007)
Here's a pertinent example of how these ideas manifest themselves in the workplace: last week, I suffered from a niggly problem with my Outlook e-mail client - it wouldn't poll the Exchange server and update itself every 20 minutes as it was supposed to do. So I logged a snag on the corporate Bugzilla implementation about the issue. The IT person, who I would describe as being a a journeyman level of competence (has passed their certification exams and is no longer a novice, but is not yet an expert) wen though all the things your supposed to do to resolve such issues
ran ScanPST.exe
checked my e-mail profile
consulted MSDN
looked at forums for similar issues based on the Error ID
... as well as some "beyond the call of duty" activities (a time-consuming MS Office reinstall).
All to no avail.
So I got my laptop back and had resolved myself to living with this seemingly intractable minor inconvenience, when a third contributor (a more knowledgeable IT support person), working from home, happened to encounter the issue when scanning through Bugzilla, entered the discussion with a simple "I know what this is."
So, by accessing my laptop via a PC-sharing application, the issue was resolved in about 20 minutes, after 5 days of dead ends and frustration.
The moral of the story is: by developing a corporate culture that encourages wide-ranging participation, and by providing a corporate knowledge-sharing environment (Bugzilla in this case), you increase the chances that somebody you're associated with, no matter how loosely, will have the appropriate knowledge and expertise to find a solution to an issue. The added learning benefit from the journeyman contributors perspective, is that they have added to their knowledge experientially, by interacting with the More Knowledgeable Other. I would suggest that the knowledge asset acquired by being involved in this problem-solving activity has been aggregated into their personal experience schema, enabling them to grow a little more knowledgeable (or even wiser).
In yesterday's post, I began to describe in some detail the characteristics of the knowledge economy in the 21st century; in today's post I will continue to investigate some of the defining factors that identify the emergence of this economic paradigm.
Learning organizations and innovation systems
In a knowledge economy, organizations search for linkages to promote inter-organizational learning, and for outside partners and networks to provide complementary assets. These relationships help organizations
spread the costs and risks associated with innovation
gain access to new research results, acquire key technological components
share assets in manufacturing, marketing and distribution.
As they develop new products and processes, organizations determine which activities they will undertake individually, in collaboration with other organizations, in collaboration with universities or research institutions, and with the support of government[1]. We can say that, as such, innovation is the result of numerous interactions between actors and institutions, which together form an "innovation system."
These innovation systems consist of the information flows and relationships which exist among industry, government and academic and other institutions in the development of science and technology. The interactions within these systems influences the innovative performance of organizations - and ultimately of the economy. The ‘knowledge distribution power’ of the system, or its capability to ensure timely access by innovators to relevant stocks of knowledge, is can be seen as a major determinant of economic growth.
Strategy and location
One of the consequences of globalization combined with advances in communications technologies has been a strengthening of world competition, and the emergence of a new form of ‘global competition’. Most organizations in a dominant market position are, by necessity, multinational or transnational organizations. To compete successfully with their rivals, organizations must compete head-to-head in all markets (including their home market), and they must rapidly attain a global scale in production and/or rapidly roll out products and services into multiple markets in order to do so. In this environment, competitiveness depends increasingly on the coordination of, and alignment of a broad range of specialized industrial, financial, technological, commercial, administrative and cultural skills which can be located in many locations around the world[2].
Production is being rationalized globally, with organizations combining the factors, features and skills of various locations in the process of competing in global markets. There are three major dimensions of change involved:
increasing national (locational) specialization
increased international ‘fracturing’ of value chains or chains of production – witnessed in increased intra-industry and intra-firm trade
greater line-item by line-item trade imbalances
An increasingly apparent consequence of this development in industrial ertia is substantial structural dislocation in local, regional and even national economies, and a consequent need for substantial structural adjustment.
Clustering in the Knowledge Economy
Networks and geographical clusters of firms are a particularly important feature of the knowledge economy. Organizations find it increasingly necessary to work with other firms and institutions in technology-based alliances, because of the rising cost, increasing complexity and widening scope of technology. Many organizations are becoming multi-technology corporations locating around centers of excellence in different countries. Despite improved capability for global communication, firms increasingly co-locate because it is the only effective way to share understanding[3]. Consequently, skills and life-style are becoming increasingly important locational factors.
As we enter the age of human capital, where organizations merely lease knowledge-assets, organizations’ location decisions are increasingly based upon quality-of-life factors that are important to attracting and retaining this economic asset. In high-tech services, strict business-cost measures are becoming less important to growing and sustaining technology clusters … Locations that are attractive to knowledge assets will play a vital role in determining the economic success of regions[4].
Economics of knowledge
In the knowledge economy there are new ground rules. Knowledge has fundamentally different characteristics from ordinary commodities and these differences have crucial implications for the way a knowledge economy must be organised[5]. The whole nature of economic activity, and our understanding of it, is changing.
Unlike physical goods information is non-rival – not destroyed in consumption. Its value in consumption can be enjoyed again and again. Hence, social return on investment in its generation can be multiplied through its diffusion. Ideas and information exhibit very different characteristics from the goods and services of the industrial economy. For example, much more than is the case with a frozen dinner or a haircut, the social value of ideas and information increases to the degree they can be shared with and used by others. More important, the costs associated with their production are distributed very differently over time. While up front costs associated with the production of traditional goods such as a car or house may not necessarily be high, each item is still costly to produce. The more of these one produces, the more likely one will eventually encounter scarcities that drive up production costs and reduce the size of social returns. In the case of innovation, ideas and information, however, the opposite would seem largely to be the case. While up front development costs can be very high, the reproduction and transmission costs are low. The more such items are (re)produced, the greater the social return on investment[6].
Traditional economics is founded on a system which seeks to optimise the efficient allocation of scarce resources, but because of the unique characteristics of information and knowledge the very meaning of scarcity is changing. Indeed, the scarcity defying expansiveness of knowledge is the root of one of its most important defining features. Once knowledge is discovered and made public, there is essentially zero marginal cost to adding more users[7].
More...
References:
Sheehan, P. Tegart, G. (Eds.) (1998) Working for the Future: Technology and Employment in the Global Knowledge Economy. Victoria University Press.
Not so much a post about e-learning today, but more about how Web 2.0 technology is being used to share information in the most extreme environments and circumstances.
If you're a regular reader of the E-Learning Curve Blog, you'll know that I include archaeology and the study of ancient cultures among my personal interests. Recently I posted on the 2008 Stonehenge dig, and today I'd like to talk about the return voyage of the Viking longship Havhingsten fra Glendalough (Sea Stallion from Glendalough) from Dublin, Ireland to Roskilde, Denmark.
The Sea Stallion is a Danish reconstruction of Skuldelev 2, one of the Skuldelev ships. According to tree ring dating, the original ship was built near Dublin circa 1042.
The original ship was built with oak from Glendalough, Wicklow, Ireland, hence the ship's name. The reconstruction was built at the shipyard of the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde from 2000 to 2004.
In the Summer of 2007, the longship made the voyage from Denmark to Dublin - a journey of exceptional endurance on the part of the boat and the crew, and fraught with a certain amount of danger, given the lousy weather we had in Northern Europe last year.
If you saw these lads coming 1,000 years ago, it was time to pack up and leave... quick!
In the 21st century, comparative advantage will become much less a function of natural resource endowments and capital-labour ratios and much more a function of technology and skills. Mother nature and history will play a much smaller role, while human ingenuity will play a much bigger role.
(New Tools, New Rules: Playing to win in the new economic game. p.101)
As I discussed in much finer detail (and in the context of e-learning rather than the economy) in this post, in my view we as a society are on the cusp of a knowledge revolution akin to the explosion of information made possible after the general availability of printed texts following the invention of movable type and the printing press in 1440.
As this century unfolds, the skills used by people will increasingly be those that are complementary with information and communication technology; not those that are substitutes.
Now read on...
What makes the emergence of the knowledge economy important is that it is, in some significant respects, different from the industrial economy we have known for most of the last two hundred years. Some of the key differentiators include:
Information revolution
The IT revolution has intensified the move towards knowledge convergence, and increased the share the knowledge stock of advanced economies. All knowledge that can be distilled as information can be transmitted globally at relatively little cost. Knowledge per se has attained more of the properties of a commodity. [1]
Flexible organization
Flexible organizations reduce waste and increase the productivity of both labor and capital by integrating worker cognition and action at all levels of their operations.In doing so they eliminate many layers of middle management, which are dysfunctional in terms of information flow[2]. Flexible organizations also avoid excessive specialization and compartmentalization by defining multi-task job responsibilities (which calls for multi-skilled workers) and by using teamwork and job rotation.
Flexible organizations merge agility and high product quality with the speed and low unit costs of mass production. They do this by more fully utilising the human capabilities of their workers.
Knowledge, skills and learning
Information and communication technologies have reduced the cost and enhanced the capacity of organizations to converge knowledge, and process and communicate information. In doing so they have substantially altered the ‘balance’ between explicit and tacit knowledge in the overall quantum of knowledge. As access to information becomes easier and less expensive, the skills and competencies relating to the selection and efficient use of information become more crucial, and tacit knowledge in the form of the skills needed to handle explicit knowledge has become more important than ever.
Information and communication technology investments are complementary with investment in human resources and skills[3]. Whereas machines replaced labor in the industrial era, information technology will be the locus of explicit knowledge in the knowledge economy, and work in the knowledge economy will increasingly demand uniquely human (and tacit) skills – such as conceptual and inter-personal management and communication skills.
Innovation and knowledge networks
The knowledge economy increasingly relies on the creation, distribution and use of knowledge assets. The success of enterprises will become more reliant upon their effectiveness in creation, harvesting, absorption and utilization of knowledge.
A knowledge economy is driven by the acceleration of the rate of change and the rate of learning of the contributors to the economy, where the opportunity and capability to get access to and join knowledge-intensive and learning-intensive relations determines the socio-economic position of individuals and firms[4]. Companies must become learning organizations, continuously adapting management, organization and skills to accommodate new technologies and grasp new opportunities. They will be increasingly joined in networks, where interactive learning involving creators, producers and users in experimentation and exchange of information drives innovation.
More...
References:
Sheehan, P. Tegart, G. (Eds.) (1998) Working for the Future: Technology and Employment in the Global Knowledge Economy. Victoria University Press.
Thurow, L. (1991) New Tools, New Rules: Playing to win in the new economic game. Prism.
Footnotes:
[1] This post is primarily drawn from Sheehan, P. Tegart, G. (Eds.) (1998) Working for the Future: Technology and Employment in the Global Knowledge Economy. Victoria University Press.
[2] Oman C. (1996) The Policy Challenges of Globalisation and Regionalisation, Policy Brief No. 11, OECD Development Centre, OECD, Paris, p. 19. [Internet] Available from: http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/51/8/1913021.pdf [Accessed 20 August 2008]
[3] Soete, L. (1997) Macroeconomic and Structural Policy in the Knowledge-based Economy. In: Industrial Competitiveness in the Knowledge-based Economy: The New Role of Governments, OECD, Paris, p. 136.
[4] David, P. Foray, D. (1995) ‘Accessing and Expanding the Science and Technology Knowledge Base,’ STI Review, No 16, OECD, Paris.
In their paper Working for the Future: Technology and Employment in the Global Knowledge Economy, John Houghton and Peter Sheehan discuss the "impacts" (p.8) of globalization and as the foundation for the Knowledge Economy. They assert that
...firms are increasingly required to adopt global strategies to deal with the new realities. Global competition in all major markets between competitors from all major countries, the increasing multinational origin of the inputs to production of both goods and services, the growing intra-industry and indeed intra-product nature of world trade and the interdependent role of the various elements of globalisation are all contributing to a transformation of the global economy.
(1998, p.8)
The emergence of the knowledge economy can be characterized in terms of the "increasing role of knowledge" (p.9) as a factor of production and its impact on skills, learning, organization and innovation. These, then, are the key circumstances and characteristics in the development of Globalized Knowledge Economy:
There is an enormous increase in the codification of knowledge, which together with networks and the digitalization of information, is leading to its increasing commodification.
Increasing codification of knowledge is leading to a shift in the balance of the stock of knowledge – leading to a relative shortage of tacit knowledge.
Codification is promoting a shift in the organization and structure of production.
Information and communication technologies increasingly favour the diffusion of information over re-invention, reducing the investment required for a given quantum of knowledge.
The increasing rate of accumulation of knowledge stocks is positive for economic growth (raising the speed limit to growth). Knowledge is not necessarily exhausted in consumption.
Codification is producing a convergence, bridging different areas of competence, reducing knowledge dispersion, and increasing the speed of turnover of the stock of knowledge.
The innovation system and its ‘knowledge distribution power’ are critically important.
The increased rate of codification and collection of information are leading to a shift in focus towards tacit (‘handling’) skills.
Learning is increasingly central for both people and organizations.
Learning involves both education and learning-by-doing, learning-by-using and learning-by-interacting.
Learning organizations are increasingly networked organizations.
Initiative, creativity, problem solving and openness to change are increasingly important skills.
The transition to a knowledge-based system may make market failure systemic.
A knowledge-based economy is so fundamentally different from the resource-based system of the last century that conventional economic understanding must be re-examined.
More...
_________________
References:
Sheehan, P. Tegart, G. (Eds.) (1998) Working for the Future: Technology and Employment in the Global Knowledge Economy. Victoria University Press.
...it just goes to show you where a mis-typed URL can land you: I was on my way over to the Xyleme Learning Pulse blog - I quite like The Blunted Edge opinion pieces there - when I accidentally dropped an extraneous "e" in front of "Learning" (finger memory I guess?).
Anyhoo, I was promptly directed to The eLearning Pulse Blog "Your daily source for all things eLearning." As the two primary contributors Ben Edwards & B.J. Schone there say themselves:
eLearningPulse is an independent online community focused on serving eLearning developers, from instructional designers to software developers to project managers.
This site provides free resources to the eLearning development community, including news, discussion forums, job postings, and more. We realized that there wasn't a great place to rely on for this type of information in the eLearning field, so we built it ourselves.
eLearningPulse is free. We display eLearning-related ads on the site to pay our hosting fees. We may add features down the road that cost (like webinars, training), but for now everything is free.
While the blog has Forums, Videos, and other functions, of great use to me is the News feature: the eLearning Pulse aggregates e-learning news form abroad range of sources - just enough to allow you to skim headlines and straplines, much as you would with your Google Reader, Bloglines and so on.
In my last post on this topic I outlined some of the key findings from the E-Learning Guild 360 Report on Mobile Learning. Today I'm going to discuss the context for mobile learning (m-learning) in a little more detail.
Now read on...
Dr. Conrad Gottfredson, head of the Performance Support Lab & Seminar at the Masie Center, has described the requirement
for an orchestrated set of performance support tools to meet each learner’s moment of need
(2008, p.1)
He defines these as the Five Moments of Learning Need as:
When learning for the first time
When learning more
When remembering and/or applying what’s been learned
When things go wrong
When things change
He considers the requirement for a multi-channel publishing platform to ensure the currency of training information, as well as its relevancy to learners to be a central component of learning and development, particularly in the organizational context.
Similarly, with the emergence of the read/write web, the ability to contribute information and learning to the totality of an organization's knowledge is quickly gaining value; as we move to a learning 2.0 paradigm, people are not just consuming, but also creating learning, and mobile technology is a being seen as a means to facilitate this learning modality.
According to the report,
...we see that, as Guild members become more experienced in e-Learning, they embrace new approaches to e-Learning more often than people with fewer years of experience. Survey results consistently show that experience in e-Learning encourages growth and experimentation, and does not foster complacency.
[However] a large number of eLearning Guild members seem stuck with the notion that “Mobile Learning” means taking existing training courses and delivering them on a small screen with little or no interactivity. ... But some Guild members need to get out of the trench of thinking “m-Training” and think “m-Performance.”
(pp.6-7)
To support this assertion, Wexler et alia outline the growth in asynchronous learning modalities over the last decade, and note in particular the growth of podcasting and m-learning as content- and knowledge delivery channels (see Figure 1).
Figure 1. A comparison of selected training modalities
Based upon the evidence of the data collected in their survey, we can say that learning and development professionals are implementing e-learning-based training interventions almost as frequently as they rely on traditional classroom-based instructor-led training to deliver courses to learners.
The report also suggests that a competency in developing and delivering e-learning grows over time (and in experience), learning professionals implement non-traditional learning initiatives more frequently than heretofore (see Figure 2).
Figure 2. Use of m-learning delivery channels distributed by professional experience
More...
________________
References:
Wexler, S. Brown, J. Metcalf, D. Rogers, D. and Wagner, E. (2008) MOBILE LEARNING What it is, why it matters, and how to incorporate it into your learning strategy. [Internet] Available from: http://www.elearningguild.com (Subscription required) [Accessed 21 July 2008]
After yesterday's short digression into some of the finer points of heuristic evaluation, today I'm returning to the matter at hand: an assessment of the features and functionality provided by the authorSTREAM and SlideShare hosted presentation distribution services.
Now read on...
authorSTREAM is a web-based PowerPoint presentation sharing platform from authorGEN Technologies. After creating a presentation in Microsoft PowerPoint, content creators can upload presentations to the authorSTREAM website. During the upload process the content is converted Adobe to Flash SWF format displayed via the Flash player. Content creators can use the provided HTML code to embed the presentation in a blog or website, as well to share the presentation via e-mail, and submit the content to YouTube. authorSTREAM also enables users to share their presentations via mobile devices that support MV4 playback such as the Apple iPod or iPhone.
Slideshare supports a range of import file types, including PowerPoint PPT, OpenOffice.org Impress, and PDF format. Broadly speaking, we can say that the SlideShare upload process shares many characteristics with other Web 2.0 tools, and is in fact very similar to the authorSTREAM submission procedure. Generally speaking, once a file is uploaded and converted to SWF, it is publicly available.
The content creators can choose to make the slide show available to be downloaded. Interestingly for a service provided by a for-profit organization Slideshare is linked with Creative Commons, so various attribution licenses are supported (click here for more thoughts on Open Source Software). As with other hosted Web 2.0 services (including YouTube), a presentation can be viewed in the small screen or take the full screen of a monitor.
Motion-based content (i.e. Flash animation / movies) in slides
Yes
No
Rehearsed timings
Yes
No
Voice-over narration
Yes
No
Embed code
Yes
Yes
Statistics
No
Yes
RSS Feed support
Yes
Yes
Full-screen playback
Yes
Via SlideShare.net only
Private content
Yes
Yes
PowerPoint file download
Yes
Yes
User Groups
No
Yes
General Observations: Content Authoring
authorGEN provide authorPOINT Lite, an advanced multimedia presentation creation software utility, which installs in PowerPoint and offers a host of features for power users. Presenters can upload presentations directly from within PowerPoint with this add-on software.
authorPOINT is an advanced multimedia presentation creation software, which installs in PowerPoint as an add-in and provides a range of features for power users. Presenters can upload presentations directly from within PowerPoint with this utility. SlideShare does not offer any offline desktop utility to support the website service.
General Observations: Audio authorSTREAM handles voice-over audio in presentations very well. Audio is retained in narrated PowerPoint presentations when uploaded to authorSTREAM. Authors can also create audio presentations using either live or pre-recorded audio as a media type via authorPOINT, before uploading to authorSTREAM. SlideShare on the other hand, has a “slidecast” feature where the content author synchronizes a pre-recorded audio file online following upload to the server.
authorSTREAM's offline desktop application is a very flexible feature - potentially very useful for e-learning content, in my view.
General Observations: Content Distribution
One very usable feature of SlideShare is it facility to enable extended distribution of content outside of it's native hosting environment. By clicking on the <embed> button on the UI, both an author and any other user can either share the presentation via any one of a range of social networking services (see the screenshot for some examples) as well as provide the source code to enable the presentation to be embedded in a blog or web page, very similar to YouTube's functionality. A case could definitely be made that this type of portability will support the creation of Internet memes in environments where YouTube is not appropriate (due to bandwidth issues, for example).
Conclusions
So which service is better? Well, I guess that comes down to WIIFM - what's in it for me. The broad sweep of features and functionality are pretty similar on both services: deficiencies in one are accommodated by lack of functionality in the other, so it really comes down to personal choice.
My user experience of authorSTREAM was slightly superior to that of SlideShare: upload and conversion times were lower on the former service, for example. Equally, the enhanced slide animation and transition support on authorSTREAM was a positive advantage, as was the ability to view presentations in full-screen mode via a third party environment (my blog in this case). I also prefer the extended functionality afforded by the desktop-based client client, as well as the better audio integration.
In the end... well, I recommend that you try both out yourself, and you decide which service meets your needs.
