Photo Casting with Slide

Jamaica's youngest consultant to the Minister of Information
Photograph Stephenie Hollyman, Copyright 2006, All Rights Reserved

The Slide Photocast, while still in Beta, presents a powerful tool for those wanting to upload photo essays quickly online, share photos, display products for auction or URLS. Slide is a new start-up being backed by Max Levchin, who co-founded and was CTO at PayPal. As this promising new web-based tool is still in Beta, it certainly has some quirks of its own, but nothing daunting. Once you use it, it's a no-brainer. Photos, URLS, Quicktime movies and other media can quickly be embedded as links. Gawker uses Slide for navigation, in an interesting way.



This is a Photo cast I quickly created using Slide, part of an ongoing personal project in which I am photographing people's long term friendships. These three men, who work together in a Chinatown garment factory, meet each Sunday to take photographs together. After they sip tea and munch on snacks while viewing and discussing the photographs they took the week before. Their friendship is kind of like Flickr conducted in real ( not virtual ) time....not online...but in Chinatown... over dumplings and tea. The warmth of their interactions just goes to prove that there is something to be said for a life lived offline.

Slide seems to come up with a new use almost weekly, with new partnerships announced. And it's no surprise why. Their technical support is terrific. By Monday morning a bug had been corrected that I had reported on their user forum the night before, a Sunday night no less. Which leads to the next question " Don't they have a life?" Hey they are in the intoxicating throes of building a new company.

"The company plans to let members incorporate video, text and news headlines with photos too, creating multimedia "channels," writes Alorie Gilbert, Staff Writer, CNET News ( August 26, 2005) PayPal Co-Founder Readies Photo-Sharing Service

Slide has just come out with a new Beta version for Mac that integrates with IPhoto 6. Apple is using slide to showcase new releases from I Tunes. I Tunes in Slide Player and Slide has devised a way to display a catalogue of items for auction on E-Bay in a photo cast. Slide For E-Bay.

To see how to use IPhoto 6 for your very own Photo Casts from a Mac or PC go to Photo Cast Feeds. You can also subscribe to a RSS Photocast feed here too.