The era of connected data services continues to unfold with the advent of emerging platforms such as Presentz, an open-source slide show offering for people to mashup videos, images and other media from YouTube, Vimeo, SlideShare and other providers.

The service syncs video with a slide deck so people can follow a recorded conference talk and see the slides at the same time.

Presentz has been in development for more than a year but recently has had more attention. This is in part due to the breadth of applications available that can be mashed up and the realization that it’s unncessary to load all your data onto one platform and use the tools that the vendor provides. Plus, it’s free to use and open-source.

At the heart of Presentz is the open-source JavaScript library that syncs the video and the slides. Users add links to their videos and slide decks to the form on the Presentz website. It supports YouTube and Vimeo for video. SlideShare, LibreOffice and SpeakerDeck are the slide-show presentation services that a user can pull.

The video and slides render to the site. Here I’ve pulled an unrelated video and slide deck together to show how Presentz works.

Here’s how it looks when finished:

Most alternatives to Presentz have a centralized approach: you give them your video or audio and slides, you use their tools to mix them, and they will publish and host the result. Presentz just pulls the video and slides from third parties.

Presentz is similar to Mozilla’s PopcornMaker, which is richer in scope but not as focused as what you get with Presentz.

Mozilla describes Popcorn as a platform to enhance, remix and share web video. It’s a browser-based platform with the capability to combine video and audio with text, links, maps, pictures and live feeds.

The biggest difference between Presentz and Popcorn are the use cases. Popcorn is a remix servicw that it describes as a storytelling platform. Presentz is best for conferences and presentations. Both are worth a look.

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