Slideshare is a free service launched by Uzanto for sharing presentations and slideshows. You can upload your PowerPoint and OpenOffice presentations, tag them, embed them into your blog or website, browse others’ presentations, and comment on individual slides. It’s a great way to share your ideas with others, or to learn from other people. And it’s free.

It was featured on TechCrunch yesterday and here’s what Mike Arrington says in his review

“SlideShare is clean, fast and functional ……I’ll be using it to post presentations I give at future conferences for archiving purposes. In addition, if any company requesting a profile on TechCrunch would like to send a presentation deck for public viewing, I’ll show that presentation in the TechCrunch profile using SlideShare.”

Here’s an embedded presentation that explains the basic intent behind SlideShare (use the buttons in the player’s panel to browse the slides)

At present, you need an invitation to use SlideShare. In case you are interested, send an email to amit@uzanto.com. Or just go to the SlideShare site and sign up for an invite. We shall send it across at the earliest.

‘Two long, hard, gruesome years of relentless, uncompromising and serendipitous product development work’ - Thats my elevator pitch for describing the experience.

We celebrated the day with a small ‘cake-party’ in the office.

While on this subject, I’d like to mention that we are thoroughly elated with the initial feedback to the beta version of MindCanvas. We have been selectively showing off the product to the user experience/research community and the general feedback is that MindCanvas offers a novel and refreshing approach to online user research.

So with MindCanvas, all our energies are currently geared towards learning to walk, before we attempt to run..

Our earlier office (at Sarvapriya Vihar) was a cute & cosy tech ghetto, that served us very well while we were in the stealth mode, developing MindCanvas like a bunch of unobstrusive, zealous fanatics. But now that we need to expand our team and generally enhance our profile, we needed a bigger place and all the trappings that come with a proper office setup. All the same, we’ll surely miss the friendliness of the earlier place. It was very much in the ’startup-in-a-garage’ mould.

Here’s how the new office looks like…

We're working on something really cool, and this is a chance to be doing really cutting-edge UI work. It's all product development, not boring services work.

Be prepared to show me some cool JavaScript code that you’ve written, and answer detailed questions about it.

Candidates who are clued in to what's happening in the web and are hip to the latest trends (LAMP, Ruby, etc) will be given priority treatment. We're not looking for warm bodies here, we're looking for clueful techs who are ready to take it to the next level. I don't care what your GPA was or where you went to school, I care about what you've built and whether you can prove to me that you get things done.

We offer excellent pay and benefits, and a killer work environment.

p.s. If you're this person but are in the bay area, I know a great startup that is hiring. Ping me (jon at uzanto) for details, and I'll forward your resume.

I particularly like the article's emphasis on how entrepreneurs are better positioned to work with foreign labor, because they are willing to put up with the headaches (staying up all night talking on skype) and have connections in the country where the work is taking place (something that is crucial to hiring the right people and having the trust necessary to operate remotely).

Excepts below:

This is the building we're in (photo src is A9).

This month, a star-studded panel will look at recent developments in search and information finding. Panelists include:
Jakob Nielsen: Usability rock star
Peter Norvig: Director of Search Quality, Google
Ken Norton: Director of Product Management, Yahoo! search
Udi Manber: CEO of A9
Rahul Lahiri: VP of Search Product Management at Ask Jeeves

Moderated by Uzanto's own Rashmi Sinha.

Anyone who's interested in search in general, or the intersection of search and user experience in particular, should attend. April 12th, at PARC in Palo Alto.