Max Levchin, co-founder and former CTO of PayPal, announced the public beta launch of his new venture, Slide.

Aug 31, 2005 15:01 GMT  ·  By

Slide is a free downloadable desktop program that indexes photos on the user's hard drive, automatically groups them into intuitive channels, and plays them back via a unique always-on ticker interface.

Because of this innovative scrolling "photo playback" model, users can rediscover and enjoy images they would rarely see otherwise. With just one click users can choose to share any photo or invite both registered and unregistered friends and family to subscribe to entire channels of photos. Simple access controls allow users to manage the privacy of their photos.

Slide's users and business partners can also create public channels for the Slide community to enjoy. Slide's Web site features a public directory of users, partners, and channels. Public channels feature diverse content, from semi-pro photography showcases to RSS feeds of photo blogs, to product catalogs. Alongside digital photos, Slide supports many rich media types, such as video, music, and others.

Best known for being the CTO and technology brains behind PayPal, which he co-founded in 1998, Max Levchin led PayPal and the high-tech industry in the development of network and information security technologies to fight transaction fraud and identity theft. Shortly after a successful IPO in 2002, PayPal was acquired by eBay for $1.5B. Levchin left the company in late 2002 to explore other projects and in 2004 founded Slide, Inc. He has since focused on developing the desktop application and back-end services for the new firm.