Why you should use DIVA.

At its core, DIVA is a file management utility for the files you need for teaching, research, and service. By uploading your files to DIVA, you get free backups and always-on access to your files from anywhere in the world, on any computer, so long as you have Internet access. That means you don't need to worry about carrying around disks, copying files from one computer to another, or e-mailing yourself your files. Things you put on DIVA can be accessed in the office, at home, or even at the beach resort when you realize that journal submission is due.

Dealing with video, audio, and even images can be a major pain. There are simply too many confusing formats and options. Different programs produce different kinds of files, and it can be hard to know whether your students or colleagues or even your other computer will be able to play that video you just found/recorded.

So let's make it simple: Upload nearly any video, audio, or image file to DIVA, and it will convert it to a format that can be played/viewed online. Video and audio are converted to formats playable by Adobe Flash Player, which is already installed for 99% of Internet viewers. That means: No software to install, no worrying about Windows or MacOS or Linux. It just works.

DIVA makes sharing your files and other content easy. Want to give your students access to a set of files? Just create a DIVA course and drop in the files you want to share. Want to password-protect those files so only your students can access them? DIVA makes it a cinch. You can even invite people that aren't users of DIVA to access your files by creating a Group.

And this is a two-way street. Other users on DIVA can share things with you, so you can reuse and remix their content for your own needs. Even better, some of our users manage collections that they make available to other DIVA users. This allows legal reuse of a wide range of incredible resources. From fine art to archival news footage, DIVA offers you a wide and expanding range of high-quality content.

We mentioned before that you can share your files with colleagues (even ones without a DIVA account) through the use of Groups. A DIVA Group also lets you give those colleagues edit access to those files and other content. With Groups, you can have assistants uploading field notes, colleagues editing findings, and keep track of it all in one place. DIVA lets you know when your Group has been updated and keeps track of old versions of files and other content, so you can see who has changed what, when, and how.

So DIVA lets you store your files and share them with your students and colleagues. But a file by itself often isn't enough. Some files need to be put into context. Is the file part of an assignment? Sample data for a lesson plan?

DIVA Web Documents lets you bring together multiple files with rich text, video, audio, and images in one place. A web document is like a cross between a word processing document and a web page. You don't need to know HTML. You don't need to bother with how to embed multimedia. You build a web document out of simple building blocks that stack one on top of another. Versioning, secure sharing, collaboration, multimedia support, and more come for free.

Web Documents support embedding video from all over the web. Want to dissect the latest SNL political skit? Find it on Hulu, and copy and paste the video's address into a video block. No need to deal with embed code or any HTML at all: DIVA will embed it for you and you can put your content all around it. It's fast, easy, and legal. DIVA supports over a hundred popular video sites including Hulu, YouTube, Vimeo, MSNBC, The Daily Show, and The Colbert Report. Chances are good: If you find a video you like somewhere on the Internet, DIVA can embed it in a web document for you. (This page is, itself, a DIVA web document.)