This week, lynda.com, home of what I now know to be over 500 hours of Deke-on-Video-Training, announced they have added the ability to share “playlists.” This means, if you are a member of lynda.com, you can round up a bunch of courses into one handy list, and then share that list (via a link, email, or social media) with whomever you wish.

For instance, in honor of the impending arrival of the final installment in the Photoshop CS6 series, also known as Photoshop CS6 One-on-One: Mastery, I have added the first three installments of Deke’s series into a Photoshop CS6 One-on-One playlist so that members of lynda.com can make sure they’re up to date on the series before the finale arrives. Perfect for your weekend Photoshop enrichment. (And, hey, if you scheduled things cleverly, you could probably get through this list in a free week trial membership from lynda.com/deke: You know, if you didn’t sleep, pay attention to your children, or work too hard at your regular job for a week.)

Read on to see how to add courses to your own playlists, get a free trial at lynda.com, and get my secret for on how to watch a completely free “playlist” of dekeVideos from the lynda.com library.

Adding courses to a playlist is a simple matter of finding them in the lyndaLibrary, then designating them to a new or existing queue. (To make the dekePlaylists, I just started by choosing Author > Deke McClelland from the lynda.com home page. Yes, there are many other fine authors, but this is Deke’s site after all.)

Then just click the checkmark-plus-arrow icon next to the course you want. As you can see below, you’ll get a list of your existing playlists to choose from, or you can create a new one on the fly. Here, I’m adding Photoshop CS6 New Features to an existing list called dekeAll. This is my list of every single dekeCourse, which for the record has 53 hours and 1 minutes of content total. (Useful for those of you who have weekends that stretch the beyond natural boundaries of time and sanity.)

Once your playlist is created, it will be on your My Courses page at lynda.com. And there are handy buttons there to share via email, via your own generated link, or Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn. Just turn on the Share checkbox at the upper right and you’ll see the self-explanatory buttons.

Of course, you may not a) be a member of lynda.com or b) have copious amounts of time to test out dekeVideos. If that’s you, I have a trick for sampling Deke’s Photoshop One-on-One series that’s completely quick and free.

It turns out that every course at lynda.com has a certain amount of content that’s unlocked to everyone. Those videos are listed in blue in any course table of contents. So if you go to the TOC page for Deke’s Photoshop CS6 One-on-One: Fundamentals course, for instance. You’ll see the first movie is blue:

When you click that link, the first movie in the course will play. If you’re a logged in member, you can have it automatically play the next movie in the course or click to jump to the next one when you’re done. But if you’re not a member, then clicking the next movie button (shown below) simply takes you to the next free movie. Voila, an efficient way to skip to all the unlocked content in the course.

Of course, I must warn you, you may become enamored of Deke’s humor, knowledge, and general charisma. In such a case you can take advantage of that free lynda week-long trial (and my handy playlist as well.)

Meanwhile, let me know if you’d like me to create a playlist to share. I know my way around the lyndaLibrary pretty well, and would be happy to whip up something useful for my fellow dekeAmericans.

Meanwhile, whatever your plans, I hope you have an engaging weekend queued up.