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The YouTube of docs…but with bells (and lots of whistles)
YouTube’s genius was to translate a multitude of clashing video formats and mush them into Flash, a cross-platform format most any computer can handle. Issuu.com has done the same for non-movie files. If you produce PDFs, Word docs, Powerpoint presentations and other files that otherwise remain static on your machine, you could load ‘em to Issuu.com and get flippin’ beauties.
Strida designer Mark Sanders sent me and Bicycle Design’s James Thomas a link to some PDFs and Powerpoint files of his ‘Blue Ocean’ presentation at the Taipei trade show. Downloading a PDF and reading it in Adobe Preview is sooooo 2008. Converted to Flash, and given the Issuu touch, Sanders’s documents now jump from the page. Click on full-screen to get the full effect.
Issuu is where I’ve parked the sampler for the Bike to Work Book (it’s had 51,000 views so far). Snow Books created an Issuu account recently and placed on there a teaser chapter for my ‘Family Cycling’ book. Many big-name publishers are now placing their books and mags on Issuu.com. But it’s not just for the mammoths, the minnows get to play, too. Digital democracy. God, I love Issuu.
Can you tell?
