WM Interviews
Issuu has a goal to make online publishing simple, attractive and easy
to share. Not only can you create interactive, great looking
publications but you can join a growing community, explore their online
library and share your documents with your own, established community.
Take a PDF, upload it to Issuu and they will convert it into an online
magazine with page-flip capabilities, zoom, full-screen viewing and
more. After you upload your PDF you can publish it immediately to a
host of social networks and blogging sites, as well as get some code to
embed on any site. Your new magazine will also be available on
Issuu.com for public viewing, where there are a host of other documents
to browse in categories ranging from Academia to Tech and Travel. You
can also create a profile, add friends and spread your publication to
others.
But Issuu is just getting warmed up. Already an impressive service,
they look to keep innovating. Martin Ferro-Thomson, Co-Founder and
Communications Manager at Issuu took some time to answer a few questions
we had for him:
When was Issuu founded?
Issuu was started in 2006, with just a few guys with a lot of
ideas. We were funded in January 2007 and started developing, launched
in
public in January 2007 and now Issuu is in beta with many plans for the
future. We have a
handpicked and extremely motivated team, without a doubt the most
talented people I've ever worked with (and yes, we're hiring to keep up
with the booming interest).
What are Issuu's goals?
To make online publishing as simple and easy as possible; both for
companies, advertisers and certainly average people like you and me. We
want everyone with a message to be able to get across to the right
targeted audience, no matter where in the world that audience might be.
And we want to empower anyone to publish in style using the best
technology out there!
Who do you find are the most frequent users of Issuu?
Anyone! Businesses want to use us because we have the best online
viewer technology on the market (vector gfx and full screen mode).
Creatives love the viewer too because it's beautiful and they can
connect via our community. Everyone else just thinks it's exciting to
join this living library where you can find so much interesting stuff
you never though was out there - and in a format that really is
something people have been craving for: easy, intuitive and gratifying.
What are some future plans or upgrades for Issuu?
Watch the blog. And believe me, it's going to be a great year to watch out
for Issuu. We have only just started rolling out the basic features and
we have an extremely exciting road map with lots of new and innovative
features that we've worked on for years now - and of course by
listening to our top-notch members (thanks!).
Editor's
note - Issuu is promising some great features but understandably
prefers to keep things under wraps for now. See a recent press release
from their blog and an example of Issuu's capabilities.
Now, a couple of limitations that we mentioned previously:
- Zoom feature: When zooming in on a document, the default means of
navigation is by simply moving the mouse - there is no clicking
involved. While it's nice to easily move a page around, it's also a
little distracting, even disorienting. My hand usually rests on my
mouse - so even the slightest movement moves the entire page. Clicking
on the hand icon at the top of the page turns the feature off, but not
all users will notice this. Also while in zoom mode, you lose the
page-flip effect when clicking to get to the next page.
- Embedded links: Right now you cannot embed links into the PDF files. It would be a nice feature to have.
I've tested Issuu. At first there was a problem uploading the PDF. But
after emailing for support (and a rapid response) the problem was
solved. It appears I simply needed to install the
latest Flash player.
After that, it was easy. I'm impressed ... and looking forward to
Issuu's continued progress.
Issuu has been nominated as a finalist in the SXSW Interactive awards, from hundreds of applicants. If you like what you see, you can vote for Issuu
here.
An example of an Issuu file and choosing to embed the magazine
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Over the past
several years, large corporations have come to realize the importance of
a dedicated Internet strategy on both the marketing and technical sides.
As such, a new breed of Internet professionals has emerged. Roles are
being defined and these new specialists are becoming essential to every
corporation’s online success.
To dig a little deeper, Website Magazine’s Mike Phillips spoke with
Steve Gehlen, Founder and Executive Director of the Internet Strategy
Forum. Gehlen and the ISF are leading a charge to better serve companies
and individuals worldwide by organizing and promoting a new breed of
Internet Strategists. Call them the new face of the Internet for
corporate world…just don’t call them “Webmasters.” |
When did you start Internet Strategy Forum (ISF) and what was your motivation?SG: March 2004 was the formative meeting, and we had our first topic-based meeting in May of that year. Our first annual Summit conference was in July, 2004.
I wanted to network with my peers. When I started the ISF there wasn't an existing organization. I knew people that did the same things I did, but they never showed up at professional networking meetings. So I developed a set of objectives for a new professional networking association.
Also, when the dot-com bubble burst, a lot of the press was about startups. But it impacted the corporate role of the Internet as well. Job salaries and roles were depressed. I saw that as a time to raise visibility to the industry of important Internet-related corporate roles — to be a champion for that.
What's the overall mission for ISF?SG: We want to provide professional development and new opportunities for corporate Internet Strategists. We do that through a variety of programs, primarily monthly chapter-based meetings. The meetings are available in person or via the Web. So, any member can participate in any of the monthly meetings no matter where the location. We also have an annual Summit conference, one of the programs fulfilling that mission as well.
What is the current and future role of corporate Internet Strategist?
SG: Primarily they are driving their company's Internet presence — anything that rides over the IP protocol is now considered Internet strategy. However, the job titles, roles and departments within corporations vary. Our members consist mainly of marketing professionals and IT but also include some online products groups and e-commerce groups, to name a few. And even though those are diverse roles, there’s a lot of commonality in issues we face. For instance, how to pitch senior management for more money? There are also challenges within the corporate structure — often between IT and Marketing. Who’s in charge? How does Marketing get the attention of IT for their objectives?
There are many opportunities to network online today. What do you think sets the ISF apart from the likes of Facebook or LinkedIn? Do you view those networks as competition and why do you think the ISF will succeed?
SG: It’s not competition. The ISF is not a social network, it's a professional network. As such, there are combinations of ways to interact with each other. If anything, we see the acceleration of interest in joining organizations like ours through the social networks... something like ISF adds value to networking. We have a LinkedIn Group, for example. But someone needs to foster those groups for the connections to really pay off. And that's where a professional network steps in.
I call it Association 2.0. One of the goals I set for myself was to remake the association meeting, to lower the barrier and combine the virtual and the physical. It facilitates dialogue and interaction.
ISF’s next summit conference will take place July 17 in Portland Oregon. The scheduled keynote speaker is co-founder and CEO of eMarketer, Jeffrey Ramsey. The ISF also returns their highest-rated speaker, Mike Moran, member and author of the highly-successful book Search Engine Marketing, Inc. and a new book titled Do It Wrong Quickly: How the Web Changes the Old Marketing Rules. Currently ISF has several active area chapters, including those in New York, Los Angeles, Portland and Washington DC, with more in development. For more information, visit www.internetstrategyforum.org.
William Rice is president of the Web Marketing association.
He has used both Rovion’s inperson and Oddcast’s
Sitepal with very positive results. What follows are some of
Rice’s thoughts on each and how a human touch has helped
the Web Marketing association.
Rice and the Web Marketing association are currently using
Rovion on their website. They have found it particularly
useful and a nice match to the site.
“From a website design perspective, we really like Rovion
because of the quality of video,” said Rice. “You come to
our site and you really get something integrated into the
look and feel of our site. it’s very easy and extremely helpful.
We think Rovion gives us a very upscale look and
feel.”
But the Web Marketing association’s first experience with
a talking character was with Sitepal – a Web Marketing
award winner in 2004 for Outstanding achievement in
Website Development.
“When we used Sitepal, it was brand-new,” said Rice.
“The animation was very interesting. What i liked about
Sitepal, the technology lets you simply create an audio file.
You record your voice and animation lip syncs to it – which
allows you to make changes on the fly much faster.
“We used different messages with different call-to-actions
for the 2005 Web awards. We would create an audio file,
upload to the Sitepal console and literally, within an hour
we would have a new message on the site.”
Both inperson and Sitepal did come with some apprehension,
however. Rice was worried about overwhelming visitors.
“From our experience with both, it’s important to limit
the amount of time people will see the characters, especially
in the case of repeat visitors,” said Rice. “it’s a great
attention getter but you don’t want to overdo it.”
Complaints started coming in. But, once a cookie was enabled
from Rovion to limit the frequency of the message,
all of the complaints stopped.
Rice and the Web Marketing association used Rovion’s
provided talent for their campaign. They discussed what
they were looking for, then Rovion’s producers offered
choices, shot videos and presented them for approval. all
of the work was done remotely.
Rice said that Sitepal was a much more do-it-yourself system
but claimed working with both companies was, “very,
very easy.”