We recently profiled Backcast and the possibility of creating something with the look and feel of a print magazine online. Issuu and FlippingBook are two examples of Web sites that provide technologies to bring such concepts to life.
If you visit the Issuu Web site, you can find out all you need to know about publishing any PDF, PowerPoint of Word document with a magazine style feel and layout. You can use the Issuu service for free, if you are willing to accept an advertising sidebar. For $19 a month, the advertising sidebar is removed, and you get 15GB of storage where you can publish as many documents as you like and have unlimited readers.
On the Issuu Web site, you can search for other publication. Enter the keyword “photography” and you will see over 1,000 of them, from magazines to little photo portfolio books published by individual photographers.
One of the more interesting examples of this type technology is Picture Colour Library’s
Flippin Brochure, which is built using FlippingBook. FlippingBook accepts PDF, HTML and Flash documents.
Unlike Issuu, which stores user files on its own site, FlippingBook alows files to be stored on your server, and the system requirements are minimal. You do not need PHP, ASP, MySQL, any other server applications or programming skills; the installation procedure is just copying files onto the server.