document sharing software

There are a lot of softwares out there for document sharing. But graphically speaking Issuu says it all. The UI is beautifully done and it gives the user/reader the impression he can almost scroll through the pages of a document. Although Issuu offers some interactivity (sharing, bookmarking, commenting) it is a pity they only accept pdf-documents. Just take a look at the educause document the Horizon report.

For a complete range of formats you need to go to Scribd or ... to share your documents.
Scribd is less catchy then issuu, the fact that it has a very broad range of documents to choose from if you want to upload anything, makes it more userfriendly. Scribd also has a group feature that enables like-minded spirits to connect. I like this one, 100 Web2.0 ideas for educators from Quentin d'Souza.

And of course you can always share documents in real life on Google docs as well as with giving all the users a wiki kind of feeling, but with a word processor feel. Google also offers other online tools. Or Zoho which also offers a big variety of online office tools (database, spreadsheets...).

If you like loging in, you can also use Adobe's Share which publishes all the documents to a flash format that can be embedded in other web pages.

For those with an interest in linking MS office to an online application, look at Office live workspace, the hybrid (no surprise) approach developed by Microsoft. ZDnet offers a nice video on the subject.

I would use Issuu for portfolio reasons though, really nice look.