
Overview

Key Features
Document Conversion - Files Type Supported
Calameo can easily convert most type of documents and files with no additional help. Files can be as large as 100MB each, and here are the specific document formats supported.


Player Features - Navigation Controls
Once a document has been converted into Calameo, it is displayed within a custom Flash player. To navigate the newly created document a navigation toolbar is available on the top left area of the Calameo player.
Delivery and Distribution


Community Features
Calameo sports the standard set of social and community features allowing you to invite as many people as you want to watch, comment and discuss around your publications directly from within the Calameo interface.
Search
The Calameo search facility module doesn't get a prize for its UI, but it does deliver solid results, that are visually navigable and immediately accessible. It appears to be also very fast.
Customization
Calameo offers a nice set of interesting customization features for your own publications. These range from integrating your own image or logo in the player, to the addition of background music and more.
Multimedia Editing
One of the coolest features of Calameo allows you to edit your uploaded document and add to it links to other web sites, links to specific pages inside the document, MP3 sounds, video clips in FLV format and animation s in SWF file format.


Licensing
All documents published with Calameo must be files for which you do have full publishing and distribution rights. You cannot just take any electronic version of a magazine and re-publish it through this service. If you do, you may run into some serious penal issues. If you are the originator of your own documents to be published via Calameo you have also the nice option of being able to select the type of Creative Commons licence that you want to use for each publication.
Other Cool Features
A number of other valuable features is available when you create a new publication and includes options to share the document and to make it easy for others to access it.

Plans & Pricing
The basic service, which is fully free, has lots to offer without asking anything in return. The PRO version, which costs €149/year (apx. $190 ) provides you with greater ability to customize your publication, tools to manage directly your mailing list, traffic and viewing stats, no ads.
In Summary
Pros - Key Strengths
Support for a wide variety of popular file formats Web-based - works with all browsers and operating systems Free - all of the basic core functionalities are available for free Slick, interactive document player Cool navigation and browsing tools Customization options Editable - links, videos and animations can be added to your original document Embeddable on other sites Downloadable - original document can be made available for download if desired Privacy - any document can be set to be published as fully "public" or as "private" Community features Social news sites support RSS supportCons - To Improve
Help and documentation - very sparse and thin - badly organized - difficult to navigate AdSense ads - AdSense ads are present on almost every public page of this service site. While I understand the basic needs for bringing in any possible extra revenue during these early phases I find the presence of ads distracting and discrediting for the site prestige and credibility. They should not be there. The "action" buttons used to edit or save information inside Calameo all use strange and non-standard terms for functions. Distracting and confusing. Somewhat confusing navigation inside Calameo web-based account. Not intuitive path to find mini-player and sharing functionalities.Editor's Comments
Here is an innovative online publishing tool which raises the bar for quality of results (final page layouts) as well as for speed and ease of use. Targeted at those wanting to distribute their contents online in a more prestigious, slick and interactive format, Europe-based Calameo has created a useful service, which similarly to Scribd or Docstoc allows you to easily publish and distribute any document online. Calameo key strengths are the wide support for a variety of popular document formats, a cool and highly usable distribution interface, alongside some nifty customization features, RSS support, publication embedding, as well as full downloading (if allowed) of original documents. Although still in beta, Calameo looks like a promising service for online publishers, especially for those who want to extract higher value from the distribution medium Calameo puts at their disposal. From the viewpoint of professional online publishers, the opportunity is in creating premium options that serve directly the needs of those wanting to use this platform as a way to market and sell their know-how, services or physical products. In this light, potential integration of ecommerce payments, squeeze page features, list building and similar marketing tools could further characterize Calameo from its competitors, while addressing aggressively one of the most rapidly moving segments on the net. I believe that there is ample market opportunities for online publishing tools like this one, as long as they are courageous and shrewd enough to address very specific needs and applications. Doing something cool that tries to satisfy many different needs and audience types is generally bound to have much harder chances of survival.Learn More
About Calameo Calameo Help (very cumbersome to navigate and rather sparse in contents) Press Release - April 21st 2008Originally written by Robin Good for Master New Media and first published on Tuesday June 24th 2008 as "Create An Online Interactive Magazine From Any Document With Calameo"