The folks at Doculus are rightly feeling mighty happy with themselves, having launched the first mobile PDF viewer that replaces the need for pinch and zoom with a proper document. This is actually pretty big: hold onto your hats.
Why we love it
How many times have you downloaded a document to your smartphone? Probably quite a few. How many times have you enjoyed trying to read a shrunk-down PDF that skips pages when your knuckle grazes that fancy-pants touch screen of yours? Probably not as many.
Enter Doculus: Led by CEO Varun Parmar, the company is revolutionizing the way we read documents on our phones. Unlike traditional PDF viewing for smartphones, Doculus’ PDF viewer reconstitutes documents to make them fit to scale for your phone’s screen, effectively rendering pinch and zoom redundant, for ever.
There are a number of factors that make this seemingly mundane breakthrough pretty exciting. Firstly there are literally *billions* of PDF documents in existence. Billions. PDF files may only have been around since 1993, but we have been a busy bunch. Coupled with the surging popularity of mobile reading, it’s clear that making it easier to read PDF documents via smartphones is very important.
Additionally, the growing phenomenon of ‘phablets’ (phone-tablets; don’t worry, there is a special circle in hell waiting for whoever coined that phrase), means that people now expect to be able to read and edit their PDFs via their smartphones. In a world of remote working and easy internet access, people need a more portable option for documents and files. In reality, PDFs – which stands for Portable Document Format – simply haven’t been that portable for a number of years, which has prevented smartphone users from working to their full potential.
Doculus is so good, it lets you work anywhere, from the office, from your home, from the bus… Wait, hang on. Doculus, we need to talk. What are you doing to my downtime, Doculus? Where are my excuses for listening to music on the bus, Doculus? Or reading a book? Or gazing listlessly at the latest McDonald’s ad? What the hell do you think you’re doing, Doculus?
And so we come to the gripe. Apps like Doculus – the technological equivalents of those kids that ask for extra homework, or over-performing co-workers – are the scourge of free time. They provide bosses the whole world over with ammunition such as, “Why aren’t you more productive?” And even though you may dream of responding, “FOR THE LOVE OF GOD I WAS ON THE BUS, IT WAS SIX IN THE MORNING AND I WAS ENJOYING A NEWSPAPER. JUST LEAVE ME BE”, we all know how it’s really going to end: “Sorry, I’ll be sure to work harder next time.”
But really, Doculus is pretty cool. With one neat feature it gets rid of squinting, and good eye health is something we can all get behind. How about, just download it for yourself and don’t tell your boss you have it. That way, you still get to dictate when – and where – you use it.
Tweetable
The team @DoculusIo have made it possible to view PDFs properly via your smartphone. The app reconstitutes PDFs to fit screens perfectly.
