iSilo 5.2

DC & Co developed a proprietary file format for compressed text and graphics to compete with the PDF technology. iSilo lets you open those files on almost any computing device available to a regular consumer today. iSilo is written for many platforms, from handheld devices to now uncommon computer architectures such as PowerPC.

Well the program will not become a main stream in the near future, despite its advantages. Let me tell you why. The program's interface looks awful. It looks like it was made at night from the scrap materials of a left-over program. I am sure the developers spent some considerable time working on their proprietary format for the compressed text and graphics, but that's not what an average user cares for. He wants a cool looking program that is also functional and useful. I mean look at Adobe's products - they are buggy, but look perfect, and we will continue using them because of that.

One thing the developers have done right is - they allow you to convert to their .pdb format for free, but to read it, you need to buy their 20 dollars program - genius. Well it is, except the format will have no chance for picking up. First of all, marketing problems. P D B is just so close to P D F. Second of all, there are free alternatives for both creating and reading, and they are also multi-platform - web browsers, text files, PDFs.

Overall, it is a great idea to flood the market with alternatives, but I am lost with this one. It looks, feels and smells like PDF, and the confusing and unsophisticated website does not say a word about advantages of pdb over pdf or any advantages, except for multi-platformism and the obvious.