MattWorld — Great Inventions
e-Brochure
After typesetting the blueprint for Canada's information highway in 1995, Matt-A-Graphics (MGi) began building the first websites for Industry Canada's Competition Bureau, Generations CanConnect, and Canada's Digital Collections initiatives.
In 1996, Matt was granted funding by Industry Canada for an idea to develop new portable electronic document format to distribute the Request for Plans and Priorities (RPP) summary document to all employees by e-mail. Coined "e-brochure", the self-contained, navigable, multimedia .exe email attachment would be built in Flash 1.0, a new vector motion technology which had recently appeared as an alternate to motion by animated .gif.
The first prototype was a bullseye with a slick, bilingual interface with sound, links, images, and a proprietary navigation feature which allowed the user to go anywhere within the document at anytime. It could be easily shared to the masses without printing a sheet of paper. MGi was contracted to produce new versions the following two years, along with a different adaptation for Industry Canada's Generations CanConnect program. Seeing more flexibility for different applications, in 1998 Canada Post asked MGi to develop an computer-based training (CBT) module e-brochure.
In 1999, MGi created the incredible Hummingbird e-brochure in only 11 days (75K contract). It was unveiled in Los Vegas at Hummingbird's big convention on a band-new, top-of-the-line, 21" plasma TV. As a solution designed to inform employees, customers, and suppliers about a new corporate direction, the Hummingbird e-Brochure saved a million trees by instantly becoming the most downloaded and distributed information resource in the company's history.
The following year, in May 2000 the ILOVEYOU virus struck—the world's first and deadliest computer worm which attacked and killed tens of millions of Windows personal computers around the world. After that, it was game over for attaching .exe's to any email ever again.
Be this as it may, MGi is credited with the invention of the term "e-brochure" in Canada's Federal government.
Click any image above to launch a feature gallery of static images or CLICK HERE to download and experience the original e-Brochures from DropBox (Windows operating system only).
Downloading any .exe file will trigger alarm bells. IGNORE THE WARNINGS HERE. There is ZERO risk of computer virus. These multimedia presentations were way ahead of their time (Generations CanConnect is the nicest but Hummingbird is the coolest).