Entrepreneur Joan Briener was so overwhelmed by a handmade book she received as a birthday gift that she decided to found a company to help people collaborate online to produce gift books for special occasions. CelebrateSomebody.com was developed to provide users with a simple way to choose an occasion and book design, quickly customize a title page and then save their book and send an email invitation to family and friends, instructing them how to access the book online to contribute comments, stories, best wishes and photos. The book can be downloaded as a PDF and printed on a color printer to produce a unique and personalized gift without the hassle of using complex page layout programs or laboriously compiling, cutting-and-pasting individual contributions.

In 1999, on demand, custom PDF production was an uncommon and revolutionary proposition, but it delivered the promise of the high quality print resolution and platform independence that Joan needed to make the product a success. Using custom-written Postscript production libraries coupled with specially prepared background image files, a unique page layout definition language, hand compiled font libraries and innovative image manipulation and PDF distillation routines, clue inc helped Joan Briener achieve her goal.

Visitors who make a book at the site can log into their account at any time to see lists of books they have saved, invite people to make comments in their books through the site's intuitive interface, see how many of their invitees have responded, edit comments and add their own comments and photos, purchase paper and album covers for finishing their book and set up email reminders to make books for future events. Every time a change is made to a book, background processes silently recompile the PDF and produce thumbnail images of each page so the book maker can quickly check layout, number of comments and pages without having to download the entire book. The finished PDF is generated on request and split into 20-page files to accommodate users who have slower connections.

The database stores detailed information about each account including how many books they have made, how many times they have downloaded their book's PDF file, how they found out about the site and what feature they first used at the site. Joan is capable of tracking her orders, viewing statistics about books and users including design popularity, most frequently celebrated occasions, average number of comments per visitor and how frequently users make a new book. This data has helped her better understand how the popularity of her product has spread virally over the past 5 years -- allowing her to offer new features and promotions as well as slowly refocus her marketing message, resulting in rebranding the site as CelebrateAHero.com in 2004.

clue has supported CelebrateSomebody/CelebrateAHero at every step, with application maintenance, feature development, systems administration, security consulting, traffic analysis and marketing advice. Since the technology of PDF production has changed dramatically, currently a major rewrite is underway to exploit those changes, assist a repositioning of the site, and further the site's reach and scope. CelebrateSomebody/CelebrateAHero is unique in its field--allowing users to collaborate and control the book production process, and Joan Briener is still achieving her business goals of delivering a superior product that takes advantage of technology innovation.