I'm not much of a coffee table book person.  First, I don't own a coffee table.  Second, most of these books are bigger than my apartment.   They never sit nicely on a shelf, or fit properly in a box.  Yes, my troubles know no end.  But I make an exception for the Definitive Visual Guides and Eyewitness Travel Guides series published by Dorling Kindersley (DK).  If there is such a thing as a well-worn coffee table book, my copy of "The Universe: a Definitive Visual Guide" certainly qualifies. 

DK Publishing is renowned for its distinctive, beautifully illustrated edu-tainment books.  They are also known for nearly bankrupting themselves in 1999 by miscalculating consumer demand for 18 million Star Wars books.  Reminiscent of the great Atari 2600 E.T. game disaster of 1982, DK sold only a fraction of their inventory.  However, instead of dumping all the books in a landfill like Atari did with the game cartridges, D.K. continued to make efforts to sell off the extra inventory.  In 2000 DK was taken over by the Pearson PLC media company and made part of Penguin Group, which also owns the Penguin Books label.

But back to the books.  The photographs are gorgeous, the diagrams are rich and immersive, and there's just enough digestible, bite-sized nuggets of information to keep you engrossed and engaged in discovery for hours on end.

In other words, exactly the kind of content you'd want to consume on a tablet.

Thankfully, someone at Penguin agrees.  As I was doing some research for a current iOS project, I stumbled upon the concept video below from Penguin that hints at what an Definitive Visual Guide and an Eyewitness Travel Guide experience might look like on an iPad.

While not nearly as impressive as Bonnier's futuristic concept video for Pop Sci magazine, the ideas in this DK/Penguin video are far more realistic and achievable.  But you only need to browse one of their real books to see how nicely their content could be converted to 3D interactive graphics and timelines, video, popovers, and searchable text for a tablet.  I particularly enjoy the implied feature in the Paris Travel Guide that allows you to create an itinerary. 

Here's to hoping I can retire my cumbersome and dogeared copy of "The Universe" to a storage locker someday soon.