PDF has found its way into some innovative publishing streams, one of them being the “Digital Newsbook” format, a joint Adobe-Kent State publishing technology venture in which, theoretically, newspapers can release rich-media content quickly for download over the Web.

Last month, the Rocky Mountain News released the first extra edition exclusively available in the Newsbook format, which was created in Olive Software’s ActivePaper, and readable in Acrobat Reader. The Newsbook, available for a limited time, solved a vexing problem newspapers face each election day: The print edition has to be “put to bed” before all the results are in, while radio and TV news outlets feast on their exclusivity on the day after.

The bad news? Only 300 people downloaded it, although the paper’s publisher told Newspapers and Technology he deemed it a success. The good news? Not only did the paper successfully create the Newsbooks, but staff was able to beat its 9:30MST deadline by almost four hours, releasing the final (of two) PDF edition by 5:40--no small feat when seconds count.