7 ms·

Scribd launches new platform and iPaper

53 points by naish 19y ago

selky 18y ago
I love the demo but my small 4mg PDF which I converted to ipaper runs really slow on my site.
brk 19y ago
Cool idea, but, "iPaper"?... They couldn't come up with a more creative name for it?
- tikhon 19y ago
  it was nearly "Scribd Viewer". So, no. :-)
vegashacker 19y ago
I think I'm actually going to use this on my site... Very cool!
gojomo 19y ago
Kinda funny how Scribd is using one Adobe platform -- Flash (esp. FlashPlayer) -- to chip away at another Adobe Platform -- PDF (Adobe Reader and Acrobat). I used to dislike both Flash plug-in launches and PDF Reader launches equally. Now, the combination of Adobe's work on making the Flash Player launch faster (helped along by the format's ubiquity -- it's probably already running in another tab), plus FlashBlock, means Flash is much less annoying than PDF. So: bravo, Scribd, for marginalizing PDF even further.
- atoulouse 19y ago
  I wouldn't applaud them for marginalizing PDF so much as applaud them for providing a better alternative for online content. OS X's support for PDF is phenomenal, and Foxit's launchtime on Windows is lightning fast. I can't speak for Linux (as I haven't opened a PDF on linux in some time), but I agree that where embedded content is concerned, PDF's browser integration is terrible across the board.
zandorg 19y ago
The PDF with ads didn't show any ads on my system. I'm not sure what iPaper is all about, other than making my web browser view documents slower. iMyReinventedWheel sounds more like it (that's a joke).
- sharpshoot 19y ago
  You sound like you never used macromedia flash paper. Scribd have just unlocked all the value in documents, rewritten an adobe product in 6 months which sucked, and done a deal with google to monetize them. I guess the ads would depend upon what you uploaded.
  - zandorg 19y ago
    What I meant about the ads was that the example from that link didn't show any. As for Flash Paper, I didn't know about it, but reading up on it, it sounds like Scribd have a good API going. One point is that they recently got sued for putting up books, etc. My gripe is that Word documents can be put on the web as HTML, so I don't see the need for a centralised repository (Scribd) when the Web suffices (decentralised).
    - jamiequint 19y ago
      uh, actually this makes it easier to be decentralized, since it allows you to put a word document in iPaper on your own site (and looks a hell of a lot better than .doc -> HTML)
gibsonf1 19y ago
This is really impressive - if only they could add .eml and .msg files to the mix of supported files! :)
jimbokun 19y ago
Reading the description, my thought process was "So don't we already have pdf and Acrobat for that?" Looking at the actual demo, my thought process was "Wow, Acrobat really sucks."
hooande 19y ago
Way to go Scribd! I think this one is going to be big, guys
pius 19y ago
This isn't meant as a troll, but what exactly is the difference between this and FlashPaper?
- jawngee 19y ago
  They're using flashpaper on the backend I believe. Or possibly print2flash, which is what we use for uploaded screenplays at massify.com.
  - snowmaker 19y ago
    As a matter of fact, we're not. We built iPaper starting from scratch because there wasn't anything good enough to build it on top of. Both FlashPaper and Print2Flash are Windows print drivers designed as consumer applications. They were never intended for something like Scribd that processes millions of documents. The iPaper back-end is built for web-scale use.
    - jawngee 19y ago
      I'm not trolling, just genuinely curious: How do you support word/excel/powerpoint 100% if you're not printing from the app themselves? Also, for the developer API, do you add advertising to the documents you convert? Are you approachable about private licensing?
boucher 19y ago
People really shouldn't lie outright in marketing materials: iPaper Requires Download: No iPaper Requires Installation: No Last time I checked, Flash was still a plugin, not a built in feature of the web. I'm just as likely to not have flash on my system as a PDF reader. Cost to create documents is perhaps the most misleading: iPaper: Free, PDF: $299, Office: $150 There are a billion ways to create PDFs for free, including built in support in every application in Mac OS X. There are also free ways to create office compatible formats. Most of the rest of this is distasteful, but less of an outright lie. Certainly PDFs can be embedded as links, not to mention, there are ways to embed on the page itself, with the supporting plugins. "Size of the application" is silly, given that you download Acrobat Reader once (and pretty much everyone has it), instead of downloading iPaper on every page load. Of course, again, Mac OS X has this all built in.
- zaidf 19y ago
  1. Actually this shows that practical people, not lawyers, wrote the product description. Flash's widespread adoption means that a vast majority of Internet users don't have to install anything to use iPaper. http://www.adobe.com/products/player_census/flashplayer/version_penetration.html http://www.adobe.com/products/player_census/flashplayer/vers... 2. There are tools for free to create PDFs, just as there are tools to do almost everything for free versus its paid alternative. That does not mean iPaper has to compete with the free tools. They are competing with Adobe Acrobat which remains a paid application.
  - boucher 19y ago
    "Flash's widespread adoption means that a vast majority of Internet users don't have to install anything to use iPaper" I could argue the exact same thing about PDF. Although Adobe does not seem to have published adoption statistics, I would bet that they roughly equal that of flash. Not to mention, I haven't come across a computer that didn't understand PDF files in many years. Beyond the obvious distrust of statistics coming directly from Adobe, there are new platforms, like the iPhone, where flash is not even available, and PDF is. "There are tools for free to create PDFs, just as there are tools to do almost everything for free versus its paid alternative. That does not mean iPaper has to compete with the free tools. They are competing with Adobe Acrobat which remains a paid application." They are competing with Acrobat Reader, which is a free application. This is not a tool for generating documents, its a tool for viewing/embedding them. That's why you have to create PDF, DOC, TXT etc. to get anything into iPaper in the first place.
tocomment 19y ago
A little late to the party, right (http://pdfmenot.com/ http://pdfmenot.com/)
- aneesh 19y ago
  not really, iPaper has lots of little features pdfmenot misses, incl zoom and scrolling.
  - boucher 19y ago
    except, pdfmenot has zooming and scrolling. how could you have a pdf reader without scrolling?
- dskhatri 19y ago
  Doesn't matter! Sometimes it's not the tool that's important but how you utilize it. Scribd guys are doing something smarter with the tool!
Readmore 19y ago
Very nice guys! Scribd is my favorite company to come out of yCombinator. I think you guys have really done some great stuff, and you use Rails, which just makes it better!
schoudha 19y ago
Super sick. I still wonder though, is the trend to share information through PDF style formats or to convert it to true HTML.
merrick33 19y ago
Anyone know how you would go about creating such a player? Also curious if anyone knows if docstoc and pdfmenot are simply using flashpaper or a customer player like scribd.

53 points by naish 19y ago

selky 18y ago

I love the demo but my small 4mg PDF which I converted to ipaper runs really slow on my site.

brk 19y ago

Cool idea, but, "iPaper"?... They couldn't come up with a more creative name for it?

tikhon 19y ago
it was nearly "Scribd Viewer". So, no. :-)

vegashacker 19y ago

I think I'm actually going to use this on my site... Very cool!

gojomo 19y ago

Kinda funny how Scribd is using one Adobe platform -- Flash (esp. FlashPlayer) -- to chip away at another Adobe Platform -- PDF (Adobe Reader and Acrobat). I used to dislike both Flash plug-in launches and PDF Reader launches equally. Now, the combination of Adobe's work on making the Flash Player launch faster (helped along by the format's ubiquity -- it's probably already running in another tab), plus FlashBlock, means Flash is much less annoying than PDF. So: bravo, Scribd, for marginalizing PDF even further.

atoulouse 19y ago
I wouldn't applaud them for marginalizing PDF so much as applaud them for providing a better alternative for online content. OS X's support for PDF is phenomenal, and Foxit's launchtime on Windows is lightning fast. I can't speak for Linux (as I haven't opened a PDF on linux in some time), but I agree that where embedded content is concerned, PDF's browser integration is terrible across the board.

zandorg 19y ago

The PDF with ads didn't show any ads on my system. I'm not sure what iPaper is all about, other than making my web browser view documents slower. iMyReinventedWheel sounds more like it (that's a joke).

sharpshoot 19y ago
You sound like you never used macromedia flash paper. Scribd have just unlocked all the value in documents, rewritten an adobe product in 6 months which sucked, and done a deal with google to monetize them. I guess the ads would depend upon what you uploaded.
- zandorg 19y ago
  What I meant about the ads was that the example from that link didn't show any. As for Flash Paper, I didn't know about it, but reading up on it, it sounds like Scribd have a good API going. One point is that they recently got sued for putting up books, etc. My gripe is that Word documents can be put on the web as HTML, so I don't see the need for a centralised repository (Scribd) when the Web suffices (decentralised).
  - jamiequint 19y ago
    uh, actually this makes it easier to be decentralized, since it allows you to put a word document in iPaper on your own site (and looks a hell of a lot better than .doc -> HTML)

gibsonf1 19y ago

This is really impressive - if only they could add .eml and .msg files to the mix of supported files! :)

jimbokun 19y ago

Reading the description, my thought process was "So don't we already have pdf and Acrobat for that?" Looking at the actual demo, my thought process was "Wow, Acrobat really sucks."

hooande 19y ago

Way to go Scribd! I think this one is going to be big, guys

pius 19y ago

This isn't meant as a troll, but what exactly is the difference between this and FlashPaper?

jawngee 19y ago
They're using flashpaper on the backend I believe. Or possibly print2flash, which is what we use for uploaded screenplays at massify.com.
- snowmaker 19y ago
  As a matter of fact, we're not. We built iPaper starting from scratch because there wasn't anything good enough to build it on top of. Both FlashPaper and Print2Flash are Windows print drivers designed as consumer applications. They were never intended for something like Scribd that processes millions of documents. The iPaper back-end is built for web-scale use.
  - jawngee 19y ago
    I'm not trolling, just genuinely curious: How do you support word/excel/powerpoint 100% if you're not printing from the app themselves? Also, for the developer API, do you add advertising to the documents you convert? Are you approachable about private licensing?

boucher 19y ago

People really shouldn't lie outright in marketing materials: iPaper Requires Download: No iPaper Requires Installation: No Last time I checked, Flash was still a plugin, not a built in feature of the web. I'm just as likely to not have flash on my system as a PDF reader. Cost to create documents is perhaps the most misleading: iPaper: Free, PDF: $299, Office: $150 There are a billion ways to create PDFs for free, including built in support in every application in Mac OS X. There are also free ways to create office compatible formats. Most of the rest of this is distasteful, but less of an outright lie. Certainly PDFs can be embedded as links, not to mention, there are ways to embed on the page itself, with the supporting plugins. "Size of the application" is silly, given that you download Acrobat Reader once (and pretty much everyone has it), instead of downloading iPaper on every page load. Of course, again, Mac OS X has this all built in.

zaidf 19y ago
1. Actually this shows that practical people, not lawyers, wrote the product description. Flash's widespread adoption means that a vast majority of Internet users don't have to install anything to use iPaper. http://www.adobe.com/products/player_census/flashplayer/version_penetration.html http://www.adobe.com/products/player_census/flashplayer/vers... 2. There are tools for free to create PDFs, just as there are tools to do almost everything for free versus its paid alternative. That does not mean iPaper has to compete with the free tools. They are competing with Adobe Acrobat which remains a paid application.
- boucher 19y ago
  "Flash's widespread adoption means that a vast majority of Internet users don't have to install anything to use iPaper" I could argue the exact same thing about PDF. Although Adobe does not seem to have published adoption statistics, I would bet that they roughly equal that of flash. Not to mention, I haven't come across a computer that didn't understand PDF files in many years. Beyond the obvious distrust of statistics coming directly from Adobe, there are new platforms, like the iPhone, where flash is not even available, and PDF is. "There are tools for free to create PDFs, just as there are tools to do almost everything for free versus its paid alternative. That does not mean iPaper has to compete with the free tools. They are competing with Adobe Acrobat which remains a paid application." They are competing with Acrobat Reader, which is a free application. This is not a tool for generating documents, its a tool for viewing/embedding them. That's why you have to create PDF, DOC, TXT etc. to get anything into iPaper in the first place.

tocomment 19y ago

A little late to the party, right (http://pdfmenot.com/ http://pdfmenot.com/)

aneesh 19y ago
not really, iPaper has lots of little features pdfmenot misses, incl zoom and scrolling.
- boucher 19y ago
  except, pdfmenot has zooming and scrolling. how could you have a pdf reader without scrolling?
dskhatri 19y ago
Doesn't matter! Sometimes it's not the tool that's important but how you utilize it. Scribd guys are doing something smarter with the tool!

Readmore 19y ago

Very nice guys! Scribd is my favorite company to come out of yCombinator. I think you guys have really done some great stuff, and you use Rails, which just makes it better!

schoudha 19y ago

Super sick. I still wonder though, is the trend to share information through PDF style formats or to convert it to true HTML.

merrick33 19y ago

Anyone know how you would go about creating such a player? Also curious if anyone knows if docstoc and pdfmenot are simply using flashpaper or a customer player like scribd.