Scribd launches new platform and iPaper
readwriteweb.com
readwriteweb.com
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.
Looking at the actual demo, my thought process was "Wow, Acrobat really sucks."
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).
I guess the ads would depend upon what you uploaded.
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).
Also, for the developer API, do you add advertising to the documents you convert? Are you approachable about private licensing?
Very cool!
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.
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.
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.
Also, it wouldn't be a stretch to assume the penetration of Flash as greater than Acrobat Reader.
"This is not a tool for generating documents, its a tool for viewing/embedding them."
Let's back up to the original goal of PDF: fixed-layout document sharing with built-in security. To generate PDF files, Adobe SELLS Acrobat to general PDF files.
iPaper seems to be a) implementing the original goal of PDF, b) with better usability, and c) with no cost to convert.
Personally, I prefer a straight up link to a PDF. My browser can display it inline, and if I want to save it to my hard drive I just option-click.
Don't forget Mac's market share is still tiny compared to Windows, especially with businesses where PDF is used most.
No. As such, this is a legitimate point for iPaper to make. They support more formats. Of course, many of the document creation programs do support conversion to PDF, but this is still a nice thing about iPaper.
But, it has nothing to do with the cost of creating documents. The cost to create an iPaper document is not zero, its undefined. You cannot create a document in iPaper, period. You must create that document some other way, be it MS Office, Adobe Acrobat, or one of their free alternatives, or a text editor.
If anything, they're advertising the cost to share a document. Which is free for every other type of document too, unless that person doesn't have a program to read the given file format, which is obviously the real thing iPaper should be trying to sell users on.
On top of that, they say that the cost of creating documents is "free". What? Are they handing out free Word licenses with this thing or something? Because last time I checked, the price of creating a document for iPaper is the cost of the program that makes the original document for iPaper. As you stated yourself, "converting" to iPaper is free. So yeah, if all your documents are TXT files then this thing is free, but if you want any semblance of structure in your document then you're probably using... you guessed it, DOC or PDF. There are plenty of free PDF converters out there (plugins for Word, built-in support in Mac OS X, standalone programs, etc etc). So I think at best iPaper is even with PDF in this regard.
Tangentially, PDF is not "bulky and painful". It just happens that Acrobat Reader is a ridiculously awful reader. Mac OS X handles PDFs like a breeze, they feel incredibly light weight as they open instantly and any application can output to them. So I whole-heartedly agree that Reader is a bad program, but don't extrapolate that to the format.
Technically PDF as a format might rock, but most users just care about how their experience is. People's idea of PDF is attached to their experience with Acrobat Reader.
My original point still stands. If its okay to say PDF requires a download sometimes, you really ought to be saying Flash requires a download sometimes. Anything less is dishonest.
I still wonder though, is the trend to share information through PDF style formats or to convert it to true HTML.
Also curious if anyone knows if docstoc and pdfmenot are simply using flashpaper or a customer player like scribd.