iPaper a New Web Document Format
iPaper from Scribd has launched an online document viewer that some are claiming will be the Adobe Acrobat killer. Scribd is claiming to have a superior product for online document publishing and after taking a test drive I have to agree that they are on to something here. The concept for the technology came from a piece of software called FlashPaper from Macromedia. When Macomedia was acquired by Adobe the development of FlashPaper was halted, iPaper takes the concept to the next level. iPaper builds on the features of PDF, including full text search, copy/paste functionality, view modes, and zoom and embeds their functionality into the webpage.
iPaper is more than just a way to view PDF’s and documents inline on a web page, it has the ability to handle Microsoft Office documents, including Word, Excel and Powerpoint presentations. They also have support for OpenOffice documents, imbedded JPEG images, plain text files, PostScript files and but do not support Office 2007 docx format yet. You need to save it in a previous version and upload the files.
One of the major shortcoming that I can see for iPaper is the requirement that they host your documents and you are simply displaying the compiled link to your document that they host. Not a real deal breaker, but it will stop some organizations from switching due to security, copyright or DRM concerns. Scribd utilizes the Amazon S3 storage subsystem for reliability and scalability. Your content is probably safer and will get served faster from Scribd than from your web hosting provider.
Scribd has a single snippet of code that can be used on any website to convert the existing documents to iPaper format, they call this technology QuickSwitch. The way that QuickSwitch works is by parsing the content on your website, uploading it to the Scribd server and allowing you to choose how to display the iPaper content onto your website. There are one of four ways that QuickSwitch can display your documents; a full screen iPaper hosted document, links to your iPaper documents, they can replace and embed iPaper over your existing document links or convert documents and embed documents in custom pages on your website.
The primary reason that I have taken any interest in this new format is the possibility of embedding and monetizing the content from your existing documents. Yep, context sensitive ads served directly to your readers from your documents. Scribus will pay you for allowing them to display these ads on your pages. This is an option but the monetization of documents has really not even begun yet. It is nice to see that there are startups that recognize that good content is powerful and that advertiser are willing to pay for engaged readers. Just imaging reading a DIY on how to build a coffee table and you get ads from a furniture store or a big chain home improvement superstore?
The possibilities are really endless when it comes to marketing via web documents, Adobe and Microsoft are experimenting with this technology but I have not seen or used it yet. Your thoughts are always welcomed.
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