

Major Book Publishers Start Turning To Scribd - trip
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/17/major-book-publishers-start-turning-to-scribd/

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extension
Perhaps I'm missing something but wasn't the "publishing documents on the
internet" problem solved long ago by The World Wide Web? Or is the purpose of
Scribd to recreate the magical experience of reading various dead tree
formats, even though it doesn't actually do that?

~~~
tdavis
It isn't solved until it is wrapped in a proprietary, inaccessible, bloated
format like Flash. Or rendered within Javascript so you can get cool page-
turning effects. Or put in a PDF inside a PowerPoint which can then be
downloaded via a link on a site. Or... I am out of asinine ideas.

~~~
dbrush
Or a company might decide to try to solve the problem by gathering and
indexing all of these documents so they are more accessible than if they were
spattered over thousands of locations, unsearchable, and cost time and money
to find.

~~~
Maro
Like Google?

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dbrush
Can you click a button and make Google index new content on your site?

Do you use Google video search before you use Youtube?

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briansmith
If you use Google Custom Search, you can get indexing on demand.

Also, if you use sitemaps correctly Google will update your content in its
main index pretty quickly.

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zhyder
Every time there's a Scribd-related post on HN, the comments are negative and
repetitive. I don't use the service either, but:

1\. It's successful, at least in terms of traffic, so it's worth watching and
perhaps learning from.

2\. The web hasn't obliterated the old document formats (yet). Not everyone
that has content in those formats has the time or inclination to replicate the
layout in HTML, so Scribd is making distribution easier for them. It may not
be solving your problem but it is solving some people's problem.

People here usually have a soft spot for YC funded startups; not sure why
Scribd's treated like the disowned member of the family.

~~~
unalone
I'm going to be a devil's advocate.

 _1\. It's successful, at least in terms of traffic, so it's worth watching
and perhaps learning from._

The lesson here is that if your concept is extremely general, you'll have
success. Scribd went after a niche that was completely underused, and props to
them: they got just as big as that plan would predict. That said, it's still
not a good web site. It's not a particularly good role model for people who
want to build their own web site, _unless_ said people have an idea that's
just as large, and large ideas are hard to come by.

 _2\. The web hasn't obliterated the old document formats (yet). Not everyone
that has content in those formats has the time or inclination to replicate the
layout in HTML, so Scribd is making distribution easier for them. It may not
be solving your problem but it is solving some people's problem._

It's solving the problem, but again: not well. Google's suite of PDF-to-HTML
and slide displayers do a much better job of this than Scribd's iPaper does.
Why that system hasn't been used yet for a public site I don't know: perhaps
Google's scared of getting supersued again.

As I said on the other thread (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=521565>)
the real challenge is making PDF displays convert to HTML. I'm certain it's
possible: hell, with SIFR you could even keep the PDF's embedded fonts. That's
a really interesting challenge (and it's one that I'm working on, though its
implementation will be radically different than Scribd's much more all-purpose
viewer). The end result is that you'll get something that requires no custom
displays, because it just works the first time.

 _People here usually have a soft spot for YC funded startups; not sure why
Scribd's treated like the disowned member of the family._

We _encourage_ YC startups. Note how rarely we attack DocStoc, which is _way,
way worse_ than Scribd is. However, HN isn't a site of happy encouraging
people. We're all critics of everything, which is _awesome_. There are also
pretty vehement Reddit critics, a few J.tv critics, a lot of people who make
fun of OMGPOP, and on and on. So think of this like tough love. We'd love to
love Scribd, but we won't tell it we do until it rehabs itself up. (I also
suspect there's some jealousy of its success, along with some annoyance that
they don't _need_ to take our advice, good as it is, because they're a
behemoth without our help.)

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anatoli
I hope you're aware of sIFR speed issues when you're replacing multiple
different instances of text. It dramatically slows down the browser. (And when
dealing with PDFs, I wouldn't be surprised if on average you had to use 20+
sIFR flash objects.)

~~~
unalone
What do you mean, different instances of text? Do you mean different types of
text that get rendered differently? Or does this apply also when you work with
a large block of text that's all rendered a single way?

~~~
anatoli
Basically, each block tag (h1, h2, h3, p, li, etc.) would create a new
instance of sIFR, thus creating a new flash object on the page. For example,
you can't use just one flash object for a long stream of text, if that stream
of text is divided into paragraphs, because sIFR cannot internally give you
the necessary margins or tabbing required for marking paragraphs.

The only case where you would have one flash object is when you have a single
column of text which has the same font, same leading, and no margins
throughout. Unfortunately, that won't happen very often.

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briansmith
Hopefully they will use the money from this deal to turn their website into
something that users don't hate.

~~~
wyclif
The reader embedded in the Scribd site drives me insane.

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sdurkin
Windows PDF viewing is problematic. Scribd's iPaper eliminates that problem.

Do you use Windows?

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ntoshev
I do. Google Chrome and Safari both open PDFs very smoothly on Windows. Even
in Firefox I am not sure Scribd is an improvement over opening plain PDF (it
shows a progress indicator, but it might as well take more time to open in
total).

~~~
sdurkin
Jesus, I don't expect groupthink from HN.

Be rational. Most users use IE on Windows. Even if you don't like it, that's
the way it is. Adobe Reader 9 loading in IE can crash the browser. Don't
believe me? Google "IE loading PDFs" and you'll see the huge number of users
who have problems.

Flash is reasonably reliable in IE. Additionally, Scribd has the option of
embedding ads in the PDF more easily by using the player, which gives them a
path toward monetization.

When creating a business, you have to be realistic. This is not a techno-
utopia where the best technology always wins. In the browser wars, IE is still
the current leader. You have to live with it if you want to maximize profit.

~~~
ntoshev
Then you should have said "Internet Explorer opening PDFs is a pain point and
scribd solves that". Fair enough, although I can argue Chrome is both much
better solution to this particular problem :)

Personally I think scribd solves some problem _for publishers_ , while
actually degrading the experience for a significant minority of the _viewers_.
Their relationship with publishers have significant negative externalities,
and this makes scribd at least somewhat evil.

------
anuraggoel
"But these options aren’t conducive to sharing content that you’ve discovered
on the web, as they don’t allow your to embed them in your blogs and
websites."

False. The Google Book Search API allows you to do precisely that:
<http://code.google.com/apis/books/>

Scribd allows user uploads though, and that seems to be their biggest
differentiator right now.

------
lionheart
Why does there seem to be such anti-Scribd sentiment here?

~~~
axod
A large amount of the content on scribd is actually plain text, or images.
Wrapping those in a bloated proprietary flash 'player' is just evil.

Microsoft will probably buy them and wrap it all in a liberal layer of DRM and
silverlight.

For me, Scribd is the caveat to "make something people want". It's undoubtedly
popular with people who don't know how to share text/documents, but it's not
good in the bigger picture.

~~~
dbrush
Principle probably doesn't come into play when the majority of people want to
consume or share information in the form of text, video and imagery. Using
Scribd or Youtube is very much a proof that people have found an easy way to
share their information. It seems you're confusing "don't know how" with
"aren't doing it while abiding by the principles they should have".

I agree with what you wrote yesterday concerning weights and measures. "Leave
people to use what they want to use."

~~~
axod
It's different though. Youtube makes possible what wasn't already possible -
sharing video.

Sharing documents online has been solved for quite a long time now. It's easy
(If slimy) to create a walled garden and coerce people into using it, but it'd
be nicer to just show them how to share documents online.

Seems like the issue with Scribd is that it enhances the user experience for
average user, but for techies/early adopters, it makes for a far worse
experience than the alternative.

~~~
marketer
How would you explain to a non-technie writer (with no knowledge of HTML or
web hosting) how to share their word or pdf files? Seems whatever solution you
come up would probably be similar to Scribd.

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TweedHeads
Everytime I see a Scribd doc I run away like if I saw the devil.

HTML does a better job.

~~~
TweedHeads
So, you say you need a format to transport a document, as one single file,
from one device to another? (No talking about the beauty of hyperlinking but
actually sending/storing)

And HTML doesn't offer that feature?

Ok, how about we all get together and propose the W3C to create a format BASED
ON HTML, open source, free, not propietary, for everybody to use and improve
upon?

How about that for an idea?

Like, instead of "Save complete page as HTML" which creates folders and hidden
passages to hell, some option to save as HTMD (d for doc); where the browser
serves as the document viewer with no other plugin or add on than the browser
engine?

Where you can open an inspect that HTMD like we do now with "View Source"?

So when you visit a page you can "Save as HTML Doc" the whole page in one
file, images included?

So we impulse a new breed of HTML doc creators, instead of PDF creators,
scribd creators, nextpropietary creator, etc?

Where you can create your doc and just publish it to the web, because it is
HTML and the web already knows it very well?

There, my brainfarts for the day...

~~~
TweedHeads
Which wouldn't be that difficult after all, even a firefox plugin could do
that.

\- Move all the JS and CSS inside the main doc.

\- Convert all images to src=data:

\- Some other minor tweaks

There you have it, one single file in all its HTML beauty

