iPaper from Scribd: a cool way to share printed documents!

One of my friends wrote a literary review and got it published in one of the leading magazines. He had sent me the write-up in pdf format and I wanted to share the same with people on an online social community. I wanted them to read the write-up without downloading and saving it on their computers. I wanted it to be so because I know the more clicks involved the less likely are people going to read the write-up. I wanted to embed the pdf file on my post so that limited number of mouse-clicks are involved to read the write-up.

Now, I know that You Tube Videos can be embedded. Google Documents can be embedded. Slideshows can be embedded. Then, there must be some way I can embed a pdf file too. I have no clue how to code. So the only way out is Google Search. And Google Seach took me to Scribd.

Here is what the Scribd people say about themselves:

Scribd began with a simple observation — that the desire for self-expression through the written word is as old as humanity itself. But even with the proliferation of blogs and other self-publishing tools, there was no easy way for average people to publish to a readership of millions.

Today, Scribd is the largest social publishing company in the world — the website where more than 60 million people each month discover and share original writings and documents.

Scribd’s vision is to liberate the written word — to turn everyone into a publisher and create the best possible reading experience on the web and mobile platforms.

Democratizing Publishing

With Scribd’s iPaper document reader, anyone can easily upload and immediately share their original works on Scribd.com or any other website. iPaper transforms "print" files like PDF, Word or PowerPoint into web document — with all the fonts, layout and artwork that makes your document unique.

Your work can be shared with Scribd's community of passionate readers, and because your document is indexed for search engine optimization, your screenplay, novel or even sheet music and recipes can be discovered by the world.

At Scribd, we built a technology that’s broken barriers to traditional publishing and in the process also built one of the largest readerships in the world.

Like you see in the picture below, Scribd lets you upload files. You can either upload to Share or Sell.

You should have an account with Scribd to upload files, of course. The registration with Scribd is a simple process. All you need is a valid email id which you require to verify after registration. However, Scribd lets you upload files even before you verify the email id. Once the process is complete you can either share the link with others or copy paste the code to your site to embed the document.

What you see above is a document loading on Scribd. Scribd's iPaper powers the document you have uploaded. It downloads easily and you can read the file without having to download and saving it on your computer. Now, this is what I call 'making life easy.'