paper

Scribd joins platform game, sets sights at killing Adobe Acrobat

We've been giving some play to Adobe Acrobat replacements and other PDF tools in the last few weeks, and it's clear people are serious about handling a large variety of document types without having to muck about with the right software or browser extensions.

To that end Scribd, a start-up that's all about documents and how to share them with others, has had a solution of its own using Adobe's FlashPaper and crunching all sorts of documents to fit in it. This morning the company launched its own viewer that not only replaces FlashPaper, but also improves upon its design for both users and publishers.

The new viewer is called iPaper. While the name might bring to mind Apple products of yore, the document viewer is a total Acrobat killer. It's fast, lightweight, and is designed with Web readers in mind. While it may look similar to FlashPaper, there are several key differences that make it much better suited for long documents, photos, and Web videos.

The biggest one being that iPaper has been designed with publishers in mind. The viewer goes hand-in-hand with a new publishing platform that lets Web publishers integrate advertising into documents or media they feel like sharing. There are no preroll or off-to-the-side ads; instead Scribd has worked in Google AdSense text ads that have been put between every few document pages and that slurp up contextual ads based on what's contained the document (example here). It's effective and not annoying.

Secondly, the publishing platform lets site owners integrate iPaper into their sites. There are three basic ways to do it. The first is basic embedding (which existed before iPaper), as well as a tool called QuickSwitch that will automatically convert any linked document into a hosted iPaper player when site owners install a small line of code on their page. For power users, there's also an open API that lets them integrate iPaper and document conversion into the back end of their sites or services.

While I think Adobe will eventually address the bloat that Acrobat has become for Web users, it's up to publishers to take a proactive approach to letting the greatest number of users access content in the same way they read words or watch videos. For that, Flash is definitely a phenomenal go-to. The iPaper document viewer shows promise at unifying document sharing by lowering the barrier to entry for users who simply don't want to deal with the hassle of extra applications.

I've embedded an example of the iPaper viewer after the break. Be sure to play around with the table of contents and zoom controls.… Read more

Paper gadgets: Next best thing to real ones

Burning paper models for the dead is a religious tradition practiced by some Chinese. These can include houses, cars, and even Rolex watches. The belief is that the departed will receive them in the afterworld, making their lives (or rather, afterlives) more bearable. But what if the dead person is a geek who never fancied flashy cars or gold-plated timepieces? You burn him an Xbox 360, of course.

That's when you need one of these paper craft models from Fx Console, as seen on Notcot. Downloadable from the blog site are a series of PDFs that are templates for … Read more

Make your own Flash presentations with Flypaper and GoldMail

Flypaper, formerly FreshBrew, creates cool Flash presentations without requiring the user to actually know Flash.

The presentations are based on templates, which users can then put their own data in, including audio and video, if the template supports it. The authoring application is a clunky downloaded application, which is weird for a glitzy Flash content company, but it does give you more drag-and-drop capabilities than you would probably get with a pure Flash authoring application.

Still, the output that we saw here was good. The "stories" that Flypaper makes look like professional Flash presentations. Whether you actually want … Read more

Earth Class Mail secures $13.3 million, plans New York store

Earth Class Mail, which enables people to manage snail mail online, has closed $13.3 million in Series A funding.

The round was led by Ignition Partners of Bellevue, Wash., with more than half of the money raised by the Keiretsu Forum angel investment group.

The company aims to open a chain of retail stores, starting with one in Manhattan early this year, according to the Portland Business Journal. The storefronts will focus on easing the process of signing up, which requires completing some notarized forms. The Seattle-based service is used currently in 130 countries.

Earth Class Mail is billed … Read more

Desktop origami in your browser: Paper Critters

For DIY nuts out there, the Web is a source of plentiful project ideas and guides. It's also the home of a handful of paper craft projects, the kind you can print out and put together with a little bit of glue and ingenuity. A new, and really neat one got sent our way this weekend. It's called Paper Critters, and it's a Web-based creation tool for making your own desk art in the form of a boxlike creature. You can edit all five sides of it using a simple drag-and-drop editor with a variety of stamps and drawing tools. There's also a custom stamp that lets you use an image from your hard drive.

When finished putting everything together, there are several ways to share you work, including a printout feature that comes complete with step-by-step instructions. There's an e-mail tool and a permalink to send to others on your usual e-mail client, or via IM. My favorite is the embed code, which lets you drop it into a blog or Web site.

Once a critter has been shared, it goes into a group collective called "The Colony." From there, anyone can give it a look and add it to their favorites list. There's also a section for user comments. The real killer application is being able to edit other peoples' work and customize it. While this won't be reflected on their original, if you see something someone else has made, you can print it out yourself, or make alterations.

I've embedded an example of a 3-D Paper Critter. I've also been told by creator JR Fabito that a Facebook Application could be on the way. If you're into these kinds of projects, there are countless blogs dedicated to chronicling Web-syndicated paper crafts. Two of my favorites are Paper Forest and PaperKraft.net--both offer some serious eye candy and links to other projects.

Disclosure: Paper Critters creator JR Fabito is an ex-CNET employee and one of the designers of Webware.com.

Digital pen does its part to save forests

Although saving trees has long been a standard cliche of the digital revolution, we all continue to waste reams of paper despite our best intentions. But EPOS Technologies is at least contributing to the effort with a way to minimize unnecessary pulp duplication.

The Israel-based company is getting ready to release a digital pen that records the intricate movements of your handwriting and stores them on a USB flash drive. Your exact writing or illustration can then be reproduced on a screen and distributed at will, reducing or eliminating the need for physical copies. The pen's receiver, which senses … Read more

It's all about makin' paper (iPod speakers and turntables)

Finally. After almost 30 years of waiting, there's a perfect tech solution for breakdancers: a boombox you can break down into a flat cardboard mat and cold bust windmills and headspins on.

The cardboard, AA-battery-powered Mini Boombox for iPod, designed by Suck UK, folds into an iPod speaker system. It can also be used with other MP3 players.

Pricing info is unavailable for the Mini Boombox for iPod. The system is slated for release in September.

We don't expect the speaker system to rival Klipsch's iFi in terms of sound quality or DLO's HomeDock Deluxe in … Read more

Inside CNET Labs: Printer Woes

Welcome to Inside CNET Labs, an occasional column on the ins and outs of testing tech goods for CNET Reviews. Here, we'll rant and elucidate, giving you a little peek into CNET's most geek-filled department.

I'm starting to question just how much printer vendors value their own products.

One of our prerequisites at CNET Labs is that when we test an inkjet printer for quality, we must use the best available paper provided by the vendor. This allows us to determine the highest quality threshold for the printer, which in turn allows us to fairly compare the … Read more

Wii Virtual Console releases for this week

E3 has come and gone, but at least you can count on Mondays to deliver three new Virtual Console games ready for download on your Wii.

Paper Mario (2001, N64, 1000 Wii points)--A game that completely reinvented the Mario franchise, Paper Mario made way for games like the acclaimed GameCube title Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door and the more recent gem, Super Paper Mario on the Wii. Balloon Fight (1986, NES, 500 Wii points)--One of the most recognizable games in the history of the industry is now available for download. Few titles have been resurrected as many … Read more

Displays have a long way to go

Today I take my lead from a Reuters article that describes two alternative display technologies that may some day replace (or at least augment) LCDs in mainstream computer systems.

Both are on the market today. OLED (organic light-emitting display) technology, used on some cellphones, creates what amounts to an array of tiny LEDs. This approach is theoretically superior to the way LCDs work, which is to combine a white backlight with colored filters and tiny shutters (the liquid crystals) for each pixel. All the light generated by the OLED is visible to the user, but most of the light in … Read more