Comments for Scribd Launches New Platform and iPaper, a New Format for Web Docs

PdfMeNot: Awesome New Tool From Makers of BugMeNot

2008-02-13T00:56:14Z

Whether or not you're a fan of the great website registration bypassing service BugMeNot, I think you're really going to like a new service from the same shop called PdfMeNot. (username: stateless password: systems until Thursday) It creates a Flash display of any PDF document! No need to download the document and launch another application to view it anymore - PdfMeNot lets you convert PDFs by upload, URL, bookmarklet or a script entered into a website's page if you're the publisher.

I've added the bookmarklet to my browser toolbar and may never download another PDF again.

]]> Unless I want to search inside it, keep it for my records or read it on my phone - but you get the idea, publishers push PDFs more often than they need to.

Here's a quick way you can try it out: Go to the tools page, drag the javascript bookmarklet to your toolbar, then go to this Creative Commons page where there's a link to a press release from yesterday in PDF format. Click on your bookmarklet, then click the PDF link. Voilà! I love it!

See also Issuu, which is more complicated and does other things, but also works magic with PDF files.

Comment from David Novakovic on 2008-02-12

2008-02-13T01:51:29Z

Looks nice... I still think PDF's are a damn sight better than MS office documents. :)

Comment from Marshall Kirkpatrick on 2008-02-12

2008-02-13T01:55:30Z

David, fair enough. In most cases I just view those in GDocs via Gmail.

Comment from Ginny Brady on 2008-02-12

2008-02-13T02:39:19Z

Do you have any invites to this service? It seems to be in limited beta.

Comment from Toby on 2008-02-12

2008-02-13T02:47:33Z

Ginny- access with username "stateless", password "systems".

I also regularly use their other website:
http://www.retailmenot.com

Comment from Don on 2008-02-12

2008-02-13T03:12:24Z

You do know that there are several Adobe/Macromedia offerings that do this on the fly, right - for instance, if you run a ColdFusion server, you can achieve/duplicate this functionality in less than a day!

Comment from Marshall Kirkpatrick on 2008-02-12

2008-02-13T03:36:27Z

Don, I believe it. Fortunately, I got a browser bookmarklet that will do it for me in just minutes and I didn't even have to run a ColdFusion server! I hear it's possible to make some pretty darned good cheese at home, too, but I haven't gotten around to doing that either.

Comment from Guy on 2008-02-12

2008-02-13T03:46:15Z

Can you make cheese at home?

Comment from rom.myopenid.com on 2008-02-12

2008-02-13T04:10:30Z

PDF is not that bad provided that you are using the right tools to open it. I do not use Adobe Acrobat Reader - I use my Mac's Preview and xpdf on Linux. I use NeoOffice and OpenOffice.org office suites to generate my own PDF -- if not, the built-in PDF support of Mac OS X.

However, I wish that a new file format be made to replace PDF but it should be based on open and global standards (not the ones proposed by Microsoft!).

Comment from TA on 2008-02-12

2008-02-13T04:29:54Z

This is not really new!

Scribd.com lets you do it in a rudimentary way, and I think Zmags.com and pagegangster.com in Denmark, as well as a bunch of other smaller sites have been doing what Issuu offers for a while now.

Comment from Matthew on 2008-02-12

2008-02-13T06:11:24Z

I made a quick Firefox extension for this. It automatically replaces PDFs with links to PdfMeNot.

While the service is passworded:
http://why.gd/downloads/pdfmenot_extension_passworded.xpi

For when they unpassword they service, install this one:
http://why.gd/downloads/pdfmenot_extension.xpi

Releasing these into the public domain, free to use/release, do whatever. Enjoy!

Comment from Ron R on 2008-02-13

2008-02-13T08:07:46Z

Matthew:

Holy c**p, you don't muck around do you?

Comment from Marcin Grodzicki on 2008-02-13

2008-02-13T13:24:43Z

This is great :) Mainly because of the speed. These bookmarklet features are more and more popular. It still suprises me how much can you accomplish with them (so far I use cocomments, delicious, and now this). Anyone knows any other i should try?

As for word/gmail. The formatting usually goes sh*t - pdf's are a lot better for that. For me - simplicity is the killer feature in this thing. In anything for that matter. This is why I use gMail over Outlook for instance.

Comment from Robert on 2008-02-13

2008-02-13T13:35:28Z

I use FoxIt for opening PDFs as it's much quicker than Adobe's own offering, but this service is much better. I'm surprised no one thought of it sooner.

Comment from pratham.name on 2008-02-13

2008-02-13T14:39:48Z

Any password seems to work with 'stateless' username.

@Matthew, When I click on the FF extensions, my browser tries to download it instead of installing.

Comment from rekha on 2008-02-13

2008-02-13T16:58:48Z

I'm a huge fan of bugmenot and retailmenot. Looking forward to seeing how this works.

Comment from Mark Evans on 2008-02-13

2008-02-13T19:07:36Z

Cool tool. Along with Read Later, PdfMeNot has now become must-have toolbar widgets.

Comment from Information Madness on 2008-02-13

2008-02-13T20:22:24Z

Here are 5 ways to convert your PDFs to SWF for free

Comment from Zoli Erdos on 2008-02-13

2008-02-13T21:32:35Z

Cool name:-)

Btw, Zoho Viewer does this for pdf, doc, ppt, xls:
http://viewer.zoho.com/

Comment from Matthew on 2008-02-16

2008-02-17T05:42:07Z

Please note that the Firefox addon I posted above has been updated by PdfMeNot themselves, so you want to download the latest Firefox addon here:

http://pdfmenot.com/tools/

Comment from Stateless on 2008-03-03

2008-03-03T09:56:22Z

Two more sites - same family feature-wise:

https://share.adobe.com/
http://www.docstoc.com/