Small Business

Embed Documents in Your Site or Blog with iPaper

By Rick Broida

Updated on: February 20, 2008 / 9:35 AM EST / MoneyWatch

"YouTube for documents" service Scribd just unveiled a fancy new viewer. It's called iPaper, and it works like a PDF viewer for embedded documents. All you do is upload a PDF, Word file, Excel spreadsheet, PowerPoint presentation, or another supported file format, then copy the iPaper embed code to your blog or Web site.

The iPaper viewer includes some nifty amenities. A mouse-over menu lets users switch between list, book, and slide modes; print the document; e-mail it to others; and grab the embed code to add it to their own site. The viewer has zoom controls, a thumbnail browser, and even a search tool. iPaper also lets you build ads into your documents (courtesy of Google) to potentially generate some revenue.

That aspect alone separates iPaper from document-sharing services like DocStoc and Issuu, though I think the latter offers a much slicker viewer. What's your take? [via GigaOm]