Free bulk-scanning, OCR and web-publishing service launched by Scribd

Evan sez, "Scribd is going to let users mail in physical paper documents to be scanned and published to Scribd.com. Awesome way to find people who have saved old documents from the pre-MS Word/Google Docs days and want to find an easy way to share them online without the hassles of manually scanning and uploading. The project is 'Convert your paper to iPaper' and it's completely free of charge."

Holy crap that's awesome -- I have TONS of old hardcopy lying around I'd love to see online. Link (Thanks, Evan!)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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The Snowden Principle

vjinterkosmos

If you can’t tell where the money comes in, its an april fools (on Apr 01) or a scam (other days).
Jason Bentley

@vjinterkosmos – the website makes it pretty clear the money comes from Scribd running ads alongside the scanned documents. So if you can’t tell where the money comes in, don’t forget to factor in poor research skills. ;-)
BenSeese

Well, VJ, about 50 words into the writeup it says: “We offset the cost of scanning by serving relevant advertisements on scanned documents.”

I realize that doesn’t answer the joke-or-not question, but it negates the previous comment.
BenSeese

Faster & funnier, Jason. Good show.
Deadmeat

According to Webware it’s real.
Jason Bentley

Hey, folks – it’s Jason Bentley, I’m the community director at Scribd. The scanning service offer is 100% real. Check out http://scribd.com/paper.

It’s bad timing, not a bad joke.
Jason Bentley

That’s http://scribd.com/paper
Lord Humongous

I have several hundred pages of documents from the National Security Archives and the National Archives and Records Administration that I would love to send to scribd. I don’t suppose Scribd will send me back the documents after they scan them?
Cory Doctorow

Photocopy them and send Scribd the copies.
stumo

Um… What day is it?
plainclothedman

#3:

That’s what I was thinkin’.
Howard Wen

I can’t tell if this is a joke. (If it is, it’s not a funny, haha kind of joke.)

I cannot find any mention of this service linked on the main Scribd.com page.

Maybe there’s a clue in the video?
Brandon

This was a Google April Fools Day prank like 3 years ago. I’m sure this one is too.
Howard Wen

Yeah, it’s a joke. I’m basing this on the video. It’s linked from archive.org and doesn’t have anything to do with scribd.
Throb

I’d love to see all of the old BoingBoing zines online…
xopl

The first of April… also known as “Stay Off the Internet Day”

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