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!)

[#1 posted by Lord Humongous , April 1, 2008 5:11 AM]

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?

[#2 posted by Cory Doctorow , April 1, 2008 5:19 AM]

Photocopy them and send Scribd the copies.

[#3 posted by stumo , April 1, 2008 5:25 AM]

Um... What day is it?

[#4 posted by plainclothedman , April 1, 2008 5:35 AM]

#3:

That's what I was thinkin'.

[#5 posted by Howard Wen , April 1, 2008 5:42 AM]

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?

[#6 posted by Brandon , April 1, 2008 6:05 AM]

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

[#7 posted by Howard Wen , April 1, 2008 6:45 AM]

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.

[#8 posted by xopl , April 1, 2008 8:31 AM]

The first of April... also known as "Stay Off the Internet Day"

grumble

[#9 posted by Deadmeat , April 1, 2008 11:19 AM]

According to Webware it's real.

[#10 posted by Jason Bentley , April 1, 2008 11:23 AM]

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.

[#11 posted by Jason Bentley , April 1, 2008 11:44 AM]

That's http://scribd.com/paper

[#12 posted by Throb , April 1, 2008 1:14 PM]

I'd love to see all of the old BoingBoing zines online...

[#13 posted by vjinterkosmos , April 1, 2008 3:10 PM]

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

[#14 posted by Jason Bentley , April 1, 2008 3:58 PM]

@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. ;-)

[#15 posted by BenSeese , April 1, 2008 4:00 PM]

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.

[#16 posted by BenSeese , April 1, 2008 4:06 PM]

Faster & funnier, Jason. Good show.