Since its launch in 2007, DocStoc has been primarily known for being the place to go to find and share professional documents. Yet, earlier this month, Docstoc went beyond just providing bundles of premium pro documents to producing its very own articles and videos on how to build and run a successful business. In doing so, it launched four iPad apps, Sales Techniques and Training Secrets, Adwords and SEO Secrets, HR & Employment Management Advice, etc. While those may not exactly light your hair on fire, all essential parts of running a small business.

And today it seems that Docstoc is further committed to becoming a resource for small businesses, as it’s launching License123, a research service that aims to help both existing and new businesses discover the permits and licenses they need to be compliant with local, state, and federal law.

As any business owner knows, your business isn’t getting far from inception without the proper licenses and permits — all collectively critical for the majority of businesses, regardless of jurisdiction. Some businesses may require as few as one or two licenses and registrations, but most require three to five permits and licenses to legally operate (and you do want to legally operate, don’t you?), state selling permits or business tax registrations are pretty much always required, and on and on.

And thus Docstoc brings License123 into the world, as it looks to provide small business owners and entrepreneurs with reports that identify their required licenses, along with which licenses are optional, and what the fees are that will be associated with said applications and licenses. Docstoc wants to provide users with all the information they will need to complete and file their applications to stay fully compliant.

Because there’s no central database that lists all the applicable forms that SMBs will need to operate, most waste way too much time dealing with government agencies and tracing down the right permits. The average business spends $1,000 in penalties and could lose tens of thousands in revenues for failing to have the proper licenses, says Docstoc CEO Jason Nazar.

With entrepreneurs and business owners struggling to find the right licensing and permit information due to an infrastructure that’s pretty much broken, License123 purports to be the first resource of its kind that aims to save SMBs time and money with customized reports that help them get on top of all those pesky mandatory and optional federal, state, county, and city permits and licenses.

In many jurisdictions, Nazar said, even simple home-based businesses require permits for operation, and businesses like contractors, eldercare services, food-related businesses, commercial and personal transportation, financial and auto repair businesses all have hefty license and permit requirements. Thus, License123 provides a certainly niche but important service for enterpreneurs and small business owners to allow them to become compliant on their own, rather than having to call on the help of attorneys or accountants to get it done.

For more on License123, check ‘em out at home here.

DocStoc, a document sharing site has been focusing on providing bundles of premium professional documents for businesses for some time now. But today, the startup is expanding to producing articles and videos related to starting and running a business, providing more than just form documents for professionals.

Docstoc has launched four iPad apps: Legal and Copyright Small Business Toolkit; Sales Techniques and Training Secrets; Adwords and SEO Secrets; and HR & Employee Management Advice to help businesses streamline operations, sales and more.

As CEO Jason Nazar explains, in addition to becoming the go-to destination for documents for small businesses, Docstoc also wants to be a content resource as well. In addition to the four released this week, the startup will be releasing 30 “Teaching and Training” Apps for Small Business in Q1 of 2012.

All the apps are free and include original video content with SMB and startup experts as well as articles and access to premium documents for free (for a limited time, Nazar says). Eventually, Docstoc will expand these apps to Android. Nazar explains, “We want to create a high quality Khan Academy for small businesses.”

Currently, Docstoc sees around 20 million unique visitors per month and has almost 30 million registered users, with the highest concentration being small business owners and operators. Nazar says that Docstoc’s revenue has been growing 100% each year for the past three years and has been profitable for last 2 years.

We’ve been tracking Los Angeles-based startup DocStoc for years now, from the company’s roots as a fairly broad document sharing site that competed directly with Scribd to, more recently, a hub that caters more exclusively toward businesses, complete with bundles of premium professional documents available for purchase. And today, the company is taking another step in that direction, with a rebranding of the site that positions it with the tagline, “We Make Every Small Business Better”.

So what exactly does that entail?

CEO Jason Nazar explains that for the last year the company has been building out a repository of professional documents — they have 20 million that were uploaded by users, and plan to have another 10,000 written in-house (or outsourced to contracted professionals) by the end of the year. The goal of this DocStoc-produced content, Nazar says, is to provide businesses with a set of documents — including hiring forms, schedules, and legal papers — that they can trust to be high quality, so they don’t have to wade through multiple variations of similar docs. This content is available through a premium subscription service, which runs $20 a month (if you buy multiple months at a time, the price goes down).

In addition to creating its own documents, DocStoc is also increasingly producing articles and videos related to starting and running a business. And that’s just the start, Nazar says. Later in the year the company will be rolling out additional products to help streamline business management (as far as documents are concerned), including a wizard that will help complete forms quickly. DocStoc has been offering some of these features for several months now, and Nazar says that the startup already has “tens of thousands” of companies signed up for subscriptions.

My gripe with the service: DocStoc includes disclaimers saying that it isn’t providing legal advice, so it isn’t responsible if you use a document the wrong way, or aren’t using the right documents, or whatever. Nazar says that the majority of the site’s professional documents aren’t related to legal issues, and for those that are, the site will also be helping users connect with consulting services, so you can speak to someone (for a price) if you want to be sure you’re setting your business up the right way. And if you already know what you’re doing, then DocStoc could be exactly what you’re looking for.

The company last raised $4 million in 2008 — it’s now profitable, with 35 full-time employees. Nazar says that revenue has been doubling each year for the last three years.

The iPad App, which is free, includes access to documents that are shared on the platform, including both premium and free content. Users have access to over 10,000 business and professional documents, and can also search and download over 20 million library documents. Content includes company business plans, proposal letters, real estate purchase forms, LLC operating agreements, marketing plans,and more. You can also integrate your saved, bookmarked and uploaded documents from the web on the app through your account.

Within the app, you can upgrade to access premium content (for $9.95 per month) from Docstoc. The startup has been making a big push towards premium content, launching a marketplace for professional documents, as well as books from premium publishers. Docstoc co-founder Jason Nazar says the iPad app gives users access to over 3000-plus high quality legal and business contracts, forms, guides, and templates as well.

This is actually Docstoc’s first mobile app, which is surprising considering that the startup has been around since 2007 (Docstoc launched at TechCrunch40 in 2007). But Nazar says an Android app is currently in the works and the company is ramping up mobile development. And the startup, which faces competition from Scribd and SlideShare, is growing in terms is usage. A year ago, Docstoc has around 3 million users and today the site has 11 million registered users.

Among the publishers that are included as part of the Overdrive.com partnership are McGraw-Hill, Random House, and Simon & Schuster. Included in the collection are book series like the ‘For Dummies’ books, Frommer’s travel books, and Microsoft guides.

Docstoc’s Docstore launched in August 2009, but was initially only available to select publishing partners. Earlier this year the site added a marketplace for “Professional” documents (like the reports and forms mentioned above) which anyone can sell their content through.  The site competes directly with Scribd, which has also inked deals to feature content from many mainstream publishers.

CEO Jason Nazar says that he believes Docstoc is seeing stronger conversion rates on its premium content than its competitors, which he attributes to the site’s focus on professional content and extensive A/B testing. He notes that Docstoc is now able to buy traffic profitably.

The viewer itself is fairly sleek and resembles DocStoc’s normal document viewers. Users can directly download documents from the viewer and DocStoc will automatically convert any convert historical embeds with Docstoc. For example, all of the documents we’ve embedded with our TechCrunch DocStoc account will now include our branded viewer.

Also included in the viewer is the ability to monetize on the publisher side. So publishers can choose to put streams of ads in the viewers, which is operated by DocStoc. DocStoc and the publisher will then share in any advertising revenue.

Competitor Scribd launched branded viewers in October, but the feature appears to be only available to select publishers. The startup just launched a new marketplace for professional documents and with 3 million registered users, DocStoc is now profitable. Nazar says that the company is seeing 20 million uniques per month and is growing rapidly as a business focused site. Branded and customizable viewers works into this vision nicely.

Here’s an example of the TechCrunch branded viewer:

DocStoc’s CEO and founder Jason Nazar says the one of the platform’s fastest growing user base segments are small business owners looking for free and paid documents for entrepreneurs, startups and professionals. Documents range from legal documents to real estate contracts to analysis to forms for business models. The DocStore also features documents in a variety of formats, including Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and Excel files. The marketplace has been open to select partners since last summer (including TechCrunch), but today will mark its public debut.

On the seller side, the DocStore allows document sellers, such as LegalZoom, Career Press, and BK Publishers, to keep 100 percent of their sales for the first 60 days of a document’s lifetime on DocStoc. After that, DocStoc takes 50 percent of the sale price. DocStoc powers all of the payments (which can be made through credit cards) on the site and returns payments to sellers via check or PayPal. Sellers can sell their documents separately, or bundle them together as packages. For example, a business plan package could include an Excel spreadsheet, a PowerPoint presentation and a Word document. And sellers can monitor their sales, documents through a customized dashboard with reports, conversion rates and analytics. Nazar says that DocStoc vets all sellers and documents to ensure that each document is legitimate.

DocStoc will also be adding the ability for anyone to embed widgets with the for sale documents in blogs to collect affiliate fees, similar to the Amazon model. Affiliate revenue will be deducted from DocStoc’s 50 percent share of the ale, not the Seller’s sale. Lazar says that DocStoc is working to maximize conversion rates for sales, even offering a 1-800 customer service hotline for any potential buyers who have questions about documents for sale. And sellers can choose to turn of ads on pages where they are selling documents.

Additionally, Nazar says DocStoc will be adding more of its own self-curated content to to the platform, which will be available to users who have a paid subscription to the site. Users will soon have immediate access to over 1000 documents, which range from what to do when you get a DUI to marital settlement agreements.

With 3 million registered users, DocStoc is now profitable. Nazar says that the company is seeing 20 million uniques per month and is growing rapidly as a business focused site. It makes sens for DocStoc to cater to the professional community and its marketplace seems like a good bet, especially with the affiliate ecosystem.

What is the best reading experience on a touchscreen device? As magazines and tablet-makers grapple with this question for larger form factors, Issuu has an answer for touchscreen phones. The Web-based document-viewer just released Issue Mobile for Android phones, and is working on an iPhone app.

Issuu Mobile is a mobile document reader which gives you access all the magazines, books, and documents uploaded to Issuu. Millions of public documents have been uploaded, just like on Scribd or DocStoc, and you can view your own private documents in your own account as well. The Android app shows featured content and addresses the small screen size with a new EasyRead feature. You just scratch a portion of the text and it pops up in a magnified view. You can also subscribe to publishers and news feeds.

Everything on Issuu is free or promotional right now, but you can find previews and free editions of books from Penguin, Random House and indie magazines. Issuu really needs a store like Scribd’s. But it is creating new mobile reading experiences which everyone can learn from.

I just wonder of down the road you need a separate app, or whether you can get the same reading experience from the Web. For now, Issuu is offering both and, at least for smaller screens, optimizing the experience with an app.

Here is an AppsFire video of the upcoming iPhone version of Issuu Mobile reader:

That means developers and designers can henceforth tap into the Issuu platform and services to equip their own applications and websites with the oft-needed functionality of offering document consultation without the need for end users to download the docs or to visit the Issuu website. Issuu already offered two APIs: one for Search (which allows developers to sift through all Issuu publications, comments, and users) and one for its Viewer product. It is now adding a third one for the ‘Upload’ feature, obviously an essential one.

When Docstoc recently left the beta phase, it also launched with a number of open APIs. I’d check up on Scribd too, but their website is currently down.

Either way, we like Issuu here at TechCrunch. When the company first launched, it was one of the first services of its kind whose interface and functionality didn’t suck. The startup has been busy adding new features to its products and venture capital to its bank account – it raised a total of $6.25 million in funding to date – and is seeing decent traction as well.

According to co-founder Martin Ferro-Thomsen, Issuu currently services over 325 million monthly unique page views across its entire network of publishers (including embeds in articles etc.) and welcomes 4.4 million unique visitors to its main website Issuu.com every month.

Sharing confidential documents within a business or between businesses can be risky—you never know who might leak a document or if your document is being shared with other employees. To solve this problem, startup Confidela has launched the beta of WatchDox, a SaaS product that allows a sender to control, restrict and track viewing, printing and forwarding of documents. We have 100 free beta invites here.

The service’s basic functionality is similar to document sharing services like Scribd and DocStoc but with ramped up privacy settings and tracking systems. DocStoc and Scribd also offer the ability to set documents as private, but WatchDox is giving users a few more tools that allow users to control and track documents.

Watchdox lets you upload any type of document, including PowerPoint presentations, PDFs, Excel files and Word documents. The service gives you a dashboard where you can control who the document is sent to, limit a recipient’s ability to view, forward or print the document and encrypt content of a document. Users can set expiration dates for each document and place watermarks on the document to show versions or the document’s recipient. Watchdox will also track recipient’s activities and location, including when a document is opened and the user’s geographic IP address. You can also send documents directly from Microsoft Outlook by via a WatchDox Outlook plug-in.

WatchDox, which is initially partnering with file collaboration and storage service Box.net to make the service available to all Box.net users, is currently in beta and adding features regularly. The startup will offer a free version of the service and will soon launch a premium version, which is $14.99 per month. Negonation also lets you upload and manage private contracts online, but is targeted towards the legal community. WatchDox seems like a useful service for documents that are confidential and private but you do lose the sharing and social elements of Scribd and DocStoc, which let users share documents with anyone and form groups around certain subjects.

Eschewing the publisher focus of Issuu, or the broad business focus of DocStoc, the boot-strapped Edocr focuses on corporates and organisations. So for instance, companies can upload all their public-facing documents, whether they be company reports, press releases, guidance documents, you name it. Admittedly the slightly dull-but-necessary focus is not going to set the world alight, but with plenty of enterprises still getting their heads around the basics of blogging, RSS and even social networks like Twitter, edocr is a simple way for companies to share their PDFs without being lumped alongside a pirated copy of a Harry Potter novel.

New features include an improved design, bulk uploading of documents, an API, document categories, better search and the ability to auto-tweet to a Twitter account when new documents get uploaded. The question is, will that be enough to set it apart from the many players in this field?

Popular document sharing service DocStoc just launched a collections feature, which lets users package documents around a particular topic. DocStoc has already created close to 50 collections, including “Starting a Small Business,” “Advertising Online,” and “Traveling on a Budget,” and is opening up the platform to users to add to existing collections and create their own.

The feature is just another way to organize your documents online and can be a pretty useful tool to manage large amounts of documents that relate to different topics. Competitors Issuu and Scribd both have similar offerings. Scribd’s “Group” feature allows users to organize documents around a theme and tries to connect users to other people who are interested in the same reading and topics. Issuu recently launched a collaborative Groups feature, where people can collect, organize and discuss publications related to any topic. DocStoc’s feature appears to focus more on the organization of documents around a particular theme than connecting users around that theme.

DocStoc is steadily growing, with 3 million documents uploaded and 1.6 million unique visitors a month in the U.S., according to comScore. (The company’s internal Google Analytics shows 4.8 million unique visitors worldwide). Docstoc recently took off its “beta” label with a homepage redesign, open APIs, and a new revenue-sharing model called DocCash.

A year and a half after launching at our first TechCrunch40 conference, document-sharing service Docstoc is taking off its “beta” label with a homepage redesign, open APIs, and a new revenue-sharing model called DocCash. The service is growing at a healthy clip, with 3 million documents uploaded and 1.6 million unique visitors a month in the U.S., according to comScore. (The company’s internal Google Analytics shows 4.8 million unique visitors worldwide).

DocStoc is still much smaller than its rival Scribd, but hopes to catch up with some of its changes (as does Issuu, another document-sharing service that keeps adding features). In order to encourage more activity and higher-quality document uploads, DocStoc is introducing DocCash. The company will be splitting AdSense revenues 50/50 with anyone who uploads documents and wants to opt into the service. Right now the ads only appear on Docstoc pages, but will eventually include Flash ads in DocStoc’s embedded Flash player as well. (See video tutorial below).

DocStoc is also unveiling a new homepage with a much more blog-like feel. Featured documents a will be selected by an editorial team, more images will be highlighted, and different document categories are highlighted on the left (including business, technology, legal, and current events). Former TechCrunch writer and Website designer Mark Hendrickson worked on the new homepage. It looks much cleaner now, with topical documents and those related to breaking news now being highlighted (I’ve embedded Barack Obama’s tax return below—his income was $2.7 million last year!).

Finally, it is opening up its APIs so that other sites can integrate DocStoc functionality into their own sites. These APIs allow other sites to include previews and document embeds, document search, use DocStoc’s document viewer, and upload documents directly to DocStoc.

If DocStoc is ever going to catch up to Scribd, it will have to keep adding features and make sure the best docs are uploaded to it service. The APIs and DocCash might help, as well as little things like upload speeds (DocStoc seems faster to me). But with rising popularity also comes rising headaches. Already authors are beginning to complain about book piracy. Uploading copyrighted works is against the terms of service of both DocStoc and Scribd, but policing such usage becomes harder and harder with the number of documents getting into the millions.

http://viewer.docstoc.com/
Barack Obama 2008 Tax Return –

Issuu, a company that lets you upload a PDF or other document and then flip through it easily on a dedicated Webpage or in a small embedded widget, is adding features to its service and site with the aim of becoming a more engaging destination for users. We’re big fans of Issuu—when the company first launched, it was one of the first services of its kind whose interface and functionality didn’t suck. Other popular document sharing services include Docstoc and Scribd.

Issuu says that it’s focusing on adding features to make the the site more of a community for both its free users and enterprise customers. Last year, the startup launched the beta of Issuu Pro, a way for professional publishers to bring their magazines and newspapers to the internet and enhance them with a variety of digital features and the ability to customize the viewing experience. Publications are ad-free (meaning no ads in the viewer from Issuu—any ads in the magazines or documents themselves remain), and publishers were only charged when their content was viewed, with pricing ranging from $1.10 to $19 per 1,000 publication views.

Now, Issuu is taking its enterprise offering out of beta and changing its pricing model to a flat rate of $19 per month for any number of publications and any number of readers. Issuu has also redesigned its homepage for free and enterprise users so that the page gives you information about how your publications are performing including a newsfeed, statistics, and subscribers.

The site has also launched a collaborative Groups feature, where people can collect and discuss publications related to any topic. Anyone can quickly set up a group, style it and then invite friends. You can add publications and/or discussions directly, or by bookmarking a publication while reading it. Groups can be private or public, and about any topic you choose. For example, I found a group called “Travel the World,” which included travel guides.

Issue has enhanced embedding by adding customization and multiple view modes (magazine, presentation, text) and allows a full screen pop-up directly from the embed widget. Each widget now includes a Share menu (think YouTube), where users can share, embed, and explore without leaving the widget. And the site has added a Library feature, a user-friendly manager and publishing tool where you can edit, organize and publish/embed directly from the management platform.

Document sharing services are finding a strong user base and are growing rapidly. Scribd, which also has a community-focus to its user interface, offers the ability to create and join groups. Like Issuu, Scribd has a free service and a premium service for enterprises. According to ComScore’s March numbers, Scribd definitely has the edge over both Issuu and Docstoc, bringing in 12 million unique visitors worldwide in March. Docstoc came in second with 2.89 million unique visitors in March, with Issuu coming in third with 2.4 million unique visitors. On Quantcast, Scribd had 12 million unique visitors in the U.S. in March, Docstoc had 1.4 million visitors, and Issuu had close to 450,000 unique visitors in the U.S. However, Issuu’s new interface and features are really visually compelling and easy to use. Scribd is the frontrunner in the race to be the most popular document sharing service, but Issuu and Docstoc keep adding innovative new features. Competition breeds innovation.

This is a list of the products I tend to use daily. Some are for work (WordPress, Delicious, Zoho, etc.), some are for fun (MySpace Music, Hulu, etc), and some are useful for both (Digg, Skype, YouTube, etc.). But I use most of them every day, or nearly every day, and I would not be as productive or happy without all of them.

The list changes a bit from year to year, and is also getting longer (see chart). Just three products have been favorites all four years: TechMeme, Skype, WordPress. TechMeme continues to be the news aggregator I check multiple times per day to keep up on tech news. Skype is the instant messaging and VoIP platform that I use most often, and WordPress software powers all of our blogs.

I’ve added nine new products, including one gadget (which I’ve left off in the past): Animoto, Friendfeed, Hulu, iPhone 3G, MySpace Music, Pandora (which was on in previous years) Docstoc/Scribd and Yammer.

I’ve removed six products from last year’s list: Amazon Music, Amie Street, Firefox, Flickr, Netvibes, Technorati.

I still use the products I’ve removed, just not as much as in previous years. I find I’m just using Netvibes and Technorati less this year (Netvibes because Google Reader is so excellent, Technorati has fallen in favor of Google Blog Search mostly because it’s too slow and has too many internal links). I tend to upload photos to Facebook now because of the people tagging feature and since it flows well with the rest of my news feed (I use Posterous for mobile uploads); Flickr is becoming less important for me. I have moved most of my music consumption to MySpace Music, and download DRM-free MP3s from iTunes when I want to buy. Amie Street is still a great place to discover new music though, and I think their business model, which is variable pricing for music based on its popularity, is sound. Firefox is off the list as I experiment with Chrome, but I haven’t made a decision one way or the other. When Chrome launches for the Mac, I’m likely to switch.

As in past years, there are a gaggle of other great products that I use regularly but didn’t add to the list in order to keep it manageable. I also haven’t added individual iPhone apps that I use daily, even though they are nearly as important to productivity and fun as the products that did make the list. Next year I expect more than a few will be added.

Here’s the current list, in alphabetical order, of products I use every day and couldn’t live without:

800-Free-411

800-Free-411 first made the list in 2007 and it isn’t leaving any time soon. Use it to make free directory assistance calls and avoid per call charges of up to $3.50 that cell phone carriers charge. The company has taken more than 6% of the market for directory service calls in the U.S. Google, Microsoft, AT&T and others have entered the market, but Jingle Networks, the company offering the product, has a patent on the idea of pairing advertising with free directory service. Here’s a tip: add “FREE411USA” as a Skype contact and do lookups that way, too.

Animoto

Animoto, which joins the list for the first time this year, does one thing, and well: it creates slide shows from photos. Unlike all the other services on the list, I don’t use it daily. But their new iPhone application put it over the edge this year. I really like this service.

Delicious

Social bookmarking site Delicious has been on the list for three of the four years (I took a brief detour in 2007 to a competing service called Blue Dot, then switched back). Delicious 2.0 is finally stable and the Firefox add-on is the reason I keep using it. Also, they long ago switched away from the annoying del.icio.us domain name, so I don’t have to look up where the dots go every time I visit the site.

Digg

Digg has been on the list the last three years. The site remains a fun place to hang out when I have some spare time to review the news, and Digg is one of our top ten sources of traffic. Hacker News is another Digg-like news site that focuses on tech that I visit daily as well.

Facebook

I visit Facebook daily to keep up with what my 5,000 closest friends are up to. I’m not a big fan of most of the applications that have launched on Facebook, but I do use it for photos and events. Unlike last year, though, I also now use MySpace as well regularly to reach people. These are the two social networks you have to be on to keep in touch with everyone.

Friendfeed

Friendfeed, a microblogging and activity aggregating service, only officially launched in February 2008. I use the service daily, although I’m not nearly as addicted as some bloggers are to the service. But like Twitter, Friendfeed is a good place to find breaking news on a variety of topics, and it’s become a must have service.

Gmail

I’ve never been a fan of the way Gmail groups message threads, and things like tagging of messages could be improved, but the service is far and away superior to any other web mail service in terms of features (Yahoo Mail has the best user interface in my opinion). I continue to rely on Gmail as my main personal email provider. Once Gears is integrated for offline use, I may stop accessing it via IMAP.

Google Reader

Three years ago I was using Bloglines to read feeds. Then I tried NetNewsWire for a while. But Google Reader, which first launched in October 2005 as a seriously flawed product, continues to evolve and is by far the best feed reader on the market today.

Hulu

Hulu isn’t about work, it’s about watching TV and films after the work is done. I openly mocked the service for nearly a year as they fumbled around, but now here it is, on a list of sites I visit constantly. I spend more time watching Hulu than I do normal cable television.

iPhone 3G

The first gadget I’ve included over the years – the iPhone 3G, which was announced on June 9, 2008, is simply the best device I’ve ever used. Sure, it doesn’t have a physical keyboard. But I can actually browse the web with this thing, and that more than makes up for a slower typing speed. This is a beautiful thing.

MySpace Music

MySpace Music is just a couple of months old and is still very buggy, but it changed the way users think about music on a big scale. MySpace combined its millions of band/artist pages with legal and free streaming music from the labels and creating a very compelling music product. Services like LaLa have a better user experience, but they still charge for streaming. Free is the future of music.

Pandora

Pandora, an Internet radio service that creates stations based on music you like, was on the list the first two years. I still listen to it all the time, and their new iPhone application put it over the top again to get on this year’s list. Pandora was one of the first startups we covered on TechCrunch, and they recently passed 20 million registered users.

Scribd & Docstoc

We use both Docstoc and Scribd here at TechCrunch regularly. Both services let you upload office type documents (PDFs, Word docs, Powerpoint presentations, etc.) and then embed them on other sites. When there’s a lawsuit complaint or interesting PDF, we add it to one of the services and embed it in our post.

Skype

Skype Skype has been on my list every year and I expect it will stay there. It’s the most important productivity tool that I have – I’d give up email before I gave up Skype.

TechMeme

TechMeme is another four-year favorite. It is the blogosphere’s daily newspaper, and one of the sites we use most often in seeing how stories develop. I’m amazed that founder Gabe Rivera hasn’t accepted any of the many buyout offers I’ve heard he’s been floated. In December 2008 TechMeme gave up on fully automated news, which I believe changes the site for the worse.

TripIt

If you travel a lot, you are going to love TripIt, which returns to the list this year. It keeps you organized, it’s incredibly easy to use and it’s just a perfect, simple service. Read our post on TripIt to get an idea for how it works. You forward confirmation emails from flights, hotels, etc. to the service and it creates an itinerary automatically. You can then access it via a mobile device.

Twitter

Last year a lot of people still hadn’t heard about microblogging service Twitter. Now, Britney is on it and the company is turning down half-billion dollar buyout offers. I mostly access Twitter through a desktop client called Twhirl, and I check it multiple times per day.

WordPress

We continue to use WordPress open source software to power all of our blogs, and it has been on the list all four years. Their Akismet spam comment blocking service is a godsend – without it we would quite simply be overrun with spam. It catches 15,000 or more spam comments per day and auto-deletes them.

Yammer

Yammer, a spin off of a startup called Geni, is a newcomer this year. They launched at TechCrunch50 in the Fall and took the top prize. The service acts as a Twitter for businesses, letting employees send messages back and forth to subscribers. It’s way more effective than email at group communications, and we absolutely rely on it here at TechCrunch.

YouTube

YouTube has been on the list the last three years. I continue to burn time watching random videos on the site, and we use it to upload our own videos as well. Sure they sent us a Cease & Desist letter a while back, but I still love em.

Zoho

Zoho, as well as its competitor Google Docs, continues to replace Microsoft Office for most of my word processing and spreadsheet needs. The feature list is still light compared to the heavy, expensive Microsoft version, but its free and I can collaborate with others on documents. This is the future of office productivity.

Update: I’m seeing other bloggers put together their own lists. Let me know in the comments if you do one and I’ll link to it. Here’s one by Tony Bain. More: Guilmain, NewsCred, Honkin (Chinese blogger), Ghost Hack Beauty, Mario Bruggemann

Getting people to use your Web app is all about lowering the barriers to entry and making it as dead-simple as possible. The idea of uploading documents to the Web and embedding them YouTube style is still a foreign concept to many people. Docstoc just made that process as easy as sending an email.

If you have a Docstoc account registered to your email address, all you have to do is send the document you want uploaded as an email attachment to uploads@docstoc.com. It’s the fastest way to upload a document to the Web. I tried it with the press release below.

Once it’s been successfully uploaded, you receive a confirmation email with a link to the Webified document. Docstoc turns Word files, PDFs, Powerpoints, and other documents into a Flash embed (as does its main competitor, Scribd)

About one million public documents have been uploaded to DocStoc since it launched almost exactly a year ago today. But only two percent of Docstoc’s 300,000 registered users bother to upload documents regularly. Something tells me that number is about to go up.

http://viewer.docstoc.com/
Email Publishing With Docstoc – Free Legal Forms

Docstoc, the professional document network, has launched a pair of new features that help transition the site from primarily a document sharing platform to a personal document archive as well. The features, dubbed MyDocs and Sync, allow users to quickly upload their files to the web, where they can be quickly accessed from any computer that supports the ubiquitous Flash plugin.

MyDocs is essentially a dashboard for users’ documents, not unlike an online version of Windows’ My Documents folder. Users can skim through their files as thumbnails, search by keyword, sort each document into online folders, and modify each doc’s privacy settings. Most impressive is MyDoc’s Preview feature, which allows users to rapidly skim through full versions of their documents using Docstoc’s Flash-based Document viewer. In Preview mode, Docstoc displays a list of thumbnails down a sidebar and presents the document itself as part of the main window, allowing users to quickly browse through their documents. In practice this worked surprisingly well – documents opened within a few seconds (oftentimes faster than they would on the desktop), making MyDocs a viable alternative to the traditional My Documents Folder.

As part of today’s release Docstoc is also launching a new Sync client, which is available for Windows and Mac. The client runs in the background, automatically detecting changes in files in designated folders on the desktop machine and uploading them to MyDocs. Docstoc CEO Jason Nazar says that Sync isn’t meant as a replacement from the many backup sites already on the web. Instead, it’s meant to help keep Docstoc’s MyDocs section populated with the most up-to-date documents, so users can quickly browse their files from any computer on the web.

As part of Sync, Docstoc is also including a “My Public Documents” folder, which further streamlines the site’s document upload process. To upload a document, users need only drag their files into the special folder, and sync will automatically upload the doc to the user’s linked Docstoc profile.

Docstoc made its debut at TechCrunch40 and launched in October 2007. Since then, the site has grown to 200,000 registered users and sees around 2 million visitors monthly. Docstoc’s primary competitor is Scribd, a document sharing community with a similar Flash-based file viewer.

Docstoc has taken a page out of YouSendIt’s book by releasing a desktop applet for sending documents to others via email without having to worry about size restrictions.

The Windows-only OneClick app enables users to right click on certain file types (Word, PDF, Excel, etc.) and choose to email them via Docstoc. The files will begin uploading to the startup’s servers in the background while an email composition window opens with pre-generated links to them. Recipients simply need to click these links to begin viewing or downloading the files, which can be up to 50mb in size and set as either public or private on Docstoc.

OneClick’s restrictions on file types and sizes mean that it will compete only minimally with more focused online file transfer services. But it does have the advantage of unlimited and indefinite storage, as well as background uploading (there’s no need to wait for uploads to finish before sending your email). At the very least, it’s a clever move to encourage more content contribution to Docstoc. As with Scribd and other UGC destinations, content is king – what else is Google going to index?

See a related announcement by Scribd from just last week that enables onsite previewing of email attachments.

Continuing its push to become a major provider of Webtop software, Adobe is releasing two new products on Monday: Acrobat.com and Acrobat 9. Adobe’s Webtop arsenal already includes the recently launched online version of PhotoShop and its online media player, Adobe TV. Acrobat.com is another big step towards bringing more desktop-like experiences to the Web. “It is our intent to blur a lot of the lines of the past,” says product manager Erik Larson.

Acrobat.com—Online Word Processing, Meetings, and File Sharing

Acrobat.com is a combination of three recently launched online services: Adobe Brio (online meetings), Adobe Buzzword (online word processor), and Adobe Share (online file sharing). Thus with the public beta launch of Acrobat.com, Adobe is taking on Google Docs, Microsoft Office Live Workspace, WebEx, and GoTo Meeting—all at the same time.

Buzzword is now integrated into Acrobat.com as the default word processor. (I reviewed Buzzword and Share when they first launched last March). Multiple people can edit a document and leave comments. Tabs along the bottom representing different people show you who has accessed the document most recently and their status (author, reviewer, etc.). It paginates documents, supports all kinds of fonts, and lets you create the closest equivalent to a PDF that is possible online.

All the documents on Acrobat.com are organized in what up until now has been Adobe Share. The document and file-sharing service now offers five gigabytes of free storage, and lets you embed documents in a widget on other sites across the Web. (I’ve put an Adobe PDF widget at the bottom of this post). This last feature should worry startups like Scribd and DocStoc, which are based entirely on the ability to upload and share documents in a similar fashion.

Finally, my favorite part, Acrobat.com includes Brio, which is a light version of Adobe Acrobat Connect. It lets up to three people have online meetings for free, with screen sharing, desktop video, voice conferencing, chat, white-boarding. You can add in a regular toll line for a fee. Anyone with a Mac is going to love this. Whenever I get a virtual demo, I prefer to do it through Adobe Connect because WebEx and GoTo Meeting sometimes don’t work with my Mac. And Adobe’s Flash viewer simply looks better.

Acrobat 9—Now With Flash

At the same time Adobe is launching Acrobat.com, it is releasing Acrobat 9—a major upgrade to one of its anchor desktop apps. The big news here is that for the first time, Adobe’s PDF-creating desktop software will support Flash. So people can now create documents with embedded Flash movies from YouTube, or developers can design entire new skins for electronic documents using Adobe’s Flex framework—the same programming tool they use to create Web applications.

PDF documents made with Acrobat 9 also support collaboration among multiple authors and reviewers over the Internet, making them connected documents. Best of all, they no longer take forever to load. The next step is for Adobe to make it easy to turn any PDF into a Web page, and vice versa.

https://share.acrobat.com/adc/flex/mpt.swf

Docstoc serves as a repository for professional documents, featuring forms, templates, and a variety of other material. Its flash-based viewer can be embedded into other pages, allowing documents to be viewed on external sites without needing an outside reader like Acrobat or Word.

The company is also introducing a Content Partnership Program (CPP) that will allow content providers to place their own ads around their documents, and to collect any revenue they accrue. The program is free of charge, but applicants will be screened for quality. Docstoc CEO Jason Nazar says that the program is designed to improve the amount of high-quality content on the site while establishing ties with valuable partners.

Docstoc raised $750k in Series A funding last November in a round led by Scott Walchek, Brett Brewer, Matt Coffin, Robin Richards, and Crosscut Ventures. Their primary competitor is Scribd, launched March 2007, which features a similar embeddable document viewer and a large collection of content. Scribd has raised over $4 Million to date.

http://www.docstoc.com/docs/wrapper.ashx?doc_id=529847&swf_url=http%3A//content1.docstoc.com.s3.amazonaws.com/Docstoc+Series+B+Funding+Press+Release.doc.swf&enableFullScreen=1
Docstoc Series B Funding Press Release – Get more documents