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.

Google Chrome has been grabbing the tech world’s attention for a few days now, and its impact on the market is showing to be significant. Massively significant. Permanently significant. That goes for everything from conceptual execution to the download count. According to Hitslink Market Share, it’s already grabbed north of 1% of the browser market. And Hitwise shows Google’s Chrome page to be nearing the top 10 of sites offering software downloads of any kind.

Big news? Yes indeed. And the reason for this is entirely evident. The blog world has been frenzied for the last 72 hours over this, and it’s been channeled through all the big media outlets, including print, television, Web. That’s on a global scale. So of course the number of downloads will be high. And the barrel of fodder is far from empty, so I imagine this boomer of a browser is going to climb a good bit higher still. The trend says so.

The question to ask, though, is just how high will it go? Is it going grow so large as to eat others’ shares of the market? Is it going to be a Red Alert phase at Mozilla for the foreseeable future? Will IE decline further? What about the bottom feeders, Opera, Safari, et al.?

In short, the answers are: pretty high; yes; yes; yes; those’ll budge a little. Indeed, Chrome is that big. It will be, anyway.

Let’s look sensibly at the situation here. Chrome was released to a resounding applause. Everyone’s voiced pros and cons, more the first than the second. And it hasn’t even had time to make itself feel briefly at home on the Mac OS X. Not to say that Mac adoption will draw enormous oohs and aahs, but OS X users tend to be a more tech savvy bunch. More in tune with the ways of this progressive chaos we show such love for. I count myself part of that club. And they’ll download in great numbers as well, and you can bet that those numbers to come will bump Chrome up even further. The biggest loser in that case will presumably be Safari, which, despite its conveniences, is hardly the force that Firefox has become.

Now, in Firefox’s case, it’s a far more complex picture. I dare say Mozilla isn’t very happy with Chrome’s release, because it can only slow the rate of Firefox 3 downloads. And Mozilla is very much about growth at this point. It has been for some time. It saw that, given the right amount of noise at the grassroots, it could yoink some pie from MSFT. And more and more. The record set for browser downloads in June only furthered its advantage. And now Google comes along, promising something open source as well, with some core aspects that surely make folks at the Foundation envious, if not a bit sour. Mozilla will continue, no doubt. But it sees that it isn’t the only slick magician in town, and having to compete while watching its own tail isn’t something it’s really very used to. Sure, Mozilla thinks the IE team has moved forward a bit with its feature set, but it can’t seriously think that what Microsoft offers is really so cool. Mozilla is the bad-ass benchmark. Now Google has stolen some of that hard-earned thunder. Even though Google has done so completely legitimately.

It’s true, Google says it’s not out to conquer. It’s lending a helping hand. So everyone is better off. But as with anything it’s done as good or better than other big-name Internet companies, once it tastes success, it cannot help but add fuel to the fire. And add fuel it will. Enough Web users will be happy to try something “better,” “more convenient,” “more reliable,” “safer,” even though the gauges for such metrics are hugely subjective and vary case-by-case, that the company will see that 1% climb to 2%. And well beyond, I think. No, not to the point of surpassing IE. But a low double-digit it will be. Give it 12-24 months, and see how the field looks then.

—Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:Google Chrome: The “GBrowser” Comes to LifeGoogle Chrome a Killer Browser Already (screencast)7 Really Awesome Things About Google ChromeChrome is Not a Windows-KillerGoogle Growth In Europe Outpacing The USGoogle Mobile Apps Reverse Summer Slump TrendsRumor: Google to Buy Sirius?

Source:Mashable!

LinkedIn and CNBC have announced a partnership today that unlike most of the hundreds of partnership announcements we see on a daily basis, seems to be something that actually impacts usability in a game-changing way.

LinkedIn is, of course, the business based social network designed primarily to put together employers and workers.  Of the many things I’ve always seen potential for in LinkedIn is as a source for information. One of the few bits of bac’n I look forward to seeing in my inbox every week is the one from LinkedIn showing me exactly who in my circle has had a title bump, changed companies, sold their company or decided to go work on their “stealth startup” (the new codeword for unemployed).

It’s like my own personalized Valleywag meets VentureBeat, giving me the dirt on exactly what’s going on with everyone’s professional lives.

Beyond that, though, the professional groups that have sprung up on the system, and the ability to ask these groups specific questions that they may be uniquely qualified to answer has been coded in (such as asking folks in a group around video podcasting what the most recommended ad network might be).

I predict that these are the sorts of potentials for story scoops and great feature ideas that CNBC saw when the idea of a partnership with LinkedIn was announced.  

LinkedIn CEO Dan Nye outlined some other ways that system users would be affected by the partnership, including increased access and sharing ability to industry news provided by CNBC, and featuring of LinkedIn data on CNBC.com.

—Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:Yahoo Partners with CNBC for Financial News Video ContentLinkedIn Launches Corporate BlogLinkedIn Introduces “LinkedIn Store”LinkedIn Launches MobileNBC Gets Around. Tango with the Times!Plaxo Adds LinkedIn to SyncLinkedIn Outlines Strategy for Upcoming Platform

Source:Mashable!

Docstoc has announced two impressive new features today that will distance it from rival Scribd, for now anyway. The features are called Docstoc MyDocs and Docstoc Sync.

Docstoc MyDocs lets you store all your documents (.doc, .xls, .ppt, .pdf) in your own online folders for anytime, anywhere access. You can now access your private documents and manage the public documents you publish to Docstoc from one location. This now truly makes file management a breeze.

Here’s a screencast of MyDocs

Docstoc Sync is a small downloadable application that automatically syncs documents from your computer to Docstoc MyDocs. You have the option to keep them private or publish them publicly on Docstoc by putting then in your “Docstoc Public Documents” folder from your desktop. It’s a welcome feature for sure. While it’s not a backup product, it certainly can perform as one.

Here’s a screencast of Docstoc Sync in action:

Conclusion

If MyDocs sounds familiar it should. The ability to manage your documents with a familiar My Documents interface is extremely attractive to users. Google Docs was the first to do this with their online app suite. Zoho just released a similar feature called Zoho Docs that makes managing your documents much easier. There’s no doubt that Scribd and others in the online document publishing space will be following suit. To its credit, Docstoc Sync is original because none of the other players offer an option to sync your documents. Not even Microsoft and their Live Workspace.

—Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:Scribd Competitor DocStoc Lands Another Round for $750KScribd Competitor Gets Angel FundingPlaxo Adds LinkedIn to SyncDocstoc Kills Email Attachments with New Desktop UtilityDocstoc Raises $3.25M: Is The Death of Email Attachments Near?PubMatic Launches AdPrice Index; Socnet Monetization Grows 69 PercentDocStoc Rolls Out Enhanced Document Control and Analytics

This morning Zoho launched Zoho Docs which provides a folder structure for managing and editing your documents. This afternoon Docstoc is announcing MyDocs which is very similar in nature. Docstoc MyDocs provides a way to store all of your documents online and view them within the Docstoc service. There are folders, ability to preview documents, a full screen mode when needed and the ability to set documents as public or private.

To make the MyDocs feature easier to use and keep synchronized, Docstoc is also launching Sync. Once you install Docstoc Sync, a folder will be placed on your desktop. Any documents inside that folder will automatically be uploaded (or removed) to Docstoc providing a valuable backup and the ability to browse your documents from anywhere.

These new launches make sense for Docstoc as the more documents they have in their overall public repository, the more users they can grab from Google on search queries. Users coming from search queries could become trial users of Docstoc and eventually move into the loyal category.

More CN Coverage:
– FriendFeed
– Amie Street
– Startup Tips

I’m generally not a fan of web-embedded widgets, because very seldom do they actually save time or significantly improve the experience of enjoying a page’s content in a way that compensates me for the extra memory usage. Exceptions to this, in my opinion, are some video players (at least the one that play videos longer than 12 seconds), and embedded PDF documents.

There may be other isolated cases where widgets genuinely improve the browsing experience, but in the case of these two widget types, they’re genuinely saving time.  Downloading a video file is pretty time intensive on most connections, and downloading and viewing a PDF, at least on my lame machines, can take several minutes for Adobe Reader to load.

Enter Docstoc.  I’ve always been a fan of their service, and they’ve announced a few updates to their to their PDF widget product tonight. Former Mashable writer and current Social Media Manager at DocStoc Sean Percival dropped me a line this evening to let me know what they’ve got cooking:

We’ve got an update that lets the owner of private docs on DocStoc see who has viewed, downloaded, and emailed their documents. The document guestbook helps track document views you share your private document link. The new features allow document owners to protect their files by limiting recipients to view (but not download) their private documents, taking away the headaches of large email attachments and concern if the recipient actually received the file.

It’s a great set of features that really improve the attractiveness of the system over some of the alternatives in the space.

—Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:Scribd Competitor DocStoc Lands Another Round for $750KScribd Competitor Gets Angel FundingDocstoc Kills Email Attachments with New Desktop UtilityNew Google Analytics Plagued with ProblemsDocstoc Raises $3.25M: Is The Death of Email Attachments Near?PubMatic Launches AdPrice Index; Socnet Monetization Grows 69 PercentMoblf: 15 Steps to Getting FriendFeed via SMS [Invites]

Online document hosting service Docstoc is out with a product update this evening. The update allows anyone who uploads private documents on Docstoc the ability to closely track and monitor usage of the documents. While Docstoc is known for public document sharing, this new set of monitoring tools allows a content creator to more closely track who is viewing the documents, email infomation, and the ability to lock documents for viewing online.

This seems much better than emailing around a PDF and potentially having it leave the circle. Users who aren’t registered on Docstoc get prompted to enter their personal information before viewing the requested document. As more and more online services tap our personal and confidential information (i.e. any Saas player), it will be interesting to watch the discussion around security and privacy.

Here’s Docstoc CEO Jason Nazar explaining how the new private document monitoring works:

Partner Links
– Free Online Budgeting Software

Document sharing service Docstoc is out with a potentially major upgrade today. The new functionality is called OneClick and allows you to share documents via email no matter how large the files are. I’ve embedded a video that describes the service below. OneClick is a simple desktop widget that you select when you have large documents to share. After the documents are uploaded to Docstoc, the OneClick application opens your default email application and puts the links directly into the email. It’s really simple to use.

Adam Ostrow notes that this new utility will help drive user adoption of Docstoc and I completely agree - this is why I noted that it’s a major upgrade above. Not only will this drive user adoption, it will also help Docstoc to increase their keyword rich content index. While it appears that documents uploaded with OneClick show as private by default, Docstoc would be smart to push users to change the privacy settings on their next login.

The only filetypes that are supported with Docstoc’s OneClick are .doc, .pdf, .xls, .ppt. This may limit the tool’s functionality as other large file email replacement tools like YouSendIt allow you to send any file type. Will the casual user know when to use DocStoc and when not to? Mark Hendrickson has the same concerns regarding file type. Frankly they should allow any file type to be uploaded and just show the files as a list rather than showing them in the Docstoc player. That’d be hot.

The document sharing battle between Scribd and Docstoc is great to watch as it’s forcing both to continue to innovate and that’s a good thing for all of us. Check out our interview with Docstoc CEO Jason Nazar.

Partner Links
– Manage your finances online with Geezeo
– Web Jobs
– CenterNetworks LinkedIn Business Group
– CenterNetworks Facebook Fan Page
– Check out SmugMug for a free trial