Crocodoc (YC W10) Makes It A Snap To Share And Mark Up Documents

I wonder if students would use this to read notes/textbooks cooperatively?<p>I can't count the number of times I've wasted half an hour trying to figure out WTF an author or professor is talking about, only to learn two pages later that I was hung up on an over-generalized equation, badly-worded simplification, or similar. One yellow sticky note in the margin that said "gets more specific 2pgs later" --which a lot of readers would pencil in for themselves anyway-- could save man-years of time over the life of a text.<p>It would be useful for authors too. Teaching documents usually have a feedback cycle measured in years (if the loop is ever closed at all), whereas this would allow them to access their readers collective impressions almost immediately.<p>You could start by adding publicly-available PDF textbooks like:<p><a href="http://www-stat.stanford.edu/~tibs/ElemStatLearn/" rel="nofollow">http://www-stat.stanford.edu/~tibs/ElemStatLearn/</a><p><a href="http://diestel-graph-theory.com/" rel="nofollow">http://diestel-graph-theory.com/</a><p><a href="http://www.plasma.uu.se/CED/Book/" rel="nofollow">http://www.plasma.uu.se/CED/Book/</a><p>(I'm sure there other open texts out there that are less wonky, of course. This is just what's on my menu).

I found it interesting they used Flash- it seems like all their features could have been done using JavaScript.<p>While Flash almost certainly works better in this situation, I wonder how it affects their odds of an acquisition. Is "increasing chances of acquisition" important or talked about at YC?<p>Scribd uses Flash (and their document viewer looks a lot like Scribd, another YC company- is it the same code, or just a homage?), however it seems to me the features would be more at home at Google Docs or Zoho.<p>Either way, awesome startup- it was incredibly easy to use, and did exactly what it said it would. Well done, and congrats!

A few criticisms from someone who has tried everything in this market:<p>1. Security is a weak point. From their FAQ:<p>"Documents uploaded to crocodoc are assigned a unique, unguessable URL (e.g. <a href="http://crocodoc.com/gQlo2g" rel="nofollow">http://crocodoc.com/gQlo2g</a>), which you can selectively share with others you wish to collaborate with.<p>For added security, crocodoc Pro users have the option of password-protecting their documents, which are uploaded and viewed using bank-grade SSL encryption. Companies interested in running crocodoc behind their firewall can contact us to request more information on intranet deployments."<p>This is insufficient security for any serious business application. Nothing about data encryption at rest. Nothing about link expiration. Nothing about the authentication used for password protection. Running behind a firewall has nothing to do with the security of data once it is transmitted.<p>2. The format seems to be proprietary. Call me crazy, but if I'm investing the time and energy into marking up documents, I want to take them away in a portable, editable format. Maybe I missed this point on their site?

Hosted document management is still not quite popular within big enterprises. It will be worth to make non hosted solution available with MS Office integration.

Awesome. How do you guys convert binary DOC/PPT files to files you can work with? If I remember correctly, the only way to do it was to convert it on a Windows system.

Congratulations and good luck crocodoc team!

nice idea. imh(and completely uneducated)o the front page is perhaps a little more cluttered than it need be. there's two links to feedback (one via a menu), two to the faq, etc. you could probably get rid of either the grey bottom bar or the drop-down menu (perhaps even both if you tried really hard :o)

Congrats guys!<p>I met with the team a few hours after their launch on TC. Phone bleeped; they'd gotten their first paying customer! Exciting.