3D in my browser, rendered by my browser? I gotta get this.

At least that part of the Internet doesn’t include Twitter.

via TechCrunch

I ran into this puzzling CAPTCHA today. Although I clicked the refresh button to get a new image, I’ve been wondering whether I should have just typed in

\sum\limits^\infty_{m=1} \text{Itithe}

For those of you unfamiliar with LaTeX: that code is rendered as

My initial solution wasn't at all perfect, although it was still better than developing an algorithm from scratch to decipher timestamps into hour/minute/second objects and coding math.

Solution 1: MySQL's TIMESTAMPDIFF()

My first solution was to use a function native to MySQL, TIMESTAMPDIFF(). This function takes in three parameters: the unit of time in which the return value will be, and two datetime expressions.

To query whether a given timestamp was within 15 minutes (either +/-) of the current UTC timestamp, I used this statement:

SELECT ABS(TIMESTAMPDIFF(MINUTE, *********, UTC_TIMESTAMP())) < 15

It worked, but I wasn't satisfied with having an extra query just to verify a timestamp. Besides, I was concerned about speed; that one query takes about 0.004 seconds to execute, which was too much for me.

Then I discovered the native Date/Time extension, built-in on PHP 5.2 and above.

Solution 2: PHP's Date/Time classes

Note: although Date/Time has been in PHP since 5.2, I use a few methods added only in 5.3.0.

I found out that there are native PHP classes to represent dates and times, and intervals of time. This solution to checking differences is intuitive and object-oriented (although there are aliases of the OOP methods to do so procedurally). I'll talk about performance after the code.

First, I need to assert that both are in the same timezone. Since I'm using the current UTC timestamp as a reference (and have no idea whether the PHP application will run on a server where the default timezone is UTC), I need to set the timezone explicitly.

$utc = new DateTimeZone('UTC');

This object will be provided in the construction of the DateTime objects:

$now = new DateTime(null, $utc);
$given = new DateTime($yourTimestampHere, $utc);

If your timestamp uses a format that is non-standard, you may want to use DateTime::createFromFormat() instead.

Once we have two DateTime objects, the diff() method added in PHP 5.3.0 allows us to compare them:

$interval = $now->diff($given, true); // the second param means absolute difference

The return value of diff() is a DateInterval object and I use its properties to check that the difference is within 15 minutes: (this is the return statement of my difference-checking function)

// interval is 0 days, 0 hours and up to 15 minutes
return ($interval->days == 0 && $interval->h == 0 && $interval->i < 15);

Comparing Performance

I've found that the PHP code, despite its heavy use of objects, is about 4x as fast as the MySQL statement when called once during the execution of a script. When benchmarked, PHP is up to 9x faster than the MySQL query over 10000 iterations.

You can try the benchmark for yourself by loading the script at http://gist.github.com/556777 onto a PHP 5.3 server (note: you must also have a valid MySQL server configured in the script). Alternatively, the same code should run from the command line with the PHP interpreter.

Actual Deployment

Since adoption of PHP 5.3 has been slow, the Date/Time features used may not be available on the majority of production environments. The best way to deal with this is to check the PHP version at runtime and fall back to using MySQL when the version is older than 5.3.0.

if (version_compare(PHP_VERSION, '5.3.0') >= 0) {
	// PHP 5.3 code here
} else {
	// MySQL query here
	// The additional milliseconds of using the MySQL query is
	// an incentive to upgrade to PHP 5.3, especially in production!
}

(Since PHP is an interpreted language, older versions of PHP will not throw errors upon encountering unknown classes or methods inside the if block because it is never executed. To my knowledge, this behaviour is similar to using something like #if defined COMPILER_GCC in C—that block won't be executed on other compilers.)

Was this useful?

If you have other solutions, please comment and let me know! Feel free to comment if this helped you.

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]]> http://www.frederickding.com/posts/2010/08/php-mysql-time-differences-29927/feed/ 0 http://www.frederickding.com/posts/2010/07/tracking-the-thesiswp-matter-part-1-15859/ http://www.frederickding.com/posts/2010/07/tracking-the-thesiswp-matter-part-1-15859/#comments Thu, 15 Jul 2010 22:27:56 +0000 Frederick http://www.frederickding.com/?p=859 Continue reading →]]> Twitter erupted into argument last night in a fairly important battle for open source, the GPL, and WordPress. At the centre of the issue is a theme framework called Thesis which plugs into WordPress, sold with a restrictive license that does not permit redistribution.

Background

To provide some background, WordPress is a blogging platform licensed under the GPLv2, which specifically forces all copies of a work licensed under GPL, as well as derivative works, to be licensed under the GPL:

2. You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of it, thus forming a work based on the Program, and copy and distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1 above, provided that you also meet all of these conditions:

b) You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License.

The Free Software Foundation explicitly addresses plugins in its FAQ, making it clear that plugins that share data structures with the main program and make function calls to each other are derivative works to which the GPL also applies.

Themes were an uncertain matter prior to last year’s legal opinion from the Software Freedom Law Center, because these works from third parties certainly build on top of the WordPress platform, but often extend it with original artwork and programming. The analysis states clearly that:

… it is our opinion that the themes … contain elements that are derivative works of the WordPress software as well as elements that are potentially separate works. Specifically, the CSS files and material contained in the images directory of the “default” theme are works separate from the WordPress code. On the other hand, the PHP and HTML code that is intermingled with and operated on by PHP the code derives from the WordPress code.

Though almost all of the other theme foundries have adopted the GPL license for their PHP code, Chris Pearson stands nearly alone in asserting the GPL’s viral clause is inapplicable to him.

Initial controversy

On a live webcast with both Chris Pearson, the developer of Thesis, and Matt Mullenweg, the founder of Automattic and the WordPress project, Chris expressed his personal belief that the viral nature of the GPL goes against his personal freedoms and rights as a developer:

Chris: One, it would require me to make a concession about something that I don’t think that I need to concede to. Why should I change? I’m protected right now. My work is protected, which it should naturally be. I want to retain that right. If I go GPL then I am ceding that right. The number one issue for me is the personal concession that I would be making. Not of any real impact to my business. I don’t want to make that personal concession, because I don’t have to. Okay?

Note: it is possible, in terms of the GPL’s legality, that Chris never had the right to prevent users from redistributing his code; if the GPL applies, a developer cannot restrict redistribution.

Matt, on the other hand, debates to defend the applicability of the GPL to themes and plugins:

Matt: … If you build a module for Drupal or a module for WordPress or a theme for WordPress or anything like that, the license says that you do have to follow the GPL. I think that it’s just a matter of choosing the platform. If you disagree with the GPL, just use a platform that doesn’t have the GPL.

I listened to all of the long back-and-forth encounter, which was interesting until Chris began to assert his importance in the community:

Chris: I’ve done great things with WordPress since 2006. I have been arguably one of the top three most important figures in the history of WordPress. You, Mark Jaquith, and myself, are the three people that I am talking about.

Wait, what? A developer whose theme accounts for such a small fraction of WordPress’s usage puts himself in the top three figures in WordPress history? Jane Wells had a similar encounter with his ego.

» See the top 10 figures in WordPress history.

Analysis of this part of the controversy

The crux of the controversy is summarized by Chris’s sentences here:

Chris: I think the license, the GPL, is at odds with how I want to distribute my software and what I want it to be. I don’t think that it necessarily should inherit WordPress’ license when over 99% of the code within Thesis is Thesis code based on the actual process of building a website.

As someone who also contributes to open source software, I can certainly understand his sentiments on the ‘infectious’ nature of the GPL, which forces derivatives to inherit the GPL. It’s pretty hard to release projects under even more permissive licenses (for example, the Apache License), or in Chris’s case, extremely restrictive proprietary licenses, when so many open source projects enforce the GPL.

That really is, though, the purpose of the GPL: to keep open source open by prohibiting its inclusion in fully closed-source or proprietary (and restrictively-distributed) projects.

Are themes derivative works?

A lot of the open source advocates and lawyers seem to think so. After all, themes do things like:

<?php if ( get_comment_pages_count() > 1 && get_option( 'page_comments' ) ) : // Are there comments to navigate through? ?>

and

<?php if ( $wp_query->max_num_pages > 1 ) : ?>

which show clear integration with WordPress core functionality, much like a program in C would use the MySQL library with

mysql_real_connect()

Granted, the MySQL developers explicitly allow derivatives to use non-GPL licenses even though MySQL is GPL, through an additional license exception. The reason such an exception is necessary is that they understood that works which link to library code are derivatives.

The biggest problem is that the GPL was written with compiled code in mind, where derivatives would have to bundle the libraries (e.g. DLLs or SOs) in their releases. It’s sort of unclear for interpreted languages like PHP; is it an indication of derivation if one piece of code makes a function call to another?

It’s a bit unfortunate WordPress wasn’t licensed under GPLv3, because version 3 is much clearer about what it means to make a “modified version” or a work “based on” another work. It would also make for a better court case.

Caleb Jenkins (@CalebJenkins) iterates an interesting point: dependent != derivative. While I can see this being an interesting legal argument, it would have a lot of implications for open source in general, completely contrary to the way things have been operating.

If using a dependency is not being a derivative of that work, then it is conceivable that one can produce a C application which links to a GPL library (for example, the FOSS-licensed version of the MySQL client library) without bundling it and is released commercially under a closed-source, restrictive license. It is conceivable that a PHP program might require() WordPress to use its functionality, but simply not bundle WordPress, and would then avoid classification as a derivative.

I’m afraid I can’t entirely lend my support to that argument.

People have argued that making function calls to WordPress is akin to making system calls to the underlying operating system. Unfortunately, only GPLv3 is clear about distinguishing the system and compiler libraries from other general code; of course it doesn’t make sense that every application on the GPL Linux kernel must be open source. It’s a valid argument.

However, I agree more completely with Matt’s contention that a dependency = derivation when it gets to the point that a WordPress theme without WordPress will not work (just try loading any theme’s index.php in a browser) while WordPress without any themes will still function — it won’t show anything, but its backend is still fully functional.

Chris Pearson is wrong when he says “I think that what I’ve done stands alone outside of WordPress completely.” Interestingly, read the context of this quote:

Chris: How is that? I think that what I’ve done stands alone outside of WordPress completely. Why should I respect that? It’s not that I don’t respect WordPress. I do. I only build on WordPress and push people in its direction…

» Now here: Part 2 of Tracking the #thesiswp matter.

» Also read: Why WordPress Themes are Derivative of WordPress by Mark Jaquith (@markjaquith), a lead developer.

Technology

Windows has entered a new era

The decade—indeed, the century—began with Windows 2000, which I consider the first great version of the operating system. XP was the version that brought widespread success, and people just seem to refuse to upgrade; even today, almost three quarters of the computers on the net are on XP.

Despite the dismal failure of Windows Vista, it too brought change, which was followed by the enhancements of Windows 7. Compare my desktop today to the ugly screens of a decade ago:

Apple deserves an honourable mention for the ground-breaking work they’ve done on the Mac, elevating it to a newly trendy status.

Portable media players have completely changed

A decade ago, CD players and tape-based Walkmans were still the norm for ‘portable’ audio players. The iPod, launched in 2001, entirely changed the game. (I suppose this and the iPhone were the “comeback of the decade”.) It was no longer a device that played removable media. That was followed by thousands of other portable media players, to which the public generally refers inaccurately as “MP3 players”, reflecting the popularity of the 15-year-old MP3 format that has also been notorious for illegal file sharing (see below).

Cell phones and mobile devices have become ubiquitous

These devices used to be ugly, huge and heavy objects. As we move into 2010, cell phones have become more compact (usually this means thinner and lighter) and more powerful.

In China, about 739 million people have cell phones; that’s more than there are Internet users in China (which is about 360 million).

Mobile devices have become truly powerful. The iPhone, purportedly the most popular cell phone of 2009, is one of the biggest platforms for software development. And it has a touch screen. RIM’s BlackBerry, initially launched in 1999, is the most popular smartphone among business users.

Ordinary people begin to embrace ultra-portable netbooks for lightweight computing. The move to mobile is probably the most noticeable trend in end-user gadgetry in this decade.

Illegal file sharing has emerged

I don’t personally think of torrenting itself as a major problem, and it’s difficult to sympathize with big companies when the RIAA is being stupid. At the same time, it’s pretty easy to see how having hundreds of movies, TV shows and music albums distributed through torrents can take away from earnings for content producers. (Some dispute this and argue that those who pirate movies and TV shows are those who will purchase related memorabilia or boxed sets.)

In any case, it is virtually undisputed that new technologies have made distribution of such content much easier. In the previous decade, pretty much everyone was on dial-up Internet and only the students at universities with blazing connections were able to do it (think about the controversial Napster).

YouTube happened

YouTube and hundreds of other video sites have revolutionized the way we watch video. What used to be distributed on tapes and discs has moved onto the Internet in a way that allows ordinary folks—not videophiles or geeks—to share their multimedia with the world.

YouTube is also the icon of the so-called Web 2.0, which is oriented on user-generated content. (Flickr deserves an honourable mention for high quality pictures, just like Vimeo for high class videos.) It has made it possible for teens with crazy personalities and high-pitched edited voices, artists who post music videos, and crazy dancers who travel the world to reach out to a vast audience. Above all, it’s a legitimate new form of entertainment.

Following the success of online video, major content producers began to license music for online distribution (think Pandora or Last.fm, not to mention Internet radio) as well as movies and TV shows (think Hulu).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcLMH8pwusw

Open source projects have become worthy challengers

More than a decade ago, in 1996, the Apache HTTP server became the most popular web server in use; today it has surpassed 100 million web sites served.

Mozilla Firefox, having risen out of the ashes of the Netscape browser, although not the most widely used browser in the world (it’s 2nd), is apparently used by 32% of the market analyzed by StatCounter.

While I still use Microsoft Office, OpenOffice.org is also a notable alternative to the proprietary and dominant office suite, especially on non-Windows operating systems.

And then there are the programs used by geeks, like the Eclipse IDE or Aptana Studio, that are depended upon. (For all of you multimedia geeks, there are open source programs that do the job much better than their closed source counterparts; think about Handbrake, VLC…)

Businesses can now also depend on open source projects like Sugar CRM that build their revenue model around support and premium features.

News has moved onto the Web

My primary news source  now is the Web. Google News is one of my frequently visited sites, as it is a fantastic aggregator of headlines. I subscribe to e-mail summaries from the Toronto Star and breaking news alerts from the New York Times. ArsTechnica and TechCrunch are my sources for technology-related news, and occasionally Mashable and Neowin. Those pesky short links in the tweets of people I follow also make for engaging news articles.

Wikipedia happened

At the beginning of this decade, I was researching in books and print encyclopedias. The conventional wisdom today of “just Google it” didn’t work so well then. And certainly there wasn’t a Wikipedia for the wealth of human knowledge that it now contains.

Today, I can near-instantly read up on the history of Wal-Mart or read up on the Beslan school hostage crisis and its media coverage. If I truly need it, Wikipedia connects with Wikisource, the free library and Wikibooks where I can read Anna Karenina online (and I wouldn’t, because Constance Garnett’s translations are really lacking).

It’s truly amazing that the sum of all human knowledge can be collaboratively archived and updated through the likes of Wikipedia. Perhaps they need your support this holiday season!

What do you think? Did I miss out on something big that happened in this decade in the world of tech? Write a comment!

(I did, however, intentionally exclude social networking—i.e. Facebook—because I don’t think it’s been revolutionary in any major way. Sure, it has connected people in new ways, but it’s still relatively fresh and more time is needed to see where it goes. Similarly, I omitted touch because it hasn’t entirely caught on yet; tablet PCs were a dismal failure a few years ago and I haven’t yet seen their widespread success. Furthermore, I omitted cloud computing because it doesn’t directly affect a large number of people. Feel free to disagree with me in the comments.)

Worldly Matters

I think September 11, 2001 marked the start of a new era of warfare and international affairs. The terrorist attacks, inasmuch as they have been abused to justify ill-advised battles, did shock the world.

I recommend you head over to the Big Picture where you’ll be dazzled by splendid photos of this decade, including commentaries on the World Trade Center attacks and war. And dozens of other things like natural disasters (remember Katrina, or the Sichuan earthquake?), the Beijing Olympics, and terrorist attacks in London.

2009 has been a fantastic year. I look forward to the future.

Happy holidays and all the best in 2010!

What happened? Why do I feel like the Internet is collapsing? Aiya!

I’m really disappointed. I’d always had uptime of over 99.96% with the first company and amazing pricing (okay, now that they’re shutting down I can reveal that I’ve been using ResellerScene). I used their reseller services to host over a dozen web sites on independent cPanel accounts.

(Begin nerdy section)
Earlier this month, they moved to new server setups; apparently the new servers are virtualized—it’s pretty obvious when WHM says the server runs on Xen. Code that had worked for years broke down because of new PHP security settings, misconfiguration of PHP as an Apache module, and file permission errors. Their help desk was really helpful because they quickly moved to PHP-CGI, which helped with permission errors and custom configuration, but which broke more things as a result of php_flag and php_value declarations in .htaccess files.
(End nerdy section)

Those were the first signs of trouble.

I didn’t immediately switch hosts. I had been a customer for more than 2 years and support was always quick and helpful. Then there were the awesome discounts I’ve been enjoying because I signed up as customer #6, before prices went up.

Today, I got a sad e-mail which began as follows:

I regret to inform you that due to financial instability, ResellerScene LLC will be going out of business. Due to the economic downturn, ResellerScene operations have greatly slowed down and it no longer seems viable for ResellerScene to continue.

I now have just over a month to migrate my dozen sites (and client sites) to some new host. Some I can move to DreamHost, but I’ll need to find another cPanel reseller service for some of the client sites.

*sigh*. Life sucks.

As for DreamHost, their services are awesome: great balance of features and price. Over the past year, I’ve been able to set up my custom-compiled PHP installation, use up gigabytes of storage and run important sites without much downtime. It’s a service I’d recommend to anyone… seriously! But I can’t get over the fact that they’ve had so many network failures in the past few days.

It’s not like DreamHost’s shutting down. Yet. But the downtime makes me wary of migrating my old sites to DreamHost, at least until they resolve these issues.

Now I have a headache. Thinking about migrating a dozen sites without breaking anything. Gotta go drink some tea… listen to some music… relax. Relax, relax, relax!

What do I do?!

I need your input. Let me know (@FrederickDing) of any (reliable!) and reasonably-priced web hosts with good reputations. Most importantly, I need to find a place where I can host client sites and provide them with control panel access.

I’ll be giving scores based on these factors:

• Web site design / usability
• Compatibility
• Converted appearance
• Embeds

In case you’re wondering, these 4 document publishing services are Docstoc, edocr, Issuu and Scribd. Of these, Scribd and Docstoc are likely the best known and the best established.

I should give a warning for those on low bandwidth connections: this is a screenshot/media-heavy post.

Web site

First impressions really matter (see Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, by Malcolm Gladwell), so I find the appearance of the home page of such a site very important. In addition to these first impressions, I want a site that is navigable on which I can do common actions (uploading, viewing, sharing) without hunting for those functions.

edocr has, to be honest, a rather ugly start page. It doesn’t have a modern, Web 2.0 feel, nor does it feel even minutely ‘slick’. If I didn’t know that it was a document publishing site, visiting the site doesn’t make it immediately obvious. Examples of documents are hidden below the fold. The home page seems, to be honest, very hideous.

edocr

At least the document viewing page is usable.

Rating:

Scribd has a well designed and uncluttered site. The home page makes it clear what the service is all about, and the document viewing page is neatly laid out. The common actions I would want to take on a document (sharing, viewing, commenting) are easily accessible. The only concern I have is that the area allotted to the document file itself is too small.

Scribd's beautiful home page

Rating:

Docstoc has a clean site that, although not as intuitive as Scribd’s, is still very navigable and usable. If Scribd is the YouTube of documents, then Docstoc would be blip.tv; it targets professionals and business documents as opposed to files from everyone (not that the common person can’t use it). Hence, there are links all over the site for “Premier Documents”, “Docstore”, and making money from documents.

Docstoc

What I love most about this site is the much larger reading area on any document viewing page. Docstoc seems to be less focused on user interaction (as in comments) and much more on the original content itself, but it is exactly this that makes it easy to download files and actually use the content.

Docstoc

Rating:

Issuu takes a completely different approach, one that targets magazines and professional publications; its site reflects this niche. That’s why its site is so breathtakingly beautiful! I’ve been very impressed by Issuu’s clean, aesthetics-oriented look, and viewing a document is such an intuitive experience that this service deserves a 5/5 for its site.

Issuu has a breathtaking home page

Viewing a document on Issuu feels like flipping pages; it

Issuu deserves to win in this category.

Rating:

I understand that you didn’t come here for a review of their respective Web sites, so let’s move on to document compatibility.

Compatibility

Each service here is at a different level of compatibility.

edocr, regrettably, supports only “.txt, .doc and .pdf formats”. This severely limits its scope. However, nearly everyone nowadays, even those without Adobe Acrobat, can make a PDF out of their documents. OpenOffice.org contains integrated PDF capabilities, as does Office 2007, and free tools like PrimoPDF exist. I suppose that if you have this capability of producing PDF documents, these limited file formats might not be an issue.

Rating:

Scribd seems to be compatible with the most formats. Their support page says that the service supports PDFs, PostScript (wow, for all those publishers), Microsoft Office files (pre-2007 .doc/.xls/.ppt as well as the newer Office XML .docx/.xlsx/.pptx), all of the OpenDocument formats, in addition to plain text and RTF files. Just about any kind of file I would think of uploading is supported.

Rating:

Docstoc, unfortunately, seems to be very Microsoft Office-centric. It supports “doc, xls, ppt, pps, pdf, rtf, txt, docx, xlsx, ppts”, but none of the OpenDocument formats. That’s not so great.

Rating:

Issuu seems to support the common formats. PDF files, “DOC, PPT, ODT, WPD, SXW, RTF, ODP, and SXI” are allowed; these encompass the common word processing formats from Microsoft Office, OpenOffice.org, StarOffice and WordPerfect in addition to the slideshows. This is not much better than Docstoc, of course, but the 100 MB limit is simply awesome; it allows for professional magazines and publications that contain a lot of high quality images.

Rating:

In any case, Scribd wins hands down in this category; no other service accepts as many formats for documents — not to mention the remarkable spreadsheet and slideshow support.

Converted Appearance

The only way to evaluate this is to upload the same file to all of the four sites and qualitatively rank the conversions. (To make this easier for you to compare, I’ve embedded a file from each service in the Embeds section following this one.) For diversity, I tried a Microsoft Word document and a PDF document with each service.

The Word document that all of the services had trouble with

I thought that this document would convert well, but it seems fonts are an issue. The formula sheet is below.

The formula sheet PDF file

The PDF (a formula sheet with equations) was converted nearly perfectly with every service. After all, that is what the format was designed to do: preserve appearance and reproducibility for converting to other media (i.e. print).

edocr apparently uses Macromedia/Adobe FlashPaper, which is a versatile format that preserves appearance in a portable Flash (.swf) file. (Actually, all of the sites use Flash, but only FlashPaper can be saved locally or relocated to your own server.) Since it’s generated usually by printing to the software, the appearance of a document is preserved just as it would be if one printed a file to a PDF driver.

The conversions from edocr preserve the original appearance to a reasonable extent.

Rating:

Scribd uses its own iPaper format, and converted the PDF perfectly (as expected) but fumbled with the Word document. I suppose that this comes only from the fact that I used a non-standard font (Adobe Garamond) in the file; embedding it also didn’t help. Aside from the fact that the typeface was switched to what looks like Bitstream Vera (or DejaVu) Sans, the overall formatting was preserved. (Take a look here.) 5/5 for the PDF and 2.5/5 for the Word document makes…

Rating:

Issuu took a long time to convert my files, but the results were beautiful. Although it didn’t use the embedded font in the Word document, it at least recognized that the font was a serif typeface, and substituted something that looks like Times. The result still stays on one page. The formula sheet was beautiful, too.

Rating:

Docstoc took an unreasonable amount of time to do a little amount of work, and the result doesn’t look all that amazing. It’s okay for usual business documents (letters, contracts, and the sort) but I don’t recommend using it for anything that is more complex.

Rating:

The winner, by a close call, is Issuu. It simply produces beautiful documents.

Embeds

This isn’t an area in which I want to give ratings (for appearance), because the embedded player could change at any time. However, some are easier to embed than others (I have written a plugin for embedding Scribd documents, and WordPress 2.9 will support automatic embeds from some sources) and some make the process complicated. In any case, I’ll let you judge for yourself.

Edocr has a standard FlashPaper look. It looks like this:

Docstoc has its own look, which seems professional enough.

Scribd has changed their embedded player over the years; originally they used FlashPaper as well, but since then there have been at least two generations of new designs.

Issuu has to be my personal favourite because the player is so beautiful. There are also various styles of embeds, and the one below is a non-traditional, nearly chrome-less interface.

I personally prefer Issuu’s look, followed by Scribd, but this is a matter of personal opinion. If your main intention is use on a professional site, such as for a business organization, any of the embeds will do.

Conclusion

My top two favourites are Issuu and Scribd. For general business use, Scribd is likely the best choice, since a huge variety of formats are supported (don’t waste time converting to an intermediate format) for upload and the conversion process takes seconds.

Any comments or alternative sites that I haven’t explored?

Free 2GB cloud storage

As a free user, you get 2 GB of space to start, and files in those 2 GB will be synced not only to your other computers, but also to the cloud. You can access those files anywhere you can open up a browser to the Dropbox Web site, and you can even share links to files in your Public folder to help collaboration with others.

PCs, Macs, Linux and the iPhone

The desktop software works on PCs, Macs and Linux machines; updates with great improvements come out often. For example, some of the recent versions of the software added LAN syncing, which speeds up the sharing of files between computers on the same network by connecting directly to one another instead of uploading and downloading from their servers in the cloud. Moreover, there’s now a Dropbox app for the iPhone that syncs your files on the go.

Free extra 250 MB

Try it out for free; there’s no cost to getting started. You can get a free account (2 GB) with 250 MB as a gift from me for signing up. Reliable sync and backup has never been easier.