Acrobat 9 (with Flash) and Acrobat.com Launch…

Last October we wrote about how Adobe was entering the world of online word processing by acquiring a company called Virtual Ubiquity who made an online word processor called Buzzword. At the time we learned that eventually Adobe would be integrating the service (built upon Adobe’s Flash platform using Adobe Flex) into a new service which we thought would be called Adobe Share, an online office suite. As it turns out, the service isn’t called Adobe Share, but it has launched.

Adobe has decided to go under the name of Acrobat.com, a place they say is used to “create and share documents, communicate in real time, and simplify working with others.”

Here’s what you can do with Acrobat.com:

• Create Documents using Buzzword (collaborate with others)
  
• Create PDF Files online (up to five)
  
• Share Documents on the web (very simple to do)
• ConnectNow – web conferencing, chat, share screens
• My Files – manage and organize your files

A quick tour is available (found at Acrobat.com) and they walk you through everything that they offer. It all looks pretty slick, and they certainly did a great job with making the aesthetics of it easy on the eyes. One of the things we like best is the option to create PDF’s online right from Acrobat.com. You can choose to convert a file from Acrobat.com or one from your computer in which case you can browse for it. Once you select the file, you click “Create PDF” and it will be created for you.

Unfortunately Adobe limits you to only five PDF’s that you can create which hardly seems like anything and is really disappointing. They’d be smart if they increased the number of PDF files someone could create, but just put a watermark on the bottom of every page saying that it was created at Adobe.com. You can’t beat free advertising!

Other than the PDF limitation, there really isn’t anything we can complain about quite yet. Their “ConnectNow” feature is amazing and allows users to share screens, chat, leave notes, and use audio and video to conduct meetings online with up to three people (hopefully more in the future).

Overall we give Adobe two thumbs-up for the work they’ve done on Acrobat.com and for entering the competition with Google Docs, Zoho, and Microsoft Office Live Workspace, just to name a few. It’s free to everybody with a few limitations, but in the future they plan to offer a version that would suit business users, in which case it would cost. Oh, and one last note. Acrobat 9 is now with flash (big news!) and has just been released although there is no Acrobat 9 Reader yet.

Thanks for the tip Omar and Radu!