It’s been 2 years since the Virtual Ubiquity team joined Adobe and Acrobat.com. And we’re marking the anniversary with our most ambitious release to date. Adobe veterans and the former Virtual Ubiquity team have brought their technologies together to merge our online services into a much more cohesive whole. And we think you’ll be pleased with the result. We’re bringing it all together.
You may have seen some early press about our new Acrobat.com release. The team will be taking down Buzzword, Presentations and Tables at 6:00 PM Eastern time today (Friday, 11/20/09.) Share and CreatePDF will go offline at 8:00 PM Eastern time. ConnectNow will be up and running throughout the update window. All of the services will be up and running again by 11:00 PM Eastern time and open for business.
The new look and changes in Acrobat.com are starting to get some good reviews. We invite you to come and check it out later today.
Adobe Acrobat.com Ideas & BrightIdea are finalists in the Forrester Groundswell Awards. We’re delighted on several levels. The Ideas site has contributed a lot of great ideas, inspiration and the site has helped us in setting priorities for the upcoming release of Acrobat.com. And, it’s great to be voted a finalist for the Forrester Research award. The Acrobat.com Ideas site is powered by Brightidea’s Webstorm technology.
In a conversation with one of the Adobe staff in the UK, an inspiring although not surprising story was told. He works frequently with a number of departments in the UK Government, and knows quite well that it is typically a long process when updating any sort of policy or procedure, even for minor updates. And so, here’s the story… and perhaps a good example for others who may find themselves in the same position.
Adobe made some recent changes which resulted in a decline in customer service quality. We know that some of you have been impacted as you have contacted us via our forums, feedback email alias, and twitter. The product team is working hard to make sure your issues get resolved. We are responding to you directly and escalating your issues as necessary. We are also working closely with the support team to improve the quality of support you receive.
We wanted to share a letter from the VP of Customer Service, acknowledging and apologizing for the situation at hand.
Open Letter to Adobe Customers
Recently, however, our customers have experienced a level of service that is inconsistent with what they expect and deserve. This is unacceptable to us and we sincerely apologize for the inconvenience this has caused some of our customers. We are working diligently – in fact, teams are working around the clock – to resolve these issues. I’d like to thank all our customers who are sharing feedback and giving us the opportunity to respond. We appreciate your loyalty, support and willingness to make your concerns heard.
As a student at City College in San Francisco over the summer, I used Buzzword to complete my class essays. I have to confess that it’s a given that I would, since I’m also Community Manager for Acrobat.com. As many of us students will be returning to class in the coming weeks, I want to encourage you all to give Buzzword a try. What I found is that Buzzword so easy to use and elegant, it quite literally makes working on assignments more fun.
For instance, when approaching a topic, I have a jumbled buzz of ideas in my head that I want to capture, and translating the thoughts into a coherent report is easier with Buzzword. Buzzword’s comment feature allows me to jump to the side of the current sentence to add a note to myself – a nice place holder to remind me to look up a fact or research an example – without interrupting the flow of the writing. Here’s a screenshot of what I mean:
After reading the rough draft, the comment feature also comes in handy for additional thoughts such as what I need to add, where it’s best to add it, what I should consider deleting, and what I need to think about some more before committing it in my report. It’s a much quicker – and also more tree friendly – process vs. printing out a copy and then hand writing comments.
Do you provide professional services to clients or others outside your company?
If your work involves managing projects and exchanging files with clients or others outside your company, then you’re invited to participate in a paid research interview. Documents you exchange may include contracts, legal documents, proposals, offer letters, marketing collateral, project plans, product documentation, and various kinds of agreements (e.g., financial, non-disclosure, etc.). You may work with consumers or businesses of any size.
During each interview, participants will discuss the process for interacting with external parties and the kinds of documents that they exchange. Participants will also evaluate some new product ideas and provide their opinions about them. Interviews will be done individually, not in groups.
We expect this to be an interesting, low-stress opportunity to talk about how you do your work and help evaluate some product ideas.
Study details:
Format: Phone or in-person conversation
Compensation: $100
When: 1.5 hours, Aug 24-31, 2009
If you are interested in participating, please click the link below and fill out our screener.
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=kZDmO4Qlf5rKWD5tDwRKvw_3d_3d
**Participants will NOT be asked to disclose any confidential information.**
If the study is a good match, we will contact you by phone or email to schedule a time.
Thank you for your interest!
Acrobat.com Team
Meet Erik Larson the visionary leader behind Acrobat.com. We at Adobe have embraced Acrobat.com because it makes us more competitive and just makes work more enjoyable. Erik will share how Acrobat.com provides a fundamentally different and better way to work through stories and real-world examples. Come hear about the future of Acrobat.com and the vision behind the product. This will be an interactive session; Bring your questions and thoughts.
Details:
Date: Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Time: 12-1pm PDT
Meeting URL: http://my.adobe.acrobat.com/comseminars
No registration required. Just click on the URL above or enter it into your browser. We’ll open the room 15 minutes prior to the event.
Today we take a big step towards realizing our vision of a new way to work on Acrobat.com.
Today we end the public beta for Acrobat.com. We launch Acrobat.com Premium subscriptions for more intensive business use (yes, the free version of the service is still available, and still free 
. And we give a look into the future of Acrobat.com for the coming year, starting with the unveiling of our spreadsheet product, Acrobat.com Tables, on our Labs website. Lots of news! Oh, plus two weeks ago we released Acrobat.com Presentations.
We’re busy because our customers are busy.
Announcing today – Tables on Acrobat.com Labs. Tables is the most recent addition to Acrobat.com, and joins Presentations and Buzzword. And it’s pretty amazing, if we do say so ourselves. Check it out: http://labs.acrobat.com. And don’t miss the Crash Course. You’ll see what we mean when you open your first table.
