ARena

A couple of big news items from the Acrobat team here at Adobe.

First up, we announced today the forthcoming introduction of Acrobat 9.  You can read the press release here, but a few highlights include:

• Deep support for Adobe Flash technology within PDFs - enabling the inclusion of Flash video and .swf files in PDF documents
• Tighter real-time collaboration capabilities
• PDF Portfolios, the ability to assemble multiple media types, such as documents, video, audio, and even 3D objects, into one, compressed PDF file.
  

Next up, The Acrobat team at Adobe have also announced the public beta of Acrobat.com. Acrobat.com is a "a suite of hosted services available as free public beta that puts communication, productivity, and collaboration tools close at hand within a Web browse."

You can read the press release here, but again a few highlights include:

• Adobe Buzzword, a Web-based word processor that makes it easy to co-author and share documents for comment and review, creating high-quality print results
• Adobe ConnectNow, a personal Web conferencing service that includes desktop sharing, video and voice conferencing and integrated chat
• Centralized online file sharing with access controls and online PDF conversion
• Developer APIs for real-time collaboration, file sharing and conversion

However, like all these things, it's much better to use it than read it - so go to acrobat.com, sign-up and check it out.

Posted by Timothy Brook at 08:33 PM | Permalink

Just a VERY quick entry to let you all know that I have moved from the UK to the USA.  I'm still with Adobe - and still in Analyst Relations, but now I'm based in San Jose, not Stockley Park.

My new roles is looking after Analyst Relations around the LiveCycle products and solutions, but I'll still be using ARena to keep you informed on all areas of Adobe's business.

More soon

Posted by Timothy Brook at 12:36 AM | Permalink

Great news that Kevin Lynch has been named Adobe Chief Technology Officer. As Shantanu says in the press release “Kevin has made a tremendous impact expanding our technology vision during his time at Adobe...Kevin’s insights and passion for rich Internet applications, and what they signify for the future of software across operating systems and devices, will help enable the next generation of innovation for our customers.”
You can read the whole press release here: http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/pressroom/pressreleases/200802/020508KevinLynchCTO.html
Congratulations to Kevin.

Posted by Timothy Brook at 08:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Adobe's mission is to revolutionize how the world engages with ideas and information. For businesses and organizations, engaging customers has never been more critical to their bottom line.  In December 2007 we sponsored a report by the Economist Intelligence Unit into the importance of engagement in the public sector.  According to the press release "eight out of 10 government executives see constituent engagement as important to their agency’s success going forward. Most executives also acknowledge that failure to engage with citizens can hurt an agency’s ability to stay on budget and fulfill its mission." Read the full press release here, or keep up with Adobe's Engagement theme here.

Posted by Timothy Brook at 11:32 AM | Permalink

A little late I know, but here's a round-up of the Adobe releases from December 2007

Flash news:

First up some news about developments in the Flash world. At the beginning of December we announced Flash Media Server 3 which "offers streaming media and real-time communication capabilities to the broadest possible audience. With industry standard H.264 video capabilities and High Efficiency AAC (HE-AAC) audio support, Adobe Flash Media Server 3 provides content owners with increased protection for streaming high quality video and allows for the delivery of interactive media applications that work consistently across multiple browsers and operating systems." Read the details here.

To tie in with this announcement, Adobe also announced that the latest version of Flash Player 9 (available to download here) now includes H.264 standard video support. Essentially that means that your PC can be a HiDef media player. As Kevin says: "The inclusion of industry standard H.264 support in Adobe Flash Player, Adobe AIR, the Adobe Creative Suite® product line and Adobe Flash Media Server 3 brings new HD capabilities to millions of Flash developers and a new generation of viewers who are turning to the Web as the place to find their favorite shows and video content." Read the full release here.

RIA news:

NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) has announced that they plan to adopt Flex and LiveCycle Data Services for its new Mission Support System.  Read the release here. According to NATO: "Adobe Flex is accepted worldwide and provides us with a new opportunity to automate the flight preparation process and save valuable time. It goes without saying that it is crucial for the NATO crew to have access to relevant information. The visual electronic maps present all the information in an intuitive manner which makes the MSS very user-friendly."

Still on the RIA theme, Adobe has also announced plans to open source elements of LiveCycle Data Services. Essentially we have released the source code for remoting and messaging technologies under a new open source product named BlazeDS. Read the release here, or access the code here. For more information on Adobe's approach to Open Source, go here.

Corporate news:

Adobe announced Q4 (and FY07) financial results on December 17th - for the first time breaking the $3b per annum revenue milestone.  Read the release here.  For completeness, we also announced the Adobe Board of Directors has approved a 30 million share increase to the stock repurchase program announced in April 2007. Read about that here.

Posted by Timothy Brook at 11:22 AM | Permalink