Adobe Featured Blogs News, views and conversations

Adobe Photoshop.com Mobile for Android is now available as a free download in all countries with Android Market. Based on customer feedback, this release also includes improvements to the user experience around launching and exiting the application. Photoshop.com Mobile for Android optimizes the camera-phone experience by offering users quick access to their photos with easy editing and sharing. The application features basic editing tools like crop and rotate, color adjustments and a photo browser that makes it simple to maneuver through photos. In addition, users have the ability to view their entire online collection of photos from Photoshop.com and share those images from their phone via email.

The application is initially available in English only. For more information, visit: http://mobile.photoshop.com/android. In support of this update, Photoshop.com will be available on Twitter to answer questions and share feedback. To join the conversation, follow @photoshopdotcom on Twitter and use the hashtag #PSdroid.

We are excited to introduce the newest version of Acrobat.com. The service now features:

• Easily share files: You can now work together across organizations without the hassle of using ftp servers or worrying about e-mailing large files.
• Access anywhere, anytime: Any Internet-connected computer or supported smartphone gives you real-time access to all of their files on Acrobat.com.
• Real-time collaboration: You can easily conduct Web meetings from Macs or PCs with Adobe ConnectNow.
• Enhanced productivity: With applications such as Adobe Buzzword®, you can easily work together to co-author and obtain feedback on documents, without the need for multiple versions.

Check out the new Acrobat.com here and get updates and feedback firsthand from the Acrobat.com team at: http://blogs.adobe.com/acom/

Our XD team has a great site, INSPIRE, that if you haven't bookmarked or RSS'ed, I highly recommend you do. Videos, articles, thought pieces, how-tos and conversations about creating great user experiences.

In the following interview, Tim O'Reilly - publisher, event maker, writer et al - talks with Michael Gough (VP of Experience Design at Adobe) about publishing, from Twitter to TechCrunch and beyond. Well worth a listen.

Click the image to watch the video

Today I appeared on CNBC's Power Lunch along with Marissa Mayer of Google to discuss trends in online search as retailers ramp up for the holiday season. One of the key points I wanted to convey is that search is overhyped. What do I mean by that? Search gets credited with driving sales for more than it actually does. This occurs because search is relatively easy to buy and measure. However, search reflects the intent of the consumer, meaning that OTHER channels have helped influence that intent BEFORE the consumer uses Google, or any other search engine for that matter. Retailers have discovered that social media and mobile can be an effective way to have a dialogue and interaction with consumers that influences the intent behind an Internet search. For example:

• 83% of major brands have a Facebook page (see Sears and Gap) and many are using Facebook pages to communicate current and upcoming holiday specials.
• For the first time, brands are using Twitter to disseminate coupons and communicate specials (see Sephora and Toys RUs). Twitter wasn't on any retailer's radar screen 12 months ago.
• Brands are using iPhone applications to facilitate easier mobile shopping and gift finding (Walmart and Target are good examples).

As Omniture helps customers better understand how social media, mobile, video and other channels are affecting the purchase cycle, our customers are doing a better job of allocating their marketing budgets and resources. In other words, they are doing a lot more to drive conversion and sales than just giving money to Google.

Which brings me to a topic we didn't have time to discuss on today's segment: the game is changing. If you look at online marketing in terms of "innings," we are currently in the top of the third inning. The first inning was dominated by Yahoo! The second inning went to Google. And while Google will be important in the third inning, I don't believe it will be dominated by a single vendor. I think this third inning will field multiple significant players, including Facebook, Twitter, the iPhone and, of course, Adobe.

Beta versions of Flash Player 10.1 and Adobe AIR 2 are available now on Adobe Labs for Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems. Flash Player 10.1 is also available for x86-based netbooks, and expected to be available across a broad spectrum of smartphones and other Internet-connected devices in 2010.

These beta releases are mainly for developers to start working with the new features and ensure already-existing content works with the new runtimes, but other people are welcome to download and try them as well. Just be sure to read the release notes (for AIR 2 here; and Flash Player 10.1 notes here) before installing.

The Flash Platform blog has more about the news, including a rundown of multi-touch capabilities and what it means now that there is hardware acceleration of H.264 video on supported Windows PCs and x86-based netbooks. Also, the press release has further details including loads of links.

And check out Kevin Lynch demoing new features of AIR 2 and multi-touch from the day one MAX 09 keynote, below.

As we discussed here in the past few weeks, the 2009 Adobe Government Assembly took place on November 4 in Washington D.C. The one-day conference focused on the next generation of government, with discussion of transparency, collaboration and citizen participation.

The program included a keynote from Cokie Roberts of ABC News and NPR, as well as presentations from several industry and government executives. Among them was Adobe's Rob Tarkoff, who provided an industry perspective on Open Government. You can watch Rob's speech, as well as a Blue Ribbon panel that included former White House Press Secretary Dee Dee Myers and representatives from the U.S. Departments of Homeland Security and Defense, on the Adobe Government Assembly event site.

Also, check out this brief video that captures some of the highlights from the event and featured speakers.

Federal News Radio ran a piece on the event with some interesting sound bites from different presenters, and Medill News Service posted a column on the conference, as well.

Interested in keeping current with Adobe in the Government market? Follow the team on Twitter at: @AdobeGov.

Photo via http://www.adobegovernmentassembly.com/

Adobe and RIM have exciting news for you, straight from the 2009 BlackBerry Developer conference. The two companies expanded their collaboration today - Adobe will deliver support for BlackBerry Smartphones within Adobe Creative Suite, and RIM will incorporate Flash Platform into the BlackBerry Platform.

What does this mean for all the creative professionals and application developers out there? You will now be able to use the Adobe Flash Platform technology and Adobe Creative Suite content development and authoring tools to easily create rich content and application experiences for BlackBerry smartphones. Read more about this exciting new development in the press release, and get more of an inside scoop in this blog post by our Flash Platform Evangelist, Mark Doherty.

We're still coming down from the high of launching Photoshop.com Mobile for iPhone a few weeks ago. Fans helped the app skyrocket to one of the "Top Free" applications on the Apple mobile platform and we couldn't be happier with over 2 million downloads to date. Today, we're extending image editing capabilities to users of the Google Mobile operating system. The Android application was designed to equip consumers with quick and easy image-editing tools, color adjustments and instant photo-sharing capabilities. Photoshop.com Mobile optimizes the camera-phone experience by allowing users to browse for their photos online and on their phone, directly from the application. The application is free and available via the Android Market. More information on Photoshop.com Mobile for Android can be found at http://mobile.photoshop.com/android. The Photoshop.com Mobile team is online now waiting to respond to your feedback, questions and provide the latest news via Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/photoshopdotcom) or Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/photoshopdotcom). To join the conversation, follow @photoshopdotcom on Twitter and use the hashtag #PSdroid.

Rob Tarkoff, SVP and GM of the Business Productivity Business Unit, addressed the Enterprise community on November 3rd at the Enterprise 2.0 conference in San Francisco. The conference explores the integration of Web 2.0 and social business technologies in the enterprise.

In his keynote address "The Customer-Driven Enterprise," Rob challenged the community with how enterprise software today is failing to deliver engaging customer experiences. He talked about Adobe's vision for transforming customer interactions and presented a healthcare vision demo to make this real for the audience.

Needless to say, Rob gave the entire community something to think about. Watch the replay to get the scoop!

Photo from Enterprise 2.0 Flickr account

Optical character recognition (OCR). It may not be among the most well-known capabilities of Acrobat, but it's certainly a powerful one. Need your PDF files to be searchable when they originated from paper or an already electronic "image" of a document? Check out the Acrobat product management team's blog and this post from Aman Nagpal, Acrobat Product Manager, to learn how.