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The views expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Adobe Systems Incorporated.
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March 27, 2008
Web conference for free & share big files on Adobe's dime
Alongside Photoshop Express, Adobe has been quietly and vigorously building out some interesting online collaboration and sharing tools. ("Watch Out - Adobe Is Slowly Building an Online Empire," says ReadWriteWeb.) Here are a pair that can help you work with colleagues and clients--for free.
- "Brio" is the codename for the next version of Adobe Acrobat Connect (once known as Breeze), the screen/voice/document-sharing system that runs through the Flash Player. Brio lets you
collaborate in real time with up to two partners. Terry White writes,
The only catch is that Adobe hopes that by trying this FREE version out, you’ll get so hooked that you’ll want more and you’ll want to step up to the full version of Connect Pro for your business or organization to get rid of the limits. However, you’re not obligated to do so. So you have nothing to lose. Account setup is painless and if you already have an Adobe ID, it takes about 1 minute to set up your BRIO account.
- "Share" is a free Web-based service that allows you to share, publish and organize documents easily. According to the Adobe Labs site,
On Entrepreneur.com photographer Danya Henninger says, "We use it to send large files to clients. We can deliver the product online. I just got into the Adobe Share beta. It worked out perfectly."Each document you upload to your Share account is assigned a unique website address. To share a document with someone, select the document you want to share, enter the person’s email address and an optional message, and set whether the files will be publicly accessible or restricted only to the recipients. Recipients will get an email with a link they can click on to download the document. You can also link to your documents, or embed rich Flash® previews on your own website, blog or wiki.
Comments
Ya, people fall out of their seats when I show them Brio.
I've been eagerly anticipating this release and am glad to see it going live but I have a problem with the legaleeze. I have to take serious issue with this segment of the terms of usage:
"8. Use of Your Content.
a. Adobe does not claim ownership of Your Content. However, with respect to Your Content that you submit or make available for inclusion on publicly accessible areas of the Services, you grant Adobe a worldwide, royalty-free, nonexclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, and fully sublicensable license to use, distribute, derive revenue or other remuneration from, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, publicly perform and publicly display such Content (in whole or in part) and to incorporate such Content into other Materials or works in any format or medium now known or later developed."
First, I know that Adobe didn't invent this. Much of the language is on Yahoo's (Flickr.com) Terms of Usage which are definitely kinder and gentler Yahoo qualifies it with: "...solely for the purposes of providing and promoting the specific Yahoo! Group to which such Content was submitted or made available. This license exists only for as long as you elect to continue to include such Content on the Service and will terminate at the time you remove or Yahoo! removes such Content from the Service."
I doubt I'm alone in having concerns over Adobe's terms perpetual, irrevocable, and fully sublicensable license.
-je
Oh, thank God Adobe is finally merging the svelte Acrobat technology to the speedy Flash platform.
[The technology has very little to do with Acrobat besides the name; that is, it runs through the Flash Player. I take it you've never tried it and are commenting without having done so. --J.]
I assume Brio will require a Quad Xeon to run on a Mac, and then only in some sort of reduced functionality mode?
[Yes, it's all an elaborate conspiracy to screw Mac users. Always is! --J.]
[Yes, it's all an elaborate conspiracy to screw Mac users. Always is! --J.]
one would assume so, given the complete lack of performance on Flash for...ever? :)
After my negative feedback about Photoshop Express, I thought I'd give a positive shout-out to Brio. It's an amazing piece of work and you all should be proud of it.
[Cool. :-) --J.]
Share is great - but we need Adobe to go one step beyond. Instead of sending a download link for ' each document', wouldn't it be wonderful to send a link to a shared folder instead? In addition, users would need a better way to mange multiple iterations of the same document i.e., a document version control feature which allows users to archive older documents in a hierarchical-stacked order.
Has anyone ever used a product like LIVELINK by Open Text? http://www.opentext.com