Spartacus of Acrobat

Late last week, Apple announced the release of Apple OSX Leopard for its computers. Nice, I've had a look and must get myself a copy. It was also nice to watch the guided tour and see that the first thing they did was to view and download a PDF document, well done Apple, kudos to you.

On that subject, Adobe has moved quickly to make sure our products work on this cool new operating system. Thanks to close collaboration between Adobe and Apple, most of the Creative Suite 3 (CS3) applications and associated technologies, such as Adobe Bridge CS3, Version Cue CS3, and Device Central CS3, are compatible with Mac OS X Leopard without requiring additional updates.

However, the following CS3 applications will require updates for full compatibility with Leopard: Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional and our professional video applications, including Adobe Premiere Pro CS3, After Effects CS3 Professional, Encore CS3, and Soundbooth CS3.

We expect to publish free Leopard compatibility updates for the video applications in December 2007 and for Acrobat 8 Professional and Adobe Reader 8 in January 2008.

For more information, take a look at the FAQ we have produced, it can be found here.....

http://www.adobe.com/go/leopardfaq

Hope this helps.....

Steve

Posted by Steve Partridge at 08:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (26)

FYI my little chums, there has been an update released for Acrobat. It addresses recent vulnerabilities that have been identified in Adobe Reader and Acrobat that could allow an attacker who successfully exploits these vulnerabilities to take control of the affected system.

This issue only affects customers on Windows XP with Internet Explorer 7 installed. A malicious file must be loaded in Adobe Reader or Acrobat by the end user for an attacker to exploit these vulnerabilities. It is recommended that affected users update to Adobe Reader 8.1.1 or Acrobat 8.1.1.

Read more about this here....

http://www.adobe.com/support/security/bulletins/apsb07-18.html

Posted by Steve Partridge at 10:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Bugger!!

Oh well, they probably just about deserved to win, well done the Boks!

Time for bed I think!

Posted by Steve Partridge at 11:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Just a quickkie, for those in Paris looking for tickets, there is still hope...

It seems that for some reason, some Kiwis have tickets available.......

Posted by Steve Partridge at 03:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

HERE WE GO THEN

Phil Vickery, "Raging Bull" looking pretty focused, I just wish he was still at Gloucester. Anyway, 9 hours to go and the nerves have already set in.

The upside is that England go into the World Cup Final (for my American friends, this is like a World Series, but we invite teams from other countries to take part.... hence the "World" element) ... as underdogs, I know the team don't like to hear that, but it's true. If we lose I'll be gutted, but only 4 weeks ago, we were being touted as the wost defenders of the Webb Ellis trophy ever, so to reach the Final is pretty special.

Kudos to my colleagues who are making the trip to Paris, I'll be back in Blighty feeling a tad jealous, I see you were sung off from Waterloo station this morning....

COME ON ENGLAND

I don't care if we play 80 minutes of "stick it up yer jumper" rugby.

Right, off for a lie down in a darkened room with a wet flanel on my forehead.

Posted by Steve Partridge at 11:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well, I have to apologise, I haven't updated in a few days (four I think)..

So this week seems to have been about articulating the differences between the full-on "Gold Standard" (Not my words, but a quote from a US based computer magazine) Adobe Acrobat and other PDF creation software. Now there are lots and lots of blogs and websites that will point out the deficincies of some other products in relation to Acrobat, so I won't labout those points here, but it made for a busy week. The main thing I see is that these 'clone' products seem to come and go over a period of time, whereas Adobe and Acrobat keeps on enduring.

If you want to read up a little more on Acrobat I would suggest you head over to the rest of....
blogs.adobe.com

Of special note at the moment is the new Acrobat 3D contest......
http://www.adobeukacademy.com/

To be honest, I didn't realise how hard it would be to spend 5-6 hours recording my voice talking constantly. I know my friends might disagree with that last statement. What I have found out is that my voice is "ordinary".... yup "ordinary". I have to say, that deflated my ego a tad. I always hoped I might have a distictive style, a poor mans James Earl Jones, but nope, it seems that I might have middle England sewn up though.

Posted by Steve Partridge at 10:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I was talking last week about security to a number of people. We talked about the "Save as certified" option, which is an easy way to add a digital certificate to a document, kind of like a wax seal.

Later, on the drive home, I considered how most information leakage occurrs by accident rather than malicious design. So, it put me in mind of another conversation I'd had a few months ago regarding using watermarks to very clearly display if something was "Company Confidential" or "Internal use only". This is an easy way to help prevent the unintentional distribution of sensitive material.

You can give your PDF documents a watermark very easily...

1. Open a PDF and go to Document > Watermark > Add
2. For the Source, you can either type in text or use an image. If you use an image, choose and then click and choose an image.
(After choosing your image you’ll see a preview of your PDF with the watermark)
3. To improve the document readability with regards the watermark’s appearance, you can change the Opacity down to 30% and for the Location of the watermark choose .
4. You can also adjust where the watermark appears on the page in the Position section.
5. Click and see how that looks.

This gives you a document that can clearly state it's usability status.

You also have the option to make the watermark visible only in print rather than on screen too.

Posted by Steve Partridge at 09:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Well, it's the morning after the night before and it's Sunday so I don't feel I must talk about Acrobat too much...

I tell you what, It's good to watch England celebrate for a change.

And in related news, my club Rugby side, Gloucester, won again yesterday against Sale beating them 31-12 to continue their 100% start to the season!

More Acrobat stuff next week I think.

Posted by Steve Partridge at 10:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It's friday and I've been looking for ways to avoid thinking about the upcomming Rugby World Cup semi-final between France and the Mighty England (like the use of capitals there?)

In the exciting world of electronic forms, I've been looking at the Tracker in Acrobat.... The Forms Tracker is a panel of the same window in which you track PDF reviews and subscriptions.... it also had a neat RSS reader too....

Did you know that? You get an RSS reader in Acrobat, go take a look, it will probably be sitting there on your system tray..... anyway...

There are several ways to open the Forms Tracker:

1. Choose Forms > Track Forms.

2. In the Tasks toolbar, choose Track Forms from the Forms button pop-up menu.

In the Review Tracker window (opened by choosing Comments > Review Tracker), click the Forms Tracker button on the left side of the window.

Four buttons appear on the left side of the Forms Tracker. Each one opens a different panel when clicked: To Do, History, Search Results, and Forms Library. These panels can remind you of the status of various forms that are part of your workflow and make it easy to find and reopen those forms.

You add a form to the Forms Library panel during the forms-distribution process. At the end of the Distribute Form wizard, a message appears, stating that the form has been sent to your default email application. This message also includes an Add To My Form Library option.

This means you can actually track and manage the electronic forms you are using, not real workflow, but almost. All this in the standard application that you bought for making PDF's from your MS Word documents..... don't worry, you can thank me later.

and by the way.... COME ON ENGLAND!

Posted by Steve Partridge at 09:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Well, the Diocese Communicators Conference went well, I think. Response to the "Acrobat 101" and "Acrobat 201" was really positive, I owe an apology to the delegates for running over a little and holding up their coach taking them to dinner... I do get a little over enthusiastic sometimes.

When I present to people in the UK, I often describe my role as BDM as being an evangelist for Acrobat, it felt strange using that phrase yesterday for some reason. By the way, the title for todays Blog, a direct quote from yesterdays sessions, when I showed how easy it is to create a PDF form that is fillable by the free Adobe Reader and can be saved by said reader, the delegates were blown away.... I love this product!

Posted by Steve Partridge at 09:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today (in around 30 minutes) I'm off to this year’s conference for the Communication Directors of the Church of England to run a couple of Acrobat seminars. This will be interesting for me as I normally look to similar events I've done in similar "comapnies"....

Checking back, I haven't run similar events for the Catholic Church, the Baptists, Jewish Community, Muslims, Bhuddists, etc... There's a good chance I'll learn more today than imarting knowledge, but we'll see. (apologies to any major religion I omitted in that list)

As time progresses towards end of year, all sales organisations go into overdrive, I'll try and keep up to date on any new stuff that comes along.

Speaking of which........ On Oct. 5, Adobe posted information on its Security Bulletins and Advisories page about the recently reported vulnerability in Adobe Reader and Acrobat for Windows. The full statement is available at: http://www.adobe.com/support/security/advisories/apsa07-04.html

Having now researched and verified the vulnerability, Adobe expects to provide before the end of October an update to versions 8.1 of Adobe Reader and Acrobat that will resolve the issue. A security bulletin will be published on the company's Security Bulletins and Advisories page http://www.adobe.com/support/security/ at which point the update is available. In the meantime, Adobe is also making available information about a workaround users can implement to protect themselves from the vulnerability. And, as always, Adobe recommends users exercise skepticism and caution when in receipt of unsolicited e-mail communications requesting user action, such as opening attachments or clicking web links.

Posted by Steve Partridge at 08:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

It's always good to see good manners and good winners. I know the Australians always are magnanamous in defeat and victory, never crowing about beating the Pommies or calling us cocky etc. So it's great to see the teams shaking hands at the end of the game wether you were the winner or the loser.

It must be quite a long flight back to Australia I guess?

Posted by Steve Partridge at 07:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm not carping, honest I'm not but blimey, does this feel good??!!

Now, if you'll excuse me, I may have to get my self around the outside of a beer.

Posted by Steve Partridge at 06:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

In an entry guaranteed to show off both y age and my dorkiness, I thoroughly enjoyed watching Thomas Dolby at the Concorde2 in Brighton last night. It's the first time I've seen him live and I'm not sure why I waited 25 years to do so. D'Oh!

Posted by Steve Partridge at 07:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

We have reached the time of year when people want to start planning for the next one, at the same time as we are also running around trying to put the current year to bed. Seems like I'm planning Christmas, Easter and the next Summer holiday all at the same time! Luckily, I'm only talking about work which is much easier to deal with.

Spent a couple of days this week starting the planning process for 2008 for Acrobat. I'm looking forward to geting in front of as many people as possible again next year, but am also hoping to spend a bit more time presenting virtually. My coleagues think i'm only just virtually presenting as it is but I hope to use Adobe Acrobat Connect Professional (mouthful!) to run a lot more eSeminars, training and other events. I'll try to keep you posted from here.

I took a day to record some voiceovers for our training academy, I'll be the voice of the training modules for Acrobat and maybe some other products, apologies if you're having to sit through them. I'll try to make the next few a little less dry and a little more entertaining. I do hope they sound OK, maybe a carreer in radio commercials is beckoning?

TIME FOR AN ACROBAT TIP!!!!
Well, I haven't included one for ages. Acrobat s a great tool for archiving information, as we know, the resultant PDF file can be searched on content.. So much better than some other formats people use. So, a quick tip if you create and share large PDF files, ones with lots of pages. You can embed the search index and it will make subsequent searching much faster.....

Steps
1. Use the Advanced > Document Processingí¯€ > Manage Embedded Index ..... Menu option
2. Acrobat will then create and embed a search index
3. Anyone can now search this PDF more quickly, choose Edití¯€ > Search

Posted by Steve Partridge at 03:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yeah, it's the old ego thing again, I was just sent a picture of the TCT event and o thought... well, since I'm here in a hotel room in Paris with no-one to talk to, what better that to share stuff with all 4 of my regular readers?

This is part of our TCT stand...

Look at me presenting! Checkout the eyes, I'm evil I tells ya, evil!!!

Posted by Steve Partridge at 07:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)