On 1st June 4, 2008 Adobe launched a web based alternative to its poplar PDF document format creation service. Acrobat.com has four principal components: a word processor called Buzzword; online file sharing via a feature called Share; a file converter that lets you convert up to five documents per month, free, to PDF format (offered within Share); and ConnectNow for personal Web conferencing. Adobe also makes API’s available for developers so they can create service mash-ups more easily. Have a closer look to each of these four components of Acrobat.com

Word Processing

Adobe has acquired Virtual Ubiquity that has developed an online flash based word processor named as Buzz Word. Buzz Word is not Microsoft Office Word, but it offers you some basic functionalities including document creation, formatting, inserting tables and images. Buzz Word has very simple to learn and use user interface. Users can import a verity of documents in Buzz Word including Word (.doc, .docx and .XML), .RTF, and .txt. You can also export to HTML or to PDF formats.

Buzz Word offers a better collaboration for sharing documents and enforcing better user restrictions. You can share documents with any one, with who know the document URL. Or restrict some Acrobat users from accessing your documents. Changes to your document are saved automatically as you work. Buzzword keeps a record of recent changes, so you can easily revert to any earlier version of the document. Users can assign different user rolls like full document editing (as co-author), read and may put some comments (as reviewer) or someone can only read documents (just like reader).

Document Sharing

Acrobat.com assigns a unique URL to each document that you upload on Acrobat.com. To share any Acrobat document you just enter the e-mail address along with optional message, enforce user restrictions on the document and recipient will receive an e-mail with a link to the document. Users can also share other documents formats that are supported by Acrobat.com, Adobe documents can be viewed using the browser only, for viewing other document formats you may require the desktop program.

PDF Form Sharing and Conversion

Acrobat.com offers an interesting-sounding PDF form-sharing and tabulation service, too; but because it requires Acrobat 9. However, Adobe presented a demo of how the feature could be used to distribute a PDF form (for conference registration, say) by e-mail. Recipients would be asking to fill the form and send back to Acrobat.com and this would notify, original sender when the complete fill form arrives and would tabulate the results in a simple database. The sender could then view the results, broken down by categories such as which recipients had registered for which conference session.

Web Conferencing

Adobe’s CoonectNow service allow users to share their computer desktop and collaborate on a document in real time. Users may also take meeting notes in a notes pod, exchange text chat messages, or communicate via audio. Adobe also provides teleconferencing numbers that use the Vapps voice conferencing service, but users must pay all toll charges. The conferencing service is similar to those offered by several competitors, including Cisco’s WebEx.

Most of the Acrobat.com services won’t require any desktop software to run. User can sign up on Acrobat.com and start using the services. To create forms, create and embed videos on form users need to have Acrobat 9 on their desktop. Acrobat.com collaboration capabilities are far better then some other online document editing suites including GoogleDocs, Microsoft Live Documents. Acrobat.com performance is not good as compare to Google docs or Microsoft Office Live Workspace. If you are looking for any online document editing tool then try Acrobat.com at least once.

Source : Acrobat.com and PC World

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