Webware

Tidbits from Adobe's Engage event

Now that Adobe's Engage event has run its course for yet another year, it's a good time to pull in the types of items that slipped through the cracks of our coverage.

We lost Wi-Fi for an hour or so during the conference, which was actually a blessing in disguise. I got to try out all the new AIR apps I had downloaded and got to see which ones managed to perform while away from their umbilical tether to the Internet. My pick for best performer? A two-way tie between BuzzWord and Shifd, the latter of which has … Read more

Scribd joins platform game, sets sights at killing Adobe Acrobat

We've been giving some play to Adobe Acrobat replacements and other PDF tools in the last few weeks, and it's clear people are serious about handling a large variety of document types without having to muck about with the right software or browser extensions.

To that end Scribd, a start-up that's all about documents and how to share them with others, has had a solution of its own using Adobe's FlashPaper and crunching all sorts of documents to fit in it. This morning the company launched its own viewer that not only replaces FlashPaper, but also improves upon its design for both users and publishers.

The new viewer is called iPaper. While the name might bring to mind Apple products of yore, the document viewer is a total Acrobat killer. It's fast, lightweight, and is designed with Web readers in mind. While it may look similar to FlashPaper, there are several key differences that make it much better suited for long documents, photos, and Web videos.

The biggest one being that iPaper has been designed with publishers in mind. The viewer goes hand-in-hand with a new publishing platform that lets Web publishers integrate advertising into documents or media they feel like sharing. There are no preroll or off-to-the-side ads; instead Scribd has worked in Google AdSense text ads that have been put between every few document pages and that slurp up contextual ads based on what's contained the document (example here). It's effective and not annoying.

Secondly, the publishing platform lets site owners integrate iPaper into their sites. There are three basic ways to do it. The first is basic embedding (which existed before iPaper), as well as a tool called QuickSwitch that will automatically convert any linked document into a hosted iPaper player when site owners install a small line of code on their page. For power users, there's also an open API that lets them integrate iPaper and document conversion into the back end of their sites or services.

While I think Adobe will eventually address the bloat that Acrobat has become for Web users, it's up to publishers to take a proactive approach to letting the greatest number of users access content in the same way they read words or watch videos. For that, Flash is definitely a phenomenal go-to. The iPaper document viewer shows promise at unifying document sharing by lowering the barrier to entry for users who simply don't want to deal with the hassle of extra applications.

I've embedded an example of the iPaper viewer after the break. Be sure to play around with the table of contents and zoom controls.… Read more

Adobe goes after game developers with 3D engine in Director 11

Adobe next month will release Director 11, an update to its graphics assembly, that it hopes will lure game developers with its better 3D imaging.

Adobe is expected to detail the latest features of Director at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco on Tuesday.

Director 11 is used to build games, as well as graphics-rich presentations, and learning applications. It uses the Shockwave plug-in to render 3D graphics.

The latest version includes physics, or movement between images, using the Ageia PhysX engine and support for DirectX 9, which can take advantage of recent graphics cards.

It will make it … Read more

Microsoft makes changes to Office Live

Microsoft is making a series of changes to its Office Live Small Business service, offering some previously paid-for services free, while adding a new charge for domain name registration after the first year.

Domain name registration will continue to be free for the first year. But each subsequent year Microsoft will charge $14.95, though it will add the ability for so-called private registration, where customers can keep their personal information out of the public Whois database. Microsoft said that those who have already signed up for Office Live will continue to have their domain name registered for free "… Read more

Adobe shuttering in-house stock photo service

Adobe Creative Suite users will soon have to turn to other Web-based or local stock photography services to get their stock photo fix.

Adobe on Monday quietly announced the end of its stock photography service. The Stock Photos service has been a part of the popular Creative Suite since the introduction of Adobe Bridge in version 2. The cutoff date is March 31st, giving users a little less than two more months to use the service to acquire legal shots to use in design work.

According to Adobe's FAQ on the matter, the company is getting out of the … Read more

Issuu is like Scribd's hotter cousin

One of my favorite document sharing services is Scribd. However, there's another document sharing service that has been around since early 2006, and boy if it doesn't have some good things going for it. It's called Issuu (pronounced "issue") and it's all about documents. In this case, it's only the ones in PDF format. Users can put together compilations of content and share them as they would photos or videos on other hosting services.

Issuu's big appeal is its media viewer, which presents the content like a real magazine. We've seen … Read more

Agency charts Web as ginormous subway map

It's always fun to see people try to map out the internet. The comparison to a spider's Web is apt, as things get a little complicated. While not nearly as humorous as efforts from Web comic XKCD (here and here), design agency Information Architects Japan has taken to the more calculated cartography medium of urban subway systems.

Last year the company created two versions of the map. Both were based on the Tokyo area train map (which is enormous) and organized 200 popular Web sites by neighborhood. This year, the firm ramps the number sites up to 300, … Read more

Meebo announces new features and partners

The Web IM and chat company, Meebo, just rolled out some very interesting new features. First off, they have introduced a developer API for their Meebo Rooms product. This will allow people to integrate a Meebo Room into their own Web site. Meebo has said that this API will "...further accelerate the widespread adoption of Meebo rooms." Meebo is hoping that Web site owners will take this as an opportunity to build a community around their site.

Meebo also announced a big win for their new Meebo Network chat and advertising platform. They have signed five major partners, … Read more

Viewdle makes those horrid in-text links useful with celebrity mugs

You know my stance on bad e-cards, and in the same vein comes my dislike for in-text ad links that you find on some blogs. I'm not talking about Snap's little Web site previews with its Snap Shots service, which people either love or hate, but the IntelliTXT stuff--the kind where you accidently moved your mouse near one and it opens up an ad that doesn't go away for several seconds. Ryan Block from Engadget had a good missive on the matter back in August of last year, and I have to agree with the guy that it ruins the reader experience.

With that said, I'm really digging Viewdle's new Name Widget service, which will cross check any names you mention in a blog post and serve up a tiny little video morsel of the person's face when you hold your cursor over his or her name. The video clips in question come from larger pieces of video that have been run through a facial recognition database and cropped down to fit in an area the size of your thumb. Anyone can add to their blog posts or Web site free of charge with a few lines of JavaScript.

The best part is, to actually trigger the video you need to hold your mouse over the link for a good 3 seconds before the video starts playing, so your reading experience won't be too bothered if you make the occasional brush. If you end up actually clicking the name link, Viewdle will kick you over to Reuters, which has a bunch of links to videos where the person appears. Each link jumps you right to that spot. However, Viewdle doesn't require you to link back to its Reuters page, which means you can jump the link wherever you please.

The service works with a variety of popular blogging tools like TypePad, Blogger, and WordPress. However, LiveJournal, Facebook, and MySpace users are out of luck since these sites don't allow JavaScript from outside sites.

You can give it a spin on the names I've added after the break.

Related: Yahoo Shortcuts: It's everywhere you want to blog

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