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Adobe unveiled an online community Monday with a word processor; file storage and sharing; and deep tie-ins to a newly Flash-enabled Acrobat 9.

The online push for Acrobat is a bold move for a brand perhaps best associated with the free and nearly ubiquitous Acrobat Reader, which opens print-ready Portable Document Format, or PDF, files. Now, PDFs will play movies.

The announcement comes in advance of the release of Acrobat 9 document-creation software, which adds dynamic features such as integration of animation, dynamic maps, 256-bit encryption, and improved forms.

The free Acrobat.com beta includes the Buzzword word processor. Its ConnectNow Web conferencing and desktop sharing tool enables chatting via text, video, and voice. The hosted services invite file storage and sharing with the capability to convert up to five documents to PDF.

Buzzword and companion tools would provide interactivity lacking in leading online word processors such as Google Docs.

The free Acrobat.com launched in beta mode on Monday.

(Credit: Adobe Systems)

Users can store files on Acrobat.com and join each other in virtual meeting rooms to share identical document views in real time. The site also can host data from forms created in Acrobat software.

Acrobat 9 document-creation software will arrive with a slew of support for creating interactive, secure documents and integration with Acrobat.com.

Acrobat users can convert MOV and WMV files to Flash content that can be embedded within PDFs alongside audio content and even 3D models. The free Acrobat Reader 9 will play the movies, eliminating the need to open other media players.

The new PDF Portfolios feature in Acrobat 9 lets users drag and drop content into a portfolio, then choose from myriad layout and presentation options.

Mapping features only in Acrobat Pro Extended 9 preserve geospatial coordinates and enable users to mark locations and measure distances.

The next Acrobat will take snapshots of Web pages and convert entire pages or chunks of them to a PDF that preserves links and animation.

Developers can tweak layouts with Flex Builder 3 or Flash CS3.

The new Acrobat.com will enable users to stash their work, edit documents, and collaborate with each other.

(Credit: Adobe Systems)

Adobe also tried to make it easier to for companies to make pages match visually with themes and custom logos, and it improved tools for comparing documents.

For creating online forms, Acrobat 9 adds intelligence to recognize content for conversion to fillable fields. And a forms tracking dashboard will show, for instance, the status of responses to a mass party invitation e-mail and let a user send reminders to guests. Responses can be sorted, filtered, and exported to spreadsheets.

Acrobat 9's security enhancements enable users to add 256-bit encryption, used by banks online, to PDFs.

Redaction tools, a key selling point of Acrobat 8, will offer searches for numeric patterns in addition to multiple words and phrases. A company could, for example, find every accidental mention of a social security number or top-secret product being developed and black out the potential leaks from a PDF with one blow.

Business users could opt to access documents at Acrobat online or via SharePoint workspaces, network folders or WebDAV.

Acrobat Pro Extended 9 will enable maps to be marked up, preserving latitude and longitude.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Acrobat 9 comes in three flavors, set for stores in the coming weeks: Standard at $299 or $99 to upgrade, Pro for $449 or $159 to upgrade, and Pro Extended for $699 or $229 to upgrade. Pro Extended also comes with Adobe Presenter, which plugs into Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 for adding interactivity to presentations.

We'll have a review of Acrobat 9 software once we receive final code, and we'll share our experiences soon with Acrobat.com beta.

I still groan when I have to open a PDF file from the Web (my PCs make loud grinding noises), so I'm curious to see how the new tools might make PDFs faster to open as well as more dynamic to explore.

PDF Portfolios in Acrobat 9 will package FLV and SWF content with the usual word processing files and more.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Adobe Systems is offering two-day trials of three beta applications from its next Creative Suite package.

The previews of Dreamweaver for Web design, Fireworks for image editing, and Soundbooth for audio editing became available Monday.

Trials expire after 48 hours for most people, but registered CS3 users get to keep using the CS4 betas until the final applications replace them.

Adobe hasn't publicly confirmed its planned shipping date or the name for the next Creative Suite, which we're nicknaming CS4. Adobe Creative Suite 3 was released in March 2007.

We took a quick test drive of the Dreamweaver trial and liked some of the changes. Among the touted enhancements are a Related Files Toolbar and Code Navigator. The Properties panel integrates HTML and CSS coding, which could save time for those who edit dynamic sites. A new Live View Mode, driven by Webkit open-source rendering, previews pages within Dreamweaver, eliminating the need to open a browser. Adobe intends for this feature to make it easier to debug JavaScript as well as to work with Flash animation.

The interface of Fireworks, originally from Macromedia, finally resembles those of other applications in the Creative Suite. Fireworks features compatibility with Adobe's AIR, Flash, and Flex Builder as well as HTML. And users can export design mockups as high fidelity, interactive, and secure Adobe PDF files.

Soundbooth adds support for multiple track editing as well as volume matching across audio files. Users can preview the compression settings before saving MP3s. Speech recognition is supposed to enable quick, searchable transcripts of dialog content.

There's no word yet on whether the next rough draft of Photoshop will be available for a free trial. However, Photoshop's next iteration may become available in widgets, enabling users to mix and mash up some features with third-party content, according to a blog post last week by Photoshop product manager John Nash. We suspect that there will be more opportunities to blur the lines between the desktop, the Web, and mobile platforms within the next Creative Suite.

System requirements for the Windows trials demand a machine running XP or Vista with at least 512MB of RAM, 1 gigabyte of disk space, and a Pentium 4 processor. Mac users must have OS X version 10.4.11 or later on a PowerPC G5 or Intel-based system. Soundbooth, however, won't run on a PowerPC Mac.

Users of the next Adobe Creative Suite may be able to mix and mash up the applications with online content and third-party tools.

In a bid to make workspaces more nimble, Adobe Systems is considering making parts of Photoshop and other Creative Suite applications available for users to manipulate within Flash widgets, according to a blog post Monday by John Nack, product manager of Photoshop.

The capability to bring tools from the Creative Suite to the desktop or the Web with Flash or Flex could lead to novel ways of exploring Adobe's expensive, hulking software. Users have mashed up Google Maps, for instance, to display apartment listings, ecological pollution, and even UFO sightings.

"The appeal of extending one's app with lightweight, cross-platform, network-aware widgets is so obvious that we were busy building support in my first app some eight years ago--and we had to build our own Flash Player clone to do it!" Nack wrote.

Developers would ideally be able to write one bunch of code rather than six separate chunks to create widgets for panels from Photoshop, Illustrator vector illustration, and InDesign page layout software, Nack added.

Adobe made its flagship photo-editing software available online with the March release of Photoshop Express.

The company aims to tell the public more about the next iteration of its Creative Suite on May 27.

A prerelease, beta edition of Flash Player 10 became available Tuesday via Adobe Labs. New features include effects for 3D-rendering effects and text-rendering enhancements.

Adobe Systems on Monday is set to finally release Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) software, which is on the leading edge of a movement to make Web applications act more like traditional desktop applications.

At the company's Engage event in San Francisco on rich Internet application design, executives will announce the availability of AIR 1.0, a free download for Windows and Macintosh.

The New York Times is releasing a beta of an AIR application called ShifD (seen here on an iPhone), which enables users to move content--including Web links, notes, and Web maps--from their desktop computer to a mobile device.

(Credit: New York Times)

Also on Monday, Adobe will release Flex 3.0, its application development tool that is now free and open-source. Another development tool, called BlazeDS, for linking Flex applications to back-end business applications, will also be released into open source as planned.

Adobe has been working on AIR for at least two years, when Kevin Lynch, now Adobe's chief technology officer, first publicly spoke about it. The company plans to build AIR versions of many of its Web applications, including photo-imaging application Photoshop Express and Premier Express for editing video, he said.

AIR is software for making Web applications appear like more like desktop programs. Applications can run offline, access data on a person's hard drive, have a desktop icon, and run without the need of a browser.

Developers can use any Web development kit, such as Ajax frameworks, to write applications that will run on AIR or they can use Flex.

These Web-native desktop applications have become an active area of software development--Adobe says that there are over 100 AIR applications--and alternatives to AIR are starting to appear.

The Mozilla Foundation, makers of the Firefox Web browser, launched a project called Prism that brings offline access to Web applications.

Lynch said that AIR is far ahead of what Prism offers but he expects many other platforms that bridge the Web with desktops to emerge.

"We're just getting back the lost treasures of the desktop that we lost when we went to the Web," Lynch said.

He said AIR is not competitive with Microsoft Windows or other operating systems; it's a layer above operating systems that enables people to use Web development techniques and toolkits.

A version of AIR for Linux is expected later this year, he said. Adobe will also create versions that run on mobile devices in the future.

Salesforce.com on Monday will release a free toolkit that will allow developers to write applications on its Force.com hosted development platform using Flex and AIR. The main driver for bringing offline access to Web applications is mobility, said Adam Gross, vice president of developer marketing at Salesforce.com.

The New York Times, for example, has created an application with AIR that will enable people to transfer content, such as Web links and maps, from their desktops to mobile devices.

"Our customers want offline access because they have users in mobile contexts like people in hospitals with tablet PCs or retail settings like supermarkets," Gross said. "I think we're going to see a variety of new technologies around how to effectively create offline Web applications."

Adobe made the low-end edition of Flex open source to lure developers who prefer open-source and standards-based software because it does not tie them to one proprietary technology or vendor.

Lynch said that Adobe intends to use open-source software and practices more. He noted that many pieces of its development products are already open-source, including the scripting engine in Flash, which was donated to the Mozilla Foundation for inclusion in the Firefox Web browser.

Lynch, who was named chief technology officer of Adobe earlier this month, said Adobe's different product teams are changing to embrace rich Internet applications, AIR, and online services to complement its existing products.

"This is a very, very important time in Adobe's history. We've made some big shifts--Postscript, multimedia, the Web," he said. "Rich Internet applications is one of those important transitions."

Adobe Systems on Thursday released the code for messaging software designed to connect back-end data sources to rich Internet applications written with its Flex development tool.

Called BlazeDS, the software is a subset of Adobe's full-featured LiveCycle Data Services ES, which it will continue to sell to its corporate customers.

BlazeDS will be made available for free under the Lesser General Public License (LGPL). Adobe will initially host the open-source project and next year plans to create a separate site to host BlazeDS and its Flex developer tool, which it intends to open-source, said Phil Costa, director of product management for Adobe's Platform Business Unit.

The software is not meant to replace other messaging products, such as enterprise service buses, Costa said. Instead, it can get data from messaging software to move data between databases or enterprise applications and Flash clients, he said.

The company already offered a free, low-end version of LiveCycle Data Services, but the companies decided to go the open-source route because customers were interested in using only pieces of the overall package, Costa said. Also, the free version had limitations on how many users could connect to it.

Like nearly all software companies, Adobe has started to use open-source techniques for its own developer products. It is also building its own products using other open-source software, such as the Eclipse development tool and the SQLite embedded database, which will be part of AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime).

Costa said Adobe plans to offer subscription-based support services for customers of BlazeDS.

Bob Lutz

(Credit: Ray Wert)

Love him or hate him, Bob Lutz is somewhat of a celebrity in the automotive world. From GM to BMW to Ford and back again, Lutz has seen firsthand the growth, as well as the trials and tribulations, of the automotive industry over a span of more than four decades. Oh, and in his early days, he flew fighter planes in the Marine Corps.

When I told some of my colleagues I was invited along with a small group of bloggers to have dinner with "Maximum" Bob, some beamed in envy, others snarled in skepticism. After all, GM has had its share of bad publicity over the years. But Bob and company claim those days are over. General Motors is hoping to please the entire customer spectrum, from eco-minded conservationists to speed-loving gearheads.

On the "green" side of the scale, GM seems to realize what alternative-fuel experts have been saying for a long time: No single fuel can fully replace our dependency on petroleum-based oil. Fuel diversification--using different ways to power the various cars on the road--eases both ecological and economic strain on our resources. During the first half of our meeting, GM carted us over to Universal Studios and outlined some of the technologies they're either testing or currently employing:

Hybrid systems. GM is introducing two types of hybrid powertrains: a two-mode hybrid system that will soon be available on the Chevy Tahoe and GMC Yukon (as discussed in a previous post) and a "mild" hybrid system that will be incorporated into smaller cars like the Chevy Malibu. And yes, it looks like that two-mode hybrid Escalade will make its way onto the market in the next year or so.

Flex fuel. Several vehicles, including trucks and SUVs, have been modified to run on up to 85 percent ethanol (E85). Although not yet widely available to the public, GM uses lots of these cars internally; they're often transport vehicles during promotions and press events. Of course, vehicle availability is only part of the equation, as E85 fueling stations are hard to come by in many areas. California, for example, only has four E85 pump locations in the entire state.

Hydrogen fuel cells. Real-world testing will soon begin on fuel cell-powered Chevrolet Equinoxes in Los Angeles and New York. It will be the largest market test ever of electric vehicles powered by hydrogen. Cars will be driven by consumers, although no specific details are available yet.

Electric cars. The all-electric Chevy Volt concept was unveiled at the Detroit auto show in January of this year. The Volt uses lithium-ion batteries, which are less toxic than nickel-metal hydride. GM folks say they're getting closer to a production car, but, they say, the battery technology still needs to get better before these cars hit dealerships.

On the other end of the spectrum, Lutz admits there's a horsepower race going on between car manufacturers. He says, for example, that a new version of the Corvette will most likely be faster and more powerful than the C6 and Z06 models on the market today. And although such muscle cars might seem the antithesis to gas-saving Saturns, Bob said not to rule out the possibility of any fuel-saving technologies on those vehicles in the future, either, should regulations so require. Electric-powered 500 hp sports car, anyone?

BOSTON--Adobe Systems' chief software architect, Kevin Lynch, gave a glimpse of a few goodies for developers and designers meant to make media-rich Web sites run faster.

At the company's FlashForward conference on Wednesday, Lynch said that the next version of the Flash Player, code-named Astro, will have "significant performance improvements" for people making video-rich Web applications. That includes better manipulation of three-dimensional images, he said during a keynote presentation of the Flash developer conference.

After his talk, Lynch declined to give a date for when Astro will ship, but said he'll be providing more details at the upcoming Max conference in Chicago next month.

Adobe chief software architect Kevin Lynch tells Flash developers to think big.

(Credit: Martin LaMonica/CNET Networks)

Also coming in the next few weeks will be an updated Flash Player 9, code-named Moviestar, which will include support for the H.264 video standard that will show high-definition quality videos.

"We're really focused on the whole video workflow," he said. "Were going to keep investing and keep innovating."

One way Adobe plans to improve Web application performance is through the introduction of a cache mechanism in the next version of its Flex development tool, which Adobe is in the process of open sourcing.

Code-named Moxie, Flex 3 will have a Framework cache which will download the files required to run Flex applications to a browser's cache the first time a user accesses a Flex application. Those same components can be reused in other Flex applications. That means quicker downloads and the ability for developers to use ActionScript--the JavaScript-compatible language in Flex--to write more ambitious Web applications, Adobe executives said.

Lynch showed off applications written with Flex to run on AIR. AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) is a download for running Web applications on desktop PCs on Windows, Mac and eventually Linux and mobile devices.

Some of the new AIR applications haven't been shown publicly yet, including one called Art Musheen (no Web site available yet), a slick drawing application with the kind of animation that people expect from Flash applications.

An AIR application, Buzzword, can import Flickr photos based on tags.

(Credit: Martin LaMonica/CNET Networks)

Adobe will make a second beta of AIR available at the Max conference.

Lynch said that beta will be have the final APIs, which include the ability to access a local file system architect and network connection, the ability send out notifications to users, local storage, automatic updates, and drag-and-drop capabilities.

A collaboration between military R&D and industrial designers is bringing state-of-the-art PDA technology to Joe Snuffy out on the battlefield.

The Soldier Flex PDA (SFPDA) introduced by Inhand Electronics features flexible display technology with input from industrial design firm Artisent, display technology firm E-Ink and the U.S. Army Flexible Display Center at Arizona State University.

(Credit: Inhand Electronics)

The PDA offers InHand's PXA270-based Fingertip4 CPU board, along with Ethernet, USB, Bluetooth and keypad interfaces all in a "ruggedized" glass-free package that weighs less than a pound. Best of all, the unique low-power characteristics of electronic paper displays and InHand's patented BatterySmart system keep power consumption at well below a single watt. Battery life runs about six hours, according to the Maryland company.

The device opens up the realm of possibilities for distributing critical battlefield-networked information to infantry combat soldiers on long duration missions, explains Henry Girolamo, SFPDA program manager at the Army's Natick Soldier Research Development and Engineering Center.

That, and having a PDA around should make pulling guard duty a lot more entertaining.

I just took the time to read through this interview with Phil Costa, director of Product Management for Flex at Adobe. (Many thanks to Dave McAllister for his link.) You may remember that Adobe announced in April its intention to open-source Flex.

Now, the company is talking about why. It's very interesting to see that the decision to open-source a product is somewhat universal in the considerations that go into it. It brings back memories of early 2003 when we (at Novell) were giddy about releasing the company's UDDI server as open source...

I particularly found Phil's thoughts on the LGPL (i.e., why Adobe opted not to go with LGPL and instead used MPL) fascinating.

At its core, Adobe's decision to open-source flex stemmed from a desire to make the project bigger than the company. That is, independent of the company. Something you could embrace without embracing the company, too. This is precisely the same reasoning that went into Alfresco's decision to GPL our enterprise content management system, so Phil's comments resonate with me.

In response to How Software Is Built's question as to why Adobe decided to open-source Flex, Phil replied: