Adobe Acrobat Enters the Cloud
On Friday Adobe announced two new products that demonstrate the company is increasingly embracing cloud-based technologies.
The first product, Adobe SendNow, allows you to send large files to a single or multiple recipients. While this is not a new concept, Adobe adds several features that provide value to lawyers. SendNow allows you to set expiry times for how long a document will be available for download, and allows you to confirm that a document has been viewed by the recipient.
The second product, Adobe CreatePDF, is a cloud-based version of Adobe Acrobat that allows you to convert a wide array of file formats to PDF. Unlike the desktop version of Adobe Acrobat, nothing needs to be installed locally on your computer: you simply upload the file you’d like to be converted to PDF, and Adobe CreatePDF sends you a PDF version of the file. Adobe CreatePDF also provides a PDF combining feature that allows you to easily combine multiple files into a single PDF. At $9.99/month, Adobe CreatePDF is an economical, albeit less feature-rich, alternative to the desktop version of Adobe Acrobat Pro, currently priced at $1,199.
Big launch day at Adobe. I just downloaded a trial version of their Air based design and publishing program, Rome.
Got to say, for the price of Adobe Acrobat you could buy a Mac and print to PDF anytime you like from any program and still have a whole computer left over. (Acrobat does have more features than the Mac PDF tools, I acknowledge—and features that appeal to lawyers.)
It has been more than six years since the publication of Sid Steward, PDF Hacks: 100 Industrial-Strength Tips & Tools (Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly, 2004): LC, O’Reilly. A little over three years ago, Adobe released the PDF specification to AIIM for publication by the ISO: Adobe FAQ, ISO Focus, ISO 32000-1:2008.