Note: This is a repost of an article published in Australian Personal Computer (APC Mag) in May 2010

Adobe’s online service, Acrobat.com, is free, has great apps and lets you share files.

Sharing electronic documents can be a real challenge and we often find ourselves dealing with bounced emails, FTP accounts and other issues. Adobe’s free Acrobat.com cloud based service was designed to make it easy to share information quickly and easily and is a combination of many useful features, including a word processor [that I'm writing this article with), a presentation and tables tool, web conferencing and more.

UPLOADING

For this article we'll be focusing on sharing files. First you need a free Acrobat.com account. Browse to http://acrobat.com and click the Sign Up button. Enter your email address, create a password and other details, then click Sign Up and you are ready to go.

Once logged in, you will see a list of your files. These are stored online and can be accessed by anyone that you give permission to [and anywhere). Let's start by uploading a file of your own. In the 'Actions' palette on the left-hand side, click on 'Upload' and then browse and select the file you wish to upload.

Click on the file name, and if you uploaded a PDF then Acrobat.com will l show you a preview. You can zoom in and out and navigate through the pages. To download the file again, click 'Download' to copy the file back to your computer. No matter where you go now, you can store and access up to 5GB of files on any computer by browsing to Acrobat.com and logging in.

MOBILE

Another way to upload and share documents is via a mobile device, and at time of writing there was support for both iPhone and BlackBerry, with more mobile platforms planned. [Web update: Android supported now too] You can scan documents with the built-in camera and have them automatically converted to PDF and uploaded, browse your files, preview them and even share them with other users while out and about.

SHARING

Adobe has created additional ways to quickly share documents, including an Adobe AIR-based desktop application which lets you drag and drop files to be uploaded, a Microsoft Outlook plug-in, and even Adobe Reader 9 has a button in the tool bar to allow you to share documents quickly. You can access these additional plug-ins here: http://acrobat.com/downloads.html.

To share a file that is already uploaded, open the preview once again and click the ‘Share’ button at the bottom left of the preview. Acrobat.com will present you with a list of options on how to share the document. To share with individuals, type in their email address and Acrobat.com will send them an email with a link to your document. Other options allow you to control what they can do with the file or allow you to open up access to anyone. When finished, Acrobat.com will show you who you are sharing the document with, if they’ve opened it, and at any time you can add additional users by simply clicking the Share button once more.

ORGANISING

After using Acrobat.com for a while, you will start to build up a large collection of files . Use the icons at the top of the file list to sort your files by different properties, or use the Lists and Collections feature on the bottom left of the screen. [Web update: This feature has been replaced with Tags & Workspaces]

Download PDF of original article as in APC Mag May 2010

Adobe has introduced Acrobat.com Workspaces, a new collaboration space that lets teams inside and outside of organizations work together on projects.

• With Workspaces, team members can store and organize project content online, and easily share and manage team access to files – eliminating the need to continually e-mail updates.
• Teams can create Shared Workspaces to store and share a set of files related to a project, letting distributed team members work together across times zones and firewalls, with no special file sharing software or IT involvement necessary.
• Workspaces help increase the productivity of project teams by letting members efficiently work together through central, easy-to-use Workspaces.  Users simply access an online Workspace to review and collaborate on documents.
• Acrobat.com users can create one free Shared Workspace, while Premium Basic subscribers can create 20 Workspaces and Premium Plus subscribers can create an unlimited number of Workspaces.
• More information on Acrobat.com Workspaces can be found on the Acrobat.com home page and blog (blogs.adobe.com/acom), including step-by-step instructions on how to create and share a Workspace.

In November I wrote about “must see” Acrobat.com improvements made by Adobe to its free online collaboration service.  In the press release about the latest version there was mention of work done by scanR to bring mobile integration to Acrobat.com users. This release for iPhone is now live on the iTunes app store.

So why use Acrobat.com on your iPhone?

The Acrobat.com mobile by scanR site explains the following workflows;

Work from anywhere – Access Acrobat.com files from your mobile phone, and easily share them with others as a link instead of a bulky e-mail attachment.

Scan to PDF – Use the camera on your mobile phone as a scanner and upload the images to Acrobat.com as PDFs.

Send faxes – Fax any of your Acrobat.com files directly from your mobile phone.

Print files – Print your Acrobat.com files by sending them to any fax-enabled printer.

What I really see useful is the collaboration benefits while out and about.

The idea of taking a photo of a whiteboard and sending to everyone in the room is great and something i’ve started doing. Being able to share documents immediately to someone you just met in a meeting instead of taking notes is also a bonus. Ultimately this app will speed up the way I work!

iPhone users can grab the app now and I understand that there is also support for Blackberry.

Adobe have upgraded Acrobat.com over the weekend to the new “Unity” release, bringing the same collaboration benefits currently offered for documents & meeting rooms to your slides & spreadsheets.

I’ve been using Buzzword, Adobe’s online word processor, ever since Adobe acquired Virtual Ubiquity and the fact that I can now have Presentations & Tables, all in a unified organizer is fantastic. Do I still use Microsoft Word, Powerpoint & Excel? Sure I do, but the collaborative nature of Acrobat.com is seeing me change the way I work and I’m progressively sharing more of my work while its still in progress, rather than waiting till i’m finished, and having other people add their input as I’m writing is fantastic and has sped up the way I work.

The biggest benefit is that there are no more annoying file sharing issues, concerns around which is the latest version, or worrying about what software everyone involved has. If you have Flash 9 or above  (99.3% of Australians do!) then you are good to go.

Check out “Why our team can beat your team” post on the Acrobat.com blog for a good look at how this will improve your business, then check out this list of improvements

Oh, and did I mention its COMPLETELY FREE!!!

This morning I gave a keynote presentation at the Future of the Book conference in Auckland, NZ. My intent was to talk about what Adobe is doing in three areas related to Book Publishing: Meeting Customer Expectations,Speeding up workflows & monetizing your ideas and effort.

My talk included an update on PDF, a look at EPUB and the support in the Adobe toolset, and how Flash & AIR are allowing us to create really engaging experiences.

Here are my slides (demo links are below)

Apart from showing how you can use InDesign CS4 to quickly create eBooks and Flash files, here are links to items mentioned during the talk;

Buzzword (part of Acrobat.com) – A free online word processor that allows multiple people to collaborate on the same document. It supports EPUB output.

Digital Editions – A free EPUB / PDF reader from Adobe.

EBooks.com – An Australian eBook site using Adobe Content Server to protect eBooks.

Adobe’s Digital Publishing Technology site – A series of articles and tools

New York Times Reader – An Adobe AIR based news reader

Sams Interactive Reader – A great application for kids (try it.. I guarantee you’ll smile)

For the last week two weeks, Brian Chau, Andrew Spaulding and I have been traveling around Australia giving the web designer & developer community a “Refresh” on what’s happening with Adobe technology that is relevant in the web space.

For the keynote we covered a wide range of topics, starting with an overview of all the major releases that the Adobe Engineers have come up with in the last 12 months, including Flex 3, AIR, Acrobat 9, Acrobat.com, LiveCycle ES Update 1 as well as Creative Suite 4.

Demos shown include;
David Gilmour PDF – Flash Video recording inside a PDF.
Acrobat.com – Many things including free web conferencing!
FIAT ecoDrive – AIR application that talks with your car and tells you how you drive.
Telstra Business – Flex application used to choose a mobile phone.

After some quick demos showcasing the latest shipping technologies, we went on to discuss & demo the latest advances in Flash and how the complete Flash Platform is coming together as a collection of devices (desktops, laptops, mobile devices, set top boxes etc). Those in Melbourne & Brisbane were able to see the Sony PlayStation 3 display flash video content thanks to the built in Flash Player (Sydney had internet troubles!).

Andrew showcased some of the latest Flash examples;

Hobnox – A great audio tool.
“The Cloth Demo” – showing the performance of Flash 10
Flash Player 10 feature demos – Several more demos

We then covered the latest from the Open Screen Project before moving on to a very important topic, the Designer / Developer workflow. The most exciting part of this was Andrew’s demonstration of Flash Catalyst (previously known as Thermo). Andrew will be posting a recording of his demo soon.

Below are the slides from the keynote, which include plenty of information and links where you can find out more information.

Adobe Refresh 2009 was a great event for us, and I especially enjoyed the conversations with so many of you during the breaks. We still have the Auckland Refresh event coming up on March 5th, so if you can make it please register at http://events.adobe.co.uk/cgi-bin/event.cgi?country=pa&eventid=7651

This wont be the last web designer / developer activity from the Adobe Australia / New Zealand team this year. We’re in planning mode right now for some rather fun and informative activities that will be announced rather soon…