Comments on: A First Look at Acrobat.com

By: Dustin

Dustin — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 23:41:21 +0000

Andrew: Fair enough — I didn’t mean to disparage the PDF conversion service, just to point out that it’s function is one Adobe’s been doing for a really long time. Thanks for commenting; it’s nice to hear a voice from “inside”.

By: Andrew Shebanow

Andrew Shebanow — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 23:29:16 +0000

I work for Adobe on Acrobat.com, and I’d like to say thanks for the nicely balanced and informative writeup. To answer your question about the apps, Create PDF, Share, and My Files really are just one “app”. But we put three separate tiles on the home page to advertise the fact that it does more than one useful thing — they all go to the same place.

One minor correction: the Create PDF functionality in Acrobat.com is not a glitzy frontend for the old service (which still exists at createpdf.adobe.com, by the way). Its an all-new implementation which is significantly faster.

By: Joseph Ratliff

Joseph Ratliff — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 17:34:37 +0000

Dustin,

Excellent Acrobat resource. It is about time they put out something like that to use.

This is my first look at your blog…and I have to say…WOW.

Nicely done.

Joseph Ratliff
Author of The Profitable Business Edge 2

By: Dustin

Dustin — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 15:25:49 +0000

Kevin: Thanks for coming by and saying "hi". I like Blist, though I have few needs that are answered with "I know, I'll build a database". For small businesses and the like, though, Blist seems like a good up-and-coming choice, and it's certainly nice to look at. The recent addition of Excel spreadsheet importing makes it pretty useful, too, although I haven't had a chance to play with that yet.

By: Kevin Merritt

Kevin Merritt — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 15:17:19 +0000

Dustin,

Thanks for referencing blist as a potential fit with Acrobat for database and spreadsheet functionality. We’re rounding out the features in blist rapidly. For your readers who haven’t tried it, blist allows you to create and share visually rich and interesting lists, which can have structure and dimensions. Effectively it’s a database, but it has a really low learning barrier, like making a list. blist is free for consumers. We’re in open, public beta and we’d love to have people give it a try and let us know what else you think is missing — http://app.blist.com/signup

By: Dustin

Dustin — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 14:44:21 +0000

Douglas: I rarely use Google Docs since I discovered Buzzword in November, so I'm a little short on "tips and tricks" for it, though I could do a basic write-up. I did write about it's collaboration features in my post on collaboration a couple months ago. Agreed on the PDF "program", although ironically it's the oldest of Acrobat.com's features -- Adobe has run a email-to-PDF service for years, where you could email a file attachment and they'd email it back as a PDF. The ACrobat.com app is just a fancier front-end for the same service. One nice thing about Google Docs is that you can post directly to your website with it via XML-RPC. I have never used that feature, preferring Windows Live Writer (which I've written about at Lifehack). It would be a nice feature to add to Buzzword, I agree.

By: Douglas

Douglas — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 13:29:43 +0000

Thanks for the run down of features on Acrobat. I haven’t been out to Buzzword to convert over my account to the new site yet, so this article saves me some time. Rather, allows me to procrastinate a bit longer.

What about some Google Docs love? Or did I miss a post.

Buzzword is a great looking application and wins any sort of elegance or depth of character competition with Google’s online word processor. However, aside from ConnectNow, Google’s done all the rest plus what you’re wishing for from Acrobat.com.

I’m not sure that converting a file to a PDF is a whole application as much as a feature with an ego.

I’d like to see both of them better at integrating with XML-RPC.