Adobe Acrobat 9 is the first release of Acrobat since the acquisition of Macromedia. Right now there are 25 million licensed and the next version is expected to surpass 30 million. The new version has been developed to redefine the PDF experience to be much more engaging, deliver a fundamentally better way to share a wide rage of information in a cohesive manner, develop a new paradign for getting remote people on the same page, simplify forms authoring and workflows, and dramatically improve performance. All of this built upon the Adobe engagement platform.

The Adobe Acrobat 9 product family includes Acrobat standard, Acrobat 9 Pro and Acrobat 9 Pro Extended. Acrobat 9 Pro Extended includes Adobe Presenter for portable, rich-media presentations with support for video-to-Flash conversion. The new version of Acrobat blends nicely with embedded Flash content created with Flash and the Flex SDK. The Flash runtime is now built into the PDF reader so the swf content always works.

PDF Portfolios With Adobe Acrobat 9, you can create PDF/Flash rich presentations without knowledge of Flash or Flex. All you have to do is just choose to create a PDF portfolio and add the documents that you want to include. The built in Flex based layouts are drag-and-drop. Simply adding headers and footers with added images and text is a breeze. The interface in Acrobat is minimized in portfolio view and you have all of the tools you need to adjust images in color for branding. The portfolio publishing options allow you to send your combined files as an email attachment or publish your documents to a sharedlibrary at Acrobat.com.

Native Support for Adobe Flash PDF communicates with Flash and Flash communicates with PDF. Acrobat forms are now easily integrated with Flex built forms within the PDF document. Integration with Microsoft office includes Adobe presenter giving you the ability to insert Flash, import video, and add audio to your power point presentations. You can then integrate and upload to Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro to track viewing and learning. You may also export and publish as PDF from power point which builds a one page PDF with the embedded content. This PDF is easily used in a portable or offline scenario.

Integration with Acrobat.com hosted services New collaboration within the PDF document which allows open chat and and document share through Acrobat.com. Basic functionality of Acrobat Connect is included that allows up to three people to collaborate in an online meeting setting. A new compare panel works lock and step with multiple documents to hightlight sections that have been change or do not match as well as pixel by pixel comparisons between images.

Improved Forms Authoring and Workflow Acrobat forms development has been simplified with the ability to import other types of forms and convert them to PDF format. The real value is that now you can collect form information directly to a specific network drive, sharpoint server, or shared space on Acrobat.com. The new tracker feature gives you the ability to see who has received and responded to your form request. The form response feature shows the collected forms in a Flash based interface similar to the PDF portfolio windows. In this interface you have the ability to filter data, export information, and review all of your form submissions.

Acrobat Pro Extended includes 3D, GIS, video conversions, and Adobe Presenter. - 2 to 3 times faster!

On April 28th, Adobe discontinued the development and sale of Adobe GoLive, the software that once attempted to compete in the marketplace with Macromedia Dreamweaver. I seriously doubt there will many that will attend the funeral. Good bye GoLive ....

Adobe has finally launched Photoshop Express, a free Flex based web application. They gave us a sneak preview of this at the Adobe MAX Conference in Chicago last fall and it looks very nice. Adobe Photoshop Express is an image editing software that aids users even with a limited knowledge of photo editing to create special effects to their images, the company noted. The latest Photoshop software allows users to store up to 2GB of images online for free, make edits to their photos, and share them online in creative ways, including downloading and uploading photos from popular social networking sites.

Adobe Digital Editions is an engaging way to read and manage eBooks and other digital publications. It is built from the ground up as a lightweight, rich Internet application (RIA). Digital Editions works online and offline, and supports both PDF and EPUB based content. This is an amazing technology and without a doubt the future of publishing. Adobe has now published the beta version 1.5 to the Adobe Labs website.

After you download the beta, visit the Digital Editions Sample eBook Library, where you can browse and download free eBooks and digital magazines including the Adobe success story - Inside the Publishing Revolution.

If you have not already figured out your own reasons for dumping your myspace account and moving on over to facebook, here is a link that should give you some great ideas. I think that number 3 is probably my favorite.

January 30th is International Delete Your MySpace Account Day

Go against the flow, be different, dump myspace! Here are the simple steps that will set you free:

1. Make sure you are logged in. If you are not on your homepage, click "Home" in the top navigation menu of any MySpace web page.
2. Once on your personal homepage, click on "Account Settings" (it's in the upper left portion of the page, next to your picture).
3. Click on 'Cancel Account'. An email will be sent to your email address to verify Account Deletion.