Adobe Launches New Version of Acrobat.com

Adobe launches New Version of Acrobat.com

Adobe Systems Inc. is launching a new version of its document sharing software Acrobat on Monday, and this time it can package videos. Acrobat allows users to package documents so they can be read across different hardware and operating systems. Acrobat 9 comes with Adobe’s video-enabling software Flash. Users can include Flash-based videos when they create and share documents with the portable document format, commonly known as PDF. With a professional version of Acrobat 9, for example, users could package a Power Point presentation not just with images, but also with an audio of the presenter’s voice.

“You can now send someone a presentation that speaks on its own all through a PDF,” said Adobe spokesman Kevin M. Lynch, who is not related to the company’s chief technology officer with the same name. Adobe also launched Acrobat.com, which will host Web-based software services to support document creation and sharing. The San Jose-based software maker hasn’t launched a new version of Acrobat since November 2006, almost a year after it purchased Macromedia Inc., the creator of Flash software. Users have expected to see Flash integrated into Acrobat since that purchase, Lynch said.

Source: AP