Techspectacular.com

Adobe Systems on Monday announced a major upgrade to its Acrobat software for creating and sharing documents. Adobe Acrobat 9 includes native support for Flash and other rich media plus new features for collaboration and sharing. Concurrent with the new software, Adobe has launched Acrobat.com, a Web site offering a suite of hosted services centered around the software.

Adobe executives said the upgrade addresses the emerging needs of the business community for online collaboration. “The ability to break through and communicate a message in a compelling way has never been at a greater premium,” said Rob Tarkoff, senior vice president in Adobe’s business productivity unit. The new features in Acrobat 9 will “fundamentally change how professionals communicate and collaborate using electronic documents,” he said.

Charles King, principal analyst with Pund-IT, believes Adobe’s deep roots in business may encourage users to engage in more online collaboration for document creation. “Something Adobe has, that Google doesn’t, is a really deep footprint in existing businesses,” King said. “Most companies use both Office and Acrobat. In business environments, documents are created in a highly collaborative manner and finding a way to track changes in documents over time has been a challenge. It looks like Adobe’s done a very good job of addressing that.”

Flash in Your PDF

Adobe completed its acquisition of Macromedia, the developer of Flash, in December 2005, but this is the first time it has integrated the interactive technology into its Acrobat software. The move keeps Acrobat’s PDF up with the times, as video has become an increasingly important way to communicate information. Software documentation, for example, could include embedded Flash videos demonstrating how to use the software.

“As the market gets used to the idea of Flash being in documents, people will start using it in new and different ways,” King said. Another intriguing use…