I recently did a review on Adobe’s acrobat.com site that allows document storage, document editing, collaboration and screen sharing, file sharing and more.

The part of the acrobat.com site that allows for document editing is called Buzzword.  Buzzword is a pretty powerful web based application that allows you to edit documents online in a word processor that somewhat resembles the big guys like Microsoft Word.

Buzzword is not as feature packed as Microsoft Word but for most tasks it will probably do just fine.  There is no charge for acrobat.com or Buzzword so it is hard to complain that they are not full featured .

This is the initial release of Buzzword, so I suspect that sometime in the near future new features will be added.

One cool thing about Buzzword and acrobat.com is they allow collaboration between multiple users.  You can share files, share documents, etc.  It also appears that more than one person can be editing the same file at the same time without losing work.

If you compare it to the other free word processors out there, buzzword is better than any that I have seen.  Also, you can access your document from anywhere on the Internet.  But yes, you need to be connected to the internet to get to it.  So you cannot just take your laptop out to lake where you have no internet and work on your document.

There is also an Adobe AIR based version of the acrobat.com suite of programs.  I am not sure if it can run without the internet or not, that is something I will have to research and update everyone on.  The little bit of research I did on the AIR version did not turn out happy comments.  Most comments were that it was hard to use.

Check back soon for an update on the AIR version of acrobat.

Bottom line, Buzzword is great for most regular word processing, it is free and has nice collaboration capabilities.  But if you need the advanced features that are available in Microsoft Word, then Buzzword is not there yet.  But by all means, check it out.

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Have you heard about Adove AIR?  Sounds like some new oxygen bar Fad right?  Well, it is a fairly new technology from Adobe that brings the rich content of web 3.0 content to the desktop without a web browser.

Adobe AIR installs a small client application that is basically the framework for the AIR application to run in.  You then download these AIR applications which are typically designed in the Service Oriented Archtecture design with XML data transfers, etc.

Anyways there are some very cool applications that are available for Adobe AIR.  My favorites are the Ebay Desktop and Twhirl (a Twitter Client).  Also following closely behind is the Google Analytics client.  It is way cool and much easier than having to login to google to look at the reports.

There are so many cool apps for Adobe Air that I am going to create a category for Adobe Air and review some apps that are available.  As new ones come out I will keep reviewing and make recomendations.

If you know of some new site, software or technology drop me a line so I can check it out too.

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Ok, just about everyone has heard of Acrobat.  No, not the bendy twisty guys and gals that fly around on poles, parallel bars, etc.  Think more geeky than that.  How about Adobe Acrobat?

Well, Adobe has a new site out now called acrobat.com that is aiming to replace some of your desktop applications.  acrobat.com has built in a feature rich word processor called BuzzWord.  It is not as full featured as Microsoft Word but hey it is free and it has one other very cool feature which I will describe in a little bit.

Acrobat.com is aiming at the collaboration market.  That is where it really shines.  In addition to BuzzWord the site has ConnectNow which is Adobe’s competitive entry into the market for screen sharing and web presentations.  Kind of like Webex.  I personally like the user interface for ConnectNow better, but that is just me.

The site also lets you share documents and create PDF files.  Remember that cool feature about buzzword I mentioned before?  Buzzword allows 2 people to edit the same document simultaneously.  Talk about collaboration…..

I will do a more in depth review of BuzzWord soon so I will skip all of the cool details in this review.

Go checkout acrobat.com.  There is no cost to sign up and use it.  You can login from anywhere on the internet to access your files, your documents, etc.

I am still trying to get more info on the roadmap for acrobat.com but the initial offering that is out there now is a good strong start.  I would think a good spreadsheet application is also required for the site to become highly successful.

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