Acrobat 9 for Mac soon

Adobe is prepping a launch for its Acrobat 9 PDF creation tool within the next two months, AppleInsider has learned.

The new version will primarily extend some features of today's high-end versions to the mainstream. An ability to convert 3D files from AutoCAD and other programs to PDF files will be available in the Professional edition, for example. The software will also enable collaborating on documents from an Adobe server, similar to a web-based beta service launched on Monday.

However, a planned move to allow the creation of fillable PDF forms in the Standard edition will be limited to the Windows release; for Mac users, the option will be available only for the Professional edition, which should cost $200 more. Adobe will offer a free upgrade to anyone who buys a paid version of Acrobat 8 after version 9 is announced.

Adobe is expected to hold a briefing for the press later this month on its plans for the software, though those details will remain secret until late June.

Saludos, GAby Menta

Appleinsider

Acrobat 9 to Include Expanded Forms Support


PDF Version

New features in the upcoming release enable forms data tracking via Acrobat.com,, video commenting.

Sources familiar with the upcoming Acrobat 9—likely to be released early this summer—say one new wrinkle involves a forms data-tracking service via an updated Acrobat.com Web site to be unveiled along with the release of the application upgrade.

The service resolves, Adobe-style, the age-old question of, "Once you make a PDF form in Acrobat, what do you do next?" Users who create effective e-forms for the first time quickly become overwhelmed when they realize that they have to do something with the data coming in to them via forms.

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If that holds through to release, some third-party solutions on the market now will still be able to compete on the basis of being more inclusive: They can take input data collected via PDF, HTML, Microsoft InfoPath, and other types of forms.

However, the Adobe-branded, PDF-only solution will likely be popular among organizations that only use PDF forms. Current indications are that the service will make available some of the technology found in Adobe's enterprise-class LiveCycle products to the individual Acrobat user. Meanwhile, regardless of whether they subscribe to the Acrobat.com service, in Acrobat a form owner will be able to track which recipients received their form as well as who filled it out and returned it, according to the sources.

Also expanded in Acrobat 9 will be document redaction, a feature available in Acrobat 8. This will appeal to government and legal customers who haven't already invested in third-party solutions that handle this touchy subject of privacy issues in public documents uploaded to the Web.

Another rumored feature is "PDF Portfolios," a new spin on a current feature called "PDF packages." Currently, users can leverage PDF as a wrapper to embed—or attach—non-PDF application files such as Microsoft Word and PowerPoint documents, so that supporting materials can be assembled in one place, even if they are in different formats. An advantage to this feature is the ability to use Acrobat password protection as an additional security layer for sensitive data.

Acrobat 9's Portfolio feature has a new, more organized, color-coded interface to make complicated document sets more visually appealing and easier to navigate.

Also included, the sources say, is an upgraded OCR (optical character recognition) engine to reduce errors in paper-to-PDF processes. Along the same lines, the Web Capture feature—which converts HMTL pages into PDF—is getting an upgrade. This feature is already one of the major value-adds Acrobat offers users over competing PDF-making apps. An upgraded search feature gives users better results searching across multiple PDFs.

Lastly, an improved "compare PDF documents" feature includes a new wizard to walk you through the process. Sources add that comparison results reports have been updated slightly over Acrobat 8's functionality. New to Acrobat 9 will be the ability to add comments to video, at the frame-by-frame level, sources say, as well as enhanced capabilities for incorporating Flash (.swf) files in PDFs.

Saludos, GAby Menta

pdfzone

Convert PDF Documents to SWF Flash Movies Online with PDFMeNot


Like Scibd and SlideShare, PDFMeNot is an online PDF to Flash converter that will instantly convert any Adobe PDF document into a Macromedia Flash (SWF) movie while preserving the original layout, image graphics and formatting.

The PDF to SWF converter can very useful when you have to embed PDF files in web pages for inline viewing or you want to read PDF files on a computer that has no Acrobat Reader.


Here’s how to create Flash movies from PDF documents:

1. Go to PDFMeNot.com (Username: stateless Password: systems) and type the URL of the PDF file - you can use this PDF link as an example. Alternatively upload a PDF from the local hard drive.

2. In your Firefox menu bar, click Tools -> Page Info -> Media. Select the object that has an SWF extension (e.g. pdfmenot.com/store/f6a29535da98cd1.swf) and save it to your disk. That’s the SWF file created from your PDF document. For IE, here’s the trick to save Flash locally.

Bloggers can embed the following JS code in their web templates and PDF links will open in Flash SWF format via PDFMeNot.


While PDFMeNot is an extremely convenient option for quickly viewing PDF files in the browser without loading Adobe Reader, the downside is that the generated SWF objects contains Zoom but no Print and Search function. They are all supported in Macromedia Flash Paper format used by Scribd. Thanks Marshall.

Related: Convert PDF into 3D Flipbook Magazines, Embed PDF Files in Web Pages

Saludos, GAby Menta

Labnol

Microsoft to support ODF, PDF in Office

Microsoft is finally adding support for Open Document Format for XML and Adobe PDF to its Office productivity suite, the company is expected to announce late Wednesday.

Support for ODF and PDF will be included in the software through Microsoft Office Service Pack 2, expected to be out in the first half of 2009, according to a confidential Microsoft press release viewed by the IDG News Service.

Specifically, the service pack will add file-format support for PDF 1.5, PDF/A and ODF v1.1, as well as XML Paper Specification (XPS). XPS is a similar format to PDF created by Microsoft to rival Adobe's popular document-exchange file format.

Microsoft could not immediately be reached for comment Wednesday.

Microsoft created its own XML-based file format, (OOXML) Office Open XML for Office 2007, the latest version of its enormously popular productivity suite that was released in late 2007. This set into motion a heated rivalry between OOXML and ODF, an open standard supported by companies such as IBM and Sun and approved as an ISO standard in May 2006.

Microsoft submitted OOXML to the international standards body Ecma International in November 2005 as an attempt to fast-track it through the ISO. Despite protests and criticisms, that process eventually proved successful on April 1 when the ISO approved OOXML as a standard.

Until now, Microsoft has never said it would natively support ODF, promoting support through software that translates documents between Office file formats and ODF rather than native support. However, the company has been hammered by the industry -- particularly through repeated fines by the European Commission -- for its lack of support for interoperability with other companies' products, and Microsoft has made several recent moves to remedy that situation.

Microsoft previously had said it would support PDF in Office 2007, but Adobe, the owner of the specification, blocked that move. As a result, Microsoft said it would pull native PDF support from Office 2007 in June 2006. Adobe has since submitted PDF to the ISO as an open standard. At the same time it pulled PDF support from Office, Microsoft also pulled planned support for XPS.

Saludos, GAby Menta

Networkworld.

Look Out, Acrobat: Microsoft XPS Is on Your Tail

PDF Version

Opinion: Upon further review, the Windows page-rendering technology, formerly known as "Metro," could pose major headaches for Adobe.

Microsoft's upcoming Vista OS and Office 2007 upgrades pose a paradox for PDF people. On the one hand, the company seems to be conceding that PDF is an essential part of the office worker's life. So it built an export-to-PDF feature into Office. That seems to predict PDF proliferation on a scale we've never seen.
On the other hand, there will be "save as XPS" features in Windows applications, too, which will create PDF-like files. Microsoft's new XPS print subsystem (formerly dubbed "Metro"), part of the underpinnings of Vista, certainly stands to cut into PDF usage.

When news of Metro first came out last year, it sounded as if Microsoft was just performing a necessary upgrade. Metro looked like the pit stop a Word file took en route to the printer—stuff happening so far under the Windows hood that the average PC user wouldn't even notice Metro's machinations.

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I'd heard that Microsoft and Global Graphics—the English PDF and PostScript innovators whose long-lived Harlequin RIP and Jaws PDF software continue to earn solid reps as stable, smart products—demonstrated Metro together at WinHEC in April 2005. So what, I thought at the time, Microsoft's in league with people who know their way around the print-rendering world. Interesting, but let's not sound the death knell for PDF just yet.

It turns out, however, some features in XPS will make its files more PDF-like and less under-the-hood than previously revealed. According to Global Graphics presenters at the AGI Acrobat and PDF Conference in Orlando, Fla., in May, XPS shares some capabilities with PDF: It can support editable metadata, annotations, digital signatures, hyperlinks, bookmarks and text selection, all bread-and-butter features the average person needs in a PDF. Microsoft or its partners will make available free XPS viewers for Windows, Macintosh, Unix, Linux and anywhere else the documents will reach.

XPS, by the way, isn't a Global Graphics product, or even close. It's all Microsoft. The company consulted with Microsoft on developing the file spec, helped develop a prototype RIP, and provided a "print reference implementation RIP for hardware and software vendors to evaluate and measure print performance when developing their applications," according to Global Graphics marketing communications manager Justin Coombes.

PDF is still a much more robust format. Its security features look as if they'll be stronger than XPS rights-management features (remember, with a new Acrobat and Vista coming out later this year, we're still talking rumors and hypotheticals—but the closer it gets to release date, the surer we're getting). Like PDF, XPS will also be an open, published standard, which likely will inspire third-party software development.

PDF supports multimedia and of course, can be made into complex forms—a function that, rumor has it, will kick into overdrive with Flash support in the next Acrobat rev. XPS won't do any of that; in fact, it cannot support any executable code.

So how will the market shake out, once XPS is on everyone's computer? For Adobe, the best-case scenario would be if Microsoft doesn't figure out how to market XPS as well as it did PDF. Today, people working in vertical markets like law, finance, insurance and government can't live without PDF. They didn't arrive at this conclusion in a vacuum.

The second-best outcome would be along the lines of, despite a Herculean effort on the part of Microsoft, the market itself declaring PDF the alpha dog.

This probably will happen—there's no turning back now that many governments have legislated PDF as their electronic document standard: Even if XPS is a better fit, it's me-too, too late. Archivists have their PDF/A standard, prepress their several PDF/X standards, and engineers PDF/E. All are either ISO-approved or headed that way. XPS will have to prove its mettle for years before inspiring such industry support.

Acrobat 8 is suspiciously absent at the AGI Acrobat & PDF Conference. Click here to read more.

It would seem that the best for which Microsoft can hope—even with its wizened marketing army and engineers who likely know the PC user more intimately than anyone else—would be to snap up the low ground. As in, make Acrobat out to be a Cadillac app and PDF a feature-loaded, bandwidth-draining overkill, and persuade the average office user to use XPS instead of PDF when sending a contract cooked up in Word or e-mail attachment for comment and review. Who needs a Cadillac when our Honda Civic, the one that comes free with the operating system, does the job as well?

Redmond's philosophy might be to let the people who are pushing PDF to its limits, such as creative publishing pros, engineers and draftsmen, and multimedia mavens, keep on doing what they're doing in PDF.

That strategy, over time, could marginalize PDF and Acrobat, painting it as an expensive solution only "for the people who need it," whereas right now it's something everybody needs.

At the Orlando conference, Adobe Acrobat Group Product Manager Rick Brown mentioned that there are more than 600 million Reader seats in the world, a change from the previous year's talk of "over a billion downloads." The new number seems more real, more useful—it's good to know how many of those billion Readers kicking around since Acrobat 1.0 actually are in use today.

The number also helps illustrate how Microsoft might be able to go from having XPS, this nonexistent-as-of-yet, non-competitor to PDF to mano a mano combat overnight: Through good marketing, falling into some sheer dumb luck (like the IRS deciding to standardize on PDF for digital forms), and much investment in a free Reader that works on every machine in the world (even cell phones running Symbian) it took Adobe more than a decade to get its 600 million Readers in action.

XPS doesn't need luck. Microsoft estimates it will be on 400 million machines 18 to 24 months after Vista hits the streets, come hell or high water. Then, the battle's joined.

Saludos, GAby Menta

PDFZone

Microsoft to Adobe: Deal or No Deal?


PDF Version

Adobe wants MS to remove PDF functionality from Office 2007 and wants changes in MS's new document display and printing technology. But Redmond has made a counter offer. Is antitrust action looming?

Following a published report claiming that Adobe Systems is poised to launch an antitrust suit against Microsoft over Microsoft's Office 2007 planned PDF support, Microsoft is going on the offensive and discussing what has led to the impasse between the two companies.
Adobe has been in discussions with Microsoft for the past four months over alleged tying and predatory pricing concerns that Adobe has regarding Microsoft XML Paper Specification (XPS) and "Save to PDF" technologies that Microsoft was planning to integrate into Windows Vista and Office 2007, said David Heiner, vice president and deputy general counsel in Microsoft's legal department.

When asked whether Microsoft is expecting Adobe to launch an antitrust suit against the company or simply go to U.S. or European Union regulators with their concerns, Heiner said "they (Adobe) are threatening legal action," but would offer no further specifics.

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Adobe is looking to make a case that Microsoft is violating tying and predatory-pricing regulations with XPS and Save to PDF, Heiner said.

Adobe is claiming that PDF export technology constitutes a separate product and that Microsoft is tying both Save to PDF and Save to XPS to Vista and Office 2007 and is making them available for free, thus undercutting Adobe's ability to charge for these kinds of plug-ins.

"I couldn't say, legally, how this would play out," said Directions on Microsoft analyst Robert Helm. "In the U.S., Adobe would need to show that Microsoft is leveraging a monopoly in one market to monopolize a second market. They will have to convince a judge that the second market exists, and that it might be possible to monopolize it. The U.S. Department of Justice was never able to pull that off. The European Commission is a different matter altogether."

Adobe first raised its concerns about XPS and Save to PDF via a letter sent by Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in February, according to sources close to Microsoft.

As a result of its ensuing discussions, Microsoft has agreed to remove from Office 2007 the Save as PDF functionality it had been touting since last fall. While Save as PDF is part of Office 2007 Beta 2, which Microsoft began distributing to thousands of testers the week of May 22, at the behest of Adobe, it will not be part of future releases, Heiner confirmed. Instead, Microsoft will make that feature a separate, free, downloadable plug in.

Microsoft is not cutting out of Vista XPS – the technology code-named "Metro" that many consider to be an alternative to PDF and Postscript, -- Heiner said. Nor is Microsoft removing the "Save as XPS" capability from Office 2007, he said.

Microsoft has offered Adobe the opportunity to have its Acrobat PDF reader bundled into Vista, Heiner said. Microsoft also has extended to Adobe an offer to include in Windows Vista their own "Save as PDF" plug-in. Adobe is still considering the PDF reader integration, but is not interested in the Save as PDF deal, Heiner said.

"We wanted to address every concern they have. We want them to be a happy ISV (independent software vendor)," Heiner said.

Adobe officials declined to offer as many details on the company's negotiations with Microsoft.

"Microsoft is an extremely important partner -- we are one of the largest commercial developers of Windows software outside of Microsoft and we share millions of customers around the world," said an Adobe corporate spokeswoman. "That said, as our CEO Bruce Chizen has stated publicly numerous times in the past, Microsoft has a monopoly and we are always concerned about the possibility that they might abuse that monopoly.

"We've discussed our concerns openly both with Microsoft as well as with a number of regulatory agencies around the world. We decline to comment on the substance of any of our discussions with Microsoft," the spokeswoman added.

Saludos, GAby Menta

pdfzone

Google Adds PDF Presentations to Google Docs


PDF Version

Google has added a "Save as PDF" feature to the presentation tool in its web-based office automation and collaboration suite.

Now, users of Google's web-based presentation creation tool can take the presentation with them off-line, saving it locally as a PDF. Google Docs now offers a "Save as PDF" feature for presentations directly from its "File" menu.

The online office automation suite already allows for the importing of Microsoft Powerpoint files, among other formats. The new feature makes it possible for users to easily extract shared presentations for off-line viewing as PDFs.

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As the Google Docs Help site documents, the process is fairly straightforward:

"To export a presentation to your local computer as a PDF, follow these steps:
Click the File menu of the presentation you'd like to export.
Select Save as PDF.

In the window that appears, select the option to save the file.
Once your presentation has been exported, you can present your slides while offline by opening the PDF."

Great, great......Bye bye GAby Menta

Microsoft Debuts Newest Version of Designer App


PDF Version

Expression Studio 2 is designed for professional designers and is aimed directly at what may be a vulnerable Adobe.

Microsoft announced May 1 the release to manufacturing of Expression Studio 2, the latest version of the software giant's suite of design tools aimed at professional designers and focused on the market dominated by Adobe Systems.
Microsoft's suite of professional design tools consists of Expression Web 2, Expression Blend 2, Expression Design 2, Expression Media 2 and Expression Encoder 2 and works with Microsoft's core developer tools, Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio 2008, to make for a smooth designer-developer workflow, the company said.

Adobe also is working on technology to enhance designer-developer workflow with a tool code-named Thermo, which is currently under development in Adobe Labs.

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Microsoft delivered a beta release of Expression Studio 2 at its MIX conference in March. The release to the Web of the suite comes a year after the last major release of its components.

pdfzone.

Bye bye, GAby Menta

Convert PDF to HTML - Free Online Conversion

PDF to Word Converter

Convert PDF Files into MS Word Easy, Fast, Exact. Free download.
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Convert pdf word

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How to instantly convert Microsoft Office, OpenOffice, PDF documents to HTML without installing any third-party software like Adobe Acrobat or PDF2HTML. Extract Text from PDF documents. Convert doc, xls, ppt, rtf, pdf to HTML - Free Online Conversion that works on all platforms be it Windows PC, Mac or Linux.

We will utilize the recently announced See it now feature in GMail to convert Adobe PDF documents into html files. In addition to PDF, you can also convert all Microsoft Office Document formats (MS Word .doc, Excel .xls, Powerpoint .ppt, Rich Text Format .rtf), OpenOffice.org Document Formats (Writer, Calc, Impress, Presentation) and WML Files (Wireless markup language) to HTML. Here's how to get this done with GMail:

1. Compose a new message in GMail. (If you are still without a GMail account, request a GMail Invitation code)

2. Attach any PDF or Word document that you want to convert to HTML You can attach multiple files in this step by clicking Attach another File.

3. Enter your own email address in the To: box and click send.

4. You instantly receive a message in your GMail Inbox folder. Open the message and click the "View as HTML" link next to your attachment.

5. The contents of your attachment appear as HTML in a new browser window without having to download the file. When you're finished reading the attached file, close the new browser window to return to Gmail or Save the file to your harddrive.



GMail will show the following types of files as HTML: .pdf, .doc, .xls, .ppt, .rtf, .sxw, .sxc, .sxi, .sdw, .sdc, .sdd, and .wml. You can extend this trick to extract text from PDF documents (PDF to Txt) or Convert Adobe PDF documents to Word (PDF to Doc conversion). First convert the Document to HTML with Gmail and then open the HTML file in Microsoft Word and choose Save as .doc.

Convert PDF without Adobe Acrobat PDF writer - This has link to free or inexpensive PDF creation software. Or Read another Google approach to convert Microsoft Office and PDF files to HTML or Translate PDF and Office documents to different languages.

About GMail See it Now: You can view Microsoft Office, OpenOffice or .pdf attachments as a web page in HTML by clicking the "View as HTML" link right next to it. For when you're on a mobile device or you don't want to install some new software just to view a document. Or if you just want to see it faster.

If you are looking for a commercial PDF conversion software, we recommend ABBYY PDF Transformer that offers One-click conversion from PDF files to Word, Excel, HTML or text. It retains layout and format without retyping and reformatting.


Bye, GAby Menta

Flash attack: Microsoft woos creatives on Silverlight


PDF Version

Analysis: While PDF implementation remains an imprecise science, Adobe has no answer for Redmond's media blitz -- or the announcement at Expression 2.0 of new Silverlight authoring tools.

May 1, ORLANDO, FL. Hell didn't freeze over quite yet, but a couple of weird things happened this morning at the Aquent CRE8/PDF Conference: First, Microsoft reached out to the creative community of print and web designers by dispatching two high-level presenters to preview Silverlight, Microsoft's answer to Flash.
Second, at the end of the presentation, the crowd of several hundred creatives in attendance gave them an enthusiastic response they usually reserve for the likes of Adobe presenters slathering on the “wow” in previewing a new technology or even Apple connecting with their faithful -- and never for Microsoft.

Clad in jeans on the dais, Brian Goldfarb, Microsoft group product manager for user experience platform and tools strategy and colleague Arturo Toledo, technical product manager for Microsoft Expression Silverlight media development tools, spoke of cultural change at Microsoft. They patiently laid out the case for Silverlight to what normally would have been a hostile audience of Apple- and Adobe loyalists unreceptive to anything Redmond would offer.

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Adobe, however, wasn't there. Microsoft stepped in as a show sponsor when Adobe declined to renew its traditional sponsorship here.

Microsoft traditionally appealed more to developers than designers in its software, Goldfarb told the crowd, but in the last few years--the company is rethinking that, as evidenced by its upgrading of company infrastructure to improve user experience by hiring design-minded engineers (last week, it came out that Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom guru/architect Mark Hamburg left Adobe for Microsoft). Their mission is to create attractive, intuitive, un-Microsoft applications and to bridge the disconnect present between designers of web content and the developers charged with executing their designs.

"I think this is one of the most fundamental problems that we're trying to solve: How do we really integrate these two worlds?" Goldfarb said. "I visit agencies all the time. The developers sit over here, the designers sit over there. It's like an eighth-grade dance."

Redmond is reaching out to designers by developing an online community as well as with sharp new revs of its Expression authoring tools -- 2.0 versions announced today--to make implementing Silverlight media simpler for the average designer. As further inducement to try out the Flash alternative, Microsoft also is offering a free hosting service for designers to upload their Silverlight projects, with up to 4 terabytes per month free streaming bandwidth.

Then came the familiar numbers argument: Goldfarb said that they're getting 1.5 million player downloads a day, which he projected will increase to 2.5 million/day over the next two months.

But this was the one Microsoft-wary crowd numbers and bribes couldn't sway. They were more interested in the media Microsoft had to demo than words about its commitment to better interface design. And it was stunning: A preview of the Silverlight-driven HD webcast site for the Beijing Olympics, where visitors will be able to watch up to four sports at once, customize pop-up news bulletins to their interests, will pop up and offer links to breaking stories (such as cutting in for a possible gold-medal gymnastics routine while you're watching a nonmedal basketball game) and consume other media such as expert commentary, highlight replays, and video arranged in constantly-evolving lists of most-watched links. Not only will the site be a coming-out proof-of-concept for Silverlight, but it will also help Microsoft acquire the worldwide penetration on desktop machines it so craves for the player.

Goldfarb also wowed with a preview of a new “deep zoom” feature with Silverlight in which a Web developer can load a 2+ gigapixel image on a Website but the desktop player manages bandwidth so the viewer sees just a screenful at a time an sidesteps the massive download such an image normally would require.

An informal poll of Toledo and several other technical experts in attendance concluded it's likely that no one's yet attempted to embed a Silverlight file into high-end, interactive PDFs like designers/developers currently can with Flash--but it is theoretically possible given the features of both technologies. Perhaps, one expert mused, it might offer an opportunity to an enterprising Acrobat developer to write a plug-in or app that would make it easier for less-technical-minded designers to inject Silverlight media files into PDFs.


Saludos, GAby Menta

By PDFZone

Eisner Returns to Scent of Crime at Aquent PDF Conference
By Don Fluckinger
2008-04-30


PDF Version
Media mogul: In 20 years, web content will reign, while networks will serve to rerun shows first shown on Internet.

ORLANDO, FL: The room was electric with bittersweet irony as ex-Disney CEO and board chairman Michael Eisner delivered the keynote address at the Aquent CRE8/PDF Conference this morning. While the jet-setting speaker and--at this point in his career, media entrepreneur--is no stranger hotel rooms, here at the Disney Coronado Springs resort he wasn't staying in just any room: He conceived this facility for smaller conferences and handpicked the architect, Graham Gund, as part of his broader plan for Disney to create its own profitable hotels and resorts around its Orlando parks instead of contracting them to large chains, which had been the plan when he took over in the 1980s.
That's the sweet part. Previously as an ABC programming exec he'd helped get Happy Days and Laverne & Shirley on the air; while at Disney, he bought the whole network, along with ESPN. They were spoils of an extraordinary run where Eisner, fresh off of overseeing a run of monster hits for Paramount, turned Walt's stagnating company into a theme-park empire with an animation division that could not fail, cranking out hit after hit from The Little Mermaid to the Lion King, and then later with Steve Jobs' Pixar, everything from Toy Story to Finding Nemo.

The bitter part was the 2005 boardroom revolt led by Roy Disney Jr. that threw Eisner, who was chairman as well as CEO, out of the company after more than 20 years at the helm. The company had seemingly lost its way after the Internet boom went bust, and Eisner's tactics of fostering seemingly constant discord in upper management--described at great length by author James Stewart in the book Disneywar--finally caught up with him. Interestingly amid today's discussion of media and how the Internet will drive the future of entertainment, it was a web innovation--a dissident shareholder site--that fueled the revolution and helped bring Eisner down.

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Here at the Aquent conference, Eisner seemed to have integrated the lessons from his old-school media hard knocks and folded in more from the current down-economy entertainment landscape by running contrary to industry chestnuts: He praised the virtues of thinking inside the box, admonishing creatives to come up with effective means to stay within budgets. To illustrate what he meant, Eisner hauled out the oft-told tale of the Raiders of the Lost Ark street fight where Harrison Ford's character shoots a sword-waving assailant after horsewhipping scores of others into submission: It was a budget matter where the crew needed to finish, and Ford was ill and not available for extended shooting. Yet it became one of the funniest moments in the movie. He also made a case for managers taking a strong hand in content creation, something in his own Disney tenure contributed to soaring successes as well as the opposite.

"Micromanagement equals effective management," said Eisner, whose company Vuguru now is developing web programming in two- to 10-minute episodes, including the video series Prom Queen as well as the uncensored All-for-Nots, a wryly witty 2008 twist on The Monkees. So far, micronmanagement is keeping costs down and getting companies like Dodge into sponsorship roles. He also described a fascinating marketing project Vuguru's doing for the upcoming Foreign Body by superstar novelist Robin Cook: Vuguru will release 50 tiny "prequel" video episodes dealing with aspects of the characters' lives, leading up to the release of the book this summer.

Eventually, Eisner believes, web content will overtake television as the main medium for first-run shows as technology supports longer episodes and advertising protocols develop. He believes the present landscape of TV networks will serve as syndication outlets for first-run web content, which will premiere at the future equivalents of today's Yahoo!, MSN, and Veoh--a company in which Eisner's invested. As for now, he said Prom Queen is in the black--barely--and the other shows haven't turned a profit. But it's coming.

"The Internet's been driven, so far, by technology," Eisner said. "Moving forward, it will be driven by creativity."

Following Eisner's mountaintop view of technology and media--which was highly entertaining and at points quite funny but in the end had little to do with Acrobat, PDF, and the other Adobe-based creative tools attendees had some to learn about--PDF guru Max Wyss of the Swiss firm Prodok got into some rock-solid PDF nuts and bolts, offering a 10-year retrospective of the evolution of PDF forms, demonstrating his trademark flashy, cutting-edge-yet-lightweight, complex PDF catalogs tailored for web use.

Wyss said that, while a lot of the features with which most forms and catalogs can be created have been in Acrobat since version 5, subsequent Acrobat revs have shown improved stability and performance, as well as further integration of XML functionality, which expands the palette for people creating data collection systems.