Beyond .pdf – Adobe Ready to Compete with Acrobat 8

I had a chance to meet and podcast with Adobe’s senior execs on their Acrobat 8 announcement.  Tom Hale and I chatted (podcast on PodTech.net) about it and talked about what it means.  It is well known that Microsoft is coming out with a “pdf” functionality in Vista.  Other bloggers have opinions on it – Gone with a breeze. 

My take on this announcement:  this is about going beyond pdf. Adobe is putting out the new framework around social collaboration.  I will be watching the new Connect product.  Adobe has always been known for delivering their solutions to businesses for high value documents management.  The Macromedia products are consumer driven and dominate in market share.  Combine the both and this could well be a jamming suite that intersects high value content and relationships with digital media.  With the new user interface and suite of digital focused capability I expect that Adobe will be leading the “content is the application” space.

Robert has a link on his blog about the exclusive video that gives the inside scoop and demo of the new Acrobat 8 suite.  Robert is showing the high quality resolution of HD.  Nice work Robert.