My last post was all about a conclusion I made in my personal collaborative tool of choice. After evaluating many capabilities I settled on Acrobat Connect, a hosted collaborative environment that has a version that exceeds my needs for a very low cost.
Then I saw the new online system just announced by Adobe called Acrobat.com Acrobat.com provides even more collaborative features, like a better way to share audio (you can still use their free conference bridge but can also use VOIP by sharing your microphone, for example). But Acrobat.com also ties together all the other online office capabilities, including a word processor (Buzzword), PDF file format converters and means to save and exchange files with others. There is also a developer API.
The entire interface is GREAT looking. But also of note, Acrobat.com is free to sign up for. That beats the low price of Adobe’s connect.
There are limits to Acrobat.com I don’t think it will meet all my video collaboration or telecon needs since they limit the number of folks currently allowed in a session to three (I’m not complaining, afterall it is free). So I will probably keep my low cost Adobe Connect account and will also use my free Acrobat.com account. I’ll just need to decide beforehand which to invite folks to.
What will happen in the future? I imagine Adobe will continue to improve both acrobat.com and connect, and those two might actually have a path to converge one day. I also imagine that the higher end collaborative capabilities provdied to enterprises, like adobe connect pro will continue to be enhanced. We are living in interesting times.
For the record, for now my URLs are:
https://connectnow.acrobat.com/bobgourley – For the Acrobat.com version.
and
http://connectnow.acrobat.com/CrucialPointLLC – For the Acrobat Connect version.
About BobGourley
Pingback: What CTOs should know about Adobe | CTOvision.com