With the latest super-advanced Acrobat 8, you may be wondering what else Adobe has in its back pocket for the near future. Well, next in line is a PDF Document Centre , a web based service that allows users to control the PDFs they create and send out. And this is an understatement.
With the hosted service, users can customize access settings and modify the use of their PDF documents by retaining control over the files regardless of where they go. This control includes setting expiration dates on documents, updating an older file version with a newer one and tracking what the recipients have done with the file. Through the PDF Document Centre, PDF authors can even restrict only certain users to access the document that are signed up with an Adobe ID and email address as ‘passwords’.
Users can work and view Document Centre controlled PDFs with the latest Adobe Reader 8, which is now currently available for download. In addition, a plug in will be made available for protecting Word and Excel 2003 documents. For these files, the same plugins as well as the Reader will be needed to access those files.
With all the talk about securing your files, this monitoring service is aimed at giving PDF creators a hands-on sense of security that they can weild from the desktop.
For all of you that are interested, a free trial version is currently available on the Adobe website until the end of the calendar year. After that, the service will be available on a per user and per month subscription price. Check out the Adobe site for more details.
