Aspiring webmasters beware. . . .Creating your own website can be appealing, but it’s also a major undertaking.  Having done some preliminary research, you may have already learned that maintaining it alone can be difficult.

Yet, never fear—there are efficient ways of doing it.

Where digital documents have made data portability easier, they have also created confusion among their users because most digital documents are complex, unpredictable and platform dependent.

However, the PDF format has given an entirely new definition to the term "digital documents".

Here's a look at some of the benefits of the PDF that have made it a superior file format and  that have changed the definition of what a digital document is.

Static text and images are the standard in Microsoft Office documents, and unless you’ve got interesting content, chances are your Office documents are pretty much a bore.  Ever wanted to do something about it?

Add exciting media elements to your Office documents.  Now animations, audio and even video can be embedded in them giving all of your documents more life than ever before.  Here’s a short list of some quick basic tips on getting your Office documents jazzed up.

The Adobe PDF format is extremely versatile. It's a swiss army knife format that can help you out in a number of tight situations.

But are you still asking just how versatile the PDF is and how that versatility can help you? Let’s show you what the PDF can do.

Here are 7 real-life problems you can solve with just this one format.

Problem #1 – Data Security

I’m worried about data being stolen from my computer or someone reading a file that they shouldn’t. How can the PDF help me?

Well Adobe Acrobat 9 has improved document security built right into it. So you don’t need to worry about the secret company information getting into the wrong hands or the wrong eyes seeing it. It allows you to set a password for everything from opening to changing. You can control whether or not a document can be printed and even permanently remove specific information or meta information. You can even prevent files from copying, editing and commenting (according to the Adobe Acrobat website).

Example Document types:

Invoices
Contracts and agreements
Surveys and questionnaires
HR forms and documents
Strategic planning documents
Design reviews
Pharmaceutical submissions
Government and military intelligence briefs

Problem #2 – Easy Collaboration and Editing

Sometimes I need other people to insert data or help with a document, but I can’t always track what they’ve done or see what it was before their changes.

Since Adobe Acrobat 9 entire teams are now able to collaborate on one document and everyone has a voice. By putting a project toether in PDF format you can slipstream the review and approval processes so that everyone can quickly see the content, comment on and even approve it. To help with all of this you can even highlight changes made between versions so everyone can see EXACTLY what changed in real-time thanks to document view synchronizing.

Here are some example document types:

RFP submittals
Invoicing
Contracts and agreements
Contract change orders
Client presentations
Design milestone reviews 
(ads, marketing collateral, product designs)
Strategic plans
Marketing plans
Proposals

Problem #3 – Sharing Information

I’ve got tons of things I need to show other people but I don’t want to have ten different types of files.

The great thing about the PDF is that you don’t have to worry about that. PDFs can have nearly every other type of file embedded within them. You can make slide shows from images or presentation information. You can embed audio files and with Adobe Acrobat 9 you can convert many different file types to PDF.  Now you can always be sure that what you want others to see is precisely what they see when they view your work.

With Adobe Presenter, which is included in Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro Extended. It allows you to record a Powerpoint presentation including audio and vidoe and save as a PDF.  You can even convert web pages and Flash objects and import them into your PDFs. Most video formats can be converted to FLV giving you full video capabilities in all of your documents, without having to worry about what browser, audio or video player your colleagues might have. With PDF Portfolios you can keep various different documents and media files in their original format and still share them all in one document when needed.

Problem #4 – Very Specific Information

My work or study requires very technical or specific information and I need a document everyone can read.

Adobe Acrobat 9 now allows a wider variety of interaction and file types. For example it allows users to import and interact with geospatial files without any loss of metadata, coordinates and comments or changes. It even allows for measurements to be made. Need to show manufacturing specifications in a 3D format? No problem Adobe Acrobat 9 allows that as well and utilize 2D, vector, and raster files formats. You can even make measurements and create exploded views of the 3D items.

Problem #5 – Forms, Forms and More Forms

My work requires endless piles of forms to be created, changed, filled and filed… I need help!

PDF is the perfect format for forms thanks to the new and improved Forms Wizard in Acrobat 9. You can create forms electronically or from pre-existing paper forms that you can scan in and modify. This can even be used to import documents from Word and spreadsheets from Excel. Acrobat 9 Pro Extended can even automatically recognize form fields for you and convert them to interactive forms fields.

Problem #6 – International, multi-industry

I do business in multiple countries in private and public sectors including education and government.

According to Greg Pisocky, Business Development Manager at Adobe, “There's not a federal agency that does not use PDF. Acrobat software and Adobe PDF are key technologies in some capacity at all branches and levels of government, the military and virtually every agency.�

But you do business outside of America as well, India and Australia are just two other examples of national governments that have embraced the PDF format. Faculty, teachers, administration, staff and students all have access to the free Adobe Acrobat Reader, which means that no matter who you need to reach with your documents you have a fairly good chance that they will be able to use PDF.

Problem #7 – Teaching at all Levels

I teach and need students to be able to use the documents everywhere they go.

The PDF format is universally accessible and students, parents and everyone in between has probably used it at work or school. So there’s little possibility that your students don’t know how to access it. Plus with the fact that nearly every house has at least one computer now there should be no trouble for them to receive the files in email or from the web.

There’s another benefit of the PDF format right there. They’re generally small enough to se sent via email or served on the web. Most browsers have plugins that allow them to view the PDFs which means that most students probably won’t even need to download or install a pieces of software since it is most likely on their computer already. Plus with the amazing versatility of the PDF they can be used for a variety of class types from arts to the sciences to computer-based courses.

What other problems could the PDF help you solve?

Excel has got to be one of the most complex software applications on the market. From keyboard shortcuts to functions and code snippets, the right Excel tricks are difficult to master, let alone find.

If you’ve ever had troubles getting around Excel or finding that perfect calculation tip, check out our latest article, The Ultimate Excel Cheatsheet.

It’s exactly what it says it is. You’ll find a number of printable PDF cheatsheets and links that reference keyboard shortcuts, functions, command line switches, formulas and VBA code snippets.

Just simply print, save or click and you’ll be able to perform some of the most complex Excel functions around.

Enjoy!

New Year’s is a great time for taking a glance back at the previous year and a glance ahead at the upcoming year—which things didn’t work, what you can do to improve and how things have changed or, in some ways, really haven’t.

It’s tax time and the 2008 deadline is fast approaching.Are you ready?

While now is the time to start worrying about your number crunching skills and your organizational skills, one thing you don’t have to worry about with Adobe around is your record keeping skills—with the help of the PDF file format.

Whether you do your taxes by hand or have someone do them for you, at one point or another, your tax forms will be touched by Adobe technology somewhere along the way. How?

When you think PDF, what comes to mind?—Adobe? Reader? Acrobat? “Oh, no�?

The format has indeed gained such a reputation for being manipulated too easily and frequently in the past that the latter probably came more naturally to you than the others. But this fact hasn’t turned the PDF into a has-been format yet.

In fact, despite the PDF hacks—or in spite of them, users and groups are still looking to the PDF as a digital solution. How come? Why is such a vulnerable format still in the picture? What keeps it going?

Check out The PDF Paradox: How Does A Risky Format Draw Us Into Its Ecosystem?--an article that tries to answer just that by putting the PDF into perspective.

With short glances and spotlights on PDF innovations, uses and technologies, the article goes beyond "Adobe�, “Reader� and “Acrobat� to look at the bigger picture—the PDF ecosystem, where the format takes centre stage.

This may seem like a rhetorical question, but is it? If you’ve ever questioned the need for the PDF, here’s the answer.

I came across  this video on YouTube posted up by Adobe veteran Lori DeFurio, entitled “Introducing Adobe Acrobat 1.0�.  The video is a “mock-umentary� presenting  a comical “day in the life of� look at the kind of office workflow we’d be stuck with if it weren’t for the PDF file format.

You just can’t help but laugh at how these office workers get their job done—because at one point or another, you probably did the same thing.

Enjoy!

If you’re bored to death with articles and spotlight pieces that sum up the past year, here’s an  interesting and fun way of doing it yourself: Google Trends.  Ever check it out?

Google Trends is a Google Labs project aimed at keeping in track with the latest in user search trends according to time frame, region and sub-region. You can find out visually how many times a certain topic was searched for.

 In addition, it’ll provide you with a news-reference-volume graph, which shows you how many times your search subject occurred in Google News and major headlines that went hand-in-hand with that search trend.

(*Disclaimer: Because this is still a Google Labs project still being developed, results are not always accurate nor are they the definitive word on user habits. However, according to the Google Team, they are “updating the information provided by Google Trends daily�.)

 Just typing in a few search terms, like “Iraq�, “Britney Spears�, “mountain climbing� will generate interesting results.

So what does a “PDF� search trend for 2007 look like? Take a look.

Take a look at the news reference volume graph as it hits a peak with the news of the PDF submission for ISO certification. It’s search popularity hits a plateau. A natural occurrence with headlines being posted everywhere?

Moreover, Google Trends lets you keep “up to date� with the past as well with an option for viewing older search trends—a good way to compare and contrast the past and the present.  And why not with the PDF?

Here’s a look at 2006—the year of the Microsoft-XPS kerfuffle.

The search volume is pretty much up there consistently, until June when it started to dip a bit with the announcement that MS was going to pull out the PDF support from Office 2007.  Search trends that reflect the climax and resolution of the conflict?

By the way, in case you couldn’t tell, I am NOT a statistics analyst by any means. However,  I think you can get a sense of how the “trendiness� of our beloved format comes about in relation to news events.

You can see PDF search popularity dipping and climbing accordingly—and that’s just with the term “PDF� alone.   Try out "PDF" variations (PDF documents, PDF converters, PDF software, PDF. . . .) and see what comes up.

 

So was 2007 a better, hotter, trendier PDF year than 2006? What’s your verdict?

 

Happy New Year’s from Investintech.com!

 

 

From the looks of it, it seems that this year had everything for Adobe: ISO standardization, marketing innovations, and product launches.  

Yet, Adobe’s enormous successes were all but equaled by the controversies and technical vulnerabilities that sprang up. In short, it turned out to be the best of times and the worst of times for Adobe. 

In the annual tradition of looking back over the past year, here are some Adobe highlights from 2007—the good, the bad and the ugly. 

 

PDFs ISO Certification

(January)

Having PDF 1.7 as an ISO standard should make life easier for organizations that need to comply with government-mandated strategies to use the format.

Indeed, Adobe and Microsoft were racing to see who could make it easiest in 2007 as the Adobe/Microsoft competition got even closer with the PDF spec submission to ISO, the OOXML fast track submission, and the release of MS Vista with its PDF/XPS creation functionality. 2008 will definitely see more of this with the race for online applications that’s already begun.

 

Adobe CS3

(April)

A customer-inspired release, Adobe Creative Suite 3 presents an unprecedented variety of integrated configurations and stand-alone products, with comprehensive support for the most cutting-edge workflows for any design discipline.

2007 was the year for graphic designing products, and it was backed by a whopping product release known as Adobe Creative Suite 3.   Taking image editing applications to a designing level especially catered to the user, Adobe indirectly took the PDF to another level as well by integrating streamlined PDF support.

 

Adobe Acrobat and PDF Conference 2007

(May)

I’m still processing all the things that went on during the conference, but this year’s conference struck me as an evolution in process. The conference itself was broader than last year, as it included all of the creative aspects – in fact, it was marketed as the CRE8 Conference.

2007 was also a great year for Investintech.com.  We not only participated in conferences dedicated to pushing PDF innovation, but also did some innovating of our own with the Able2Extract product line: we added image conversion and PDF form creation.

 

LiveCycle Enterprise Suite

(June)

By transforming processes such as account enrollment, claims processing or guided self service into engaging applications, businesses and governments can improve customer service, decrease costly cycle times, and manage information faster and more accurately.

The release of LiveCycle ES further enhanced workflows that efficiently process interactive PDF forms. Yet, with all its benefits, how could this service/software not enhance more than just PDF workflows? Adobe PDF technology is always aimed at doing more than just what’s required for the PDF; it does what the user requires.

 

Digital Editions

(June)

The public beta of Adobe Digital Editions generated more than 300,000 downloads in less than six months.

This is a 2007 product release that will no doubt further promote the PDF and PDF e-book as a digital commodity in 2008.  In essence, it’s a super Reader being the ubiquitous software it was meant to be.

 

PDF Spam

(July)

As PDF usage continues its ubiquitous growth, unfortunately so does the spammers creative use of it to engage readers to buy into bogus offerings.

PDF spam campaigns happened more than once this year with July being one of those times. This PDF pump-and-dump spamming period put all PDF users at odds with their own files—not a good time for the format’s popularity, or its reputation as a trusted format.

 

Kinko’s Fedex Controversy

 (August)

I was hoping that Adobe would take real advantage of the hubbub and create a new, more platform-oriented feature. The timely burial of “The Kinko’s Edition� could be converted to a significant opportunity.

The outcome of this innovation didn’t turn out as expected.  As a consequence of singling out Kinko’s Fedex, a major controversy between Adobe and print publishers ensued, leading to the removal of the functionality altogether. A lesson for future endeavors in 2008? Or, as Duff Johnson puts it, “a significant opportunity�? It’s always hard to tell at the moment.

 

XSS and PDF backdoors

(September)

I am closing the season with the following HIGH Risk vulnerability: Adobe Acrobat/Reader PDF documents can be used to compromise your Windows box. Completely!!! Invisibly and unwillingly!!! All it takes is to open a PDF document or stumble across a page which embeds one.

When it seemed like it couldn’t get worse, more format vulnerabilities popped up.  Unlike the PDF spamming campaign, this PDF setback also involved other software application vulnerabilities.  The event underscored a digital irony for PDF users: what was once used to protect their data was now used to exploit it.

 

Bruce Chizen Announces His Retirement

(November)

"Bruce Chizen's vision has helped transform Adobe from a company that was known mainly for its popular design products into one of the largest and most diversified software companies in the world," Chuck Geschke and John Warnock, Adobe's board chairmen and the company's co-founders, said in a joint statement.

With more than 10 years invested in the company, Chizen announced his retirement. It was a major shocker of the year that will significantly shape the company’s future. In short—the vision is shifting, the company is metamorphosing.

 

Yahoo! Ads

(November)

The service could hold great promise for PDF publishers, which are trying to find new revenue streams for their content and are tired of running ads by selling ad space and linking to the ad.

This marketing innovation leaves 2007 on a cliffhanger: How will it turn out for Adobe? Controversy or success? Will 2008 be any different? Or will it contain a bit  more drama?

 

 Thus, Adobe’s  25^th year ends. 

 

Do you remember what it was like using 3 ½ floppy disks? Typewriters? Rotary dial telephones? Audio cassettes? Will you remember what it was like to use Desktop applications?

I’m a late bloomer when it comes to technology, so it’s actually been ten years since I first used a 3 ½ floppy disk. Up until then I’d been using a typewriter for high school essays and papers. Back then, typos were costly on a final typewritten draft, something which the backspace key on a computer now eliminates. Most of you can probably remember even more “old school� ways of getting things done.

Changes come slowly, then gradually, and then finally all of a sudden, over a day, a month, or even a few years. Well, in ten years, a lot can happen. This is the time frame Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen predicted for a complete shift from the computer desktop to the World Wide Web.

Articles on tech sites in the past month, have been citing Chizen’s predictionfrom his question and answer period at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. And over the span of ten years, you can expect to see this predicted shift.

You can see it happening right now. You can see it happening with Google and its number of web services and mashups. And, much like Google in the early days of the web, Adobe is aiming to be a major player as an online service provider, taking a major step into the Web 2.0 market.

So far it’s latest moves have been a gesture towards this. Their latest SHARE beta project in Adobe Labs is geared towards sharing, accessing, viewing and organizing your documents online as a free web-based service.

In addition, Adobe’s already offering some of its digital editing applications online as services. Even the PDF format is still being improved and innovated with the still on-going Mars project.

Yet as exciting as the prospect of seeing how far we can go using the web as platform is, it’ll be just as demanding in adjusting to the changes it’ll generate. It’ll mean changes in the way you work (as always), in how companies carry out e-commerce and product sales, in server-client processing technology, and further changes in document exchange and storage.

Microsoft, of course, is also looking to gain ground in the Web 2.0 future with its own online storage service, Windows Live SkyDrive, which has been in beta form since late September. Thus, even competition between companies and the services they create is going to evolve.


In my last posting, I looked at the how the interconnectedness of Web 2.0 made an impact on the changes in the PDF format. You can think of it now as a sneak peek of what to expect from the bigger picture. If desktop applications can achieve the same dynamic, connected and richer quality the PDF has acquired for online usage, it‘ll be interesting to see what Adobe will do with its desktop applications.

If you were to come up with a good sampling of trends you see online, what would be included in that list? Facebook, YouTube, G-mail, ebay? Perhaps Yahoo!, Google Maps and Wiki sites as well. Let’s not forget the infinite number of blogs, RSS feeds, tagging, podcasting and bookmarking sites that are out there. If you’ve listed these, then you’ve listed a good sample of Web 2.0 elements.

Web 2.0 is a term that you’ve probably seen around on the Internet, and perhaps a term that is a bit obscured. Coined by Tim O’Reilly in 2004, the term encompasses a broad definition. But in a nutshell, it refers to the general trend in which the World Wide Web is going—a more connected and dynamic direction than ever before.

Broadly speaking, Web 2.0 places emphasis on the web as platform. Moreover, the user participation that enriches it, the networks that add to it, the tech innovation that motivates it, and the data that drives it, are all hallmarks of a Web 2.0 application. The result of such a combination? A web environment in which users can do more.

From just that short description alone, you can see that it’s a Web 2.0 world out there. And it’s seeping into the PDF world simply by influencing our digital habits and interests. For example, web designing tools are turning users into developers. If you’re a downloader, you’re a server as well. Desktop publishing software can make the user both publisher and reader at the same time. These desktop applications, in turn, are then gradually shifted to web applications. Whether or not you’re an avid user of the PDF, you can see that these characteristics play a role in how we look at the file format in a different way, how it’s used, how it’s innovated and how it can be made more efficient online.


Web 2.0—It’s presence, It’s Impact, And It’s Influence On The PDF


Along with this Web 2.0 growth, Adobe has been taking PDF and its authoring tools and combining it with the web tools of Macromedia. This is forming an important relationship between the PDF and online content. And this is why the PDF is gaining a foothold as Web 2.0 further develops. Adobe’s AIR is a runtime client that can render PDF, HTML and Flash content that can work external to the browser and as a desktop application connected to the Web while still taking advantage of your local storage and hard drive. This is just an example of PDF technology being leveraged for the web. There is so much PDF content on the web because the PDF is accomplishing what other formats can’t do online.


For instance, if you take a look at the main use of PDFs today, three words that might come to mind are: Interactive Document Processing. This is an efficient way of connecting both business workflows and the Web to each other. The PDF format is becoming the interface between businesses and users. Just because of the sheer growth of the Internet and the wide user-base websites have established, it’s now convenient that tax forms be downloaded in PDF, or that applications be filled out online. Document processing and dynamic security control is what software and online services like LiveCycle Design ES and Adobe Document Server is geared towards--creating and connecting custom tailored backend systems with the client user.


Real time collaboration is now a major feature that enhances PDF workflows. The format is no longer a static virtual page , but a dynamic virtual space. This connectedness is also accompanied by hyperlinking, a thing to which other online documents is not immune. The format actually goes beyond the identity of a closed format and connects to the web and to users online. However, what makes the PDF more unique is that the Adobe Reader is feature rich. Reader 8.1 can now support RSS feeds in XML format, a more dynamic and heavy duty linking than simple hyperlinking can provide. A Reader can keep you in touch with dynamic content that’s constantly updated.


Another aspect of today’s web is the “openness� of software and technology that is now becoming the norm for Web 2.0. It generates user input and contribution that drives the innovation and integration of different technologies. Software manufacturing is becoming a communal project. The Adobe Mars project, for instance, still in beta status, is an example of this communal production. In one sense, Web 2.0 has made PDF users participants, third party developers and innovators all in one.


The user perspective on the PDF is changing drastically in that anyone can create one for any purpose, not just for those dealing with top corporation documents. This allows users to spontaneously create and share PDF files as you would normally email media or image files. PDFs are being uploaded and downloaded publicly on webpages in the form of documents and data containers.


In one form or another, the PDF is being developed in stride with Web 2.0 in mind. The PDF has gradually shifted its position and is a far from what it was three versions ago, let alone the last version. If Web 2.0 is a vision of what the web could be, then the PDF format is a vision of what Web 2.0 documents should be.

On every website you visit, if there is a document to download or an article to view, the Adobe PDF icon will be lingering around on the page somewhere. The PDF is everywhere online and for good reason.

Adobe’s made the PDF into a format that connects many of the tasks you need to do on a daily basis. But Adobe didn’t do it alone. The computer world is a dog-eat-dog world that involves big bucks and big names. In two words, it means mergers and acquisitions. And this is how Adobe has helped to keep the PDF format ahead of the competition.

So whether you realize it or not, these 9 acquisitions and mergers by Adobe have played an important role in your work.

1. OCR Systems Inc. (1992) OCR Systems Inc. provided the technology that gave birth to the question, ‘is it a native or scanned PDF?’ Their technology is what first made it possible to manipulate scanned documents into PDF.

2. Aldus Corp. (1994) This merger essentially brought PostScript--and hence the PDF, to the desktop. Creating, viewing, publishing. . . . Let’s face it, where would the PDF be without a desktop application to create one?

3. Accelio Corp. (2002) Digital forms users can submit are now a reality. Thanks in part to Accelio, the company’s server-based solutions technology is used in Adobe LiveCycle Design.

4. Yellow Dragon Software Corp. (2003) Now a combination of PDF and XML is being commonly being used for exchanging business data. Yellow Dragon, a maker of XML messaging and metadata software, palyed a key role in adding the backbone electronic business XML (ebXML) scheme to the PDF.

5. QLink Technologies, Inc.(2004) This merger contributed their Java-based workflow technology for building Intelligent document processing applications. Undoubtedly, you’ve probably already filled out a PDF form that has gone through a processing system built with the technology from QLink.

6. OKYZ S.A. (2004) Although not much detail was released about this acquisition at the time, OKYZ S.A. allowed Adobe to make use of the 3D technology that’s now a big part of its Acrobat line.

7. Macromedia, Inc. (2005) A big one. How big? So big that without it, it’d mean no support for Flashpaper, no mobile PDFs, no online collaboration, and worse, no media-rich PDFs. . . .

8. Trade & Technologies France (TTF) (2006) You wanted those 3D graphic models in PDF? Well, TTF provided the technology needed to convert 3D models to PDF with CAD translators.

9. FileLine DRM Division of Navisware (2006) FileLine DRM contributes to Adobe’s LiveCycle Policy Server that gives you the dynamic security control your PDF files use. Can you picture the PDF without the security it’s known for? I don’t think anyone can.


On the Adobe site, it says that around 10% of the file documents found online are PDFs. Now while that may seem like a small percentage, 10% of how many millions of online documents can add up to a very large number. With all the technology that’s added to the format, is it any wonder?