What’s the buzz?
For years they've been saying web-based office applications like word processing and spreadsheets are not far from becoming mainstream. Since they own Flash, Adobe look in a pretty good position to make this reality and the bundling together in Acrobat.com looks like an interesting effort. You've got Buzzword, a Web-based word processor, ConnectNow conferencing for up to three people, a PDF creator, and file sharing with 5GB of storage. Read more here:
What is clear is that Adobe hasn't been sitting idly by watching as services move to the cloud. This launch of a hosted suites of services, not to mention this huge shift with Acrobat 9, now a web-powered tool, shows the company's focus on combining the best of web office tools with their current set of products.
Even with all these new, integrated products and services, you still get the sense that these are all tools meant to enhance the Acrobat experience as opposed to an attempt to compete with traditional business software like Microsoft Office. If anything, their word processor seems like more of a way to begin the task of PDF creation - especially with the service's handy “convert to PDF feature” - than it is an attempt to be a Microsoft Word competitor.
All styled in a very Lightroom-like black. And with such a cute time-out screen.