Expanding its push from software toward online services, Adobe Systems on Wednesday introduced a technology for collaboratively producing and sharing online presentations.

Acrobat.com Presentations, hosted at Adobe Labs in its current, somewhat experimental state, joins Adobe's Buzzword online word processor with its ConnectNow service for screen sharing and other online meeting activities. Adobe also offers a basic online version of its Photoshop image-editing technology called Photoshop.com.

"The application includes built-in tools and layouts for adding visually appealing elements, such as pre-defined colour sets, intelligent image placement and graphic tools for creating diagrams and adding effects," Adobe said in a statement.

Acrobat.com Presentations also lets multiple people work on the same presentation at the same time. "With simultaneous editing capabilities, no one is locked out of the presentation while others are making changes," Adobe said. "The application also makes it easy to see who has access to the presentation, who is viewing, who is editing and which slide each person is editing."

Acrobat.com Presentations is based on Adobe's Flash technology, an add-on that's widely installed in web browsers. In contrast, a rival service, Google Docs, uses the JavaScript programming language built into web browsers. Microsoft's upcoming online Office service will use JavaScript but get extra abilities if a browser has Silverlight, Microsoft's rival to Flash, installed.

Related links

Leave a comment

You must read and type the 6 chars within 0..9 and A..F

* indicates mandatory fields.

Log in


Sign up | Forgot your password?

  • Staff Microsoft shows off IE9 preview

    This week, highlights from Microsoft's MIX10 conference and more in the Roundup. Read more »

    -- posted by Staff

  • Chris Duckett IE9's H.264 vote killed Ogg

    In a split decision by the judges, the winner of the W3C/WHATWG video codec consensus is H.264, taking home the future of video playback on the internet while loser Ogg goes home with nothing but thoughts of what might have been. Read more »

    -- posted by Chris Duckett

  • Staff Google launches Apps Marketplace

    Google launches and app store, while Mozilla plans to re-write its open-source license. More of this week's news in the Roundup. Read more »

    -- posted by Staff

What's on?

  • Optus Deal

    Broadband + home phone + PlayStation®3 in a single package price!