Acrobat.com illustrates that web apps aren't a Flash in the pan

Big news today out of Adobe with their Acrobat.com launch. It's a suite of online tools based around Adobe Flash & Flex that offers a word processor, web conference function, file sharing and up to 5 GB of file storage for free. As a daily user of Google Docs, I immediately hit up Buzzword, the word processor. I came away very impressed right off the bat as I tried to import a .docx file created in Microsoft Word that I can't import on Google Docs. It worked perfectly and I was able to view and edit as if I were in Word. The export support looks fantastic as well: PDF, .doc, .docx, RTF, .txt and HTML zipped. Sure it doesn't offer 80% of the bells, whistles and tools included in my copy of Office Ultimate, but most consumers don't need those to begin with.

I haven't tried the other features yet, but hope to do so this afternoon. James and I often collaborate on documents so this gives us another avenue of options. In the words of Hans and Franz, "Hear me now unt believe me later..." This is where we're heading with mobile devices and productivity. The days of bulky client apps are slowly coming to a close and the browser essentially IS the operating system. We've still got years of client revisions ahead of us, but I gather that within 5 to 7 years, more consumers will use web applications than client apps. That works out pretty nicely with all of the efficient, but adequately powered mobile devices and platforms arriving on the scene right now, no?

Update: the more I play with Buzzword, the more impressed I get. Although not feature-rich, it seems to have all of the features I need: word count at the bottom right, spellcheck, history timeline, ability to add comments, a "synchronator" button to take control and save edits while collaborating and more. Well worth the look if you have time... and I haven't even hit up the other apps in the suite, yet!

Comments

[Scott]

Just tried to log into my newly established Adobe Buzzword account and got this message:
Service Unavailable
Sorry, but Buzzword is currently unavailable.
Please try again in a little while.

Oops.

[Scott]

Just tried to log into my newly established Adobe Buzzword account and got this message:
Service Unavailable
Sorry, but Buzzword is currently unavailable.
Please try again in a little while.

Oops.

[TateJ]

Me too. I'll try it again in a few days. If I have issues then, I'm moving on.

[Jalapeno]

Just tried the ConnectNow app, looks like a free conferencing app with voip, video and Screen Sharing, very nice!

[Mike Whalen]

The service has been hit-or-miss all day. I did get in after trying many times. It's pretty nice. I really like the fact that the you can see what the page will look like. The lesser WYSIWYG setup at Google Docs has been the only thing that has bugged me so much about their service. I would use Buzzword. It's easy, it has enough features, it's sexy, too.

[Kevin C. Tofel]

Since the service just launched, I gather it's going to be hit-or-miss for a short while. Clearly, if Adobe can't keep the service available 99.999% of the time, folks won't use it. I like what I've seen so far though... still needs more features to truly compete with Google Docs, Zoho, etc... but heading in the right direction.

[James Kendrick]

I just got in the first try. :)

[John in Norway]

And will this work with an E90 Communicator? All the others I've tried don't.

I can't see this cloud thing taking off until we have always connected internet and it works on all 'computers'.

[DavidK]

1) the buzzword uploaded a word doc OK, that was neat.

2) it couldn't convert it to PDF, in fact the converter couldn't see my docs already uploaded, had to re-upload

3) the connect app launched somewhere on my desktop I couldn't see!

- David

[Virtuous]

I won't rely on the cloud until high speed access with good reception and generous data caps is available throughout California.