Adobe Acrobat.com gets a makeover and new services

It has evolved into a larger suite of services integrated closely not only with Acrobat 9 and the upcoming Acrobat X, but also with Creative Suite 5 and its CS Review service. It is a useful cloud offering in its own right, whether or not you use it with Acrobat or Creative Suite. Going beyond its document collaboration roots, it also includes the ability to become a Learning Management System repository when used with Captivate 5. I wrote a some blog entries a few months back about using Acrobat.com as a repository for eLearning with Captivate 5. And, for the basic service, it's free!

This morning, Adobe rolled out SendNow and CreatePDF, two new services that extend the value of Acrobat.com.

SendNow allows you to send files to other people via email. It is similar to services like YouSendIt, but this based on the existing Acrobat.com infrastructure and has the backing of Adobe Systems' extensive cloud. 

You might wonder how it's different from the existing Share function of Acrobat.com. Share is about collaboration, and when you Share a file, it ends up in the other person's Acrobat.com files when they log into Acrobat.com. It's pretty neat when you're working with several people on the same project and you want everyone to have a copy of the document.

In the case of SendNow, it delivers an email with a tracked link to the file. When the user clicks the link, they are taken to a web page where they download the file. No login, no fuss, no muss. The file remains available for seven days then disappears. You can send up to 100MB at a time, and each file can be downloaded up to 100 times. If you need larger files or longer duration, you can subscribe to the SendNow service and receive more disk space as well as other benefits.

CreatePDF is a service that allows you to upload files and convert them to PDF. It also includes a desktop printer that will print to the service, and a capability to combine two or more PDFs into one PDF. The basic service will allow you to convert 5 files to PDF and print 5 files to PDF. To use the combination feature, you need a paid subscription.

The new services are available separately from Acrobat.com. It is unclear whether a subscription to Acrobat.com includes SendNow and CreatePDF, since the page hasn't been updated yet. However, since an Acrobat.com subscription has always included unlimited PDF conversions, I would imagine that the $15 per month for the Plus version of Acrobat.com would at least include CreatePDF, but I'll update this when I learn more about it.

Acrobat users are wondering about why they would need this service. Well, imagine that you're working on a shared computer that DOESN'T have Acrobat installed. Or, you're working in a library or other public terminal and there's no PDF maker. This offers you the ability to create a PDF from your native Office documents as well as the complete suite of file formats that Acrobat supports. Also, for many companies, the cost of Acrobat isn't palatable just for creating and combining PDFs, but a monthly subscription service is just the trick to increase productivity. And, of course, you get all of the other benefits of Acrobat.com to boot.

I am excited to see Acrobat.com grow. I believe that the cloud is a good move for Adobe, and while many users are just getting introduced to Acrobat.com, those of us who are old hats are liking the new features and services. I can't wait to see what's next.