Tech bytes for tea?

In a bid to drum up interest in a staid workhorse product, and get consumers to look beyond its ubiquitous role as a document reader, Adobe has embarked upon an innovative campaign to convince people that Acrobat X is more than just a reader, or a document archiver.

Acrobat X contains a complete suite of modules to facilitate “sharing and collaboration of digital documents amongst co-worders”.

What is Acrobat?

To the man in the street, Acrobat brings immediately to mind Acrobat Reader, the ubiquitous free browser plug-in that enables the opening and viewing of documents saved in the equally ubiquitous PDF format.

Nothing exciting. In fact, many third party software publishe PDF reading software that promises to be smaller and faster than the original.

The other half of Acrobat comprises other modules that facilitate document archival via conversion of documents from proprietary formats to the universal PDF format. It enhances document collaboration by tracking and managing comments and amendments that co-workers can add – even simultaneously – and then reconcile into a neatly compiled working document.

Have you tried circulating minutes to members of a meeting and manually compiling spurious comments that come in from those members suggesting amendments? An Acrobat-based workflow can alleviate much of those grunt work and save everybody’s time and effort.

The price of such rigorous sharing is security, and this is implemented via document encryption and password-based access and rights.

Another form of document collaboration involves the interaction between the publishers and readers, and this is managed by the form authoring and editing module in Acrobat.

As for content, in addition to just plain text documents, Acrobat can add sound, video and graphics to the text. The latest PDF Portfolio module assembles the source files of multi-media elements together into a single multi-document portfolio packaged in slick Flash-based presentations (Unfortunately, there’s no HTML5 versions available – pity!).

Users don’t have to track multiple files manually to put them together outside of Acrobat.

Adobe PDF Guild

No wonder the folks at Adobe believe they have a product that does magic. They are aware, however, that general awareness of Acrobat’s full capabilities beyond that of the Reader is sorely lacking.

That’s why Adobe has launched the PDF Guild. Based on a metaphor of magic and wizardry, the PDF Guild seeks to build a community of Acrobat users that shares the knowledge and expertise of its members in the software rigorously with each other.

For starters, Adobe has built a simple self-paced computer-based learning package in the guise of a simple RPG (role-playing game) “adventure” to entice people to try out Acrobat and experience for themselves how easy to accomplish the tasks that Acrobat boasts it can achieve.

Five “quests” challenge the curious who signs up to complete assignments and quiz questions on “Document Conversion”, “Document Collaboration”, “Document Security”, “Dynamic Forms” and “Rich Documents”.

I’ve cleared all five quests and found that the hands-on experience did provide a clearer understanding how to do stuff in Acrobat.

To participate, visit www.adobepdfguild.com. Participants who don’t yet own a copy of Acrobat X can download and install a 30-day trial version. You’ll need a Facebook account too to participate.

Everything you need to complete the assigned tasks are provided, right down to working documents that you can download, work with in Acrobat and then save. The result is than uploaded from within www.adobepdfguild.com. Stumped along the way? Hints are available to make the road a little less difficult.

The magic? You start out as an the sorcerer’s apprentice and as you accomplish points, you get promoted to high ranks of wizardry, like Sorcerer, Mage and ultimately Wizard.

Goodies? The points earned can be used to redeem stuff from Adobe, from notepads and thumbdrives to free copies of Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 and Adobe Premiere Elements 9. Additional ways of earning points include introducing friends via email or Facebook, and participating in discussions at the Guild’s Facebook page.