Filed under: Adobe

When I think about searching online, my first and often only thought is, "how can I do this with Google?" Well, Google's great at search, but that doesn't mean it's the best tool in every situation. Consider searching for PDFs containing specific information; wouldn't you like to see a nice clean list of PDF titles with links both to the PDF in question and an HTML version of it? PDF Search Tool offers exactly that functionality.

To be fair, Google can do this too, particularly if you use the search argument "filteype=pdf", but PDF Search Tool feels somehow more purpose-built. For those that are inclined, it's interesting to see what happens when you search for a well-known author's name; PDF Search Tool almost feels like a pirate ebook finder when used that way. Not that you would. Or should.

I almost (not quite, but almost) feel bad for Adobe right now. Apple has been unceremoniously dumping on Flash in a big way since the iPad announcement, and all Adobe can do is claim they don't ship known-buggy Flash releases and announce how much better Flash will perform on Macs when Flash 10.1 is released. Flash still has critical mass adoption among traditional computing devices (desktops and laptops), and almost all mobile platforms other than Apple's have either stated they will use Flash or are working towards it.

And yet, the size of Apple's iPhone and iPod touch (and soon iPad) markets just can't be ignored, and neither can the swelling anti-Flash sentiment coming from the very influential tech elite.

Is better performance on the Mac going to fix what ails the Adobe / Apple relationship? Don't bet on it. But since Flash isn't going away for a long time, the improvement will be nice to have for Mac users.

Apple's recent iPad product announcement fanned the flames of the Flash debate, namely whether it belongs on Apple's mobile devices -- or not. Since the release of the iPhone Apple has been staunchly against putting Flash on its mobile devices, citing performance and stability issues. In fact at an Apple Town Hall meeting just over a week ago, Steve Jobs said, "When a Mac crashes more often than not it's because of Flash." It doesn't get much more blunt than that.

Adobe, of course, is crying foul, and their chief technology officer Kevin Lynch responded by making the grandiose statement that "Regarding crashing, I can tell you that we don't ship Flash with any known crash bugs, and if there was such a widespread problem historically Flash could not have achieved its wide use today."

Unfortunately, Matthew Dempsky begs to differ, and he can prove it. Before you click that link, you should know that unless you are running the very latest beta version of Flash, it will crash either the Flash plugin, or your entire browser, depending on what browser you are using. The thing is, Dempsky found this crashing bug in September of 2008 and reported it to Adobe then, and the bug has continued to exist in every version of Flash on every platform since.

Lynch's comment is what you'd expect any CTO to say publicly; realistically, what else could he say? It's just very unfortunate for him that someone was able to prove the inaccuracy of his statement in a very compelling way.

If you're tired of Flash giving you troubles, check out the various solutions we've presented by searching Download Squad for "flash block" or "disable flash".

[Update] Adobe has now acknowledged Dempsky's bug report, and has offered an explanation for why it has taken so long to fix it. The explanation is reasonable, but likely won't do anything to dampen the rising level of distaste for Flash that is becoming evident in the online community.

Adobe has always been pretty miffed over the lack of Flash on the iPhone and iPod Touch. You can understand Apple's point of view though: Flash would remove their control over the user experience. It would also make the App Store irrelevant and the flow of software onto the Apple devices almost impossible to govern.

Couple the lack of iPhone support with the keynote presentation of the iPad, where Steve Jobs proudly displays the lack of Flash, and you can see why Adobe has just launched an anti-iPad smear campaign.

Not ones to tread lightly, or even scale up their assault, they've waded right in and played the porn card. As you can see, they've already removed the offensive part of the screenshot, but not before generating a lot of angry comments and even some commentary from Wired.

Adobe's poster ends with the slogan "Millions of websites use Flash. Get used to the blue legos." Maybe, as Jay said yesterday, Apple's customers don't want Flash. It performs poorly, it steals vital CPU cycles, it flattens your battery faster than an American stocking up at an all-you-can-eat buffet.

Hopefully this is the kick in the butt Adobe needs to make Flash a little more efficient and less impotence-inducing. Watching --and feeling! -- my 2.2GHz laptop sit at 100% CPU usage while viewing Flash videos is truly a sad sight to behold.

There's an interesting post up at Adobe's Flash Platform blog, referring to Apple's new iPad as "a broken link" because it doesn't support Flash. When the Flash elements of the New York Times website failed to load during Steve Jobs' unveiling of the iPad, the message from Apple was pretty clear: no, this thing doesn't have Flash, and no, we don't care.

It seems like a callous attitude from Apple, especially if Adobe's blog post is right that Flash accounts for 75% of the games and 70% of the video on the web.

Here's the thing, though: Apple's customers DON'T WANT FLASH. The hundreds of comments on the Adobe post are overwhelmingly from people who are dissatisfied with the way Flash performs on their Macs, and are worried that it would put the same strain on their new iPads. The same issues came up over and over in the comments: YouTube and Vimeo offer HTML5 video now, Flash games would mostly be unplayable on a touchscreen, and nobody wanted to see Flash ads anyway. Basically, users aren't going to miss it.

Is the iPad going to be remembered as the final nail in the Flash coffin, or will Adobe find some other way to get its act together and keep Flash dominant?

There was a time when having a chat client on your computer at work was considered a no-no. These days, if you're not available via some sort of online chat or instant messaging, you're just not moving at the speed of business.

Many companies have begun using open instant messaging services for their internal discussions, but there are a couple of downsides to this approach. The first is a lack of control, and a potential lack of security. The second is a lack of collaboration tools; it's difficult to share files between multiple people in an instant messaging chat.

HipChat is a new start-up that aims to fix the problem of secure, controlled corporate chat. Based on Adobe AIR which provides cross-platform functionality, HipChat is a fully functional chat client that as GigaOM points out, bears a resemblance to 37Signals' Campfire product. To be fair, the basic layout of an IRC-like chat client has been the same for 15 years, so the similar look is not that much of a surprise.

Where HipChat has a definite advantage is in the fact that it is a desktop client (even if it does unfortunately rely on AIR), not a web client. While there are 3rd-party Campfire clients and even ways to run Campfire in a dedicated single-purpose browser, HipChat is simply a desktop chat client.

HipChat has plans available from $9/month for up to 12 users, to $99/month for up to 100 users, and offers a 30 day free trial.

[via GigaOM]

There have been more than a few blog posts lately talking about how websites can use Flash cookies to keep tabs on you even if you're visiting their site using your browser's private browsing mode. It would appear, however, that the crew at Adobe thinks this is something which should change.

According to a post on NeoWin, Adobe is working to make sure that Flash 10.1 will play nice with the private browsing offered in most current browsers. Once you close your session, Flash Player will automatically clear the pertinent locally cached files. Visited a site with a Flash-powered login system? Any locally stored objects (LSOs) they create will also be purged.

On top of that, non-private instances of the Flash player won't have access to data created by those running in private sessions.

Right now, Adobe has things working with Google Chrome, Firefox 3.5 (or newer) and Internet Explorer 8. While Safari offers a private mode, support isn't quite there just yet. Expect to see it arrive before Flash 10.1 is released to the public.

Talk about your Photoshop disasters! Gaspar Llamazares, a member of Spanish parliament, discovered that his hair and some his facial features had been used by the FBI in a new Most Wanted poster of the world's most notorious terrorist, Osama Bin Laden. The FBI claims to have used "cutting-edge" technology to create the image, depicting what Bin Laden probably looks like today. In that case, Adobe will be glad to hear that the Bureau was so impressed with Photoshop. Is it just me, or does most of this high tech mockup look cut-and-pasted from Llamazares campaign photograph?

The FBI says that they often use stock photos to find the features they include in such mockups, but in this case, the right features weren't available. Llamazares' photo was pulled from the Internet, and "the forensic artist was not aware of the identity of the individual depicted in the photograph. The similarities between the photos were unintentional and inadvertent." That's all well and good, but it might be smart to make sure the guy whose photograph you're using isn't a celebrity or, in this case, an elected official of a foreign government.

Llamazares is reportedly considering legal action. "Bin Laden's safety is not threatened by this but mine certainly is," he said.

[via BBC News]

With 2010 just begun, Adobe seems primed to take yet another step in making sure Acrobat and Adobe Reader users are protected from the security exploits which plagued the apps in 2009.

Currently in beta testing is the Adobe Refresh Manager which will handle automatic update duties for both products. According to Brad Arkin, Adobe's chief of security and privacy, the current system just isn't working the way it should.

Why not? Because it allows choice. An end user who doesn't want to be bothered with an update can simply click the alert away and go about his or her business. That leaves the app unpatched and open to exploits. And since there's no point at which the update becomes required, users can click warnings away for months -- or even years, as I've seen on plenty of computers.

While this might not be the best solution to the Acrobat security problem, it will at least ensure that end users are running the latest (and hopefully most bulletproof) versions.

Of course, there's a slight problem with being mostly bulletproof...

[via PC World]

There's a chance you might already have seen this 'sneak peek' video, in which case forgive me. For those of you that haven't seen it, read on and take the jump to view it.

This is actually old news, but I only just stumbled across it a couple of days ago. You see, news of Adobe's next Creative Suite is so hard to come by that this is still the latest Photoshop development! In fact, since October, the only news they've released was to announce the cancellation of their Flash CS5 public beta. But can I say, having just watched the the 'sneak peek', I am now very, very excited about the possible applications for Adobe's CS5. Give us more news, Adobe!

It's the second of January 2010 and the figures are in from December. In just 16 months, Chrome has caught up and passed Apple's Safari browser. Google Chrome now has 4.63% of the global market share, while Safari has only 4.46%!

It doesn't look like a lot when you're talking about a fraction of a percent, but when you consider that last month Chrome only had 3.93% you can see just how quickly it's being adopted. Last month was actually Chrome's biggest leap since its launch, which probably has something to do with Google's current large-scale advertising campaign. PC World speculates that the large surge could also be due to the Mac and Linux Chrome Beta releases last month.
Despite Chrome's progress in December, it was not at the expense of Opera or Safari's market share -- both actually made slight gains. Firefox lost 0.1% and Internet Explorer lost almost an entire percentage point, but thankfully not from IE8! Down with IE6 and 7, down I say!

Buckle your seat belts, ladies and gentlemen: if you're not a gamer yet, you damn well soon will be. It seems, using the wonders of the newly-released (and soon-to-be-embraced) Open GL ES.20, the Unreal Engine 3 has been successfully ported to the iPod Touch. And it's not slow either: we're talking proper, smooth frame rates... ooooooh!

AnandTech speculates that in the next 3 to 5 years smartphones will become more powerful than the Xbox 360. I think it might be even sooner than that, but we'll see. Don't expect to see big-name PC and console games on the iPod/iPhone just yet, but it will happen sooner rather than later. Flash memory continues to grows in capacity; processors are gaining more power.

What this really signals, considering the inclusion of the advanced graphics capabilities in the latest iPod Touch, and Apple's foray into games development, is that we're about to see a huge boom in the portable computing/smartphone gaming market. If you think it's big now -- 2009 was a massively successful year for iPhone games -- it's going to get a whole lot bigger.

Unreal also say that we'll see the Engine tech demo running on another mobile platform at CES. I'd put my money on an Android-powered device, but we'll find out for sure soon!

There's a very short video of the Unreal Engine 3 in action, on the iPod Touch, after the break.

[via AnandTech]

We've covered PDF conversion tools in the past, but given the inconsistent performance of such tools, it's always worth pointing out potentially better ones. PDF to Word by Nitro is just such a tool, and given its claim as "The Most Accurate PDF-to-Word Converter", I had to give it a shot.

And you know what? It does remarkably well. Based on the test documents I tried, I really didn't run into any serious issues, other than the elephant in the room: uploading your documents to a third-party for conversion. I can't imagine using a service like this for real-world heavy lifting with business-related documents. I can't hand over my sensitive documents to a third-party.

However, for business users with the same issue, there's good news. Nitro's PDF-to-Word conversion technology is what powers their Nitro PDF Professional desktop application, and it has recently been marked down from $99 US to $69 US, with a free 14 day trial available.

We told you a while back about how the latest version of Adobe Flash supports using your computer's graphics processing unit (GPU) to speed up video playback. Well, Adobe has even bigger plans for GPU acceleration in its video apps, and maybe even in Photoshop. Adobe blogger John Nack lays out all the details in a new post, including plans to optimize for specific GPU models.

Photoshop is definitely getting multi-core and GPU acceleration, although Nack says he can't spill the details yet. Pixel Bender is an early example of the kinds of features this could bring with it. Some new features only work with NVIDIA graphics cards so far, but Adobe is looking at supporting OpenCL in the future. Then there's the aforementioned hardware optimization: just like Adobe apps used to be optimized for PowerPC and Intel processors, they'll now be optimized for different graphics hardware.

Adobe's Acrobat.com service is getting a big update tonight, followed closely by a new mobile app for iPhone and BlackBerry. The name "Acrobat" goes hand-in-hand with the PDF file format, and Acrobat.com allows you to convert documents to PDF and save, store and view PDF files. It also features some other applications, including the Adobe BuzzWord word processor, a web meeting service called ConnectNow, and storage space for docs, spreadsheets and images.

The new features include searching by filename (I'm still wrapping my head around how they didn't have this before), but not searching within documents. That feature is reportedly coming soon. Your files are also now displayed in a file organizer that lists everything you have stored on Adobe's webspace - I think this includes saved stuff from other web apps, including presentations.

The mobile app is reportedly going to be a pretty basic mobile front-end for Acrobat.com, with the ability to upload documents and send faxes (what's a "fax?") from your phone. It will come in both free and paid flavors, and the free version will allow a limited number of uploads and faxes per month.

[via CNET]