Adobe announced that the next iteration of its Acrobat line of product, but may be taking the wrong direction by adding the ability to add Flash Content to PDFs.
Has Adobe Taken a Wrong Turn with Acrobat 9?
Niel McAllister
This week, Adobe announced details of the next iteration of its Acrobat line of products, due in late June or early July. Perhaps the most prominent new feature of Acrobat 9 will be the ability to embed live Flash animation and video directly into PDF documents.
But while this capability sounds appealing, I can't help but be skeptical. PDF stands for Portable Document Format. It seems to me that this new direction that Adobe is taking in some ways flies against the original idea of what PDF is all about.
For starters, adding Flash to PDF documents is instantly going to make them a whole lot less portable. Flash support is nearly ubiquitous on the Windows and Mac OS platforms, but Adobe's track record with Flash on Linux leaves something to be desired. Also, there are a whole lot of handhelds and other devices that can render PDF documents just fine, but lack the power to render video animation.
Second, if something is moving, dancing, and singing across the screen, is it still a "document"? Historically, PDF has been a way to deliver nicely formatted, graphically rich pages in an electronic way. One of the most popular uses of PDFs, in fact, is to print them out on plain, old-fashioned paper. What happens when you go to print a document with embedded video? If nothing else, the printout will not be an accurate representation of the original file.
One of PDF's strengths has been that it has been somewhat less of a moving target than online file formats, such as Flash. By wedding the two, Adobe risks lessening the value of one of its strongest properties.
What's more, if Adobe is now positioning PDF as primarily an online (or mixed-media) file format, what message does that send to the print publishing community, which has long relied on PDF to manage prepress workflows? Will Adobe continue to act with their best interests at heart?
Though the distinctions are subtle, the new features of Acrobat 9 seem likely to create confusion about PDF in the minds of customers. I wonder if, in its zeal to be viewed as a major player in the online content creation business, Adobe might be taking a wrong turn here.
Source: www.pcworld.com
Thursday, June 5, 2008
PDF May Embed Flash Content
Friday, March 28, 2008
YouTube Video Usage Analytics
YouTube account holders now have the ability to check usage statistics for the videos they upload.
YouTube Rolls Out Usage Analytics
YouTube account holders will now be able to access usage statistics for the videos they upload, such as where viewers are geographically located and how they found the clips.
The feature, called YouTube Insight, had been in high demand from partners that use the video-sharing site to market their products and services and, as such, want detailed metrics to determine the efficacy of their YouTube campaigns.
The announcement, made early Thursday, wasn't a complete surprise. Earlier this month, YouTube sales team manager Brian Cusack said that the Google unit was planning to provide its members with more data about video viewership.
"YouTube has enormous amounts of data, but not great reporting on that data yet," Cusack said during a keynote speech at the eRetailer Summit in Miami.
Now, marketers will have a better understanding of clips' reach and effectiveness at boosting brand awareness and sales, according to YouTube.
"With YouTube Insight, we've turned YouTube into one of the world's largest focus groups. Insight will help advertisers optimize their marketing efforts, determine how successful they were, and discover previously unknown marketing opportunities," an official YouTube blog posting reads.
The metrics will also give a better understanding of clips' popularity and viewership to people who upload videos for fun without commercial or marketing purposes.
YouTube Insight doesn't collect or display personally identifiable information on viewers, but rather provides uploaders with aggregated data on viewers' geographic location and on the time and day when clips were viewed, a Google spokesman said via e-mail. Google will "soon" turn a feature to let uploaders discover how viewers found a clip, such as via a Google search, browsing YouTube's "related videos" suggestions or clicking on an e-mail or Web site link, he said.
