Have Adobe left PDF behind in a rush to Flash?

Acrobat 8 will feature a major push for Flash video as meeting space. Breeze is now Acrobat Connect. The promotion is aimed at knowledge workers in general, much wider than the sages of pre-press. The idea seems to be that video, email chat, and voice over internet are more exciting than marking up documents. Acrobat is no longer based on PDF.

A possible explanation is concern that simple PDf creation is increasingly available from other sources. Microsoft will now offer PDF creation as a download for Vista so this may slow things down for a while. Open Office works ok for exporting PDF and Writely from Google shows no sign of charging for online PDf as was once a possibility.

As far as I can make out, Adobe will do very little to promote the print aspects of Acrobat 8. The JDF creation is almost unknown and may remain so. Companies such as Quark and Global Graphics have more of a focus on hard copy. Next week Adobe will be in tents on Regents Park but not at Digital Print World.

Please comment on this post as things occur. There will be more later.

Print industry needs JDF to keep up with the Web

Thinking about next week at Digital Print World I think the digital aspects are interesting for the whole print industry, especially the litho part. Sometimes the discussion is about the fairly slow way in which digital print will take a larger share of the whole hard copy market. The growth of digital media is much faster. YouTube may be overvalued but the web is now an entertainment vehicle with enough bandwidth for video. Print is only one possible choice so needs to appear as flexible and immediate as anything online. It turns out that AJAX stands for something including XML so however much this is actually understood by anybody, JDF could work as part of this.

Update on Lawrence Wallis: there is no blog

Information has come to hand that there is no actual blog by Lawrence Wallis. The coloumns in Printweek were just about blogs in general. Still just the idea that such a thing is possible is a sign of the times.

I will keep reading the hard copy and add a comment here if there is more on blogs.

Has anyone at Haymarket really thought about AdTech?

Off to AdTech tomorrow. Like a direct mail show, but online.

Haymarket are a media partner and last year were in the basement with a hospitality area. Strangely they promoted their print magazines - Marketing etc. Revolution got included - covering online - but I don't remember much about Brand Republic - the website version of their advertising media publishing. Not sure why this should be. the Haymarket policy may be to recognise the web but it is not coming over in their promotion. At least that was what I thought last year.

Still no news on a Lawrence Wallis blog. Maybe Brand Republic could offer him some space.
Off to AdTech tomorrow. Like a direct mail show, but online.

Haymarket are a media partner and last year were in the basement with a hospitality area. Strangely they promoted their print magazines - Marketing etc. Revolution got included - covering online - but I don't remember much about Brand Republic - the website version of their advertising media publishing. Not sure why this should be. the Haymarket policy may be to recognise the web but it is not coming over in their promotion. At least that was what I thought last year.

Still no news on a Lawrence Wallis blog. Maybe Brand Republic could offer him some space.

To comment, please switch to commentrequest.

How could I reach the Amazon Quality Control Department?

I have tried sending email through their website. Some time ago so I have just tried again. The problem is with an mp3 for free download of a Bobby Womack track- Get a Life. The sound quality is awful. Actually by Rae and Christian featuring Bobby Womack so look under Rae and Christian or folow this LINK.

The mp3 has been there for ages. I am not the only one to have complained.

W. Kwok wrote "Save yourself some trouble and listen to the 30 second sample first. The staff at Amazon are using the Xing encoder, which is a poor quality rip off the bat at 128kps. I like Rae & Christian but there seems to be some major static in the file I downloaded. Such a shame but what can you expect for free? Hope they fix the file."

There have been three people who found this review useful, but nobody from Amazon seems to have read it.

The track got a lot of radio play in the UK but was never a hit. You can get it second hand on Amazon and it has a cultish sort of valuation. You may find a secondhand copy of the album "sleepwalking" for less or maybe a bit more. Anyway worth a look. You miss out on a second version of 'Wake Up Everybody' but you get several other tracks.

Meanwhile YouTube has found a video. So the combination of the video and a decent mp3 could get some more interest in this. No news of anything new from Bobby so this is still a current single.

So the question is, how can this issue get to Amazon attention? Any clues out there?

Seem to have missed out the question

So the actual problem is that Lawrence Wallis may have joined the blogosphere, judging from a recent piece in Printweek. However, no search is turning up anything. so far as I know.

Feedback please.

Anyone know of a Lawrence Wallis blog?

I have failed to modify the IPEX 2002 blog to allow comments. So I feel a bit restricted in asking for feedback.

So here is a new blog which I hope has comments.