I’m not normally a fan of the ranting I-can’t-believe-they-did-this-to-me school of blogging but I promise that there is a computer-related point to the following edited highlights of a recent correspondence with British Airways customer service department.

More to the point I can’t believe they did this to me! (more…)

As I said in my recent review, the launch of Acrobat 9 is the most important release in years. Naturally most of the attention has been on the incorporation of the Flash player into the Adobe Reader with all that this means in terms of media handling and interactivity.

However it’s possible that the associated launch of Acrobat.com will eventually prove even more significant.

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Now that the dust has cleared on the launch of Acrobat 9 thoughts naturally turn to Adobe’s next major release Creative Suite 4. So what might we expect to see?

Well the launch of Acrobat 9 might well give us a very strong clue. The Acrobat applications are focussed on the business/office productivity market, but the introduction of new PDF capabilities gives the CS teams something to work with. And with Acrobat 9 that’s an understatement…

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I’m still waiting for my review copy of the new QuarkXPress but of course I’ve read the press release and explored the Quark site - so how does it look on paper?

 The slogan that Quark has picked for the new release is “Revolutionizing Publishing. Again.” Certainly sounds good, but what does it actually mean?

Putting aside the new “Designer-Driven Typography”– and on the basis that this seems to boil down to settings for managing hanging punctuation that seems sensible – there are two new features that Quark is pushing that could live up to the revolutionary hype: the new interface and the new interactive design capabilities.

Again it’s easy to be sceptical…

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Yesterday Adobe officially announced the launch of its latest Acrobat 9 so what are my first impressions?

I was invited down to London a month or so ago to the press briefing and it was clear that Adobe considers this a major release. And after the pitiful version 8 it really can’t help but shine.

The feature that Adobe was stressing is the new ability to handle Flash - but just how significant is this development? And come to that - just how new is it? And how welcome?

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The web-based economy is bizarre. In the real world you naturally expect to pay for products and services, but out in the virtual world everything has to be free. It’s the world’s biggest all-you-can-eat buffet, in which the browser can gorge themselves day-in and day-out for absolutely nothing. And woe betide the naive web-based developer who breaks the unwritten rule and suggests that they might like something in return.

This point hit home recently when looking at the mini-storm that broke out regarding Adobe’s new Photoshop Express service. Like everything else on the web signing up for Photoshop Express is free – at least for the first 2GB of storage space. However, the original terms and conditions made it clear that by posting to the public galleries you were granting Adobe a “worldwide, royalty-free, nonexclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, and fully sublicensable license to use, distribute, derive revenue or other remuneration from… such Content.” (terms since entirely rewritten)

Like everyone else my original reaction was horror. They’re planning to sell on my photos! How dare they? All that money should be coming to me! Daylight robbery!

But let’s stand back a little… and get real.

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Recently there’s been a lot of excitement about Adobe’s launch of a free online version of Photoshop, Photoshop Express. However the biggest squeals weren’t of delight and you only have to take a look at the original Terms and Conditions to see why…

8. Use of Your Content. Adobe does not claim ownership of Your Content. However, with respect to Your Content that you submit or make available for inclusion on publicly accessible areas of the Services, you grant Adobe a worldwide, royalty-free, nonexclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, and fully sublicensable license to use, distribute, derive revenue or other remuneration from, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, publicly perform and publicly display such Content (in whole or in part) and to incorporate such Content into other Materials or works in any format or medium now known or later developed.

You don’t have to be a lawyer to see that basically you were handing over your all rights as originator and giving Adobe free rein to make money from your photos however it saw fit!

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