EXTRANET NEWS * Week of 7 April 2003

EXTRANET NEWS * Week of 7 April 2003
Editors: Joel Orr and N'omi Orr
http://www.extranetnews.com

1.ACROBAT 6.0: GETTING SERIOUS ABOUT ENGINEERING
2. THE LIST
3. TIDBITS
4. QUOTE OF THE WEEK

1. ACROBAT 6.0: GETTING SERIOUS ABOUT ENGINEERING

EditorJoel Orr spoke with Diane Helander of Adobe and others on the Adobe Acrobatteam. Visit their Web site at http://www.adobe.com.

EXTRANETNEWS wrote about Adobe Acrobat as an important collaborative tool in Februaryof this year (http://www.extranetnews.com/2003%20issues/EXTRANETNEWSWeekof3Feb2003.html)but the release of Acrobat 6.0 merits further comment. Here's what impressed me:

Engineering paper sizes. All standard US and international sizes, as well as custom sized. Wizards make it very easy; the software chooses sensible defaults for portrait vs. landscape and other factors; you can override them.
A "magnifier" view lets you see any zoomed or panned portion of the whole document in a little window; you can use it as a visual index.
One-button PDF "printing" from AutoCAD and Visio, preserving layers. You can also group and rename layers.
Collaborative editing. Anyone who has used Acrobat for collaborative editing knows the strengths and weaknesses of its commenting and markup features—but in the new stuff, everything you dreamed of is there: a complete range of editing and proofreading marks; callouts and "clouds"; send just the edits layer to someone who has the original; a "review tracker dashboard"; an "accept/reject" list for edits (nicer than Word's); and the biggie: Convert your Acrobat markups to Word markups, one at a time or en masse.
Some length- and area-measuring capabilities.
Button in Explorer to save Web pages as PDFs, preserving links—and Flash and other multimedia. Also, you can add pages to a PDF.
Button in Outlook to "mail as PDF."
Add all kinds of documents to a PDF, then arrange their order—even wildly varying sizes.
Much better support for forms (as a result of acquiring Accelio).

Acrobat is now a family of products. All the features above are in Acrobat Professional;see the feature lists on the site to know what is in each of the more limitedversions.

Acrobat Reader 6.0: due out at the end of May, 2003; free;
Acrobat Elements: PDF creation for knowledge workers. Windows only (Macs now have PDF output built-in to Mac OS X); 1000 seats and up; ~$29.
Acrobat Standard: for people who have to collaborate on documents, such as lawyers, marketing groups, etc. $299, or $99 upgrade;
Acrobat Professional: the whole enchilada. $449, or $149 upgrade;
Adobe Document Server for Reader Extensions. Form management and digital document signatures.

Our take: In our 3 February 2003 issue, we reported that all other system-independent formats have disappeared. Usually, when competition goes away, companies slack off on new features and improved capabilities. Not so Adobe. In fact, the many new capabilities in Acrobat 6.0 are barely touched upon here. Explore for yourself; you will like what you find.

I recommended to Adobe and Groove Networks that they get together; their collaborative capabilities seem very complementary.

2. THE LIST

ADDED: Sarcophagus, a UK-based AEC project-extranet service.

Total companies: 258 (see who's on The List at http://www.extranetnews.com/).

3. TIDBITS

· Get a collaborative-product evaluation checklist from Groove Networks, here: http://www.groove.net/extras/surveys/evaluation/index.gtml.Sure, it makes Groove look like a good choice; but it's a good checklistanyway.

· LCI (LeanConstruction Institute) upcoming events:

- Implementing the Last Planner System? Las Vegas,Nevada, 24-25 April 2003. Details are available at: http://www.mapnv.org/events.html#LeanConstruction.This seminar is a must for anyone whose company wants to implement this new approach to production control.

- 5^th Annual Lean Construction Congress, Blacksburg, Virginia, 21 July2003. Enjoy a day devoted to presentations by practitioners of lean construction who are getting exciting results in their organizations. Stay another two days to participate in IGLC, described below.

- 11^th Annual Meeting of the International Group for Lean Construction, Blacksburg, Virginia,22-24 July 2003. This meeting will feature more presentations by practitioners and academics from around the world on the implementation and theory of lean construction. Details for both LCC and IGLC are available at http://strobos.cee.vt.edu/IGLC11/

· Sarcophagus Ltd.announces eTenderer. Details at: http://www.sarcophagus.co.uk. (No, it is not cemetery-management software.)

· "The Dandelion Principle: Structuring forGreatness." Joel's upcoming book resonates with what you know in your heart, but haven’t articulated. Visit http://www.dandelionprinciple.com , and sign up there to receive a series of "seedlings" from "The Dandelion Principle" viaemail.

· COFES2003. Keynotes: Alan Kay and Jeff Harrow. 15-18 May 2003, Scottsdale Plaza Resort, Scottsdale, AZ. Come talk to the Top Dogs and pundits. Go to the website to see who has registered to date. http://www.cofes.com

· "It's" is a contraction of "it is." "Its" means "belonging to it." Never confuse them!

4. QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"I do not believe in vile acquittals, phony appeasements, easy forgiveness. Even less, in the exploitation or the blackmail of the word "peace." When " peace" stands for surrender, fear, loss of dignity and freedom, it is no longer peace. It is suicide."

- Oriana Fallaci

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