New Acrobatics

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Although I use pdf files a lot, I dislike Adobe Acrobat intensely. For me, one of the great things about Mac OS X is that it enables me to create a pdf from any document without ever resorting to the Adobe program.

Wade Roush has much the same attitude to Acrobat, which is why his review of the latest release is interesting. Sample:

I’ve spent the past few days testing Acrobat 8 and an associated Web service, Acrobat Connect. I’m pleasantly surprised by the number of new features Adobe has provided to help people work together on documents over the Internet–even if those documents aren’t PDFs. When combined, Acrobat 8 and Acrobat Connect form a powerful (and potentially cheaper) alternative to established collaboration and presentation systems such as WebEx and Microsoft’s Live Meeting and Office Groove 2007. They also show how Adobe is beginning to benefit from its 2005 acquisition of Macromedia, the company that founded the interactive-multimedia industry.

Veteran Acrobat users needn’t worry that they’ll lose anything. Acrobat 8 includes all of the core functions of Acrobat 7, including the ability to create, review, search, encrypt, and export PDF documents, and to convert other kinds of documents, such as e-mails, Web pages, and Word files, into PDFs. (I tested Acrobat 8 Professional, which retails at $449. Acrobat 8 Standard, at $299, leaves out a few specialized features, such as the ability to work with CAD documents and create fillable PDF forms. Adobe Reader 8.0, the latest version of the company’s stripped-down PDF viewer, is still a free download.)

It’s the new collaboration features, however, that have me rethinking my negative attitude toward Acrobat and PDF. The features change PDF files–which I’d always seen as the electronic equivalent of museum cases, preserving sacred, untouchable text–into living documents that any number of people can alter, either separately or in concert.

For instance, Acrobat 8 allows users to create blank PDFs and add text by typing, just the way one would with a new Word file. That’s a major shift in itself; it means PDF can be a document’s “native” format, not just a way to package material created using other applications.

The program also offers better tools for providing feedback about PDF documents–a key feature for professionals like lawyers, publishers, or journalists. Conveniently, all of Acrobat’s commenting tools now appear in a single floating toolbar. If you don’t like the way your boss rewrote your section of the company’s annual report, the toolbar provides a whole playground of tools for expressing yourself: beyond the traditional colored-highlighter tool, there are tools for creating deletions and insertions, sticky notes, boxes, circles, freehand drawings, pretty little thought bubbles or “clouds,” draggable “callouts” with arrows that point to a specific passage, and “rubber stamps” saying things like “Draft,” “Confidential,” and “Sign Here.” You can even attach an audio file downloaded from your dictation machine.

Even cooler, though, is a new collaboration feature called Shared Reviews. When it’s activated, comments and markups added to a PDF file by reviewers are no longer saved within the document itself, but are uploaded to a central location on an organization’s computer network, such as a network server or Web server. Every time a team member opens the document, Acrobat retrieves the latest changes from the server. Whenever a reviewer adds a new comment, the program notifies all of the other reviewers. In other words, team members no longer have to wait their turn for access to a document, or create separate edited versions that someone must eventually merge back into the “master copy.” With Shared Reviews, many people can work on the same document in parallel.

My guess is that this might worry Microsoft quite a lot. Those of us who work in the Open Source world know that one of the factors which makes companies wary of moving to Open Office is that they have built their corporate working procedures around the commenting tools in Microsoft Word. (Virtually every legal firm in the western world, for example, uses the program in that way.) But companies also use Acrobat to “freeze” the final Word document in pdf form. If Adobe is offering a way of doing all this in Acrobat without having to go through the Word phase first, then they might find it an attractive proposition.

The Green Electronics Guide

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Greenpeace has just released the second edition of its Green Electronics Guide

This Green Electronics Guide ranks leading mobile and PC manufacturers on their global policies and practice on eliminating harmful chemicals and on taking responsibility for their products once they are discarded by consumers. Companies are ranked on information that is publicly available and communications/clarifications with the companies.

Nokia comes top; Apple bottom.

Cheney to be a grandad — again

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NO REPUBLICAN in Washington is more beloved by social conservatives than the Vice-President Dick Cheney, who with his wife Lynne, has backed and breathed every issue dear to them for six tumultuous years.

News that Mr Cheney’s gay daughter, Mary, is pregnant has therefore touched a raw nerve as advocates for conservative family values struggle to reconcile their loyalty to the Cheneys with their visceral opposition to same-sex relationships – and particularly to raising a child without a father.
“Not only is she doing a disservice to her child, she’s voiding all the effort her father put into the Bush Administration,” said Janice Shaw Crouse, a senior fellow at the Beverly LaHaye Institute, run by Concerned Women for America.

Asked why the Administration played down the news, she said: “This is Cheney’s daughter; anything they say will make the situation worse.”

[Source]

Where to stick those Zunes

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This is lovely — an imagined transcript of a forthcoming meeting between the management of Universal and Steve Jobs. Written with great panache by John Gruber. It opens thus:

Early 2007. The Executive Boardroom, Universal Music Group Headquarters; Santa Monica, California

A large table dominates the room. Seated on one side is Universal Music CEO Doug Morris and six Universal attorneys, three on each side of Morris. On the other side sits Steve Jobs and one Apple attorney. On the table in front of Morris and each of the Universal attorneys are various neatly stacked folders, contracts, and legal pads. In front of Jobs the table is completely clear; he holds nothing in his hands.

Morris: Steve, it’s great to see you again. I hope your flight was good.

Jobs: It was terrific, thanks.

Morris: Well, let’s get right down to it. I’m sure you heard, together with our friends at Microsoft, we created a really interesting arrangement for their “Zune”. What it is, is that for each hardware unit Microsoft sells, Universal gets a small fee. A nominal fee.

Morris uses his fingers to indicate the quotes.

Jobs: Yes. Very interesting.

Morris: A pittance, really. But what it is, is a small step toward compensating us for the stolen music that belongs to us which we all know is being stored on these sorts of devices. Like the Zune. And, you know, like the… iPod. Your iPod. The iPod. You know I got my kids a bunch of those “Nano” ones for Christmas. Big hits. They love ’em. They really do.

Jobs: Thanks.

Morris: So, uh, we feel that this Zune arrangement is really the future of the, you know, the synergy between our industries. Between music and electronics. And we really feel that this deal is the future. And given the way you’ve led Apple into this future, Steve — and you know, you really have been a leader in this regard — we feel you’re going to want to stay in a leadership position.

Morris, pauses, as though to offer Jobs a turn to speak. Jobs, smiling, says nothing.

Morris: We feel it’d be in both our interests — Apple’s and Universal’s — for you to retake the lead in this regard. I’ll just lay it all on the line here, Steve. Now this doesn’t leave this room, OK?

Jobs: Sure.

Morris: Our deal with Microsoft is for one dollar per Zune. There it is. That’s it. (Pause.) And we’re really happy with that, that’s quite a deal. But we really want to see you guys at Apple remain in a leadership position in this market. You guys are number one and we want you to stay there. So we think Apple should do, you know, two dollars per iPod. That’d send a message that you guys are still number one, and you intend to stay there.

Morris sits rigidly, as though braced for an argument.

Jobs: Two bucks?

Morris: That’s right. Two bucks. And we’ll work something out with those little Shuffle thingies. You know, maybe we do one percent instead. One buck out of each hundred, retail. You do this, and then, you know, we’ll relicense our wonderful music library for the iTunes.

Jobs: That sounds great. That’s a great idea.

Jobs goes on to remind the Universal guys that all the music on iPods goes through Macs (and PCs) and wonders if they’d like a royalty cut on Macs as well. The Universal crowd begin to salivate. This is going much better than they expect. Then…

Jobs: But I have a better idea.

Jobs leans forward, and arches his eyebrows.

Morris: OK, sure.

Jobs: How about you take one of those white Zunes and you turn it into a brown one, Doug.

Jobs beams the full Steve Jobs smile.

Morris: Pardon?

Apple Attorney: Mr. Jobs is suggesting that you take a white Microsoft Zune 30 gigabyte digital music player and insert it into your rectum.

Jobs: In fact, how about one for each of you? (Gestures to Universal attorneys.) Seven Zunes — that should double their sales for the week.

Morris: —

Jobs: And Universal Music will get seven dollars.

Jobs sits back in his chair, beaming proudly.

Morris has broken out in a bit of a sweat. He wipes his forehead.

Morris: Steve, I don’t think this…

Jobs: Doug, it’s not a problem at all. The Zunes are on me.

Morris: I’m really sorry Steve. I’m sorry. I’ll tell you what: How about we just continue the current deal. The deal we already have. 99 cents a song on the iTunes and that’s it. That sounds like a better idea now that I think about it.

Jobs: That sounds great.

Bah, humbug!

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Er, from The Register …

A new study from AirMagnet has demonstrated that Wi-Fi signal strength can drop by up to 25 per cent when seasonal decorations are in place.

Shiny baubles can reflect wireless networking signals, while flashing lights generate all sorts of interference. Sticking to the traditional holly and ivy won’t do you any good either, as plants are notorious for blocking the 2.4GHz signal Wi-Fi relies upon.

Carrying out a full wireless survey or network analysis might be overkill, but AirMagnet recommends that signal degradation can often be mitigated just by moving decorations away from access points, and remembering that every barrier between access point and user will lead to a weaker signal.

Thanks to Bill Thompson for spotting it.

The Gowers Report

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Hmmm. The Gowers Report on Intellectual Property has been published. I haven’t read it through yet (in fact have only read the Press Release). When I started on the Report proper, I was immediately distracted by the Gowers signature:

That doesn’t seem at all safe to me. I mean to say, how do we know that this is the real Andrew Gowers, rather than a cheap counterfeit copy knocked up in Bangkok?

UPDATE: Bill Thompson has been reading the report. His initial impression is one of relieved surprise. Given what could have happened to the document, it seems sensible. And it’s delicious to think that ‘Sir’ Cliff Richard’s er, descendants, will not be able to wax fatly on his royalties after all. Gowers thinks that 50 years is quite enough, thank you very much. Actually, of course, it’s far too much, but we will leave that pass. I’m still trying to work out when Windows 95 comes out of copyright, for example.

What’s in a name?

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From the Pew Research Center…

A mostly insiders-only debate about whether Iraq is in a state of civil war broke out into the open last week when two major news organizations announced that they would henceforth refer to the conflict as a civil war. According to polling in September by the Pew Research Center, much of the public had already reached that conclusion. By a 50%-to-37% margin, more Americans said the current violence in Iraq was mostly a civil war than said it was mostly an insurgency aimed at the United States and its allies.

Interestingly, whether respondents thought it was a civil war or an insurgency didn’t seem to affect their attitudes towards whether the US should stay in Iraq.

So what’s Plan B then?

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The report of the Iraq Study Group is out. (Summary available here.) A couple of thoughts that are prompted by it:

  • Firstly there is the interesting shift in US discourse to blaming the Iraqis, as if, somehow, they had brought all this upon themselves.
  • Then there’s the Report’s central idea — that a timetable should set for the Iraqis to get their house in order, after which the US will go home — in 2008. But there’s no evidence so far that the Iraqi government has a hope in hell of getting a grip on the situation. The chaos and carnage will, in all likelihood, get worse. So will the US then walk away? The Report seems to envisage no Plan B.

    I saw a suggestion recently on a Blog somewhere (can’t remember where, to my chagrin) that one way of rating US presidents is on how long it takes to clear up after them. On that metric, even Ronald Reagan looks reasonable. But Dubya is a catastrophe.

    Another interesting thing: there was a report on the BBC today (also here) that George Bush Snr burst into tears recently at a public event when he was introducing his other boy, Jeb (Governor of California). What can this mean?

    • Spam 2.0

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    From today’s New York Times…

    The antispam industry is struggling to keep up with the surge. It is adding computer power and developing new techniques in an effort to avoid losing the battle with the most sophisticated spammers.

    It wasn’t supposed to turn out this way. Three years ago, Bill Gates, Microsoft’s chairman, made an audacious prediction: the problem of junk e-mail, he said, “will be solved by 2006.” And for a time, there were signs that he was going to be proved right.

    Antispam software for companies and individuals became increasingly effective, and many computer users were given hope by the federal Can-Spam Act of 2003, which required spam senders to allow recipients to opt out of receiving future messages and prescribed prison terms for violators.

    According to the Federal Trade Commission, the volume of spam declined in the first eight months of last year.

    But as many technology administrators will testify, the respite was short-lived.

    “At the beginning of the year spam was off our radar,” said Franklin Warlick, senior messaging systems administrator at Cox Communications in Atlanta.

    “Now employees are stopping us in the halls to ask us if we turned off our spam filter,” Mr. Warlick said.

    Mehran Sabbaghian, a network engineer at the Sacramento Web hosting company Lanset America, said that last month a sudden Internet-wide increase in spam clogged his firm’s servers so badly that the delivery of regular e-mail to customers was delayed by hours.

    To relieve the pressure, the company took the drastic step of blocking all messages from several countries in Europe, Latin America and Africa, where much of the spam was originating.

    This week, Lanset America plans to start accepting incoming mail from those countries again, but Mr. Sabbaghian said the problem of junk e-mail was “now out of control.”

    Antispam companies fought the scourge successfully, for a time, with a blend of three filtering strategies. Their software scanned each e-mail and looked at whom the message was coming from, what words it contained and which Web sites it linked to. The new breed of spam — call it Spam 2.0 — poses a serious challenge to each of those three approaches.

    Spammers have effectively foiled the first strategy — analyzing the reputation of the sender — by conscripting vast networks of computers belonging to users who unknowingly downloaded viruses and other rogue programs. The infected computers begin sending out spam without the knowledge of their owners. Secure Computing, an antispam company in San Jose, Calif., reports that 250,000 new computers are captured and added to these spam “botnets” each day.

    The sudden appearance of new sources of spam makes it more difficult for companies to rely on blacklists of known junk e-mail distributors. Also, by using other people’s computers to scatter their e-mail across the Internet, spammers vastly increase the number of messages they can send out, without having to pay for the data traffic they generate.

    “Because they are stealing other people’s computers to send out the bad stuff, their marginal costs are zero,” said Daniel Drucker, a vice president at the antispam company Postini. “The scary part is that the economics are now tilted in their favor.”

    The use of botnets to send spam would not matter as much if e-mail filters could still make effective use of the second spam-fighting strategy: analyzing the content of an incoming message. Traditional antispam software examines the words in a text message and, using statistical techniques, determines if the words are more likely to make up a legitimate message or a piece of spam.

    The explosion of image spam this year has largely thwarted that approach. Spammers have used images in their messages for years, in most cases to offer a peek at a pornographic Web site, or to illustrate the effectiveness of their miracle drugs. But as more of their text-based messages started being blocked, spammers searched for new methods and realized that putting their words inside the image could frustrate text filtering. The use of other people’s computers to send their bandwidth-hogging e-mail made the tactic practical.

    “They moved their message into our blind spot,” said Paul Judge, chief technology officer of Secure Computing…