Adobe Launches Free Web Conferencing

Introducing free web conferencing, Adobe System Inc. hopes to make holding meetings via the web as very useful and convenient.  The new product, Acrobat ConnectNow, works with free online document processing, sharing and storage services.

Unlike other Web-conferencing solutions that offer the same features at an expensive rate and make using quite complicated, the Adobe System Inc's Acrobat ConnectNow is free and convenient making it more helpful to share things besides spoken words, such as documents, text chats and whiteboards.

However, the service is only free for very low-end users; this implies that Acrobat ConnectNow is free for limited number of users, three users to be précised beyond which users will need to pay for either of the two brands available – Acrobat Connect or Acrobat Professional.

The service is simple to use, users need to first register after which they can invite others to attend by sending them an email or IM (instant message) containing the URL of their personal meeting room. Once they've joined the meeting, they can all share screens, whiteboards, text chats and meeting notes. There is also option to upload files for others to see and give control of desktop to other participants.

The other Acrobat.com applications, all of which work through a Web browser, involve documents. Buzzword, for example, is an online word processor that Adobe acquired when it bought Virtual Ubiquity in October 2007. Other applications help users create PDF documents, share files and store files online. You can switch among applications through clicks, though ConnectNow is a separate application that doesn't work directly within the browser.

The big advantage of all the applications is that they use the Flash technology installed on almost all Internet-connected computers. Therefore, no software downloads are required. That gives ConnectNow the benefit of being as easy for Macintosh and Linux users to access as it is for those with Windows computers.