Atlantic Zeiser announced its acquisition of a majority stake in SOFHA GmbH, a Berlin-based software solutions provider to OEMs of high-speed digital printing machines. SOFHA GmbH is also a co-development partner of Adobe and the acquisition will create new digital printing solutions based on Adobe’s PDF portfolio of standards.

Adobe Systems today announced that more than 100 publishers, book retailers and libraries have adopted Adobe® Content Server 4 software to protect PDF and EPUB eBook content and support the distribution to thousands of retail, libraries and other channels across the globe.

Caldera extended its partnership with Adobe and announced the integration of the Adobe PDF Print Engine (APPE) into its RIP solutions. This is the first time when any dedicated wide-format solution has integrated Adobe PDF Print Engine Technology. Caldera solution now offers better quality and speed on complex PDF files.

Adobe and Barnes announces further advancement for eBook distribution by joining hands to standardize the open EPUB and PDF eBooks and collaborating on a content protection standard based on Barnes & Noble and Adobe technology. Barnes and Noble will make all their content available to customers in PDF, which is one of the most compatible and secure file formats.

The top-tier digital publishing industry website, Future of Publishing, has (pre)released the report titled “Adobe’s Designs on Web Analytics: The Omniture Acquisition”. Report author, Thad McIlroy, aims to give a 360 view of the upside of the deal.

“Extra, extra, read all about it – get your free PDF creator, free pdf converter, and free PDF reader!”
Check out the freebie low-down on free pdf creators we’ve listed over at 4xPDF — we’ve covered off the top eight that don’t include hideous watermarks, ordered according to the stats on Download.com.

Of course, it wasn’t always that way — there was a time when you actually had to pay $50 for a copy of Adobe Reader as well as $2,495 for a copy of Acrobat Distiller – wow, back in the good ol’ …

The general rule-of-thumb regarding being careful about whether to open files from untrusted third-parties (heck, even some trusted parties) applies even with PDF files.

Adobe will be holding four hour-long Acrobat related eSeminars over the next few weeks for legal professionals. It’s free to attend (virtually of course), but those of you who register now will automatically go into the running for a Samsung T220HD 22″ HDTV Widescreen Monitor.

Adobe has released a patch for Adobe Reader 8 and Acrobat 8. The patch fixes critical vulnerabilities in these two applications that could cause the application to crash and could potentially allow an attacker to take control of the affected system.

My old work-buddy Kurt Foss, Online Editor of Adobe Acrobat User Community, wrote a short piece on a video I’ve been trying to track down for some time. 
The video is centered around a typical “office of the 90s ” and is included on page 24 as part of a Flash-presentation that celebrates “25 Years of Innovation” at Adobe Systems.
It takes us back 15 years ago to the land of ascii text, overnight mail, copier jams and filing cabinets laden with paper-based-documents. Although Kurt says that “Acrobat humor is a narrow niche”, …

Back in November 2006, Thad McIlroy, publishing consultant and analyst from The Future of Publishing sent a scathing letter to the Planet PDF Editor, Dan Shea:
I think that Acrobat 8 is one of the weakest upgrades I’ve seen in years. Adobe is apparently angry with me for saying so, but that’s just Adobe getting all imperial, as it does (as do so may so may other U.S. organizations, like the old Republican administration).
However, with version 9 — Thad thinks that Adobe has provided a elegant upgrade:
Adobe Acrobat has evolved in so …

Adobe have announced plans to immediately discontinue the development of FlashPaper… Although some once touted FlashPaper as a PDF-killer, it never really fulfilled it’s promise in that regard. And, as you can imagine, any lingering PDF-killer thoughts, were quickly laid to rest when Adobe acquired Macromedia in 2005.

Ever encounter the problem where you’re reading, writing, and publishing more than one document at the same time?  
Rhetorical question!
You know the scenario — you’ve got multiple windows open — all stacked on top of each other, you’re alt-tabbing applications to the point of arth-thumb-ritis. Even with 2 x 21″ screens and your Intel® Core™2 Extreme processor QX9770, you feel like you’re driving your Ferrari F430 Spider with the hand-break on.
Well, a quick and easy solution to this problem is to pick yourself up a copy of Desktop Rover™ v4.0. You will need multiple …

No matter how much you like a particular piece of software, there’s almost certainly something about it that irks you, whether it be the installer, the start-up time, a bug that never gets fixed or featuritis. Enter Dear Adobe, a place where you can vent about Adobe products until your heart’s content.
Submit your own gripes or rate other peoples, with a Love It or Hate It tag. The results of the voting are shown on the Top 50 Gripes page, which makes for some interesting reading.
The top gripes are pretty clear:

Loosen DRM …

Adobe Systems have released a free utility which helps computer administrators take greater control of enterprise-wide deployments of Acrobat 9 and Reader 9.
The Adobe Customization Wizard allows administrators to customize the Acrobat 9 installer and the application features prior to deployment.
By using the Adobe Customization Wizard, you can:

Optimize the behavior of the installer by including silent installation, pre-serialization, reboot, multilingual, and custom setup choices

Customize key application preferences: Turn off automatic updates, add and set default job options, and customize collaboration and security settings

Help prevent users from modifying certain preferences

More information …