The next meeting for Digital Media ME is on June 21 in the usual location. If you’re coming along post a comment to this announcement or send us an email.

We will especially discuss the recent news about Acrobat and Magnus has said he’ll show some of the recent beta versions of some CS4 applications that have been released. Let’s look at what’s new there.

Adobe has announced Acrobat 9.

Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today introduced Adobe® Acrobat® 9 software, a significant upgrade that will transform the process of creating and sharing electronic documents. Acrobat 9 delivers native support for Adobe Flash® technology, the ability to unify a wide range of content in rich PDF Portfolios, and access to real-time capabilities for co-navigating a PDF document with colleagues.

“The expectations organizations and individuals have for communicating and collaborating in the workplace continues to grow significantly,” said Rob Tarkoff, senior vice president, Business Productivity Business Unit. “The ability to break through and communicate a message in a compelling way has never been at a greater premium. Acrobat 9 is a response to this environment and is poised to fundamentally change how professionals communicate and collaborate using electronic documents.”

For the first time, Acrobat 9 provides deep support for Adobe Flash technology, enabling users to include Adobe Flash Player compatible video and application files in PDF documents. Recipients simply need free Adobe Reader® 9 software to consume the content. Now, static documents can come to life as dynamic communications.

Acrobat 9 also includes the ability to unify a wide range of content into a single document with the new concept of PDF Portfolios. PDF Portfolios enable business professionals to assemble multiple media types, such as documents, video, audio, and even 3D objects, into one, compressed PDF file. Users can then choose among several professional layouts—or create their own—to quickly integrate content, define navigation, and add polish and branding. As a result, communications such as sales proposals, legal documents, and product collateral can become far more customized and compelling.

In addition, Acrobat 9 provides access to capabilities for collaborating live within a PDF document—enabled by working with Acrobat.com, a new suite of hosted services Adobe introduced as public beta today. For example, a salesperson could use Acrobat 9 to send a lengthy contract to clients. The sales professional, or any of the recipients using Adobe Reader1, can then drive the group’s navigation through the PDF document in real-time working with Acrobat.com. This helps ensure everyone is literally, and figuratively, on the same page.

Additionally, Acrobat 9 users can access Acrobat.com for storing and sharing files, use it as a central location for collecting data as part of a forms process, and to gather comments in a shared document review. Acrobat.com includes other services, such as Adobe ConnectNow, personal Web conferencing that provides desktop sharing, video and voice conferencing, and integrated chat; and Adobe Buzzword®, an elegant, Web-based word processor that can be used to easily co-author and share documents for comment and review, creating high-quality print results.

The Acrobat 9 family consists of Acrobat 9 Standard, Acrobat 9 Pro, and the new Acrobat 9 Pro Extended software. The most comprehensive member of the family, Acrobat 9 Pro Extended, includes Adobe Presenter software for easily turning Microsoft® PowerPoint presentations into multimedia experiences that can be published as PDF files.

There are some upcoming Adobe Events you might be interested in.

For all you Flash developers, there’s Web Flash Festival 2008.

Scotch on the Rocks, June 4-6 in Edinburgh, Scotland, promises, “3 days, 45 sessions, 150+ delegates, world renowned speakers from the ColdFusion, Flex, Air, Flash, LiveCycle and Web communities”.

Flashforum Konferenz 08, in Germany, 21-24 May, I can’t seem to find much information in English on, but I’ve heard good things about past events there.

There’s an Adobe Max tour, stopping in the US, Italy, and Japan, and like always ignoring the Middle East. If you’re lucky enough to catch any of the events, let us know.

The Adobe Air Tour also misses out on us, but with more dates in Europe you should have a better chance getting in on it.

As per our usual schedule we have our next DMME Meeting this coming Saturday May 17th. If you’re coming along, please let us know so we can get the right amount of refreshments and things and be ready for you.

One topic we need to discuss is how we can increase the awareness of DMME and get more members.

The next meeting for Digital Media ME is on May 17th in the usual location. If you’re coming along post a comment to this announcement or send us an email.

With Indesign it’s easy to do an interactive PDF, where users can click on an entry in the table of contents, for example, and they go to the actual article. But what about something like Zinio, or an alternative to Zinio? I mean a nice, dynamic solution, perhaps Flash-based, which reads in articles, pictures, etc. dynamically and presents it in an attractive and user-friendly interface. Is there such a thing where you can from Indesign export/save to it?

As per our usual schedule we have our next DMME Meeting this coming Saturday April 19th. If you’re coming along, please let us know so we can get the right amount of refreshments and things and be ready for you.

See some photos by Scott Kelby from his recent visit to Dubai here, here, and here.

Just a reminder to everyone about Adobe D-Day this Saturday April 2008. It promises to be a fun event all filled with Adobe goodies.

We’re changing location for our DMME Meetings, we’re not at Tashkeel in the Nad Al Sheba area of Dubai. We’re also changing to Saturdays, and the time is 4pm. If you’re coming along to a meeting, please let us know first. You can find a map on Tashkeel’s site.