Adobe Acrobat Professional – A Lawyer’s Best Friend

For those who don’t have the professional version of Adobe Acrobat – get it.  There is just too much you can do with this application to not have a copy of it available.  No matter if you practice primarily in litigation or transactional law, Acrobat Pro is a must-have tool for lawyers.

Version 9 adds some new features that are geared to legal professionals:

• Enhanced Redaction and Bates Numbering
• File splitting
• Better Save to Word with flowing text
• PDF Portfolios (Packages on steroids!)
• More powerful Document Comparison

The feature I like best in version 9, though, is the new PDF Portfolios.  Click here to see a video outlining the features of PDF Portfolios.

With the ability to do Bates numbering, redact documents, create forms, collaborate with others, all without sacrificing security, Adobe Acrobat Professional is a must-have application for lawyers.

As an added bonus, Rick Borstein of Adobe has a blog for legal professionals where he provides ways to utilize Acrobat in a legal environment.  You can view his blog by clicking here.

 

Google Browser Signals End of “Mandated” Operating System

Google is set to release on Wednesday a first public “beta” of a web browser that at first glance appears to join a suddenly crowded web browser marketplace.  After reading its “comic” explaining the idea behind the browser, it becomes apparent that Google isn’t just trying to enter the web browser market – it is trying to transform the web browser into a vehicle for stable, web-based application delivery.

As explained in the comic, traditional browsers can crash pretty easily when delivering web applications.  This is due to the framework of the web browser.  It was initially developed to do small tasks such as render text and graphics quickly.  As browsers grew, they added tools for email and calendaring that were fine for individuals, but added bulk and instability for those who wanted to use browsers to push internal applications.

Google has responded by placing each tab of the browser in its own process (ie, each tab is like opening a new instance of the browser) so that if one tab becomes unstable, it doesn’t affect the other tabs.  This also prevents a script that is slowing down the rendering of a page to affect the other tabs.

This comes with a cost – additional overhead (more RAM memory, better hardware).  But for business use, this can finally usher in the end of executable-based client server applications and push all business applications through your browser.  This will not only simplify administration of applications from an IT perspective, it gives freedom to end users to choose whatever operating system they want to use (which may end up increasing IT administration, so that may be a wash – IT isn’t going to be less of a need in the future in any event).

Perhaps this is what will challenge virtualization (something Microsoft envisions as it prepares for the end of Windows).

The above is merely scratching the surface of the new features of Google Chrome.  The browser will be open-source, meaning developers around the world will be free to see, use, and improve upon the source code (and create their own applications based on the technology without paying licensing fees).  It also tries to improve upon the user experience that takes advantage of Google’s omnipresence on the internet.   Read the comic by clicking here to see more of what Google envisions with its browser.

The bottom line is that computing as we know it will soon be a thing of the past.  New technologies that are in their infancy now will be in the forefront of your technology decisions soon.  Make sure your IT department is testing these technologies now so they can give you a better opinion on which to choose when the time comes.

UPDATE:  As if on cue:  ”Google believes any task done in a standalone desktop computer application can be delivered via the Web and Chrome is its bet that software applications can be run via a browser.”  Read more here.