The SharePoint Swiss Army Knife

Now wouldn’t that be something!

If you guys haven’t checked out Adobe’s recently launched beta collaboration site, http://acrobat.com, it’s pretty damn cool and slick compared to what else is currently out there. I was only playing around with Buzzword and ConnectNow for about 15 minutes but here are my thoughts:

Adobe Buzzword

• Slick/easy to use word processor.
• Can export to any of the major file types (pdf, doc, docx, etc.)
• Live and almost real-time document collaboration. You can interactively work on the document with another person and as soon as that person saves, you’ll be able to see the updated document and edit controls.

Adobe ConnectNow

• I haven’t used any screen sharing utilities lately other than GoToMeeting, but I thought this just blew everything away. It has built in screen sharing, chat, web cam, white-boarding all organized pretty cleanly.
• Easy access and logging on process. Owner can accept or reject incoming requests to join the meeting. This is better for smaller groups.
• Easy to remember personal url for the screen sharing, i.e. https://connectnow.acrobat.com/henryo

Can SharePoint do it?

I sure hope so one day! I’d imagine with some Silverlight, SharePoint workspaces can some day be as user-friendly and intuitive as Buzzword. Actually, I hope that this would be really true within the next 2 releases because right now, I’m hanging my head low in shame.