So a friend re edited my ebook for me. I took about 6 hours to go through the edits and try to learn from them etc. I went to create a PDF from the new version fo the Word ebook and Word hangs up. I can close it and report the error to MicroSoft, but that ends their sloppy at best customer support offering. No followup. Complete trash.

There used to be a saying around Microsoft, "DOS isn't done until Lotus won't run." I wonder if Adobe is today's version of Lotus. Hopefully Adobe has a fix for Acrobat in the works. - Perry Clausen

Maybe this error is my fault? So I tried to download the service pack 2 for Word, but it told me Firefox is the wrong browser. I then started up Internet Explorer and got told I was all hosed for having a firewall. Cool !

Finally got the download to work, but still couldn't create PDFs from that document. No love for me.

I can quickly make PDFs using Open Office, but for some reason it was stripping out the book index links from the Word document.

So then I try to download a trial of the newest Adobe 7.0. Of course, since I already purchased 6.0 and it is running on my computer the trial of 7.0 aborts. Uninstall 6 & try 7. It works! But only if I stripped the internal links out of the document.

After about 50 hours wasted I finally got the software to create my ebook. Gotta love the Office productivity suite & and that friendly document format!

Easy to say MiroSoft is crap here...but so is Adobe. Where is Adobe at with their support. All of their past customer complaints and answers are hidden. Support forums that are not getting indexed. You can't even view them unless you register.

Why when I search for Adobe Word plugins or Word Adobe plugins or Word Adobe Macros am I left in the cold? And just about any "Acrobat + problem" search leads you to a site other than Adobe. Is Adobe that far out of the loop? Most of their forum posts look like this:

When I convert the Word doc to a PDF, the first page footer shows in the PDF, but none of the others do. EXCEPT...When I click the Pages tab in the Navigation pane and view the thumbnails of each page, I can see the missing footers there. - C Pickrell

And most are left unanswered.

So people post their comments on other sites, like Amazon:

Our firm does over $300 Million worth of business a year. We thought that Acrobat Professional ability to create fillable forms that could be shared, updated, and filled out by clients was a blessing. We not have dozens of worthless forms. And then there's the embarrassment when a client with Acrobat 7 can't fill out a form. THINK OF THE COST!

Adobe's site doesn't even mention the issue (although, their site search and help system is so poor that it may be their somewhere - who knows.)

At first, I thought I was doing something wrong. But, when I called support I was told that forms were not compatible. The service person then told me that she thought there might be a fix. However, without a service plan we'd have to pay to talk to Technical Support. We paid good money for this software (we buy multiple licenses) and only had this version for two days.

Considering the magnitude of this issue. I'm guessing there are other major problems with this release of Acrobat..

Adobe should fire its entire staff of software developers and the arrogant managers who let this software hit the market without providing fully functional compatibility.

I don't get how companies can sell so much expensive software and have customer support that is that bad.

I didn't think that much of it when Google announced their toolbar budling with Sun, but I really hope they push Open Office hard enough to kill the proprietary formats. I will be happy when they are either killed off or forced to open up.

My productivity software, like a proprietary format, is pure garbage.

From The Register:

Google's internet library project will face competition from Yahoo!, but also from a less predictable rival: the European Commission announced its own plan on Friday. And it has an advantage: if copyright laws interfere with its plans it can change the laws.

Why do so many people care about who controls what databases?

"Without a collective memory, we are nothing, and can achieve nothing. It defines our identity and we use it continuously for education, work and leisure," said Information Society and Media Commissioner Viviane Reding.

For historical perspective check out The Royal Library of Alexandria, which is also covered in the always ever recommendable Cosmos series, although the Carl Sagan site could sure use some SEO.

The LED Digest is having another one of the is SEO dead debates.

In last issue Ken Evoy made a blatent self promo SEO is dead post::

If you are not ready for the future, for what's coming big-time, you do not understand why SEO is dead and has been for a while. Oh sure, the corpse is still walking, and SEOers get real upset when they read a book that is normally only for our Site Build It! customers but that has leaked out and I'll share it here with you. It's called "The Tao of CTPM"

Tao of CTPM? Tao of ZYJQ? Talk about dropping an advert, eh? He even added a link, and this dislaimer:

Please understand that it's been written for normal business people, not geeks. But also please understand that these people, unskilled in the Net but who know their BUSINESS, outperform as a group, SEOers

How can he prove that on average his customers outperform the average SEO?

When you say how another field is full of crap you have to expect them to question your own tactics. Like the advert posts or paying affiliates 3 weeks late.

I am both surprised and happy to see Shari Thurow stick it to him:

Ken, stick to sales. That's what you're good at. Please do not make blanket statements about a field in which you have limited knowledge.

Where Shari falls short is her next line:

Search engine spammers have limited knowledge, too. Their goal is to exploit the engines. Ask a spammer to build and write a user-friendly AND search-friendly site that converts? They don't have the skills.

For those SEOs who talk down algorithm chasers and talk up user friendly conversion friendly etc etc etc... out of those sites, how many of their sites do you find yourself regularly linking at?

I don't think SEO is in any way dead, just more that there are enough quick acting feedback networks to where it is becoming more efficient and more useful for some to do holistic marketing instead of just focusing on algorithm busting. As far as what is best goes, it sorta depends on your personality though.

AdAge asks IS BUZZ MARKETING ILLEGAL?

As marketers more frequently look to recruit consumers brand agents to spread goodwill for brands, industry attorneys view buzz marketing as a likely area of regulatory involvement, especially around the issue of compensating people to participate in buzz programs when they fail to disclose their connections to marketers and agencies. While there is no legal precedent specific to word-of-mouth marketing, there are Federal Trade Commission guidelines for ads that are likely to apply.

How far can they stretch this line of thinking? Is affiliate marketing a paid endorsement? Does every affiliate link need to be identified? How the hell would they enforce that?

In the offline world when you read a billboard it does not usually say SPONSORED BY in huge red letters. Celebrities endorse products they never use. What makes one type of advertising legit and another illegal?

Sometimes big fans of a company who love their products are great people to employ, and sometimes you only find those people after they state how wonderful your products are. Proving causality will be tough.

Viral marketing might be illegal, but some of the true web gurus think it is what drives the web:

It is a truism that the greatest internet success stories don't advertise their products. Their adoption is driven by "viral marketing"--that is, recommendations propagating directly from one user to another. You can almost make the case that if a site or product relies on advertising to get the word out, it isn't Web 2.0.

Some of these same people talking up buzz marketing being illegal during the day are probably working on buzz marketing campaigns at night.

So Gmail created an autosave feature, which saves your email drafts.

What is scary about that is that sometimes you may start writing stuff that you did not want to send...you may have been blowing off steam in a random form box only to find it got cached and later winds up in court.

I think Google makes many of these features with genuinely good intent, but some of the people in positions of power may have bad intent.

Having recently read the WSJ today to find Drug Maker Under Fire for Sharing Data and DeLay was indicted again and spending many thousands of dollars on an ongoing lawsuit that I think is without merit makes me wish some of the new features were widely mentioned and easily opt outable before they were live launched.

Some of the pressures Google will feel are not internal. Just look at the maps, or think of how absurd 38,514 hours of wiretapping the wrong line sounds.