Buzzword was built using Adobe’s Flex software and runs in the Adobe Flash Player and lets more than one user to view and edit as document online at the same time.
Separately, Adobe also added a new file sharing service to its current online document services codenamed “Share”. The beta service is designed to make it easier for people to share, publish and organise documents online.
The company said the acquisition was part of its commitment to “foster a vibrant ecosystem” for rich internet application (RIA) development.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed, though Virtual Ubiquity’s eleven California-based staff will join Adobe.
The acquisition helps establish Adobe as a player in the Software as a Service (SaaS) market, which is fast becoming one of the hottest sectors of the industry on the back of offerings like Google’s Docs & Spreadsheets offering.
“For over a decade, Adobe Acrobat software and PDF have been the standard way people share and collaborate on high value documents across platforms, with perfect fidelity,” said Adobe Business Productivity Business Unit senior vice-president David Mendels.
“Buzzword will build on that leadership and enable fundamental improvements in how people collaborate on documents,” he said.
“At the same time, it is an exciting showcase of the power of Adobe’s RIA technology that raises the bar for the quality of experience people should expect in their applications.”
Adobe said Buzzword enables greater document quality, outstanding typography, page layout controls, and robust support for integrated graphics, regardless of the browser or device. The application also runs on Adobe AIR, giving users a hybrid online/offline experience and the ability to work with both hosted and local documents.
Virtual Ubiquity chief executive Rick Treitman said Buzzword was “an online word processor for the ‘Facebook generation’ that focuses on working together online, without sacrificing quality.”
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