Adobe has announced the release of Acrobat.com Presentations, a Flash-based presentation application. This looks to be a capable, albeit average presentation tool. Although they beat Microsoft to the cloud with a presentation solution, I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s best of breed. When you stack it up against the likes of third party solutions like SlideRocket, it doesn’t even come close.

This wouldn’t be the first time Adobe’s pushed out a solution that falls short of what third parties are doing with the same technology/platform. Take Photoshop.com, for example. When compared to Aviary, the differences comprise a rather wide chasm. In the case of Photoshop.com, I’ll give Adobe a little slack, since the target audience is distinctly more consumer-oriented and it wasn’t marketed as a pro design solution. Nevertheless, why couldn’t they have released a basic AND pro version?

The days of the big dogs dragging their feet are coming to a conclusion. Releases like Acrobat.com Presentations will be met with little to no fanfare, particularly when the little guys are releasing great things utilizing the same technology. Of course the likes of Adobe and Microsoft can, and likely will, assimilate these little guys and their technology, as is typically the case. But it’s a bit embarrassing for them when they don’t exercise the foresight to do the acquisition before releasing a product.

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