It shows how to publish the project to a Flash file, convert it to HTML5, then convert it into an iPad app and test it using Adobe PhoneGap.

Adobe is also hosting a Captivate HTML5 contest. “This is a great opportunity to showcase your skills in authoring HTML5 based eLearning content, and to win yourself one of three 32GB iPads!” says Adobe’s Shameer Ayyappan. “Even if you aren’t quite ready to create your own content, check out some of the great submissions thus far- to get an idea on what HTML5 based eLearning has to offer.”

Here’s another video on publishing Captivate to iPad:

“The acquisition of Efficient Frontier adds cross-channel ad campaign forecasting, execution and optimization capabilities to Adobe’s existing Digital Marketing Suite, along with a social marketing engagement platform and social ad buying capabilities,” an Adobe spokesperson said in an email to WebProNews.

“With the completion of the Efficient Frontier acquisition, we are focused on aggressively integrating cross-channel ad buying and optimization capabilities with our Digital Marketing Suite,” said Brad Rencher, senior vice president and general manager of Digital Marketing, Adobe. “Enterprises and agencies that count on Adobe to optimize digital business will benefit from exciting advancements in our ability to help them better turn ad spend, social media initiatives and campaigns into real business impact.”

Details of the product-integration roadmap will be shared at the Adobe Digital Marketing Summit 2012 March 20-23 in Salt Lake City.

The acquisition was about $400 million, and Adobe expects it to bring in $60-80 million this year.

Jason Lemkin, VP of Web business services at Adobe and former CEO of EchoSign tells WebProNews, “All signatures will be Web signatures in five years. The question has been how to accelerate adoption even faster. Putting e-signatures into the number one piece of software that 1 billion users around the world use to view documents – Adobe Reader – will dramatically accelerate that adoption because it creates exposure.”

“The e-signature market has grown more than 100 percent a year for the past few years, but it has still, in the grand scheme of things, remained niche due to a lack of awareness,” he says. “Adobe Reader is used on 1 billion PCs and mobile devices. There will be no awareness issues in 2012 with EchoSign in Adobe Reader. E-signature usage should quadruple or more this year.”

With the new Reader update, users can send PDF files to be signed from within the application as well as sign documents electronically themselves. Specifically, users can:

- Place a scanned signature into a document

- Get status updates and track the progress of your signature process through the EchoSign UI

We did an interview with Lemkin last summer where he talks more about where he sees web-based signatures going. If this is something you’re interested in, check it out.

Adobe Edge Preview is the company’s HTML5 animation tool, and the new version will of course come with new features. The video shows off a bit, including: symbols, clipping, support for web fonts, etc.

Users who have downloaded Adobe Edge Preview 3 before December 14 will find the product expires on December 31. An updated version, 3.1, is available, which extends the expiration date until 4 comes out in January.

“The purchase bolsters Adobe’s strategic focus on digital marketing and expands the company’s solutions, which are central to how digital marketing and advertising is created, managed, executed measured and optimized,” an Adobe spokesperson tells WebProNews.

Adobe released its Q4 earnings yesterday, and on the conference call, the company revealed the price to be around $400 million. CFO Mark Garrett said, “Assuming we close the transaction as planned later this quarter, we would expect the acquisition to add between $60 million and $80 million to our annual revenue in fiscal 2012. It would also result in the use of approximately $400 million of our domestic cash and add approximately 350 employees to our headcount. We expect the acquisition to be slightly accretive to non-GAAP earnings for the year.”

Seeking Alpha has a transcript from Adobe’s earnings call. Here’s what Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen had to say about the acquisition:

Late in Q4, we announced our intent to acquire Efficient Frontier, a leader in digital ad buying and optimization. In the acquisition, which we expect will close later this quarter, we’ll add multi-channel ad campaign forecasting, execution and optimization capabilities to our existing Digital Marketing Suite. More specifically, Efficient Frontier strengthens our digital market offering in several key areas.

And in multi-channel optimization, Efficient Frontier enables marketeers to take the guesswork out of how to spend marketing dollars across search, display and social media platforms by optimizing bids and allocating budget across all these digital channels for maximum ROI.

Included in the pending acquisition is Context Optional, a subsidiary of Efficient Frontier. Context Optional provides Fortune 500 companies with brand management, monitoring and analytics tools.

Adobe has been more focused on its digital marketing strategy lately, with recent acquisitions and partnerships (such as its partnership with OptiMine Software and its acquisition of Auditude), and of course the Efficient Frontier acquisition.

This, of course, comes a day after the launch of the Galaxy Nexus, which runs this version of Android.

The release doesn’t come with any major features, but it does come with some bug fixes in addition to the new compatibility. Adobe lists known issues as:

- Seeking while video is paused will not update the frame on ICS device
- StageVideo using On2 and Sorenson does not work on ICS devices
- PHDS content plays with audio pops
- OS does not prioritize incoming call – audio remains playing before and after call is received
- Enter key does not work on the multi-line text input field

Some are ready for Flash to go away:

Adobe announced its decision to do away with Flash for mobile last month. At the same time, the company emphasized that it is increasing investments in HTML5. They also cut about 750 jobs. Adobe’s statement said:

Our future work with Flash on mobile devices will be focused on enabling Flash developers to package native apps with Adobe AIR for all the major app stores. We will no longer adapt Flash Player for mobile devices to new browser, OS version or device configurations. Some of our source code licensees may opt to continue working on and releasing their own implementations. We will continue to support the current Android and PlayBook configurations with critical bug fixes and security updates.

Adobe reported its Q4 earnings yesterday. Profits were down 35%, but they beat analyst estimates.

“The purchase bolsters Adobe’s strategic focus on digital marketing and expands the company’s solutions, which are central to how digital marketing and advertising is created, managed, executed measured and optimized,” an Adobe spokesperson tells WebProNews.

Efficient Frontier will add multi-channel ad campaign forecasting, execution and optimization features to Adobe’s Digital Marketing Suite.

“With the explosion in global Internet advertising, our customers need to know where, when and how to spend their digital marketing dollars to get the greatest return,” said Brad Rencher, SVP and general manager of Adobe’s Digital Marketing Business. “The addition of Efficient Frontier will give our Digital Marketing Suite customers a leading platform for turning ad spend into business impact.”

“Adobe’s vision of digital marketing is perfectly aligned with the Efficient Frontier approach – use data and intelligence to manage risk and drive ROI across a growing number of digital channels,” said Efficient Frontier President and CEO David Karnstedt. “Adobe customers will have greater insight into how their social, search and display spend impact one another and how to optimize their cross-channel campaigns.”

Included in the pending acquisition is Context Optional, a subsidiary of Efficient Frontier.

Context Optional provides Fortune 500 companies with brand management, monitoring and analytics tools.

Adobe itself, it says, currently captures nearly five trillion digital transactions per year for over 5,000 customers, which include some of the world’s largest publishers, ad agencies and advertisers.

Terms of the deal have not been disclosed.

You may recall the big back and fourth between Adobe and Apple over Flash last year. Remember the famous letter from Steve Jobs: Thoughts on Flash?

I won’t rehash the entire thing here, but the conclusion said:

Flash was created during the PC era – for PCs and mice. Flash is a successful business for Adobe, and we can understand why they want to push it beyond PCs. But the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards – all areas where Flash falls short.

New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too). Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind.

It appears that they are doing just that. Adobe outlined its growth strategy, and that includes greater investment in HTML 5. Just take a look at iPhone and iPad sales, and it’s not hard to understand why.

ZDNet shares the following announcement from the company:

Our future work with Flash on mobile devices will be focused on enabling Flash developers to package native apps with Adobe AIR for all the major app stores. We will no longer adapt Flash Player for mobile devices to new browser, OS version or device configurations. Some of our source code licensees may opt to continue working on and releasing their own implementations. We will continue to support the current Android and PlayBook configurations with critical bug fixes and security updates.

Here’s what some people have been saying about it on Twitter.

That last one is a story on its own. In a statement, Adobe said:

In order to better align resources around Digital Media and Digital Marketing, Adobe is restructuring its business. This will result in the elimination of approximately 750 full-time positions primarily in North America and Europe.

The company will report its Q4 earnings on December 15.

Adobe’s description for Auditude says: “Auditude helps maximize the value of video content through advanced ad technology and monetization services so content owners and distributors can effectively monetize their content wherever users choose to view it. Auditude’s flagship product is the Connect platform, an ad serving and decisioning technology targeted at premium video content owners and distributors that enables the insertion, trafficking, delivery, rights management, and analysis of online video ads.”

“Premium video publishers want to capitalize on the foundational shift to digital by providing viewers with great media experiences and maximizing the value of their content on every IP device,” said David Wadhwani, SVP and general manager, Adobe’s Digital Media Business Unit. “With this acquisition, Adobe can now offer an unparalleled platform for authoring, distributing, analyzing and monetizing digital video experiences everywhere – simplifying workflows, increasing consumer engagement, delivering insights and driving increased revenue for content publishers.”

“By joining Adobe we are accelerating our vision of helping top media companies and publishers maximize the value of their video content,” said Auditude CEO Jeremy Helfand. “Adobe has deep roots in video and bringing our capabilities together will provide great incremental benefits for our customers. As part of Adobe we are excited to bring publishers and media companies a platform offering that has never been possible before, driving unprecedented monetization opportunities for them.”

Auditude already provides services to Major League Baseball, FoxNews, Starz, Lionsgate, and other brands of note.

Adobe says it will be tightly integrated with SiteCatalyst and Test&Target.

If you haven’t seen our other video round-ups from this week, you can find them at:

09/16
09/15
09/14

Microsoft may have tapped Jerry Seinfeld for an ad campaign in the past, but Google has gone the George Costanza route to sell Google Wallet:

Business Insider’s Henry Blodget points to this video of what he describes as an “Insane Video Of Guy In Wingsuit Flying Through Trees.” That about sums it up. Somehow this seems worth passing along. Don’t let the title “Grinding the Crack” fool you.

How to make quantum dots (nanoparticles) (via Slashdot):

This one was shared by Adobe’s John Nack on his blog. It comes from Junebum Park:

The Adobe Carousel team answered reader questions in this video:

Webcam 101 for Seniors has been trending all week, but we haven’t included it yet, so if you haven’t seen it yet, here it is:

Jeff Jarvis shared this one on Google+. As he notes, the punchline is in English:

This apparently won YouTube’s Next Up contest in Japan

From the Ellen Degeneres Show, David Beckham went under cover selling cologne at Target: