Paul Wrubel lives a couple of houses down from me. I just met him at a neighborhood party, which is still going on (I’m teaching people about blogging and Google — lots of people live in my neighborhood who don’t understand all this stuff which is fun).

Anyway, one guy I met is Paul Wrubel who runs TuitionCoach.com. He tells me that tons of people don’t think they can pay for their kids to go to college. Really inspirational guy. Was the principal at Gunn High School in Palo Alto for a couple of years.

Anyway, it’s nice to know that I’m not the only blogger who lives on my street. Here’s a video I shot of Paul.

Adobe just released Acrobat 8 and last week I got an exclusive look at it through my camera lens when Rick Brown, Director of Product Management of the Knowledge Worker business unit gave me a demo. I really liked the forms handling and collaboration features. It’s best to download the video and watch it off of your hard drive. I did two videos for PodTech News. One, the above demo, and two, an interview with Rick where we talk about the state of Acrobat.

The official press release is here.
Another press release is here on the Adobe Connect collaboration family of products.

The official Acrobat 8 site is here. The player isn’t updated yet (coming in November), I’ll watch for when that comes online, should be linked off of this site when it’s ready.

I originally planned these videos to be part of my new show, but my site isn’t quite ready yet, so we’re running these on PodTech’s news channel.

Things that caught my eye about the new Acrobat? The new forms engine. It kicks ass. You put in a document with a form layout on it (like what we used to do in Pagemaker for Thunder Lizard — a brochure with a form on it). It looks like something that you’d get in the mail. But then you stick it through Acrobat and it puts a form on it that you can fill out from your computer.

Also, this is where we see a good integration of the stuff Macromedia was working on (the collaboration pieces) with something Adobe was working on (Acrobat).

Is this important? Well, Adobe makes quite a bit of profit off of the Acrobat line and Microsoft is gunning for that profit big time.

This might not get on TechMeme but Acrobat/PDF technology is used all over the Web, so this is important news for all of us to pay attention to.

Update: actually it is on TechMeme and there are a few news articles over on Google News about Acrobat 8 too.

Over at the Direct2Dell blog there’s a video of Michael Dell who spoke with gamers at the Austin Game Conference. It’ll be interesting to watch the Apple announcements tomorrow. Apple has been gunning for Dell’s marketshare. But, the interview is interesting cause Michael explained some of Dell’s hopes for Vista and PC-based gaming and also explains what’s happening in the high-end of the consumer world.

I think Michael Dell is still missing the huge trend inside homes that’s hitting now: large-screen HDTV. He’s focusing too much on PC-based gaming and not enough on what happens to entertainment priorities when a new large-screen TV shows up.

More and more people are going to buy large-screen TVs for their homes (you only need to hang out at Best Buy and see where all the action is to realize that these things are selling like hotcakes). When the buying decision happens to put one of these suckers in your home, everything about your media usage changes.

Most people aren’t going to buy a new PC just to play games. Now, don’t take me wrong. PC gaming is still very important. It’s just not going to be where the industry sees massive growth. That’s going to come from the war between Xbox 360 and Sony’s Play Station 3. Why? HDTV.

Me and my friends are noticing that we are already budgeting out our discretionary spending for the next year. I’m far more likely to buy a new HD Tivo, like seen on TechMeme today, or a new Playstation or Xbox than I am to buy a new PC that can play the latest games. The unknown variable in that mix is Windows Vista. But, even there, my first Windows Vista purchase will be a HD media center, not a gaming machine (and that’s despite having a 12-year-old who loves playing video games. The Xbox is just a better place for families to game together than a PC.

Dell remains particularly clueless about HDTV. Look at its website. Quick, find me the words “HDTV.” I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple jumps into the HD world left alone by Dell tomorrow.

My HD media center will sit upstairs. Have a massive hard drive on it. And will be shared to my HDTV screen downstairs via the Xbox 360 (this is one of the coolest features of the 360, by the way). That’ll let me watch PC-based videos (I want to subscribe to ZeFrank and watch him, along with other videobloggers, on my 60-inch screen downstairs), and also get a great game experience with the Xbox. Plus my photos, my music, all will be stored on the huge hard drive upstairs and displayed through the Xbox 360’s extender capabilities. Where in this scenario is room for a killer gaming PC? I don’t see it.

Why? Cause the Xbox is gonna do the heavy game lifting and the Vista machine upstairs just needs a decent enough video card to display Vista’s glass interface, not to give me a great game framerate.

Translation: I don’t think Dell’s strategy of focusing on PC gaming is that exciting. Dell, please focus on HDTV, that requires you to put HDTV front and center on your Website — you have a couple of laptops that are better for HDTV than Apple’s offerings but you don’t even point that out. What does that demonstrate to me? That Dell is clueless about HDTV and the real trends that are going to hit the livingroom over the next 36 months.

If you don’t focus on HDTV, Apple will come in and take the home away from you. And Steve Jobs has a big stick in his hand: Disney content.

When Michael Dell starts really showing some leadership in the HDTV world wake me up. Thanks! Until then I’m saving up for the new HD Tivo.