This is an update to one of our most popular blog posts:

Adobe is embracing the cloud with a streamlined service that issues a monthly charge for its apps. Lots of people aren’t happy, and the other day our COO stepped in to detail his skepticism. 

It’s not all bad news. In fact, some of us love clouds.

There will never be an ideal time to take the Adobe apps to the cloud, and there is always going to be a very uncomfortable transitionary period. Now is as good a time as any, especially when Creative Cloud is hosted on Amazon Web Services. The immediate benefits to the developers at Adobe and their ability to push updates faster is the real sell.

A common complaint is that people don’t want to have a persistent online connection to use Photoshop. You need to be online when you install and license your software, and annual membership users will need to validate every 30 days. Users will still be able to use products for 99 days even if you’re offline. This has proven true, we havent heard any complaints about 'not being able to work without being connected'

When it comes to coordinating with a group or team, files created by the Creative Cloud apps can be shared like any other file. For example, you can share files through Email, FTP, and so on. You have 20 gigs of storage space that you can use to sync files between your devices and access them whenever you want.

Creative Cloud doesn’t wall you off from other users who aren’t members of Creative Cloud either. You can let non-member view the files in a browser. Viewers can view relevant metadata, turn layers on and off and even download files for editing, all without knowing what Adobe Creative Cloud is.

People have been concerned with retaining ownership over what they create through the Creative Cloud, but as the myths article explains, Adobe claims no ownership or copyright over any of your work. It’s all yours.

The biggest issue we've seen is what our biggest fear was- the latency and delay in opening, saving, and working from the cloud is crushing production. Internet pipes are still too costly for anything similar to the experience creatives and studio folks are used to with local high performance file servers. Once the dream of CFOs and financial planners, pushing these assets into the cloud is driving up labor costs due to the sheer inefficiency of trying to access enormous files across the WAN.

At this point, it's clear the CC suite of applications has been a great success for Adobe, and usefull to the end users. Production though, is still being kept local due to access speeds and times

Change is brought about by individuals determined to make a difference in other peoples' lives. One of the engineers at the NAPC team witnessed people living in poverty and was moved to action.

NAPC Systems Engineer Scott Creamer describes the mountains of Appalachia as being "like a third world country", and notes that some of the Appalachian people live on pennies a day.

Scott is currently working with the Appalachia Service Project. The ASP operates similarly to Habitat for Humanity, but focuses on fixes existing houses rather than constructing new ones. This year Scott is foregoing traditional vacation locales like Cancun or Hawaii and traveling to West Virginia for a week. He will be working on one of 20 homes selected as the most needing repairs. These are life-saving repairs designed to provide basic standards of living to people in Appalachia: Fixing holes in roofs, repairing windows, and providing basic plumbing and sanitation. 

The group has about 100 volunteers; 20 adults and 80 students, including Scott and his oldest daughter. The group leaves a caravan of vans July 13th, sleep on air mattresses in a community center and work 12 hour days. Scott is excited for the chance to help people, and to enrich his and his daughter's lives with the experience.

"Seeing the plight of these poor people moved me to action...I'm very excited to have my daughter see the world differently. I'm told everyone who goes on these trips come home better than when they left."

Scott currently needs to raise $800 to cover the cost of the trip as well as building materials. Let's help Scott make life better for people in Appalachia together!

CreativeBanks 4 Tutorial - Creating a New Bank from FlatheadU on Vimeo.

NAPC's CreativeBanks is used for user management for the website of your digital asset management deployment. It integrates with Active Directory, controls access for users, rotates passwords, and even manages branding. Greg Sposato takes the professor's podium at Flathead U to walk us through how to make your first bank in Creative Banks 4. Customizing the theme, adding uploaders, security models, and user notifications are a few steps covered; be sure to watch the video for the full guide.

_______________________________________________________________