Adobe

The search-engine wars are alive and well -- and Bing is the beneficiary again. Microsoft's so-called decision engine grabbed 11.5 percent of the U.S. search market in February, according to comScore.

Although that's only a slight increase over January, when Bing boasted 11.3 percent of the search market, it's an incremental improvement Microsoft is glad to see for its less-than-a-year-old engine.

No watered-down Internet. No sacrifices. That's the promise Hewlett-Packard Vice President and CTO Phil McKinney offered consumers in a blog post about the PC giant's upcoming tablet computer. HP's iPad competitor, he promised, will offer a full web browsing experience in the palm of your hand.

Competitors in the fast-moving tablet-computer category are lining up to take on Apple's iPad. Hewlett-Packard is the latest to preview its upcoming slate product, and other companies like Lenovo, Sony, Dell and Acer are similarly positioning their products.

The HP tablet runs Windows 7, and was first previewed by Microsoft at the Consumer Electronics Show in January. HP published some details on its company blog last month and updated the information with a posting Monday that includes two promotional videos. The videos show a tablet device running Flash and responding to hand gestures.

You may not know it, but your gadgets have a hidden agenda. Think about the electronics you own. No doubt there's a digital music player such as an Apple iPod or a Microsoft Zune. Then there's a smartphone -- perhaps an iPhone or a Droid that sports the Google-inspired Android operating system. For games, your family may have an Xbox 360, Sony PlayStation 3, or Nintendo Wii. For books, there's the Kindle from Amazon, among others. When the iPad hits stores on Apr. 3, you'll want that, too.

The new year began harshly for Adobe Systems. Shares of the maker of Photoshop, Flash, and other widely used software have dropped almost 8 percent in 2010, after big gains last year, amid speculation that Adobe's Flash Web-video software will be eclipsed by a competing technology backed by Apple and Google.

Adobe Systems will make its AIR platform and new Flash player available to mobile devices. The company previewed the new AIR version at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain.

The bickering between Apple and Adobe over why Apple's iPhone and its new iPad don't run Adobe's Flash software is giving me a headache.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs says Flash is buggy and accuses Adobe of being lazy. Kevin Lynch, Adobe's chief technology officer, denies that and accuses Apple of trying to control what iPhone and iPad users can do with their devices.

Jobs says Flash is on its way out. No way, says Lynch. Enough already. You guys are beginning to remind me of my kids. Can't you find some way to get along?

What's Apple's problem with Flash? Three years after the introduction of the iPhone, Apple's refusal to include Flash on its soon-to-be-released iPad has sparked another kerfuffle between Apple and Flash maker Adobe Systems.

When Palm launched the Pre smartphone last June, I considered it a close second to the iPhone in the race for best smartphone on the market.

The smartphone market has changed a lot since then. Unfortunately, Palm hasn't kept pace.

Verizon Wireless said Wednesday that it will launch another Android-based smartphone from Motorola next month. The Motorola Devour will be the first phone on Verizon's national network to feature MOTOBLUR -- an application and service suite that provides users with dynamically pushed Internet content via a unique user interface.