Adobe

In these tough times we all need as many tips as we can get to save a few dollars.

The cost of buying a new desktop or laptop box is just the start. The price can double when you have to add in the software costs of Microsoft Office (Outlook, Excel, Word and PowerPoint), antivirus, and image editing software such as Adobe Acrobat.

Below are only a few free software options that are available to be downloaded from the Internet.

Office Applications

After optimizing the Kindle bookstore for the iPhone and acquiring the popular iPhone e-book reader Stanza, Amazon is now turning the page on its next Kindle innovation: Blog subscriptions.

Amazon on Wednesday unveiled a beta program to pay bloggers for Kindle subscriptions to their posts. Although Kindle comes equipped with a simple browser that allows consumers to pull up their blogs of choice, Amazon has decided to remove a step from the process and push blog content to the device's home screen. Subscriptions run 99 cents to $2 a month.

Patch Tuesday is a Microsoft institution, but competing software companies are stealing some of the attention this week with security issues of their own. On Tuesday, Apple released Mac OS X 10.5.7, an update for its operating system that aims to improve application performance and stability -- and fix 68 security issues.

Amazon.com is setting the stage to take e-book readers to the next level. Lexcycle on Monday announced that it will be acquired by the e-commerce giant.

Lexcycle is a year-old company that makes the iPhone e-book application Stanza. It's a free application that works with the iPhone and the iPod touch and can be used to download a selection of more than 100,000 books and magazines. Lexcycle positions it as a wireless electronic library that stays open 24/7.

The social-networking site Facebook has a lot going for it: A staggering 200 million users, an enormous media profile, and a steadily increasing advertising base. But the company is clearly worried about the new social-networking sites on the block -- most notably Twitter, which lags far behind in subscribers but has been basking in a sudden wave of celebrity buzz, thanks to high-profile tweeters like Oprah Winfrey and Ashton Kutcher.

As April 15 approaches and taxpayers scramble to complete their tax returns, it's critical that they take extra care to guard their personal information.

Consider what's exposed and vulnerable: your Social Security number, address, name and financial information.

Facebook is about to get Flash-ier as the result of a joint effort announced Tuesday by Adobe Systems and the popular social-networking site. The companies said the newly available Flash ActionScript 3.0 Client Library for the Facebook Platform, a free and open-source programming library, will support all Facebook application programming interfaces, including APIs for the growing network of sites that back Facebook Connect.

'Simpler Access to Facebook Data'

CBS Interactive wants to be sure television viewers don't miss their favorite television shows when they aren't able to sit in front of the tube. Select full episodes, news updates, and clips from CBS can now be viewed by iPhone and iPod touch users by downloading a free TV.com app from Apple's App Store.

Less than a week after security researchers warned of a vulnerability in two Adobe programs that could allow hackers to compromise a PC comes yet another critical exploit that could hijack your desktop.

This time, attackers have targeted Adobe's Flash animation software. According to iDefense Labs, remote exploitation of the vulnerability in the Flash player could allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code with full user privileges. That means anything you could do with your PC, the attacker could, too.

Security companies are warning of a vulnerability in two Adobe programs that could allow hackers to compromise your PC. Attackers are actively exploiting the flaw, although security researchers say the onslaught isn't yet widespread. Versions 9 and 8.x of Adobe Reader and Acrobat are affected.