Adobe

Freescale Semiconductor is entering the fast-growing netbook market with a solution that promises to make possible portable devices that feature 8.9-inch displays, eight hours of battery life, and prices under $200.

Freescale's solution is based on its new i.MX515 processor featuring ARM Cortex-A8 technology. The solution includes software, components and resources that aim to help OEMs rapidly develop and deploy netbooks.

Chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices is among the most recent casualties of the slowdown in technology spending. On Dec. 4 the chipmaker drastically cut its sales outlook, saying fourth-quarter revenue will drop about 25 percent from the third quarter's $1.59 billion.

Adobe Systems is poised to launch several key enhancements to its Adobe Flash platform in San Francisco this week at its MAX 2008 conference.

Any major upgrade to Flash is significant because 81 percent of worldwide online videos are viewed with Flash technology, making it the number-one format for video on the Web, according to comScore. Adobe's Flash Player is also installed on 98 percent of Internet-connected desktops and a growing number of mobile devices.

Today's LCD monitors and plasma displays are a substantial evolution from the monochrome CRT relics of PC antiquity. High brightness, support for more than 1 billion colors and sharp resolution are just a few of the latest improvements.

Color-Critical LCD

Reach into your pockets after a business trip. You've got business cards, crumpled receipts and perhaps other scraps of paper with information needed for databases, expense reports and tax time. Dealing with this mess of paper is as much fun as visiting the dentist.

The new NeatDesk desktop scanner I've been testing can help you through this drill. It combines a speedy sheet-fed scanner with digital filing-system software called NeatWorks 4.0 that neatly sorts and organizes the information. For now, the scanner works with Windows only; a Mac version is expected in 2009.

Security research firm Sophos on Wednesday discovered attackers have launched their own presidential campaign. Attempting to exploit President-elect Barack Obama's historic victory, the spam attack sends e-mails with the subject line "Obama win preferred in world poll" and a return address of news@president.com.

Clicking a link in the e-mail takes victims to a Web page that insists on downloading Adobe Flash 9 to view a video of the first African-American president's "amazing speech." The scam is this: It's not really Flash. It's dangerous malware.

Adobe Systems has released a security fix to address eight major vulnerabilities in version 8.12 of its free Adobe Reader application. The flaw was first reported to Adobe five months ago.

Core Security Technologies on Tuesday issued an advisory disclosing the vulnerability, which could affect millions of individuals and businesses that use the popular PDF file-viewing software. Specifically, CoreLabs engineers discovered attackers could exploit Adobe Reader to gain access to vulnerable systems by using a specially crafted PDF file with malicious JavaScript content.

Netflix on Monday made announcements that favored both Microsoft and Apple and opened up a new audience for its streaming video service.

First, Netflix has started deploying Microsoft Silverlight to enhance the instant-watching component of its service. Second, that move opens the door for subscribers to begin watching movies and TV episodes instantly on Intel-based Apple Macintosh computers.

Just weeks after releasing the beta version of its Flash Player 10, code-named Astro, Adobe Systems this week released the final version for Linux, Windows and Macintosh computers. Flash Player 10 comes with a slew of new features and goes head-to-head with Microsoft's Silverlight 2, which was also released this week.

The multimedia products are competing head-to-head. Adobe has the lion's share of the market, but adoption of Microsoft's Silverlight has ramped up since it launched a year ago with 150 partners, including NBCOlympics.com, Blockbuster, Yahoo Japan and AOL.

Internet and Web browser security experts are sounding the alarm about a new type of malicious attack called "clickjacking," a technique that can be used to dupe Web surfers into revealing confidential information while clicking on seemingly innocuous Web pages. Among other things, a clickjacking attack can be used to take control of a computer's Webcam and microphone without the knowledge of the user.