Visual Basic

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.

The OpenOffice business productivity suite is now available as a native Mac application for the first time.

Version 3.0 of the free open-source software -- which integrates word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, graphics, formula and database capabilities -- is now available for download for Windows, Mac and Linux computers.

"With 3.0, the application is more interoperable with MS Office, more capable, more extensible," said Louis Suárez-Potts, community manager of OpenOffice.org. "It frees the desktop from vendor lock-in."

Reducing Feature Bloat