Adobe Systems is not taking lightly attacks on its technology by Apple CEO Steve Jobs. On Friday, Adobe responded to accusations by Jobs that Flash is behind Mac crashes and battery draining.

Apple is blowing smoke in the wrong direction, according to Adobe, which said Flash — used in 81 percent of the videos on the Web — is not the cause of Mac problems. It said Apple’s operating system is to blame.

“Adobe’s vision and strategy has always been to empower customers to create, deliver and optimize subject matter and applications across media and screens,” said Holly Campbell, Adobe’s director of corporate communications. “Flash is one of the most pervasive technologies on the planet and makes great web experiences and applications possible.”

Apple’s move is another attempt to control developers and consumers, according to Adobe. “Apple’s moves to block Flash and other technologies are designed to protect a business [...]

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Oprah Winfrey and General Motors are adding their voices to the growing chorus against cell-phone use while driving. The queen of daytime talk was to host on Friday a Fort Wayne, Texas, activist, Diveeta Johnson, who lost her 18-year-old son, Rodney, after he lost control of a car while texting. Johnson has since persuaded 7,000 students to take a pledge not to text behind the wheel.

‘Second Nature’

Winfrey called for a national No Phone Zone day, and GM CEO Ed Whitacre and employees of the Lansing Delta Township Chevrolet plant in Michigan taped a video for Friday’s show supporting the the no-phone pledge.

“My biggest hope for the No Phone Zone campaign is that it becomes mandatory that no one uses their phone in the car or texts while driving — just as seat belts are mandatory, just as driving while drunk is considered absolutely taboo. I’m hoping [...]

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Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz has put Google under a microscope — and found some flaws. The search executive talked to the media about Google’s weak spots, but some say she’s not in a position to scrutinize a company when there are many problems at her own.

In an interview with BBC News tech reporter Jonathan Fildes, Bartz said Google will have to “do a lot more than search.” As she sees it, Google needs to diversify to avoid problems and “grow a company the size of Yahoo every year.”

Yahoo once dominated the search market and actually had an opportunity to acquire Google in its upstart days but declined. Now Google owns 65 percent of the U.S. search market, compared to Yahoo’s 17 percent — and Yahoo has been losing ground to its partner, Microsoft’s Bing.

Google’s Revenue Pie

“Google is going to have a problem considering Google is only [...]

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Symantec said Thursday it will pay $370 million in cash to acquire encryption technology providers PGP and GuardianEdge Technologies, with the deals expected to close during the company’s June quarter. Symantec sees its acquisition of standards-based encryption capabilities from the two firms as a natural extension of its strategy for securing and managing knowledge on any device — across both the enterprise and consumer segments as well as in the cloud, said Symantec CEO Enrique Salem.

“With PGP and GuardianEdge’s encryption solutions for full-disk, removable media, e-mail, file, folder and smartphones, Symantec will have the broadest set of integrated data-protection capabilities,” Salem said. “We will be able to address the encryption needs of all customer segments from the largest enterprises and governments to small businesses and individuals.”

Expanded Opportunities

Together, PGP and GuardianEdge are expected to significantly expand the addressable shield market that Symantec can serve, [...]

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As the tablet computer war heats up, one of the most interesting possible entries was Courier, a prototype that Microsoft was developing. But according to recent news reports, Microsoft executives told the internal team earlier that week that the project is dead.

Courier was never actually announced or even acknowledged by Microsoft, although there have been leaks of a video and photos. The video showed an innovative, two-screen tablet device with the screens able to act as one large, virtual desktop. The leaked knowledge plus indicated that Courier would have both touch- and pen-based interfaces.

‘A Digital Unicorn’

A Microsoft official told news media that the company is always developing new ideas, that the Courier project will be evaluated again in the future, and that, at the moment, there are no plans to build that tablet.

The tablet that Microsoft is publicly promoting is Hewlett-Packard’s Slate, which uses Windows 7. [...]

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It’s been a week since the Facebook developers conference, and I can’t escape the feeling that it represented a pivotal moment in the history of the World Wide Web. We will look back on that day as the point where Facebook usurped Google’s position as the most vital company on the Web.

There’s nearly no way to overestimate the impact of what Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg unveiled during his keynote address. The ambitious new set of features will construct Facebook the central nervous system of the Web.

that will grant Facebook an astonishing amount of potential. While that has the potential to bring an array of benefits to users, it plus means we must become more vigilant about our privacy, and that Facebook must recognize its new responsibilities.

Let me set some context for why that is so vital. Not only did Zuckerberg confirm that Facebook has 400 million users — [...]

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Even whether you love your iPhone, you may not love AT&T. Cell reception can be crummy in some areas, non-existent in others.

Toktumi hopes to fill the gap. The San Francisco start-up sells a 99-cent iPhone app called Line2 that turns the iPhone into a dual-mode handset. In plain English, that means you can build and receive calls by the Web through Wi-Fi or cellular, using your Line2-issued phone number. conclusion: You’re no longer hung up whether AT&T’s coverage is spotty or simply unavailable, as it often is indoors, so towering as there’s a wireless hot spot.

Using Wi-Fi, Line2 voice quality is generally excellent, particularly so whether you’re gabbing with another Line2 customer. On cellular, the quality is as good or poor as any AT&T cellphone shout. You can additionally produce a VoIP (or World Wide Web call) using AT&T’s 3G goods network, but the quality is so-so.

You can [...]

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