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Today, Apple announced it is relaxing the previous restrictions on the use of third-party development tools for the creation of mobile applications on iOS, the operating system that powers the iPhone, the iPad and the iPod Touch. Specifically, sections 3.3.1, 3.3.2 and 3.3.9 of the iOS Developer Program license have been modified with new language that rolls back some of the changes that were enacted earlier this year.

SublimeVideo, an HTML5-based video player from Switzerland-based development and design firm Jilion, has launched SublimeVideo.net, an HTML5 Video-Player-as-a-Service. The goal of the new site is to provide tools for Web publishers that will allow for the easy deployment of zero-maintenance HTML5 video on a website in a matter of seconds, and without the need to understand the complexities of the different Web browser versions and their various specifications.

Adobe today announced it has reached a deal to acquire ECM vendor Day Software. In a telephone interview, Erik Larson Senior Director of Product Management at Adobe, cited Day's technology's scalability and social features and the company's support for open-source software as the primary factors driving the acquisition. According to Day's website, "Day Chief Scientist Roy Fielding was co-founder of the Apache Software Foundation, author of the Apache Software license, and creator of the Apache web server." Day has contributed to 12 Apache projects and 25 other open-source projects.

A report from Secunia shows that Apple has passed Oracle in the total number of self-reported software security vulnerabilities in its Windows XP and Vista products, such as iTunes and Safari. The report does not rank companies by severity of vulnerabilities, only number, so this does not mean Apple's software is the highest risk - other sources indicate Adobe Reader may be the most dangerous. The report highlights the lack of improvements made by the software industry as a whole and the difficulties facing IT managers and consumers face in keeping software patched.

Today, Adobe announced an expansion of its open-source activities and a collaboration with Sourceforge, called "Open@Adobe."

"Open@Adobe is a site aggregating Adobe's openness programs, which includes source code hosting, such as the Adobe® Flex framework, and contributions from Adobe to standards organizations, as well as specifications."

Curation is increasingly crucial for finding the most important and relevant information on the Web. It's used to point out insights which would not have ordinarily been discovered in the wash of data that overwhelms us in our daily lives.

The concept of curation can also be applied to the often-forgotten world of product documentation.

One of the turning points in the evolution of augmented reality (AR) was the porting of the ARToolKit - an opensource software library for building AR experiences - to the widely accessible Adobe Flash platform. The toolkit allowed Flash developers to easily create computer vision AR applications and opened the door to a flood of AR development. These days, brands looking to use AR to market their products have looked to AR vendors for solutions, and now one of the largest - Total Immersion - is now also offering Flash support within its proprietary AR development software.

The battle between HTML5 and Adobe Flash for dominance over video on the Web is likely to end poorly for one of the two, and lately it's been looking worse and worse for Flash. Steve Jobs wrote an open letter to the Web stating why Flash would remain banned from iPhones and iPads, and just yesterday, Apple got an "unexpected ally" in its anti-Flash crusade - the adult entertainment industry.

But today, just to keep from making things too cut and dry, Google-owned video site YouTube has come out with a list of its own reasons why Flash is here to stay - for now - and HTML5 simply isn't qualified to handle the job at hand.

Earlier this morning, Google released a new stable version of Chrome, the company's increasingly popular browser. This new release for Windows, Mac and Linux is the first stable version of Chrome to be distributed with a built-in version of Adobe's widely used Flash Player. Just two days ago, Google enabled the built-in version of Flash in the beta channel versions of Chrome, where it had already been available earlier this year, though Google then disabled this feature after a while.

Puppet Labs, the commercial sponsor of the open source server configuration framework Puppet, announced today that Adobe has agreed to publish their Puppet modules for managing Hadoop. The code will be freely available for download via the Puppet Forge.

Puppet is an open source data center automation and configuration management framework that provides system administrators with a platform that allows for consistent and flexible systems management.