ReadWriteWeb

If you think it is safe to download PDF documents and view them once Adobe finally releases its patch next week, think again. Didier Stevens, an IT security consultant last week demonstrated that simply viewing the folder containing compromised PDF documents within Microsoft's Windows Explorer is enough to launch the exploit.

It appears that this is due to Adobe's shell extension for Windows Explorer which allows the malicious code to be invoked in three ways; when hovering over a PDF document, single clicking on a PDF document, or viewing the thumbnail.

When reading your RSS feeds, do you prefer a local application versus one that is online-only? If so, look no further than ShareFire. Besides being platform-independent (courtesy of Adobe Air), it is also completely free and open-source. It was created with article sharing in mind, as its name implies. According to its creators, Christian Cantrell and Dan Koestler, this was a priority.

Netflix lovers out there, rejoice! You can now manage your Netflix queue right from your desktop using a new Adobe AIR application called Queued. Created as a demonstration of how AIR and the Dojo Toolkit can be used together to create rich hybrid applications, Queued is open-source, BSD-licensed software. Although the point for Queued's existence may have be to demo different types of technology, the end result is definitely something we all can enjoy.

The ongoing debate over Flash on the iPhone appears to be over after Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen announced last week at the World Economic Forum that Adobe and Apple are working together in an effort to bring Flash to the iPhone.

"It's a hard technical challenge and that's part of the reason Apple and Adobe are cooperating to try and get it done as soon as possible," Narayen said in an interview with Bloomberg.

When we put Amazon Web Services (AWS) in our list of top 10 enterprise products of 2008, a few readers were skeptical that AWS was enterprise ready. This is a perception issue that Amazon faces. Amazon needs more partners that build apps for the enterprise. Adobe, meanwhile, wants to convince the kind of developers who love AWS that they should develop more business apps using its LiveCycle platform. This is the context for Adobe's announcement today that LiveCycle will be powered by AWS.

A grainy video has just become available from the Adobe Max conference in Milan, Italy last month of a sneak peek at a new experiment called Infinite Images.

The project is so cool we couldn't help but post about it, even though very little about it is known yet.

Adobe and ARM today announced that they are joining forces to bring Adobe Flash Player 10 and Adobe AIR to ARM powered devices in a move that Adobe hopes will lower power consumption for mobile devices running Flash and AIR content, and make it easier for users to play video on a variety of devices.

According to the statement, the partnership stems from the Open Screen Project, Adobe's industry-wide initiative set to address challenges of Web browsing on a broad range of screens.

Yesterday, an all-star panel at the TechWeb/O'Reilly's Web 2.0 Summit took a closer look at the implications of the current shift towards cloud computing and discussed the possible business models around it. The panel featured Adobe's CTO Kevin Lynch, Salesfore.com's CEO Marc Benioff, Google's Dave Girouard, and VMware's CEO Paul Maritz. The panel was moderated by Tim O'Reilly.

Today Abode announced the availability of Adobe Flash Player 10 for Windows, Mac, and Linux. The new plugin offers a number of improvements such as native support for 3D, a new text rendering engine, and integration with Adobe's Pixel Bender technology. However, we know that many of you aren't interested in these upgrades, which are mainly aimed at Flash developers. What you want to know is this: Will Flash video finally work in Firefox?

NBC seems to be having a change of heart this week. The network recently wrapped up their streaming of the Olympics using Microsoft's Silverlight technology. However if you tuned in for this week's NFL season opener, NBC was using Adobe's Flash technology instead of Silverlight. Making some do a double take, here's a look at why NBC left Silverlight in a flash (pun intended).