Amazing how a record $1.35 billion in antitrust fines can change your perspective on software interoperability, eh? Under pressure from European regulators, national standards organizations and anyone else interested in open standards, Microsoft has committed to using open document standards in the future.

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The iPhone doesn’t support Flash and according to Apple CEO Steve Jobs it’s not going to anytime soon.

In remarks during the company’s annual shareholder meeting yesterday, Jobs said Flash Lite, the mobile version of Adobe’s popular Flash Media Player, simply isn’t good enough for the iPhone.

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Coming to a PDF Near You: Adobe announced today that it is teaming with Yahoo to put text-based ads in PDF files. … The new and improved version of Apple’s iPhone will be able to download from the Internet at a faster rate, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson announced last night. … For Facebook, Nothing’s Set in Concrete: Responding to criticism from MoveOn, Facebook execs are looking into changes to the recently launched Beacon advertising tool.

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If Adobe Chief Executive Officer Bruce Chizen planned to quit while he was ahead, he couldn’t have picked a better time. When Chizen steps down as CEO at the end of this month, to be succeeded Dec. 1 by Adobe COO Shantanu Narayen, he will depart a company that’s flourishing financially. Adobe posted better-than-expected third [...]

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Note: John Paczkowski is on vacation and won’t be writing or posting videos until he returns Monday. To keep you abreast of tech news while he’s away, we’re compiling a daily digest of 10 must-read tech stories. We’re calling it the Tech 10 and it appears here.

1. Retailing behemoth Wal-Mart will sell digital-music downloads on its Web site without copy protection, Reuters reports. The so-called digital-rights management software insisted on by some record labels can stymie where the average user plays the songs.
2. Taking on the juggernaut of iTunes, MTV and RealNetworks are forming an online digital music venture. According to The Wall Street Journal, Verizon Wireless has signed on as mobile distributor of the joint content.

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Note: John Paczkowski is on vacation and won’t be writing or posting videos until he returns Monday, Aug. 27. To keep you abreast of tech news while he’s away, we’re compiling a daily digest of 10 must-read tech stories. We’re calling it the Tech 10 and it appears here.

1. Although they made no jokes about their secret marriage, as did Apple’s Steve Jobs when he appeared with Microsoft’s Bill Gates at D5 in May, the CEO schmoozefest between Steve Ballmer of Microsoft and John Chambers of Cisco today in New York City yielded news of increased cooperation between the two tech giants, according to eWeek. Ballmer also deflected questions from moderator Charlie Rose about whether Microsoft was contemplating acquiring Yahoo, writes Elizabeth Montalbano of IDG News Service.
2. Adobe’s Media Player isn’t quite ready for show time: the eagerly awaited player won’t be fully released until next year. In an exclusive, Beet.TV’s Andy Plesser gets the word from an Adobe spokesman and posts a video interview with Adobe’s Chris Hock, head of its Flash media group.

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Looking over the trajectory of VMware’s IPO yesterday, you’d think we were still living in the go-go days of the late ’90s. Shares of the virtualization software-maker spiked nearly 76% in their first day of trading, defying the overall market slide and eclipsing Google’s historic 18% first-day gain in 2004. VMware’s shares ended the day [...]

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