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Adobe Systems has announced a prerelease alpha of its Adobe AIR software for the Linux operating system. Version 1.0 of AIR for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X was launched last year.

The move provides additional tools for Linux developers to build rich Internet applications, and RIAs created for Mac and Windows users can now be extended to Linux users without additional platform-specific code.

Joining the Linux Foundation

Adobe also announced that it is joining the Linux Foundation to boost the growth of Linux-based RIA technologies, and that it is making an update to the alpha version of Flex Builder 3 for Linux available. Recently, Adobe released as open source the software development kit for the Flex framework and for BlazeDS, which supports data-intensive RIAs. The company also said it continues to contribute to the open-source Tamarin virtual machine, the core of its Flash player.

David Wadhwani, general manager of Adobe's platform business unit, said these releases "provide a first-class application runtime and RIA-creation tool to the Linux community."

Flex is a free, open-source framework for building RIAs that can run on the desktop with AIR or in a browser with Adobe's Flash Player. On the desktop, RIAs can have access to offline data that has been constantly updated via the computer's network connection. In the browser, they can operate with the responsiveness more common to desktop applications.

Adobe Versus Microsoft

Al Hilwa, program director at industry research firm IDC, said these moves help Adobe secure additional credibility in the open-source community. "Open-source developers look at all large vendors with a suspicious eye," he noted, "but Adobe's done much more with the open-source community than, say, Microsoft -- relative to its size."

Hilwa pointed out that Adobe "is trying hard to cozy up to that community," in large part because of its ongoing battle against Microsoft's...

Of all the world's great brands, one name rises above all others. It's the brand most people would like to have dinner with, the brand that would have most impacted the world if it had existed 100 years ago, the brand that most inspires, that most people want to be.

And the envelope, please. This superbrand is ... Apple, of course. From "Think Different" and OS X to the iPod, the iPhone and all the way back to Mac itself, it's Apple that has won the hearts and minds of consumers around the world.

Actually, make that marketers. The results come from a survey of 2,000 readers of brandchannel.com -- 74 percent of whom are from the marketing industry. Here's what the survey of "brandjunkies" found:

Imagine Apple in 1908

Asked which brand would have the greatest impact if had been around a century ago, 15.5 percent of respondents said Apple. "If the whole of Apple were transported back to the early 1900s, we might have eliminated our dependency on foreign oil already, and alternative energy sources would be mainstream, not alternative," said one respondent.

Further down the list, at 8.4 percent, was Google. "I think we would be in flying cars by now if the Google guys had 100 years to work!" said a Brandchannel reader.

On the other hand, Microsoft was the top answer when readers were asked which brand they would most like to argue with. One reader asserted: "They must rethink their values to make them match with their most influential opinion leaders: IT staff and professionals." Another complained that Microsoft products are "frustrating to use" and said the company offers "very little innovation."

The Inspiration Leader

But Apple was right behind Microsoft in this category, with respondents noting that CEO Steve Jobs "exploits" customers' goodwill. "How Apple gets away with it, that's...

Microsoft's pursuit of a global industry standard for its open-document format, which set off a protracted battle with its commercial rivals over the burgeoning market for interchangeable Web-based documents, is set to conclude this week after a final round of voting.

Delegations from as many as 87 nations were expected to have cast ballots by a deadline Saturday with the International Organization for Standardization, the standards-setting body in Geneva whose ISO designation could influence software purchasing by some governments and large businesses.

Advocates and opponents of Microsoft's proposed standard, Office Open XML, or OOXML, declined Friday to predict the outcome, and an unofficial tally by the Malaysian delegation showed the result as too close to call. An ISO spokeswoman, Sandrine Tranchard, said her group would publish official results early this week.

Industry experts said the outcome of the vote on the 6,000-page OOXML specification, which was steeped in arcane technical debate over software coding and licensing, could have commercial ramifications for Microsoft, as well as for International Business Machines and Sun Microsystems, which helped develop a rival technology called OpenDocument Format, or ODF.

ODF is so far the only interchangeable document format bearing an ISO standard, an endorsement that its backers have used to promote the technology to governments and businesses around the world. The ODF format, available at www.OpenOffice.org, lets users save text and spreadsheet documents in many formats, including Microsoft's.

Microsoft, facing increasing client demands for interchangeable formats, responded by developing OOXML, but initially did not let users save documents as ODF files. Microsoft eventually relented and financed a free software add-on that enabled OOXML users to save documents in the rival format. OOXML was designated a European standard in December 2006 by a Geneva group called ECMA, formerly known as the European Computer Manufacturers Association.

Through ECMA, Microsoft sought fast-track approval from the...