Microsoft (MSFT) and Google may be bitter rivals, but sometimes a deal makes sense for both companies. Like today's announcement: Google's (GOOG) DoubleClick is now capable of serving video ads into Microsoft Silverlight 2 videos, which it'll do for NBC Universal's (GE) 2,500 hours of Silverlight-format Olympics videos. Silverlight is tiny compared to other video streaming formats like Adobe's (ADBE) Flash, RealNetworks' (REAL) Real Media, and Microsoft's own Windows Media. But that means its market ...

Apple's iPhone app platform is brand new, so developers have plenty of questions they want to ask each other, or tips to share. But they can't -- at least not without violating Apple's non-disclosure agreement. The NDA, which is threatening to undermine the success of Apple's much-hyped new platform, isn't just for big guys who might get extra advice or help from Apple. It's required of every single developer working on the platform -- and ...

By Michal Lev-Ram HALF MOON BAY, Calif. — Tech executives understand the importance of reliability when delivering computing power over the Internet, a technology called “cloud computing.” The problem is, they haven’t yet achieved it. The ups and downs of renting storage space - as opposed to owning and operating servers and a data center - was the subject of a panel at Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech conference Tuesday. More technology startups are turning to cloud ...

Adobe's (ADBE) newish Adobe Media Player is about to get an update that'll make it cleaner-looking and a bit more useful: The new version delivers a clean, more intuitive user interface, a new home screen, and improved navigation. Additional enhancements include notifications that update users about new content and the ability to download content in the background while working on other tasks, making Adobe Media Player more user-friendly than ever. And it's getting some much-needed, ...