As the IDG News Service reports, the International Organization for Standardization is now in charge of Adobe's Portable Document Format as an international standard. To mark the occasion, here's a collection of tips and tools for working with the ubiquitous files.

First, and most important, if you use Adobe Reader make sure you keep it up-to-date. The most recent security flaw in the program allows an attacker to take over your PC if you open a poisoned PDF, and it was actively exploited before a patch even came out. Take a look at the Secunia advisory for more info and links to Reader updates.

The huge array of great sites and business services that constantly pop up online like mushrooms after a rain prove just what human ingenuity and entrepreneurial spirit can accomplish in an open and free marketplace.

On the other hand, the cell phone market is a fine example of what you get when companies take steps to reduce competition and ensure they get a lock on their customers: an SMS data transfer charge of $1,310.72 per megabyte, according to some number-crunching from CrunchGear.

If you've ever had one of those embarrasing 'whoops' moments where you realize - or worse, are told - that you accidentally e-mailed a Word, Excel or PowerPoint document that contained tracked changes, comments or other info that your recipient shouldn't have seen, a new Outlook add-on can help.

I recently looked at SendShield, a download for Outlook, that scans Office 2003 and 2007 documents for this kind of data when you attach one to an Outlook e-mail.  If it finds any, you can quickly clean out the tracked changes, comments or other info before sending the file.  SendShield only changes the attached copy of the file, and leaves the original untouched.

In case you missed it, Google stealthily introduced a new PDF upload feature into their Google Docs offering last week. I use the service most every day, and I just came across it by clicking the 'New Features' link at the top of the documents list. Here's what I found.

You can pull a .pdf into your online documents store from your desktop or from a URL (max size of 10MB if uploaded from your PC, or 2MB if pulled in from a URL). Afterwards the file shows up in your document list and you can click it to view it like any other stored file.

More bad news for Microsoft after the Yahoo deal breakdown: according to comScore's analysis of May search traffic, Redmond's share of the search market dropped from April, even as Google and Yahoo edged up.

Google dominates with 61.8 percent of the market, according to comScore's data, a 0.2 percentage point increase from April's 61.6 percent.  The beleaguered Yahoo comes in second with 20.6 percent, also a 0.2 point improvement over April's numbers.

Mozilla hyped today's Firefox 3 launch with a 'Download Day' appeal to Firefox users to all come get the new version at once and shoot for a new Guinness World Record.  But some network difficulties handling that huge rush of traffic is keeping many visitors from helping Mozilla reach that goal.

Mike Schroepfer of Mozilla wrote on the Mozilla developer center blog that you should head to http://getfirefox.com/ for the new browser (you can't yet get it by going to Help | Check for Updates within Firefox 2). That page appears to be coming up now, but for a good while the site was unresponsive.  After a few tries on the download link on that page I was just able to start a download.

I wrote last month that Mint.com planned to begin pulling investment account data into their free financial service Web site, which up until now tracked online checking, credit card and other accounts but couldn't look at your 401k, IRA or other investments. After getting my invitation e-mail last night, I hopped onto Mint.com today to add my investment accounts.

If you've used Mint.com before, then you'll find that adding a new investment account is much the same as adding one for any other account. On the Accounts page you click the button to add a new account, but now you can choose an investments category.

Microsoft must be ticked.  It didn't get to buy Yahoo, or even just a slice of it.  Instead, all its efforts only served to drive Yahoo into Google's waiting arms.

The Google/Yahoo deal, announced yesterday, doesn't make a Goohoo (or would it be Yagle?) by any means.  According to BusinessWeek, Yahoo will display some Google text ads for Yahoo search results. Yahoo will control when and how the ads show up, and says it stands to make up to $800 million from the deal.

Glassdoor.com, which went live last night, allows anyone to peer into details many employers would no doubt rather keep secret:  salary information, CEO ratings from employees, and dishing about work environment, among other things.

The site shows teaser details for Microsoft, Yahoo, Cisco and Google for non-registered viewers, but to see all the data that others have shared, you'll need to first provide anonymous details on your own employment.  Share your salary and see those from others.  Same for employer reviews.  You won't need to provide your name (though you will need to give it an e-mail address), and it's free.

Once a shining example of the potential for online profit, auctions on eBay may now be a dying breed, according to an interesting BusinessWeek story out today.

I never really got into auctions myself, but I remember working in offices in the 90s when coworkers eagerly scoured auctions and monitored bids in the hopes of scoring a low-priced deal. Stories left and right chronicled yet another lucky Joe who left his unfulfilling job to make a living selling gems, junk or both via the definitive auction site.