Adobe Systems, the maker of Photoshop and Acrobat, hopes its $1.8 billion purchase of fast-growing business software maker Omniture will turn around its declining sales.

Adobe reported lower quarterly sales and profit after unveiling the deal. A snazzy new acquisition is a welcome distraction.

The purchase will give Adobe a new stream of revenue to offset a decline in customer upgrades of older versions of its programs. Omniture charges customers fees based on monthly web site traffic, so it is less sensitive to economic swings than Adobe. "There is no way Adobe can grow organically. This is a smart move," said Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdhry.

But not everyone is convinced. Larry Dignan at ZDNet said he slept on it and, at 4:52 this morning, said in his Between the Lines column that he couldn't see the logic. He quoted a couple of negative analyst notes.

"Adobe's Omniture purchase isn't a slam dunk. The burden of proof regarding synergy, product roadmaps and (CEO Shantanu) Narayen's vision where analytics meets content creation rests with Adobe," he wrote.

At the risk of stating the obvious, everybody’s blogging about New York Times reporter Matt Richtel’s story about how the stress of 24-7 blogging is thinning the herd of Internet scribes.

Here’s his evidence:

Two weeks ago in North Lauderdale, Fla., funeral services were held for Russell Shaw, a prolific blogger on technology subjects who died at 60 of a heart attack. In December, another tech blogger, Marc Orchant, died at 50 of a massive coronary. A third, Om Malik, 41, survived a heart attack in December.

And here’s the cause:

A growing work force of home-office laborers and entrepreneurs, armed with computers and smartphones and wired to the hilt, are toiling under great physical and emotional stress created by the around-the-clock Internet economy that demands a constant stream of news and comment.

And here are the symptoms:

Weight loss or gain, sleep disorders, exhaustion and other maladies born of the nonstop strain of producing for a news and information cycle that is as always-on as the Internet.

Two thoughts:

Public figures who are targets of blogging ire often deride bloggers for the cacophony that online self-publishing creates, not to mention their supposed ignorance of traditional reporting techniques. Maybe they’ve found an answer to their prayers.

Richtel makes blogging sound an awful lot like wire service reporting.

* Dear Media File readers: We came up with at least a few other headlines for this entry, but are sure you’ve got a few up your sleeve. Here are our runners-up. Be morbid, and submit your own!

For whom the blog rolls

Die blogging

Chronicle of a death foreblogged

Death of a blogsman

A blog too far

(Richtel Photo: Meredith Barad/Hachette Book Group)