Week in review: AVG’s new antivirus suite, Apple’s spat with the Chamber of Commerce

Here’s our rundown of the week’s tech and business news. First, the most popular stories VentureBeat published in the last seven days:

AVG launches its free antivirus suite as Microsoft crashes its party — “AVG Technologies has made itself into a familiar name on the Internet by giving users antivirus software at a pretty good price: free. Today, the company is announcing that the ninth version of its AVG antivirus software will be available in mid-October.”

How Fourth Wall Studios hid an artistic radio drama inside Halo 3:ODST — “Created through a collaboration of startup Fourth Wall Studios and Halo franchise developer Bungie, Sadie’s Story is a self-contained tale. It is a radio drama embedded within the world of Halo 3: ODST.”

Dell building an Android phone for the US (report) — “Since the phone will reportedly run on AT&T’s network, not only does this news add to Android’s roster of device manufacturers, but it also means the mobile OS will be on all four major mobile networks in the US.”

Review: First look at Microsoft’s Windows Mobile 6.5 on HTC Pure cell phone — “I tried it out on the new HTC Pure phone from AT&T, and the experience is a big step up from the crappy Windows Mobile experience of the past.”

Why Charles River Ventures sat out on Twitter’s latest round — “When Twitter raised its most recent round of funding at $1 billion, a few players were conspicuously absent, including Union Square Ventures and Charles River Ventures.”

And here are five more stories we thought were important, thought-provoking, or just fun:

U.S. Chamber of Commerce strikes back after Apple defection: “We don’t have any regrets” — “Days after Apple announced that it would be quitting the U.S. Chamber of Commerce due to its opposition to greenhouse gas limits, the Chamber has very publicly shouted back.”

The iPhone finally gets Flash apps — but not Flash websites — “When Adobe announced the latest version of its Flash technology, a bunch of writers jumped on the fact that Flash 10.1 would eventually work on most major smartphones, except Apple’s iPhone. Looks like we spoke too soon. Sort of.”

U.S. private equity fundraising plunges 70 percent — “This means much less money will flow to technology start-ups over the next few years.”

Amazon debuts payment system for mobile phones — “Amazon Mobile Payments Service, or Amazon MPS as they’d prefer you call it, brings the comforting yellow Amazon button to mobile phone screens.”

Surprise! Dating site OKCupid finds white guys get more replies — “This week in slightly depressing confirmations that the online world is not so unlike the offline one: dating site OKCupid tracked the behavior of nearly 1 million users and found that race is correlated with whether people reply.”