IBM Wants To Shove You Off A Bike!
NYPD commissioner Ray Kelly appeared in an IBM ad for free, and now "watchdog groups" are upset because IBM "reaps untold benefits from the reputations of Kelly and the NYPD." Uh, the price is probably right. [NYP]
IBM makes environment easy to bookmark and forget
"Energy-efficient computers powered by sunshine. This will be an instant hit," grouses chief bitterness officer Ted Dziuba in his latest opinion column for The Register. "There will be greenhouse gas output dashboards with neat little Ajax widgets." Mystery contributor theodp points out that IBM already sells it.
mrfomoco
In a post showing slides from IBM's 1975 presentation, commenter mrfomoco deftly explains the genius behind Big Blue's marketing, complete with visual aides:
IBM preso from 1975 proves they had better fonts then
One foot in the future, one planted squarely in the '70s. These slides from an IBM presentation — 17 years before anyone bothered to plug the projector into a laptop — prove how little has changed. Except now the office workers behind the narrator have YouTube to watch whenever he turns his back.
IBM's new antitrust muddle
European regulators are looking into whether IBM is unfairly dominating the mainframe market. What, is this 1968? IBM's purchase of Platform Solutions, a 36-person rival which made cheaper versions of IBM's mainframes, would normally be too small to rouse antitrust inquiries. But, amid accusations that IBM bought…
IBM employee directory mocks your company's lameness
Tech companies like to babble about openness and transparency. But try finding an engineer's phone number. Standard procedure is to hide company telephone and email directories from external eyeballs, lest a recruiter — or, more annoyingly, a reporter — use the phone list to cold-call staffers. One shining…
Bill Gates's relevance — and irrelevance
The Economist tidily sums up billg's career this week, now that Microsoft's Rain Man (see video) has walked away from the company after 33 years. I've whittled the piece down to its talking points.
Google, HP and others form League of Extraordinary Patent Holders
Tired of fielding lawsuits from patent trolls and scared of court injunctions like that faced by RIM which nearly shut down the company's BlackBerry service, Google, Hewlett-Packard, Cisco, Verizon and Ericsson are among the companies rumored to be behind the formation of the Allied Security Trust. Ponying up …
Bill Gates looks back at the competition Microsoft annihilated
Putting media naysayers in their place, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates continued his farewell tour by pointing to old press accounts of companies like Ashton Tate and Lotus as worthy competitors into the perspective only the ultimate winner can enjoy. When asked by CNET's Ina Fried about the early presumptions that…
Interview with Konrad Zuse, inventor of first functional computer
"You could say I was too lazy to calculate, so I invented the computer." The whole documentary is a lot of fun to watch — famed British thespian David Jacobi even makes an appearance in a dramatization as the legendary Alan Turing. Zuse and Turing were on opposite sides of World War II, with Zuse's machine mostly used…
HP moving to acquire EDS in $12 billion-plus deal
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Hewlett-Packard is nearing a deal to buy EDS for $12 billion to $13 billion. Having set Dell back on its heels in PC sales, HP is now moving to challenge IBM. As computers become commodities, the money is in installing and maintaining them, not marking up Intel's…
White House used Microsoft software to flout email-archiving law
At last, an explanation of the Bush Administration's misbehavior that will resonate in Silicon Valley: It's all Microsoft's fault. Ars Technica details how switching from an IBM Lotus email system installed under Clinton to a Microsoft Exchange server made it impossible to store White House emails systematically.…
IBM researcher plugs house into Twitter for energy usage updates
It's only a matter of time before the inanimate home of inventor Andy Stanford-Clark somehow pisses off TechCrunch publisher Michael Arrington and feels the wrath of "@andy_house blocked." [Earth2Tech]
IBM dividends up, American jobs down
Big Blue raised the company's dividend 25 percent to $0.50 per share, as union employees and retirees picked outside headquarters to protest outsourcing and pension problems. [AP]
Now we can relax: IBM files patents to fight the apocalypse
Worried about the next "episode of profound chaos" headed our way? Don't be! Your friendly International Business Machines Corporation is on the job. In 2006, IBM filed a patent for "computer usable program code" designed to optimize skills and resources during "episodes of profound chaos during hurricanes,…
IBM's board authorized $15 billion in additional stock buybacks for 2008 and raised its future outlook. The company spent $18.8 billion on buybacks last year and has repurchased $94 billion in the past 13 years. Why, that's two Yahoos! [AP]
Smaller chip mean a cheaper PS3 — and a comeback for Sony
Gadget battles are won and lost on the price of components. In that regard, Sony has had poor luck with its latest PlayStation console. Its hulking size, exorbitant price, and dearth of interesting titles left it vulnerable to the Wii's unexpected rise. Gamers were more interested in the Wii's casual fun than the…
IBM cuts 7,600 employees' salaries by 15 percent
IBM tech-support workers believe they are eligible for overtime pay. And IBM agrees. It's just going to cut their salary by 15 percent to make up for it. After hearing the news, "I was so angry I could hardly speak, and it takes a lot to make me angry," one IBM employee told the AP. "I just don't know how IBM expects…
