IBM and Intel Executives Arrested for Insider Trading

Six people total were arrested today for making too much money too easily, among them executives from IBM and Intel. These guys made $20 million in profits between January and July 2007 by passing insider info regarding Google, Hilton Hotels and Polycom onto a trader. Now they're all facing multiple counts of conspiracy and securities fraud. More »

ThinkPad's $100 a Year Warranty Service is Actually Pretty Good

Boing Boing Cory relates this tale using his $100/year global support service for his Lenovo laptop and actually liking what eventually happened. Wha?? More »

Battery 500 Project Wants to Make a 500 Mile Range Electric Car Battery

IBM, UC Berkeley and five US National Labs are collaborating in a consortium to make an electric vehicle battery that goes all the way up to 500 miles per charge. More »

Lenovo Goes All Multitouch On Us With the X200 Tablet, T400s

The most important thing to remember about the multitouch Apple tablet is that it doesn't exist. So how about two multitouch laptops that do, from another hardware manufacturer that people actually like? Enter Lenovo's ThinkPad X200 tablet and T400s. More »

Gadgets of Our Future Will Continue To Get Smaller and Faster Thanks To Nanowires

Computers have been getting smaller for years, yet they cram the same amount of power if not more. Essentially that is Moore's Law, or the theory that every year the number of transistors per square inch on integrated circuits doubles. More »

IBM Files Patent For Tweeting TV Remote

Good lord, this is all we need. A TV remote that allows users to easily ramble on about the shows they watch via their blog or twitter account. For better or worse, IBM appears to be working on this technology. More »

PS3 Slim Contains the 45nm Cell Processor

Everyone assumed it because of the Slim's power savings, but it's been confirmed that the Cell has been shrunk to 45nm (down from 65nm). [Yahoo Tech via CrunchGear]

IBM Examining Microchips Built On DNA "Origami" Nanostructures

From the "at least 10 years out" category of microchip fabrication comes word that IBM is working to reduce future costs and microchip sizes by using DNA. More »

Lenovo IdeaCentre C100 All-in-One Nettop Will Have a Touchscreen, Eventually

Here at the gdgt party, Lenovo introduced an all-in-one nettop we haven't seen before: The IdeaCentre C100 is an Atom-based, 20-inch nettop that will eventually pack Windows 7 and a touchscreen, but it'll have touchless Vista first. More »

IBM SNAzzy Knows Your Circle of Friends Better Than You Do

That heavy breathing you hear on the phone sometimes? It's IBM. More »

IBM Seer Augmented Reality App Ensures No Confused Android Users At Wimbledon

Android is quickly becoming the go-to mobile OS for augmented reality apps: just days after Layar gave us a realtor's tour of Amsterdam, IBM has released a similar—and more comprehensive—app for attendees of the Wimbledon tennis tournament. More »

IBM Withdraws $7 Billion Bid For Sun Microsystems

The $7 billion deal between IBM and Sun Microsystems has all but failed, say sources at the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. Sources say Sun balked at IBM's latest offer and IBM eventually withdrew sometime today.

Nearly Official: $7 Billion Sun Swallowed By IBM

We mentioned the rumor before, but NYT is now reporting an all-but-done deal: IBM will buy Sun Microsystems, and all its succulent intellectual property, for just under $7 billion. [NYT]

IBM Prepping For Thousands Of Layoffs "Resource Actions"

IBM has begun notifying employees that layoffs or "resource actions" are coming. All in all, some 5000 employees, mostly from the Global Business Services division will be affected. [Digital Daily]

Apple Falls to Third Place in Reliability Report, Loses to Asus and Lenovo/IBM

Apple, the previous champ in RESCUECOM's consumer reliability 2008 report, just got demolished by Asus in an almost 3 to 1 score for Q1 2009. It even loses to Lenovo. More »

IBM Wants Sun for $7 Billion

Sun—once a bright star in the technology universe, who even wanted to buy Apple—is about to get swallowed by IBM for $7 billion, say New York Times' sources. [NYT]

Microsoft Crosses 10,000 Patent Mark

Microsoft recently rolled past the 10,000 patent mark, reports Ina Fried at CNet, saying that the lucky #10K covered natural interfaces, linking "a real-world object with a set of data or images." Is 10,000 patents—well, 10,541 at last count—that good? Well, according to our snappy research, it's way better than Apple, with 2,541 to date, but it's a far cry from IBM, with 53,413. Fried reports that the US Patent Office issued IBM 4,000 of those little licenses to print money just last year. Go Big Blue! [CNet, IBM Patents at USPTO, Apple Patents at USPTO, Microsoft Patents at USPTO]

Sony: PS3 to Get 45-Nanometer Chips Around June

According to David Reeves, president of Sony Computer Entertaintment Europe, the PS3 could get a 45-nanometer Cell chip in a few months. From an interview with The Guardian: More »

Apple's New Head of iPhone and iPod Hardware Engineering Starts Soon

Apple has cleared the way for Mark Papermaster to start working as head of iPod and iPhone development, starting April 24th. The previous roadblock was a non-compete clause from his time at IBM. More »

IBM First Company to Win 4,000 Patents in a Year, More Than Microsoft and Intel Combined

IBM has always hoarded patents like a dwarf and his gold. But this year, they're the first company to ever win more than 4,000 in a single year, more than Microsoft and Intel combined. More »

Sony Basically Designed the Xbox 360 Processor For Microsoft, Says New Book

The new book The Race For a New Game Machine, by two IBM engineers, details how ridiculous the design process was when IBM was making Sony's PS3 cell chip. Microsoft basically got a free ride. More »

IBM Embarrasses Itself with Five Idiotic Predictions for the Future

IBM has just released a list of five innovations it thinks we'll see in the next five years, and they're ridiculous. It's the kind of crap we laugh at when we see old Life magazine from the 40's predicting airship kitchens by the year 2000.

IBM Played the Sappy Family Guilt Card In Bid to Keep Papermaster

The legal snafu regarding former IBM employee Mark Papermaster's departure for Apple took a hard right toward Lifetime TV town this week after some new information shed light on just how far IBM went to keep him on the payroll. Imploring Papermaster to remain in the Big Blue camp, an unnamed exec asked the new iPod head at Apple to "consider the effect of his decision on his family." When Papermaster declined the offer, thereby choosing free iPods over discount blade servers, IBM sued him for violation of a non-compete contract. Per a judge's emergency order, Papermaster is currently not working for Apple until this is cleared up. If nothing else comes of this, at the very least Papermaster has some interesting additions for his updated resume. [CRN]

Judge Orders Apple's New iPod and iPhone Chief to Stop Work Immediately

Mark Papermaster, a former IBM executive who's replacing retiring iPod chief Tony Fadell, came to Apple with some heavy baggage—namely a one-year no-compete clause that IBM said he was violating by working at Apple. U.S. District Judge Kenneth Karashas sided with IBM for the time being in their lawsuit, ordering Papermaster to "immediately cease his employment with Apple Inc. until further order of this court." More »

iPod Creator Tony Fadell Abandons His Children, IBM Chip Guy New Head of Devices

While you might think that Apple products emerge from Steve Jobs' head, fully formed and perfect like any other offspring of gods, the inventor of the iPod was actually Tony Fadell (along with former Apple hardware chief of engineering Jon Rubinstein). Fadell, who took over the iPod division from Rubinstein in 2006, is leaving his position to take a "reduced role" as an advisor to Steve Jobs. More »

IBM Laptop Concept Features Built-In Scanner, Shredder

Whether you are a spy or a shady CEO, this laptop concept by Nicolas Lehotzky has features that will fit the bill. I'm not crazy about the giant protruding lock / finger scanner, and the USB slots hidden behind a lockable metal cap may be a bit of a nuisance—but I love the built in scanner and paper shredder to archive and / or eliminate incriminating evidence. I'm sure a product like be snatched up lightning quick by corporate America. [Coroflot via The Awesomer via Ubergizmo]

Cell Processors to Go 45nm in '09; Smaller, Cheaper PS3s Likely to Follow

Sony and Toshiba announced that they had successfully shrunk the 65nm cell down to 45nm earlier this year, and now thanks to Japan's Nikkan Kogyo, we now have a date for mass production: 2009. At a 40% reduction in power consumption, the shrunken Cell will generate less heat, which would help the PS3 to lose some of its piano-black bulk in a slim version. Cheaper production costs also means more $$ for Sony (or price drops for us). This could also lead to wider adoption of Cell technology in HD upscaling, which Toshiba is already doing in their SRT-enabled TVs and DVD players (but with their own custom chip). [Nikkan Kogyo (Translated)]

Blindingly Fast Touchscreen Text Entry System Gets a Push By Creator of T9

Everyone who has owned a cellphone over the last 10 years should at some point pour one out in thanks to Cliff Kushler, one of the inventors of the T9 text entry system that knows you mean "DONKEY" when you type 366539 in an SMS. Now Cliff is smartly shifting his focus on touchscreens with Swype—a way to type blindingly fast on a touchscreen by tracing your finger or stylus over the letters you want without lifting up, connect-the-dots style. It looks frankly amazing in a demo—so amazing that we remembered we've seen it somewhere before. Thankfully, it could be heading to the iPhone and Android really, really soon. More »

Lenovo ThinkPad X200t Photographed in the Wild

The tablet version of Lenovo's ThinkPad X200 laptop, sensibly named the X200t, was photographed in the wild, looking pretty much like an X200 with a swiveling screen. (That means it's also awfully similar to Lenovo's last tablet, the X61t.) Tablets don't really rock our world, but the X200's form factor and build quality should mean the X200t is also a solid machine. [GottaBeMobile via Engadget]