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android
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 » -
Computing Classic
Computing Classic: The 1954 SAGE Protected the US From Invasions That Never Came
Dag Spicer from the Computer History Museum leaned over and unscrewed a bolt. Underneath, it read, "I can't stand it". The operator's job was to look for cold war bombers that never came. I would go mad, too. Look: More » -
jeopardy
IBM Prepping 'Watson' Computer to Compete on Jeopardy!
IBM, not content to merely crush the spirits of chess masters like Garry Kasparov, have started working with Jeopardy! to create a supercomputer that will undoubtedly answer questions more accurately than Sean Connery. More » -
ibm
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. -
ibm
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] -
Financiapocalypse
IBM Prepping For Thousands Of
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]Layoffs"Resource Actions" -
reliability
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 » -
rumor
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] -
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bionic body armor
IBM Patents Bionic Armor That Gives Humans Ability To Dodge Bullets
Believe it or not, IBM has filed for a patent on tech that heightens our reflexes so that we could, theoretically, dodge bullets like Neo in The Matrix. More » -
microsoft
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] -
man vs machine
Your Keyboards May Have Been Made In Appalling Conditions
I don't mean to get super human-rights on everyone, but if you're using a keyboard from Microsoft, IBM, Dell, Lenovo or HP, there's a chance it was made under some horrific working conditions. More » -
david reeves
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 » -
supercomputers
IBM Sequoia: Faster Than the Fastest 500 Supercomputers, Combined
20 petaflops. That's the speed rating of IBM's slated Sequoia supercomputer, the future world's fastest supercomputer that promises to be faster than every system on the Top500 supercomputer list, combined. More » -
apple
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 » -
patents
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 » -
books
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 » -
predictions
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. -
supercomputers
IBM Roadrunner Tops Cray as the Official World's Fastest Supercomputer
It's like a geek soap opera. Just last week, Cray bragged that their updated Jaguar XT supercomputer was the world's fastest. Now this week, IBM responds to the trash talk with a number one ranking of their Roadrunner system on the newly published Top500 supercomputing list. More » -
Guilt Card
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] -
apple
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
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 » -
concept
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] -
chips
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)] -
cellphones
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 » -
tablets
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] -
retromodo
Gallery of 101 Vintage Computer Ads
Sure, some of us remember using the Commodore 64, but do any of us recall what the ads for it were like? Boingboing has aggregated a wonderful collection of 101 classic computer advertisements by everyone from AT&T (yeah, I forgot they tried their hand in making PCs too) to Texas Instruments. Aah, to be back in a world where everything fit inside a bulky keyboard and displays were monochromatic. [Boing boing] -
atom
Intel To Use Atom For Embeddable Systems, Moving Beyond PCs
Intel has found another use for its tiny, low-power Atom chips—today they've announced intention to move into the system-on-a-chip industry, where they'll compete with ARM, MIPS, Freescale, and IBM among others to provide embeddable systems for things that aren't PCs. Namely cable boxes, manufacturing robots, security hardware, and anything else that needs an all-in-one brain. Initially they'll be using the Pentium M, but the transition to Atom should happen next year. Maybe this is what the "most of us wouldn't use Atom" talk was all about.[WSJ] -
roadrunner
Roadrunner Military Supercomputer Sets Processing Record
Roadrunner, the IBM supercomputer at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, manages 1.026 quadrillion calculations per seconds, also known as a Petaflop. Twice as fast as IBM's Blue Gene/L, the previous World's Fastest, the Roadrunner—also from the House of IBM, will be used, once classified, to solve military problems—such as making sure our proud nation's nuclear weapons will continue to work correctly as they age. Until classification, however, it will be used for important scientific problems, such ashow I can get more shoes in my closetclimate change. More » -
Super Processors
IBM Developing Water-cooled, '3D' Semiconductors
Straight out of IBM's Zurich R&D labs are these concepts for semiconductor chips that are stacked on top of eachother and allow enough space in between for water cooling. Developed jointly with the Fraunhofer Institute in Berlin, the '3D' stacking of these chips not only uses less space and allows for greater speed, but the water cooling technique could potentially take the generated heat and reuse it for other purposes. IBM says the water cooling structure is as thin as 50 microns and equal in complexity to the system of nerves and blood vessels in the human brain. Crazy stuff.[IBM via TG Daily via Engadget] -
data
IBM Racetrack Memory To Boost Storage By 100x
We have good news and bad news. The good news is that IBM is exploiting electrons to create memory with 100x the data density we see today. In terms of iPod, that's 500,000 songs. The bad news is that the technology won't be ready for 7+ years. Here's how it works: More » -
supercomputer
IBM Mixes Water, Chips to Make Supercomputer And Cook Dinner Too
It might sound like a risky idea, but IBM's new Power 575 supercomputer uses a new system of chip-level water-cooling to keep its processors chilled. Nicknamed "Hydro Cluster", the machine actually uses 448 of the new 5GHz POWER6 processors. They must kick out a hefty heat load because IBM thinks there're eco-friendly uses for the spare hot water. Much like the Swiss town pool mentioned the other day, the suggestion is that it could be used for heating people's homes or even for cooking. Check out the video to see how IBM plans to take water even closer to the chip surface in the future. More » -
speed
Scientists Build Optical Databus Capable of Tbps Transfers
IBM's new prototype 48-way optical databus takes up just 3 mm of width on a PCB, and is capable of a truly ridiculous data rate of around 8 Tbps. That's roughly 5,000 high-definition video streams per second, even if better has been done on fiber. Even better, this "green optical link" is a hundred times more power efficient than conventional electronic connections, so the environment benefits too. More » -
skynet
IBM Kittyhawk to Host the Entire Internet, Eat the Planet with Fries
In what is a sure sign of recklessness and suicidal tendencies, IBM has decided to take us closer to Skynet with Kittyhawk, a global-scale shared supercomputer so enormously big, so gigantastically powerful that it will be able to run the entire internet as one application. Because that's exactly what the planet needs, a Skynet-like supercomputer with 67.1 million cores and 32 petabytes that could probably gain consciousness, take over a Large Hadron Collider and open a black hole to send us all to hell. Or discover the secret of eternal life and the perfect Margarita. Either way works for me. More » -
laptops
Backstory and Teardown of the Lenovo X300 (Components By Weight!)
Here's an interesting bit: The Lenovo x300 almost had the old IBM butterfly keyboard of old. This detail and others were revealed in a Businessweek cover story on the ultrathin, quickly being recognized as the antithesis to the Apple Air. The piece has a lot of other interesting background, like the above info graphic of a teardown with weight for each component. Also, it nearly had a 10-inch screen.
More » -
riches
IBM Says Storm Worm Creators Making Millions, Daily
The cunning masterminds behind the Storm worm are apparently rolling in great wealth. The boffins at IBM estimate the worm is netting just under $2 million per day for its creators. The Storm worm's financial success comes from the fact that it has successfully created a massive collection of autonomously running computers, a.k.a. a botnet, which can be used to launch profitable spam attacks. More » -
ibm
The PS3 Processor Has Been Successfully Shrunk
IBM has successfully miniaturized the Cell processor that you know from Sony's PlayStation 3. Formerly built upon the 65nm scale, the new version will be based on the 45nm high-k process. What's this mean? Money, power and heat savings for Sony. And maybe a smaller or cheaper PS3 for you. More » -
line-up
Macbook Air and The Usual Suspects
We already gave you a spec-wise comparison of the Macbook Air and its prominent competitors, but The Usual Suspects—the Lenovo X300 (recently leaked), Sony TZ and Dell XPS m1330—are all back for a photo shoot. Jump for the fantastic line-up of the laptop bad boys bearing it all. More » -
ces 2008
IBM Wins Most Sexist and Degrading Promotional Device
I have so many issues with this LCD shirt that IBM is making women wear at CES, I don't know where to start. First off, they're instructed to say "Are you looking at my chest?" as people pass by. And supposing I do just that, why have her feminine curves been replaced with a grotesque bionic interface? Don't tell me this thing is a touchscreen. The end result is that I pay no attention to the ad at all. Sorry, IBM, there are some things technology can't improve. Spare this poor woman—bring back the sandwich board. [CES 2008] Thanks to Mark W. for that extra reporting! -
roundup
Afternoon News: Harry Potter Is Too Close for Comfort, DirecTV Breaking Promises?, Best Buy's Profits Soar and More
• Daniel Radcliffe, a/k/a Harry Potter, just bought an apartment in Manhattan. Coincidentally, it's only four blocks from our NYC headquarters. Luckily we have our own Dark Lord Balthazaar to protect us from his spells. [Gridskipper] More »

































