IBM

IBM has acknowledged that in early 2007 a third-party contractor misplaced a tape containing the personal information of current and former IBM employees. The tape was lost in transit to its Armonk, N.Y, headquarters some time in February. Recently, IBM was in the news as one of the companies helping to investigate the massive data breach at TJX.

Big Blue started informing affected employees last week, and as compensation the company is offering one year of free credit monitoring. The exact number of affected employees is not known but it's thought to include personnel who worked for the … Read more

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--Experts from IBM and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology universally agreed on Friday that there's great potential for virtual worlds, also referred to as the 3D Internet. But for now, a dearth of applications is keeping these virtual worlds' appeal limited to early adopters, they said.

"There's not a lot of stuff there," said MIT Media Lab Director Frank Moss, referring to virtual worlds like Second Life and World of Warcraft.

IBM hosted an event at MIT's Media Lab to explore the potential of virtual worlds for use in business. Already, the company … Read more

Cambridge, Mass.--The industry around virtual worlds, also referred to as the 3-D Internet, is chaotic and messy but on the brink of mainstream adoption, said Mitch Kapor, chairman of the Linden Labs and PC industry pioneer.

Kapor spoke here on Friday in an event organized by IBM and the MIT media Lab on virtual worlds. Linden Labs is the maker of Second Life, a popular virtual world environment.

During his talk, Kapor drew many parallels between the early days of the PC and virtual worlds: there are many people who are skeptical of virtual worlds and the product is … Read more

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--To IBM, today's virtual worlds like Second Life and World of Warcraft are simply a glimpse of the future Web, with the same potential to transform business and society as the first waves of the Web.

IBM hosted an event at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab on Friday, where experts offered insights into how virtual worlds can be applied to make businesses more effective and address societal problems.

The daylong event brought together IBMers, academics, media and representatives from businesses exploring virtual worlds, including those from entertainment, retail and the hotel industry.

Although some … Read more

IBM and Cisco Systems are sitting down at the table again. And this time the table is bigger.

The two technology behemoths are expanding their near-decade-old alliance, enhancing the focus on telecom carriers and their customers. As part of the expanded alliance, announced Thursday, the duo will offer a centralized service to identify, manage and reroute network traffic when trouble arises.

Cisco will combine its Network Management Platform with IBM's Tivoli Software for Service Assurance and Fault Management. That, in essence, strives to help carriers manage IP-based services and reduce implementation and maintenance costs.

Next month, Cisco plans to … Read more

IBM announced Friday that it's making available as open-source the software it developed for modeling the movement of infectious diseases.

The Spatiotemporal Epidemiological Modeler (STEM), which can run on any operating system, will be available through a project run by Eclipse, the open-source development foundation, called the Eclipse Open Healthcare Framework Project.

The mapping software has customizable tools, and epidemiologists can apply their own algorithms to fit the needs of specific projects and various outbreak scenarios. Among the variables the software can include are air travel, road systems, borders and animal interaction with a disease.

It can also be … Read more

The Securities and Exchange Commission announced Tuesday it reached a settlement with IBM, over allegations the industry titan issued misleading statements regarding stock options expenses.

The end result: IBM, without admitting or denying the commission's findings, consented to an order that it cease and desist from "committing or causing violations of these provisions." But more importantly, IBM paid no fine, nor faced any monetary penalty.

What was the beef?

Back in April 2005, IBM said during a conference call with analysts it would begin reporting its stock options as an expense, starting with the first quarter 2005. … Read more

IBM will introduce a new generation of Unix servers Tuesday, the first using its Power6 processors, according to sources familiar with the plan.

Better late than never. In 2004, IBM said the Power6 processor was supposed to ship in 2006.

IBM will likely release only one Power6-based mid-range server in the first half of the year, said sources, and follow with more models in the second half.

Power6 servers can hold more chips than those using the Power5+. Power6 servers can contain 64 chips; Power5+ servers maxed out at 32.

Like Power5 and the newer Power5+, Power6 chips have two … Read more

UPDATE (March 22, 1:35 p.m.): After this item was published, we discovered we gave an incorrect figure for the percentage of developers who said they use MySQL. The figure is 40 percent.

You now can discard any lingering traces of doubt that the open-source MySQL database competes with the incumbent proprietary products from Oracle, Microsoft and IBM.

Data released Thursday from an Evans Data Group survey of database usage among developers shows MySQL use increased from 32 percent in 2004 to 40 percent last year. The survey tallied real production use in corporate environments, not just tire-kicking or … Read more