IBM

IBM patenting the fine art of patent trolling?

IBM is perhaps the most aggressive patent machine on the planet. In a move reported by The Register today, IBM has now taken a step beyond the pale (again) and sought to patent the art of squeezing profits from patent portfolios, otherwise known as patent trolling.

A filing at the U.S. Patent Office, entitled "system and method for extracting value from a portfolio of assets" stages a landgrab on the thoroughly original idea of letting other people use your ideas.

IBM's intellectual property carpet baggers describe the invention as "obtaining an interest in selected assets from the portfolio to a client who lacks the resources to accumulate and maintain such a portfolio, in return for an annuity stream to the portfolio owner." Or, en Anglais, patent licensing.… Read more

More than 100 times faster than Wi-Fi?

Radio scientists at IBM Research and MediaTek are teaming up to develop a wireless transmission protocol that will deliver files more than 100 times faster than Wi-Fi.

The idea is to take advantage of the 60GHz spectrum, according to Mehmet Soyuer, the lead researcher on the project, who is based in IBM's T.J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York. These chips will be able to transfer files at around 2.5 gigabits per second, compared with the 11 to 54 megabits of Wi-Fi. Hence the 100 times faster calculation, Soyuer said.

Put another way, these chips … Read more

IBM services buoy third-quarter earnings

IBM on Tuesday reported a 6 percent profit increase in the third quarter of this year, riding a strong performance from its services division that compensated for a decline in its hardware business.

The company earned $2.36 billion, or $1.68 per share, which narrowly beat out analysts' profit estimates.

The computing giant said the revenue growth in its services division was the highest since 2003. Services contracts in the quarter totaled $11.8 billion, up 12 percent year over year.

Revenue from its Systems and Technology group was $4.9 billion, down 10 percent. Excluding the impact of … Read more

IBM updates mash-up builder for businesspeople

IBM released on Tuesday a tool that it says will let businesspeople, rather than professional programmers, build their own Web applications.

Called the the Mashup Starter Kit, it is an updated version of QEDWiki tool. The starter kit lets people view and access Web information and company databases in order to build mash-ups--applications that combine information from different sources in a single screen.

IBM, which sells to corporate customers, sees a lot of potential in giving businesspeople the ability to build their own applications via tapping into various information sources.

For example, an insurance agent could combine internal rate information … Read more

IBM, Google detail joint initiative

IBM and Google on Monday released details on their "academic cluster computing initiative" to provide data centers for remote computer programming.

The centers would allow a larger number of students and programmers to have access and processing power for writing software code involving massive amounts of data over the Internet, a practice known as "cloud computing."

The program, which is already under way at the University of Washington, will also be rolled out at Carnegie-Mellon University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Maryland. IBM and … Read more

VMware and the mainframe

Enterprise Strategy Group's resident expert on all things server virtualization, Mark Bowker, tells me that there were 15,000 people at VMworld a few weeks ago. Not a surprise, the industry is gaga over server virtualization as more users look to turn physical servers into consolidated virtual partitions.

The irony here is that while the server virtualization chatter focuses on VMware, Xen, Citrix, and Microsoft, the venerable IBM zSeries (i.e. mainframe) will likely be one of the biggest beneficiaries of this virtualization frenzy.

The reason for this is fairly simple. Server virtualization is all about rationalizing IT assets … Read more

How to implement SEO at a mega-corporation

Oftentimes, SEO is much easier to accomplish within a small company. It's hard to be nimble when working at a behemoth.

When I talk about items like title tags, URL structures, meta descriptions and canonical URLs, it sounds all quite logical and seems prudent to implement, doesn't it? Well imagine, what it must take for a company like IBM--whose myriad divisions and business units span 90 countries and over 30 languages--to make even the slightest SEO enhancement.

It's a big deal.

To find out more about what it's like to chip away at SEO (search engine … Read more

IBM tailors SOA lineup for specific industries

IBM is set to announce on Wednesday a set of services geared at boosting its services-oriented architecture (SOA) consulting services and products.

The company has devised an assessment tool that allows companies to compare the efficiency of their business processes with others in their own field.

It also has developed a program that allows end users to adjust which indicators they like to track how their business is performing, such as how quickly orders are fulfilled.

These SOA consulting offerings and IBM's WebSphere tools include information that has been customized to particular industries including banking, health care, telecommunications and … Read more

IBM takes on Microsoft Office again with Lotus Symphony

Note: the description of the original Lotus Symphony product has been corrected.

An emboldened IBM challenged Microsoft's desktop application dominance with the introduction on Tuesday of IBM Lotus Symphony, a suite of free desktop applications.

Lotus Symphony is made up of three applications--word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation programs--which IBM already ships as part of Lotus 8.

The offering is in beta and is available as a free download with "community support" from IBM's Web site. IBM is considering other support options, according to a company executive.

The name Lotus Symphony is recycled; it was the name … Read more