International Business Machines Corporation (IBM, or (colloquially) Big Blue; ) is an American computer technology corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York. The company is one of the few information technology companies with a continuous history dating back to the 19th century; it was founded in 1888 and incorporated (as Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (C-T-R)) on June 15 1911. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware, software, infrastructure services, hosting services, and consulting services in areas ranging from mainframe computers to nanotechnology. With almost 330,000 employees worldwide and revenues of States dollar|$" target="_blank" >^*91 billion annually (figures from 2005), IBM is the largest information technology company in the world, and holds more patents than any other technology company.

In recent years, services and consulting revenues have been larger than those from manufacturing. Significantly, IBM has also been steadily increasing its workforce in developing countries (notably, in IBM India) and retrenching in the US and Europe . Samuel J. Palmisano was elected CEO on January 29 2002 after having led IBM's Global Services, and helping it to become a business with $100 billion in backlog in 2004. Palmisano replaced Louis V. Gerstner, who had held the job from 1993 to 2002, taking over from John Akers, who left during a period of financial difficulty for the company.

IBM has engineers and consultants in over 170 countries and IBM Research has eight laboratories, all located in the Northern Hemisphere, with five of those locations outside of the United States. IBM employees have earned five Nobel Prizes, four Turing Awards, five National Medals of Technology, and five National Medals of Science.

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RIM announces BlackBerry Storm with responsive touch screen display
Tue, 07 Oct 2008 22:14:16 -0700
It was no secret that the BlackBerry Storm was coming to Verizon, but now it is official as both Verizon Wireless and Vodafone announced the device with RIM tonight. The BlackBerry Storm is the first touch screen BlackBerry device and one of the first I have ever heard of that...
First impressions of the Dash Express connected GPS device
Tue, 07 Oct 2008 10:58:05 -0700
I checked out a Garmin StreetPilot c580 last summer and thought it was a pretty compelling dedicated GPS system since it had MSN Direct integration to provide some wireless functionality. While it was useful for some things, the MSN Direct service is not designed for real-time wireless data and coverage...
Apple notebooks to be fabricated from a solid "brick" of aluminum
Tue, 07 Oct 2008 09:49:48 -0700
The term "brick" was mentioned in a 9-to-5 Mac rumor piece on 10 September 2008 when their source said that the MacBook update is "all about the Brick." 9-to-5 Mac now claims that the "brick" isn't a specific Apple product but rather a manufacturing process that uses lasers and jets...
Netrics offers vital link in automating healthcare
Tue, 07 Oct 2008 08:51:36 -0700
The application of standard artificial intelligence techniques, most of which have been around for many years, to the enormous and growing databases being created by health systems is very much overdue. by Dana Blankenhorn
How a Mac Mini can beat a quad-core Vista behemoth (or how Apple can't write good software for Windows)
Tue, 07 Oct 2008 07:06:35 -0700
Here's a tale of how a humble Mac Mini system outperformed my cutting-edge quad-core system. It's also a story of how Apple can't write good software for the Windows platform. by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes
Can two AMDs be better than one?
Tue, 07 Oct 2008 04:49:30 -0700
AMD will today announce that it will split into two companies - but can two AMDs be better than one? by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes

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