IBM to give away 500 patents. Curiouser and curiouser. Why now? And, what patents? IBM makes a great deal of money licensing their patent portfolio - is this meant to stimulate additional licensing? How does this fit in with the open source movement? In other news, IBM just received the go-ahead to sell off their PC unit to a firm that just won a rather large contract to provide PCs in China.
posted by FormlessOne on Jan 11, 2005 - 18 comments

The IBM 1403 Printer (1964) playing music. This may change your life.
posted by the fire you left me on Feb 4, 2003 - 23 comments

Ease of Use? IBM sends mixed message... see how complicated the instructions are to order this poster.
posted by TNLNYC on Jun 20, 2002 - 15 comments

IBM gets the bill for less-than-standard advertising methods supporting Linux. The city of San Francisco yesterday quashed some of the warm, fuzzy feelings associated with the Linux operating system when it reached a settlement with IBM that calls for the vendor to pay $120,000 to compensate the city for damages caused by a "guerrilla" marketing campaign centered on Linux.
posted by trioperative on Nov 29, 2001 - 15 comments

U.S. Patent 6,304,886, from the fine folks at IBM. "The tool comprises a plurality of pre-stored templates, comprising HTML formatting code, text, fields and formulas." (Via Scripting News.)
posted by mrbula on Oct 17, 2001 - 6 comments

No more Muzak™ and classic rock? "The [IBM] interns collaborated on something called Hold Freedom, a way to ease the tedium of being on hold while waiting to talk to a human. The program enables callers placed on hold to listen to news, music of their choice, enter a chat group with other customers or even make another phone call without losing their place in the queue. The choices would be based on personal profiles that the customers had previously completed on the call center to phone company's Web site." (Also cool that the idea comes from summer interns.)
posted by tippiedog on Aug 27, 2001 - 9 comments

Big Blue moves into the web services arena, claiming to be the first company to provide such services. Ever hear of .NET? Seems to me that they've been rolling a framework (that's got BETA development tools already) since last summer.

i think the most poignant point in this article isn't the fact that IBM's making false claims, but this quote by Peter O'Kelly:

``It's amazing that these guys are agreeing to work with the same standards. They've finally realized it's a disservice to customers when they try and compete on the basis of proprietary formats and protocols."

Now if the browser wars could end, we'd all be in better shape.
posted by tatochip on Mar 14, 2001 - 5 comments

Lynn Conway is one of the major talents in the history of the development of computers, responsible for major advances without which computers we buy now would be much different. She's also a transsexual, born physically male. While working for IBM she had her sex-change operation, and IBM immediately fired her for it.
posted by Steven Den Beste on Dec 10, 2000 - 7 comments

Steal a design, win an award. Sumerset Custom Houseboats won several awards in the 2000 Inc. Magazine Web Awards 2000, including the top prize in the General Excellence category. According to a company press release, the site was chosen for its "simple, functional, yet elegant design". The only problem is, they stole the design from IBM's site.
posted by jkottke on Nov 22, 2000 - 33 comments

SmileProject. Too.
posted by piefke3000 on Sep 25, 2000 - 2 comments

Crap, don't tell me I have to upgrade again! IBM introduced a commercial version of the "ASCI White computer" today, which it claims is the world's most powerful supercomputer, able to process 12.3 trillion calculations per second. But can I play pacman on it?
posted by Outlawyr on Jul 24, 2000 - 0 comments

IBM's Linux commercial. Part of their Avery Brooks "serious software" ad campaign, which I like a lot, I have to say.
posted by dan_of_brainlog on Jul 22, 2000 - 2 comments