August 14 - 4:15pm EDT   Apple has overtaken Google in a key industry metric, figures show. Apple's market capitalization -- a measurement of share price multiplied by the amount of outstanding shares -- reached $158.84 billion on Wednesday, beating Google, whose cap at the time was $157.23 billion. The news is significant mainly due to the clout of Google, which closed with a share value of $500.03 on Wednesday, even though the companies are comparatively similar in size. [full story]

August 7 - 9:30pm EDT   In late January, IBM revealed it was considering the iPhone as a viable platform for its web-based Lotus Notes, and MacNN has revealed that the plans are drawing to a close, with a late 2008 release in mind. While Apple included support for Microsoft Exchange in its latest v2.0 iPhone operating system update, it still lacks several key collaboration features that IBM hopes to supplement through the so-called Lotus iNotes. No specific release date is planned. [full story]

July 30 - 8:40pm EDT   Apple's rumored non-Intel mainboard platform may primarily involve a change of suppliers to NVIDIA rather than any kind of custom development, PCPer suggests. The enthusiast site notes that Santa Clara, California-based NVIDIA has been developing its first nForce mainboard chipset for Intel-based notebooks, currently codenamed MCP79, with the aim of improving several weaknesses that have affected Intel's own designs and thus Apple as well. The architecture would support all the necessary components for Intel's just-announced Core 2 processors, including a 1,066MHz system bus and the option of DDR3 memory. [full story]

June 9 - 5:30pm EDT   IBM today announced it will commission a $100 million hybrid supercomputer, the world's fastest, codenamed Roadrunner, to the US Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration. The supercomputer is claimed to be able to perform 1,000 trillion operations per second, or one petaflop. According to IBM, the array has the same computing power as 100,000 of today’s fastest laptop computers combined. The hybrid computer combines AMD's x86 processors with Cell Broadband Engine chips originally developed for video game platforms, such as the ones used in Sony's PlayStation3. [full story]

June 6 - 4:40pm EDT   IBM on Thursday announced plans to use water to cool its next-generation of computer chips internally, allowing it to develop faster multi-layer processors that don't require additional external cooling. To this end, the company showed off a prototype 3D chip with thousands of tiny water passages in between the chip's layers. The company says interlayer cooling was necessary, as traditional heat sinks weren't efficient enough to cool today's densely packaged processors. The water-carrying tubes are just 50 microns in diameter, and integrating them into the chip necessitated the development of a new thin-film soldering technique by IBM engineers. [full story]

May 9 - 2:30am EDT  Apple has been ranked the worst among all major PC vendors and other large electronic firms in the fight against climate change. Climate Counts this week released its second annual Company Scorecard hoping to create a "simple, easy-to-understand ranking of companies would motivate both companies and consumers to step-up their efforts on climate change." Apple was ranked in last place among the list of 12 electronics companies, while companies such as IBM, Canon, Toshiba, Sony, and Hewlett-Packard were near the top of the electronics industry. Top honor went to Nike, which passed last year’s high scorer, Canon, to become the top scored company among the 56 companies evaluated. Apple was the only ... [full story]

April 21 - 4:00pm EDT   Google remains the number one company in the world in terms of estimated brand value, says the research group Millward Brown Optimor. Google has held its spot for a third consecutive year, with a recent valuation of $86.1 billion, an increase of 30 percent over earlier results. General Electric holds second place in the current survey at $71.4 billion, while Microsoft is valued at $70.9 billion. The results are based on interviews with over a million people worldwide. [full story]

April 21 - 11:20am EDT   Lenovo today signaled a change in its philosophy by pulling the last notebook in its signature T series with a standard ratio display from its lineup. The PC builder has withdrawn the 4:3 ratio, 14-inch ThinkPad T61 from its store and now offers all its mid-size notebooks, including the 3000 and IdeaPad series, only in a widescreen ratio. Lenovo hasn't explained the decision but is considered one of the few computer vendors in North America to continue selling standard-ratio designs. [full story]

April 16 - 1:00pm EDT   In an apparent attempt to lessen its reliance on Microsoft Windows, IBM has launched an internal pilot program designed to support employees who decide to switch to the Mac platform, according to Roughly Drafted. The pilot program ran from October 2007 through January 2008 and distributed 24 MacBook Pros to researchers at different sites within IBM Research. Of the sample group, 18 users said that the Mac offered a "better or best experience" compared to their existing Windows computer. 19 of the 22 users asked to keep their Macs after the pilot program had expired. [full story]

April 10 - 3:40pm EDT   Researchers at IBM's Almaden lab have developed a new type of memory that operates in three dimensions, according to an announcement. Termed "racetrack" memory, it is composed of U-shaped nanowires, which are aligned perpendicularly to a chip and work as a shift register. While information can only be read or written at the base of the wire, the remaining space in its shape can be used to store and shuffle bits, thanks to minute pulses of electricity applied to the tips. In a finished racetrack chip, numerous wires would be built next to each other. [full story]

March 10 - 1:05pm EDT   Hitachi and IBM are set to announce a partnership which will result in smaller, more efficient silicon chips, according to the New York Times. While many companies are only now making the switch to 45nm technology, as with Intel in the case of its Penryn processors, Hitachi and IBM say they are working on the next step, which involves research at the atomic level to produce 32 and even 22nm semiconductors. In some cases this may make components as little as a few atoms thick, approaching the physical limits of non-quantum computing. [full story]

February 29 - 4:25pm EST   Researchers at IBM have developed a new type of wired connection, one which could enable massive amounts of local bandwidth. The company's "green optical link" merges optical chips and data buses into a single arrangement, and can theoretically deliver data at a colossal 8Tbps -- enough to stream approximately 5,000 HD videos simultaneously. More crucially, the power needed is the same as a 100W lightbulb, dozens of times less than what is needed for an equivalent electrical data connection. [full story]

February 28 - 10:10am EST   The special event Apple has planned for March 6th will likely introduce better corporate e-mail support, argues Shaw Wu of American Technology Research. The analyst cites "industry and developer sources," who say that Apple has been conducting months of beta testing in order to make the iPhone function properly with Microsoft ubiquitous Exchange Server technology. The same sources suggest that support is imminent for Lotus Notes, for which IBM has confirmed that a web client is in development. [full story]

February 14 - 3:45pm EST   Having almost disappeared completely late last year, SCO says it has been resuscitated by a new financing plan. Under the terms of the deal, Stephen Norris Capital Partners and "its partners from the Middle East" will supply up to $100 million, enabling SCO to reorganize and launch a new series of products. SNCP will gain a controlling interest in the company, and take it private, allowing it to slip out of Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. [full story]

January 22 - 3:40pm EST   IBM is still preparing the launch of a Lotus Notes web client for the iPhone and iPod touch, reports say. Some media outlets speculated that it might be released shortly, as a result of a recent demonstration; although the Associated Press wrote that an announcement would be made at this week's Lotusphere conference, IBM now claims that the client is "not something that [is] ready to go out and market or launch." Lotus Notes is a long-standing collaborative suite which integrates e-mail, calendars and other workgroup applications. [full story]