(CIO)1. "New Virus Comes Disguised as IE 7 Download,"Network World, 3/30Quick! Warn users of your company’s network to delete e-mail that offers a download of Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2. The e-mail, which was slipping through filters into Friday morning, carries a virus disguised as a test version of the browser. As of Friday morning, security companies were reporting that damage was not widespread, but even so they were warning about the virus, whose origin was unknown. The malware has the subject line Internet Explorer 7 Downloads with the sender listed as admin@microsoft.com. The e-mail is complete with a blue Microsoft-style graphic and an executable file labeled IE 7.exe. 2. "Land Rush for H-1B Visas Expected Monday,"Computerworld, 3/30H-1B visa applications will be accepted by the U.S. government starting Monday and the rush of applications filed early next week is expected by some immigration attorneys to mean that the visa cap could be reached within a couple of days. 65,000 H-1B visas are available under one cap, with another 20,000 set aside for advanced degree graduates from U.S. universities. The cap for graduates isn’t expected to be filled so quickly, so if you’re recruiting non-U.S. citizens the latter visa could be the way to go. Multiple immigration attorneys said they plan to send visa applications in by courier on Monday to make sure they get to Washington the first day applications are being accepted. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigrations Services isn’t forecasting when the cap will be reached. 3. "Microsoft Unveils Mobile Web Browser,"PC World, 3/29"Google Introduces New Mobile Search Service,"Infoworld, 3/27Microsoft is offering a preview of "Deepfish," a mobile Web browser meant to provide more convenient Internet access on wireless devices with features similar to those on PC browsers, including the ability to zoom in and out of the parts of a Web page most of inerest. Deepfish downloads are being offered on a first-come, first-serve basis and then access to the browser at Microsoft’s Live Labs Web site will be closed when a certain, unspecified by Microsoft number of downloads have occurred. Microsoft’s news came late Wednesday, a day after Google launched a new mobile search engine that it says will make it easier for handheld users to find information on the Web. That news came the same day that Google’s archrival Yahoo launched a new mobile publishing service and a mobile advertising network. Read More...

(CIO)In an effort to protect the Amazon, the world’s largest rain forest, Brazil will provide Internet signal by satellite to 150 Amazon communities, reports CNN.com. Environment and communications ministers and the Forest People’s Network signed an agreement on Thursday. The provision of Internet access to native Indian tribes will allow them to report illegal logging and ranching, ask for help, and fortify rain forest preservation efforts. Many of these communites are only reachable by riverboat. City and State goverments must first install telecenters with computers in selected areas, then the federal government will provide satellite connection. The Forest People’s Network is a digital web for monitoring, protection and ecucation. Read More...

(CIO)If you receive an e-mail offering a download of Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2, delete it. A new virus is making the rounds that comes disguised as a test version of Microsoft Corp.’s current Web browser. Security experts reported no widespread damage Friday morning, but they said the virus is notable for a couple of reasons. The e-mail includes a convincing graphic that looks like it could really be from Microsoft, and the virus is delivered when recipients click on a link rather than in an attachment, which makes it harder to stop it from reaching in-boxes. "The idea of sending a link seems to be a trend among attackers; it’s still fairly new and it works much better than sending a file," said Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer at F-Secure Corp. Read More...

(CIO)Red Hat Inc.’s latest financial results prove the company can withstand new competitive challenges, according to Matthew Szulik, the company’s chairman and CEO. On Thursday, Red Hat Thursday reported fourth-quarter sales of $111.1 million in sales, up 41 percent from sales of $78.7 million during the same period one year ago. The sharp rise in sales came despite stepped up competition for Red Hat, including Oracle Corp.’s introduction last October of lower-cost version of Red Hat’s subscription service for businesses using open source software. In addition, Microsoft Corp. started working to make features of Novell Inc.’s Linux distribution work with Windows as part of a deal between the two companies Read More...

(CIO)A purchase of popular Taiwanese blog site Wretch.cc by Yahoo Taiwan Inc. will not adversely affect competition in the local Internet market, Taiwan’s Fair Trade Commission ruled Thursday, paving the way for the completion of the deal. Rivals of Yahoo Taiwan, which operates the most popular portal and online auction site on the island, had petitioned the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) to stop the acquisition on the grounds that it would give Yahoo Taiwan the power to control Internet advertising rates. They had also argued that Yahoo Taiwan already holds a large share of the local Internet market, and that the deal would help it consolidate its hold on auction activity. But the FTC found that Yahoo Taiwan’s share of the local Internet market, estimated at between 57 percent and 59.54 percent, will rise by only 1.75 percent at most from the purchase of Wretch.cc., and that their businesses do not overlap. Wretch.cc, which allows users to post pictures and open blogs, and video blogs, does not engage in any kind of auction activity. Read More...

(CIO)Dell will start offering Linux pre-installed on its PCs and notebooks, the company said yesterday. That’s thanks to customer feedback that Dell began soliciting last month. Dell said that top of mind among customers was that the company should offer Linux as an alternative to Windows on its personal computers, according to a posting on a company blog. Dell said it "has heard" what customers said and will act accordingly."We will expand our Linux support beyond our existing servers and Precision workstation line," the company said on its IdeaStorm blog. "Our first step in this effort is offering Linux pre-installed on select desktop and notebook systems." The company said it will provide an update in the coming weeks that includes detailed information on which systems it will offer, testing and certification efforts, and the Linux distribution or distributions that will be available.Dell said earlier this month it had begun polling customers about what changes they want to see from the company. These efforts began soon after founder Michael Dell returned to the company’s helm, when customers began to ask Dell to expand their software choices for PCs. Dell has been struggling in a PC market it once dominated, and is hoping that offering Linux on PCs will spur company growth.On Wednesday, Dell posted the results of a customer Linux poll on the IdeaStorm blog. According to Dell, more than 70 percent of survey respondents said they would use a Dell system with a Linux OS for both home and office use, and said they wanted a choice between both notebook and desktop offerings.The majority of survey respondents said that existing community-based support forums would meet their technical support needs for a tested and validated Linux OS on a Dell computer and indicated that improved hardware support for Linux machines is as important as the distribution offered, according to Dell.Dell also said that customers are more concerned about driver compatibility and Linux kernel support than they are about which distribution Dell would choose for its PCs and notebooks. The company is currently deciding which specific software to use and advised customers to stay tuned. Dell offered more details about how it will offer Linux on PCs on its Direct2Dell blog, which is designed to collect customer feedback. --By Elizabeth Montalbano, IDG News Service (New York Bureau)  Read More...

(CIO)Accenture Ltd. has established a center in India to build software applications based on the SOA (service-oriented architecture) model using technologies from Sun Microsystems Inc.The center, which is the first from Accenture to focus on Sun products, will develop composite applications that combine identity and access management technologies with the SOA model, Alastair MacWilson, managing director of Accenture’s Global Security Practice, told reporters in Bangalore on Wednesday.The center will create reusable applications for key markets such as government and telecommunications, as well also custom applications for some customers, he said.Accenture is off-shoring to India up to 60 percent of the work involved in delivering SOA applications to customers, to take advantage of the lower costs in the country, MacWilson said.Sun will contribute some staff and technologies to the center, which will use its Identity Management Suite, Java Composite Application Platform Suite and Solaris OS, among other products.Sun already has a development center in India with about 1,400 staff working on identity, access management and other technologies, said Don Grantham, executive vice president for global sales and services at Sun, of Santa Clara, California.Accenture rival IBM Corp. set up SOA centers last year in Beijing and in Pune, India, that will develop SOA (service-oriented architecture) applications that can be reused across various customers.Accenture announced in January that it will have more staff in India than in any other country, including the US, by the end of its fiscal year, which closes Aug. 31. The company’s staff in India will increase to 35,000 by that time, up by more than 52 percent from a year earlier, it said. -John Ribeiro, IDG News Service (Bangalore Bureau) Read More...

(CIO)The arrest of a top-ranking Siemens AG official responsible for its IT services business will not affect daily operations at the unit, according to a company spokesman, but the publicity could hardly have come at a worse time.The arrest of board member Johannes Feldmayer will have no impact on the day-to-day operations of Siemens IT Solutions and Services (SIS), according to Siemens spokesman Marc Langendorf. "We have a very decentralized structure," Langendorf said Wednesday. "Board member Feldmayer has several areas of responsibility, including SIS, where he is in charge of strategic planning. The unit is managed by Christoph Kollatz."Police detained Feldmayer on Tuesday as part of an investigation into payments from Siemens to the head of the AUB labor organization. The German electronics and engineering company has confirmed the payments. Feldmayer has asked to be temporarily released from his duties.The case is not related to the much larger investigation of corruption in the company’s communications division, which is being merged into a new networking venture with Nokia Corp. Siemens has confirmed a flow of transactions that may have been used in bribes.The allegations of corruption come at a bad time for Siemens CEO Klaus Kleinfeld, who is trying to win the support of customers, investors and technology partners for a new focus at the company. Siemens is moving away from low-margin manufacturing areas, such as telecommunications equipment, computers and chips, to areas it views as potentially more profitable, including factory automation, power generation and automotive systems.IT services is also part of that strategy. Kleinfeld has bundled all of Siemens’ worldwide IT services and software activities, including the former money-losing Siemens Business Services (SBS), into the new entity. His argument is that by combining all IT services and software development across Siemens, the new unit will be in a stronger position to provide comprehensive and complex systems and services from a single source.Outsourcing, a core business of SIS, accounts for nearly 60 percent of sales in the new group, followed by IT services, such as systems integration and SAP software implementation, at 35 percent. Software development generates the rest of the group’s sales of around €5 billion (US$6.7 billion).The new joint venture Nokia Siemens Networks will officially launch on April 1, Langendorf confirmed.The launch of the new company had been pushed back a couple of times as the result of the corruption probe against executives at Siemens’ networking division over accusations of bribes offered to secure business.The company will have a combined customer base of around 600 companies, with half of them mobile operators and the other half fixed-line operators. -John Blau, IDG News Service (Dusseldorf Bureau) Read More...

(CIO)Cisco Systems Inc. has agreed to buy SpansLogic Inc., a privately held designer of network processing chips based in Mountain View, California, for an undisclosed sum.It plans to embed chips developed by SpansLogic into its switch platforms to keep up with demands for ever-faster Ethernet networking equipment, it said Wednesday. Using SpansLogic’s network processors will allow it to improve network efficiency and throughput, it said.Cisco will bring SpansLogic’s 14 employees into its Datacenter business unit, where they will report to divisional Senior Vice President Tom Edsall. Cisco expects to close the deal by April 28, the end of its current fiscal quarter, subject to standard closing conditions.SpansLogic, founded in 2004 with funding from Crescendo Ventures and ATA Ventures, has said little about its work to date."We are developing a line of products that challenge long-held assumptions about a fundamental function in computing," it said on its Web site. "Our technology derives from an elegant reformulation of the problem, an insight that allows us to overcome serious bottlenecks related to power consumption, speed, and cost of key applications."While that technology can be applied to several fields, the company initially focused on networking, it said. The company has recently tried to recruit a software engineering manager with experience of embedded networking software development for network processors, and a product and test engineer with a background in testing integrated circuits with high-speed I/O (input/output). -Peter Sayer, IDG News Service (Paris Bureau) Read More...

(CIO)As part of an attempt to control costs inside its retail operations, Circuit City today announced that it will outsource its IT infrastructure operations to IBM. According to the company’s press release, Circuit City expects a 16 percent reduction in infrastructure costs over the life of the contract. The switch will reportedly affect 130 IT employees, with the release noting that 50 of them will move into jobs with IBM. The fate of the rest was not disclosed. The outsourcing move was but one of a pair of cost-reduction moves, the other being the firing of 3,400 employees who were making "well above the market-based salary range for their role," according to the official announcement. Read More...

(CIO)Initial reactions to the latest proposed draft of a popular license for free and open-source software (FOSS) have been wide-ranging, with the changes winning some kind words from the creator of Linux and a critical bashing from an industry association.The Free Software Foundation (FSF) released the penultimate draft of the GNU general public license version 3 (GPLv3) Wednesday, with a focus on addressing concerns raised by a patent cross-licensing agreement struck between Microsoft Corp. and Novell Inc., the distributor of Suse Linux, in November. Parts of the Linux operating system including its kernel are licensed under GPL version 2.The GPL gives users the right to freely study, copy, modify, reuse, share and redistribute software.Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, has been highly critical of the two previous drafts of the GPLv3, particularly in relation to its stance on DRM (digital rights management) technology, and has said he has no plans to adopt it for the Linux kernel.Stressing that it’s his initial take on the new draft, he wrote in an e-mail response to a request for comment Wednesday that the third draft is "a huge improvement on the previous ones." He’s particularly impressed by the work the FSF has done on revising the language referring to patents."In fact, the new draft looks much better wrt [with respect to] patents -- the old 7 (b) section allowing for patent retaliation clauses seems to have been excised entirely, and all the other (very fundamental) problems with 7(b) in general have been removed," he wrote. The issue with the earlier drafts of the 7 (b) section was that they encouraged license proliferation effectively allowing different projects and individuals to add their own restrictions on top of GPLv3 and hence lead to the creation of brand-new licenses."[In the new draft] not only were the fundamental problems in 7(b) basically removed entirely, some of the ’we control the hardware environment too’ language has at least been narrowed down a lot," Torvalds wrote. "I still think that is totally mis-designed, but at least the damage is much narrower in scope now, so in that sense the last draft is a big improvement on the previous ones."As for whether the particular issue around the deal between Novell and Microsoft really merits addressing in the GPLv3, he doesn’t know and is still considering whether the new draft is an advance on the GPLv2 license, which appeared in 1991."Whether it’s actually an improvement on the GPLv2 itself is still pretty open, but at least it doesn’t feel like the disaster that the previous drafts were, and I’ll happily give kudos for that to the FSF!" he wrote.Simon Phipps, the chief open source officer at Sun Microsystems Inc., saw some positives in his first look at the new draft, describing an explicit explanation about software-as-a-service in the license as a "welcome enhancement."Like Torvalds, he’d noted the substantial revisions in patents in section 7. "In its previous form, this section provided a basis for various different licenses to be mixed, but the new version seems to provide less opportunity for that," Phipps wrote in his Webmink blog. "I wish we could work out mechanisms to allow the various FOSS communities to mix their work more easily."Sun has recently become a major flag waver for GPL after its surprise November decision to make its Java platform available under GPLv2 as well as its own CDDL (Common Development and Distribution License). It’s also been suggested that Sun may look to make its OpenSolaris operating system available under the GPL as well.Phipps was still getting to grips with the implications of the language added to the draft in relation to the Microsoft/Novell deal. "I need to read it several times before coming to a conclusion," he wrote.Phipps also noted the change to the timeline for GPLv3. "I’d been expecting the final draft; this is now an extra interim draft, and we’ll not see the final version until the summer," he wrote. "And there are several signs that we’ll see more frequent updates to the license -- there are indications that the DRM stuff might be extended to different kinds of devices, for example," Phipps added."I’m happy that the GPLv3 process has completed its next milestone, and understand why the FSF has seen it necessary to proceed at a pace somewhat slower than originally intended," Kaj Arno, vice president, community, at open-source database vendor MySQL AB, wrote in an e-mail.In December, Arno announced that MySQL had refined its GPL licensing plan for its MySQL 5.0 and MySQL 5.1 databases from "GPLv2 or later" to "GPLv2 only" to make the move to GPLv3 optional not an obligation. "Until the new version of GPL is finalized we won’t be in a position to determine whether GPLv3 is an appropriate license for MySQL products," Arno added.Not surprisingly, the Association for Competitive Technology (ACT), a technology lobbying organization, which has been highly critical of GPLv3 especially in relation to DRM in the past, was negative about the latest draft of the license."The newest draft of the GPLv3 is clearly designed to build unscalable walls between open source and proprietary software," Morgan Reed, ACT executive director, said in a statement.He described the latest draft as resembling the U.S. tax code. "The new draft no longer just defines freedom; it is designed to punish companies and business models that Richard Stallman [FSF president and principal author of the GPL] just doesn’t like," Reed added. "In fact, the new version is now so complex and legally squishy that it is essentially a full employment guarantee for intellectual property lawyers."With still another draft to come of the GPLv3 and major changes occurring to the language of the license each time a new draft is issued, nothing is as yet set in stone. -China Martens, IDG News Service (Boston Bureau) Read More...

(CIO)SAP AG announced changes to its executive management team, including that Shai Agassi, president of the product and technology group, will leave the company. Agassi was scheduled to become co-CEO of SAP when Henning Kagermann leaves the job of co-CEO. However, SAP chairman Hasso Plattner asked Kagermann to retain his position until 2009 instead of leaving the job this year, so that he could continue to lead the company through planned new product launches. "Then it became apparent to Shai that he wasn’t comfortable with committing a long-term 10- to 15-year period to SAP," Plattner said, speaking during a conference call to discuss the changes. Agassi will pursue new business opportunities in alternative energy sources and environmental policy, SAP said. His resignation is effective April 1. Leo Apotheker, currently president of customer solutions and operations, will immediately take on the new role of deputy CEO. Executives who run SAP’s NetWeaver, SAP Business Suite, CRM (customer relationship management), collaboration and software development for the business user will report to Kagermann. Executives who run marketing, small-to-medium business, partner activities and global regions including Europe, the Middle East and Africa, Americas and Asia Pacific will report to Apotheker.SAP also said it formed an executive council, made up of the company’s corporate officers. The council reports to the executive board and will be responsible for customer-facing and product strategies. -Nancy Gohring, IDG News Service (Seattle Bureau) Read More...

(CIO)European countries and Singapore are leveraging IT better than the U.S., according to a study issued Wednesday by the World Economic Forum.Denmark, for the first time, leads the "Networked Readiness Index" survey as the country that uses IT to maximize development and increase competitiveness. The U.S. fell to seventh in the rankings, after placing first in last year’s study. Denmark came in third last year after starting to rise in the list in 2003. The Danish government’s use of electronic services, regulatory structure and telecommunications environment aided the country, according to the study. Conversely, the study attributed the U.S. slip to the "deterioration relative of the political and regulatory environment."The study delivered positive analysis on some aspects of the U.S. The survey noted that the U.S. education system helps the country maintain its lead in innovation and linked the nation’s robust IT sector to venture capital availability, a savvy financial market and the ability to start a business with ease. Other Nordic countries also fared well in the study. Sweden came in second place and Finland took fourth, advancing from the eighth and fifth spots, respectively, compared to their 2006 results. The 10th spot went to Norway, up from 13th place, while Iceland fell to eighth place from fourth.Nordic countries have had a strong showing in the World Economic Forum survey since it was first conducted in 2001, with some of those nations cracking the top 10 each year. Several factors contributed to the Nordic nations’ presence in the annual survey, such as an emphasis on education, efficient governments and a willingness to use current technologies, according to the study. The other European countries to make the top 10 are Switzerland (five), the Netherlands (six) and the U.K. (nine).While Singapore placed third in this year’s survey, it fell one position from its previous place in last year’s summary. The Asia-Pacific region ranked high in the survey with Hong Kong (12), Taiwan (13), Japan (14), Australia (15) and Korea (19) making the top 20. China and India, hot spots in the global economy, placed lower in this year’s survey. China fell nine spots to 59 while India slipped to 44 from 40. The survey claimed that both countries have weak infrastructure that prevents them from maximizing IT, with China having low business and individual IT preparedness and use and India having low personal IT use.The 122 countries polled were measured on their business, regulatory and infrastructure environments for IT, the readiness of business, government and people to use technology and the actual use of current technologies. The study comes after U.S. politicians and business executives recently discussed the status of the nation’s innovation and competitiveness and how to improve in these areas. During separate congressional hearings, Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates and Intel Corp. Chairman Craig Barrett called for improved mathematics and science education in schools and additional government funding for research and development to maintain U.S. competitiveness in the global economy.Earlier this month a group of U.S. senators introduced a bill that aims to improve U.S. worker competitiveness by doubling the funding to an organization that supports U.S. scientific research and creating programs to help students learn mathematics. -Fred O’Connor, IDG News Service (Boston Bureau) Read More...

(CIO)The Ko-RFID research project, sponsored by the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology, addresses RFID and collaboration, and the impact of the former on the latter within the supply chain. The project is divided into nine sub-projects, each approaching the main research questions from a different angle, according to a university statement. Initiated by Humboldt-Universit¿zu Berlin, the Ko-RFID project was started in August 2006 and is dedicated to studying the impact that RFID technology might have on the coordination and cooperation processes within an RFID-enabled supply chain. The project is split into nine modules, each having its own objectives and responsibility for certain aspects of the general problem area, according to the university. The primary focus of the "Privacy and Security" module addresses security aspects of data storage, processing and sharing in the RFID-enabled supply chain. The objective of the research activities is to evaluate and produce solutions for security threats in the supply chain under the specific conditation that it consists of a number of cooperating but to some extent or at a specific point in time also competing companies. Read More...

(CIO)SAN FRANCISCO (03/27/2007)—3G (third-generation) wireless will grow up at the CTIA Wireless show in Orlando this week, finding its place in Cisco Systems Inc. business routers. The blue-chip networking vendor is set to introduce on Tuesday a 3G module for its ISR (Integrated Services Router) line of branch and small-business routers. The 3G Wireless WAN (wide-area network) High-speed Interface Card will provide a link to the Internet over the EV-DO (Evolution-Data Optimized) or HSDPA (High-Speed Downlink Packet Access) networks of mobile operators that are working with Cisco, said Inbar Lasser-Raab, a director of marketing for network systems at Cisco. Most customers are likely to use 3G only as a backup for when their main Internet connections go down, according to Lasser-Raab. But in becoming one of a variety of interfaces on the popular router, a set of technologies usually associated with fun phone features for consumers and on-the-road connectivity for traveling employees is making a leap. 3G has grown in both speed and coverage area over the past few years, to where Cisco says it is price-competitive with DSL (digital subscriber line) and cable modem access and faster than ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network), which is commonly used for backup in Europe. As faster wireless data technologies such as WiMax appear, Cisco plans to introduce new models. Read More...

(CIO)LONDON (03/27/2007)—PayPal, the Internet-based money transfer system owned by eBay Inc., is trying to persuade e-mail providers to block messages that lack digital signatures, which are aimed at cutting down on phishing scams, a company attorney said Tuesday. So far, no agreements have been reached, but the idea is one that PayPal would like to see from other e-commerce businesses, said Joseph E. Sullivan, PayPal’s associate general counsel, at the International E-Crime Congress in London. An agreement with, for example, Google Inc. for its Gmail service could potentially stop spam messages that look legitimate and bypass spam filters. Read More...

(CIO)BOSTON (03/27/2007) - Months later than had been expected, the Free Software Foundation (FSF) intends to release the third draft of its GNU general public license version 3 (GPLv3) on Wednesday. The organization now also plans a final "last-call" draft following feedback on the third draft. Created by Richard Stallman in 1989 for the GNU free operating system project, the GPL was last fully revised 16 years ago. The license gives users the right to freely study, copy, modify, reuse, share and redistribute software. It governs a good deal of free and open-source software (FOSS) including the Linux operating system. In July 2006 when the FSF issued the second draft of GPLv3, Eben Moglen, an FSF board member and one of the authors of the draft, said he and Stallman hoped to bring out a last-call third draft of GPLv3 sometime between mid-October and Nov. 1. Assuming that third draft was well received by the FOSS community, the FSF would then issue the final version of the license on Jan. 15, 2007. Read More...

(CIO)By N. Dean Meyer "Top management support!" Everybody who’s selling a new method or system says that this is the key to success. As your monthly curmudgeon, I say that if you have to ask for it, you don’t deserve it. "How’s the mileage on that yacht?" Read More...

(CIO)Symantec is set to dramatically expand its mobile security offerings this week, adding VPN, data encryption, antispam and other features. The company will unveil on Monday its first suite of security software for Microsoft Windows Mobile devices. So far Symantec has only offered antivirus software for Windows Mobile and a suite of antivirus and firewall for Symbian, said Paul Miller, managing director of mobile and wireless at Symantec. The suite is called Symantec Mobile Security Suite 5.0, to match the upcoming version 5.0 of the company’s suite for the Symbian OS. Symantec plans to show off the new software at the CTIA Wireless show in Orlando. Businesses are getting more concerned about mobile security as they put smart phones and other handheld devices in the hands of roving workers. Meanwhile, they are faced with an array of regulations on the handling of data, and some high-profile losses of private information in the field have made mobile data protection a hot topic. Symantec aims to extend the same kind of protection it gives PCs. Read More...

(CIO)IBM researchers showed a prototype optical transceiver chipset Monday they say will allow people to download movies or share online data eight times faster than current technology allows. The chipset can move data at 160 gigabits by representing information as light pulses instead of electrons and could be used for both corporate and consumer applications as soon as 2010, IBM said. Consumer demand for digital media such as movies, music and photos has caused an explosion in the amount of data being transferred over the Internet, and underlined the need for greater bandwidth and connectivity, said T.C. Chen, vice president for science and technology at IBM Research, in a statement. Read More...