David Needle

In a move designed to facilitate fast adoption of its virtualization technology, AMD announced it is offering royalty-free licenses to hardware and software developers. “The idea is to make [virtualization] easy for anyone to implement,” Steve McDowell, director of emerging technology at AMD , told internetnews.com. “There is no fee. We want to make our […]

Talk about having room to grow. The creators of TenThousandBrightIdeas.com want to showcase as many as 10,000 of “the world’s best ideas” on its homepage. Judging from this week’s launch, the site will need well over 9,900 ideas, putting aside whether they’re the world’s best, to get there. Still, some companies have shown they can […]

PALO ALTO, CALIF. — If further proof was needed that on-demand software in the enterprise is growing, software giant SAP provided it today with the unveiling of its first entry to the market. SAP’s on-demand solution is for customer relationship management (CRM) and builds on the company’s mySAP CRM software, a more traditional “on-premises” software […]

Ramping up its bread-and-butter workstation line, Sun Microsystems today announced new systems based on AMD’s 64-bit Opteron processor. The company has made increasing use of AMD’s processor line as an x86-compatible alternative to its mainstay Sparc chip. At the high end, Sun is laying claim to several performance breakthroughs for its Sun Ultra 40 workstation. […]

The latest chapter of an ongoing Department of Justice (DoJ) investigation into price fixing in the dynamic random access memory market (DRAM) has resulted in Japanese manufacturer Elipida forking over an $84 million fine. All told, the DoJ said it has issued some $730 million in fines to other companies and individuals involved in similar […]

When it comes to technology, Silicon Valley is loathe to take a back seat to its neighbor to the north, San Francisco. Last year the city of San Francisco announced plans to offer free Wi-Fi internet service; now its tech neighbor plans to do the same. Smart Valley, an initiative of Joint Venture: Silicon Valley […]

A consortium led by IBM has published a new open architectural standard it says will help usher in a new generation of high speed printers for companies that issue bills, statements and other high volume output. While color output is hardly new, very high end black and white printing systems are typically used for high […]

UPDATED: A consortium of big hardware makers and Intel announced plans to spend a collective $10 billion to help drive adoption of systems based on the Itanium platform. The Itanium Solutions Alliance said the funding, which is targeted for use through 2010, would go to research and development, capital expenditures, sales and marketing, and ISV-enabling […]

Microsoft announced a major investment and ambitious research effort with today’s announcement of Live Labs, a partnership between its MSN online division and Microsoft Research. Live Labs has a broad charter, but one of its goals is to use researchers from Microsoft’s various technology groups to leverage Internet technologies and speed them to market as […]

It could get a lot harder for AMD to convince folks that it’s the victim of Intel’s monopolistic abuse if its market share continues to rise. AMD has crossed the 20 percent share mark for overall shipments in the fourth quarter of 2005, according to a report released this week by Mercury Research. Its 21.4 […]

Apple’s hot-selling iPod is finding a home on college campuses and it’s not just for entertainment. Stanford, Duke, Drexel, University of Michigan and several other universities have been making lecture notes, podcasts and other content available via a custom iTunes store hosted by Apple. With these pilot programs well under way for several months, Cupertino, […]

The Walt Disney Company made a bold move toward reclaiming leadership of the movie animation market on Tuesday. Disney bought Pixar Animation Studios , the high-profile production company headed by Steve Jobs. Pixar pioneered the creation of full-length digital animation movies. The all-stock transaction, expected to be completed this summer, has a cash value of […]