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IBM is tapping into its computing know-how to get to the next-generation 22-nanometer chip technology.

The initiative is also linked to IBM’s cloud computing strategy, which offers scalable, more energy-efficient Web services. Through cloud computing, customers can access these services “in a highly flexible and open environment,” according to IBM.

At its most basic, photolithography–the conventional process for making semiconductor chips–means using a mask to cast a shadow onto a light-sensitive material called a resist. Based on this, the circuits are then “printed.” This is where 22nm is hitting a wall. “Once the wavelength of light becomes comparable to the size of the thing you’re trying to print, things break down,” said Subu Iyer, an IBM distinguished engineer. The challenge is to use a light wavelength of 193 nanometers because “extreme ultraviolet” radiation is still impractical.

“The challenge is to ensure that the diffraction pattern (from the light) that is produced is basically the pattern you want to print,” he said.

The Computational Scaling initiative will include support from several of IBM’s partners, including Mentor Graphics and Toppan Printing.

“There’s a tremendous amount of computation involved in taking that design data and converting it to a mask which will illuminate with the right kind of illumination,” Iyer said. “We build very fast computers. So, it’s a matter of taking advantage of these very high-performance computers and doing these computationally intensive things.”

“If I had x-rays, I would be able to print this in a jiffy. Problem is, that technology doesn’t exist. And it doesn’t look like it will exist in time for 22 nanometers,” according to Iyer. “This allows us to do it not using very, very advanced lithography tools, but combining our existing tools with a computationally intensive technique.”

After 45nm, comes 32nm, which doesn’t present any great manufacturing process hurdles. But 22nm is a different story. And IBM is trying to lead the way–ahead of Intel.

“In straightforward physics (22nm) is kind of a tall order,” said Iyer. IBM’s new computational-intensive method takes the circuits that designers lay out and transforms them into a pattern on the mask that allows IBM to print the 22-nanometer features with 193-nanometer light, he said.

Generally, the smaller the geometries, the faster and more power efficient the chip becomes. Both Intel and Advanced Micro Devices are moving their processor lines from 65-nanometer to 45-nanometer technology. (AMD, which does joint chip R&D with IBM, is slated to begin doing this in the fourth quarter.)

Unisys on Tuesday announced that it has named J. Edward Coleman as its new chief executive.

J. Edward Coleman

(Credit:
Gateway)

“(Coleman) has a strong track record of helping IT companies successfully narrow their business focus and build on core strengths to drive revenue and earnings growth,” Unisys’ statement said. “Throughout his career, he has shown himself able to drive change from vision to execution, with a proven focus on operational improvement.”

Coleman will take on the roles of chairman and CEO. He replaces Joseph McGrath, who served as CEO for the past three years, and whose departure was announced last month. Henry Duques will step down from his position as chairman of the company’s board but will become lead director instead.

In a statement, Unisys touted Coleman as a master of corporate transformations and turnarounds. Most recently, he served as CEO of Gateway for a little more than a year. In that short amount of time, he managed to work out a deal with Acer to buy the troubled PC maker. He has more than 30 years’ experience in the IT industry and has held executive positions at CompuCom and Arrow Electronics.

He’ll have his work cut out for him. For most of the year, Unisys’ stock has stayed below the $5 mark, and the company has faced declining revenues.

I mentioned the other day that a significant customer uptake for Zimbra would be much more meaningful than IBM and Microsoft trading customers back and forth. Well, 20 million paid mailboxes spread over 30,000 customers is much more significant than IBM beating its chest over nabbing 5 million mailboxes from Microsoft.

Last I checked in June, Zimbra, Yahoo’s open-source e-mail and calendar software, was at 11 million paid mailboxes. This was a healthy jump from 8 million paid mailboxes in May 2007 and the 4 million paid mailboxes TechCrunch reported back in October 2006.

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Well, on Monday The VAR Guy reported there are 20 million paid mailboxes for Zimbra, a massive increase in roughly seven months. It’s likely that a big chunk of these came from Zimbra’s deal with Comcast. Still, that is amazing momentum.

Perhaps Yahoo/Zimbra should focus on building PostPath-esque drop-in Exchange integration?

Could Zimbra be the foundation for an enterprise challenge from Yahoo? I wouldn’t rule it out.

However, to get there Zimbra/Yahoo has an uphill challenge, as a big percentage of Zimbra’s customers fall into the education and small- and medium-size business markets. It’s a hard sell to get enterprises to swap out their e-mail systems, and the standard open-source entry point (department-level deployments) doesn’t work for e-mail (unless, of course, the customer wants to scale out with Cisco’s Linux-based PostPath drop-in Exchange replacement).

Mike [Arrington, TechCrunch founder] has agreed that:

c) TechCrunch will link to other publications in TC’s coverage.

But I believe TechCrunch’s unfair advantage in covering its own event will be mitigated by policies that TechCrunch50 co-host Jason Calacanis relayed after talking with CNET News Editor in Chief Dan Farber. Quoting an e-mail from Calacanis:

This kvetch may smack of inside baseball to many readers, but it’s been bugging me. Do I really want to spend three days covering an event where I am at such a decided disadvantage, where I’m competing with the event itself? DemoFall, for comparison’s sake, doesn’t compete with other journalists or blogs; It has its own site but it doesn’t have the readership, stature, or aspirations of TechCrunch.

For other coverage of TechCrunch50 and the competing DemoFall conference, see CNET’s Launch Week page, our special Twitter feed, and the other major Web 2.0 blogs like Mashable, ReadWriteWeb, GigaOm, and CenterNetworks. If you like the inside-the-beltway skinny, ValleyWag is also sure to have some fun items.

a) he will not allow TechCrunch editors to bank stories [write them ahead of time].

It stands to reason that TechCrunch the blog will have an unfair advantage in covering the TechCrunch50 event. The same team produces both products, and the company has put a gag order on companies accepted to present on stage. Only the TechCrunch team knows who’s going to be pitching at the event. So it will be easy for them to organize their coverage and even prepare stories on the presenting companies ahead of time.

Good for you, Jason and Michael. I still have issues with the way the event is set up, but if your team holds true to these policies, at least I’m not going into this event with the deck completely stacked against me.

b) TechCrunch will not cover the live demos until after each
session–giving other press outlets first shot at the stories (like an
HOUR advantage!)

This move is also a sound business decision. It makes sense to keep the press happy at TechCrunch50, since press coverage is one of the key drivers for events like this, and since the TechCrunch50 event is such a big moneymaker for the TechCrunch company. Even a blog of TechCrunch’s size can make only so much money from advertising. The real money for a business of TechCrunch’s scale is events, and TechCrunch50, with its 800 to 1,000 (my estimate) paid attendees at $2,995 each, and its roster of five-figure sponsors, is this operation’s big revenue producer.

So here’s the net effect. If you decide to buy a Prius, decrease the United States’ dependence on foreign oil, help improve national security, and do your part to reduce carbon emissions, you get nothing in return because the federal government came up with some lame-brain quota system based on manufacturers and brands of
cars. Ridiculous!

I already own a hybrid (a Ford Escape) but am toying with the idea of going for the gusto by trading in the old Ford for a gas-sipping Honda Civic or Toyota Prius hybrid. When I bought my Ford, Uncle Sam sweetened the deal by giving me a tax credit of around $2,000, so my expectation was a similar financial incentive if I went for a more economical model. Not so fast! In its infinite wisdom, the federal government created one of the dumber set of guidelines you could ever imagine.

I know I’m out on a limb, but I firmly believe that with gas at over $4 per gallon in many areas, the federal government should be reducing the speed limit, pushing states to eliminate tolls, and absolutely persuading taxpayers to buy cars with higher mpg. Given the energy goals we hear everyday from the presidential candidates, the cap on hybrid tax credits is just plain stupid.

Once a manufacturer (for instance, Ford, Honda, Toyota, etc.) exceeds sales of 60,000 hybrid vehicles, the IRS phases out tax credits over the course of a year. Since Toyota is killing it with the Prius, it passed the 60,000 mark years ago.

Your boss might block access to Facebook on the job, but that hasn’t stopped Forrester Research from estimating that social networking will be a huge priority of “Enterprise 2.0.”

In a new report written for the market research firm, as detailed by Larry Dignan at CNET News.com’s sibling site ZDNet, analyst G. Oliver Young predicts that “Enterprise 2.0″ applications–buttoned-up versions of the Web 2.0 apps we all know and love–will be a $4.6 billion industry by 2013. Social networks, Young wrote, will make up the bulk of that, with nearly $2 billion invested in them.

Smaller businesses, meanwhile, seemed a bit skeptical. Sixty-eight percent of small businesses (fewer than 99 employees) surveyed by Forrester said that they had no intention of instituting “Enterprise 2.0″ applications, compared with 51 percent of global companies (20,000+ employees) who said they were already actively buying them up.

This means we’ll probably see a lot of intra-company networking tools (souped-up corporate directories, for example, or internal forums) as well as more interactive varieties of technical support. Not surprisingly, Young’s report predicts the biggest adopters will be large companies where you can’t just stroll over to the HR or IT folks for a little face time, and where instituting collaborative tools from 37Signals or Zoho could speed things up when not everyone’s based in the same building (or time zone).

(Credit:
Forrester Research)

Behind social networking, the Forrester report asserts that the “Enterprise 2.0″ landscape of 2013 will consist of mashups ($682 million), RSS technologies ($563 million), wikis ($451 million), blogs ($340 million), and podcasting ($273 million).

Which companies plan to go all 2.0 on us? Big ones, say Forrester Research.

Keep in mind that malicious scripts can wreak havoc on your system, so be judicious in your use of scripts from unfamiliar sources. Likewise, Chickenfoot may be susceptible to cross-site scripting (XSS), so the developers recommend that you create a separate Firefox profile for Chickenfoot, and use the scripts only on sites you trust.

(Credit:
Chickenfoot)

Chickenfoot was developed by MIT’s User Interface Design Group. It’s similar to the Greasemonkey scripting extension for Firefox, but its scripts tend to be simpler and easier for nonprogrammers to customize.

A silly example of a Chickenfoot script is one that changes the image on the Google home page. First you copy the script from the Chickenfoot site, and then you paste it into the Chickenfoot script editor, swap out the image-source URL for the one of your choosing, and click the Run icon. Gone is the universally recognizable “Google” icon, and in its place is whatever image you chose. Not especially practical perhaps, but a neat little trick nonetheless.

After you download the scripting engine, click View > Sidebar > Chickenfoot (or press F8) to open the Chickenfoot Script Editor. Enter the script in the top pane of the sidebar, and click the Run icon to activate the script for the current page. You can also run scripts by copying and pasting them into the editor, or by clicking the sidebar’s Open icon and navigating to the .js file. By placing the scripts in the Triggers window, they will run as soon as the target page opens in Firefox.

Tomorrow: top online scanners and speed testers.

Run a Chickenfoot script that changes the "Google" image on the site's home page with the image of your choice.

Any task you perform on the Web can be automated by writing a script. But you don’t have to know how to use Javascript or some other scripting language to create your own custom scripts. The Chickenfoot add-on for
Firefox makes it easy for nonprogrammers to devise scripts that do their bidding.

Another Chickenfoot script places an icon at the end of URLs that lead to a PDF download or anywhere other than a Web page. But the real power of Chickenfoot scripts is in customizing those in the various Chickenfoot libraries.

I’m more than a little upset by the news of Wii Sports taking the top sales spot from Super Mario Bros. Suffice it to say that in my mind, regardless of sales, Wii Sports will never compare to any fine franchise and to compare it as such is an insult to those titles.

More importantly, I don’t think Wii Sports is really a “game” in the conventional sense. It lacks a story, offers no measurable ability to get from one point to another, and boasts the most basic functionality.

To be honest, I’m upset that this day has come. I was sure it would happen eventually, but I never believed that it would happen so soon and at the hands of a game like Wii Sports.

(Credit:
Nintendo)

It’s not that I dislike Wii Sports or haven’t enjoyed my time playing it. I just don’t see how it can be held in the same high regard as Super Mario Bros.

Sure, it’s a video game, but I don’t think it can be compared on the same level with games like Super Mario Bros. or any title in the Madden franchise.

According to the report, VGChartz software data for the week ending December 27, 2008, found that Wii Sports “has now passed sales of Super Mario Bros. at 40.24 million units, making it the best-selling video game of all time. The game…reached that milestone after 110 weeks of sales.”

I’m happy for Nintendo that Wii Sports is now the best-selling game of all time, but we should never compare that “game” to the countless others that truly fit the billing.

I don’t see how anyone can call it that. Regardless of sales, Wii Sports is nothing more than a proof of concept that aims at helping new Wii converts get the feel for the console’s interaction mechanism.

VGChartz released internal data Saturday claiming that Wii Sports, Nintendo’s sports title that comes bundled with each
Wii outside of South Korea and Japan, is the world’s best-selling game.

The best-selling game of all time

Check out Don’s Digital Home podcast, Twitter feed, and FriendFeed.

The title held by Nintendo’s great Super Mario Bros. has been vanquished by Wii Sports and there’s really nothing we can do about it. But does being the best-selling game of all time make it the best?

Don’t get me wrong. I remain a believer, overall, in this form of online interaction, however socially stunted it may feel compared with, say, a singles bar. I just think the technology has a ways to go. I found Second Life more immersive, but even so, even the relatively crude communications enabled by e-mail and instant messaging did more to revolutionize my online social interactions.

Google's Lively is a Web-based project similar to Second Life. This shows a re-creation of Google headquarters, complete with the T. Rex skeleton.

A few other differences from Second Life: Lively doesn’t have money. It’s designed to be easier to use, with a drag-and-drop interface. And it’s not programmable, at least yet, so you can only select furniture, clothes, hairstyles, and such from the prefabricated catalog Google supplies.

With Lively, you can set up you own online spaces–rooms, grassy meadows, desert islands, or, in the demo version I tried, simulated Silicon Valley office parks. You can change the clothing or form of your avatar (that’s your online incarnation, for those of you who missed the Second Life hype). And of course you can chat, do backflips, shake hands, and give high-fives.

Money and programmability are both items the company is seriously considering, though, Wang said. A
Mac OS X client also is a high priority, she added.

After that, the novelty wore off even more rapidly than with Second Life. I’m sure it would have been more exciting with somebody else to talk to than a mock-up of Google’s T. Rex skeleton, and perhaps if it were a room that I designed myself.

Integration with the Internet is indeed a significant departure from the Internet, but much of the Lively sales pitch will sound–how to put this politely–familiar to those who’ve already read virtual worlds press releases from years past.

Google on Tuesday plans to unveil an online 3D social arena called Lively, the Internet giant’s take on Second Life. But Google wants it to be part of your first life.

“It’s integrated with the Internet. It’s not an alternate destination,” said Niniane Wang, Google’s engineering manager for the project. “Our intention is to add to your existing life.”

Update 8:17 p.m. PDT: Google amended one Lively detail: the application for MySpace is under development but not yet ready. Also, I corrected a name misspelling.

Integration with the ordinary Internet takes several forms. For one thing, you can pipe in content hosted elsewhere on the Internet, including photos or videos. For another, you can embed your Lively area into your blog or, using widgets Google has written, on Facebook Web pages now and MySpace pages later. And you can e-mail your friends a normal Web address to get them to join.

The idea is to bring a better social dimension to online interaction, Wang said–something more sophisticated for expressing oneself than an emoticon on an instant-messenger status line.

Second Life requires users to download and install a separate “client” software package that taps into the online world. Lively also requires a download and installation–Windows only for now–but then people can use Internet Explorer or
Firefox to enter the virtual world.

“We think there is a desire to socialize in this way,” Wang said, suggesting that’s why Second Life got so much attention when it blossomed in popularity a couple years ago. “We hope this product will help them do that.”

I had a number of burps and hiccups using Lively in my demo on a somewhat elderly but by no means ancient laptop, problems Wang said weren’t widespread. When it’s working correctly, it took a little while to master the controls for moving the perspective and my avatar around.

The i356IS (the “IS” stands for “intrinsically safe”) is built with exploding fuel pumps in mind. According to the carrier, the phone will not release “enough electrical or thermal energy to ignite fuel and cause a fire or explosion.” What’s more, “intrinsically safe devices are safe to use in hazardous areas that may contain flammable gasses, vapors or dust.” Phew.

If you ever bother to read your cell phone’s user manual from front to back, you’ll see a whole section with neat safety warnings. One of them advises you not to make calls in a gas station since the phone’s electrically energy could cause a gas explosion. Sounds like fun!

The i365IS is built with safety in mind.

(Source: Mobiledia)

Other features include support for Nextel’s Direct Connect push-to-talks service, a speakerphone, messaging, GPS, Bluetooth, organizer features, and support for Nextel’s second line feature. Like its i356 cousin it may not be much to look at, but its rugged design is built to last.

(Credit:
Sprint)

While I doubt that many people have heeded the warning, much less read it, Motorola is taking it seriously. Last week, Sprint Nextel
announced the Motorola i356IS, which is a variation of its burly i356 candy bar phone.