IBM Corp. has kicked a field goal of a deal developing a new content management systems for the National Football League. As part of the three-year deal, Big Blue will build a central digital warehouse to hold all of the NFL’s media assets, including audio, video, Web content and stats, which are generated and used by the league’s NFL Films division and broadcast network partners. At the heart of the project will be the IBM DB2 Content Manager and Universal Database software, in addition to IBM tape storage systems and x- and pSeries eServers. While the financial terms of the deal were not revealed, IBM did note that it will be getting additional sponsorship and advertising opportunities with the NFL.
Chimps go ape for Visual Basic 6.0
Funny enough, this is no joke. A company in Des Moines, Iowa is teaching computer programming skills to chimpanzees and has plans to resell their services in outsourcing contracts. Primate Programming Inc. recently conducted research that claims computer programming is a task that most higher primates can perform. And, according to the company, the primate programming language of choice is Microsoft Corp.’s Visual Basic 6.0. Primate Programming is offering software maintenance and report writing services – all conducted by chimpanzees – for approximately US$0.69 per hour. The company also offers software testing for US$0.45 per hour – a lower price since the chimps require less skill to conduct tests. Visit www.newtechusa.com/ppi/main.asp for more information.
Monster gets the boot from AOL and MSN
Monster.com, a global job search engine, seems to have trouble staying employed. It appears Web portals AOL and MSN, which account for one quarter of Monster’s site traffic, have made a new friend in the job search market. Both AOL and MSN have relinquished their Monster partnerships in favour of CareerBuilder.com as main partner for their respective career sections. However, Monster’s CFO claims it had in fact made the decision not to extend either deal as part of a company strategy that would save US$50 million per year. Both AOL and MSN will replace Monster with CareerBuilder.com by January 2004.