Stacy Cowley

America Online Inc. (AOL) named its first instant messaging system interoperability test partner Tuesday: IBM Corp. subsidiary Lotus Development Corp. The two companies said they would begin a trial testing communication between their messaging systems, AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) and Lotus Sametime.

IBM plans to release an interoperability bundle in October that will link Lotus Development

The worldwide labour costs associated with cleaning up the Code Red worm and its variants, including the still-rampaging Code Red II, now total more than US$2 billion

Company plans to refocus on six key development areas and to divide technologies into four branded product lines.

Apple Computer Inc. kicked off this week's Macworld show in New York with upgrades to its iMac and Power Mac G4 product lines, and a pledge that Mac OS X version 10.1, the first major upgrade to its recently released operating system, will ship in September.

IT spending isn't growing as rapidly as it has in past years, but it's still rising, research firm Gartner Inc. said Tuesday as it released preliminary results from its annual IT Spending and Staffing Survey report.

Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) kicked off its presence at this week's PC Expo trade show by announcing a host of new products, including a pair of new consumer laptops, a LCD (liquid crystal display) monitor, several wireless accessories and enabling technologies, and an enterprise package designed to streamline corporate PC deployment and maintenance.

At the height of dot-com mania, in September 1999, the exhibit hall floor at SAP AG's annual Sapphire trade show was packed from wall to wall. SAP's growth in new installations was peaking, and companies flush with venture capital were tossing marketing dollars around liberally to attract those customers.