InfoWorld EBusiness Strategy

The rumor mill is in full gear over speculation that Google may acquire Twitter. The news comes from two separate and unnamed sources that claim talks between Google and Twitter are in the late stages, according to TechCrunch#39;s Michael Arrington.

Until this week, the major analyst houses have said the current recession is not as bad as what the tech sector suffered though in 2001 and 2002 after the dotcom bubble popped. Forrester, IDC, and Gartner still all agree that IT spending is down, but whether this recession is worse than the dotcom fallout is now a matter of debate.

IBM and Sun Microsystems are close to a deal under which IBM will acquire Sun Microsystems for about $9.50 per share, The New York Times reported in its online edition Thursday afternoon.

Biomedical informatics researchers at IBM and the Mayo Clinic have launched a new open source consortium focused on natural language processing (NLP), in an effort to help doctors share diagnosis and treatment information.

SAP and its customers disagree not just about the value of its Enterprise Support service, but also about how to measure that value -- and now, it seems, about how close they are to agreeing on how to measure that value.

Two U.S. senators are proposing legislation that would give federal officials significant new authority to create and enforce data security standards both for government agencies and key parts of the private sector.

Hoping to score new business among a rival#39;s customer base, SaaS ERP vendor NetSuite on Thursday pushed its ability to integrate with on-demand CRM vendor Salesforce.com.

Intel CEO Paul Otellini joined a call on Thursday for Group of Twenty (G-20) finance ministers and central bank governors to implement policies that encourage investment in environmentally friendly technologies and agree on a more effective climate treaty, the only head of a major high-technology to sign the letter drafted by the Copenhagen Climate Council.

Rackable Systems said Wednesday it plans to buy the assets of bankrupt SGI (Silicon Graphics) for roughly $25 million in cash, and will also assume certain liabilities.

A long-anticipated set of key performance indicators (KPIs) for SAP#39;s controversial Enterprise Support Service are coming soon, according to a company spokesman.

Jaspersoft is adding integrated in-memory analysis functions and SaaS (software as a service) capabilities to Version 3.5 of its BI tool, released on Wednesday. The move opens the way for application service providers to use it to offer hosted BI services.br clear=both style=clear: both;/ br clear=both style=clear: both;/ a href=http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=0dc07f011c7bf8e555f7914b62790451p=1img alt= style=border: 0; border=0 src=http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=0dc07f011c7bf8e555f7914b62790451p=1//a

Forrester Research is now predicting that U.S. IT spending will drop by 3.1 percent this year, shattering its previous projection of a 1.6 percent increase.br clear=both style=clear: both;/ br clear=both style=clear: both;/ hr / div style=font-size:xx-small;color:gray;padding-bottom:.5emPresented By:/div diva href=http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/ht.php?t=camp;i=0b3f2a81373528d0d75c2ece9ce5b2a1amp;p=1Inside Guantanamo: Sunday at 9P e/p/a/div table border=0 cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 trtd valign=topembed src=http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9/17831997001?isVid=1publisherID=1660622131 bgcolor=#FFFFFF flashVars=@videoPlayer=17854499001playerID=17831997001domain=embed base=http://admin.brightcove.com name=flashObj width=300 height=250 seamlesstabbing=false type=application/x-shockwave-flash allowFullScreen=true swLiveConnect=true allowScriptAccess=always pluginspage=http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/index.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash/embedbr /br /img src=http://images.pheedo.com/g/ngc_bluewhale/brand_logo_80x60.pngbr /font size=2 face=tahoma Guantanamo Bay is one of the world's controversial prisons. This may be its final chapter. With unprecedented access, National Geographic has the story you haven't heard. Both sides, told from the inside, before its doors close forever. Click to learn more and go Inside Guantanamo br //fonta href=http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?a=v3%3Aa271cee67dfff482f0d65fb1ab2dbeb4%3AMr%2Bh0MpnVRLPNJdcAt9CNC9V4bldEKN7LJct7xOR4Qasw2TqiPSywbekHkNSMJBXoLLTgxjqJ6GFDjQrWKxDTti%2BExxPSgB53ImQxT%2Fv%2F65baGhOO2fHMoDRL2wRGFtyEd9rjTRarteEV4MpZVASTMH%2BQlzbT04u%2FQ%3D%3Dtarget=_blankfont size=2 font color=007DC3 face=tahoma Unatgeotv.com/guantanamoU/font/a/td/tr trtdnbsp;/td/tr /table div style=font-size:xx-small; padding-top: 1em;span style=border-top: 1px solid br style=display:none/ a href=http://www.pheedo.com/Ads by Pheedo/a /spanimg alt= style=border: 0; height: 1px; width: 1px; border=0 height=1 width=1 src=http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/ht.php?t=vamp;i=0b3f2a81373528d0d75c2ece9ce5b2a1amp;p=1/ br/ /div

Billionaire investor Carl Icahn intimated on Tuesday that after losing his bid to take over Yahoo last year, he has set his sights on Apple. Should Icahn succeed in his takeover effort, he has a radical strategy planned for Apple: To reposition the company's products as bargain computers.br clear=both style=clear: both;/ br clear=both style=clear: both;/ a href=http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=6ff8d2fafa71b1d9e4f4f9761afae234p=1img alt= style=border: 0; border=0 src=http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=6ff8d2fafa71b1d9e4f4f9761afae234p=1//a

Microsoft requested on Tuesday some $20 billion in bailout funds from the federal government, claiming that as the company controlling an overwhelming share of the OS market, it is too big to fail. The company said low adoption rates for Windows Vista, the ensuing ad campaign trying to convince people that they really do like Vista, and the increased need for development resources to rush Windows 7 to market to make people forget about Vista have necessitated the bailout.br clear=both style=clear: both;/ br clear=both style=clear: both;/ a href=http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=f85ee6a636f4ae2637e443f88643c9cap=1img alt= style=border: 0; border=0 src=http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=f85ee6a636f4ae2637e443f88643c9cap=1//a

In a surprise announcement, Red Hat is looking into a move away from open source and making its flavor of Linux a proprietary OS. The shift, if undertaken, would be a tricky one that would delve into thorny legal issues of ownership within the open source community.br clear=both style=clear: both;/ br clear=both style=clear: both;/ hr / div style=font-size:xx-small;color:gray;padding-bottom:.5emPresented By:/div diva href=http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/ht.php?t=camp;i=763adc584bcb26c350aacd11805c1579amp;p=1Inside Guantanamo: Sunday at 9P e/p/a/div table border=0 cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 trtd valign=topembed src=http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9/17831997001?isVid=1publisherID=1660622131 bgcolor=#FFFFFF flashVars=@videoPlayer=17854499001playerID=17831997001domain=embed base=http://admin.brightcove.com name=flashObj width=300 height=250 seamlesstabbing=false type=application/x-shockwave-flash allowFullScreen=true swLiveConnect=true allowScriptAccess=always pluginspage=http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/index.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash/embedbr /br /img src=http://images.pheedo.com/g/ngc_bluewhale/brand_logo_80x60.pngbr /font size=2 face=tahoma Guantanamo Bay is one of the world's controversial prisons. This may be its final chapter. With unprecedented access, National Geographic has the story you haven't heard. Both sides, told from the inside, before its doors close forever. Click to learn more and go Inside Guantanamo br //fonta href=http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?a=v3%3Aa271cee67dfff482f0d65fb1ab2dbeb4%3AMr%2Bh0MpnVRLPNJdcAt9CNC9V4bldEKN7LJct7xOR4Qasw2TqiPSywbekHkNSMJBXoLLTgxjqJ6GFDjQrWKxDTti%2BExxPSgB53ImQxT%2Fv%2F65baGhOO2fHMoDRL2wRGFtyEd9rjTRarteEV4MpZVASTMH%2BQlzbT04u%2FQ%3D%3Dtarget=_blankfont size=2 font color=007DC3 face=tahoma Unatgeotv.com/guantanamoU/font/a/td/tr trtdnbsp;/td/tr /table div style=font-size:xx-small; padding-top: 1em;span style=border-top: 1px solid br style=display:none/ a href=http://www.pheedo.com/Ads by Pheedo/a /spanimg alt= style=border: 0; height: 1px; width: 1px; border=0 height=1 width=1 src=http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/ht.php?t=vamp;i=763adc584bcb26c350aacd11805c1579amp;p=1/ br/ /div

In a milestone that marks Twitter's evolution from a tool for self-obsessed 20-somethings into a vital part of our nation's telecommunications infrastructure, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has announced it is adding the microblogging service to the national emergency response network.br clear=both style=clear: both;/ br clear=both style=clear: both;/ a href=http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=6753b1bebe2087bc3441233c95e2e915p=1img alt= style=border: 0; border=0 src=http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=6753b1bebe2087bc3441233c95e2e915p=1//a

Global IT spending is expected to decline nearly 4 percent#160;in 2009 over the previous year as industry watchers confirm the current recession will see more losses than the dot-com bust in 2001, Gartner reports.br clear=both style=clear: both;/ br clear=both style=clear: both;/ a href=http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=7f181fdde6d513572e35533a90f7f474p=1img alt= style=border: 0; border=0 src=http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=7f181fdde6d513572e35533a90f7f474p=1//a

China on Tuesday denied suggestions it could be involved in a cyberespionage ring that attacked computers worldwide from servers mostly based in the country.br clear=both style=clear: both;/ br clear=both style=clear: both;/ a href=http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=edddef71a02d413a6f51dc67df5a423cp=1img alt= style=border: 0; border=0 src=http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=edddef71a02d413a6f51dc67df5a423cp=1//a

Web 2.0 Expo kicks off Tuesday with the motto quot;the power of less,quot; hoping that thousands of developers, entrepreneurs, managers, and investors in attendance will see Internet technology opportunities within current budget and resource constraints.br clear=both style=clear: both;/ br clear=both style=clear: both;/ a href=http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=7f474957bc69e984299160361c6f07b7p=1img alt= style=border: 0; border=0 src=http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=7f474957bc69e984299160361c6f07b7p=1//a

The U.S. high-tech industry gained about 77,000 jobs in 2008, despite losses of 38,000 jobs in the fourth quarter of the year, according to a report from trade group TechAmerica.br clear=both style=clear: both;/ br clear=both style=clear: both;/ a href=http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=ccb46634728867959c7853b72936720fp=1img alt= style=border: 0; border=0 src=http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=ccb46634728867959c7853b72936720fp=1//a