Corporate & legal

Transitive, the company best known for powering the emulation layer that helped ease Apple's transition to Intel chips, announced Tuesday that it is being bought by IBM.

In addition to helping Apple create Rosetta, Transitive eased a number of different architecture transitions in the tech world, including SGI's move from MIPS to Itanium processors as well as an effort by Intel to woo Sun Microsystems customers. IBM was also a customer, using Transitive's tech to allow x86 workloads to run on Big Blue's Power processor-based servers.

IBM didn't say how much it would pay to … Read more

Worldwide mobile messaging grew nearly 10 percent in the third quarter compared to the second quarter of the year, fueled by new trends in the messaging market, according to VeriSign, which provides Internet infrastructure services and delivers messages on behalf of carriers and content providers.

The company reported Tuesday that VeriSign enabled more than 58.3 billion messages per day during the third quarter of 2008. This was up from about 52 billion messages sent during the second quarter of 2008.

On average, this means that VeriSign facilitated the delivery of about 634 million messages per day during the third … Read more

Consumer spending on e-commerce sites grew just 1 percent during October compared with the same month a year ago, according to ComScore.

In fact, last month was the worst growth month for online retail spending since ComScore began keeping track in 2001.

Rising prices and unemployment rates, and the psychological impact of the chaos of the financial markets are to blame, according to ComScore Chairman Gian Fulgoni.

But the dip in spending can't be too much of a shock to those who watch ComScore's monthly reports carefully. The preceding six months featured declining growth rates--April saw 15 percent … Read more

Hewlett-Packard announced preliminary fourth-quarter results on Monday, saying it pulled in $33.6 billion in revenue, up 19 percent from the year-ago quarter, or 16 percent when adjusted for currency effects.

The company earned $1.03 per share, excluding after-tax adjustments related to amortization of purchased intangibles, restructuring, in-process research and development, and other acquisition-related charges of approximately 19 cents per share. Nonadjusted earnings were 84 cents per share.

HP plans to formally announce its quarterly results on November 24.

Looking ahead, the company said it expects currency exchanges rates to continue to be an issue, hitting revenue by about … Read more

Updated 8:29 p.m. PST with analyst comment.

Jerry Yang's resignation as chief executive of Yahoo opens the door wide for another Microsoft offer, several sources said Monday.

"I would expect Microsoft to come back within the next three or four months," said Eric Jackson, an activist Yahoo shareholder who was among the investors angry with Yahoo's management for not accepting Microsoft's previous bid. "I think Microsoft will come back because Microsoft needs Yahoo, despite what they've been saying publicly, and I think they know that," Jackson added.

Financial analysts also … Read more

Just a few months ago, Sid Agrawal, the chief operating officer of a 4-year-old semiconductor start-up in Santa Clara, Calif., was opining on the Silicon India site about the technology industry, noting that "green technology is the buzzword of the day" and bemoaning the challenge of "hiring good analog designers."

On Friday, however, Agrawal, 56, became one of three victims in a fatal workplace shooting that has saddened friends, colleagues, and family members, and left Silicon Valley employees--already shook up over constant reports of layoffs and bad economic news--feeling all the more uneasy.

"Silicon Valley … Read more

Updated 5:11 p.m. PST with Yahoo announcement. Updated 5:21, 6:19 p.m., and 6:57 p.m. PST with further detail.

Yahoo, under fierce financial pressure, has begun a search to replace company co-founder Jerry Yang as chief executive, the company said Monday.

"Jerry and the board have had an ongoing dialogue about succession timing, and we all agree that now is the right time to make the transition to a new CEO who can take the company to the next level," Chairman Roy Bostock said in a statement. "We are deeply grateful … Read more

As large employers, such as Citigroup, prepare for massive layoffs, the bad economic news is starting to hit home for consumers afraid of losing their jobs and already looking for ways to tighten their belts.

The recent spate of poor earnings from all kinds of consumer companies, like coffee giant Starbucks, tell us that consumers are nervous about the economy. And it looks like consumers will continue to be skittish about spending over the next several months. Last week Nokia, the largest maker of mobile phones in the world, announced it's already seen sales slip, and it projected that … Read more

There's some good news for BlackBerry owners with broken or misbehaving phones on their hands: starting Monday, service providers and company IT departments using LogMeIn Rescue+Mobile to remotely cure mobile phones from whatever ails them can now support BlackBerry phones.

LogMeIn Rescue+Mobile is desktop software with a mobile component that lets technicians access the phone's entire file system from their remote dashboard (previous coverage). Prior to this release for BlackBerry OS 4.3+, the remote control software was compatible for Windows Mobile 5+, Symbian UIQ 9.0+, and Symbian S60 7.0+, in addition to Windows … Read more