IBM gave its online cutting-edge ideas department, AlphaWorks.com, a 10-year birthday party on Sept. 25, and at the same time introduced AlphaWorks Services, a new way to give businesses access to emerging technologies being developed at IBM’s labs. AlphaWorks founder John Patrick, an author and former IBM vice president who is now president of venture capital firm Attitude, was present for the occasion, along with IBM Vice President of Emerging Technologies Rod Smith, IBM General Manager of Developer Relations Buell Duncan and several other company luminaries.

General Electric said on Tuesday that a company laptop containing the names and Social Security numbers of 50,000 current and former employees was stolen in early September. The laptop, issued to a GE official who was authorized to have the data, was stolen from a locked hotel room, the company said. The Connecticut-based company began mailing letters earlier this week to the people whose names and Social Security numbers were on the laptop, to notify them of the breach and to offer a year’s free access to a credit-monitoring service.

The U.S. Commerce Department released a statement on Sept. 21 admitting that more than 1,100 of its laptop computers were either lost or stolen over the last five years, with at least 249 of those machines confirmed to have held sensitive data. With the litany of security issues facing Windows-based desktops and laptops, and other devices with the ability to store sizable amounts of data locally, proponents of thin-client computing say such events provide a perfect example of why their technologies are getting a closer look from many enterprises these days.

Quad-core processors are only the beginning of what a revitalized Intel has to offer, the company’s top executives said Sept. 26. The chip maker will deliver in November its first quad-core processors–chips that incorporate four processors each–for both desktops and servers, said CEO Paul Otellini in an opening keynote speech at the Intel Developer Forum. The quad-core chips themselves will offer up to 70 percent greater performance in desktops and 50 percent in servers.

Security software maker Sophos announced that it is adding a number of so-called application-control features to its flagship anti-virus package in an effort to give IT administrators greater ability to limit access to potentially troublesome programs. The features being injected into Sophos Anti-Virus Version 6, which was first released in June, include tools that are meant to allow administrators to block unauthorized usage of a number of legitimate programs, including consumer VOIP systems, peer-to-peer file-sharing networks, and instant messaging applications.

Hewlett Packard announced Thursday the resignation of general counsel Ann Baskins. Baskins’ resignation follows on the heels of the resignation of Chairwoman Patricia Dunn. Both have agreed to testify at a congressional committee hearing about the company’s possibly use of inappropriate methods to obtain information about board members, who were believed to be leaking information to journalists. Baskins leaves HP after 24 years with the company.

TLCC (The Learning Continuum Company) announced two new distance learning courses for Domino 7 developers. "Beginner LotusScript Programming for Notes and Domino 7 Developers" teaches the basics of the Java language and how to write Java-based agents in Domino. Students learn the basic Java operators, statements and core classes and then use Java to access and interact with Domino Objects. "Using LotusScript in Domino 7 Web Applications" is for advanced LotusScript developers who want to create Domino web applications that can do validation and back end processing for tasks like e-commerce and e-business. This hands-on distance learning course covers how to create LotusScript agents that run when a user opens or saves a document and run agents from a Web browser.

IBM has a new feature demo for Lotus Sametime 7.5. The demo is in the form of a short Flash-style movie.

IBM is going to publish its patent applications online to share their details with the world and, perhaps, reduce the flood of patent infringement lawsuits. IBM made the change in corporate policy public Tuesday after a two-month long research project this summer involving experts in law, academia, government and technology.

Notes.Net/Lotus DeveloperWorks announced that Lotus Notes 7.0.2 will be available for Web downloads from Friday 29 September. As well as the usual maintenance fixes, it contains four well-tailored new features: the ability to import iCal entries from public calendars into your Notes calendar, a new Blog template, RSS enablement tools, and the ability to take your Notes client away with you on a 256Mb or larger USB memory device. I’m going to try my Palm LifeDrive for that. There are some other new features too: Some new programmability functions in Designer. Domino Web Access on Mac Firefox. SAP solutions feature. Domino Server on Suse Linux 10 and on Windows 2003 x64. Run as Admin has been added to the Smart Upgrade, and lastly, support for MS Exchange TNEF messages–you’ll be able to read them directly without fiddling around with conversions. More details at Notes.net, and I’m sure that the download lines will be busy on Friday.–Mick Moignard, DominoPower Senior Technical Editor