An IBM executive who was part of an engineering team that designed the very first IBM PC has moved on to tablets and thinks we're on the verge of the post-PC era. He said as much in a blog post yesterday, the timing of which comes just two days before the 30th anniversary of the IBM 5150 PC, and some six years after IBM sold its PC division to Lenovo.

Companies hoping to shield themselves from costly patent lawsuits have no choice but to play the patent game, which entails building up as big of a patent portfolio as possible. It's expensive, but still cheaper than going to court and risking high dollar verdicts. Some consider it a broken system, including Google, which has publicly called for patent reform. In the meantime, Google is forced to play the game, and according to reports, the search giant just purchased over 1,000 patents from IBM.

International Business Machines (IBM) today announced a new lower-cost mainframe server aimed at mid-size organizations and governments in emerging markets in Asia, Africa, and other parts of the world. The z114 is the latest and most powerful version of IBM's zEnterprise System, and also the most scalable ever. It costs 25 percent less and offers up to 25 percent improved performance compared to IBM's zB10 BC servers, IBM says.

Engineers at IBM Research in Zurich, Switzerland claim they've come up with a breakthrough in phase change memory (PCM) technology that, for the first time, would allow it to store data for longer periods, potentially paving the way for lower cost solid state chips that are faster and more reliable than today's multi-level cell (MLC) flash memory chips. The trick is in figuring out a solution to a problem called "drift."