The initiative will drive IBM's cloud computing, data analytics plans across the healthcare industry to enhance evidence generation, service quality, privacy and new incentive models.

IBM announced Thursday that it will spend $100 million over the next three years to develop technology solutions in areas such as systems integration, services research, cloud computing and analytics -- as well as emerging scientific areas such as nanomedicine and computational biology -- to drive technology innovations that will assist doctors, nurses and other clinicians in efforts to improve quality patient care.

As part of the initiative, IBM expects to hire approximately 100 experts including doctors, clinicians, nurses, engineers, economists and social scientists who will work with IBM's researchers and engineers to forge new innovations in health information technology. Additionally, the company will seek new research collaborations with businesses, governments and universities.

Yes, we know you know that in the space of three short years Apple's iPhone has humiliated the entire cellphone industry.

But we bet you won't FULLY APPRECIATE just how completely Apple has laid waste to incumbents like RIM, Nokia, and Sony Ericsson until you look at these two charts from Goldman Sachs (via FT).

First, a chart comparing the total handset industry profits since 2005 captured by:

1) Apple (light blue), and

2) Everyone else (RIM, Nokia, HTC, Sony Ericsson, etc.)

Stuff happens. People and companies make mistakes. If you've had a long-term relationship with a vendor, reaching for the divorce papers too quickly can be the wrong move.  

But what we've learned about Dell recently doesn't qualify as an understandable mistake. Only a rotten company sells defective computers and lies about it. How could anyone in IT or anyone buying a computer for personal use ever trust that company again?

I hate saying this. Although Dell was never a leader in technology, it pioneered a business model, including one of the world's best supply chains, that helped make desktop computing ubiquitous, affordable, and secure. And how could anyone not admire the smarts and drive of Michael Dell, who founded the company in his college dorm room and built it into a multi-billion-dollar enterprise in less than a decade?

One reader points out how a positive experience with a personal purchase affects his decisions as a systems administrator

Tom wrote in with the sort of tale that is so rare at the Gripe Line that I have to solicit them once a year in the form of my kudos-to-those-who-do-it-right Cratchit Awards. For the most part, the Gripe Line puts the spotlight on everything wrong in the world of service and support. When someone takes the time to write about a positive experience, I like to share it.

"I recently ordered a computer kit from Newegg," says Tom. "It wasn't a deciding factor in my order, but the site listed a total of $30 in mail-in rebates. There were two $10 rebates for each paired graphics card I ordered, and one $10 rebate for a CPU cooler. After things arrived and I got the system put together, I went to start the rebate process and found that the graphics card vendor's site limited rebates to one per household."

The less-than-free price point and increasing feature set in Chrome OS and Google Docs will be difficult for PC makers to ignore

Although a niche offering today, the open source Chrome OS is likely to follow Android's success -- so IT decision makers should plan on evaluating Chrome OS-based devices for at least some portion of their user base in the next 12 to 18 months.

As PC World's Ian Paul reported earlier this week, Dell revealed it intends to use Chrome OS as the basis for future offerings. Details surrounding Dell's Chrome OS plans and, more important, Google's offer to PC makers are still murky at best. However, it's likely that Google will follow much of the same game plan as it did with the mobile Android OS.

With gadgets of the iPhone 4's importance, Apple tends to hand out a certain (small) number of early review units to preferred publications. (I don't think it would surprise anyone to discover that Gizmodo is no longer on Apple's nice list.) For the iPhone 4, there were five. Here are the highlights:

HTML5 will spawn richer, more sophisticated Websites while also easing development. Here are nine ways the impact of HTML5 will be felt

Many folks who are just tuning into the HTML5 saga because of the
battle between Adobe and Apple are surprised to learn that the push
to create a fifth official version of the HTML specification
began six years ago. And that's just the first half of the story because
the latest implementations, while nice, are far from standards. The HTML5 demos from Apple, for instance, are
impressive, but they only run well on Safari.

That's how slowly
committees can work. The browser creators and other stakeholders have a
big collection of ideas for improving the browser and the Web, and these
are gradually coalescing into a fifth generation for the standard. But
agreement takes time. Many of the new tags and JavaScript functions
exist already as experiments on some of the browsers, but
interoperability and standardization are still to come. That's why the
Flash groupies joke about HTML5 being a time
machine to take you back to 2000.

News sites are abuzz with scare stories about risks as Microsoft ends support for Windows XP SP2 -- don't believe them

The world is coming to an end! Or at least you'd think so by news reports across otherwise respectable news sites warning of the dangers that companies face when Microsoft ends its extended support program for Windows XP Service Pack 2 on July 13. "Red alert" is what today's Computerworld headline screams, and that story is one of many in the same vein that have been popping up over the last month at various tech news sites.

Guess what? Nothing will happen to those Windows XP SP2 systems on July 14. Windows XP SP2 will be just as stable and secure then as it is now, with six years of patches already applied to it. All that will happen is that Microsoft will stop providing updates to the 32-bit version of XP SP2, as it has long been scheduled to do. And if you use the 64-bit version of XP SP2, you'll get automatic security updates through April 8, 2014. (Here's Microsoft's own explanation of what will happen.)

A pple’s new iPhone, its fourth in four years, reaches stores on Thursday. Ordinarily, this is where you’d expect to find a review of it. But honestly — what’s the point?

The iPhone 4 is already a hit. AT&T says that it received 10 times as many preorders as it did for the iPhone 3GS last year. On the first day of taking orders, Apple processed 600,000 requests — before its ordering system, and AT&T’s, descended into chaos.

In short, the public seems to be perfectly capable of sniffing out a winner without the help of tech critics.

On the other hand, the new model won’t do anything for people who detest the iPhone. It wouldn’t matter if the new iPhone could levitate, cure hepatitis and clean your gutters; the Cantankerous Committee would still avoid it.

Verizon later this year plans to expand its offering with home energy management and security, a move that could signal a quicker route to delivering smart-grid services to consumers.

The company is currently developing an "integrated home management system" that includes both energy and security services, according to spokesman Jim Smith. The intent is to add home management to the menu of options Verizon offers.