- InfoWorld - Mixing together a m??lange of services, software and marketing, IBM's announcement this week of its Cloud Services Initiative is about putting an organizing construct around all of its cloud offerings, according to one IBM executive. - NewsFactor - IBM is getting in the cloud. After a string of announcements over the past few weeks from Citrix, Red Hat, VMware, Cisco and Hewlett-Packard, Big Blue is launching an initiative to extend its traditional software delivery model toward a mix of on-premise and cloud-computing applications with new software, services and technical resources for clients and independent software vendors (ISVs). - NewsFactor - The Facebook duo is no more. One of Facebook's two cofounders is leaving the popular social-networking site. - PC Magazine - Skype's president has acknowledged that users in China have had instant messages both blocked and copied to servers owned by TOM Online, Skype's partner in the country. - 
Reuters - Online social networking site Facebook will set up its international operations center in Dublin, officials said on Thursday.
- InfoWorld - A small business is not necessarily a simple business. That rather basic lesson has taken much of the computer industry far too many years to learn. Successful SaaS vendors have realized that small businesses need the same sort of functions and support that large enterprises get ??? just in smaller quantities. Clearly Microsoft has come to the same realization with the release of Small Business Server 2008. - NewsFactor - IBM has launched an iPhone-specific version of the company's popular Lotus Notes collaboration software. Called Lotus iNotes ultralite, the free download gives mobile business users the ability to securely connect to Lotus Notes and Domino e-mail accounts. - InfoWorld - Ross Mayfield??, founder of Socialtext, unveiled this week version 3.0 of his company's enterprise wiki, which promises to make the corporate directory a social networking tool for the workplace. - 
Reuters - IBM shares tumbled 6 percent on Wednesday, their biggest drop in three years, on concern the world's biggest computer services company's results missed Wall Street targets in the quarter that ended Sept 30.
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AP - Promises of the paperless office have been circulating ever since the first IBM clones started showing up on desks in the early 1980s. Yet we're still tied to printed documents and there's no sign that's going to change.
- InfoWorld - Microsoft on Wednesday is revealing an updated platform strategy to support composite applications in Windows Server and the .Net Framework programming model. - InfoWorld - SpringSource, maker of the popular Spring Framework for Java application development, this week began offering its SpringSource dm Server, an OSGi-based application server to run enterprise Java and Spring applications. - 
Reuters - Social network software maker, Slide Inc has signed a deal with major media companies to distribute video content on Facebook, capitalizing on the success of social networking.
- PC Magazine - Hosted storage, like many other enterprise technologies and Web services from large data centers, is trickling down to small businesses. Western Digital has capitalized on the trend by offering ShareSpace, a four-terabyte storage system for small businesses. - 
AP - National Public Radio, already strong online with free downloads from many of its shows, is boosting its digital ambitions with Monday's introduction of social-networking features akin to Facebook.
