■COMPUTING
IBM under investigation
The US Justice Department has opened an antitrust investigation into computer giant IBM over its mainframe computer business, a computer trade association said on Wednesday. The Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) said the inquiry into IBM by the Justice Department was opened on the basis of a complaint by CCIA, which was formed over 30 years ago to battle market dominance by “Big Blue.” A CCIA spokeswoman said the complaint detailing allegedly abusive practices by IBM in the mainframe business was submitted last month.
■METALS
Alcoa makes profit
US aluminum giant Alcoa on Wednesday swung to profit in the third quarter after three consecutive quarters of losses, in a positive start to the US quarterly earnings reporting season. The company said its net income was US$77 million or US$0.08 a share in the quarter ended last month, compared with a net loss for the second quarter of US$454 million dollars or US$0.47 per share. Alcoa was the first company in the blue chip Dow Jones Industrial Average index to announce results for the three months through Sept. 30. It was expected to report a loss excluding special items of US$0.09 a share.
Revenues for the quarter were US$4.6 billion compared with US$4.2 billion dollars in the second quarter, a 9 percent increase, Alcoa said in a statement.
■SOUTH KOREA
Lee backs electric car firms
President Lee Myung-bak yesterday offered full government support to help South Korean firms secure about 10 percent of the global electric car market by 2015. Lee said the country should make an all-out effort to develop the technology. His comment came at a meeting of economic policymakers in the research institute of the country’s leading auto group Hyundai at Hwaseong, south of Seoul. The Ministry of Knowledge Economy said it is now targeting mass production of electric cars from 2011 instead of 2013. The government says it will allocate 400 billion won (US$341 million) between now and 2014 to support development of high-performance batteries and other related systems.
■COMPUTING
Software creator acquitted
A Japanese high court yesterday acquitted the creator of a popular file-sharing software program of copyright violations, overturning an earlier conviction. “It was a very fair judgment,” Isamu Kaneko, the 39-year-old developer of the Winny “peer-to-peer” program, told reporters after the Osaka High Court handed down the verdict. “This will obviously have a good impact” on software development, he said. Winny, which Kaneko had made available on his Web site, enables users to exchange files such as computer games and movies over the Internet for free, making Kaneko a cyberspace icon in Japan.
■INTERNET
Voice commands introduced
Bing is getting vocal on a new Samsung mobile phone that lets people command Microsoft’s Internet search engine by talking. A “Tellme” feature built into Intrepid mobile phones introduced by the South Korean electronics giant can also convert spoken words into text messages. The Intrepid features a Tellme button that users press to activate a voice service that lets them tell the smartphone what they want. Google launched a voice search application for iPhones last year and has since made the feature available on Blackberry and Android-based smart phones.
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