International Business Machines (IBM) and a handful of other major marketers, including casino operator Harrah’s Entertainment and software giant Microsoft (MSFT), are experimenting with developing ad campaigns based in part on what consumers are chatting about on the Web.

For decades, advertisers have relied heavily on sometimes-dated consumer surveys and focus groups to provide grist for their ads. Now, some are using new technologies to scan the Web for key words to find out what consumers are–and aren’t–saying about their brands.

Then, they are incorporating those findings into their more-conventional research and using them not only to choose the overall themes of their marketing campaigns, but also specific text and photos for their ads.

Once the campaigns are up and running, the companies and their ad firms are using the same Web-scanning technologies to gauge consumer reaction to their messages, and to fine-tune them to boost performance.

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On Monday, researchers will release a twice-yearly list of the 500 biggest computers in the world. The latest rankings should provide some new clues about high tech’s relentless speed race, and how it’s being funded.

National labs and other research institutions buy these supercomputers to handle huge number-crunching tasks, like modeling weather patterns, nuclear explosions and aircraft designs. They rely heavily on advances from the semiconductor industry, since each system uses thousands of microprocessor chips–typically supplied by Intel, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and IBM (IBM).

Rankings on the so-called Top500 list are determined by performing a set of mathematical calculations known as Linpack that indicate how fast a system is.

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Dassault Systèmes SA agreed to pay $600 million to buy an International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) unit that sells Dassault’s design software.

The sale to Dassault, which makes software for computer-aided design and product management, removes one of the last vestiges of IBM’s once vast applications-software business. The two companies will retain a formal alliance in which the French company will recommend IBM services and infrastructure software.

Separately, IBM’s board expanded its stock buyback program, authorizing the spending of another $5 billion. It currently has $4.2 billion remaining from previous repurchase programs. The buyback announcement sparked a rally in IBM stock, which rose $1.06 to $121.17 in midday New York Stock Exchange trading.

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Beleaguered software vendor Novell (NOVL), which has been fighting a lawsuit by bankrupt SCO Group for the last several years, could see a silver lining, writes Ladenburg Thalmann analyst Aaron Schwartz in a note this morning. He says SCO may settle with Novell in its claim of infringement of intellectual property SCO holds with respect to the Unix operating system, rather than proceed to a jury trial against Novell.

Schwartz notes that the incoming court-appointed bankruptcy trustee for SCO Group fired Darl McBride, the CEO, on Monday. McBride had made himself a vilain in the world of Linux and open source software by suing numerous parties reselling or distributing the Linux operating system, including IBM (IBM), but also Daimler (DAI), claiming Linux infringes on Unix operating system rights that SCO acquired several years back.

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Within International Business Machines Corp., Robert W. Moffat Jr. was known as a “quintessential IBMer,” rising to Big Blue’s top echelons by relentlessly cutting costs to boost profits. To the rest of the world, he is becoming known as one of the highest-ranking executives to be embroiled in an insider-trading scandal since Wall Street was rocked by such schemes in the 1980s.

The 53-year-old IBM (IBM) veteran, a senior vice president and a close confidant of IBM Chief Executive Samuel Palmisano, was arrested last week and accused of leaking sensitive data as part of an insider-trading ring that prosecutors say is the biggest in a generation.

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A mainframe computer may seem as out-of-date as a typewriter in the age of Google (GOOG) and iPhones. But the half-century-old business is still crucial and lucrative enough to be drawing scrutiny from U.S. antitrust investigators.

International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) is now almost alone in the market for mainframes: high-end computers that run everything from Amtrak’s reservation system to benefits payments for the Social Security Administration. Market-researcher IDC estimated that in 2008 mainframes accounted for 9.9 percent of the world-wide $53 billion server market.

Toni Sacconaghi, an analyst for Sanford C. Bernstein, estimates that IBM’s direct revenue from sales of its System Z mainframes was about $3.5 billion, or less than 4 percent, of its $103.6 billion in2008 revenue.

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Indian technology-outsourcing companies no longer just want to serve their clients’ computing departments–they want to be them.

For years, India’s big tech firms positioned themselves as a cheap alternative to U.S. and European competitors for tasks such as software maintenance and database upgrades. They were content to take whatever work companies like Citigroup Inc. (C) and BT Group PLC parceled out to offshore specialists.

But the days of 30 percent annual revenue growth from such work are over, a casualty of the global economic downturn and increasing competition in the tech services industry world-wide. Now, Indian companies such as Infosys Technologies Ltd. (INFY) and Wipro Ltd. (WIT) are racing to broaden the services they offer and compete for higher-level work that usually goes to larger rivals including International Business Machines Corp. (IBM), Hewlett-Packard Co. (HPQ) and Accenture Ltd. (ACN).

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International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) will try to sell a new package of low-priced computer desktop applications to companies and governments in Africa, challenging Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) and other rivals in the region.

IBM, which has been pushing into developing markets like Africa and Asia as mature markets slow, said the package–which includes basic programs like word processing and email–would be made available to customers via remote “cloud computing” facilities, meaning users could access the programs from the Web. It would cost $10 per month per user, and can run on so-called netbook computers, or low-cost PCs priced around $300.

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The new iPod nano is a tour de force, the Swiss Army Knife of mobile entertainment. I’m sure there’s some obscure gadget from Japan that packs more features per cubic millimeter, but I’ve never heard of it, and chances are neither have you.

This one’s a major consumer product, just in time for stimulating the economy this holiday season. Speaking as a technophile, I want one of the new nanos for the same reason I want a Dremel with 300 different bits: just because.

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Five months ago, a group of media executives including Steven Brill seemed to have the field to itself when it said it was building a system for newspapers to charge readers for access online.

Now, that group appears have a lot of company, like the News Corporation (NWS), led by Rupert Murdoch, and the technology giants Google (GOOG), Microsoft (MSFT) and I.B.M. (IBM), whose interest was first reported this week.

But publishing executives and analysts caution against concluding that this proves there is a robust competition to develop such systems, or even that newspapers will rush to join any of the projects. The contributions of Google and some others are little more than a set of ideas, written up at the request of the Newspaper Association of America, which inadvertently made them public on its Web site.

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IBM (IBM) has often marched to a different drummer in computer chips. But Big Blue will take a step closer to conventional wisdom next year.

No, IBM is not moving away from developing electronic brains for its own servers, as most computer makers have. While some IBM servers do use the ubiquitous x86 chips designed by Intel (INTC) and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), IBM continues to extend the internally-developed Power line of microprocessors for other systems as well as chips for IBM mainframes.

Yet IBM is taking a page out of rivals’ playbook with a chip called Power7 that is due in the first half of next year–not that the product doesn’t include some novel design concepts, too.

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International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) is on a mission to expand its partnerships in Brazil in response to the country’s growing information-technology market.

The Armonk, N.Y.-based computer giant is announcing today the formation of its Sao Paulo IBM Innovation Center, part of a network of 43 such centers that will provide training, consulting services and assistance to bring new technologies to market.

The company will also be making a “more concentrated effort to engage with the venture community in Brazil,” said Claudia Fan Munce, the managing director of IBM’s venture capital group, which invests in venture capital funds but not directly in start-up companies.

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The tech services business has been hot for the last year or so, since H-P (HPQ) bought IT outsourcing giant EDS in May for more than $13 billion. H-P and IBM (IBM), the market leader in services, are now going head to head for big outsourcing deals. PC giant Dell (DELL) is also trying to expand its own services offerings, and smaller players are trying to grow their market share and profits as they look to capitalize on what’s expected to be a wave of new acquisitions in the area.

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About six years and $20,000 ago, I made the switch to Apple (AAPL) products after a 20-year love affair with Microsoft (MSFT). That love affair started with the humble PCjr and ended with an IBM (IBM) ThinkPad. From DOS to the first version of Windows (the run-time version that only loaded one program), and on to Windows 95 and XP, I dealt with the viruses, driver incompatibilities and other assorted quirks of Microsoft’s wildly open ecosystem.

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This was a strange earnings season. But it has been a remarkably strange economy. But when you look at the big names in tech, including Intel (INTC), IBM (IBM), Apple (AAPL), Google (GOOG), Yahoo (YHOO), eBay (EBAY), Microsoft (MSFT), and the big names on Wall Street, there was a bizarre disconnect over what was expected, and what was realized.

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