Microsoft said Wednesday it would pay $240 million for a small slice of Facebook in a deal that values the red-hot social networking website at $15 billion.

In selling a 1.6% stake to the software giant, Facebook rebuffed a competing offer from search-engine giant Google. (GOOG) Google had no comment.

Microsoft (MSFT) also will sell ads on Facebook outside the USA, extending a marketing relationship that began last year. The deal, announced after several weeks of negotiations, is considered a coup for Microsoft as it slugs it out with Google for online ad sales. Facebook, founded in 2004, has more than 47 million users.

The hefty price paid by Microsoft validates the gambit by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to spurn a $1 billion takeover bid from Yahoo last year. In 2005, News Corp., (NWS) parent of Fox News, paid $580 million to acquire Facebook rival MySpace.

Microsoft covets the data Facebook collects about its members’ tastes and preferences. Microsoft wants to sell ads based on those preferences, ads that appear when Facebook members use Windows Live services, Windows Mobile smartphones — even its Xbox Live online-gaming service, says online search expert Kevin Lee, chairman of Did-it.com.

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In an era pushing for more GREEN cost cutting measures, VMware now dominates the virtualization market. The software is seen as the ideal solution to cut hardware costs and reduce electricity bills for I.T. data centers.

IPO-darling VMware handily beat analysts’ expectations in its first quarter as a public company, tripling profits. And though investors had already priced a powerful quarter into VMware’s lofty share price, which has more than tripled since the software company’s initial public offering in August, the stock surged 5% after the report.

VMware (VMW), which makes “virtualization” software that helps companies pile the work of multiple computer servers onto a single machine, nearly doubled its third-quarter revenue compared with a year ago, generating sales of $358 million. Orders for new software licenses, a key measure of future revenues, also nearly doubled, to $248 million.

Third-quarter net income totaled $64.7 million, or 18¢ per share. Wall Street’s consensus estimate was that VMware would earn 17¢ per share on $334 million in revenues, but the unofficial “whisper” estimate had investors looking for $355 million to $360 million in sales. As such, the results managed to vault the especially high hurdle analysts had set in advance of the Oct. 24 report. Investors bid up VMware shares in after-hours trading following the update, though some of that gain may have been driven by short-sellers forced to cover their positions after betting the company wouldn’t meet the market’s outsize expectations.

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Superlatives were in short supply for anyone looking for perspective on Apple’s financial results released Oct. 22. The consumer electronics company shattered records in its fiscal fourth quarter, and its forecast for the current period blew past Wall Street’s most optimistic predictions. One of the only questions left for analysts in the aftermath concerns what Apple will do for an encore.

For the most recent quarter, Apple (AAPL) reported $6.2 billion in sales, a fourth-quarter record, and finished the fiscal year with sales of $24 billion, beating by $4.5 billion its previous best for annual sales. Apple also reported profit of $904 million, or $1.01 a share. In extended trading, investors propelled the stock $11.99, or 6.9%. That left Apple’s share price north of $186 and brought it within spitting distance of the $200 price target set by many analysts.

Then Apple executives let loose with an even bigger surprise: Rather than give conservative guidance for this quarter—the period that includes the all-important holiday season—they reported expectations that were well ahead of the Wall Street consensus. Apple forecast fiscal first-quarter sales of $9.2 billion, compared with analysts’ forecasts for sales of $8.58 billion. Apple also said it expects per-share earnings of $1.42—3¢ higher than the consensus analyst estimate.

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Brocade Communication Systems Inc. today announced that it is developing what it calls a Data Center Fabric architecture, a product strategy built around optimized server and storage virtualization, application services and policy-based automation that will materialize over the next six months with new products in five categories.

At its annual end-user conference in Las Vegas, Brocade said its Data Center Fabric product roadmap will revolve around applications such as continuous data protection, disaster recovery, file and block data migration across heterogeneous environments, server and storage virtualization, and encryption for data in-flight and at-rest.

Cisco Systems Inc. recently announced a similar strategy at VMworld 2007 in Las Vegas, also calling it a “Data Center Fabric” strategy. Cisco CEO John Chambers said that the data center will consist of a cloud populated by servers, storage and Cisco’s “intelligent” networking gear, all managed by Cisco and its partners — starting with VMware (see: “VMware, Cisco say data center OS is on its way”).

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Cisco Systems Inc. has agreed to buy Navini Networks Inc., a developer of WiMax broadband wireless access systems, for $330 million.

The deal marks Cisco’s first foray into WiMax technology. Earlier this month, Cisco wouldn’t comment on reports that it planned to buy Navini, saying it had no plans to develop wireless base stations using any technology other than Wi-Fi.

Navini makes mobile WiMax wireless base stations.

Wi-Fi and WiMax are wireless networking technologies defined in standards set by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc. WiMax (802.16) has a range over a hundred times greater than the older and more widely deployed Wi-Fi (802.11) family of standards.

Cisco said it is particularly interested in Navini’s expertise with “smart beamforming” technologies used with multiple-input, multiple output antenna arrays, which in Wi-Fi systems allow base stations to handle much higher data throughput.

Cisco plans to fold Navini into its wireless networking business unit. It expects the acquisition, its 124th, to close by the end of January.

Tech bellwethers Intel and IBM offered fresh evidence that the housing slump and financial malaise are separating the economy’s haves from its have-nots. Both companies—the haves, in this case—reported third-quarter gains Oct. 16 that exceeded analysts’ expectations in key ways. For Intel (INTC), the world’s largest maker of computer chips, profit and sales outstripped analysts’ expectations on robust demand for personal computers and the semiconductors that make them run.

At IBM (IBM), sales of computer services rose at the fastest pace in four years. It was enough to exceed the forecasts of some analysts, and more important, offset a drop in demand from some of the most notable have-nots: financial-services firms. IBM Chief Financial Officer Mark Loughridge told analysts on a conference call that U.S. banks and brokerages scaled back spending. That affected U.S. results especially in the area of mainframes, the hulking machines that help companies tackle mammoth data-processing tasks. “Given that the financial-services sector was uncharacteristically the poorest performing segment…and that they are big consumers of both mainframes and related software, there is at least a hint that the credit crunch may have affected the demand in the third quarter,” notes Bob Djurdjevic of Annex Research.

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Now that Apple Inc. has blessed its users with a release date for the next version of Mac OS X — it’s the 26th, in case you didn’t hear — the next order of business for anyone planning to upgrade is to step back, take a breath, put down the credit card and think things through a little.

Is a move to Leopard smart? Your call, obviously. But assuming you give Apple a nod and your $129, here are the questions to ponder as you prep for the Friday after next. We’ll start with the basics first.

What is Leopard? Leopard (Panthera pardus) is both the name of a big cat and the code name for Mac OS X 10.5, the latest in a string of operating system releases from Apple that go by names from the family Felidae. The current operating system, Version 10.4, is Tiger, which was preceded by Panther, Jaguar, Puma and Cheetah, in reverse order. It is the first major release — in Apple’s eyes, that means a shift in numerical nomenclature of one-tenth of a point — since April 2005. It also marks the longest time between releases since Apple started rolling out Mac OS X.

As to why Apple CEO Steve Jobs and company insist on naming their operating systems after cats, you’d have to ask them. But with 41 species altogether in the family, there are enough to keep going for another 43 years or so.

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Here is a recent testimonial where a quick delivery of missing hardware was very important. Patti / Jack,

Once again, thank you very much. I just received the hardware kits. All 3 arrived as expected. Therefore, I now have a total of 4 kits that will allow me to correctly assemble the tables I purchased.

I appreciated the excellent customer service you provided to us, helping to solve this problem with a very quick turnaround. I look forward to dealing with your company in future purchases.

Thanks. Ryan Dotterer
Engineering Leadership Program

Information Support Concepts (ISC) offers a wide variety of blank panels. Blank panels can be steel or aluminum, flat or flanged, black or various colors. We even have vent panels, security panels, and panels with fans.

BL Series 16 GA Aluminum Panel Flanged

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HBL Series 11 GA Aluminum Panel Flat

Horizontal Slotted Vent Panels 16 GA Aluminum Flanged Black Brushed and Anodized (top) or Silver Brushed and Anodized (bottom)

Almost any piece of non-rackmount equipment can be made rackmountable with the use of the appropriate size blank panel.

See this month’s feature article on blank panels, for an explanation of their many uses and benefits. If you have a question about the type of panel that makes the most sense for your application, just call us at 800-458-6255.

Call ISC at 800-458-6255 for more information. Mention the October newsletter article for 5% off*!

What Good is a Blank Panel?

Blank panels come is a variety of heights and are usually made from aluminum or steel. They can have different colors and textures, can be flat or flanged, and can be used for a surprisingly large number of applications. Most people don’t realize that blank panels are very important to their overall rackmount application. So this article’s goal is to provide information you can use in selecting the correct panel for your application.

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Q: I am having a difficult time with my PTRK-2126 cabinet. I have installed my components, and there are wires and cables that plug into the front. When I close the cabinet door the cables interfere. What do I need to do?

Jim Velasquez
Pulaski County IT

A. The PTRK, like all the cabinets we sell, have adjustable vertical mounting rails. In the case of the PTRK, these rails are known as infinitely adjustable. All you need to do is remove the components from the rack, loosen the bolts holding the vertical mounting rails to the frame, and reposition the rails further back in the cabinet. Then tighten the bolts and reinstall your components. That should solve the problem.

Rackmount Ranger

Google said Tuesday that it had bought the Finnish start-up Jaiku, which makes a mobile phone application people can use to send short messages about where they are and what they are doing. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

In a note posted Tuesday on Google’s blog, Tony Hsieh, a product manager for the company, said it believed that Jaiku’s technology could help develop new ways to use mobile devices.

It has made no formal announcement, but Google is reportedly working on an operating platform for mobile devices to make it easier for people to get access to Google when they are away from their personal computers.

Founded last year in Helsinki, Jaiku specializes in mobile phone software that makes it easier for users to share updates about their whereabouts and thoughts. The concept, known as microblogging, is also being promoted by Twitter, a San Francisco start-up.

Google shares closed at $615.19, up $5.57 on Tuesday.