Two long-time IBM execs retire

Two long-time IBM executives are retiring, prompting the technology company to reshuffle its top ranks, says Associated Press.

William Zeitler, 60, who has been running IBM's hardware group, will hand the division to Robert Moffat, who most recently has been in charge of IBM's supply chain. Zeitler plans to retire on 1 August, after 39 years at IBM.

Nick Donofrio, 62, who had been executive VP for innovation and technology, is retiring as of 1 October. He has spent 44 years in the company, beginning when he was still a college student.

Nintendo has thrown down the gauntlet for Mario Kart Wii racers worldwide. Now it's time to see who's up to the challenge, as players take on the world in Mario Kart Wii Tournaments, reports gameinfowire.com.

Every few weeks, a new tournament will appear on the Mario Kart Channel, an online feature that not only allows players to compete in tournaments, but also exchange race data with friends.

Tournaments might take the form of a challenge for players to race a certain course as fast as they can with specific characters, or to collect a number of coins on a course using the Wii Wheel accessory or another control setup. They can feature unique rules or obstacles on the course.

T-Mobile USA has introduced its first commercial high-speed wireless service in New York City, and plans to expand the service to 20 to 25 other major US markets by the end of the year, says InformationWeek.

The launch will help the US mobile unit of Deutsche Telekom catch up with rivals AT&T, Verizon Wireless and Sprint Nextel, which have long sold fast mobile Web services to help boost revenue and keep users.

The move comes amid reports that Deutsche Telekom is eyeing a purchase of Sprint. T-Mobile USA and Sprint use incompatible network technologies.

Sun Microsystems announced a supported version of OpenSolaris at the CommunityOne conference in San Francisco, reports Network World.

After working on OpenSolaris for three years, Sun now has a supported distribution, called 2008.5.

"It's a major milestone in the development of OpenSolaris, and opens the door for more deployments," said Kjell H"ogstr"om, senior systems engineer at Sun in Sweden.