Berners-Lee Finally Gets A Reward

After inventing the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee is probably tired of reading in every description of him that he's the only guy who didn't get rich from the Net. Now, that's no longer the case, since TBL just won a million Euros -- about $1.2 million -- from an outfit backed by the Finnish government.

Berners-Lee, who earlier this year was knighted by the Queen of England, will probably find this honor a bit more useful. And now he won't have to hear anymore about how he didn't get rich off the Web. Better late than never.

Enterprise spending on the rise?

Remember earlier this year, when Cisco's John Chambers sent a shiver through the markets by suggesting that enterprises were exercising "extreme caution" on their IT spending? Now that the most-recent earnings reports are hitting the street, some early signs are pointing toward an increase in IT spending.

Specifically, yesterday's positive showing by Ethernet switch vendor Extreme Networks, which reported almost $90 million in revenues for its last quarter, could be a signal that corporations are opening the IT checkbooks again. The real proof, however, will start to be revealed next week, when Juniper Networks reports, to see if it can continue the momentum it built last quarter. The biggie, of course, is the report from Cisco Systems, scheduled for May 11.