Salesforce has been making noises that sound like it'll announce that anticipated, supposedly anti-Microsoft deal with Google on Tuesday June 5. It's assumed to have something to do with Google's online productivity apps.

StarOffice, Road Warrior
Singapore Airlines is going to carry StarOffice for the use of its passengers as part of its KrisWorld inflight entertainment system. Remembering heightened security, Sun says passengers won't have to open their laptops and will be able to access Office and IDF files and export documents in PDF.

IBM Runs Up King-Sized Debt
IBM borrowed a king-sized $11.5 billion so it could buy back 8% of its shares for $12.5 billion, tickle its earnings per share 13%-14%, make its stock popular again, add to the shares it has on hand for options and jack the price up. It's part of the company's latest $15 billion buyback plan. It will cost it $250 million in interest payment this year.

Apple Starts Selling DRM-Free Songs
Ahead of its own May 31 deadline, Apple Wednesday delivered its promised DRM-free music service called iTunes Plus, still a little light on the $1.29-a-song music - only a few albums were initially available. It will operate along side the old 99-cent copy-protected iTunes. Apple also said it would deliver a thing called iTunes U, a bunch of college lectures, lab demonstrations and sports highlights with material from Stanford, Duke, MIT and Berkeley.

AMD Names Ex-Microsoft Canada President to its Board
AMD has named Frank Clegg, the president of Microsoft Canada from 1991-1996 and again from 200-2005 and now the chairman of Navantis Inc, a Microsoft Gold partner, to its board. Before Microsoft, he was with IBM Canada.

Intel, Microsoft & Dell Push NAND
Intel, Dell and Microsoft have formed an Intel-led Non-Volatile Memory Host Controller Interface Working Group to push the adoption of NAND-based Flash memory in PCs by conjuring up a standard software programming interface to be used by operating system drivers. They expect to have a spec in the second half and looking for playmates. See nvmhci@intel.com

IBM Trims IGS Staff
IBM, whose huge Global Services growth engine appears to have run out of juice and faces serious competition from India, cut 1,573 service jobs Wednesday, mostly in North America. That makes 3,720 job cuts at IBM so far this year starting from a base of around 355,000 worldwide at the end of December.