LENOVO'S RORY READ JUMPS SHIPS TO BE AMD'S PRESIDENT AND CEO

AMD has finally found itself a permanent CEO. The company today named Rory P. Read to the post, also announcing that he'll serve as President and as a member of the board of directors. Read most recently served as President and Chief Operating Officer of Lenovo, and spent 23 years serving in a variety of roles at IBM prior to that. He replaces AMD CFO Thomas Seifert (now returning to his original role), who had been serving as interim CEO since the departure of Dirk Meyer -- who himself only became CEO in 2008 when Hector Ruiz stepped down. For his part, Read says that he's "very pleased to be joining AMD at this important time in its history," and that "AMD is a true innovator and is uniquely positioned to lead the industry forward, delivering the next big thing both within the PC ecosystem and beyond."

LENOVO SHOWS OFF EYE TRACKING TECH

Controlling a mouse pointer on a laptop can be done in one of three ways depending on your hardware. The most common two ways are with a touchpad or a USB mouse. If you have a ThinkPad then there’s the keyboard nub too. Lenovo has decided to prototype another method, though, using an eye control system from Swedish company Tobii.

Using your eyes as mouse input is not always active to avoid frustration and therefore require some keyboard input to work, but it seems to remain intuitive. Holding down a button shows all the active windows you have open and looking at one while releasing the key gives it the focus. If you want to quickly select an object like an image you can look at it and double-tap the left arrow key to load it.

Lenovo and Tobii have also added a new fold out menu system. It works by sensing when you look just beyond the far left of the screen which activates the menu. Items on that menu can then be focused on with your eyes to either bring up another menu or load that item.

Tobii sees eye tracking as viable in laptops within two years as long as the right hardware partner is chosen. Based on that timescale, and if Lenovo continue to see value in this input method, we could get an eye tracking ThinkPad by 2013.