Among those honored for individual accomplishment was Hector Ruiz, the CEO and chairman of Advanced Micro Devices Inc., who underscored another theme that ran through many of the projects: Using technology to improve the greater good. Ruiz said people throughout the world "are desperately clamoring for the opportunity to have access to this awesome technology" and he believes that finding ways to help that happen is something that motivates everyone involved in technology.

Passion about technology was also evident in Bruno Friedll, systems support manager at Zurich-based Neue Zurcher Zeitung AG, one of the largest newspaper publishers in Switzerland. The company, under its Archive 1780 project, has put 225 years of its newspaper in digital form, including some 2 million pages and 10TB of data, using an automated imaging process. The archives are now searchable online.

Friedll talked about the difficulty of converting Gothic-style text into digital format. When asked about the value of the work and its return to the company, he said there is but one answer: "The value is making history accessible."

Another value from technology is illustrated by BellSouth Corp., which developed an Amber Alert field-notification system that sends information about missing children to the laptops of more than 13,000 field technicians. Jim Wheeler, general manager of network systems, said the company is making the intellectual property behind the system freely available "so your companies can establish your own field-notification systems," he said.

2006 Computerworld Honors Program Winners