The dairy, which provides more than 50 Triangle grocers with fresh milk, opened a 2,400-square-foot store last month where visitors can buy milk and ice cream. The ice cream is made on the premises and, of course, with fresh milk. The Maple View Farm Country Store also offers shakes and smoothies. The ice cream is $1.50 per scoop or $2.70 a pint and comes in a variety of flavors, including chocolate, vanilla, double chocolate, mint chocolate chip and teaberry.

The store is located at the corner of Rocky Ridge and Dairyland roads, near Old N.C. 86 (check out www.mapleviewfarm.com for directions). The farm also offers guided tours ($3 per person and by appointment only at 933-3600) on Monday, Wednesday and Friday or there's always the free, self-guided tour on Monday through Saturday.

Later this year the store plans to add other farm products to the store, including ground beef and stew beef from the farm's steers.

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Think: In 2000, for the eighth straight year, IBM won more patents than any other private sector organization. Big Blue received 2,886 patents for inventions in 2000 (up from 2,756 in 1999), according to the United States Patent and Trademark Office. In the No. 2 position was NEC Corp. at 2,020 patents.

For the year, the top 10 patenting organizations consist of four U.S. corporations, five Japanese corporations and one company from the Republic of Korea.

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Good news, bad news: Salaries for information technology professionals are going up in the Triangle at the same time that job cuts in the dot-com world have reached a record, according to two recent reports.

Salaries for IT workers in the Research Triangle Park, Raleigh and Durham increased by 8 percent last year, according to a survey from Matrix Resources, an IT staffing firm based in Atlanta. Chief information officers/vice presidents in our area had the highest average salary at $149,611. Complete survey results for 26 different jobs can be accessed at www.MatrixResources.com.

But those who work for dot-coms are feeling a pinch, according to a study by outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. In January, a record 12,828 dot-com jobs were cut, a 23 percent increase over December.

The firm has recorded 54,343 job cuts from 610 companies since it began keeping track in December 1999. The study also reported that 108 companies have closed.

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Quotable: Once the exclusive domain of stock analysts, more companies are opening their earnings conference calls up to the average investor, according to Feb. 5 article in Business Week.

Part of the reason for the openness comes from the Securities and Exchange Commission's Fair Disclosure Regulation that took effect in October. The rule is designed to forbid selective disclosure of information to analysts and portfolio managers.

Buzz has noticed that several companies with Triangle connections allow the public to listen to conference calls over the Internet. Those companies include IBM, Trimeris, Quintiles Transnational, Red Hat, Cree and NCBC - to name a few. And Cisco Systems earnings conference call will be transmitted over the Web at investor.cisco.com on Tuesday.