T-Error

On Wednesday, the leading hosting automation and virtualization software provider SWsoft launched the new version of its sitebuilder software.

Key new features are:

Sitebuilder 4.0 features for service providers include:

• Promotional Footers – Add company name or other promotional material on each customer’s published website.
• SSO Support – Gain full access to all Sitebuilder capabilities with unified credentials through the SWsoft Plesk administration console.
• Backup/Restore – Back up and restore individual sites or an entire Sitebuilder server.
• Custom Design Template Support – Create custom templates tailored for specific markets with the ability to create one template that can be deployed across both Linux/Unix and Windows platforms.

Sitebuilder 4.0 features for end users include:

• File Download Module – Provide downloadable content on a website.
• Google Maps – Add area maps and get directions.
• Multiple Image Uploader for Image Gallery – Upload multiple images to user sites at once in the Image Gallery module.
• One-Click Publishing – Publish a website with one click after building it using new interactive text in the five-step design wizard.

Since I am a little bit familiar with the hosting industry and hosting software I’d like to drop some comments.

The new end user features are not really brand new things or rocket science. Competitors like CM4ALL do already offer this (and in a nicer way).
A backup function is not really a feature, it’s a requirement! They shouldn’t praise that as a feature in a press release

The “promotional footers” and “Custom Design Templates Support” are really nice features and I know that service providers will love that! Good move.

Hosting SaaS sitebuilder Software SWsoft

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Dukudu, a promising german Twitter clone was recently on sale on eBay including all of their assets:

http://cgi.ebay.de/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=110141009440

The auction ended at just 43.208,00 EUR (!).

Wasn’t such a bad deal for them. They invested only 25 K and got 43 K through eBay. Nice ROI

The lucky winner ist AllesKlar.de, a german media company that runs portals such as the local MeineStadt.de.

I think that Dukudu could perfectly fit as a mobile extension into MeineStadt.de. Makes sense to me.

Official AllesKlar.de press release here (german).

Allesklar Allesklar.de Dukudu eBay eBusiness Meinestadt.de mobile web Social Web Software Twitter Web 2.0

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It was in the pipeline for some time now and today Yahoo is supposed to announce the acquisition of the sports site Rivals.com

Rivals.com has 185,000 subscribers paying $99.95 per year or $9.95 per month. It’s the US number one reference for college football and basketball.

paidContent.org reports that the price is around $100 million.

Rivals.com competitor Scout.com is owned by Fox Interactive Media, acquired in 2005 for approx. $60 million.

The folks at paidContent have a nice article about the acquisition.

college football eBusiness Miscellaneous rivals.com scout.com Search engines sports Yahoo

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Apparently Rupert Murdoch is in ongoing talks with Yahoo about exchanging MySpace for stakes in Yahoo!

According to The Times (also Murdoch owned), Murdoch’s News Corp will hand over MySpace in exchange for a 25 percent stake in Yahoo! Talks where interruped by the leave of Terry Semel.

Yahoo! is worth $ 37 bn. Murdoch acquired MySpace for $580 million in 2005. The exchange would be a quarter stake in that enlarged company. That equals around $ 12.3 bn. That’s what I would call a nice ROI. It would come in handy for Murdoch since he wants to buy Dow jones.

Yahoo! is interested in social networks (tried and failed to buy Facebook earlier) to face Google.

And now let me cite MySpace founder Chris DeWolfe from a “The Telegraph” report:

“If you’re on your site and you have a line of T-shirts you have designed and you want to sell them to your friends, we want to be able to provide you with the tools you need to do that.
…
So we could partner certainly with someone like eBay to do that. We haven’t decided yet, but it would be probably a good bet that someone like eBay could be a good partner.”

Yahoo <-> MySpace <-> eBay … hmm… thinking of… eBoo!

I believe that eBoo! (= Yahoo + eBay) will happen. It’s only a matter of time.

eBay eboo eBusiness Facebook Google Murdoch mySpace News Corp Rupert Murdoch Search engines Social Web Times Web 2.0 Yahoo

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The new Opera mini beta 4 has been released.

Main advantages are the smooth zooming for web pages (including a mouse pointer!) and the well known server-based page optimization.

Now this is nice:

When you load a page, Opera Mini will automatically suggest a place to begin reading. When it’s time to dive into the page, Opera Mini zooms in and cleanly focuses on the content you want.

Apple claims that with the iPhone the web will become navigable. Hm… wait… doesn’t Opera mini already have all these features?

Oh, and there’s a hilarious video from the Opera guys about Opera mini vs. iPhone. Mocking the known Apple commercials:

Opera mini will make the web navigable for any phone, for any carrier at a very low cost.

Guess who will not?

Apple Browsers cell phone iphone mobile browser Opera Opera mini

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Advertisers can now exclude up to 20 specific IP addresses per campaign.

This is a good step in preventing click fraud (from competitors) and accidental clicks (from within the company/ad agency). You can now also block MFA sites.

Nevertheless this new tool should be used wisely to avoid that you ban wide ranges of potential visitors.

More Info: https://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=61492

Upcoming: eBay Ads and listings exclusion tool for AdSense

Adsense advertising Adwords click fraud Google IP exclusion Made for Adsense MFA Search engines

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The german leading domain marketplace Sedo acquired GreatDomains.com. GreatDomains was founded in 1994 and is specialized in premium domains.

This acquisition will allow Sedo to offer a differentiated service for premium market segments. GreatDomains, which formerly belonged to Verisign, already offers Sedo Domain Parking.

That might not be such good news for Afternic and Moniker …

And there’s also GoDaddy who announced yesterday that it embraces the premium domain market by offering a premium domain option to its customers. It’s btw the same Godaddy that announced a mobile version (tdnam.mobi) of its domain name aftermarket on June 13th.

afternic domain brokerage domain parking domain trading Domains eBusiness GreatDomains moniker premium domains sedo Verisign

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Almost every hosting company offers to its customers a range of 1-click applications like Joomla, PHP Nuke, Wiki, Wordpress etc.

Within its Open Fusion framework, SWsoft now tries to set its “Application Packaging Standard” as a standard.

In one sentence, APS defines a ZIP file with a special XML-file containing meta data of the application. Full specifications here.

This is a nifty move from SWsoft

Establishing a standard should strengthen their position within the hosting industry and tie hosting companies closer to SWsoft.

Besides of that, this “pluggable” approach to distributing SaaS applications would surely be a good thing. It would make it easier for hosting companies to offer applications and developers would be able to increase the spread of their software since they could seamlessly integrate into the hosting environment.

At least that’s the plan.

Let’s see if hosting companies, and more specifically control panel providers other than Plesk/SWsoft and software developers, will adopt that standard. 1&1 (USA) did (in cooperation with SWsoft) and 1&1 (D) is supposed to follow in the second half of this year.

This concept is not really new, Fantastico on cPanel has been around for quite some time now.

1&1 Application Packaging Standard APS cPanel Fantastico Hosting HSP ISV Open Fusion Plesk SaaS SWsoft Web Hosting

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The domain “scores.com” has been sold for $ 1.180.000 (!) and is now among the 25 “seven figures domain sales all stars”.

Considering that there are 68 million registered .com domains, 25 domains seems to be very little.

The chances to hit a jackpot with your domain tend to zero

domain brokerage domain jackpot domain sales domain trading Domains

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Well well well….

Google today suddenly cancelled its “Let Freedom ring” party I wrote about, the counter event to eBay’s conference right now in Boston:

eBay Live attendees have plenty of activities to keep them busy this week in Boston, and we did not want to detract from that activity. After speaking with officials at eBay, we at Google agreed that it was better for us not to feature this event during the eBay Live conference. Google is constantly reaching out to new users and sellers, and we are available to privately discuss any matters of concern with individuals as they relate to Google products. Interested parties may contact us at checkout-reply@google.com.

Link: http://googlecheckout.blogspot.com/2007/06/update-to-our-event-on-614.html

And this page where you could register for the party also changed:

Thank you for your interest in attending. This event will no longer take place as originally planned. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Maybe there was some small pressure from eBay? Maybe after all it’s not such a good idea to mess with eBay which is also one of your biggest customers?

Now who’s your daddy?

eBay ebay conference Google Google Checkout let freedom ring Payment processor PayPal StumbleUpon Yahoo

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