T-Error

Mid december 2007 Google announced its Wikipedia competitor “Knol” (what a name…). My guess is that it will be a huge “success” like Google Checkout (lesson: bad idea to come up with an alternative to a monopoly — especially years later — even when you’re Google) and that only people who also buy iphones will cheer (sorry for the sarcasm ).

But what is funny is that the domain Knol.com doesn’t even belong to Google. It’s owned by a dutch cleaning company that sells vacuum cleaners and steam cleaning equipment. They’re pretty happy about the additional free traffic they receive and even thank Google for that on their site:

Knol Stoomreinigingssystemen wil o.a. de volgende sites bedanken : Google
040 Hosting
nu.nl
Webwereld
TechCrunch
Blogoscoped

De aandacht is echt overweldigend !

Translation: “Knol steam cleaning systems wants to thank the following sites (among others ) […] the attention is really overwhelming!”

How can a company in the internet age decide on a product name without checking the associated domains first? All these people who type-in “www.knol.com” and only find vacuum cleaners? Tsk tsk tsk

Oh and respect for their sys admin - the site is still up despite the traffic.

Domains Google Knol Search engines Social Web Software Web 2.0

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Another little yet useful tool for domainers is ParkingWhois.com. This tool tells you where a domain is parked. Simply enter the Domain Name:

It also gives some information about the parking company, for example this one for Sedo.

Works pretty well!

domain parking domaining Domains ParkingWhois Software Whois

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Stunning. Just one week after SWSoft announced the acquisition of Positive Software and its H-Sphere control panel software (2 million end-users), they now announced the acquisition of SaaS provider Sphera.com (customers: AT&T, Japan Telecom, Telecom Italia…) and its hosting control panel…

Sphera provides automation, provisioning, virtualization and management software for hosting companies, telecoms and enterprises.

“We’re building a broader solution set and customer base as a technology provider — using a standards-based approach — to enable the delivery of SaaS by application developers and service providers,” said Serguei Beloussov, CEO of SWsoft. “Through our three recent acquisitions, we estimate that we will be able to reach nearly 1.5 million additional business customers through our ISV and service provider partners.”

Well this is correct, but standards established by them! If you’re into SaaS and/or value added services for hosting companies there are good chances that you will have to meet their standards. We’ll see how this will have an impact on software manufacturers.

From leading position they now definitely moved to a dominant position. Then you can establish standards. Kind of the Microsoft of Hosting and Virtualization.

Where will they stop, and above all when will the European Union intervene?

Official press release acquisition Positive Software (H-Sphere)
Official press release acquisition Sphera

control panel H Sphere Hosting Provisioning SaaS Software Sphera SWsoft virtualization

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And yet another strategic purchase of Yahoo: they acquired leading open source eMail software and groupware provider Zimbra for $ 350 million. Zimbra was financed $ 30 Millionen venture capital through Benchmark Partners, Redpoint Ventures and Accel Capital. Through this acquisition Yahoo will expand its presence in universities, businesses and ISP’s.

This is a direct confrontation with Google apps of course. Yahoo! having the higher customer satisfaction (according to the American Consumer Satisfaction Index) this is again very good karma for Yahoo!

Yahoo’s CEO Jerry Yang said:

“Zimbra’s tremendous talent and innovative technology will help to extend our core Mail offerings, further strengthening
our strong leadership position in this space. Additionally, Zimbra’s successful relationships with large ISPs are
key as we expand our worldwide partner network and continue to focus on our commitment to being the partner of choice.”

And the big differentiation, the competitive advantage, vs. Google Apps and MS Exchange is that businesses can host their own collaboration softwares like email, contacts, shared calendar and document authoring tools. And it all works in a browser. Businesses are often reluctant to use Google Apps since crucial business data is hosted on Google’s servers. Oh, Zimbra is also offered as a hosted app by the way.

It is also very likely that Zimbra technology will be integrated into Yahoo’s webmailer.

Clever move…

Official press release
Official blog post

eBusiness Exchange Google Google apps groupware SaaS Search engines Software webmail Yahoo Zimbra

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Seems that more Facebook source code leaked at http://facebooksecrets.blogspot.com/. This time it’s the search frontend:

[Blurred]
So that blogger guy still didn’t read his C&D ? Or maybe it’s on its way via snail-mail?

Three possibilities for this new leak:

1. The Apache/mod_php/load theory is true. The code was saved before the Facebook Fix.
2. The Apache/mod_php/load theory is true. There was no Facebook Fix.
3. There is a real security issue.

In any case this is not really good publicity for Facebook and it will surely not inspire confidence.

Some funny findings from the code:

// Holy shit, is this the cleanest fucking frontend file you've ever seen?!

* @package ubersearch
(Not really PC …)

Apache Facebook Facebook hack Facebook source code PHP Security Social Web Software source code Web 2.0

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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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