blogWS.com: Blog for Webmasters

New .INFO Product Site from Afilias

2008-05-13T08:29:00.000-07:00

Afilias, a global provider of registry services, today announced that it has launched a new product site (www.info.info) where domain name registrars and Internet users can get information about the .INFO domain.

The company avers that the new site contains .INFO WHOIS search, a news blog, statistical information, links, and FAQs about the domain name registration process. A major feature is also a directory of .INFO sites and a submission form where site owners can submit their .INFO Web site to be added to the directory and possibly be featured on the home page. It adds that internet users can also use the ShareThis feature to post information from the new info.info site into their favorite social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, del.icio.us, digg, etc.

Microsoft withdraws Yahoo bid

2008-05-05T13:13:00.000-07:00

Microsoft walked away from its bid to buy Yahoo on Saturday after the Internet company turned down its offer to raise the price by $5 billion to $47.5 billion. Microsoft’s offer was for $33 a share but Yahoo would not lower its demand below $37, Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer said. The software company initially bid $31 per share for Yahoo more than three months ago.

.ORG Registry Launches New Online Resource Center

2008-04-26T12:46:00.000-07:00

.ORG, The Public Interest Registry, announced the launch of the .ORG Resource Center. Committed to improving the online experience of the .ORG Community, it has created a comprehensive library of information, interactive tools, examples and guides to help community members harness the power of the Internet and social networks to advance their mission, claims the Registry.

The Registry states that .ORG Resource Center will serve as a guide through the many uses of .ORG, a non-restricted, versatile global domain name, along with examples of websites where one can see the numerous ways .ORG domain names are being used today. In addition, there is a wide variety of resources available, including social networking tools, wiki building software, fundraising gadgets for websites, technology resources for nonprofit organizations, best practices in web marketing, website building tools, and a number of other easy and useful free widgets for websites.

It declared that along with the .ORG Resource Center it includes the .ORG Featured Partner Program, made up of companies with the experience to be a trusted provider to the .ORG Community. Featured Partners are highlighted with a link to their website as well as an in-depth description of their company, products and services.

"The trends such as collaboration, community building, micro-donations and grassroots advocacy are all ones that fit right in with the values of the .ORG community," says Director of Marketing Lance Wolak. "We are simply aligning proven tools to help our customers further enhance the viability and effectiveness of their .ORG websites."

"Social media's ability to facilitate engagement, self expression and communication is a tremendously powerful weapon for .ORGs," said Jeff Zaretsky, Vice President of Strategic Partnerships and Business Development at KickApps. "KickApps' vision is based largely on making the power of social media as accessible as possible to every web publisher seeking to grow their website's audience. We're very excited to be included in the partner program and look forward to helping .ORGs further their mission."

HostGator Offers 4,500 Free Web Templates

2008-01-03T10:21:00.000-08:00

HostGator, a shared hosting service provider offers 4,500 free website templates to customers and resellers. The templates cover nearly 120 different types of businesses and helps non-technical people to build websites.

The company claims that the free templates cover a broad range of page designs suitable for nearly 120 different types of small and medium-sized businesses from accountants and auto dealers, to cleaning services, consultants, martial arts studios, toy stores, women's health clinics, and everything in between.

It further states that the wide variety of templates makes it easier for resellers to attract people and businesses who want websites, but don't have the knowledge or design abilities needed to create good looking Websites.

The company even states that a reseller or webmaster simply browses through the templates, selects one or more to use and they automatically begin downloading to their computer. And further affirms that hosting resellers and webmasters are also welcome to modify the templates, so long as their websites remain hosted by HostGator. As an added feature, resellers can mirror the templates pages to show to their customers. That can make accessing the templates easy, while maintaining control over who can accesss them.

Although it's common for web hosting companies to offer a variety of perks, including free or low cost web tools, and even a limited number of templates, Oxley says the number of free templates HostGator has is far beyond the average: "I really don't know of any other large hosting company offering this many templates. We may be setting the trend here."

"These templates are free to any Website hosted by HostGator, whether on a shared or dedicated hosting plan, or through a hosting reseller," says HostGator founder and president Brent Oxley.

"We want to make hosting domains or building Websites as painless as possible, that's why we offer the free templates. We also offer free Site Builder, one of the easiest tools available for anybody wanting to custom build a Website, rather than use a template."

"The only restriction," says Oxley, "is that the templates can't be sold or distributed for use on Websites not hosted by us."

Coming soon: 'Google's Gdrive?

2007-11-28T10:25:00.000-08:00

Google Inc is preparing a service that would enable users to store data from their personal hard drives on its computers, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday in its online edition.

Users would be able to house files they would normally store on personal computers -- such as word-processing documents, digital music, video clips and images -- on Google's computers, the Journal said, citing sources familiar with the matter.

According to the Journal, the service could let users access their files through the Internet from different computers and mobile devices when they sign on using a password.

Google launches India Labs, local search

2007-09-18T08:44:00.000-07:00

Google India has launched Google India Labs, and two India-centric products, local search and Google local business centre.

Google Local Search promises to be a useful tool for Indian users who are looking for locally relevant information on the Web. With the launch of this product, users will be able to search for information on local businesses such as restaurants, shops, and hotels by simply doing a search on Local Search

Google Local Business Centre allow any business to add its information to Google Local for free. When users search on Google Local Search, the listed business information will be displayed. Local Business Centre already exists in other geographies and has provided owners with means to provide visibility to their businesses.

Sun Deploys Three New Datacenters

2007-08-25T04:26:00.000-07:00

Sun Microsystems today publicly unveiled three active, new datacenters in Santa Clara, California; Blackwater, U.K.; and Bangalore, India, as part of the company's ongoing commitment to greening its global operations. Put into operation between January and June of this year, all three datacenters were built using breakthrough designs and next-generation energy efficient systems, power and cooling. Sun estimates that the company's datacenter efforts will save the planet nearly 4,100 tons of CO2 per year and trim 1% from Sun's total carbon footprint.

The Santa Clara datacenter is the largest of the three datacenters at 76,000 square feet. Phase One of the Santa Clara project began with a hardware consolidation and refresh project that took three months, increased compute power by more than 450% and is expected to save $1.1 million in energy costs a year. Accomplished in an aggressive 12 months, phase Two involved designing the Santa Clara space and installing the new hardware. Sun estimates that Phase Two will yield an additional 30% savings in energy costs. Silicon Valley Power, a local utility company, has recognized the breakthrough efficiencies and design of Sun's Santa Clara datacenter by giving Sun nearly $1 million in rebates and awards.

The three new datacenters run exclusively on Sun's line of energy efficient products, including Sun Fire(TM) T1000/T2000 servers, Sun's x64 servers and the Solaris(TM) Operating System. Today Sun also announced a suite of programs and solutions under its Eco Innovation(SM) Initiative to help customers architect more energy efficient datacenters and save money.

Is MSN have removed access to backlinks?

2007-05-21T23:49:00.001-07:00

Looks like MSN has removed access to backlinks, queries such as link:, linkdomain: are not working.

For those of you who use some of the advanced query syntax in our search engine such as link:, linkdomain: and inurl:, you may have noticed that this functionality has been recently turned off. We have been seeing broad use of these features by legitimate users but unfortunately also what appears to be mass automated usage for data mining. So for now, we have made the tough call to block all queries with these operators.

You can find more at MSN blog

New Version of Hotmail

2007-05-07T20:43:00.000-07:00

Microsoft Corp today announced the global launch of Windows Live Hotmail, a new version of its popular e-mail service, in 36 languages.

"The new service has been built to be a vast improvement over the previous Hotmail, having incorporated inputs from more than 20 million 'beta' testers," a Microsoft release said.

The new Live Hotmail will deliver safer, more powerful and productive e-mail experience with flexible access via the web, on a mobile phone or with an e-mail client, it said.

Later this month, Live Hotmail subscribers will be able to access their Windows Live Hotmail email and contacts for free, using Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 or Office Outlook 2007 via the new Microsoft Office Outlook Connector Beta.

"With Windows Live Hotmail, you can preview your email, drag and drop emails and personalise your inbox"

Is Microsoft looking to buy Yahoo?

2007-05-04T10:43:00.000-07:00

New York: Microsoft Corp is resuming its pursuit of search engine operator Yahoo Inc that could help it better compete with Web search leader Google Inc, published reports said on Friday.

The New York Post reported Friday that Microsoft has asked Yahoo to enter formal negotiations for an acquisition that could be worth $50 billion. Yahoo's market capitalization was about $38 billion on Thursday.

The Wall Street Journal said executives of the two companies are looking at a merger or some other kind of matchup and said the talks appear to be early-stage discussions. It said the companies explored the idea of combining last year but the talks led nowhere. The newspaper reports each cited unidentified people familiar with the situation.

The Post story said Microsoft and Yahoo have held informal talks over the years and said Microsoft's latest approach to Yahoo signals increased urgency.

Earlier this week, Yahoo said it would buy 80 per cent of advertising exchange Right Media for $680 million, increasing its stake in that company to full control.

Private Nameserver Voice Tutorials from DemoWolf

2007-03-16T10:29:00.000-07:00

DemoWolf.com, a flash tutorials company for web hosting industry, on Tuesday announced the release of a new series of Flash-based Voice/Audio tutorials for creating private nameservers at 15 domain name registrars.

According to the company, these Private Nameserver Voice tutorials are ideal for web hosting companies who allow customers to setup their own private nameservers, and wish to reduce the number of support calls asking for help on how to do just that.

When hosting companies purchase DemoWolf tutorials, they receive tutorials that are branded for their own company. The hosting company's logo is inserted into the first and last frame of every tutorial, and they also get their choice of custom text box colors to further brand the tutorials as their own. The new Private Nameservers Voice tutorials sell for $99.95 for the complete set of 15 tutorials. Each tutorial explains how to create private nameservers and covers a different domain registrar.

Microsoft Launches Windows Vista

2007-01-31T03:38:00.000-08:00

Microsoft Corp., today rolled out Windows Vista at retailers in 70 countries, delivering a new computer operating system that aims to better manage the explosion of digital media and protect users from the dangers of the Internet.

The new operating system arrives after years of delays and a shift away from desktop-based software and towards web-based applications. Nevertheless, the PC industry is counting on the new software to help reignite stagnant growth.

Windows runs on more than 95 percent of the worlds computers, and the long delayed new version is the first major release of a new Microsoft operating system since it introduced Windows XP in 2001.

The company called Vista the most important release of its dominant operating system since Windows 95 more than a decade ago, when shoppers waited for hours to be among the first to run the new software.

Google Apps for Your Domain

2006-12-20T06:51:00.000-08:00

Google, announced the launch of Google Apps for Your Domain, a platform that allows organizations to offer tools like email and shared calendaring to all of their users and have them all hosted by Google.

The company says that they've added domain registration services to Google Apps for Your Domain. The service provides no hardware or software to be installed for the services.

Started on December 14, Google partners with eNom and GoDaddy.com, two domain registrar, to offer users without a domain an easy way to find, register and buy a domain and start immediately using our services. When user's register a new domain as part of the sign-up process for Google Apps for Your Domain, Google will work with their partners and automatically configure everything so it works with all of the services available through Google Apps for Your Domain. It also gives users full control of their domain settings, in order to use their domain for other services not provided by Google.

Google also offers domains for $10 per year, which includes private registration. The company currently support .com, .org, .net, .biz, .info and expect to support more domains over time.

Google Apps for Your Domain includes Gmail web email, Google Calendar shared calendaring, Google Talk instant messaging, Google Page Creator web page creation tools and the Start Page feature for creating a personalized home page for users on their domain.

Google Checkout goes International

2006-12-09T10:22:00.000-08:00

Google Checkout an online payment processing system opens its doors to other countries.

Previously it was opened for only US residents. Now, regardless of where you live, you can purchase items with Google Checkout

Premium Digital Certificates

2006-11-10T09:54:00.000-08:00

ResellerClub, one of the largest private- labeled end to end Web service providers, today announced the introduction of premium Digital Certificates into its comprehensive product portfolio. The certificates will be available to all resellers for special best buy prices starting at $24. The introductory pricing will last upto 5th January 2007. The company has partnered with Thawte- an industry pioneer in digital certificates to provide its resellers with only the best and most premium products.

ResellerClub will also offer its reseller a wide variety of Thawte Digital Certificates. Resellers can select from four different types of certificates namely SSL 123 Certs, SSL Webserver Certs, SGS SuperCerts and WildCard Certificates coupled with the Thawte guarantee and ResellerClub's best prices. With such a wide variety and extraordinary prices, this product is sure to boost reseller sales and increase their market reach exponentially.

pagerank update

2006-10-02T16:35:00.000-07:00

Google started updating toolbar pagerank on friday. New PageRanks are visible at many data centers, but not at every data center, it may take a 6-8 days to reflect pagerank at all data centers. Every 3-4 months google take a snapshot of PageRank values and export them so that the new values are visible in the Google Toolbar.

Keywords in file names may help rankings?

2006-08-31T23:30:00.000-07:00

"Most bloggy sites tend to have words from the title of a post in the url; having keywords from the post title in the url also can help search engines judge the quality of a page."

read more at matt cutts blog:
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/scoble-visiting-the-plex/

LogicBoxes Announces OrderBox v6.3

2006-08-29T17:03:00.000-07:00

LogicBoxes, a software and consulting company, today announced the next release of its complete business automation suite- OrderBox v6.3 for ICANN accredited registrars and Web Service companies.

The OrderBox v6.3, the core engine of the Logicboxes Hostex platform is packed with brand new powerful features including the integration of the popular .EU ccTLD, a comprehensive tax engine to enable service providers to manage their tax sheets efficiently, long awaited Boosted hosting plans that guarantee service providers extra bandwidth, web space, databases and unlimited sub-domains and an updated version of the SuperSite allowing further customisation and branding options.

Google Apps for Your Domain Released

2006-08-29T16:58:00.000-07:00

Google Inc., today announced the launch of Google Apps for Your Domain, a set of hosted applications for organizations that want to communications tools to their users, without the hassle of installing and maintaining software or hardware.

According to the company, in addition to customizing the user interface with their own branding and color scheme, organizations can tailor the service to their needs by mixing and matching the email, messaging, calendaring and other tools offered through Google Apps for Your Domain. Over time, Google will offer versions of Google Apps for Your Domain that are oriented toward the needs of a variety of organizations, from family websites and community groups to non-profits and small businesses, as well as universities, large enterprises, and ISPs.

Google Apps for Your Domain, an expansion of the Gmail for Your Domain service that launched in February 2006, includes Gmail, the Google Talk, Google Calendar and Google Page Creator. Google will provide organizations with two choices of service which are a standard edition of Google Apps for Your Domain available today as a beta product without cost to domain administrators or end users and a premium version of it with more advanced features.

Google and eBay Agreement

2006-08-29T16:54:00.000-07:00

Google Inc., and eBay Inc., yesterday announced a multi-year agreement to benefit both companies' collective communities of users, merchants and advertisers.

The agreement consists of two primary components involving text-based advertising and click-to-call advertising functionality. Google will become the text-based advertising provider for eBay outside the United States. In addition, eBay and Google plan to integrate and launch click-to-call advertising functionality that leverage both Skype and Google Talk in each company's respective shopping and search platforms. The companies said the financial terms for certain components of the deal involve revenue sharing, but did not disclose specific details. The companies plan to begin testing the text-based advertising and click-to-call initiatives in early 2007 that will be evaluated over a period of several months.

Google: New Search Technologies

2006-05-15T11:54:00.000-07:00

Google Inc., announced new technologies to enhance and improve the search experience for users. Three new products – Google Co-op, Google Desktop, and Google Notebook advance the state of the art in search, by helping users find and share more relevant information worldwide.

Google Co-op beta is a community where users can contribute their knowledge and expertise to improve Google search for everyone.

"Google Co-op and the other new services announced today combine the power of Google's technology with the context, knowledge, and unique expertise of individuals," said Jonathan Rosenberg, Senior Vice President, Product Management, Google Inc.

Google Desktop beta offers another way for users to improve their search experience, by personalizing their desktops with the introduction of Google Gadgets. These gadgets are mini-applications that reside on users' desktops and deliver a variety of personalized information such as games, media players, weather and news.

Google Notebook is a simple way for users to save and organize their thoughts when conducting research online. This personal browser tool permits users to clip text, images, and links from the pages they're browsing, save them to an online "notebook" that is accessible from any computer, and share them with others.

The company also introduced Google Trends, a new tool that enables users to examine billions of searches conducted on Google to gain insight into broad search patterns over time. Google Trends builds on the Google Zeitgeist to help users find facts and trends related to Google usage around the world.

PHP tutorials from template monster

2006-04-21T11:14:00.000-07:00

TemplateMonster.com, a website templates provider, started a new site dedicated to PHP – LearnPHP.org. The site contains tutorials and other materials on PHP, MySQL and different Content Management Systems.

According to the company, the project aims to undercover all the secrets of PHP. It is an open project, hence anyone experienced with PHP can submit their tutorials. Currently, there are about 120 materials in the LearnPHP.org collection.

ResellerClub launches New Promo-Engine

2006-04-04T09:36:00.000-07:00

ResellerClub.com, a private-labeled end to end web service provider, today announced the integration of a new promo-engine with its recently launched ResellerClub v6.1 platform.

The promo-engine enables resellers to pass various promotions and special discounts to their sub-resellers and customers. As a part of this integration, the company has also announced sale of .info domain names for $1.49. The new promotional price will be available to all resellers upto June 30, 2006.

The reseller will see a brand new interface in his ResellerClub control panel through which he can set his promo pricing, discounts and package settings, etc. Additionally, the working of the engine is completely automated and does not require any code writing.

Domain Name Analytical Tool from DomainMart

2006-03-19T09:59:00.000-08:00

DomainMart.com, a provider of secondary domain name market products and consulting services, today introduced the brand-to-traffic (B/T) ratio, an analytical tool to determine the best use of a domain name, judge its traffic quality and select portfolios.

The company says that the value of a commercial site's domain name is driven by two, not necessarily mutually exclusive, functionality forces: branding and traffic values. As these drivers are unobservable, to impute their respective values DomainMart uses statistical techniques to combine information on observable proxies.

VeriSign Identity Protection

2006-02-14T11:36:00.000-08:00

VeriSign Inc. (verisign.com/dm/vip), a provider of intelligent infrastructure services for Internet and telecommunications networks, today announced the launch of VeriSign Identity Protection (VIP), a solution that will help provide identity protection for consumers who conduct business online.

VIP is supported by online companies such as PayPal, eBay and Yahoo!. Additionally, technology partner SanDisk has announced plans to support VIP by manufacturing and distributing OATH compliant USB mass-storage and trusted flash devices, while Motorola plans to lend its support in enabling this technology on consumer mobile devices.

VIP is a modern approach to combating digital identity theft targeted for both consumers and online services that demand identity protection. The solution will allow consumers to use a single security device to authenticate themselves across any future VIP-enabled Web site of network members, such as PayPal, eBay or Yahoo!, claims the company. It includes shared authentication network, multi-factor authentication, fraud detection and fraud intelligence network.