Conceptualist.com, By Sahar Sarid

Readings for February 12th, 2008

Published on 2008-02-12 19:30:38 0 Comment Edit
URL: http://www.azcentral.com/community/scottsdale/articles/0212s...

One of the Duke of York's key stops during his visit Tuesday to Arizona was to Scottsdale's world leader of Internet domain names.

Prince Andrew, the younger brother of Prince Charles and son of Queen Elizabeth II, visited Go Daddy Group Inc. in his role as United Kingdom's special representative for international trade and investment.

Prince Andrew met privately with Warren Adelman, president and chief operating officer of Go Daddy, before taking a tour of the company's headquarters in the Scottsdale Airpark.

"We had a very engaging discussion about the growth of the Internet, the impact of the Internet on businesses and individuals, and the opportunities for Go Daddy to grow its business in the United Kingdom," Adelman said after the visit.

Prince Andrew also talked briefly with Go Daddy employees in the company's call center.

The prince's staff discussed what the United Kingdom could offer Go Daddy if the firm expanded to Great Britain, though Adelman declined to give details of any incentives. Go Daddy, which has 42 percent of the domain-name market, is considering adding overseas operational units, but said that the company would keep its call center in the U.S.

The British trade agency initiated the visit to Go Daddy because of the company's discussions with various agencies in the country, Adelman said.

"Thank you, it's been a pleasure," the prince told Adelman as he left.

Source: Scottsdale Republic

To Bob Parsons: Impressive PR, get well.

Country Codes Of The World

Published on 2008-02-12 17:12:56 0 Comment Edit
URL: http://www.historyshots.com/OtherArtists/4015.cfm

Country Codes of the World maps 245 top-level domain country codes encompassing all United Nations countries as well as numerous islands and territories. (At the end of every URL and email address is a top-level domain. Although .com is the world's most popular top-level domain, it is far from alone. There are more than 260 top-level domains in use around the world, most of which are country code top-level domains.)
Each two-digit code is aligned over the country it represents and is color coded with the legend below for quick and easy reference.
Each two-digit code is sized relative to the population of the country or territory, with the exception of China and India, which were restrained by 30% to fit the layout. At the other end of the spectrum, the smallest type size used reflects those countries with fewer than 10 million residents.
This map is an excellent resource for managers of global Web sites and global marketing executives. And because there are no country borders, this map has been proven by teachers to be a valuable tool for teaching world geography.
This poster was created by John Yunker of Byte Level Research LLC; Byte Level is dedicated to the art and science of Web globalization.
This map is a registered trademark of Byte Level Research LLC. All rights reserved.

Source: HistoryShots.com

Toronto.com - The Decline of Toronto's Web King

Published on 2008-02-12 16:45:52 2 Comments Edit
URL: http://www.blogto.com/tech/2008/02/torontocom_the_decline_of...

Toronto.com is celebrating its ten year anniversary, or so enthuses a press release which arrived in my inbox this morning. Aahh, Toronto.com. What fun would we have if we didn't have a site like you to kick around? In fact, part of the reason we started blogTO way back in 2004 was because of the general consensus that existing Toronto web sites sucked - with Toronto.com the most annoying culprit of the bunch.

So with its tenth anniversary upon us we thought it might be fun to take a closer look at Toronto.com. Despite all its detractors it's still the elephant in the room. It gets more traffic than any other site covering Toronto culture, restaurants and events. The site claimed to reach 1 million unique users in January which would put it ahead of Now Magazine followed by dine.to, Martini Boys, blogTO, Torontoist, Torontolife.com and Eye Weekly.

But despite its ~~success~~, longevity and prized domain name all is not well in Toronto.com land. A quick peak at the chart above (yes, that's declining web traffic) tells the beginning of the story.

Source: BlogTo.com

Venture Beat: Brace yourselves for the SPAC attack

Published on 2008-02-12 11:06:50 0 Comment Edit
URL: http://venturebeat.com/2008/02/12/brace-yourselves-for-the-s...

Life-science IPOs may be hitting the wall - so far this year, seven biotech and medical-device startups have yanked their offerings - but one part of the IPO market is booming. That's the field of "special-purpose acquisition corporations,"? or SPACs, which are essentially blank-check companies that raise money through initial offerings specifically for the purpose of acquiring other companies.
At Renaissance Capital's IPOhome news page (partial screenshot here, as the flow of news will probably throw off the numbers), fully one-third of the IPO-related items involve SPACs filing, pricing or completing IPOs. Throwing things into an even starker light is the fact that most of the other items - 11 out of 27, to be exact - are all about IPO withdrawals or postponements.

SPACs can buy any target they can afford, but some have shown interest in private companies. In fact, a few have already been active in the life-sciences venture sector, and odds are good they won't be the last. In December, a SPAC took out Precision Therapeutics, a maker of cancer diagnostics that looked shaky to me when it first filed for an IPO. Then just last week, a different SPAC bought up specialty pharma Dynogen Pharmaceuticals.

Source: Venture Beat

TechCrunch: Hearst Acquires Kaboodle for $30+ million

Published on 2008-02-12 10:36:38 1 Comment Edit
URL: http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/08/08/hearst-acquires-kaboodl...

This is the second recent acquisition announcement for Hearst Interactive Media - UGO for around $100 million last month, and tonight they are announcing the acquisition of Kaboodle, a social shopping service that launched in late 2005.

Kaboodle, founded by Manish Chandra, Keiron McCammon, Chetan Pungaliya, closed a key distribution deal with eBay a year ago. Comscore numbers show rapid growth, with 2 million or so unique monthly visitors currently.

The acquisition price is not being disclosed, but we're hearing it was somewhere between $30 - $40 million, all cash. The company raised three rounds of financing totaling $5 million from Shea Ventures, Kanwal Rekhi, Jeff Clavier, Ron Conway, Garage Ventures, Georges Harik, Rajeev Motwani, Iggy Fanlo and others.

One other thing we've heard - investor Ron Conway was "instrumental"? in putting this deal together.

Source: TechCrunch

Domain Name Wire: Threats to the Domain Name Industry

Published on 2008-02-12 10:31:00 0 Comment Edit
URL: http://domainnamewire.com/2008/02/11/threats-to-the-domain-n...

Domain Name Wire has learned through multiple sources that Ask.com's Google feed will no longer be syndicated to parking companies as of March 1. A number of parking companies use this feed to augment other search results. I know that Parked.com uses it for traffic to some foreign companies, and apparently HitFarm and Skenzo use this feed as well. There are likely others. (Ask has not returned my calls for comment.)

Source: Domain Name Wire

My sources for last months are indicating the same. Rumor or not, the threat is all too real.

Rick Schwartz: Time Capsule December 27, 2000

Published on 2008-02-12 06:55:19 0 Comment Edit
URL: http://www.ricksblog.com/my_weblog/2008/02/time-capsule--1.h...

Morning folks!!

This is going to be another "Time Capsule"? post. This post I made on December 27, 2000 on my 5^th year on the net. You will see I say we are entering "Phase 2."? That is particularly appropriate today as I believe we are now beginning "Phase 3"? of all this. So this post is a little over 7 years old. The more things change, the more things stay the same. If recollection serves me right, this post was made just a few months before the collapse. Hope you find a tidbit of value.

"My 5 year anniversary is TODAY.

Source: Rick's Blog

RWW: Delver Reinvents Search

Published on 2008-02-12 06:49:39 0 Comment Edit
URL: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/delver_reinvents_search...

The most impressive thing about the new search engine Delver is that it knows who you are and who your friends are even if you don't import your address book or add your social networking profiles. Instead, Delver leverages the social graph to map out a user's social connections. Since everyone's social graph is unique, like a fingerprint, the same query will yield vastly different results for each user. The results are more personal and meaningful to users than a generic search using "normal" search engine.

Source: Read Write Web

A Look At MainStreet.com

Published on 2008-02-12 01:39:14 0 Comment Edit
URL: http://www.thisisjustin.com/2008/02/11/a-look-at-mainstreetc...

I woke up this morning, got some coffee and readied myself for the day. I drove to breakfast, ate, then headed to the office. I set up my laptop and hit Google Reader, I then saw Jim Cramer's company TheStreet.com released a new site named MainStreet.com aimed to be the TMZ of the personal finance market. Basically, TMZ meets TheStreet.com for normal people who are at different stages in their financial life.

I first looked at the site and was amazed how nice and clean the site looked. The site was simple to navigate and easily understandable, except for video. Finding video on the site was a lonely link at the bottom but once there it was useful. I enjoy how the site breaks up its sections: Beginnings, Endings, Windfalls and Challenges.

Source: This Just In

MainStreet.com, what a GREAT domain name.

Sahar