Posted 10/27/08 at 09:16:00 AM by Pulkit Chandna

Rackspace Hosting has made two acquisitions in a bid to establish itself as a major player in the lucrative cloud computing market. It has acquired Slicehost and Jungle Disk to bolster its Mosso cloud service. The acquisitions are said to be worth $28 million. Rackspace’s Cloud Files, scalable file storage service, will most probably be integrated into Slicehost, according to the Slicehost website.

Jungle Disk, which offers a cloud storage solution for multiple users, uses Amazon’s Simple Storage Service, but will begin offering Rackspace’s Mosso service as well. The two acquisitions will help Rackspace Hosting compete more fiercely with its more accomplished rival Amazon Web Services.

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Internet, cloud computing, web, Amazon Web Services, cloud, rackspace hosting, slicehost, jungle disk, mosso

Posted 10/24/08 at 04:28:29 AM by Pulkit Chandna

Amazon has agreed to acquire casual web gaming company Reflexive Entertainment. The move marks the internet behemoth’s foray into casual gaming. Reflexive was constituted in 1997 and is stationed in Orange County, California. Reflexive is working on a game development and distribution service called Reflexive Arcade.

The Reflexive Arcade service will be restricted to only PC, Mac and web-based games. The true motivation behind this particular acquisition is not yet known. The two companies haven’t made the details of the transaction public.

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games, Software, pc, video games, browser, amazon, Mac, acquisition, developer, web, casual games, reflexive entertainment, distributor

Posted 10/21/08 at 03:08:05 PM by Pulkit Chandna

Last week’s Gmail outage, which lasted for about 28 hours, has once again highlighted a major shortcoming of cloud computing and web-based services. The incidence exemplifies cloud computing skeptics’ greatest concern that unheralded disruptions in cloud computing services might cost businesses’ and individuals dearly.

Some Gmail users – including paying Google Apps subscribers - couldn’t access their accounts between 16 and 17 October. Incensed users expressed their indignation across the internet, while Mark, a Google Apps adviser, provided regular updates on the status of the issue, as long as it lasted.

“We know how important Gmail is to our users, so we take issues like this very seriously, and we apologize for the inconvenience,” Mark wrote in a Google Groups post.

Earlier this year, Amazon’s Simple Storage Service remained unavailable for 8 hours. That particular episode had also spawned similar questions regarding cloud computing. Companies will have to come out with ways to keep outages to a negligible count.

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Software, Internet, Gmail, Google, cloud computing, web, google apps, web-based, docs, outage

Posted 10/15/08 at 06:00:36 PM by Pulkit Chandna

Adobe Flash Player 10 has been released. Its release follows a day after its only notable competitor Microsoft Silverlight 2 became available. The latest iteration of Flash is filled with many enhancements including native 3D transformation and animation, custom filters and effects, advanced audio processing and GPU hardware acceleration.

Adobe’s senior marketing manager in the Platform Business Unit, Tom Barclay, said that the Flash Player 10 is capable of “things not possible with Silverlight 2.” The direct reference to Silverlight 2 underscores the amount of respect Adobe accords to its seemingly innocuous rival – just about enough. Barclay heavily touted the addition of Adobe Pixel Blender-related functionality in the new edition. Flash Player 10 has simultaneously become available on Windows, Mac and Linux.

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microsoft, Software, Adobe, web, silverlight 2, flash player 10

Posted 10/10/08 at 07:57:40 PM by Pulkit Chandna

Facebook is the most visited social network globally and Britain is no exception to this fact. The website is the second most popular website in the UK after Google UK, according to Hitwise. Its popularity in recent times can be gauged from the fact that it registered a staggering growth rate of 2905% from September 2006 to 2007. Of course, the website is probably never going to replicate its performance during that period – its halcyon days.  Its annual growth rate has come down to a more digestable level of 88%.

Its growth in the UK is certainly slowing down. There was only a 4% increase in its traffic between August and September, which is almost negligible compared to the 50% growth during the same period last year. Facebook’s average session time has also come down to 20 minutes.

Is there a message hidden in these numbers? Are social networking websites marching towards their popularity threshold?  Will there be a corrective decline in their traffic?

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Internet, facebook, Social Networking, traffic, websites, web, uk, britain, google uk

Posted 10/09/08 at 10:49:43 AM by Paul Lilly

We would expect to see an increase in ammo, canned food, and other survival sales during the current economic downfall, but local Army Surplus stores aren't the only ones seeing increased traffic as of late. As the stock market continues to slide, people have begun spending more time on the web following the latest news on Wall Street and looking for financial advice.

According to internet tracker comScore, visits to GasBuddy.com, which helps consumers find the lowest fuel prices in their area, are up almost 30 percent. The tracker also expects statistics will show increased traffic to finance and bargain-hunter sites when tallied later this week.

"Investment pages are just red hot right now with people wanting to know what is going on with stocks," Yahoo Finance general manager Mark Interrrante told AFP. "We have been impressed by the traffic. People are not just diving down into stocks but asking what is going on, how it affects them and where it is all going."

Yahoo Finance message boards has seen its traffic jump by 40 percent, and Google searches for the term "stocks" has almost tripled in September. SavingAdvice.com reports "a significant amount of traffic," and self-help startup PeopleJam.com says it has seen interest in personal finance tips jump eightfold in the past month.

Hit the jump and tell us what sites you're visiting.

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Internet, traffic, web

Posted 10/08/08 at 06:33:37 PM by Pulkit Chandna

Now that the possibility of Microsoft acquiring Yahoo has been wiped out, Microsoft is steadily trying to improve its standing amongst search engines through strategic acquisitions and deals. To this end, its Live search service has now been integrated into Facebook. Users can now search the web using Live search from the familiar search bar on the top right corner of the popular social networking website.

The search results are displayed within Facebook and are accompanied by advertisements on the right side - as is the norm with search ads. This particular move is being viewed as a giant stride – at least potentially - for Live search, although Facebook will still has to convince users to use the search feature.

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microsoft, Internet, facebook, Live Search, Social Networking, search engine, web

Posted 10/07/08 at 08:29:29 PM by Pulkit Chandna

Most established web companies have an eye on the social web market. eBay has staked a claim for a share of this burgeoning web segment with its social community website called Tokoni. The public beta of the social community, which allows users to share stories, is over.

Founded by Mary Lou Song and Alex Kazim, erstwhile eBay employees, Tokoni has financial backing from eBay. The press release announcing the official launch seems to suggest that sharing stories through Tokoni would be far easier for the mainstream users compared to other platforms on the social web.

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Internet, EBay, community, web, tokoni, social web