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From Crain’s Chicago Business | Chicago-based Web hosting company Hostway Corp. said it has received commitments for $110 million in venture capital to invest in infrastructure and refinance debt. Backers include New York-based venture capital firm Veronis Suhler Stevenson and hedge fund Fortress Investment LLC.
Get the full story: chicagobusiness.com
Associated Press | A computer hacker from Florida was sentenced
Thursday to 20 years in prison for helping engineer one of the largest
thefts of credit and debit card numbers in U.S. history.
U.S. District Judge Patti Saris sentenced Albert Gonzalez of Miami, who
pleaded guilty last year to breaking into computer systems of major
retailers, including Naperville-based Office Max, as well as TJX Cos. and BJ’s Wholesale Club.
Tribune staff report | After being down for nearly two hours, YouTube’s home page is running again.
Beginning at about 6 a.m. youtube.com was returning a “500 Internal Server Error” or an “Http/1.1 Service Unavailable” message to those who visited its home page. Direct links to videos hosted on YouTube appear to work.
Google, which owns YouTube, has not released a statement giving reasons for the outage.
From Bloomberg | Motorola Inc. has removed Google Inc.’s search engine from its Zhishang device shipped to China Telecom Corp. after the search giant said it would no longer comply with China’s requirement that it filter censor search results.
“If you were partnering with Google in China, your business plans have just fallen apart,” said Bertram Lai, head of research at CIMB-GK Securities in Hong Kong.
Get the full story: businessweek.com
Associated Press | Four countries and two territories have won
preliminary approval to have Internet addresses written entirely in
their native scripts as early as this summer.
However, proposals for Internet addresses that would say “China” and
“Taiwan” in Chinese will require a few more months of technical review.
The delay is not over political disputes, but rather because the
Chinese language can be written in two ways — using simplified and
traditional scripts. Rules are being developed to make sure that
addresses in either script go to the same Web sites.
By Wailin Wong | More Americans are simultaneously surfing the Web while they watch
television, according to a new report from The Nielsen Company.
In the last quarter of 2009, Americans spent 3.5 hours a month using the
Internet and TV together, up from 2 hours and 36 minutes in the same
period of 2008. Nielsen said 59 percent of Americans now use the
Internet and TV simultaneously once a month, compared with 57.5 percent a
year ago.
By Wailin Wong | Users
of Twitter reported a new phishing scheme during the weekend, in which
private messages sent via the microblogging service tried to get their
user names and passwords.
Twitter is a mostly public platform, with updates visible to the entire
Web. But members that “follow” each other, or sign up to receive each
other’s posts in their feeds, can correspond privately with a feature
called direct messages. The new phishing scheme sends a direct message
asking “You’re on here?” and a link to a suspicious Web site.
Dow Jones Newswires-WSJ | The retail graveyard is filled with
venerable names that were felled by the recession. Now, some
risk-taking companies are trying to profit by bringing brands back from
the dead.
Systemax Inc., best known as the parent of Internet computer-parts
retailer TigerDirect.com, gambled by buying the rights to the names of
two deceased store chains, CompUSA for $30 million in 2008 and Circuit
City for $14 million in 2009.
Now as the economy crawls toward recovery, Systemax is opening CompUSA
stores in Houston, Chicago and other major markets after successfully
testing the concept in Florida.
From the Consumerist | Sears Holdings-owned Kmart Corp. posted a coupon to the Internet offering $10 off a $20 purchase that it said was intended for the Chicago, New York City and Baltimore markets only. But, it contained the words “valid at all locations” and the coupon was widely circulated to people in other markets via e-mail. The company apologized for the inconvenience.
Get the full story: theconsumerist.com
By Phil Rosenthal | Scott Smith is out after a year at Playboy.com, the last seven months as its editor.
Playboy Enterprises, through a spokeswoman, cited “creative differences” and said Smith’s responsibilities will be split by Sam Jemielity, the Web site’s executive editor, and Sarah Preston Gorenstein, its managing editor.
Get the full story: Tower Ticker
| Dow Jones Newswires | Twenty-five years ago this week, the Internet opened the door to business, and the world changed. Previously reserved for its academic and government users, the national computer network issued the first commercial domain name, symbolics.com, to a now-defunct computer company.
The dot-com trend started slowly. Only five other dot-com domain names were registered that year. Academics especially looked down on the idea of making a profit on the Internet, but the lure of lucre proved more powerful. Companies started selling e-mail addresses and service, then they started using the Internet to sell stuff. |
See also • 100 oldest ‘.com’ domain names • Sex.com to hot to be sold? |
Associated Press | The suitors for Sex.com have been put off for
now. An auction for the much-sought-after domain name was canceled
Wednesday after three creditors filed a petition forcing the owner into
bankruptcy.
Mike Mann, an investor with all three creditors, said the petition was
filed to stop the auction. According to the petition, the creditors
have a combined $10.1 million claim.
Selling the domain name at an auction was not going to enhance its value, Mann said. “It’s gone way up in value,” he said. “It’s the most valuable domain in
the world. They were throwing away the world’s most valuable domain
asset.”
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in 2007. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma)
By Wailin Wong | Social networking platform Facebook racked up the most U.S. hits on its Web site last week, edging past search giant Google to be the country’s most-visited site for that period, according to data from research firm Hitwise.
A construction worker hangs fiber-optic cable in Vermont. (AP Photo/Toby Talbot, File)
By Jim Puzzanghera and David Sarno | Declaring expansion of broadband Internet access the nation’s next great
infrastructure challenge, federal regulators Monday unveiled an
ambitious, decade-long project to make super high-speed connections
available in every corner of the country.
The plan by the Federal Communications Commission sets a goal of making
sure at least 100 million homes have affordable access to networks that
allow downloading data from the Internet at speeds of at least 100
megabits per second — at least 20 times faster than what most people
get today. The proposal, which will be sent to Congress, also seeks to
put ultra-fast Internet access of 1 gigabit per second in public
facilities such as schools, hospitals and government buildings in every
community.
From Fast Company | Though Apple isn’t releasing figures, CNN’s sampling of iPad and other Apple product purchasers suggested that more than 120,000 iPads were ordered Friday, the day pre-ordering began. It’s considered a strong showing for a product getting a mixed reception.
Get the full story: fastcompany.com
