For the last week there’s been a frenzy of news around Chrome OS and Google’s Cr-48 — a new, unbranded notebook computer that Google is distributing to early adopters so that it can test Chrome OS before its big public launch. Google has given some of these laptops to the press (you can see my first impressions right here), and it’s letting developers and other early adopters request one through a variety of contests, forms, and other channels. Unfortunately, not everyone is going to receive a Cr-48 — most people will have to wait til consumer devices ship next year. But we’ve got one more way to boost your odds: the folks at Google have been kind enough to give us five Cr-48 laptops to give away to our readers. Read on to find out how you can get a chance to win.

TechCrunch Giveaway: Five Google Chrome Cr-48 Notebooks

Editor’s note: Brand dollars are still the biggest unclaimed prize on the interent. Guest author Steven Carpenter handicaps the players who are most likely to get them.

One of the biggest business opportunities in the consumer Internet space is to create products and services that attract a share of the billions of dollars in held-up brand marketing that has yet to find its way onto the web. With the explosion of various kinds of content and the innovative ways advertisers can segment and track users, why are marketers so reluctant to open up the floodgates? Quite simply, because the current online solutions—search, lead generation, display, video—do not provide a high enough return for these kinds of categories and are not consistent with the image these brands have invested so heavily to achieve.

Commensurate with the potential riches, there is an enormous amount of startup energy and experimentation going on in this area. In this installment of the TechCrunch Teardown, I will look at the four leaders—Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, and Groupon—and how their new interactions—“like”, “follow”, “friend/check-in”, “group coupon”—are fairing with brand advertisers.

The $20 Billion Opportunity

According to Ad Age, the Top 100 Global Advertisers spent over $100 billion in 2009 across the various print, television, radio, outdoor, and Internet channels; based on data from the previous year, 39 of the 100 had budgets of $1 billion or more (see table 1, click to enlarge). Procter & Gamble, manufacturer of 50 leading brands (such as Tide, Dawn, Pampers, Gillette, and Crest), of which 23 generate $1 billion or more in sales, is the world’s largest advertiser, spending close to $9 billion annually. It should follow, then, that the Internet economy as a whole is effected by how the brand managers at these companies decide to allocate their funds online.

As you can see from the last column in the table at right, the leading marketers are only spending $1.8 billion, or 2.6% of their total budgets, online, despite the fact that consumers are spending close to 30% of their time on the Internet. Of the top marketers, only General Motors, Disney, Bank of America, and News Corp. allocated more than $100 million to the web.

So who has found the best marketing value online? Companies that market and sell financial services, insurance, automotive, communications and media, and consumer technology. It makes sense: these are companies with products that can be found easily using search, and whose customers are most likely to be acquired online because they can transact online. To date, Google and vertical content sites such as Yahoo! Finance and Bankrate have been the largest benefactors of these re-allocated dollars.

New Kleiner Perkins partner, and former Morgan Stanley analyst, Mary Meeker, estimates that closing the gap between consumer attention and ad dollars spent on the Internet to be a $50 billion global opportunity. If the Top 100 marketers bring their marketing budgets in alignment with 30% of time spent, I estimate online brand marketing to be a $30 billion global opportunity and $20 billion in the U.S. As evidenced by Google’s recent pursuit of Groupon, its traditional CPC and display advertising may not be sufficient enough to meet these marketers’ needs.

The Four Horsemen

There are four Internet companies currently best positioned to work with brands to create innovative marketing solutions that will appeal to millions of consumers—Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, and Groupon. I acknowledge it is not exactly a fair comparison for two main reasons: 1) Facebook has enjoyed a 3-4 year head start on the field and 2) each product has a different use case and thus attracts a different audience with distinct revenue opportunities. Each company, though, has found its way into the mainstream and now finds itself with an attractive platform for brand experimentation.

I see the four product experiences these companies offer on a continuum of online-to-offline interaction on one axis, and requiring passive-to-active behavior on the other. The Facebook experience, for example, is largely an online one where a user can say something about herself by associating with a particular brand by “liking” it. This is an incredibly passive expression that requires a split-second action with little to no long-term repercussions. She can choose to visit the brand page and see the news feed at her convenience.

Twitter, on the other hand, is a personal tool for gathering realtime information—no one knows which feeds the consumer decides to consume or to ignore. While Twitter is similar to Facebook in its largely online-focused consumption, it is a much more “active” medium. Users are constantly reminded when they are following a brands’ information stream. As soon as the information becomes unimportant, too frequent, or spammy, she will simply cut off the connection.

Groupon (which I wrote about in an earlier teardown) is the lightest application, ironically, even though it is the only one of the four that requires a user to make a purchasing decision. Transactions occur easily online and the offline experience of presenting a coupon is consistent with decades of proven user behavior.

As of now, Foursquare asks the most of its users in relation to branded campaigns, but it is also the closest of the four to placing customers in the physical proximity of brands and retailers.

How They Are Doing

You can see how the four different interactions 1) naturally lend themselves to different brands and 2) exhibit a large disparity in terms of the sheer number of participants. And this is not necessarily a bad thing: 44,000 passionate luxury fashionistas at NY Fashion Week may be more valuable to Yves Saint Laurent than 5 million fans on Facebook.

It should come as no surprise that the biggest brand in the entire social ecosystem is Coca-Cola with 20 million Facebook Fans. Whole Foods is the biggest brand on Twitter with 1.8 million followers and the Gap, having sold 440,000 half-off coupons using Groupon, is that startup’s largest brand experiment.

Of the top 50 pages on Facebook, 8 of them are leading advertisers and brands, compared to Twitter which doesn’t have a single brand in its top 50 users. Of Facebook’s top 50 brand pages, 31 of them are food and beverage companies, while 11 are consumer products such as Converse All-Stars and Victoria’s Secret. The most important takeaway is that brands have a far greater following on Facebook than they do on their own sites. Facebook’s best move has been to convince brands to market their Facebook pages rather than driving traffic to their own websites.

The most interesting finding is that what seems to be popular on Facebook is not so on Twitter. If you click on the table at right an dlook at the top 50 brands on Facebook, the “Follower/Fan Ratio” (the result of dividing the number of Twitter followers to Facebook fans) does not get higher than 8% (Disney). This indicates that Twitter might have a more difficult time than Facebook in attracting overall brand dollars with its current product feature set.

This is evident when you look in detail at one CPG company and its portfolio of brands. I did a comparison of the differing success of P&G’s top brands using the two platforms (click on table at right to enlarge). In every case except one (Dawn), the branded experience on Facebook is more popular in terms of numbers than on Twitter. In a few cases, there does not appear to be a reason for even having a Twitter presence. It is interesting to note that the most followed P&G Twitter account is the company’s own corporate PR team.

Facebook still has a lot of work to do and it is far from a foregone conclusion that it has won. While the lightness of its interaction makes getting to scale easier, maintaining enough valuable interactions on the branded pages and engaging long-term customer interest is a huge challenge. For example, according to eMarketer, nearly 1/3 of Facebook users who unsubscribed from a branded page simply were no longer interested in it. And, more to the point, simply because Coke has 20 million Fans does not necessarily mean Coke will pay for the privilege to advertise on Facebook if it cannot see a return.

So what brands seem to be working well on Twitter and far better than on Facebook? Daily deals, such as Dell Outlet, Amazon, and Woot, and companies that place customer service and community at the heart of the brand experience, like Zappos and Etsy, exhibit the most lopsided Follower/Friend ratio. It is important to note that two companies that had horrific customer service challenges over the past few years—JetBlue and Toyota—have fully embraced Twitter as a direct communications channel. The biggest driver of Twitter success as compared to Facebook is the timeliness of the information.

Twitter, then, is well positioned to capture marketing dollars from companies optimizing for deals, retailers that have frequent specials, ticketing and events, movie studios, television shows, last minute deals, airlines, and hotels.

It is still early days for both Foursquare and Groupon in terms of working with big brands. Foursquare has seen traction with high-end luxury and media brands, likely as a result of its headquarters being located in New York and early media partnerships. Of course, Foursquare’s long-term viability as a stand-alone “check-in” company is still an open question with Facebook Places breathing down its neck. This is a strategic move on Facebook’s part to get closer to offline actions, transactions, and local commerce.

While Groupon is the defining company of next-generation e-commerce, it has a tougher road in terms of working with brands and large retailers. These companies tend to be more sensitive to heavy discounting as they don’t want to train their customers to wait for 50%-off coupons. And, they don’t like to be so indiscriminate with their offers.

Overall Assessment

I evaluated the four companies along the six different types of offers and campaigns that I can see consumer brands wanting to engage in:

• Coupons: Simple discount off purchases
• Location: Physical check-in or product scan
• Loyalty: Frequency, “Mayorship
• Time-based
• Special Events: VIP’s
• Inventory Close-Outs

Based on my research, while Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, and Groupon are the best positioned to capture the estimated $20 billion in pent-up consumer marketing dollars, none of the four are currently optimized to execute along all of the necessary dimensions. There are considerable opportunities for startups to innovate and capture share. I look for this to be one of the most attractive areas for entrepreneurs in the consumer internet for years to come.

Bugatti teardown photo credit: Flickr/David Villarreal Fernández

TC Teardown: Who Is Best Positioned To Win The $20 Billion Brand Advertising Prize?

We were recently inspired to write up our own year end review of 2010 to go over the highlights of all the accomplishments our staff made during the year. It’s also a great overview of the advancements IPS constantly makes for our customers. Here are the highlights:

December 2009

We began blogging about IP.Board 3.1 and IP.Content 1.2. Everyone was very excited to start revealing the upcoming changes to IP.Board and to further the maturing of the new IP.Content product.

January:

• IP.Chat 1.0.0 released as final. IP.Chat 5 user room provided for free to all customers with an active support contract.
• Blogged about expected updates to our addon applications
• Released public phpdoc documentation for developers
• IP.Downloads 2.1.0 released final. IP.Downloads 2.1.0 provides friendly URLs, upload progress bar, multiple files per record, interface updates, and more.
• IP.Content 1.2.0 released final. 1.2.0 provides WYSIWYG editors, better control over fields, and better support for attachments.
• Gallery 3.1.0 released final. 3.1.0 introduces album cover images, friendly URLs, sub albums, profile picture albums, friendly only albums, and fancy slideshow.
• IP.Blog 2.1.0 released final. 2.1.0 includes support for group blogs, Blog This!, RSS imports, resource improvements and more.
• Continued blogging about IP.Board 3.1 improvements

February:

• Improvements to spam monitoring service.
• Continued blogging about IP.Board 3.1.0 and addon application updates to be expected
• Extended our demo system to 48 hours (extended to 5 days later in the year).

March:

• IP.Board 3.1.0 revealed to the community via updated company forums. New features include profile customization, link sharing, status updates, twitter integration, reputation viewing, ad codes, notification system, soft deletions, and more.
• Continued blogging about expected application updates and IP.Board 3.1.0 changes.
• Skin Generator service launched for free to all active license holders.

April:

• Community Hosting improvements were made allowing for free 20 user chat rooms, IP.Content available for only $5/month, and a switch from generic metrics to user-based limits.
• Continued blogging about application updates, and released betas of the new versions for the community to begin testing.
• IPS Staff is excited to hear the news that Nakisha Thomas, our Director of Customer Service, welcomes the birth of her son.

May:

• iPhone app developed and released for free to the community.
• Skin generator service updated.
• Introduced IP.Nexus as our new business platform.

June:

• IP.Board 3.1.0, IP.Gallery 3.2.0, IP.Blog 2.2.0, IP.Downloads 2.2.0, IP.Content 2.0.0, and IP.Chat 1.1.0 released. Many great improvements for all products available to customers – check out the release topic for a full list. It’s impressive!
• IP.Board 3.1.1, IP.Gallery 3.2.1, IP.Blog 2.2.1, IP.Downloads 2.2.1, IP.Content 2.0.1, IP.Chat 1.1.1 released. Quick bug fixes for the most notable issues in the newest version.
• iPhone app updated to support push notifications, amongst other features.
• Community directory launched to allow customers free exposure to anyone using the iPhone app or browsing our company forums for any site.
• New IPS web site launched.

July:

• IPS conducts a donation drive for Autism research, in part to test our newest upcoming product IP.Nexus, and in addition to raising $1000 via donations from our community, IPS donated a matching $1000 to AutismSpeaks.org.
• IP.Board 3.1.2, IP.Gallery 3.2.2, IP.Blog 2.2.2, IP.Downloads 2.2.2, IP.Content 2.0.2, and IP.Chat 1.1.2 released. In addition to important bug fixes, this release includes enhanced SQL error display, ACP live search improvements, SQL toolbox enhancements, improvements to partial member registrations, and more.
• Forum support launched allowing official support via our company forums.

August:

• Website improvements to make documentation searching easier and better documentation organization.
• Community hosting improvements implemented.

September:

Continued blogging about upcoming updates to our software. IPS does not release roadmaps as they are too easy to stray from and you end up making promises you cannot keep which we never want to do. Instead, we post blog entries when we complete a new feature so everyone knows it’s not just a mockup or an unfulfilled hope.

October:

• IP.Board 3.1.3 released.
• Skin generator updated and improved.
• Release schedule for our products announced. The first and last time IPS has done this!

November:

• IP.Nexus 1.0.0 released.IP.Nexus is our powerful ecommerce solution that allows you to monetize your IP.Board easily.
• IP.Content 2.1.0 released. Features include external widgets, redesigned default interface, block variable help, admin interface improvements, better forum integration, template import/export, and more.
• IP.Nexus 1.0.1 released. As part of our commitment to maintain and update Nexus regularly, we release our first update for Nexus only 10 days after initial release of 1.0.0.
• IP.Content 2.1.1 released. Resolves bugs reported since the release of 2.1.0.
• IP.Board 3.1.4 released. This release includes new like and comment functionality which our other application updates will be making use of.
• IPS Marketplace goes live. The Marketplace allows developers to sell their IPS product addons directly through our site, reaching more customers with less hassle.
• IP.Nexus 1.0.2 released. This release is part of our continuing effort to ensure any issues affecting your ability to monetize your site using IP.Nexus are promptly addressed.
• New release and quality assurance testing two-stage procedure implemented to help enhance quality assurance of releases, and to give customers a chance to test and use the software prior to actual release.
• IPS Staff is excited to hear the news that Lindy Throgmartin, our CEO, welcomes the birth of his son.

December

• In just a couple weeks of activity already paid out over two thousand dollars to Marketplace contributors.
• IP.Blog 2.3.0 released. 2.3.0 includes new like and commenting systems, Facebook like buttons on entries, tweet entry button on entries, a redesigned portal interface, improved notifications, new interfaces, and more.
• IP.Downloads 2.3.0 released. 2.3.0 includes IP.Nexus integration for selling downloads, an overhauled user interface, improved notifications, new like and comment system integration, and much more.
• IP.Nexus 1.0.3 released.

Still to come: Maintenance releases, new IP.Chat version, and IP.Gallery 4.0 reveal!

We are all looking forward to a productive 2011 and will continue to bring you the best community software around!
Invision Power Services: 2010 Year in Review

Earlier today we broke the news that Skype was ramping up in preparation for new web-based products — a big shift for the company, which has historically offered its extremely popular service via native desktop clients.

Now we’ve heard more details from one source about what this new service may entail. We’re still working to firm up the specifics, but here’s what we’ve gathered so far:

According to our source, Skype is hoping to launch its web-based service in the first quarter of next year. The launch will likely include integrations on multiple partner sites — Skype is gunning for some big partners, and we hear that LinkedIn has been in discussions about a possible integration (LinkedIn declined to comment).

As for the web service itself, we hear it will actually be based on browser plugins — this isn’t a full HTML5 solution (note that Google took a similar approach with its own web implementation of Google Voice earlier this year). Skype will promote the plugins to users of its existing native apps.

To monetize, we hear that Skype will be offering a number of premium features, which may include SMS functionality and advanced telephony options. Partner sites that integrate Skype will get a revenue split for the users that they drive toward these premium features. It is possible that these premium features may not be slated for the initial release and will roll out later.

Finally, in addition to the hiring boost we reported earlier today, Skype is also planning to bolster its growth in these areas by acquiring smaller companies.

Obviously VoIP service is going to play an increasingly important role in the coming years, and it sounds like if Skype has its way, it will become a standard feature on many of the web’s most popular sites. We’ll keep digging for more.

More Details On Skype’s Big Move To The Web

The rumors are true! Amazon and daily deals site LivingSocial have just officially confirmed their partnership, with the e-tailer investing a whopping $175 million in the latter. This comes at an interesting time for both companies, amidst even more rumors that competitors Google and Groupon will hook up to the tune of $5-6 billion.

Full press release below:

LivingSocial Announces $175 Million Investment by Amazon.com

WASHINGTON, Dec. 2, 2010 /PRNewswire/ — LivingSocial (www.livingsocial.com) has secured a $175 million investment from Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN). LivingSocial has also secured an additional $8 million investment from Lightspeed Venture Partners. LivingSocial will use this investment to maintain a steady drumbeat of worldwide launches and overall business growth while continuing to serve more than 10 million subscribers across the U.S., Canada, UK, Ireland and Australia in more than 120 locations. Because of LivingSocial’s rapid expansion, the company is currently booking revenues of more than $1 million a day on average and is projected to book well over $500 million in revenue in 2011.

“To be the biggest player in the local commerce space there is no one better to work with than Amazon,” said Tim O’Shaughnessy, CEO of LivingSocial. “As the social shopping space continues to heat up, LivingSocial is committed to staying focused on providing the high level of quality that consumers and merchants have come to expect when working with us.”
As the online source to find amazing experiences at an unbeatable value, LivingSocial lets anyone experience the hottest restaurants, shops, activities and services in their area. The company has dedicated area experts on the ground in every location working directly with business owners, and constantly researching the best in local adventures to bring a savings of 50% to 70% for consumers.
Recently, LivingSocial expanded its business by acquiring adventure company Urban Escapes, and launching three new verticals including LivingSocial Family Edition, Campus Deals and LivingSocial Escapes, a travel site that offers unbeatable savings on curated adventures. In addition, the company continues a regular flow of launches – on average one per day – and has expanded its reach in Australia with a controlling stake in Jump On It, making it live in five countries.

About LivingSocial

LivingSocial is the online source for people to find handpicked experiences at a great value, inviting anyone to save up to 50% to 70% each day on their favorite restaurants, spas, sporting events, hotels and other local attractions in major cities. LivingSocial has an extensive subscriber base of 10 million, and is headquartered in Washington, D.C. To sign up for Deals in your location, or to find out more information about LivingSocial, visit www.livingsocial.com. You can also follow LivingSocial on Twitter at www.twitter.com/livingsocial.

About Amazon.com

Amazon.com, Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN), a Fortune 500 company based in Seattle, opened on the World Wide Web in July 1995 and today offers Earth’s Biggest Selection. Amazon.com, Inc. seeks to be Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online, and endeavors to offer its customers the lowest possible prices. Amazon.com and other sellers offer millions of unique new, refurbished and used items in categories such as Books; Movies, Music & Games; Digital Downloads; Electronics & Computers; Home & Garden; Toys, Kids & Baby; Grocery; Apparel, Shoes & Jewelry; Health & Beauty; Sports & Outdoors; and Tools, Auto & Industrial. Amazon Web Services provides Amazon’s developer customers with access to in-the-cloud infrastructure services based on Amazon’s own back-end technology platform, which developers can use to enable virtually any type of business. Kindle and Kindle DX are the revolutionary portable readers that wirelessly download books, magazines, newspapers, blogs and personal documents to a crisp, high-resolution electronic ink display that looks and reads like real paper. Kindle and Kindle DX utilize the same 3G wireless technology as advanced cell phones, so users never need to hunt for a Wi-Fi hotspot. Readers who don’t need the convenience of free 3G wireless can choose Kindle Wi-Fi for a lower price. Kindle is the #1 bestselling product across the millions of items sold on Amazon.

Amazon and its affiliates operate websites, including www.amazon.com, www.amazon.co.uk, www.amazon.de, www.amazon.co.jp, www.amazon.fr, www.amazon.ca, www.amazon.cn, and www.amazon.it. As used herein, “Amazon.com,” “we,” “our” and similar terms include Amazon.com, Inc., and its subsidiaries, unless the context indicates otherwise.

Forward-Looking Statements

This announcement contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Actual results may differ significantly from management’s expectations. These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that include, among others, risks related to competition, management of growth, new products, services and technologies, potential fluctuations in operating results, international expansion, outcomes of legal proceedings and claims, fulfillment center optimization, seasonality, commercial agreements, acquisitions and strategic transactions, foreign exchange rates, system interruption, inventory, government regulation and taxation, payments and fraud. More information about factors that potentially could affect Amazon.com’s financial results is included in Amazon.com’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K and subsequent filings.

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Amazon

LivingSocial

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LivingSocial Confirms $175 Million Amazon Investment

]]> http://www.invisionskins.net/livingsocial-confirms-175-million-amazon-investment/feed/ 0 http://www.invisionskins.net/amazon-pulls-hosting-services-for-wikileaks/ http://www.invisionskins.net/amazon-pulls-hosting-services-for-wikileaks/#comments Wed, 01 Dec 2010 19:38:37 +0000 admin http://invisionskins.net/amazon-pulls-hosting-services-for-wikileaks/

WikiLeaks was briefly down this morning not only because of ongoing DDoS attacks, but because it was actually taken off Amazon Web Services by Amazon and moved back to a Swedish provider, according to this tweet from Reuters.

WikiLeaks has been in the news almost every day since it released 251,287 U.S. diplomatic cables to major media organizations on Sunday. Yesterday founder Julian Assange was put on Interpol’s Wanted list for non-WikiLeaks related charges.

Neither Amazon or WikiLeaks have commented on the matter.

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WikiLeaks

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Amazon Pulls Hosting Services For WikiLeaks

]]> http://www.invisionskins.net/amazon-pulls-hosting-services-for-wikileaks/feed/ 0 http://www.invisionskins.net/flash-sales-site-gilt-groupe-to-open-traditional-online-retail-store-for-men/ http://www.invisionskins.net/flash-sales-site-gilt-groupe-to-open-traditional-online-retail-store-for-men/#comments Tue, 30 Nov 2010 15:50:42 +0000 admin http://invisionskins.net/flash-sales-site-gilt-groupe-to-open-traditional-online-retail-store-for-men/

Gilt Groupe has made a name for itself, particularly in the United States, for operating a successful flash sales site that offers its members products and experiences at heavily discounted prices for a limited period of time.

Now, the company is turning to traditional e-commerce for its next trick.

Gilt this morning announced that it will be debuting a full-price men’s business as a dedicated website in Summer 2011 (to coincide with Pre-Fall 2011 collections).

The company says the new site, the name of which hasn’t been disclosed yet, will offer a selection of men’s apparel, accessories, athletic gear, gadgets, and more. Aside from a “state-of-the-art shopping experience”, the site promises to throw editorial content into the mix.

John Auerbach, currently General Manager of Gilt Groupe’s $100 million+ Gilt MAN business, will be President of the new site. Brooke Cundiff, formerly Director of Men’s Brand management at Gilt rival Rue La La and Associate Divisional Merchandise Manager of Saks Fifth Avenue, will become Divisional Merchandising Manager of the new business.

Brian Kalma, formerly head of user experience at Gilt and prior to that head of user experience and web strategy at Zappos, will be in charge of user experience for the new site.

Gilt Groupe says the mixture of brands on the full-price site will be similar to the curated assortment currently available on Gilt MAN, and items will live on the site according to seasonality in contrast to its current flash sales model.

Kevin Ryan, founder and CEO of Gilt Groupe in a statement says the company has already signed up 400,000 male customers and 350 brand partners to date.

Online fashion retail stores seem to be having quite an upswing of late, with Google launching Boutiques.com and eBay running a one-stop-shop for all things fashion.

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Gilt Groupe

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Flash Sales Site Gilt Groupe To Open Traditional Online Retail Store For Men

]]> http://www.invisionskins.net/flash-sales-site-gilt-groupe-to-open-traditional-online-retail-store-for-men/feed/ 0 http://www.invisionskins.net/red-hat-acquires-cloud-application-platform-as-a-service-makara/ http://www.invisionskins.net/red-hat-acquires-cloud-application-platform-as-a-service-makara/#comments Tue, 30 Nov 2010 15:44:10 +0000 admin http://invisionskins.net/red-hat-acquires-cloud-application-platform-as-a-service-makara/

Open source software giant Red Hat has acquired cloud application deployment and management platform Makara.

Makara, which was rumored to be in talks with Red Hat a few months ago, allows organizations to provision, deploy, manage, monitor and scale their Java and PHP applications on both public and private clouds, such as Amazon EC2 and VMWare-based clouds. Makara offers both on-demand and on-premise deployments.

Red Hat, who is best known for enterprise operating system Red Hat Enterprise Linux, plans to integrate the JBoss Enterprise Middleware infrastructure with Makara’s Cloud Application Platform to offer organizations a comprehensive platform-as-a-service.

Red Hat bought open source company JBoss for $350 million in 2006 and has created a Platform As A Service based off of the technology to allow cloud service providers, ISVs and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) to take existing assets and develop new applications and deploy them to a wide range of public and private clouds.

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Red Hat

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Red Hat Acquires Cloud Application Platform-As-A-Service Makara

]]> http://www.invisionskins.net/red-hat-acquires-cloud-application-platform-as-a-service-makara/feed/ 0 http://www.invisionskins.net/sites-with-government-seized-domains-are-moving-on-on-twitter/ http://www.invisionskins.net/sites-with-government-seized-domains-are-moving-on-on-twitter/#comments Sun, 28 Nov 2010 06:27:52 +0000 admin http://invisionskins.net/sites-with-government-seized-domains-are-moving-on-on-twitter/

Last week while everyone was waiting for the COICA bill to move through Congress, the US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agency one upped the Attorney General and seized domain names from a group of over 70 copyright infringing websites. A visit to the blacklisted domains now results in the ominous looking message from Homeland Security below.

While the graphic is pretty scary, Market Ticker’s Karl Denninger points out the websites themselves and the servers they run on have not actually been seized, just the domains.

“That’s a lot of staff attorney time and trouble to get a big fat nothing out of it, which is exactly what they get going down this road. Why? Because all they can do is redirect the domain pointers which will do exactly nothing when the sites re-register under a top-level domain not under the US Government’s jurisdiction – and there are lots of them.”

Domains under US jurisdiction currently include anything controlled by Verisign which puts .com site owners in a legal relationship with the United States. According to Denninger, all afflicted site owners need to do is move to a non-US controlled top level domain in order to avoid further ICE seizures.

Some have already started to migrate to other domains, though it’s likely choices like .net won’t be any safer. Torrent-Finder owner Waleed Gad El Kareem said he switched his site over to Torrent-Finder.info the moment he saw the ICE message on Torrent-Finder.com, posting the new site’s address on Twitter.

@gadelkareem
Waleed GadElKareem

Torrent Finder is now http://www.torrent-finder.info

November 25, 2010 11:49 pm via DigsbyRetweet

Hip hop site RapGodfathers has aggressively followed suit with its own .info address, using Twitter to get the word out about the move and asking people to retweet as well as @replying fans with its new domain.

@RapGodFathers
RapGodFathers.info

Everyone please retweet our new link, lots of people still don't know about it. http://www.RapGodFathers.info #RGF

about 7 hours ago via webRetweet

Onsmash seems to have not made the move over, but is soliciting emails from fans on Twitter who oppose the domain name seizure as well as tweeting out stuff like “THEY CAN NEVER STOP US!!!” I’ve emailed them and sister site dajaz1.com about possible plans to move to a different domain and am waiting to hear back.

@HofOnSMASH
Hof // OnSMASH

ARTISTS: If you oppose the seizure of @OnSMASH pls send an email to gmail.com”>freeonsmash@gmail.com & express why. Your participation is appreciated!

about 7 hours ago via webRetweet

Even the counterfeit sites have caught on, an email I sent to www.2009Jerseys.com was met with the following auto response, “Notice: The original Domain Name has been suspended, please visit the new domain name www.2009Jerseys.net, We apologize for the inconvenience. If there is new information, we will first time inform you.” The people behind Dvdcollects.com have decided to focus all their energy on the yet unfettered Bestcollects.com according to their Facebook page.

If it really is that easy to pick up and move on its hard to believe that the other 70 or so sites won’t find friendlier domains on which to land, rendering ICE’s efforts ultimately futile. If anything, the seizures serve as lesson to all possibly infringing sites — Steer clear of the .com top level domain.

Sites With Government Seized Domains Are Moving On, On Twitter

]]> http://www.invisionskins.net/sites-with-government-seized-domains-are-moving-on-on-twitter/feed/ 0 http://www.invisionskins.net/uk-high-court-ruling-implies-headlines-are-copyright-not-a-good-idea/ http://www.invisionskins.net/uk-high-court-ruling-implies-headlines-are-copyright-not-a-good-idea/#comments Sat, 27 Nov 2010 10:43:20 +0000 admin http://invisionskins.net/uk-high-court-ruling-implies-headlines-are-copyright-not-a-good-idea/

The UK’s High Court has ruled that news monitoring agencies will have to pay publishing companies to use their web content, effectively re-classifying headlines as separate literary works subject to copyright.

The moves follows a legal battle between the Newspaper Licensing Agency, owned by eight of the UK’s largest newspaper groups, and Meltwater, a news monitoring agency. Meltwater plans to appeal against the decision, but if it’s upheld, you can expect a wave of more legal actions, claims that links are copyright and the break down of the UK’s internet industry. Well done High Court.

UK High Court Ruling Implies Headlines Are Copyright. Not a Good Idea.

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