| IPOWER Joins RatePoint Partner Program
NEEDHAM, Mass. & PHOENIX --(Business Wire)-- RatePoint, the leader in providing businesses with the only comprehensive online reputation management and customer feedback platform available, and IPOWER, Inc. (www.ipower.com), a leading web-site hosting provider for small businesses, today announced a new partnership that will give IPOWER customers access to the RatePoint platform and consumer approval program.
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Malware writers exploring Software as a Service model
The business of writing, buying, and selling malware has become increasingly commercial over the past few years, but a new report from online security firm Finjan sheds light on just how mainstream the crimeware business has gone. Earlier this month, the company discovered a small, standalone application gathering data on over 8,700 servers, including web sites from 2,500 North American companies and a handful of sites in Alexa's top 100 ranking. Potential buyers were able to log into the malicious server hosting the data-gathering service and evaluate any given web site's size and Google Page Rank to decide whether or not the site's FTP information was worth purchasing or not. The concept of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is nothing new, but this is the first time anyone has organized the purchase of FTP login credentials, with additional tools available to help a buyer confirm he's making a smart purchase.
Business Briefs: Chamber organizes annual trade show
The Athens Area Chamber of Commerce will be hosting the annual Business Expo on March 27 at The Classic Center. Organizers for the 2008 Business Expo have adopted the theme "Let's Make a Deal" and will provide activities throughout the day. The day will start with a networking event, Business Before Hours, and end with award presentations at 4 p.m. The awards will include the annual Small Business Person of the Year. Trade show organizers are expecting more than 100 exhibitors, said Rich Cary, the chamber's vice president of member services. Exhibition booth costs are $475 for members and $575 for non-members. For more information, visit the chamber's Web site at www.athensga.com or call (706) 549-6800. Toccoa company plans $1M expansion Combat Training Solutions, a Stephens County company that manufactures simulated explosives for the military, announced that it plans to add more than 30 jobs and invest $1 million to expand a facility in Eastanollee.
Allton Starts Web Design Firm in Lake Saint Louis, MO
Michael Allton can still remember his first website. "It was 1997, and my mother had just formed a new non-profit organization in Norwalk, Ohio called Project Leadership. It was designed to promote leadership and community values and she wanted a website to help recruit members. I used FrontPage 97 and it was very basic, but it sparked my love for website design." Since then, Michael has come a long way. For several years, he designed websites for businesses and organizations in Ohio while with an IT Firm. Then, last year, after moving to Lake Saint Louis, he started his own design firm, Stadia Studio. "I wanted very much to get back into designing websites for small businesses," said Michael. "I've always enjoyed helping businesses grow, and having a great website is an integral part of that." Stadia Studio specializes in providing small businesses with complete web services including website design, hosting, search engine optimization and consulting.
Adsense - The Powerful Passive Income Generator
Webmasters have a revolutionary new method of collecting income from their websites.
Whereas in the past advertising revenue was reserved for those sites with large a coming and going of visitors, now even teenagers are making a quick buck with their online hobby blogs. People place adsense on their online family photo albums, their blogs and their business sites. The minimum you would get, even with a small amount of traffic, is for adsense to pay for your hosting costs.
Adsense revolutionized the world of paid advertising; banner advertising is based on the number of visitors you attract to your site, so the number of banner impressions dictates the revenue you receive. Google Adsense is quite different; it is the number of visitors that actually click on the advertising that determine how much you earn.
Rangers' McCarthy hits a roadblock
It kept hurting and didn't loosen up. I don't know what else to say about it. It's not fun." McCarthy will be evaluated today in Surprise by Rangers team physician Keith Meister. General manager Jon Daniels and manager Ron Washington said they aren't leaping to any conclusions about McCarthy's status. McCarthy was expected to start the Rangers' fourth game of the season April 4 at Anaheim in 27 days. The injury already caused the right-hander to miss 15 days of spring training. A similar layoff would give him only 12 days to get ready for that first start of the season. The Rangers have some flexibility. They won't need a fifth starter until April 12. If McCarthy isn't ready by then, Luis Mendoza likely would be the first alternate. "We haven't talked about any plans," Washington said.
NAACP checking out OCN report
The Orange County branch of the NAACP is looking into an incident at Orange County National Golf Club, where a noose was reportedly hung from a ceiling of one of the course's offices. The organization learned of the incident after it appeared in the Sentinel on Jan. 18.
The Sentinel detailed the PGA Tour's investigation of OCN after former employee David Brice, who is black, said he witnessed a noose in an outside-services office in June and sent a formal complaint to the Tour. The Tour got involved before hosting its Qualifying School at OCN in early December.
"Before we put out a position paper or a press conference, we try to do our fact finding," NAACP President Randolph Bracy said. "I find it very repugnant and a serious problem, so we want to find out more."
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Briefly: Las Vegas store; FC Studio seminar
In brief: A new Apple retail store is scheduled to open in Las Vegas tomorrow, Scotsys is offering a free seminar demonstrating Final Cut Studio 2 in Scotland, and REAL Software has shipped REALbasic 2007 Release 5. Mac GUI City has launched a virtual world for Mac users, mystery snippets of text discovered within iTunes 7.5 suggest Apple may be working toward new features for its Apple TV multimedia set top box. Apple is preparing to open a new retail store at 9:00 a.m. PST in the Town Square in Las Vegas. The new store, which resides at 6725 Via Austi Parkway in Suite 380, will host a press event to commemorate the occasion in Apple's traditional style. The Las Vegas store joins the ranks of Apple's existing retail outlets which numbered 197 when the company announced its September quarterly earnings in October.
New on Amazon's Shelves: Storage for Startups
EC2 lets its customers quickly start up a virtual computer in the "cloud" -- industry slang for data centers around the world -- then use it as a Web server or for crunching data and shut it down just as fast. "I don't need to have a systems administrator or a network administrator," said Chief Executive Chris Gay. "I don't have to worry about hardware becoming irrelevant." Gay said he also uses Amazon's online payments service and is evaluating its data storage and simple database services. During the first dot-com boom, he said, "It was a badge of strength to have as much as possible in house. "Now, unless that is your core business...it's a liability." Adam Selipsky, vice president of product management and developer relations for Amazon Web Services, said Amazon wants entrepreneurs to focus on their ideas, not on hardware leases and crashing servers.
Friday Updates
As I blogged about here earlier today, it's a big day in the fight against breast cancer. We just learned that Genentech's Avastin drug, already used to fight some cancers, has now been approved, by the FDA, to treat breast cancer. Breast cancer advocates are very happy about the decision, which helps to clear the way for another weapon in the battle against breast cancer and also puts money into the pockets of Genentech (DNA) investors. Already a big moneymaker for the company, Avastin now has another big market to try and conquer. There's still a ways to go before Avastin can prove that it's a sure-shot way to beat breast cancer, but today's FDA ruling means it's well on its way. We'll keep you posted as the Bay Area's biggest biotech company continues to do well, by doing good.
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