Microsoft and Yahoo recently released details regarding a web search and advertising revenues alliance, all according to Reuters.

The alliance is going to be complex (as expected when dealing with two giants) but the companies will for example split the revenues coming from online advertising and Yahoo will use Microsoft’s search engine Bing on their sites. Yahoo will be the company in charge of managing the revenues from the advertising on a global scale.

“Through this partnership with Yahoo we will be able to create innovative search functions, add value to our clients as well as providing consumers with an alternative to a market that is dominated by one single company”, says Steve Ballmer, Chief Executive at Microsoft.

Steve Ballmer obviously refers to Google, who is getting increasingly dominating on the search engine market. With this alliance Yahoo and Microsoft are stepping up their position in the battle against their enemy Google.

The alliance can lead to around 500 million dollars in increased revenues per year, according to a press release in Reuters.

“This deal means a lot for Yahoo, for our users and for the industry as a whole. I believe that it creates opportunities for a new era of innovation and development on the Internet”, says Carol Bartz, Chief Executive at Yahoo.

The contract will tie the two companies together for a period of ten years. This arrangement was preceded by an 18 months long attempt from Microsoft to get Yahoo to join them in the battle against Google. I for one am looking forward to see how all of this will present itself in the future. Beating Google is not the easiest of tasks.

Monitis Central

Offering up to six different services, Monitis Central makes sure to cover the vital needs of any website owner, self or remotely hosted.

External Monitoring

This service includes monitoring from the US, the UK, Germany, China, Australia and Panama, thus including all continents except Africa. Watching your servers 24 hours a day and seven day a week, if your website is performing poorly or becomes unavailable from any location worldwide, you will be notified instantly.

External monitoring requires no software or local installation.

Traffic Monitoring

Through Monitis Central service package you are also offered the option of including a site traffic statistics tool, Traffic Monitoring. Rather than having Analytics set up, thus adding yet another tool to monitor, you can track UV (unique visitors) page views, referrers, browsers, OS, geography etc. And while Traffic Monitoring offers little else than most standard site statistic tools, if you are planning to use Monitis it may be smart to include it.

Web Ranking Monitoring

An exceptional additional service with Monitis Central that many other traffic monitoring tools lack or overcomplicate (e.g. Google Analytics) is Web Rank Monitoring. This service makes it super easy to track you current keyword position, search engine ranking and backlinks.

Monitis Central is truly a full serviced website monitoring tool that may seem overcomplicated upon first glance. This is however understandable and soon forgotten and replaced with amazement.  Monitis Central comes with all the features you need as a site owner. Before purchasing, try out the 15 days trial offered.

]]> http://www.webhostingsearch.com/blog/506-0506/feed 0 http://www.webhostingsearch.com/blog/monitis-review-pt-1-0496 http://www.webhostingsearch.com/blog/monitis-review-pt-1-0496#comments Mon, 29 Jun 2009 08:23:12 +0000 Brian http://www.webhostingsearch.com/blog/?p=496 Keeping track of the status of your servers can be something that keeps you up worrying at night. With Monitis monitoring services however, you can rest assured that your servers, site traffic, rankings and overall performance are being tracked.

IT monitoring is high on demand and whether you run a small e-shop or a multi-site empire, Monitis’ professional web monitoring and management services may be a useful addition to your toolbox. If anything, a simple way for you to monitor your web hosting provider.

On the market since 2007, Monitis is already trusted by companies like Acer, BMW, Arizona State University and many more. With an easy sign up process and a devoted customer services team, choosing and setting up Monitis various service packages is fairly straight forward as well.

Divided into two plans, Monitis services comes with external monitoring, internal monitoring, transaction monitoring and traffic watches, each plan differing in volume. The basic plan costing a mere $95.80 a year and the plus plan $383.80, it is safe to classify this web monitoring tool as affordable.

Of the three main service packages, Monitis Central is perhaps the one that with the broadest customer base. Additionally, all services are provided as a managed service, which requires little effort from the customer. Notifications on monitoring results can be sent through SMS, Email, Twitter, IM or RSS on a monthly basis.

For more in-depth information about included services with Monitis check out part two of our review next week. Sign up for our RSS feed.

I don’t know if you are as tired as me about hearing how great and “happening” virtualization is, but I am getting pretty sick of hearing about it. However, there’s a lot of truth to all the positive things that’s being said so I thought that; maybe I should publish a post about Virtualization as well…

First of all, what is virtualization? I guess that it can be explained from a very techy point of view or from a more basic aspect. I’m gonna go with the latter; Virtualization allows you to run several different virtual machines on one single physical system. This means that you for example can have your file server, DNS and print server all operating at the same time.

The advantages with Virtualization are plenty but the main advantage, at least according to me, is that it cut downs power and hardware costs. Another benefit with Virtualization is that it will simplify operations as well as ensure data protection and availability for people or businesses that are involved in a project on the web.

So, that’s my short and concise contribution to all the fuzz and buzz about Virtualization. Hopefully you feel a bit more informed on the issue now and if not – browse the web, there are thousands of articles on Virtualization…

Not that long ago the European Interactive Advertising Association (EIAA) released a report about the evolution of e-commerce and the online shopping habits of Europeans in 2008. Around 80% of all Internet users bought a product or service online in 2008. This figure was 40% in 2004. There has hence been a 100% increase in just four years all over Europe. Each user has in average shopped for 747€, during the first six months, which means a total sum of 1.3 billion Euros.

The products that people buy are 1. Travel tickets (54%) 2. vacation trips (42%) 3. books (40%) 4. concert tickets (38%) 5. clothes (33%). Out of these online shoppers do 59% consider the brands own websites to be a good resource for information on products, and a majority of people think that search engines is a greater source for information rather than personal recommendations.

This means that we in average trust the Internet more than we trust word-of-mouth. And keep in mind that word-of-mouth is the marketing technique that as good as all experts have proclaimed as the best marketing method these latest years. Maybe the new direction is not that strange either. On the Internet you are able to read hundreds of reviews on a single product. Your friend might be wrong about something but can a hundred people be mistaking?

The next big thing to look out for seems to be Google Wave, a soon to be released real-time communication platform which has been under construction for about two years now. When the platform hits the public is difficult to say so I guess that we just have to settle with “sometime later this year”. With every new release from the major web companies follows a heap of info, tending to make it all a bit overwhelming. To clarify what Google Wave is all about I thought that it was about time that I wrote a little something about it.

As mentioned is Google Wave a real-time communication platform and it combines everything from email, social networking (for example FaceBook), instant messaging and wikis. In other words: you will get access to all of this and much more through a one in-browser client. Want to share files with your friends and colleagues at work? Yes, you guessed right – Google Wave is a tool that can help you with this. Some of the features that are included are: drag and drop file sharing, wiki functionality, real-time, embeddability on your blog or website, playback and natural language which means that the wave corrects your language.

As with most new hypes nowadays do Google Wave come with its own lingo. Yes, you will yet again have to learn a couple of terms if you want to be in the “it crowd”. A wave means a specific threaded conversation. A wavelet is part of the mentioned thread bit it is just a small part of the larger picture. A Blip is the smallest part of the conversation, being a single line of a conversation.

This was just a short walkthrough but other things that could be worth reading up on are wave gadgets, robots and wave embeds. If you have the time you can check out the video below. In my opinion is Google Wave one of the most exciting things happening on the web this year and I look forward to seeing it in all its glory when it gets released.

If you do not already have an online portfolio it is about time for you to create one. The traditional portfolio is increasingly becoming a thing of the past as geographical situation do not mean that much anymore. Potential clients will be able to find you online at all times so make sure that you do not miss any important part of your online portfolio.

1. The Basics – What do the clients need to know?
   Begin with asking yourself the question: What do my potential clients need to know? Try to put yourself in their situation. What you will display obviously depends much on what kind of assignments you wish to get in the future.
2. Keep it simple!
   It should be easy to find and use your online portfolio. Be open with what it is that you want. Are you looking for assignments? Put a sign with the text: “For Hire” and a link to how to actually hire you. Make sure that your best material is the first thing that visitors get see. Describe yourself and your work in just a couple of words.
3. Let people know about you
   Your work should always be in focus but do not forget to include a good “About Me” page. Let people know who you are and what your background is. Have you been mentioned in the media? Link! Can you get your clients to write a few lines about how it was to work with you? Excellent!
4. Contact
   Information on how to get in contact with you is of the essence. The link to your contact information must be easy to find. It is not a bad idea to have the most basic information on several places, such as at the bottom of each page.
5. Let people know what you are doing
   Your clients might not see the value of your previous work through a screenshot of a website or a free-standing illustration. Let people know what the assignment was. Where is it published? What problems did you solve for your client? What was the result of your work?
6. Build traffic
   Share your experiences. You can for example record a video when doing a photo shoot. Start a blog, the more text on the site, the easier to get snatched up by search engines. Link to others that are creating amazing things – it will pay off in the end.
7. Be search friendly
   Google and other search engines are responsible for most traffic to websites. Through optimizing your site you will have a much greater chance of getting found by new clients.

The trial is over and the world is now awaiting the judgement. The outcome will not only have impact on the legislation in Sweden. No, this is a global issue and it will pretty much set the tone for file-sharing all over the world. It has been quite the battlefield in the court room and being the good Samaritan that I am I will clarify the arguments of both parties.

The Prosecutor & Plaintiff

It’s not the technique that is the issue; it is the fact that there are Torrent files available on The Pirate Bay. Consequently, the site is guilty of distributing copyright protected material. Also sites linking to illegal material can be found guilty in the Supreme Court.

The accused have knowledge that copyright protected material is distributed through their site and they have done nothing to prevent it. The accused can be sentenced even if their site is a form of search engine. This according to previous sentences.

An agreement among the accused to form the company Random Media shows that all four should be held responsible. Three of the four have signed a contract and the fourth is mentioned in it – all according to the prosecutor.

The Accused

The Pirate Bay is nothing but a search engine. It is not possible to convict the supplier of the infrastructure for what the users are doing.

The prosecutor has not been able to show where and when the violation was committed, hence they can’t be convicted for being accomplices. It is not even clear that the violation was committed on The Pirate Bay.

Three of the accused maintain that they can’t be held personally responsible for the site. Only one of the four accused admits that he is operating the site, also adding that the purpose never has been to spread any copyright protected material. Nowhere on the site are visitors encouraged to file-share copyrighted works.

Officially putting Sweden on the map, the TPB trial will establish precedent whether their website and services facilitated illegal music file distribution or their service cannot be held liable for what people do with it. Because The Pirate Bay never hosted any music, the defense claims they have not violated any copyright laws. The prosecution is convinced, along with the movie and music industries, TPB is the next living kin of satan. Hyperboles and exaggerations ran amuck at the trial.

Pirate Bay Trial Famous and sometimes, Stupid Quotes:

“Songwriters and publishers all over the world are dependent on having their rights protected by law. The Pirate Bay is disregarding those rights and abusing the creativity of the people who own them.” – Ger Hatton, ICMF

“You are welcome to send some flowers to my wife.” – Roger Wallis, professor at KTH (Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan) in Stockholm
(his wife received over $4000 dollars worth of flowers in a day)

“It is common sense, if they couldn’t get it for free they would buy it and when we ask them, they confirm that.” – John Kennedy, CEO of IFPI

“Big companies from foreign nations trying to affect the outcome in a Swedish Court of Justice with straightforward bribes. Now the copyright lobby is showing its true face” – Rickard Falkvinge, Swedish Pirate Party

“It’s a trial regarding four individuals that have conducted a big commercial business making money out of others file-sharing … copyright protected works.” – Monique Wadsted, Prosecutor

If found guilty:
Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde and Carl Lundström could face two years in prison and a $12.7 million fine.

Well, the verdict will come out April 17th, till then we hope for more mudslinging.

Stolen Passwords

On March 5th 2009 news sources reported that Spotify yet again had become the victim of “hackers” who this time got access to a large number of user passwords and personal information. In a statement to the papers, Spotify spokesperson spoke to all Spotify users, strongly recommending that if the same password is used elsewhere, it should be changed directly. This to avoid the “hackers” accessing your email account or even worse, accounts where your credit cards info is registered.

To learn more about Spotify, check out Davids post Spotify – So Hot Right Now