Google made a new post on their official blog today responding to Microsoft’s $44.6 billion bid for Yahoo.

While Google has been patient in responding thus far (not wanting to show their colors early), they made quite a bold statement today by offering a position against the Microsoft offer saying “the openness of the Internet is what made Google — and Yahoo! — possible” and that “Microsoft’s hostile bid for Yahoo! raises troubling questions”.

Google’s primary concern with the deal is that it could possibly undermine the openness and innovation that made the internet (and Google and Yahoo!) possible. With Microsoft’s current dominance in the PC market, the notable concern is great that they will seek to create a dominant force in online search. Past projections for a combined Microsoft and Yahoo search would put them at a 30% market share in online search. That creates a major contender for Google who serves half the online searches in the US.

This could also signal a very big anti-trust issue (although that is yet to be determined) with Google seeking a monopoly on searches in the US. A merger between Yahoo and Google would already create the largest host of emails and IM chats around.

Google even goes so far as to ask that “could a combination of the two take advantage of a PC software monopoly to unfairly limit the ability of consumers to freely access competitors’ email, IM, and web-based services?”

It’s a very good question and one that should be addressed as the offer progresses. I doubt, though, that Microsoft would be allowed to limit access to services using their software or email dominance.

I’d like to hear your opinions. Is the deal a positive move for online search and media? Or is it a move that could potentially cause more harm than good? Or is it too early to decide?

Here’s a copy of the post:

Yahoo! and the future of the Internet

Posted by David Drummond, Senior Vice President, Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer

This hostile bid was announced on Friday, so there is plenty of time for these questions to be thoroughly addressed. We take Internet openness, choice and innovation seriously. They are the core of our culture. We believe that the interests of Internet users come first — and should come first — as the merits of this proposed acquisition are examined and alternatives explored.

You know, it’s not every day that a celebrity comes out and creates a new online service. But today, Damon Wayans bucked that tradition by announcing his new startup, WayOutTV.

Now, I am just waiting to get access to the beta and I’ll post on it when I do.

Brian Solis over at bub.licio.us had this to say, “The way I described it … was, it’s like Will Ferril’s Funny or Die, but funny.” Here’s the link to his original post on the service.

I was reading through my feed reader tonight and ran across a particularly interesting story from Nick O’Neill. He reported yesterday that Facebook made some changes to their application developement platform that enabled the use of your created applications on your own website. The Javascript client library update they released enables not only the existence of Facebook applications outside of the Facebook website, but it also enables the use of cookies to access user data.

This just on the heels of Facebook joining the DataPortability Work Group, a group that’s sole focus is to increase the “sharability” of data between services and organizations across the web. (It’s also a group that boasts some very big names like Microsoft, Myspace, LinkedIn and more).

I’ll be watching this one pretty closely.

For many of my clients, this post may seem a little too simple. More and more, I get questions on the basics of RSS feeds and how they are used to benefit blogs and news sites and the general blog reader. My goal with this post is to help answer some of those questions and to help proliferate the use of RSS feeds.

RSS Feeds. I love them. They organize my popular websites, improve my productivity, give me only the information that I want to see and help spread the content from my blog further.

So, what is RSS? In short, it’s called Really Simple Syndication (or Rich Site Summary or Atom depending on who you get your information from). RSS is a way to syndicate content from your website, blog, etc and make it available for others to access using an RSS reader. Most blogs (in fact almost all, including mine) come with an RSS feed with it that helps to syndicate the content you make on your blog for readers.

For example, say I went to a website like Techcrunch.com and I don’t want to have to go back to their website everytime I want to view their content, so I access their RSS feed and give that web address to my RSS feed reader (in my case, I use Google Reader). This funnels all of my news sources and blogs into one source so that I can get all of my updates quickly without having to visit every single website.

In addition, RSS feeds help me to distribute my content faster and better. You see, when I make a post to my blog, it automatically updates the RSS feed that my readers subscribe to, allowing them almostinstantaneous access to the content I posted.

A common misconception with RSS Feeds

There is also a little bit of confusion with RSS feeds, particularly when readers first look at a feed, often times all they see is code. For example, look at the sample below from my own RSS feed:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<?xml-stylesheet href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~d/styles/rss2full.xsl" type="text/xsl" media="screen"?><?xml-stylesheet href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~d/styles/itemcontent.css" type="text/css" media="screen"?><!-- generator="wordpress/2.1" --><rss xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/" xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" version="2.0">

<channel>
	<title>InspireMedia Blog</title>
	<link>http://inspiremediablog.com</link>
	<description>The mind of John Wooton</description>
	<pubDate>Sun, 20 Jan 2008 05:13:21 +0000</pubDate>
	<generator>http://wordpress.org/?v=2.1</generator>

	<language>en</language>
			<atom10:link xmlns:atom10="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" rel="self" href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/InspiremediaBlog" type="application/rss+xml" /><item>
		<title>Tetris Revamped</title>
		<link>http://inspiremediablog.com/2008/01/19/tetris-revamped/</link>
		<comments>http://inspiremediablog.com/2008/01/19/tetris-revamped/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 19 Jan 2008 21:34:29 +0000</pubDate>

		<dc:creator>John</dc:creator>

		<category><![CDATA[Links]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[Websites]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://inspiremediablog.com/2008/01/19/tetris-revamped/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[This has to take some time and dedication, but is very cool…

The code you see is not any error, the code is the RSS feed. You see, RSS is written in a XML programming language. XML is meant to be read and interpreted by a browser or RSS Feed Reader. What you should do is ignore the code and copy and paste the web address of the feed in the browser into a RSS feed reader like Google Reader. The feed reader will read the XML code and spit out a readable format that you can read.

Take a look at the screen shot of my blog from Google Reader:

Google released a new user interface for the iPhone/iPod Touch the other day (they prelaunched this very thing in early December, but this was a full release).  The design is reminiscent of the Facebook iPod/iPhone UI released last year. I’ve included a screenshot below.

Mobile development took a big leap forward today.

At CES today, Yahoo announced the early preview of it’s Mobile Developers Platform. The goal is to enable developers to quickly create and deploy mobile applications across a wide variety of mobile devices. The platform, called Yahoo Mobile Widgets, is expected to usher in a new era of expanded mobile use and include launch partners such as Myspace, MTV and ebay. I’ve posted a copy of the press release below.

I mentioned a few days ago that mobile would be big in 2008. It looks like from this announcement, that it indeed will be.

I’ve just updated this website! You can now become a member and receive updates via email.

I’m putting together some awesome specials for members and subscribers, so if you want to know more, sign up using the link in the sidebar or by clicking here.

Good marketing truly is the key to success!!!

Sunday, we held the second annual Holiday Bridal Show at Allisonville Nursery! We’ve designed the website for this show in the past and also for their Summer Bridal Show, so we knew what their end goal was for this show and were able to suggest some great new technologies for this one.

I absolutely love watching websites progress over time as their technology needs change. This website was no different. In the past, design and development were relatively simple. For this show, we upped the ante by connecting their website to a database for easy capture of leads and bridal information. We also gave them an awesome design that showcased the elegance of the event to local brides.

The most amazing thing, though, is how quickly this show filled up. Within 48 hours of the website going live, it was HALF filled with vendors. Within a week, the show was filled and by the end, they were sporting a waiting list of almost 2 dozen vendors.

A lot of this marketing was through the creative talents of my wonderful wife, Erin Hession. It was her efforts and enthusiasm that pushed this show to the success it’s had. Over the past several months, we were able to test out some new services, search marketing, and targeted social marketing with Erin’s marketing plan and the information and experience has been invaluable to both Erin’s business and the clients that I service as well.

I was so thrilled to see how this event turned out. Even with a Winter Storm Warning looming the day before and roughly 4-5 inches of snow and ice on the ground, brides and vendors braved the elements and the show was a huge success. They had many vendors donate door prizes and services for the event. Special Occasions by Anna donated all the chair-covers and table linens. The decor was a huge effort by Allisonville Nursery and most of the planning and details were at the hands of Erin Hession, who also photographed the event.

We just want to say congratulations Erin Hession and the Florist at Allisonville Nursery. You guys did a tremendous job and we are excited that we’ve had the opportunity to be a part of that success. Thank you so much! We’re looking forward to helping you with the Summer Bridal Show website soon!

Side Note: We are working on some awesome designs for both Special Occasions by Anna and Allisonville Nursery that will be live shortly. I don’t want to ruin the surprise by giving a sneak peek of their design, but when they’re ready to go live, I’ll blog about it. Stay tuned!

I just had to say something about this. I get one or two of these letters a month and it just boils my blood when I receive them. Not only do I get them, but my clients, honest business owners, receive them; many of whom would not know the difference.

It looks like a simple invoice showing the domain name you own and states that it’s coming up for renewal. It then shows what looks like an invoice for $65 to renew the domain name (Quick note: I pay $10/year for a domain name). Another version that I have received is from the Domain Listing Service (suspiciously from the same address in Chicago) peddling search engine submission service.

(Photo source http://braun.no-ip.com)

Looks harmless enough, right? Unfortunately, these guys are up to no good. If you fall for one of these traps, it can be an absolute nightmare to clean up. The company takes control of your domain name and moves it to their registrar, removing it from the company you have it held with and then cleares the DNS so that your website becomes non-existent.

Take a look at the company’s BBB record.

What’s worse is ICANN, the corporation that creates all the policies and rules regulating domain names has a policy that prevents domain names from being transferred frivolously. So when a domain name is transferred, they put a hold on the domain name for 60 days that prevents another transfer to another registrar. This is where the trap is most cumbersome. If these guys end up transferring your domain name to their registrar, in effect, shutting down your website, you may lose control of your site for 60 days until you are able to get it transferred back to the correct registrar.

How do they get away with this, you think? They simply state on the letter that it’s not a bill, but a solicitation. That’s it, and they can make it look as close to an invoice as they want.

As you can imagine, this boils my blood. I’ve had clients of my colleagues who have been caught in this web and paid for it dearly. If you end up receiving one of these (and odds are, if you own a domain name, you already have or will), just SHRED it. Most domain names are set to auto-renew with the registrar they are held with. Most registrars do it as a service to the domain owner so you don’t worry about losing the domain name.

How can you protect your domain names from these scams? Simple. Send any correspondence regarding your domain name to your web development company or registrar. That way, you’ll get verification of the validity of any offers or notices. In addition, make sure your domain name is locked from transferring. This prevents anyone from actually trying to transfer your domain name elsewhere.

The one protection I have found most appealing, though, is to do a private registration of your domain name. This puts the contact information with a domain privacy company and thus forwards any correspondence and/or solicitations to the servicing company protecting you from potentially making a mistake.

When it comes down to it, you really need a development company that has experience with these types of scams and can help you recognize and avoid them. If you have questions about this or any other domain name scams, or just have a comment, send us a note through our contact page.

Late last week, we went live on the new Holiday Bridal Show website. Check it out and let me know what you think?