Free .biz domains (seriously!)

I’m totally serious.

I got an e-mail not too long ago from 1&1 telling me of their free .biz domains offer.

Although I’m not sure whether this offer is also valid for new users, I’m extremely pleased with 1&1’s services, and have great confidence that they are absolutely honest and non-deceptive in this offer. I’ve registered “freddyware.biz” among others, all of which I plan on developing — there’s a requirement that you can only register .biz domains if you are going to use it for business/commercial purposes (which do not include selling or trading domains).

Anyhow, check it out. This is an offer webmasters cannot miss out on.

(No Ratings Yet)

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Choose VistaPrint

VistaPrint offers a wide array of printing services, from business cards, to personalized sticky notes (like Post-Its), to rubber stamps, and more. Our kind friends at VistaPrint also offer free products, such as customized pens and their flagship product, their business cards.

Regardless of whether you are moving, and want to send out some moving announcements, or have other mass printing needs, VistaPrint is there for anything you need. Even non-printing services/products are offered, like the customized rubber stamps.

One of the best things about VistaPrint’s many products is that they are full colour; that means you’re not forced to make your print tinted in one colour. It’s more than possible to add a photo on the full colour side, too; this is especially useful for business cards.

VistaPrint isn’t just for business-related matters, either; you can get photo calendars for as low as $6.99. They even have customized T-shirts!

When I recommend VistaPrint, I’m not just talking about their free business cards or their free customized pen. Just about all of their services produce reputable results. A small note: you will be charged shipping and processing fees for all orders, including the free products.

One small thing which prevents me from using it often is that they don’t accept PayPal. When they add support for it, I will be a returning customer.

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Take Care of Your Computers

Fast-teks can help you do exactly that. These computer technical support people are skilled and experienced at what they do. With professional, high-quality service at affordable prices, they do many things, including:

• Technology consulting
• Software training
• Network monitoring / management
• Computer / network security
• Email service support

And they even offer some things which compete with other services I’ve recommended in the past. For instance, their web site design and hosting directly competes with us (FreddyWare), and their data recovery services compete with a well-known program called SpinRite.

But a lot of businesses want a reputable name and a reputable company servicing them, which is why Fast-teks is the best place to go for on-site computer services. Small- and medium-sized businesses will find that their certified technicians will have you up and running (again) in no time!

This company offers a full range of IT solutions. Take a look at their services, and they can “take care of your computers”.

Brought to you by our friends at Fast-teks.

(1 votes, average: 4 out of 5)

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LifeSize Communications

I talked about H.264 a while ago as a great standard for distributing high-quality video. Would you be surprised to find that H.264 is also used for high-definition video conferencing?

LifeSize Communications provides interesting solutions for businesses and all sorts of organizations, from international NGO’s, to governmental agencies. The ability to communicate is important; the ability to see each other in LifeSize is a luxury, made possible by their telepresence solutions. Long-distance communication is so much more effective when everyone can see the others’ gestures, facial expressions, and body language.

Let’s talk more about the video. In October of last year, LifeSize Communications “rocked the high definition conferencing world” when they released a 720p product, allowing for high-definition telepresence on a typical broadband connection. The resolution is 1280×720, and amazingly, 30 fps. Typical (competing) video conferencing solutions are simply webcam quality; they aren’t well suited to a business environment or one in which the appearance of face-to-face communication is essential. LifeSize products lets you meet with the illusion of life-sized participants!

These are great solutions for any small business, enterprise, or organization. The best video conferencing solutions around!

Brought to you by our sponsors at LifeSize Communications.

(5 votes, average: 4 out of 5)

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Don’t let Microsoft buy Yahoo!

It’s been widely reported that Microsoft has offered $44.6 billion to acquire Yahoo! Inc., which comes to around $1500 per user of Yahoo!. It’s evident that they are doing so in order to compete with Google’s rising (56%) share of search queries. But don’t let Microsoft do it! It will be the downfall of Yahoo! and will negatively impact many people.

How many times have we seen Microsoft do questionable things? Here are some of the likely things to happen if and when Microsoft purchases Yahoo!:

• Yahoo! products to disappear:
  • Yahoo! Messenger (to be replaced with Windows Live Messenger)
  • Yahoo! ID and plans for OpenID (to be replaced with Windows Live ID)
  • Personals (to be replaced with Windows Live Spaces)
  • Maps
  • Yahoo! Widgets
  • Mozilla Firefox Yahoo! Edition
  • Music Jukebox (to be replaced with some form of Windows Media Player / Zune Marketplace)
  • All the Yahoo! toolbars (to be replaced with some form of the Windows Live Toolbar)
• MSN and Yahoo! merge into some sort of weird portal
• Yahoo! Publisher Network becomes an active competitor to AdSense (and accepts publishers outside the U.S.)
• Yahoo! Mail loses the “unlimited” storage and the interface changes

Doesn’t it seem a tiny bit anticompetitive if Microsoft eliminates the Yahoo! products that would have competed with the Windows Live products, and forces those users to switch to the Microsoft products? This simply consolidates the users into one group of people locked into Microsoft products.

Clearly, Yahoo! has created a great deal of services that compete directly with Microsoft: Yahoo! Messenger, Yahoo! ID, Maps, Mozilla Firefox Yahoo! Edition, and the Yahoo! Toolbar… even Yahoo! Mail. Does it not seem likely that Microsoft will favour its own products over those of Yahoo!, despite the strong Yahoo! brand?

We will see hundreds of thousands of dissatisfied users. They have remained dedicated to Yahoo! products for its strong brand, some of the reputable features in its services, and also for its willingness to help open source — as demonstrated in the Yahoo! Developer Network as well as some of its open API’s.

It is good that Google will have competition, but not when the opposition is Microsoft. In such circumstances, we will not see benefits for the users — only more hooks to “lock” the users in.

TechCrunch also has an article on this, but is more specific about some of the changes, although I seem to disagree with some of them. For instance, I do not believe that Live Search will replace Yahoo! Search — rather, I feel that they will merge into one. Hopefully, they’ll come up with a better name than Yahoo! Live Search. TechCrunch also mentions that it’s possible for Flickr to integrate with Windows Live, or to offer a Picasa-competing download.

TechBlog mentions that this purchase will need to be approved by various regulating agencies, and that would include the Justice Department. Quite obviously, this hostile purchase is intended to crush a competitor, Google, and given the history that Microsoft has in antitrust, we can probably expect some trouble from the E.U., where corruption isn’t an issue. (I’m not saying it is for the U.S., but Microsoft does pay a great deal of money to the government — can we really trust an entity that contributes so significantly to the U.S. economy, which is heading into recession?) This issue will create an uphill battle for Microsoft.

But there are others, who feel that such a purchase or merger will be very beneficial for bloggers, the Internet, and even Google. The argument is that this sort of action does increase competition (agreed), and that will allow cheaper search engine advertising, push Google to improve its services even more, and allow third parties such as bloggers to earn a higher revenue share from programs like AdSense. Respectfully, I understand this view, but it has to be seen that this power that Microsoft-Yahoo! would have can be abused, and it’s quite possible we’ll see the decline of Google services like AdSense.

Some people, including John C. Dvorak, previously mentioned for his Tech5 podcast, do feel that this purchase won’t go through. Clearly, the European Union has dealt with Microsoft before, and Microsoft has not yet won a major fight in its courts. Hopefully, this is the case and Microsoft’s attempt is crushed.

What do you think? Should we let this happen? Should the European Union allow Microsoft to take such drastic measures? I don’t think so. What about you?

(1 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

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Business cards are here

A while back I talked about getting 100 FREE Business Cards from an European company called Ooprint. I also said that I would order 100 for myself, just because it seemed like a good deal.

Well, now it’s January 14, 2008 and I’ve received the business cards I ordered two weeks earlier. As you can see in the image to the right (this is NOT a fake image — I only edited the photo artistically to put the card in someone’s hand), I’ve customized the blogger card to display my primary blog, my name, and ways I can be reached (erasing my address, for privacy reasons). There are also a couple of tags that I felt were relevant, printed in the bottom portion.

The only catch was a small bit of text on the back of the card relating to Ooprint and their services, but it’s not going to be much of a concern for anyone — unless you were actually considering using these for business purposes, in which case it would be more suitable to go with one of the paid options.

I’m happy with these, and I will use them.

It’s not too late to get your business cards, since this is an ongoing offer. They recently added a few newer and more professional designs to the free category, so you can easily find what you’re looking for.

I like them. The question is, do you?

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