Website Worth 577 Million Euros

Sabre Holdings announced its intention to buy lastminute.com, a pan-European Web travel agency and retailer, for £577 million. This move will help Sabre and its Web travel agency unit Travelocity.com gain against Expedia, just as Europe is about to see rapid growth in Web travel spending. Lastminute’s experience as a diversified retailer in non-travel products will also help Travelocity improve its merchandising capabilities.

Source: Forrester Research

Can’t believe what some websites are worth nowadays. I’ve heard of astonishing buying prices big companies invest to acquire the smaller ones or competitors. People would say buying out the competition or strengthening their foundation is their purpose but for a website online worth that much. :S

I wonder how much my website might be worth in the future then. LoL! And if you’d like to visit the million dollar website mentioned, go HERE.

Google Mobile Services

Might be appearing soon in future. Google is slowly expanding its popularity of being one of the best search engines (best to me..) into broader horizons. You’ve all heard of Google Map that’s in beta testing now. Well, have you heard that Google acquired Dodgeball.com :: mobile social software? *grin* Neither have I, so I decided to share. You can view the proof HERE.

Let’s see, now with Google acquiring a technology such as this, I’m going to wish for these things.

• Free SMS service.
• Free SMS/email/photo storage.
• Automated mobile services.
• And but of course, the ability to search for friends..?

I think there shouldn’t be any privacy or legal issues if Google implemented the search for your friend feature, because there are numerous ways of stopping it. You could just select an option by disallowing that function in your own account or maybe even just ‘filter’ the only people you’d like to know.

I see a another sun coming out on the Google side. Go GOOGLE! w00t!

Blogging And 3G

Would be the thing of the future, and who better to mention it first other than Joichi (“Joi”) Ito. I’ve never really heard about him but he’s above the average blogger or known as an obsessed blogger. His obsession in blogging speaks of the daily media coverage and the happening that he finds interesting to put a word out. His prescence in the blogosphere is so powerful that people suggest to him what to blog about next. You could Joi’s blog, HERE. 0.0

In a column written by H. AMIR KHALID in the TheStar: TechCentral, HERE, he met up with Joi and got some important information. The article was very informative and though I’ve not met Joi, from the article I believe he’s quite a fun person to be talking to in real life.

Towards the end of the article, Joi mentioned about 3G taking blogging up to a new standard later. It’s quite interesting because it did make me wonder how blogging/online journalism might be taken to the next level with the availability of 3G. My first imagination are reporters/authors updating us even faster than normal TV viewing about the latest happenings in their vicinity.

But alas we won’t be able to find out till 3G invades our shores now, won’t we?

Finally Something New

In terms of a blog layout in the realm of the blogosphere. I picked it up while reading up at Rachel’s Designer Blogs. A little about Rachel, she’s a website designer that specialises in blog designs. Find that far fetched? Well, that’s the discussion everyone would have when that question is raised. However, the main difference I’ve noted is that blog designers sometimes have a plan to offer clients, blog maintenance. You could visit her blog, HERE.

Now, I was speaking about a new blog layout I’ve found online. Well, I’m not sure if the lot of you have seen it but it’s definetely new to me. It’s very clean and it’s header, well, there isn’t a banner if you were assuming that. And you’d be intrigued by the smart usage of space and the organization of the content. In one word, sweet! Visit the weblog of ‘Pen and Think’; HERE.

Ain't This Scary?

Well, it just gave me the goosebumps and sent a chill down my Internet spine. Wouldn’t you have felt the same if you read this:

14. Changes to the Service; Our Cancellation of Service.
We may change the Service or delete features at any time and for any reason…Our cancellation or suspension may be without cause and/or without notice…Once the Service is cancelled or suspended, any data you have stored on the Service may not be retrieved later.

This was on the terms page at the MSN website. I came to reading it since they pointed me to some page verifying if I wanted to continue using MSN. Anyway, I’m not at comfort with security if that’s what they wanted to do. Better start backing up into GMail.

Oh yeah, here’s a cool website for you to explore. Dive into the office cubicle of Mr.Scube, HERE.