Microsoft recently announced it will be shutting down its Windows Live Spaces blogging platform and partnering with dominant blogging platform, Wordpress. Essentially, this means that all new Windows Live account users will no longer get a Windows Live Space blog, but will instead receive a WordPress blog. In the long run it also means that the 30-million active Live Spaces users that Microsoft claims to have will be moved onto WordPress by March 2011, although new data claims that only ...

Skype announced an agreement on Wednesday with corporate telephone provider Avaya to bring the internet communications service to US business customers.A technology blog, the Dow Jones-owned AllThingsDigital, reported meanwhile that Luxembourg-based Skype was also set to announce a partnership with Facebook that would integrate Skype services into the social network.Skype and Avaya, a provider of enterprise communications systems, software and services based in Basking Ridge, New Jersey said their agreement calls for the delivery of low-cost communications to business clients.Avaya ...

Luke Mckend will join Google South Africa as Country Manager on 1 November 2010. Originally from South Africa, Luke has been with Google since 2006, working as an Industry Head in Google’s London office. In the UK he was responsible for managing a wide variety of businesses across the classified, property, restaurant, education, dating and job sectors before joining Google.“I am looking forward to being back in South Africa, and to helping South African enterprises take advantage of ...

The organizers of thought-sparking TED conferences, known for changing the way people look at life, are challenging advertisers to do the same.In a spin on its mantra of "Ideas Worth Spreading," TED on Tuesday launched an "Ads Worth Spreading" contest that offers winners access to the global ted.com online stage for advertisements that inspire and engage audiences."We want to encourage development of ads-with-a-difference," said TED 'curator' Chris Anderson of non-profit Sapling Foundation. "Ads that engage our audience authentically, intelligently, delightfully. ...

The advent of social media and online social networks has drastically changed the way we communicate. Not only are we able to consume information about any topic from anywhere in the world, but now anyone with any idea or message can make their message go viral across the world.But if it’s really true that anyone can reach thousands of people, how does one achieve this goal? Popular logic dictates that the answer is simple: Get enough people to follow ...

Storing a document to last for a long period of time in one physical location is not only difficult, but risky as well. Secure digital file storage is also problematic, with risks of lost external drives, corrupt hard-drives, missing discs amongst the many potential problems. The easier and supposedly safer option is cloud storage, which involves storing the document on a network online for easy, secure access from anywhere.iSigned.com, launched in July 2010, is an online file storage platform ...

A recent study conducted by SmartData Collective pinpoints the most frequently used and popular words in social media -- and those that are most likely to get you retweeted.The company used a system of predictive analytics that employed text mining to analyse more than 3 000 posts and identify the most important subjects. Text mining refers to the process of gathering high-quality information from written text.SmartData Collective's first task was to identify the most frequently occurring words in popular ...

What The Trend, which bills itself as the "Front page of the real-time web" (the company has also trademarked the phrase), tries to make sense of what is trending on Twitter. Every week the company compiles a list of what is trending and why.Last week, the world was buzzing about football and memes like "#ihaveafriend", "#icandowithout" and "#ireallythink". Of course, Twitter itself became news with the highly-publicised security flaw. The Bieber was also big news, not for his recent ...

Congratulations to Michael Arrington and team on the TechCrunch acquisition by AOL. Techcrunch is a leading Silicon Valley technology blog ranked 302 on Alexa's worldwide rankings and near to being one of the top 100 largest sites in the US.The terms of the deal have not been made public, however AOL will be required to make an SEC filing in the next few days if the amount is "material". AFP says various reports put the purchase price at between US$25-million ...

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the man credited with inventing the world wide web, warned on Tuesday of the "blight" of new laws being introduced across the globe allowing people to be cut off from the internet."There's been a rash of laws trying to give governments and internet service providers (ISPs) the right and the duty to disconnect people," he told a conference on web science at the Royal Society in London.The "current blight" includes a French law that comes into effect ...