Yacrosoft Deal Dropped

Microsoft has dropped its proposed bid to buy out search giant Yahoo. Microsoft had wanted Mihoo, or Yacrosoft (or maybe just MY!), to compete with the seemingly untouchable Google for the search king title. Having raised their initial bid from $44.6bn to $47.5bn, Microsoft has withdrawn because they were not willing to meet the $53bn valuation set by Yahoo.

Websites and Internet businesses have set a truly astonishing benchmark when it comes to valuations and bid prices. Yahoo are demanding more than $50bn for a company that has a fairly minimal share in a $40bn market – although analysts do expect this value to rise to $80bn by the year 2010.

In march 2005 Ask Jeeves, which holds considerably less market share than Yahoo, was purchased for a $1.85bn investment. More recently, Skype was purchased by Ebay for $2.6bn (which could rise to as much as $4.1bn depending on performance) – that’s a lot of money for a free service. YouTube was sold to Google for $1.65bn while MySpace went for a snip at $580mn to Fox Interactive.

Most of us can barely comprehend a figure of that magnitude but it seems that the search engines and portals are buying businesses for tens of billion dollars without hesitation. Can Ebay really turn a profit on Skype when they payed $2.6bn for it? In comparison to some of the prices, the $580mn for MySpace has the greatest chance to impress but, even then, that’s a lot of monetisation.

MySpace Adds Karaoke To Its Features

MySpace – never a website to shy away from trying new things – is launching a MySpace karaoke service. The new site, released on Tuesday and found at ksolo.myspace.com enables users to sing along to any of their favourite hits. This move comes in light of the recent purchase, by MySpace’s parent company News Corp of the karaoke website ksolo.com.

The unique blend of the karaoke feature and MySpace music uploading means that registered users will also have the chance, should they desire that chance, to upload their efforts to the MySpace site where it can be viewed and laughed at by the community members.

MySpace is one of the largest social networking or social media sites on the Internet. It is largely geared around a community that listens to, creates, and shares music. With many an unsigned band using MySpace to highlight their own flavour of tunes, the site isn’t a stranger to bad music.

You might be surprised to learn (at least I was) that kSolo is only one of a large number of karaoke sites on the Internet. Electronic Arts owns SingShot and Yahoo! Owns Bix. However, this amalgamation of kSolo and MySpace will be the first time that avid sing-alongers will be able to upload their efforts directly to the site.

Is it really something we should applaud them for?

Tame Multi Tasking Cube Saves Time And Hassle

The modern world is great! It allows you to keep in contact with business associates and your nearest and dearest any time and anywhere.  The problem is people can also get hold of you 24 seven in one way or another.  So we have found a gadget that will relieve you of duty at one turn of a cube!

Tame is a device that syncs all of your equipment and email accounts including social networking sites.  At one turn of the cube you mobile phone, email auto responder, instant messenger status and facebook account’s status can be updated.

Each side of the cube has a message  that relates to the messages on the device or programme you want to update. So by turning the cube over the message/comment will be updated accordingly.

Tame is also very good looking and would look at home on any modern desk or dashboard. This is one clever bit of kit that is a great time saver.

Cool Belt Buckles That Rock

You may have read our post about the transformers usb flash drive the other day and thought it was cool, well I am happy to report that we have found some equally cool clothing gadgets for you in the form of belt buckles!

Yes that’s right! Belt buckles - in the form of some of my favourite films, gadgets and cartoons. There is a buckle with the transformers syblol, a Darth vader mask and even a classic nintendo controller!

To pick up one of these fantastic belt buckles pop along to the think geek website today.

Digital Cowboy CRF 102 Laptop Cooler

Digital cowboy have designed and launched an innovative laptop cooling platform/rest that has some awesome cooling power. The digital cowboy CRF-102 cooler has a 22 cm fan that circulates at 600 rpm. The platform measures 30 cm x 27 cm x 2.5 cm and can tilt at an angle up to 15 degrees. This cooler retails at just 45 dollars in Japan so it should be a good price when it reaches Europe later this year.