I came across a great write-up in the FT today entitled: Doing Business in the Isle of Man. it’s an 8-page special report that takes a look at a number of different aspects of the Isle of Man, ranging from the recent turmoil in the Financial Markets, all the way to living and working on the Island. I think it’s a pretty positive piece and paints a great picture of the Isle of Man.

Read it here

Just a few days after Facebook has had to remove access to Scrabulous for legal reason, it is now back under a new guise: WordScraper. Here’s what it says about itself:

Welcome to Wordscraper. It’s the only game on Facebook that allows you to play the game the way you want to! With Wordscraper you can build your own board and try out whacky combinations with special high value squares.

The game is turn based, so you need not be online for very long periods. Plus, we also give you the option to store a board layout. This saves time when you want to play new games with the same layout.

So give it a try, you will love it. Don’t follow rules, make them!

I don’t think it’s worth debating the point as to whether Hasbro did the right thing shutting them down. U.S. law seems to be on their side, and although it seems crazy from a marketing point of view, it’s their choice at the end of the day. It wasn’t actually clear whether Facebook took the game down themselves, hackers were responsible or the authors took it down themselves to launch this new game, but as it was only taken down for users in the US and Canada, I’m pretty sure the lawyers have had their way.

Still, we now have Wordscraper to play with, assuming Hasbro has been placated, now that it’s called something different and the tiles are round rather than square. The question as usual is, has Hasbro really gained from this action?

RapidSwitch, a leading supplier of dedicated servers and one of the fastest growing hosting companies in the UK, is building a new data centre with a 20,000 server capacity, to meet growing customer demand.

Fit out work on the new site has commenced, and it will be ready for service in early 2009. The new site is near Maidenhead in Berkshire, close to the existing RapidSwitch Hosting Centre, enabling direct connectivity between the two sites at multiple 10 gigabit speeds. There is also diverse connectivity from the new site to London, again at multiple 10 gigabit speeds. The data centre is 600 racks in size, which will give a total capacity of 20,000 servers.

It’s always a good sign when a company adds a data centre. It’s a sign of increased growth and confidence in the market. It’s good news, both for RapidSwitch and all their RapidSwitch Dedicated Servers customers. RapidSwitch are interesting in that they are purely focused on the upper end of the hosting market, namely dedicated servers and co-location. Their dedicated servers start at £39 a month, which is a pretty good price if that’s what you’re after.

Ok, it’s another Long Tale TV Viral video, but as usual, it’s flawless executed, extremely topical (at least here in the Isle of Man) and exactly the sort of thing people will send around to one another. Great work Brain Grenade

• Specs of Facebook’s Profile Redesign – interesting read which will affect millions of users. I wonder how much user feedback goes into this process. After all, nobody like a platform they’re familiar with changing under their feet without warning, do they? And don’t forget the poor developers.
• Microsoft Brand Confusion Runs Deep – Very interesting post and a real problem from Microsoft. They have generated so many brands and nomenclature over the years that there is significant confusion amongst it’s user base. Microsoft always feels like a top-heavy organisation, with too many people pulling strings and not enough people delivering to the end user.
• Google Translate becomes the best online free translator – Google Translate now supports the translation between any of the following languages: English, Arabic, Bulgarian, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Swedish (the new languages are shown in bold)

There was more, but those were the most interesting ones

P.S. that was my first link to Mahalo .. Jason will be so pleased ..

Performancing has grown since then and now includes tools to measure how your website
is performing, as well as to sell advertising space on your blog.

So what does this mean for PayPerPost? PayPerPost
already has created a marketplace where bloggers get paid
to blog. The addition of Performancing to their family brings another 28,000 bloggers
to the fold and are a captive audience for PayPerPost’s offering. It also proves to
be a consolidation of services for advertisers and internet marketeers where they
can go to one place and get a range of services.

So, I’ve checked out the blogger marketplace on Performancing, and I’ve also added
Performancing metrics to my site. I had been using Google Analytics, but never really
got any use out of it, so will be giving Performancing a try. The main thing I noticed
was that although both services are offered by one organisation, the integration between
them was far from seamless. I had to set my blog up for the Marketplace, then I had
to set it up once again for the metrics. One thing I hope PayPerPost will be doing
in the near future is to make all service that bloggers can use; rather than sign
up multiple times for different things.

It will be fun to see how the next few months shape up

This episode is about PPP’s move to a new office. You can feel the excitement in the
air as the move approaches and things need to get finished in time. If you’ve ever
been part of an office move, you’ll know what I’m talking about. I like their shiny
new home, particularly the fingerprint reader that lets you in. Good going guys; keep
up the buzz!

• MoonEstates.com – one acre for £20
• ParamountZone – will sell you an acre for £19.95

So, what do you get for your money. Well, it seems that you get a nice certificate, and nothing else really. According to NASA, everyone out there is just a fraud and the moon falls under the same jurisdiction as international waters and property rights are governed by the United Nations. So, don’t rush off an buy an acre of moon this Xmas >

P.S. Kempton fireworks is organised by Round
Table and all proceeds go to charity.