The service gained a lot of popularity and became the single largest free hosting service. In 1999, the beat of internet, Yahoo bought the company and continued the service flawlessly. But the popularity was on gradual decline because of better and more featureful options by other free service providers. But still, alot of users sticked to GeoCities.

During the last one year, Yahoo! has been continous decline. It started with the Microsoft’s interest to acquire the company. Though Yahoo declined the offer in interest of it’s investors and users.
Why is GeoCities shutting Down?
The reason specified on Yahoo’s site is pretty much unfair for the consumers and reverse for the company:

We have decided to focus on helping our customers explore and build relationships online in other ways. Beginning on October 26, 2009, you will no longer be able to use GeoCities to maintain a free presence online — but we’re excited about the other services we have designed to help you connect with friends and family and share your activities and interests.
We recommend our award-winning Web Hosting service, which works a lot like GeoCities but includes a personalized domain name (such as widgetdesigns.com) and matching email, terrific new site building tools, unlimited disk space and bandwidth, premium customer support, and more. See more on moving to Web Hosting.

Clearly, they are no longer encouraging free services. Reason being, they are already having a drowning business and they are cutting costs wherever possible. Primary reasons had been loss of interest and dis-investment- (CEO Bartz brings Trouble to Yahoo! Investors: $2Million Shares Cashed-out)

Whatever is going on inside Yahoo, we have only glimpse of it but what we know for sure is- It’s Not right for the company, not right for the users.  Yahoo’s CEO Bartz said“We Have Never Been a Search Company”. Wow! I remember, I saw it growing from “a Search” to “Everything”.

Hey Yahoo, whatever you are doing, you are getting worse.Your market share is falling, economic state is worse, one of the main Inspiration: Carl Icahn, resigned; I no longer see a hope with left out business : stinky search (bing), outdated Email, IM. I hope you don’t shudown developers API, widgets, webservices, which most developers still use.
I wish… Yahoo had listened to Google.

Yahoo was the first love for several Internet users.

The deals like this, brings new hopes for the customers and areas where Mobile usage isn’t as dense as US, Japan, China.

Today, as per the latest press release, Orange and T-Mobile, will join hands in a new joint venture, this fall.

At the moment, they are 3rd and 4th largest Telecom providers in UK. The merger will create the largest mobile company in the United Kingdom, with a subscriber base of more than 28.4 million which builds up roughly 37% of the market.

Currently the largest UK operator with a 27% share is Telefonica’s O2, which is the exclusive iPhone carrier. At the  second place with 25% of the British market is Vodafone, the company which jointly owns a 48% stake of Verizon Wireless.

The merger of Orange and T-Mobile in the UK would be like Sprint and T-Mobile merging in the United States, breaking up the market into thirds.

The deal, which is due to be signed November, comes on the heels of poor financial results from T-Mobile and lackluster sales from Orange, and the reasons behind it are quite obvious: saving money. Despite the huge initial cost of the merger, the two companies expect to save, over time, up to 5.7 billion dollars. Part of these savings will probably reflect on the combined staff of the two companies: Orange’s 12,500 and T-Mobile’s 6,500 employees, although a spokeswoman said that it’s too early to talk about the impact on the workforce, but we can expect cuts.

As far as branding goes, both brands will remain separate in the first 18 months after the deal is completed. Orange chief executive Tom Alexander will lead the new company, while T-Mobile’s UK boss Richard Moat will become the COO.

Though both Vodafone and O2 were recently reported to have made bids on T-Mobile, a mutual interest was shared between executives at Orange and T-Mobile. Orange’s CEO Tom Alexander, for example, came to the company in 2007 from T-Mobile-owned MVNO Virgin Mobile. Alexander will become the CEO of the joint Venture, and T-Mobile’s CEO Richard Moat will take over as COO.

For the first 18 months of the joint venture, both brands will remain separate. T-Mobile this morning said that period will be used to “review branding alternatives” for the new company.

sources: betanews, Mashable ]]> http://geeknizer.com/orange-and-t-mobile-join-hands-to-become-uks-biggest-telecom-provider/feed/ 0 http://geeknizer.com/how-to-choose-a-future-proof-router/ http://geeknizer.com/how-to-choose-a-future-proof-router/#comments Fri, 12 Jun 2009 20:31:15 +0000 Tarandeep Singh http://geeknizer.com/blog/?p=1112 Read more »]]> With Networking Technologies evolving at lightnign speed, the challenge is being faced by IT organizations as they rethink their approach to routing, they need to ensure that the routers that they deploy today can support the current requirements and the current enabling technologies. These routers should have the flexibility to provide support for the requirements and the enabling technologies that will emerge over the next several years. The bandwidth requirement based on ever growing traffic outbound/inbound from the company sites is bringing the best to the knees. This is highly complex because it is impossible to predict with certainty the specific new requirements and technologies that will impact a particular IT organization in the future. It is, however, possible to state with certainty that there will be new requirements and new technologies and that the organization’s routing infrastructure will have to support those requirements and technologies.

There are different approaches that can be followed for future proofing your investments. These methodologies can help IT orgs to save money and plan for future while cutting costs optimally. One trend that is impacting virtually all IT organizations is that the number of different Web-based applications traversing the enterprise network is growing rapidly because of the webification of enterprise applications such as ERP and CRM, plus the utilization of emerging Web-based application architectures such as SOA, SaaS, cloud computing and mashups. This trend increases the importance of identifying which Web applications are business critical so that the IT organization can provide preferential treatment to these applications vs. the more mundane or recreational applications that are also Web-based; for example, Internet radio. Routers that can base QoS scheduling and forwarding behavior on deep-packet inspection (DPI) will be able to parse application headers allowing all critical business applications, including VoIP and videoconferencing, to receive preferential treatment and enabling recreational or unwanted application traffic to be either eliminated or rate limited.

We believe that implementing router-based QoS at key points of aggregation within the network may offer an attractive alternative to managing an end-to-end QoS scheme involving numerous client end systems. We believe this because the vast majority of IT organizations that we work with have already implemented QoS. However, because of the complexity that is associated with managing an end-to-end QoS scheme involving numerous client end systems, only a minority of them can effectively manage their QoS implementation.

WAN Experts share best practices on WAN issues from optimization to management as quoted below:

IT organizations that are looking to future proof their router purchases should also insist that any router they purchase support IP Multicast. IP Multicast provides for the efficient use of WAN bandwidth by enabling the simultaneous delivery of content to large numbers of recipients dispersed throughout the network. Applications leveraging IP multicast include IPTV for corporate communications or distance learning, video conferencing, as well as the distribution of software, stock quotes, and news.

Our next WAN newsletter will be our last for a while on the topic of enterprise routing. You can read more about the need to rethink routing here.

CIOs at top-performing companies are dealing with this issue in part by making quick and deep discretionary cuts across the board rather than through better IT cost-control initiatives, according to a new survey by The Hackett Group.

The survey shows IT budget growth at 1.3 percent for 2009 to 2011, compared to a historic average of 5.3 percent. At the same time, IT demand will grow at a rate of 8.6 percent. Reconciling greater demand with a smaller budget means IT must deliver higher levels of efficiency and productivity improvement, says Erik Dorr, senior research advisor for The Hackett Group.

CIOs traditionally do this through cost control (such as negotiating better vendor contacts) and discretionary cuts (such as staff reductions). Although discretionary cuts are the most effective way to quickly achieve savings in the face of rapid demand, this tactic comes at a cost, Dorr warns. “Without addressing fundamental productivity issues, these types of cuts inevitably lead to a degradation of service levels and a reduction in the level of demand that can be met,” he says. The survey also found a lack of focus by CIOs on the demand-side of IT services, which creates an opportunity to trim costs there, says Dorr.

Typically, IT met rising user demand by simply handling it, rather than creating processes to prioritize work by its value. However, as CIOs do more with less, developing demand management capabilities becomes critical. The survey found companies focusing demand management efforts around project portfolios (58 percent) and cost allocation of IT services (37 percent).