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Web site builder SynthaSite rebrands as Yola

SynthaSite, a San Francisco-based company that lets users build Web sites with minimal technical expertise required, has changed its name: it has ditched the corporate-sounding moniker for the more Web 2.0-ish Yola.

"The name SynthaSite has brought us to where we are today, but it won't take us where we want to go," CEO Vinny Lingham said in a release. "We're reaching a global market and need a name that is easy to say, resonates in any language, and captures the creativity and excitement that our users bring to their Web sites."

Yola, … Read more

D-Link offers high-end 425MBps 7.5TB NAS server

Casual home users might not need something like this, but the business world will definitely want the new NAS server from D-Link.

Last week, the company announced its all-new Stack DSN-1100 iSCSI SAN Array NAS server, which offers up to 7.5TB of storage and 425MBps of bandwidth. It achieves this high throughput speed thanks to IEEE 802.3ad Link Aggregate Groups technology that combines the speeds of the device's four Gigabit Ethernet ports.

The NAS server include five bays, each of which can take a 3.5-inch SATA (or SATA-II) hard drive of up to 1.5TB. The … Read more

Study: Microwind turbines a tough sell in Mass.

BOSTON--Despite the growing enthusiasm for home wind turbines, an analysis of microwind turbines in Massachusetts found that they fell short of performance expectations.

The Massachusetts Renewable Energy Trust commissioned a study last year to review electricity output from 21 small wind turbines in the state and the results were surprising: the data showed that the estimated production was about three times higher than the turbines' actual production.

The analysis is not the final word on small wind generators, but is significant because few states have done similar reviews, say the study's authors.

The Massachusetts Renewable Energy Trust was "… Read more

Metaplace: Platform for user-created virtual worlds

Why play someone else's virtual world when you can build your own?

That's the major premise behind Metaplace, a new browser-based virtual-world platform from, among others, former Sony Online Entertainment chief creative officer Raph Koster.

Built to run inside the browser on any Internet-connected machine, Metaplace employs a simple, 2D, Flash-based graphics system that fronts for a fairly sophisticated set of content creation tools and what may one day be a complex open-ended economy built around user-created content.

In fact, because of the 2D and Flash nature of Metaplace, it's easy to miss that the platform offers users some of the easiest virtual-world building tools that have ever been made available. And while Metaplace has been in closed beta since October, it is expected to emerge into a public and open beta period sometime later this year. See below for an invite to the closed beta.

The company, which was formerly known as Areae, raised a $6.7 million funding round last October, led by Charles River Ventures. In total, it has raised $9.4 million.

Rising to the top Metaplace has a little something for everyone. For the casual users, it has any number of user-created worlds to play, and there's a basic central Metaplace world that is an easy gathering place. Each can be rated, and the highest-rated rise to the top, allowing users to skip messing around with the system's chaff and instead concentrate on the wheat. But for those who are interested in creating their own virtual world, Metaplace offers a cornucopia of tools and choices that make it quick and easy to get a brand new world up and running.

Of course, as with any user-generated content system, the good creations are far outweighed by the bad. As Koster himself put it, "There are more than 25,000 Metaplace worlds, most of them are empty and most of them are crap."

But if it sounds like Koster is bashing his own system, he's not. Rather, he's touting how easy it is for anyone to start a virtual world that itself can be accessed by anyone on the Internet in mere seconds. Indeed, it's not an exaggeration to say that just about anyone could have a rudimentary Metaplace world up and running in less than five minutes. … Read more

PCNation has the Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2003 for $169.81, after $19.19 savings, plus free shipping.

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Freescale harvests energy from small solar panels

Freescale has developed a specialized chip that could lead to distributed energy sources like miniature solar cells powering indoor thermostats, consumer electronics, and garage door openers.

The chip manufacturer this week at a power electronics conference in Washington, D.C., plans to demonstrate a prototype of a device that can squeeze usable electricity from low-voltage energy sources.

Those energy sources could be a solar cell embedded on an electronic appliance. But the chip could also harvest energy from other low-power sources, like ambient electromagnetic radiation, waste heat, or mechanical motion, said Kevin Parmenter in Freescale's applications engineering

The chip … Read more

Get a free domain name and hosting from Microsoft

The words "free" and "Microsoft" don't often appear in the same sentence, so imagine my surprise at discovering this deal: a free custom domain name, free Web hosting, free e-mail accounts, and more.

As you might expect from the name, Microsoft Office Live Small Business has a decidedly business focus--but that doesn't mean you can't use it for a personal site.

The freebie account includes not only the domain (any available .com, .net, .org, or .info address), but also site-building tools, reporting tools, project and document managers, 100 e-mail addresses, and collaboration-minded online … Read more

Study delivers blow to urban microwind turbines

Small wind turbines attached to individual homes work fine unless you have lousy wind.

That's the upshot of a multi-site study called the Warwick Microwind Trial project, a year-long survey on the performance of roof-mounted turbines done in the U.K. done by Encraft, a low-carbon technology consulting firm.

The researchers picked 26 sites in the U.K where microturbines tied to the power grid were attached to people's homes to offset their electricity use. Many of the consumers clearly purchased the turbines to lower their fossil fuel energy use as some already had solar panels and ground-source heat pumps. … Read more

Small business: A cloud-computing opportunity?

There has been much ado about Rackspace's recent "cloud hosting" survey (PDF), in which it finds that small businesses are essentially unaware of services that fit that description.

Specifically, the survey found that more than two-thirds of small businesses (not defined in the survey, unfortunately) have never heard of "cloud hosting."

Several prominent bloggers, the CNET Blog Network's Dave Rosenberg and CloudAve's Krishnan Subramanian among them, have pointed out that the question asked may have courted the response received. To quote Rosenberg:

Not too surprisingly, the majority of SMBs were not aware nor terribly interested in "cloud hosting." I suspect that some of this had to do with the use of the term "cloud hosting" rather than an interest in moving toward hosted applications and infrastructure. I would argue that questions about using "the cloud" versus "cloud hosting" would have come up with a different set of answers.

Good point, but I think that there is more to this story.… Read more