Herndon, Virginia - (Website Hosting Directory) - March 15, 2006 - Web solution and domain name registration company, Network Solutions joins 18 other leading Internet companies in asking the Board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to reconsider a detrimental decision that would deprive the .com domain registry of future competition.

Network Solutions and other registrars are asking for reconsideration and emergency relief following the Board's split decision on February 28 to approve the proposed .com registry agreement and settlement between ICANN and VeriSign. Calling the adverse consequences of the .com deal "far-reaching and permanent," the request said the proposals demonstrate that ICANN has failed to foster a market with appropriate controls on .com registry pricing or to provide adequate regulatory oversight.

In a decision that failed to gain backing from 40 percent of its members, ICANN's Board approved a .com contract extension and proposed settlement with VeriSign, without altering provisions that drew sharp concerns from all corners of the Internet community. These anti-consumer provisions would: (1) Foreclose future competition in the .com registry and (2) Let VeriSign raise .com registration fees by a compound rate of up to 31 percent over six years without cost-justification or review in most years. Not a single one of the Internet Constituencies created by ICANN as part of the required bottom-up form of governance supported the proposed amendments to the .com agreement. Statements in opposition are set forth in the comments section of the ICANN website.

The proposal is now before the Department of Commerce's National Telecommunications and Information Administration for final review. The Department must approve the proposed amendments.

According to joint request filed late Friday, March 10th, ''Over the past month, the DOJ [Department of Justice] has actively investigated the registry market and the potential impacts of the proposal on competition. The Board should be privy to the results of this investigation and solicit the DOJ's advice prior to approving the agreement.''

The joint request for reconsideration was filed under ICANN procedures that allow reconsideration requests to be granted if a Board decision was made without considering material information. The filing demonstrates that ICANN's Board did not have key facts about VeriSign's market position and did not apply traditional antitrust analysis in evaluating the competitive effects of the settlement.

The joint request continued, ''The failure to consider material information concerning the potential adverse effects that the settlement would have on competition is contrary to ICANN's core values and would be harmful to consumers.''

The proposals narrowly approved by the Board would settle pending litigation between ICANN and VeriSign, which solely operates the registry for the .com generic top level domain.

To learn more about Network Solutions, please visit: www.networksolutions.com.

Sacramento, California - (Website Hosting Directory) - March 15, 2006 - Web server company, Re-invent, has launched Web Services Enhancements (WSE) 3.0 for Microsoft.NET, an add-on to Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 and the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 and has been installed on all Re-invent web servers.

The add-ons are intended to enable developers to build secure web services based on the latest web services protocol specifications. WSE 3.0 simplifies the development and deployment of secure Web services. It enables developers and administrators to apply security policies to Web services running on the .NET Framework 2.0. Using WSE 3.0, Web services communication can be signed and encrypted using Kerberos tickets, X.509 certificates and other custom binary and XML-based security tokens. In addition username/password credentials can be used for authentication purposes. An enhanced security model provides a policy-driven foundation for securing Web services. WSE also supports the ability to establish a trust-issuing service for retrieval and validation of security tokens, as well as the ability to establish more efficient long-running secure communication via secure conversations.

To learn more about Re-invent, please visit: www.re-invent.com.

Cincinnati, Ohio - (Website Hosting Directory) - March 15, 2006 - A new blogging tool has been released by Performancing Metrics, an organization dedicated to building the world's largest community of professional bloggers.

Performancing Metrics is a hosted analytics solution for professional bloggers who require detailed, accurate statistics for their revenue-generating blogs. The tool is compatible with all major blogging software that allows access to HTML templates, including WordPress, Movable Type and Blogger.

Features include a clean, efficient user interface that allows bloggers to view their analytics for multiple purposes, including advertising statistics, link optimization, participation monitoring and topic popularity. Performancing Metrics also enables measurement of multiple sites, enabling blog network managers to monitor and compare traffic and growth across all sites, individually or in aggregate.

The feature-rich beta of Performancing Metrics includes RSS feeds for simple monitoring, a comprehensive API for third party developers to use and build upon the Performancing Metrics platform, the ability to save chart images for use online or in reports and a private-versus-public option for allowing basic statistics to be publicly displayed. The full version, slated for early Q2 2006, will add many customization features, and will be guided by trends gathered from feedback via the Performancing.com community blog.

Nick Wilson, Co-Founder of Performancing commented, ''Our goal was to build an industrial strength web analytics system that was specifically tailored for blogs, an analytics solution that bloggers could rely upon for accuracy and power and, whilst being simple to use.''

Jeremy Wright, President of Blog Network b5media and author of ''Blog Marketing,'' added, ''Even while Performancing Metrics is still in beta, it is fast becoming one of our favorite stats packages. It allows us to analyze how blogs are actually doing in real time, which is critical when we often have spikes that last only a few hours. Getting stats in real-time lets us react to incoming traffic in ways that our other stats packages simply can't.''

Danae Shell, a small business owner who authors a blog titled Knickers promotes her lingerie business and added, ''Wow, this tool is brilliant! I'm learning all kinds of new things about my blogs. I love the way Performancing Metrics breaks down information by post and comments rather than pages. It makes so much more real-world sense.''

To learn more about Performancing Metrics, please visit: http://performancing.com/forum/metrics/support.

Bellevue, Washington - (Website Hosting Directory) - March 15, 2006 - Microsoft Corporation is hosting an inaugural Small Business Summit in Bellevue, Washington via more than 40 webcasts on subjects including financial management, sales and marketing, computer security, productivity, and mobility.

Themed ''Take Your Business to the Next Level,'' the summit anticipates more than 12,000 small-business customers and partners will participate, including such well-known entrepreneurs as Maxine Clark, CEO of Build-A-Bear Workshop, and Keith Ferrazzi, CEO of Ferrazzi Greenlight Inc.

Several other announcements concerning support the strategy, including a new financing option for small businesses to purchase technology solutions, and the availability of Microsoft Point of Sale will be addressed.

Chief Operating Officer at Microsoft and summit Kevin Turner commented, ''We have an exciting year ahead of us, with major new products and services that we think will delight and surprise our small-business customers. By putting people at the center of our software design and delivering software solutions that drive business value and work the way our customers work, we are furthering our efforts to help small businesses reach their full potential in today's economy.''

As a result of the lowered transaction limit, qualifying customers in the United States can get 36-month loans for complete IT solutions, including hardware and services, in addition to Microsoft software. Current and future efforts to deliver software and resources uniquely suited to small businesses include the following: Windows Small Business Server 2003 R2.

Scheduled for release later this year, Windows Vista Business is the operating system designed for organizations of all sizes. For small businesses, Windows Vista Business is designed to keep PCs running smoothly and securely so they are less reliant on dedicated IT support.

To learn more about Microsoft's business summit, please visit: http://www.microsoft.com/sbs.

Minneapolis, Minnesota - (Website Hosting Directory) - March 14, 2006 - Tier 1 Research has issued a new report that indicates Internet infrastructure services have developed into a growing and profitable sector, after struggling as a sector over the past few years.

With 14.9% year over year (Y/Y) growth to $11.7bn in revenue, Tier 1 Research believes, despite this growth, that the sector is transforming itself and will meet challenges and opportunities along the way. These challenges and opportunities will cause changes during the next two years, and Tier 1 Research sees numerous strong drivers pushing the sector to 10% or greater annual growth during this period.

Andy Schroepfer, President of Tier 1 Research and lead author of the report, comnented, ''The Internet infrastructure services sector was left for dead in 2002, but through a painful fight for survival in the years since then, the sector is once again experiencing growth.We believe the transformation taking place will present some significant challenges and opportunities in this sector."

These findings are contained in a report released today by Minneapolis-based Tier 1 Research - an independent division of The 451 Group that analyzes the financial and industry implications of developments affecting public and private companies within the IT, communications and Internet sectors.

The 34-page report, titled ''Internet Infrastructure Services - 2005 Year-End Market Size/Share Review,'' provides a market size/share review and comparison of companies in the Internet infrastructure services sector, which includes companies that deliver ad-supported services, colocation, content delivery networks, hosting, infrastructure management, utility computing services and Web development. It includes discussion of the challenges faced by this sector, segment-by-segment snapshots and revenue growth details, analysis of the segment leaders and a look at key M and A activity, as well as expectations and recommendations for each of the segments.

To learn more about the Tier 1 Research report, please visit: www.tier1research.com.