For those of you that follow such things, there was a hugely prescient blog post written here at TheWHIR in April. Here you can view the original post entitled, Why Yahoo Should Sell. Among the many other wise words included in this post were the following:

''The truth - though it hurts for Yahoo to hear it is this - they should immediately make a deal with Microsoft. If Yahoo is so certain that they are going to make a TON more money in the next three years, then they should make a deal that includes lots of Microsoft stock. That way, when the Yahoo piece of Microsoft outperforms, Microsoft stock will go up.''

So what was the deal that I was advocating at the time? Microsoft had offered to purchase Yahoo in a deal that was worth $38 billion (that's billion with a B). Yahoo turned the deal down. Then CEO, Jerry Yang, had said of the deal at the time, ''With the distraction of Microsoft's unsolicited proposal now behind us, we will be able to focus all of our energies on executing the most important transition in our history so that we can maximize our potential to the benefit of our shareholders, employees, partners and users.''

Okay Jerry. So what has transpired in the meantime? Yahoo's stock price has fallen to settle at a current company value of...drumroll please...$12.67 billion. So not listening to me has cost the company - wait, let me do the math: $38 billion - $13 billion = $25 billion. Wow - that was really stupid.

So now the financial cost has caught up with CEO, Jerry Yang - the man that most credit for the failed deal. Mr. Yang announced this week that he would step down as CEO of Yahoo. And so the man that popular investment television host Jim Cramer labeled a ''value wrecking ball'' will go. I contend that it's too late. Yahoo is essentially done. The value is gone. Microsoft has walked away - really.

This saga should act as a lesson for those of us fortunate enough to be working deals - of any size. Don't let the big buyer get away. You may never get another chance.

This content was written by Derek Vaughan exclusively for the Web Host Industry Review.

Riding on the swelling wave of utility and cloud computing solutions that have been rapidly surfacing in the industry over the last few months, in August, AT&T launched AT&T Synaptic Hosting, an offering the company describes as "its next-generation utility computing service with managed networking, security and storage for businesses."

As part of AT&T's $1 billion planned global network investment in 2008, the new utility computing service combines technology acquired from USinternetworking with five "super IDCs" (Internet data centers) in the US, Europe and Asia.

The company says a core feature of its service is its next-generation utility computing platform, enabling customers to use the AT&T network to manage applications, compute resources on servers and store data.

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Additionally, AT&T says the service is integrated into a virtualized "pay-for-what-you-use" infrastructure than can adapt to changing demands from users or applications.

While in Las Vegas, WHIRtv sat down with Joey Widener, senior product manager for AT&T's hosting and application services about AT&T's push into the utility computing market.

The DMCA has been around for 10 years now.  It remains as controversial as it has ever been.  The most controversial aspects of the Act, the anti-circumvention provisions, don't generally apply to hosts.  The "notice and takedown" aspects of the Act do.  In spades.

The DMCA, for all its flaws,has made life a bit easier for hosts.  Prior to the DMCA, hosts were often faced with lawsuits arguing that they were liable as third party infringers for the content of their customers.  With the DMCA, as long as you comply with the Act, you fall within a "Safe Harbor," insulating you from liability. 

The predictability of the DMCA has not come without costs.  Primary in my mind is the flawed process of "shoot first - ask questions later."  Each year I see at least 10 instances where a copyright owner simply ignores basic copyright law when sending a notice and takedown letter and suffers no penalty.  The host's customer, however, has likely had their site shut down and sustained at least a week of downtime.

I have also encountered my fair share of notice and takedown complaints that were harassment pure and simple.  A business sends a notice and takedown letter and has his competitor's site shut down.  Even if the site is down for a week, for an Internet business, that can be the difference between life and death.

Copyright owners argue that unfairly targeted entites can sue complainants for false notice and takedown letters.  While this argument works well in theory, in practice, a lawsuit typically runs about $40,000.  That's money most businesses don't have to spend.  In addition, Federal courts remain split on the issue of whether the phrase "under penalty of perjury" applies only to the authorization to make the claim of infringement, or to the truth of the claim of infringement itself. 

I am sure I am not the only person who has had to parse murky sentence structure that was specifically drafted to make sure that the signatory of the letter was *not* stating that the claim of infringement was in fact truthful.

The DMCA, however, has been a good thing for hosts.  Whether it is good for society, is a question for the pundits.

Supposing you were the sort of person who would consider shaking a stick at offerings of "educational" information on green IT, you might find, right now, that there is a bit more work than you can handle.

It seems like everybody's doing an informational webcast on green IT at the moment - and more often than not they're sponsored by one of the big technology companies with a vested interest in the decision-making of the people looking for information on "green IT," like HP, Sun or IBM.

The notice I got today from Internet.com was on an upcoming webcast called "Governing IT in a Green World." And it's sponsored by IBM. The upside of the sponsorship being the "FREE" price tag for attendance (to "qualified attendees.")

As far as I can tell, that "qualified attendees" bit refers to registered Internet.com users, a status that is not difficult to achieve. I signed up just a moment ago at the registration page that came up when I tried to follow the link to the webinar signup page.

The session is scheduled for December 2, 2008 and will be presented by George Spafford, principal consultant at Pepperweed Consulting.

According to the registration page, the key points of focus for the webinar will include

- Understanding the risks facing IT, such as skyrocketing energy costs, Global warming and the potential for new regulations

- Developing and implementing "green" strategies in IT, including how IT can help the organization and what approaches are relevant to IT

I get the feeling from the material I've seen that the presentation might include a rehashing of some of the more regularly-repeated "green IT" mantras. Particularly in the "understanding the risks facing IT, such as skyrocketing energy costs etc." portion of the show. But I doubt at this point that a webinar would be targeting the imaginary demographic of "IT people who have no understanding at all of the energy-related issues facing businesses today."

Besides, the presentation is "45-60 minutes" and it's very possible that there will be something worth seeing during the "developing and implementing 'green' strategies in IT" part.