There is a certain nostalgic feeling that early web developers will have when they hear that Yahoo! is shutting down GeoCities.

Back in the 90′s, GeoCities had certain communities (neighborhoods) that people could join.  Some of the most popular neighborhoods were WallStreet, SoHo, Hollywood, Heartland, and Tokyo.  If you weren’t on GeoCities back then you were a nobody.  Dare I even compare it to the Facebook of its generation back then.  GeoCities had a way for beginning web developers to create their own websites.  It was one of the Internet’s first breakthrough websites.

GeoCities was initially a web hosting company when it was founded by David Bohnett and John Rezner around 1994.  The company was called Beverly Hills Internet before switching in 1995.  Around June 1997, GeoCities became the fifth most popular website on the Internet

After growing at a rapid pace despite placing advertisements around the website, the company went public on the NASDAQ under the symbol GCTY.  The IPO price was $17 and it rose to a peak of $100 per share.  Yahoo! bought the company in January 1999 for $3.57 billion.

Between the time that Yahoo! acquired the company and today, web hosting and template designs have become increasingly competitive at a rapid pace.  This is why it is time go for GeoCities.  It will be missed as much as we miss the Netscape browser and AOL CDs arriving in our mailbox.  The service will be shutting down later this year.  Goodbye GeoCities, we had a good run eh?

I put up a timeline above of how GeoCities looked every year and what the services offered were.  Click on the image for the bigger version.

A couple of days after The Pirate Bay team decided to appeal the verdict comes the news about the connection between the judge of the trial and copyright organizations.  On a Swedish radio station, the judge denied a “conflict of interest” when it was found out that he was a member of the main copyright association in the country.

The radio station is called Sveriges Radio and it is the equivalent of the BBC in Sweden.  Judge Norström is a member of the Swedish Copyright Association and is even on the board of the Swedish Association for the Protection of Industrial Property.  That organization focuses on tougher copyright laws.

Last Friday the four co-founders of The Pirate Bay were found guilty of copyright infringement.  The judge denied his conflict of interest over what is considered the most high-profile trial revolving around filesharing in European history.  The four co-founders were asked to pay $3.6 million in damages and serve a one year sentence.

The defense lawyers for the four co-founders will be calling for a retrial.  “I will point that out in my appeal, then the court of appeal will decide if the district court decision should be set aside and the case revisited,” stated Peter Althin, the lawyer for Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde.

Ever since the verdict was decided on Friday, the Swedish Pirate Party membership has more than doubled.  This may give the party a chance to win a seat in the European Parliament.  Over 22,000 members joined the party since the verdict.   Now there are over 37,000 total members.

The Pirate Party organization focuses on copyright law regulation and they keep a close eye on the government.  The party gained some attention last September when they found out the Bavarian and German governments were developing a trojan horse that would intercept calls made on Skype.

[via Guardian/Wired]

I’ve heard of Madoff’s employees selling paraphanalia, personal license seats at the New York Jets stadium, and even the title of the Lord of the Manor of Warleigh on eBay.  But this is the first time I’ve heard of a personal gene-sequencing auction taking place on the website.

Knome Inc. is the first company that offers personal genomics and they are based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  The auction will begin tomorrow and will last 10 days.  The opening bid will be at about $68,000.  The standard price that Knome charges for the gene-sequencing service is $99,000.  Last year the company was charging as high as $350,000.

Even though this is a hefty price, scientists believe that it will take a few years before it will cost only $1,000 to determine all 6 billion units in a DNA sequence within the 46 chromosomes.  This genetic information would be able to predict risk of disease and the most ideal medication.

Although it is not known how many customers Knome has, the company had an increase in business around December.  Kompolt Cause Media is the company that is running the auction for Knome.  In the past, Kompolt ran the auction for selling a lunch date with Warren Buffett.  The winning bidder will also get a private dinner with Knome co-founder and Harvard University scientist George Church.

[via NYT]

Facebook is looking for ways to increase their revenue and they are actually asking users whether they would pay for certain servies.  In this case, Facebook is asking if you would pay for a unique username that points to profiles (example: www.facebook.com/amit).  Several celebrities have already been given profile URLs for free in order to encourage them to update regularly and lure them away from Twitter.

For short URLs with certain keywords, it may end up turning into a bidding process.  For example www.facebook.com/john would get many offers.  MySpace.com already offers vanity URLs for free so this move may end up driving more people to create them on the other social network instead, but still maintain a Facebook profile.

Would you pay for a Facebook vanity URL?  Leave a comment.

[via AllFacebook]

Chris DeWolfe is one of the MySpace creators and was the CEO as of yesterday.  Now that he is out of the CEO position, there is a chance that former Facebook COO Owen Van Natta will be recruited.  Supposedly Natta left Facebook because he wanted to be CEO, but Zuckerberg did not accept that.  Sheryl Sandberg ended up replacing Natta.

Jon Miller is working on the details with Natta according to AllThingsD.  News Corp. was not planning to have DeWolfe leave the company but then TechCrunch reported that the company was looking for a replacement.  DeWolfe and Miller then started negotiating over the phone.  Both MySpace founders Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson will end up on different roles within News Corp.

Below is the internal e-mail sent out to News Corp. (Fox Interactive Media) employees:

To FIM Employees:

I am writing to share the news that MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe will be stepping down from his executive role in the near future. He has agreed to serve as a strategic advisor to the Company and will remain on the board of MySpace China.

In addition, I am currently in discussions with MySpace President Tom Anderson regarding his role within the organization.

I want to take this opportunity to thank them both for their incredible contributions to the Company, and for pioneering one of the greatest social media revolutions of our time. I wish Chris nothing but the best in any new endeavors and, like many in this industry, am eager to witness his next innovations.

I understand the importance of having a dynamic, inspiring and innovative management team, and am dedicated to ensuring that MySpace continues to benefit from the highest levels of passion and enthusiasm.

I also want to thank everyone across FIM for giving me the opportunity to work with all of you. With MySpace, IGN, Photobucket, Fox Audience Network and our Digital Publishing Group, this is an exciting collective of properties and I’m enthusiastic about the opportunities that lie ahead.

I hope to meet and work closely with many of you over the weeks and months to come.

Best regards,

Jonathan Miller

Well isn’t this just perfect… I bought my refurbished 8GB iPhone 3G for $149 about 4 months ago and signed a contract.  Well now they are offering the same price for the iPhone 3G, but double the capacity.  That’s right, 16GB refurbished iPhone 3Gs are now selling at $149.  I wave my fist at AT&T and Apple for letting the late bloomers get such a good deal.  The 8GB model is $99 with two year contract.  The $149 deal applies to both black and white iPhone mobile devices.

[via Engadget]

[Updated 9:22 AM EST - Both companies appear to be fixed during the pre-market, Intel is at $15.76 and Oracle is at $19.45]

In September 2008, Google stock appeared to be trading at $0.01 temporarily when it should have been over $400.  The glitch had to be investigated by Nasdaq Stock Market operators and it resulted from erroneous orders that were routed from another exchange.  This time it looks like a similar case is happening with Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC) and Oracle Corporation (NASDAQ:ORCL).

In the after hours stock price, Intel is reporting a $7.91 per share which is -49.52% from the closing price. Oracle is showing an after hours stock price of $9.63 per share which is -49.77% of the closing price. When this happened with Google last time any trades that took place at the $0.01 price were automatically canceled was not allowed to be appealed. As exchanges are becoming all-electronic they are susceptible to problems.

If anyone has any additional information, please let us know in the comments.

Fifty-five year old actor Jackie Chan, known for the Rush Hour franchise, is facing some heat from bloggers in regards to a statement he made at the Boao Forum this past Saturday.  The Hong Kong-born actor stated that Chinese people “need to be controlled.”  Chan further fueled the fire by talking about how Japanese TVs are better than Chinese brands.

After that statement, Chinalawblog.com likened Chan to a self-loathing racist and Stnn.cc reported that they were extremely disappointed with Chan.  Many people are boycotting his concert planned in May at the Bird’s Nest stadium.  As much as it was a terrible thing for him to say, I think it helped bring him back in the limelight.  I almost forgot about Jackie Chan for a minute there.

[via WSJ]