As we mentioned last week, Google, in spite of already having launched their Knol website, doesn’t own the domain name Knol.com. It is owned by Dutchman Hilco Knol, who sells steam cleaning equipment on that URL.

He hasn’t sold the domain name yet, but it seems like he has been approached by Google with a six-figure offer. However, he has stated that he wants at least €1 million to part with the domain name. That is approximately $1.56 million.

You could call him an unintentional domain speculator. All of a sudden a person running a small business has found himself in possession of a domain name for a brand belonging to one of the largest companies in the world. All because his last name happens to be Knol.

It could happen to anyone

When a big company like Google launches a brand with a name that happens to coincide with a domain name you own, your company may be in for a significant (and unexpected) pay day.

You’ll have the trouble of switching domain names if you sell yours, of course, but if you run a small business with a moderate income that trouble can easily be offset by the profit from the sale of the domain name.

(The man in the picture really has NOTHING to do with this article, but we liked his glasses… Photo courtesy of Trig at Flickr.)

Twitter announced yesterday that they now have more than 145 million registered users. That’s a lot, but how much is Twitter actually being used? Turns out that there’s more activity on Twitter than ever before, and it keeps increasing.

Twitter processed 2.64 billion tweets this August, an increase of 33% over May. Not a bad increase over just a summer. In August, an average of 85 million tweets passed through Twitter every day.

Read more

It may be the start of a new trend, software that automatically upgrades itself silently in the background without ever bothering users. Google has been doing it successfully with its Chrome web browser, and soon Mozilla will jump on the bandwagon with Firefox.

You may love it or hate it, but for most users, software that automatically upgrades itself can be a blessing, and in more ways than is immediately apparent.

And it’s not just great for users, it’s great for developers because it allows them to innovate and develop at a fast pace, pushing out frequent updates without annoying their users with upgrade notices. In short, automatic upgrades let developers push the pace of innovation.

Read more

The two mobile platforms with the most apps are Google’s Android with around 95,000 apps, and Apple’s iOS with around 250,000 apps.

Those are impressive numbers, but this article isn’t about the sheer number of apps available. Instead, we wanted to focus on a very interesting distinction between the two platforms: The radical difference in the ratio between free and paid apps.

Read more

Do you run a web service or hosting company? Do you like transparency? Then this might be of interest to you.

Service status blogs are becoming increasingly common these days and are usually very appreciated by users. Look no further than Twitter’s famous status blog, or the Google Apps status page. Status blogs (or “status pages”, depending on approach) may look and work differently, but they all serve the same purpose, informing users about service issues.

Now it’s easier than ever before if you want one, or want to make your existing status blog even better.

Read more

From its official launch in October 2009, it took Windows 7 only nine months to pass Vista. Now the next question is when it will catch up with Windows XP. Because, unbelievable as it may seem, Windows XP still has a massive 55% of the desktop OS market. That is more than Windows 7 and Vista combined.

To figure out when Windows 7 will overtake XP, we have made a prediction based on the average market share changes over the past six months. It will give us an idea of what will happen if things continue at their current pace.

Read more