MySpace is acquiring Photobucket for $250 million in cash. TechCrunch is reporting that there is also an earn-out for up to an additional $50 million.

Photobucket has been looking for a buyer since March, when they hired Lehman Brothers to help sell the company. They were looking for $300 million or more, but may have had few bidders other than MySpace.

The companies have been in serious acquisition discussions for the last couple of weeks – A dispute that involved Photobucket videos being blocked on MySpace led to acquisition discussions, and the block was removed.

Photobucket generated $6.3 million in revenue last year and planned on hitting $25 million or more this year. They have 40 million registered users and add another 85,000 per day. (more…)

If you visit a lot of websites regularly like news sites, forums or whatever, then you will enjoy the services of this software, it is called ServiceHolder.

ServiceHolder helps to keep your sites grouped and tabbed easily in just one window. Each site which you add to ServiceHolder has its own unique settings (popup killer, script killer, etc.). So each site is like a whole new browser installation.

What are the main features that ServiceHolder supports? To mention but a few:

• Multiple websites in one window!
• Kills banner popups!
• Access and manage IE favorites
• Live update from internet
• Minimize to tray
• 70,380 mood colors
• Auto refresh on timer
• No installation or extra DLLs
• 100% Banner free.

If you think the software can meet your needs why don’t you just check it out. It’s free.

Go to http://www.serviceholder.com/

One thing is worthy of note though: According to the publisher:

“The auto update server is currently down. This will not affect your application; the error you get in the startup is just for the auto update services.”

Here is a really cool tool worth checking out. Meetro is radius and proximity based software. Getting rid of the jargons this means this software finds like-minded people around you.

Meetro is the first the world’s first location-aware IM client and real-time social network — which means Meetro allows you to meet real people in your neighborhood. One of the cool things about Meetro is that it has multiple IM network support so you don’t lose contact with your old friends on other networks.

One thing you will definitely love about this software is the fact that it generates buddy lists based on proximity so when you enter the program you get two buddy lists: Your normal one, i.e. AOL, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ list and an additional one based on who is nearby.

Check out http://www.meetro.com/ for more info.

Oh! Less I Forget, Meetro will cost you nada, nothing, $0, IT’S Free !!! Go Check it out. http://www.meetro.com/
 

Yahoo Inc. is shutting down Yahoo Photos, its first-generation photo storage site, and asking users to move instead to Yahoo’s Web 2.0 photo sharing site, Flickr, a Yahoo official said on Thursday.

In June, tens of millions of registered users of Yahoo Photos will be notified of various options including upgrading to Yahoo’s Flickr service or various outside-photo storage sites, according to Flickr co-founder Stewart Butterfield.

Yahoo also will offer consumers the option of loading their photos on competing sites when users are notified next month.

These include PhotoBucket — the most popular online photo sharing service among users of social network sites like News Corp.’s MySpace — or more conventional photo printing and storage site such as Kodak Gallery, Shutterfly Inc. or Snapfish, he said. (more…)

Here is useful tool to get the best of web search. It really redefines Search Engine Optimization.

FirstStop WebSearch Business Edition is a cool tool that increases Web searchers’ productivity by allowing them to do the things they cannot do with standard search engines. With this really useful tool you can search multiple engines all at once,, save and export search results to office and web applications. You will also appreciate the fact that you can get all available search results in a single list instead of only 10 or 20 per page.

The fact that this software helps you to automatically conduct batch searches makes it really very useful. Additional search engines and features can be added on request.

The latest version, FirstStop WebSearch Business Edition 5.0, which was just recently released, has these cool changes:

• More supported search engine types;
• Increased level of detail in search results;
• Improved support for non-English language searches;
• Batch searching;
• RSS support;
• New Discovery Tree enhancements;
• Desktop search bar.

The only downside to this software is its price, it costs a whooping $125, but the question you’ll have to ask yourself is, is this software helping you achieve your desired goals and if so is it worth your financial investment?

You are the only one that can answer those questions but that is after you check out the trial version first.

Want to check it out? Go to http://www.firststopwebsearch.com/

JLC’s Internet TV is a program for watching free online TV channels. You will enjoy the fact that it gives you a wide range of choices as it automatically finds over 1400 channels and have an online updater to keep the channel list updated.

Still not sure this is for you, check out some of its cool features:

• Watch over 1400 online TV channels for free!
• User friendly interface with inbuilt channel list
• Channel updater which keeps your list synchronized with the list at World Wide Internet TV
• Program updater automatically keeps your program up to date
• Powerful search function lets you easily find any channel
• Favorite list to keep a track of your favorite channels
• Absolutely NO spyware/adware or malware included!

The latest major change in the latest version is the inclusion an installer.

Want to check it out? Go to http://jlc-software.com/index.php?page=internet_tv.html

If you are using YouTube and you’ve been looking for something to help with your video streams then you need to try out SpeedBit Video Accelerator for YouTube.

SpeedBit Video Accelerator for YouTube makes your videos stream faster and play smoother, reducing buffering problems and video “hiccups”. One really cool thing you will really love about this tool is that its unique video search lets you find the latest and hottest videos around the web easily. But that’s not all the “Recently Accelerated” list gives you instant access to the last videos played, so you can have easy and quick access to your favorites.

The new version, SpeedBit Video Accelerator 2.0 Beta, which was released a couple of days ago, now supports more site. So it’s no longer just a YouTube thing.

Here are the latest changes in the new Beta Version:

• Added acceleration for dailymotion.com
• Added acceleration for metacafe.com
• Added acceleration for grouper.com
• Added acceleration for itunes.com
• Search mechanism upgraded to a new Solr based search engine

Want to check it out, it’s freeware!!!! Go to http://www.speedbit.com/video%5FAccelerator/

In need of a cool video software with video surveillance and capture tools? You need to check out Webcam Surveyor

Webcam Surveyor is complete software that combines video surveillance and video capture tools. The good thing about Webcam Surveyor is that you can use it to record all video activity. It can also work as a motion detector. As a motion detector program alerts are triggered by events e.g. an email can be sent or images uploaded to FTP site when motion is detected, making remote observation real easy.

One real cool thing about this software is that the built-in file browser allows to you to easily organize captured images and video clips.

The latest version which was just recently released has these changes:

• Added: Support for DivX® 6.5.1 Codec
• Support for ACDV 2.0.1 Codec
• Optimized- Motion Detection
• Updated- Documentation
• Fixed – Minor Bugs

Want to check it out? Visit http://www.webcamsurveyor.com/

Hackers have begun cashing in on the Virginia Tech university tragedy by spamming out malware-infected emails purporting to offer cameraphone footage of the attack which resulted in more than 30 deaths.

Email messages carry a photograph of gunman Cho Seung Hui and claim to link to a Brazilian movie website carrying footage of the campus shootings. But clicking on the link downloads a malicious screensaver file which installs a banking spyware Trojan. (more…)

High-flying startup StumbleUpon has been rumored to be in acquisition discussions since at least last November. Recently we’ve heard that talks have heated up again, with Google, AOL and eBay as potential suitors. A source with knowledge of the deal now says the company has signed a term sheet with eBay to be acquired. The price is somewhere between $40 – $45 million.

StumbleUpon lets users rate websites via a browser toolbar. At any time a user can click “Stumble!” and will be taken to a website highly rated by other StumbleUpon users who tend to vote in a similar way as the person “stumbling.” More often than not, it’s something almost serendipitously interesting to the reader. The company expanded into video referrals in late 2006. (more…)