If you have always fancied trying out the role of a PR without jacking in your day job, women’s website Handbag.com is offering people the chance to engage in a spot of fantasy PR. Star PR is featured within its celebrity channel and players are given a £20m budget for their A-list team of celebrities with a brief to see how much media attention they can gather.
UK Betting continues to expand into the sports field with its latest acquisition of the online gaming assets of Sports.com. Over the past year, UK Betting has bought sites including Sportal and Sportinglife.com and more recently Teamtalk. UK Betting chief executive Terry Semel said: "Sports.com fits neatly with our other digital sports betting operations and consolidates our position as a digital wagering operator." The only question left open is who will acquire the content arm of Sports.com? It seems as though this will be sold as a separate concern to the domain name Sports.com which is owned by Sportsline in the US. The firm has said a number of interested parties are keen to get their hands on the domain. One possible buyer for the content is via a management buy out.
Will online IT information website Silicon.com remain as an independent? That’s the question that is being asked after reports linked the site with US-based CNET.
A bid price of around £30m is said to have been put on the table but the firm is keeping quiet about who has made an offer for its business.
Anyone looking for images to use either in print or for websites should register with Image.net (www.imagenet.co.uk) or PA Pic Select (www.papicselect.com). Both sites offer a wide variety of high-quality promotional images from entertainment and leisure companies which can be used for web as well as print purposes.
For those looking to create their own websites, there are some very good and inexpensive tools around. If you are looking to offer a portal-type project with a mixture of your own content and a directory of sites and services that you wish to link to, then Links SQL from Gossamer Threads (www.gossamer-threads.com) is a heavyweight option that allows you, literally within hours to have a fully functional portal. The software costs $450 (£290), but Gossamer Threads also offers Links 2.0 which allows the directory to be created. It costs $150 (£97) for commercial use or is free for non-profit use.
Another option is PHP-Nuke (www.phpnuke.org) which features a fully functional content management system that doesn’t cost anything.
Leslie Bunder
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