Many will be familiar with Google News. It’s a Google interface that searches thousands of sources for news articles. Well, just found a site a little similar to it. The site is called Plugger and it searches various sources for Australian business news.

Check out Plugger here.

EDIA company Destra Corporation has done a deal with businessman Lachlan Murdoch to increase its stake in online film subscription outfit, Quickflix to almost one-fifth.

Under the arrangement, Mr Murdoch’s firm, Illyria, will swap 6,260,587 shares in Quickflix in exchange for 4,173,725 new Destra Corporation shares.

The deal means Destra will own 19.9 per cent of Quickflix and Mr Murdoch’s Illyria will own a 2.8 per cent stake in Destra.

Destra has three divisions, dealing in CD and DVD publishing in Australia, online communities including the scene.com.au and online media representation.

The company has a current market capitalisation of about $71 million.

Quickflix is Australia’s largest independent online film subscription company, with a catalogue of 25,000 films.

It has a market capitalisation of about $10 million.

At 10.48am (AEST), Quickflix shares (qfx.ASX:Quote,News) were up one cent to 19.5 cents and Destra (des.ASX:Quote,News) was down 0.5 cents to 32.5 cents.

Source: News.com.au

Online search leader Google said on Friday it purchased FeedBurner, which helps bloggers and podcasters syndicate and make money from their online content, for an undisclosed sum.

Chicago-based FeedBurner “delivers feeds to millions of users around the world and offers unique and useful tools for publishers to analyze, optimize, and monetize their content,” wrote Susan Wojcicki, Google’s vice president of product management, in announcing the deal on Google’s official blog.

FeedBurner also offers a tool for pushing ads through feeds, generating advertising revenue.

According to some reports Google was to pay $US100 million for FeedBurner, which was launched in 2004.

Source: SMH

Ok, lets say I just told somebody at a party (what a geeky party) about this cool site called Wikipedia. They go home, and settle down at the PC and type in Wikipedia.com, right? Right. We have come to realise, how ever unconsciously that .com is a generic top-level domain. This testifies the value of using a .com rather than a .org, .info (etc) domain. For more information on this topic, see this website on .com domains.

Obvious other types of domains have their place. For instance, geographical domains play their part at both a functional and conscious level. Here in Australia, if I give out my BigPond email address which ends in .com most people are adamant that I mean .com.au. I am unsure how people react to .us, .co.uk and .ca.

I feel that geographical domains are more significant at an offline level. From what I observe, people that source a domain offline are likely to think of its geographical orientation. Whereas online, standard .com plays a greater role.

James Packer’s Publishing and Broadcasting Ltd (PBL) has sold a further 25 per cent stake in PBL Media Holdings - which owns the Nine Network and magazine businesses - to its joint venture partner, CVC, for $515 million.

Read more at SMH.

Gazal Corporation, owner of brands including: Bisley workwear, Midford schoolwear, and Lovable intimate apparel is looking at offloading its Mambo streetwear brand.

Gazal’s net profit fell 7.9 per cent to $6.73 million in the six months ended December 31, 2006. So it looks like Gazal is considering some approaches it’s received for the Mambo business. Mambo has undergone a major re-branding over the past couple of years and now has a strong street presense with its bold colours and local art-cum-clothing.

Today marks the release of this years BRW Rich List. As usual, a Packer is at the top of the list. But for how long? The iron ore industry is certainly stirring things up. Of the billionaires, 9 are products of the mining industry.

Strong economy, high-demand for iron ore by the Chinese and activity in the financial service industry are the key drivers behind the growth of the 2007 list and its participants wallets.

“The resources boom, driven by China’s modernisation, keeps setting records for the price of the nation’s key commodities, with the price of iron ore, in particular, surging 153 per cent since 2003.” (see: news.com.au)

Top 4:-

James Packer -$7.25 billion (media and gaming)

Frank Lowy -$6.51 billion (property)

Richard Pratt -$5.4 billion (packaging)

Gina Rinehart -$4 billion (mining)

NetBusinessBlog.com (NBB) is one of my favourite internet business blogs. It’s up there with EJ and College-Startup for me. But Matt Coddington, founder of NBB and internet-marketing-supreme is selling up to concentrate on other projects.

Heres an extract of the sites sale ad on Digital Point:

“Net Business Blog is a blog dedicated to helping its readers improve their internet income through a variety of earning avenues. The blog has content on marketing, minisites, affiliate marketing, domaining, SEO, social media, blogging, current events, and a ton more.

I have worked very hard to make this a respectable blog and protect its reputation. The blog was launched on January 7th, but has already become an authority in the industry. Traffic and revenue have been consistent since the first week and are growing daily without anything spent in advertising since early Feb. ”

In that short space of time Matt has done extremely well. He’s gone from 0-15k unique visitors and a PR5 generating over 1k in revenue a month in less than six months.  Outstanding! I want to know his tricks. I think I will read all his posts from beginning to end -again.

All I can say is good luck Matt and all the best with the other projects. I hope that the new buyer treats the site with respect and passion. Also, I hope Rock Surge stays in your interests.

Pajago

Last week on Digital Point I made purchase of Directory-Tree. I must say it’s one of the neatest web directory designs I have seen in a while: especially for the price.

The stats for the site are pretty neat. It’s Alexa ranked; has a PR1 (which I’ll soon change) and loads of potential.

This is my new pet-project so we’ll see how we go.

In other news, I have been on a domain name buying spree. Purchased four over the week. All have loads of potental. A couple I wish to build blogs around and flip. The others I’ll invest time and effort as they are associated with interests of mine, i.e. global warming and travel.

Pajago

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“BMW AG said it will conduct test drives of the world’s first mass-produced liquid hydrogen-fueled vehicles on public roads in Japan between July and December,” according to reports on ABC.

Currently there are 100 liquid hydrogen-fueled driving around the the streets of Europe and USA.

“The German carmaker will test two of the environmentally-friendly vehicles, which emit only vaporised water, in major Japanese cities. The company is aiming to appeal to consumers but problems such as the shortage of charging stations for hydrogen automobiles will need to be resolved if the vehicles are to become popular in Japan.”

BMW have done well in addressing this niche of green-transport currently dominated by Toyota. People in the position to buy a luxury vehicle will soon have at least one option. Soon I am sure we’ll see other prestige car brands offering their own green-models.