Facebook gets Russian boost

A Russian Internet investment firm has invested $200 million in Facebook, giving the social networking company a cash buffer during the recession and pegging its value at $10 billion, reports Reuters.

Digital Sky Technologies, which has invested in leading Russian Web properties, like Mail.ru and Vkontakte.ru, will take a nearly 2% stake in Facebook in exchange for preferred stock, the two companies said yesterday.

The new valuation is $5 billion lower than when Microsoft invested $240 million in Facebook, in return for a 1.6% stake, in 2007.

The tech marketing gurus at Glooq.com are turning the simplest and most widely used communication technology - e-mail - into a powerful way for businesses to spur new growth, according to PRWEB.

By allowing users to easily embed high-quality marketing banners into their e-mails, Glooq provides companies with a new, minimum-cost marketing platform.

Glooq has enjoyed success in Europe in recent months as Audi, McCann Ericson, Remax, Konica Minolta, Motorola and DHL, and more than 500 other top brands have begun using the low-cost service to turn their millions of monthly corporate e-mails into mini-billboards.

Google brought its reseller program for Google Apps Premier Edition to Southeast Asia today, with the announcement of its first reseller in Singapore, PointStar, says CIO.com.

Google Apps Premier Edition is the version of Google's online application suite designed for companies with more than 50 users. Unlike the free version designed for companies with up to 50 users, Premier costs $50 per year for each user. For that fee, companies get 25GB of storage per user, instead of 7GB, as well as migration tools and more support.

PointStar is the first Singaporean reseller of Google Apps Premier Edition and will provide consulting and support services for local customers, said Deepak Ramanathan, Asia-Pacific head of enterprise marketing for Google, during an interview at Springboard Research's Software as a Service Asia Conference.

Around three million homes in the UK have broadband speeds of less than 2Mbps, according to research commissioned by the BBC.

The government has promised to provide all homes in the UK with speeds of at least 2Mbps by 2012, reports BBC News.

The research revealed that so-called notspots are not limited to rural communities with many in suburban areas, and even streets in major towns. The government has pledged a range of technologies to fill the gaps.