BusinessWeek reports that 1&1 will soon start deploying Open-Xchange mailboxes in Germany, followed by rollouts in the US, Britain and France. The article reports that 1&1 manages 5 million email accounts on behalf of 2.7 million web hosting customers. (This is wildly inconsistent with the 6 million hosting customers and 65 million emails accounts in 1&1's Business 2.0 ad. Maybe these figures include users from 1&1 parent company United Internet's Web.de and GMX portals business?)

With Open-Xchange's open source solution, 1&1 will be able to offer Microsoft Exchange-like features for $5 per user per month, versus its $10-$15 $6.99 current price. BusinessWeek says this is "nothing but bad news" for Microsoft, but are Microsoft and Open-Xchange competing with each other? Or should both be worried that end users like Steve Rubel are turning Gmail into their personal nerve centers?

Steve is a senior VP at Edelman PR, an enormous organization that no doubt has an industrial strength email system, but Steve is hooked on Gmail because:

"Everyday I come across something on the web that I want to save for future reference... since I travel a lot, I need to access my bits from a mobile device. The latest version of the Google Toolbar has a send to Gmail function. Select some text or graphics, right click on it and send it to Gmail... Whammo - an instant personal database."

A friend who works at Microsoft says he can use his Windows Mobile phone to search his Exchange archive as well. But 10 GB Gmail accounts are available for $4.17 each per month (mobile client, website builder and web-based word processor and spreadsheet included). That's a 10x larger personal database compared with 1&1's 1GB allocation (Outlook 2003 and free domain name included).

Another important question is, to what extent will 1&1 be able to drive Open-Xchange adoption? Yes, as the world's largest hosting provider, 1&1 can deliver an enormous audience. But seeing is *not* deploying. As a point of reference, when I switched from (POP mail + Outlook + Blackberry) to (Google Apps + Gmail mobile) last week, I realized that despite the conveniently-located Google Start Page icon on my control panel, I still like Netvibes better. But thanks to the Gmail and Google Calendar widgets on Netvibes, I was able to piece together a best of all worlds solution.

If I were 1&1 CEO Andreas Gauger, I would think along the same lines and open up my community and technology platform. Customer A might prefer Gmail + 1&1's website builder, while Customer B might choose Open-Xchange mail + Google Pages. Why not use widgets, RSS and open APIs to help each user concoct his perfect combination?

Speaking of events... I was really glad to hear from Josh Wolff at Hosted Solutions that he's creating a SaaS User Group. 75% of his customers are local, Josh said. He wanted to provide a forum where they can share best practices, resources and experiences. The first meeting will be on March 15.

I think this is such a great idea; I wish more hosting companies would expand their roles beyond providers of hardware/connectivity to social networking platforms that bring like-minded customers/vendors/prospects/etc together.

Carolina SaaS could use a sprinkling of Web 2.0 stardust though. Josh said over 100 people have expressed interest, but you'd never know from looking at its website. In fact, you wouldn't even have any inkling of Hosted Solutions' involvement. Of course, this is a brand new initiative - but RedMonk analyst James Governor's Adobe "unassociation" is in the same boat. But the Bedale Group has a blog, which interested parties can comment on and trackback to. Instead of waiting until scheduled meetings to "establish direction", why not get some conversations started right away?

I LOVE the idea of an unassociation, by the way. James defines it as "a loosely-coupled social affiliation where the membership is driven and created by the participants, generally day-by-day, without any dues, and with social rather than top-down articles". I've been in more "why isn't there a web hosting association" conversations than I can count, but no organization has ever materialized because it's impossible for diverse types of companies to agree to the same objectives, priorities, membership structure, etc.

But is consensus really necessary? Or could interested folks skip all the administrivia, connect with no set agenda, and collaborate on an ad hoc basis whenever there's mutual interest in a project?

PS - On an unrelated note, there's something very important happening today. Kayla turns 23! Say happy birthday, everyone!

Allan Leinwand, who used to be Digital Island's CTO, says he's intrigued with Dell's upcoming data migration service. Later this year, customers will be able to securely transfer not just their documents/photos/videos/songs - but also programs, drivers and settings from their current computers - to Dell's storage portal. Dell will install everything on their new machines during the manufacturing process, reducing migration hassles to opening a box.

Allan thinks other vendors should follow Dell's lead. Wouldn't it be cool to get a new Tivo that's pre-configured with your current settings? A new GPS that's pre-loaded with your frequently used addresses? A new cellphone with your contacts and calendar items ready to go?

Allan's post reminded me of the same conversation I had over and over while I worked at EV1Servers. At least once a day, a customer will say he wants to upgrade to a different server. We can move all of his stuff over, right? Right? With no down time??

I hated dashing their hopes. And if Dell's data migration service takes off, you will no longer be able to get away with saying no. Customers will increasingly take for granted that contents of Machine A can auto-magically be transported to Machine B without requiring them to lift a finger.

That's another disadvantage of standalone dedicated servers. Think about it... Is it easier to resize someone's entire infrastructure with a few clicks - or spend forever troubleshooting why code from their ancient Celeron won't run on a Quad Xeon? Because thanks to Dell, you - rather than the customers - will be doing the work.

I've just read on Ars Technica and TechDirt that starting in January, Microsoft will flag sites with Extended Validation SSL certs with a green "safe bar".

According to draft guidelines (PDF) from the CA/Browser Forum, that green safe bar won't be easy to come by. For one, the cert issuer must verify applicants' addresses against government records. If there isn't a match, an in-person visit is required, along with photographic documentation of the business' building exterior and actual workspace.

VeriSign has started selling EV certs for $2495 (!). GeoTrust's got them too, for $899. As of yet, there's no reference to EV on Comodo's website. GoDaddy seems to be the only web host who plans to offer it, starting in "early 2007".

"Goodbye, SSL padlock", says Nate from Ars Technica. In which case, goodbye also to web hosting providers' revenue stream from SSL cert sales - and good luck to those who've invested in substantial SSL inventories. On one hand, the EV certs aren't priced for the mass market. At the same time, site owners will be reluctant to pay for a second class cert that doesn't come with the coveted green bar.

GoDaddy announced its new Online Photo Filer this morning, just in time for the holidays. Citing a Photo Marketing Association International report (Powerpoint), the company says 20.5 million digital camera were sold in 2005; "digital photography is here to stay". (It seems a bit behind the times to quote this stat, considering that PhotoBucket has 30 million members?)

Online Photo Filer (which could use a catchier name?) costs $2.99/month (with 3 month minimum). But in order to use the service, you must register a domain name (why?). On the bright side, GoDaddy offers a $1.99 (plus $0.25 ICANN fee) domain package deal. As an incentive, new customers get 10 free 4x6 prints (shipping is extra). During the signup process, you'll also be offered a website, an email account, a blog, a $16.99 copyright protection service (with $45 filing fee).

I've always admired GoDaddy's cross selling persistence, but I think the company needs tighter integration across its products. The site builder, blogging platform and photo hosting service all have separate storage/bandwidth limits, admin interfaces and templates. In contrast, the folks at Zoho offer single sign-on across all of their applications, as well as the ability to embed data from their online spreadsheet, for instance, on documents created with their wiki.

GoDaddy COO Warren Adelman says Online Photo Filer is better than other photo sharing services on the market because your albums won't be hosted under long and impossible to remember URLs, and your friends can view your photos without the hassle of logging in. Apparently he's not familiar with Flickr? Flickr's $24.95/year service (which is $9.57 cheaper) offers unlimited photo uploads, by the way, compared with GoDaddy's 150 GB/bandwidth and 2.5 GB storage. Even free Flickr accounts include 100 GB monthly data transfer. And QOOP, Flickr's photo printing partner, will give you 10 free prints too.

I'm especially disappointed that GoDaddy doesn't support tagging and searching *across* user accounts, or the creation of multi-user photo groups. Those are the features I like best about Flickr. Online Photo Filer also doesn't encourage users to embed photos on MySpace, eBay or other communities. That's part of what drives PhotoBucket's 80,000 new signups per day. Last but not least, GoDaddy doesn't capitalize on the camera phone trend that the Photo Marketing Association International reports also talks about. Flickr and Photobucket both offer mobile uploads, as does Radar.net, a new "picture conversation" service, where users can store, share and comment on cell phone photos.

A couple of weeks ago, BusinessWeek ran an article about RyanAir. I was surprised to read that about 10% of the company's $3 billion+ annual sales comes from commissions on rental cars, hotel rooms, ski packages, travel insurance, etc. that it advertises on its website. $332 million between March 2005 and March 2006! A 36% increase over the previous year! Can you believe it?

In contrast, when you sign up for any service at 1&1 or GoDaddy, the only marketing messages you'll see are for the company's other products. Why is that?

For instance, might it make sense to offer domain registration customers theirname.com t-shirts? If someone activated your photo album tool, maybe they'd be interested in photo printing? And if they lived in Chicago, you could show them flight deals from Midway and O'Hare? At the very least, you could build an Amazon aStore; the folks at TypePad did. I've met more than a few new dedicated server owners who'd benefit from a good sysadmin reference book.

Just think: RyanAir is an airline, yet it manages to generate ~$1.80 from each website visitor - whether or not they become customers. Since 1&1 and GoDaddy are in the business of enabling Internet success, shouldn't they be able to match RyanAir's performance? And if you, too, are in the hosting business, shouldn't you?

PS - I just remembered that GoDaddy recently signed Danica Patrick as their new spokesperson. Maybe they'll leverage the deal to sell some miniature GoDaddy race cars?

Quick question: what's the most commonly used developer tool? According to Krugle CTO Ken Krugler, the answer is search. As developer and Krugle fan Justin Royce puts it:

Coders are notoriously lazy - seriously. We'd rather find someone who's developed something similar, copy it, then hack it up to do what we want... We typically think up a few lines of code, then look at the news and then go back to coding a few more lines. If we need a big block of code like a function, we'd rather go searching, sometimes for hours, for someone that's already done it for us.

The problem is, traditional search engines aren't optimized for finding code, which is why Krugler launched Krugle earlier this year. I first read about the company on GigaOm. Then I came across Justin's detailed review. According to Technorati there are 2,492 other blog posts on Krugle's code-oriented search engine. It's got fans, not to mention 20 million source files, or 1 billion lines of code.

I spent some time looking around Krugle's website, and I like the company's idea of "open source + component software + globalization" being key drivers of software development. Unfortunately I have no programming skills and can't understand the search results. Your customers, on the other hand, might be a different story.

Many hosting companies say their target market is developers. If this describes you, might it make sense to partner with Krugle and offer co-branded code search within your customer interface? It'd increase the amount of time customers spend on your website. Krugle might even be able to offer aggregated stats on what development tools seem to be popular among your user base.

(I don't know the folks at Krugle, but since it's an ad supported service, I'm guessing they'd welcome search traffic from your customers.)

During ISPCON, Jon Price talked about how companies who serve similar audiences ought to find ways to work together. You and Krugle; that combination just might have some potential...

I found out via MobileCrunch that Google has added some new features to Google Page Creator.

First, you can now create 5 different sites under the same account. That's no news, as far as most hosting providers are concerned.

Second, you can crop, rotate, lighten/darken and add special effects to images using just your browser. That's kind of cool.

But most importantly, Google automatically creates mobile editions of any sites you build. Your content is instantly optimized for any mobile browser your visitors might be using.

As GoDaddy points out, as of this May, there were already more web-enabled phones than PCs and TVs combined. Since trading up to a Blackberry Pearl a couple of months ago, I've ordered books on Amazon, bought movie tickets and make restaurant reservations using my phone. And more and more people I know seem to be doing the same. So I can see automatic mobile optimization becoming an increasing important feature for website owners.

This doesn't seem to be supported (yet) at 1&1, Hostway or iPowerWeb. While GoDaddy's Website Tonight site builder is mobile-compatible, its documentation appears to suggest mobile optimization is only possible if you "build .mobi pages" (ie register for a more expensive .mobi domain name)? Based on Google's announcement, maybe this doesn't have to be the case?

Frank Zamani, who's the CEO of Caspio, turned an Excel spreadsheet into a searchable, editable, password protected online database while we chatted on the phone. It looked easy; there was no coding involved. GE uses his app building service (which is hosted at Verio), as do Sara Lee, Toshiba, the American Red Cross... Frank says it empowers non-programmers to create event registration forms, staff directories, product inventory databases, etc, all by themselves.

Caspio has been around since 2000 and powers over 40,000 apps, but now competition is heating up. Coghead announced its beta last week, and Teqlo has gotten lots of press since announcing former SAP strategist Jeff Nolan as its new CEO. Wufoo falls in the same category as well. There's also Ning, where I was able to clone somebody else's music ratings app in 30 seconds flat.

App builders are the new black - and there's a reason for that. Just about every hosting provider I've spoken to recently has complained about churn. And "service not in use" is the #1 reason customers give for closing their accounts. Unfortunately, static brochure-ware websites typically aren't part of customers' workflows. They're seen as non-mission-critical marketing initiatives. Interactive web-apps, on the other hand, have the potential of playing central roles in customers' daily operations.

Last night I did a quick survey of a dozen or so shared hosting providers, and it looks like 1&1 is the only company that offers an app building tool. Everybody else has some catching up to do...

Earlier this week I spent some time talking to Jason Lemkin, who's the CEO of EchoSign.

EchoSign is an e-signature/contract management service. If you've ever had to collect signed agreements from prospective customers/vendors/employees/investors by fax, you've probably wished the process could be digitized. And if you've needed some old document to enforce a contract or settle a dispute, you've probably looked forward to the invention of a search button for dusty stacks of paper.

In either case, EchoSign is the solution. They manage signature collection (via fax, email and Blackberry) and document archiving so you don't have to. Cisco uses EchoSign, as do sales/HR/legal departments at 15,000 other companies. Jason said he's actually surprised by the adoption rate. He thought it'd take much longer to convince prospective users.

Anyway, EchoSign is hosted at RackSpace. I asked Jason whether it's a heavy burden, being the outsourced archiver of Cisco's contracts. Can you imagine the trouble he'd be in for any kind of downtime or data loss?? But Jason said that with RackSpace, hosting really isn't on his list of top 20 worries. I'm not sure I've ever heard a more compelling testimonial.

Lots of hosting companies have been talking about doing customer surveys. If that's on your agenda, I'd suggesting asking where hosting ranks on your customers' list of worries. Do you think it'd be outside their top 20?