Rackspace Hosting Inc. (NYSE:RAX) is expecting to return customer credit from the major outage that they had this past Monday.  The dollar amount that the company is expecting to return will be between $2.5 and $3.5 million according to an SEC filing.  The cause of the outage was a series of equipment failures at a Rackspace data center in Dallas, Texas.

Several generators malfunctioned which put several servers out of power without backup.  “We sincerely apologize for this disruption and know that it impacted our customers’ businesses as well as the experience of many who use the web,” stated Rackspace CEO Lanham Napier in a blog post. “Although we have had some issues with this data center before, please know that we will do what it takes to improve its reliability and performance. We owe you an action plan to prevent this type of thing in the future, and we’ll get that to you as soon as it is ready.”  The data center in Dallas, Texas is 144,000 in square feet and is Rackspace’s largest facility.

Personal note: Pulse2.com uses Mosso, a Rackspace subsidiary and we have been 100% satisfied with their services.  Pulse2.com barely had any downtime and if there was, we were refunded immediately.

StyleCaster is a website that offers style tips, shopping tips, and has a social network.  StyleCaster raised $4 million in Series A from Quicken Loans owner Dan Gilbert.  Gilbert is a businessman born in Detroit and also founded Rock Financial Corporation.  StyleCast said that they plan to use the funding to expand internationally and grow their ad network.

StyleCaster started in February and receives about 200,000 unique visitors per month.  StyleCaster will soon be launching a fashion website for men.  “StyleCaster has the potential to truly revolutionize the fashion and lifestyle space,” stated StyleCaster CEO and Co-Founder Ari Goldberg. “We are excited to continue our partnership with Dan Gilbert as we build the next generation of intelligent and engaging experiences.”

[via PEHub]

E*TRADE Financial Corporation (NASDAQ:ETFC) has successfully completed a debt exchange offer.  E*TRADE received a commitment from creditors to swap $1.8 billion in debt for convertible bonds.

The conversion was accepted for the following reasons:

- The new bonds do not bear interest as zero coupons.  Class A debentures can be converted into E*Trade’s stock at a rate of $1.034 per share.
- E*Trade’s largest shareholder Citadel had already commited to the deal which encouraged other investors.
- Creditors realized that because there are greater capital requirements on the horizon, this would be a good way to keep E*TRADE from buckling down their services.

E*TRADE is struggling to keep up the competition with Ameritrade and Charles Schwab.  E*TRADE will be posting another loss this year. E*TRADE has applications built on the iTunes App Store and BlackBerry App World.

[via Fool.com]

IAC/InterActiveCorp (NASDAQ:IACI) has laid off about 25% of their work force at Evite.com.  Evite had about 38 employees and now they are down to about 29.  Two of the executives that were laid off includes General Manager Rosanna McCollough and VP of Marketing Lariayn Payne.  John Foley will be at the top Evite.  Hans Woolley will be reporting to John Foley.

Evite has taken a hit on revenue which was generated mainly from advertising.  Evite is also finding themselves heavily competing with social networking websites that have built in event invitations.

Evite currently has 22 million registered users and there are about 25,000 invitations sent each hour.  Evite was launched in 1998 and has headquarters in LA, CA.

[via BusinessInsider]

Facebook is actively working on a new advanced application for iPhone OS 3.0.  Facebook software engineer Joe Hewitt wrote a post stating that he is about 98% done with it and even listed the features that will be included:

1. The “new” News Feed
2. Like
3. Events (including the ability to RSVP)
4. Notes
5. Pages
6. Create new photo albums
7. Upload photos to any album
8. Zoom into photos
9. Easier photo tagging
10. Profile Pictures albums
11. A new home screen for easy access to all your stuff, search, and notifications
12. Add your favorite profiles and pages to the home screen
13. Better Notifications (they link to the comments so you can reply)
14. Quickly call or text people right from the Friends page
15. Messages you are typing will be restored if you quit or are interrupted by a phone call

Push is not ready as of yet, but Facebook is working on it.  The 3.0 version may not have it, but the 3.1 version will most likely have it.

[via Facebook Blog]

[via AutoBlog]

Last month AT&T had the best month ever with the release of the Apple iPhone 3G S.  Below is a list of some of the milestones achieved by the phone’s launch:

- Best ever sales day in retail stores
- Second largest traffic day in retail stores
- Most transactions processed through IT systems in a single day
- Largest order day in history on att.com
- Most upgrade eligibility checks in one day
- Largest features sales day on att.com

On June 25, when Michael Jackson died — AT&T processed 65,000 text messages per second — the largest ever recorded.

When the Palm Pre launched in June, Sprint also broke sales records.  Given that Sprint and AT&T had the best month ever last month, I’m wondering what Verizon has up their sleeve.

[via MacDailyNews]

There are several rules for the cuddle parties: No alcohol, no promiscuous pajamas, consent required, and cuddle participants must be hygienically-savvy.  Each cuddle party is hosted by a trained guide and participants are sometimes charged as high as $40 per party.  But there are some free parties.

Cuddle Party is a non-profit institution that makes money by training the facilitators. It costs $495 to learn the skills and $995 for a 10 session teleconference. There is an additional $195 per year to stay affiliated with the website CuddleParty.com.

Over 50 facilitators have been trained around the world over the last 5 years. The number of Cuddle Parties are increasing and so is the number of facilitators.

Below are some of the details about the new video game creation software:

- Developer: MSR Kodu
- Game Rating: Unrated
- Genre: Family
- Players: 1-4
- Co-Op: 2-4
- HDTV 1080p
- Custom Soundtrack
- Only Multiplayer: 2-8

[via PCW]

Apple Inc. is currently working on making a deal with China Unicom for bringing the iPhone to China, the most populated country in the world.  The only problem is that Hanwang Technology Co. owns the trademark for the term “i-phone” for mobile phones.

This makes it illegal for Apple to sell the iPhone in China.  Apple registered the “iPhone” trademark in China back in 2002, but that only covered computer software and hardware.  In 2004, Hanwang won the trademark for the term “i-phone” covering mobile phones and phone equipment.

In order for Apple to sell the iPhone in China, Apple would have to make an agreement with Hanwang or find a way to have the i-phone trademark revoked.  Having a trademark revoked could take upwards to 3-4 years.  In China, there are currently about 1 million unlocked iPhones floating around.

[via ComputerWorld]