A screenshot of Skype’s Twitter account indicating updates to its service (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Skype ( www.skype.com )continues to experience downtime Thursday morning after an outage that began early Wednesday. Social media communications lead for Skype Peter Parkes wrote in a blog post Thursday that “some features may not work as reliably as expected.” Skype started to experience downtime on Wednesday morning due to issues with supernodes, or telephone directories for Skype, as explained by Parkes .  “Under normal circumstances, there a large number of supernodes available.

( EMAILWIRE.COM , December 11, 2010 ) Charlotte, N.C. : Websites have become a lifeline for existing businesses

Web hosting technology develops at a rapid pace. So much so that often what is new technology today is old news tomorrow.  As more and more business start to see the value derived from operating online, web hosting will continue to evolve and develop at a dramatic pace. Many businesses will be able to take advantage of this and gain a more global reach while at the same time cutting costs and improving efficiency.

Facebook Groups: Good Fences Make Good Neighbors? Despite recent rumors concerning cellphones and a deal with Skype, Facebook’s latest big reveal was all about new site features. Groups will let users cordon off friends into separate categories, and other new functions relate to user data and privacy

Facebook Gets Cliquey Facebook’s big reveal Wednesday involved new options for the ways it handles groups. The site already lets users form group pages, but now Facebookers can cordon their own friends into discreet groups themselves and make communications within those groups private from outsiders

Silver Lake Sunday accepted a deal for the purchase a minority shareholding in Brazilian Web hosting firm, Locaweb. The exact details regarding the finances involved were however undisclosed. The minority stake is expected to give the buyout firm, Silver Lake, an opportunity to take advantage of the vast growth opportunities in Brazil, currently the fifth biggest internet market globally.

This Sunday, Silver Lake agreed that they would buy a small amount of stake in Locaweb.

Locaweb’s services include cloud computing, providing on-demand, scalable computing power for the Brazilian market. This image is from a company YouTube video explaining the concepts behind the cloud. (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Silver Lake Sumeru ( www.silverlake.com ), a private investment firm in middle-market technology companies, has made a strategic investment in Brazilian Web hosting and cloud computing services provider Locaweb ( www.locaweb.com.br ), a pioneer delivery of IT services over the Internet in Latin America

Skype and Fring Fulminate in Disconnect Drama Fring called Skype “cowards” after the popular Internet calling service cut it off. Skype denied that it had taken that drastic step, maintaining that Fring’s departure was voluntary in the wake of a tussle over terms. iPhone 4 users probably don’t care much about the details surrounding the dispute — they would just like to get their 3G video-calling functionality restored

Q: I’ll be vacationing in France and Italy later this summer, and I’d like to be able to use my cell phone while I’m there. However, friends have told me nightmare stories about running up huge phone bills with international calling plans.