http://techcrunch.com – The explosion of infrastructure-as-a-service and platform-as-a-service offerings has greatly expanded the ways in which hobbyists and professionals deploy web sites and web services. For about the same cost as cheapo shared hosting, you can get your own small virtual machine at any number of providers, allowing you to tweak the entire instance to just the way you want it. (IT news)

http://www.cyberciti.biz – I am the small business owner and runs my own web-site. I have noticed increased cracking activity against by blog. What's the best way to block WordPress URLs such as example.com/blog/wp-login.php and example.com/blog/wp-admin/ in the nginx web-server?Read answer to: "Nginx: Block URL Access (wp-admin/wp-login.php) To All Except One IP Address"     (HowTos)

http://techcrunch.com – Songza, a free streaming music service that has expert-made playlists and runs on the web and various touch screen platforms, raised $3.8 million according to a SEC filing. While Amazon has long been an “unconfirmed” investor listed on AngelList, it parlayed its investment in the earlier Aime St vehicle into Songza. (IT news)

http://techcrunch.com – Schmap already helped advertisers and other companies understand their Twitter followers through its Know Your Followers product, but today it launched a new, upgraded service called Demographics Pro — CEO Paul Hallett described the concept as “Nielsen for Twitter.” Nielsen does its own social media analysis, and it announced a partnership with Twitter last fall, but that was focused o (IT news)

http://techcrunch.com – From the moment it launched under Twitter’s watchful wing, marketers and the media have considered Vine a new frontier for advertisers. User-generated content is all the rage in marketing, and social media is finally old enough for even traditional ad agencies to have it figured out. (IT news)