Network Solutions Inc has signed an agreement to acquire ImageCafe.com, a privately held Columbia, Maryland company that offers $299 web design. With NSI racing to establish itself as a competitor in the freshly opened domain name registration market (see separate story), the acquisition should mean small businesses can slap together a web site at the same time that they register their domain with NSI. ImageCafe offers a choice of 40 web site templates, customizable with 150 industry-specific image motifs. Presumably, web surfers can expect to get as tired of seeing these as they did of seeing Netscape’s blink tag. NSI says it will refer all of the web hosting business thus generated to its worldwide partners, including MindSpring, Interliant, ValueWeb and Interland Inc. Clarence Wooten, CEO of ImageCafe, joins NSI as VP of the ImageCafe division. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
