Articul Media LLC today announced the release of Lucky Birds, a new arcade, action and puzzle game to the Apple App Store. Lucky Birds is currently compatible with the iPhone3, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S with iOS 4.3 or later.
Lucky Birds for iOS features three characters; Sneaky Sparrow, Dull Pigeon and Big Crow, whose goal is to safety get home before night falls. Lucky Birds love to land on telephone wires but must be very careful not to fall to the ground or be caught out after dusk.
Gameplay consists of flying the Lucky Birds to their homes by launching the birds off of the telephone wires. Uses must change the bird’s trajectory to correctly aim and reach the home targets for the feathered characters. Along the way, the birds can collect bonuses, keys, teleport, open doors and much more.
The three types of Lucky Birds differ in weight and personalities, a grumpy bird may refuse to sit next to its friends and birds in a hurry may be set to a timer. As the levels rise in difficulty, there are three different types of wires that the Lucky Birds can land on - regular, worn-out, and hot. Regular wires can be used any number of times, however, the worn-out wires can only be landed on three times or it will break and one should never land on a hot wire or you will get burned.
Lucky Birds is currently available for iPhone in the App Store for $.99 at http://bit.ly/LuckyBirdsAppStore.
Technical Details
Release Date – February 5, 2012
Platform – iPhone
Genre - Action, Arcade, Puzzle
Developer - Articul Play Dev Studio
Publisher - Articul Media LLC
ESRB – E? or E 9+
Levels – Three with 30 levels each - levels four, five, and six coming soon.
Languages – English, Russian, Spanish, French, German - second release: Italian, Chinese
For screen shots, video demos, and more information on Lucky Birds, please visit www.luckybirds.com or www.facebook.com/luckybirdsgame.
January 28th is the annual Data Privacy Day. Data Privacy Day is an international celebration designed to promote awareness about privacy and education about best privacy practices.
Stina Ehrensvard, CEO for Yubico shares her thoughts on the importance of this day.
“The Internet was designed for sharing, not security. As we have moved our business, e-governments and social lives online, and as these digital services become more and more sophisticated, so do fraudsters. Online identity theft is today the fastest going crime, with trillions of dollars in yearly losses.
However, just as the safety belt for cars was not adopted in larger scale until it was a simple one second procedure, users will not adopt online identity protection if it is too complicated to use. And just as your driver license verifies your identity across multiple services, a secure and simple identity and authentication method that can be re-used across the range of Internet services will be needed for mass implementation. White House Initiative National Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC) could make a difference here, driving mass implementation of online identity protection for US citizens and services, based on open identity standards and new authentication technologies.”
Honored to be published in PR Daily today for 23 smartphone apps perfect for PR pros… to view the article in its entirety, please visit http://bit.ly/ztTih7
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There are more than 1 million applications available for smartphones and tablets. Among the first applications that everyone probably downloaded was Facebook, Angry Birds, or Pandora.
With more business-oriented applications become available, I was curious to know which apps my fellow PR professionals use on a daily basis and can’t live without. So, I reached to colleagues and sent a query through Help A Reporter Out (HARO).
The most common answers were apps that many of you are probably already using—Facebook, Twitter, TweetDeck, HootSuite, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Mashable, Google, and Yelp—so I wanted to focus on the applications that fell outside of this group, some of which were new to me and I have since begun to use. Most of these applications are multi-platform with Android and iPhone, I have listed which are iPad only.
Click here to view the list!!
NextLevel Internet, Inc., a leader in mission-critical Internet access and hosted voice services, is pleased to deliver a 2011 year in review and 2012 technology forecast.
“2011 was our most profitable and successful year to date. Not only did we see double digit growth in revenue and client base, but we also increased our number of employees by 26 percent,” said Jerry Morris, founder of NextLevel Internet, Inc. “We are continuously adapting and evolving our service offerings to make sure we are providing our B2B clients with the best privately managed voice, Internet, and cloud based data services available in the market. As we look forward into 2012, we see this trend to continue as we will be offering new services to remain ahead of the ever changing needs of our clients.”
Customer Satisfaction — In 2011, NextLevel Internet received the highest recognition for the company’s customer service and support. The company scored a Customer Excellence rating of 98 percent in a survey to the company’s existing client base. Conducted by Strategic Business Communications, Inc. (SBC) during a three month period from February through April 2011, the outside blind survey asked respondents to rate interactions, transactions and satisfaction levels between themselves and NextLevel Internet.
California Power Outage — Further expanding on NextLevel Internet’s mission-critical offerings; during the massive power outage on September 8, 2011, the company’s NextLevel Voice(TM) and Co-location services provided uninterrupted service to emergency organizations and first responders. The power outage, which was the largest recorded in the region’s history, lasting more than 10 hours left roughly eight million people and thousands of organizations in parts of Southern California, Arizona and New Mexico without power, Internet, and phone access. This disruption of power and the associated loss of connectivity could have resulted in the loss of life, money, or reputation for many of those affected.
NextLevel Voice Adoption Rate — Introduced as a new service in 2008, NextLevel Internet’s flexible hosted voice service, NextLevel Voice saw an increase in revenues of 65 percent during 2011. Clients have installed and retained NextLevel’s voice solutions because of the quality, reliability, affordability and disaster recovery (DR) attributes.
NextLevel Voice provides organizations with 10 to 500+ employees the advanced features and security of a sophisticated Private Branch Exchange (PBX) system for a fraction of the cost, with unsurpassed ease of use and zero system maintenance fees.
Data Center Expansion — In 2011, the company increased access to its new, secure, 88,000 square foot, SAS 70 Type II compliant data center in Rancho Bernardo, CA. The expansion to the new World Trade Drive Data Center followed the relocation of NextLevel Internet’s headquarters to North County San Diego in September 2010. SAS 70 Type II compliance certifies that NextLevel Internet’s data center has adequate controls and safeguards in place when hosting and processing data for the company’s clients.
Managed Internet Infrastructure — NextLevel Internet’s privately managed Clear Channel connectivity options allow businesses with 10 to 500+ employees the ability to control the quality of service (QoS) and class of service (CoS) to include its hosted voice service offerings. NextLevel’s mission critical Internet access and 24/7 NOC services are designed to give businesses everything they need to maximize company uptime and headquarter all remote sites.
For organizations that would like to request more information on NextLevel Internet’s business-to-business co-location, Internet, hosted voice, and managed data services, please visit www.nextlevelinternet.com .
“A security breach of the magnitude experienced by Zappos.com is a serious concern for any business that relies exclusively on Internet orders for sales,” said Stina Ehrensvard, CEO, Yubico, Palo Alto, California and Stockholm, Sweden, commenting on how hackers exposed 24 million client records in a security breach over the weekend. “While it appears Zappos’ securely protected the database that housed credit card information, hardware security modules (HSMs) could have prevented the exposure of Zappos’ customer password data that were compromised from the organization’s servers in Kentucky. The exposure of email addresses and password hashes of weak and duplicated passwords leaves customers exposed across potentially many sites. The perception is HSM and related services are very expensive, but the cost and complexity for this needed technology has fallen dramatically to a few hundred dollars and the cost of not deploying it is very high as Zappos has shown.”
“Additionally, Zappos has reset and expired their customers passwords and is helping them choose new passwords. We believe a better solution is the new breed of consumer-friendly one time passcode tokens that users can keep on their key chains to replace weak and duplicated passwords,” Ehrensvard continued.
Taming the inbox
“This year, my New Year’s resolution will be to keep my email inbox tame and highly organized throughout the entire year. Right now it’s like an angry pit bull, but I would rather have it be a happy puppy.” - Ronnie Manning, principal, Mynt Public Relations, @RManning_Mynt
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It is once again that time of year. The ‘Mo’, slang for moustache, and November have come together again for Movember. In 2010, over 64,500 US Mo Bros and Mo Sistas got on board, raising $7.5 million USD.
Mynt Public Relations fully supports the cause and therefore I’ve donated my face to Movember and the fight against cancer (think I will be going with the Clark Gable this year). Every cent counts, if you would like to donate to me and my team campaign, please visit our Movember page.
32,000 men die of prostate cancer in the US each year, to increase awareness and raise funds, every Movember men change their appearance and the face of men’s health by growing a moustache. The moustache is our ribbon, the means by which we raise awareness and funds for cancers that affect men. Much like the commitment to run or walk for charity, our commitment is to grow a moustache for 30 days. Funds raised benefit the Prostate Cancer Foundation and LIVESTRONG.
We thank you for support and hope you can also join the month of fine moustachery and immaculate grooming.
For detailed information about the Movember Foundation, financial and annual reports, men’s health, the programs being funded and the social impact Movember is having, please visit: http://us.movemberfoundation.com/
Looking good in 2010, this year’s shall be a different look….
The official Mynt Public Relations Halloween 2011 Jack-o-Lantern… only took 2 hours to carve last night!
October 27 is the birthday of the first time banner ads were seen on a website. Hotwired.com was the first company to run these ads in 1994 and they were the beginnings of what would become a $24 billion business and generate a CTR of 78%. They were simple ads, created for AT&T and Volvo—the latter’s banner didn’t even send the consumer to the company’s website but rather to a questionnaire of what type of automobile they’d be interested in. It’s been 17 years since then and online advertising has grown tremendously, but the average CTR of banner ads today is only a fraction of a percent: a measly 0.1%. So how does one generate ad revenue in a world where online consumers have adapted to ignoring banner advertising?
We must ask ourselves why the CTR of banner ads drop so much. This has a two part answer; banner ads are ignored, consciously and subconsciously, and when they aren’t ignored, they don’t convert at a high rate because the ads are not delivered at a relevant time. The solution to these issues is to reach online consumers where their attention is and when they want it. In-content advertising allows advertisers to accomplish this.
In-content advertising is much like the product placement that you see in movies and television. This advertising technique is contextually relevant as well as tightly integrated and works for two reasons: Consumers see and interact with these advertisements and they experience the advertisements while they’re actually looking for the information. The easiest way to reach your viewer is with in-content advertising with link insertion. Link insertion allows users to scroll the mouse over a word that then pulls up a pop-up to link to the relevant site.
This article was a guest post from Murray Newlands, to learn more about in-content advertising and link insertion, please read his most recent eBook,”Content Monetization” or “INTENETclick“:In-Text Advertising Secrets.
Social media is not a phenomenon that can be ignored. Millions of users every day access various social media platforms, and they tweet or post or share information freely. Companies who are working to thrive in the information age cannot pass these platforms by if they expect to be successful. There are many reasons why social media should play a large role in your branding, and the three biggest are listed here.
Extremely Low Cost of Entry. A single television advertisement or newspaper page can cost a company a tremendous amount of money, and it still only reaches a limited market. A profile on Facebook or humorous videos on YouTube are free and grant you world-wide exposure. The ability to reach so many people at so little cost has never existed before. The interaction and brand-building that can go on through social networking can gain a great deal of revenue for your company. With so little expenditure, it would be foolish to miss this chance to build rapport and relationships with potential customers.
Build Awareness of Your Brand. Where else can you go to reach thousands of people with a single tweet, and thousands more with a single shared video? Social media is where your customers go for information, entertainment, and connections with friends. If your brand is also there, you are getting the kind of incredible exposure that can make your business a success. A simple, memorable branding strategy can take on a life of its own as it is shared through the networks from person to person. In addition, this sharing from peers increases your brand’s credibility – people are much more likely to take something seriously if it comes from a friend, rather than the company itself.
Manage Your Company’s Image. Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Google+, blogs and other platforms lend themselves very easily to positive customer interaction. In addition, if your customer care department sees a complaint shared on a social network, they will be in a position to respond quickly to resolve the complaint, saving the company a lot of negative publicity.
Social media is the current wave of social interaction and information sharing, and that makes it the current wave of marketing. With an extremely low cost of entry and excellent opportunities to build awareness of your brand and manage your company’s image, social media represents one of the most important marketing tools available. If you leverage it correctly, you will be able to grow your revenue and customer loyalty for years to come.
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This article was a guest post from Capterra - With over 300 business software directories, from public relations software to applicant tracking software, Capterra enables you to find and compare any kind of software for your business, filter results based on your needs, and view ratings and peer reviews.
DeviceLock, Inc., an international leader in endpoint data leak prevention solutions, today announced that its DeviceLock® Endpoint DLP Suite software can now be used by corporate IT to control the use of the Google+ social network on endpoint computers including content filtering of their data exchanges via Google+ services. As Google+ has become one of the fastest growing social networks, its uncontrolled use in corporate environments presents the risk of data leakage for IT security departments in organizations of various sizes and industries.
DeviceLock 7 Endpoint DLP Suite gives IT security administrators the ability to control which users on protected computers are allowed to access, read or post information on the Google+ site, even the days and times access is allowed. If needed, filtering of file and message content flowing between the protected endpoint and Google+ can be enforced to block the posting of unauthorized information. DeviceLock provides a full log of user activities and optional shadow-copying of data transferred for use in compliance auditing and forensic investigations.
“Many of our customers are worried about potential data leakage when employees communicate through Google+ with the outside world from their corporate computers. Even prior to the release of Google+, our customers had access to a recent DeviceLock version that enables them to control which corporate users can access Google+ from protected endpoint computers,” said Vince Schiavo, CEO, DeviceLock, Inc. “DeviceLock controls when and how users can access Google+ and the software can monitor and filter information considered by the organization to be confidential or sensitive. The speed of implementing this unique DLP capability is a tangible confirmation of DeviceLock’s dedication to its mission of providing proactive endpoint data security.”
Prior to the release of Google+, DeviceLock could already control the use of other popular social networks like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and Live Journal along with common webmail solutions like Gmail, Live Mail (Hotmail) and Yahoo Mail. In the latest version, DeviceLock’s Endpoint DLP Suite also adds contextual and content-aware controls over several regionally popular social networks and webmail systems, including XING.com, Studivz.de, Meinvz.de, and Schuelervz.net, as well as AOL Mail and Yandex.Mail. User access to mobile versions of social networks and popular webmail applications from endpoint computers is now also controlled by DeviceLock.
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NextLevel Internet today announced that the company’s NextLevel Voice and co-location services provided uninterrupted service to emergency organizations and first responders during the massive power outage in San Diego on September 8, 2011.
The power outage, which was the largest recorded in the region’s history, lasted for more than 10 hours and left roughly eight million people and thousands of organizations in parts of Southern California, Arizona and New Mexico without power, Internet, and phone access. This disruption of power and the associated loss of connectivity could have resulted in the loss of life, money, or reputation for many of those affected.
“We had a number of emergency calls, all of which were either handled at our office or on our off-hours emergency line,” said Michael Murphy, president of Computer Protection Technology. “With customers such as Scripps Healthcare and General Atomics, it is imperative we maintain our communications channels. During a time of uncertainty, NextLevel’s services remained fully operational and were a great success from our end.”
NextLevel’s hosted voice and co-location services are maintained in secure, SAS 70 Type II compliant data center environments with disaster recovery plans, multiple generators, redundant power, multi-homed bandwidth and diverse dial-tone carriers in place to maintain business continuity during a disaster scenario.
“With the immense power outage in Southern California last week, I’m happy to report our customer’s service never skipped a beat,” said Eric Fleming, vice president technology operations for Golden Hour Data Systems. ”As we help facilitate communications in the emergency medical transportation industry on a 24/7/365 schedule, our customers are often on lifesaving missions transporting those who are critically injured or ill. NextLevel’s proactive actions to ensure uninterrupted internet and hosting services have a direct effect on helping to save people’s lives.”
NextLevel’s high-availability (HA) hosted VoIP service provides organizations the advanced features and security of a sophisticated Private Branch Exchange (PBX) system for a fraction of the cost, with unsurpassed ease of use and often with zero system set up fees. NextLevel Voice eliminates costly maintenance and upgrade fees associated with obsolete phone equipment, while often getting rid of some of the monthly fees associated with a company’s access to the Public Switched Telephone.
For organizations that would like to request more information on NextLevel Internet’s hosted voice, business-to-business co-location, Internet, and managed data services, please visit www.nextlevelinternet.com.