Mediaboss Marketing

LONDON, April 19, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --

Thomson is excited to announce the launch of its Summer 2013 programme, with the latest editions of Thomson'sFlorida,Summer Collection, andFarawayShores brochures. The new brochures showcase the launch of the Thomson Airways 787 Dreamliner, more hotels offering exclusivity and unique holiday experiences, than ever before, plus new Sensatori and Thomson Couples hotels and new destination of Costa Almeria. Summer 2013 holidays will go on sale as of Thursday 26 April."Summer 2013 is shaping up to be one of our most exciting launches ever," says Garry Wilson, Purchasing and Product Director for Thomson.

"We are thrilled that our customers are going to be able to experience the benefits of travelling on the Dreamliner on our most popular long haul routes. We know that this addition to our fleet will set us apart from our competition and we'll be able to give our customers the best possible start to their holidays."

"In line with our strategy of offering customers holidays they cannot get elsewhere, we've been working to ensure that more hotels than ever are being offer exclusively by Thomson to our customers in the UK. This is the way the business has been taking for a few years, as we have found that when we are able to work more closely with hoteliers, we are able to tailor the hotels around our customers. I am confident that our customers will really appreciate this move, as it will mean that their hotels are more in tune with their needs and wants."

NEW: THOMSON 787 DREAMLINER

Thomson Airways, the airline for Thomson and First Choice, is the UK's first airline to take delivery of Boeing's new 787 aircraft - the Dreamliner. From 1stMay 2013, holidaymakers heading to Cancun, Mexico and Sanford, Florida from Manchester, London Gatwick, East Midlands and Glasgow will have the opportunity to travel on the brand-new aircraft.

Hailed as the greatest advance in air travel for passengers in recent years, the Dreamliner will revolutionise air travel for Thomson Airways customers through significant advances in in-flight comfort and wellbeing. The new Dreamliner routes will be included in theFloridaandFarawayShoresbrochures.

NEW: HOLIDAYSONLY FROM THOMSON

From May 2013, 90% of Thomson's holidays will be availableOnly from Thomsonto UK customers. By increasing the number of properties offered exclusively by Thomson in the UK, we hope to be able to offer customers the best holidays in the market. The hotels have been handpicked by our product and purchasing teams, further to customer feedback, and Thomson will be working with hoteliers to ensure that all of our hotels are tailored exactly to our customers' needs.

NEW: SENSATORI AND THOMSON COUPLES HOTELS

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Thomson Announces Summer 2013 Programme

In the days following the announcement of the U.S. Department of Justice lawsuit against publishers accused of colluding with Apple to raise e-book prices, much of the U.S. publishing industry decamped to the U.K. for the annual London Book Fair. Not surprisingly, the suit was a major topic of conversation at cocktail parties and in booths across the Earls Court Exhibition Centrein particular speculation about whether the DOJ suit might finally push big publishers to consider easing their requirements for digital rights management (DRM), the controls that keep e-book readers from being able to pass a copy of a title on to a friend.

Publishing-industry futuristsindividuals typically far removed from the real-world calculations being crunched in publishers accounting departmentshave long argued that DRM inhibits e-book innovation and prevents small e-book retailers from entering the market and competing with the giant distributors (read Amazon). In London this year, says Lorraine Shanley of publishing consultancy Market Partners International, more mainstream publishing executives are talking seriously about ending DRM restrictions. It would allow individual publishers much more flexibility with their own content and in making it available directly to consumers, says Shanley. And it would allow consumers to access content without getting locked into one devicee.g. the Kindle.

Some analysts say thats wishful thinking. In recent years the music industry has removed nearly all its DRM restrictions, yet that has done little to diversify the digital music market. Apple dominates, and Apple sets prices. For consumers, Amazon regaining more market power could result in less choice among retailers down the road, says Michael Wolf, vice president of tech news website GigaOm. Whether Amazon is benevolent or not in the long run, thats yet to be seen.

Most of the London trade show visitorsand indeed many others in the businesssay the lawsuit plays into the hands of Amazon and its boss, Jeff Bezos. Since the debut of the Kindle, Amazon.com has played a long game, losing money on both the razor (Kindle devices) and the razor blades (e-books) in an effort to establish the kind of dominant market position in e-books that Apple enjoys in digital music. The company sells Kindle hardware at virtually no profit, and it also lost money during the Kindles first few years by pricing new releases and major bestsellers at $9.99, when it was paying publishers $15 or more for many titles.

For e-books published by Hachette, Harper Collins, and Simon & Schusterthe three houses that settled with the DOJAmazon will soon be able to start slicing retail prices again. That could boost Amazons market share from more than 60 percent of the overall e-book market and put additional pressure on Barnes & Noble, which controls 30 percent. But it also could undermine Amazons already thin operating margin just as the company is investing in long-term projects such as tablets, the Amazon Prime free shipping club, and its cloud computing initiative, Amazon Web services. Analysts believe Amazon will start cutting nonetheless. This is a very calculated move on Amazons part, says Colin Sebastian, an analyst at RW Baird. Their view is that Apple probably doesnt have the stomach to lose a whole lot of money on e-books and Barnes & Noble cant afford to. They will do whatever they can at this stage of e-books and Kindle to drive as much market share as possible.

Amazon will have to be cautious about cutting prices so dramatically that it forces book publishers to leverage what remaining clout they have left. Publishers could, for example, window e-booksdelaying their publication for a few weeks after the release of the more expensive hardcovers. Simon & Schuster and Hachette tried this in the early days of wholesale e-book pricing, on memoirs by Sarah Palin and Edward Kennedy. (This strategy, though, could alienate customers and lead to increased e-book piracy.) Publishers could also experiment with packaging the e-book and the hardcover together, or they might pull DRM technology on e-books for the Nook, which could make Barnes & Nobles store more appealing to customers. Still, its hard to see how publishers find a way around Amazon in the market, unless Amazon blows it somehow, says Bill Rosenblatt of consulting firm GiantSteps Media Technology Strategies.

Whatever Bezoss overall strategy, Amazon wont be able to cut the price of e-books published by Penguin and Macmillan until the DOJ case is resolvedand that could take a while. Geoffrey Manne, an antitrust expert at the Lewis & Clark Law School, says the case could take years to resolve, in part because Apple has such a deep reserve of cash it could spend on the litigation. Meantime, the e-book market is likely to keep evolving rapidly. In fact, one of the big problems with this suit, as with others in the tech realm, Manne says, is that by the time its concluded, the market is likely to have changed so much that it will have become irrelevant.

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The DOJ's Publishing Lawsuit May Doom Digital Rights Management

REDWOOD CITY, Calif., April 17, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --Yodlee, the leading provider of digital money management solutions, today announced a new partnership with Central 1, the largest wholesale financial services provider in Canada. Central 1 will integrate Yodlee's market-leading technology into its powerful MemberDirect Services online banking platform. Central 1 is Yodlee's first wholesale financial partner in Canada.

The 300-plus credit unions and banks which utilize MemberDirect Services will now be able to provide fully-integrated money management tools including budgeting and spending analysis, and cash flow management across all their accounts. MemberDirect Services' four million users will have more control over their money and the security of managing it through the website of their trusted financial institution.

"Consumers want a simple and secure way to take charge of their money and they literally want that information at their fingertips," said Oscar van der Meer, Chief Technology Officer at Central 1. "We partnered with Yodlee to create a solution that meets current consumer demand but also has the flexibility to grow and innovate as those needs evolve."

Offering personalized financial management is increasingly important to customers who are looking for a primary financial institution through which they manage their money.

"Central 1 really challenged us to test the flexibility of our Platform to be able to simultaneously meet the needs of so many different, forward-looking institutions and credit unions," said Bill Parsons, Chief Customer Officer at Yodlee. "With Central 1's tremendous reach, powering banking services for more than half of all credit unions in Canada, we will together be able to deliver unmatched, personalized services for the millions of members served, helping to empower consumers to make better financial decisions."

Through a number of pilot projects which launch in 2012, Central 1 will be working with Yodlee to fully integrate the platform into MemberDirect Services online banking and make it available to all clients by 2013.

For more information about the Yodlee Platform, and other Yodlee products and services, visit http://www.yodleefinapps.com. For more information about Central 1's direct banking services, http://www.central1.com/thinkingforward.

About Central 1 Credit Union

Central 1 is the central financial facility and trade association for the B.C. and Ontario credit union systems, providing liquidity management, payments, Internet banking and trade association services to member credit unions, and banking and transaction services to customers in the corporate and public sectors. For more information, visit http://www.central1.com.

About Yodlee, Inc.

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Yodlee® Partners With Central 1 to Power Personalized Financial Management for Credit Unions and Financial ...

PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

John Textor, chairman and CEO of Digital Domain Media Group (NYSE: DDMG - News), will be a guest on The Next Big Thing segment of CNBCs Fast Money today, Wednesday, April 18. Fast Money is shown at 5:00pm EDT.

About Digital Domain Media Group

Digital Domain Media Group (DDMG: NYSE) leverages its expertise in digital visual effects (VFX) and computer-generated (CG) animation across a group of interrelated businesses. At its foundation is Digital Domain Productions (DDPI), an award-winning digital production company founded in 1993. This leading provider of visuals has contributed to more than 90 major motion pictures, including Titanic, the Transformers series, Real Steel and TRON: Legacy, as well hundreds of commercials. DDPI also converts two-dimensional (2D) imagery to three-dimensional (3D) imagery and holds key patents in this area. Mothership, a DDPI subsidiary, focuses on creating advertising, entertainment and branded content from concept to completion, across multiple media platforms. DDMG, its work and its employees have been recognized with numerous awards, including seven from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The company is building on its success in VFX to participate as a co-producer in major studio productions and is currently in production on the upcoming live-action sci-fi feature film Enders Game. DDMG is also applying its CG expertise to produce original, family-friendly animated feature films at its subsidiary Tradition Studios. The first movie, The Legend of Tembo, is in pre-production and two more features are in development. The companys education subsidiary, the Digital Domain Institute, sets a new standard in digital media education through a pioneering public-private partnership with The Florida State University College of Motion Picture Arts. DDMG is expanding its worldwide footprint of the highest quality visual effects and animation at the lowest possible cost through global partnerships in India and China. The company has studios in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Florida, Vancouver, Mumbai and London, and is currently establishing a studio in Beijing. http://www.ddmg.co

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Digital Domain Media Group CEO John Textor Will Be a Guest on CNBC’s Fast Money on Wednesday, April 18

Seven months from now we will be seeing the release of Disneys latest animated feature Wreck-It Ralph. The movie is based on the world of coin-operated arcade games and follows Ralph (voiced by John C. Reilly) as an antagonist of a rampage-like arcade game.

Bored of the same old mundane defeats he suffers at the hands of Fix-It Felix (Jack McBrayer), hero and overall good guy, Ralph decides to break out of his world and jump into other arcades to prove that he is more than just a guy who wrecks stuff, hes a hero.

Now we got the first poster for Wreck-It Ralph (via MSN) and if you are familiar with 8-bit technology and retro gaming, then you should be happy to see this piece of work.

The first poster for Wreck-It Ralph successfully conveys that this will be a movie about video games. The older generation, especially those who still remember first generation Nintendo games, will love the 8-bit feel that the poster has.

However, what concerns me is whether or not gamers only familiar with the current-gen games will understand what Wreck-It Ralph is. How many younger gamers have experienced classic 8-bit games of the late 80s and early 90s in an actual arcade?

Though the poster clearly shows that the movie is a Walt Disney Animation creation, its hard to tell what they are selling given that there is no actual title for the movie displayed on it (outside of the Facebook tag). So unless you attended last years D23 Expo or have been keeping up with movie blogs, then you might not even know what this is for without having it described.

Still,Wreck-It Ralph is in the early stages of its marketing campaign and hopefully with the release of this poster, there will be a trailer coming out very soon.

Directed by Rich Moore, Wreck-It Ralph features the voices of John C. Reilly, Jack McBrayer, Jane Lynch, and Sarah Silverman. Wreck-It Ralph will hit theaters on November 2, 2012.

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First Poster for ‘Wreck-It Ralph’ Goes 8-Bit