Mediaboss Marketing

FRAMINGHAM, Mass., April 19, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- In honor of 9-1-1 Education Month, Smart911 is kicking off a new webinar series titled "Understanding the Citizens We Serve." The first edition, "Understanding and Responding to Citizens with Autism," takes place on April 26 to mark National Autism Awareness Month. While open to all, the webinar will focus on how 9-1-1 telecommunicators and public safety personnel can most-effectively interact with and assist people with autism. A service of Rave Mobile Safety, the trusted software partner for campus and public safety, Smart911 is a public/private partnership creating a first-of-its-kind, critical caller database that is already helping citizens and emergency responders across 20 states.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20120409/NE83750LOGO )

"Understanding and Responding to Citizens with Autism" will feature Dennis Debbaudt of Autism Risk & Safety Management, a website offering training and resources for law enforcement, emergency first responders, parents, educators, care providers and the autism community. A law enforcement trainer and author on the subject, Debbaudt is also the proud father of a young man with autism. While the public is invited to attend, the webinar's content is aimed at providing police, fire, emergency medical services and 9-1-1 telecommunicators with techniques for diagnosing and responding to emergencies that involve people with autism.

There is no cost to attend "Understanding and Responding to Citizens with Autism" and those interested should register online. The webinar is supported by Autism Speaks and the Autism Safety Project. Smart911's website is also now hosting blogs contributed by Autism Speaks chapter members throughout the U.S. in order to draw further attention to issues that people with autism and their families face

Smart911 is a national system that is entirely private and secure. Citizens can create safety profiles for free at http://www.Smart911.com, entering vital data they want made available on themselves and family members, a residence, even pets. This can include details on medical conditions, disabilities and/or special needs, children's photos, home addresses of cellphone callers, floor plans and other pertinent information. Smart911 delivers this information automatically to telecommunicators, enabling responders to be more effective because they have access to critical health and logistics information before arriving at the scene of an emergency. Smart911 supports the critical need to effectively capture and manage data for special needs citizens.

"While Smart911 safety profiles enhance the delivery of emergency services for everyone, it has proven very effective in helping individuals with special needs and their families," said Tom Axbey, president and CEO, Rave Mobile Safety. "This has brought us into close contact with the autism community, and as a result, this webinar will offer very valuable information to those involved in public safety. At the same, the general public shouldn't hesitate to participate; the specific details and overall educational value will be useful for everyone."

About Rave Mobile Safety

Rave Mobile Safety is the most trusted software partner for campus and public safety. Used by leading Institutes of Higher Education and State and Local Agencies, the award-winning portfolio of RaveAlert, RaveGuardian, Eyewitness, Smart911 and SmartPrepare enables millions to feel safe, secure and connected. Rave Mobile Safety is headquartered in Framingham, MA. For more information please visit http://www.ravemobilesafety.com

Media Contact: Marty Querzoli Davies Murphy Group pr@ravemobilesafety.com (781) 418-2433

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Smart911 Honors 9-1-1 Education Month with Kickoff of "Understanding the Citizens We Serve" Webinar Series

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Orbital is, from left to right, Paul and Phil Hartnoll.

Orbital is, from left to right, Paul and Phil Hartnoll.

When brothers Phil and Paul Hartnoll began making their own version of the American house music and techno sweeping through English pop in the late 1980s, they took their name from the motorway that circles London's suburbs and, back then, linked the new rave scene together. The two were from Sevenoaks, a southeastern exit on the Orbital, the moniker they've recorded and performed under ever since.

Right from the start, with their 1990 debut "Chime," Orbital specialized in big, warm riffs that were equally effective at moving masses of bodies in a field or causing outbreaks of air-keyboard among those listening on the radio. When they performed, the pair almost always played live. Most acts that don't just DJ on stage sound harder, techier. But the Hartnolls wrote tunes whose repetitiveness seemed integral to their melodic structure, not incidental to it one of their big live favorites was titled "Lush," and that's a canny self-description.

Orbital became one of the premier festival groups of the '90s, not just at big dance-music events in the U.K. like Tribal Gathering but at the rock-oriented Glastonbury too. That extended, partly, to the U.S., where the brothers frequently got over with tracks like the guitar-shredding "Satan" and "The Box," featuring a dulcimer. But Chemical Brothers-style chart crossover eluded them, and in 2004, after seven albums and endless tours, the Hartnolls decided to part ways professionally.

It wasn't too surprising when Phil and Paul began performing their classics again in 2009 the lag time between "retirement" and getting back in the game is growing smaller by the year. But while most reunion albums sound like the uninspired, profit-taking ventures they are, Orbital's eighth non-soundtrack album, Wonky, sounds refreshed, as if the duo's time off together had rejuvenated them creatively.

As Phil Hartnoll told me in two separate Q&A sessions conducted for The Record in August 2011 and March 2012 some of that can be put down to the fact that much of the music was written for them to play out, injected in between their hits, like "Halcyon And On And On" and "Impact (The Earth Is Burning)."

You had a ringside seat to the American record biz trying to sell electronic dance music to America in the '90s. What was your impression of the music's popularity in America at first?

PHIL HARTNOLL: We came over with Meat Beat Manifesto in 1992. That was our first proper tour of America. We had people little ravers following us around from gig to gig. The geographical size of England is so small it's a breeding ground for subcultures. When we went over to America, with the huge enormity of it, you [had] little pockets of ravers and rave culture in every little town and every city that we played. But it was never on a national scale at that point. It was represented quite a lot, in each little city, but the only way of talking from city to city was via the Web. The ravers had uniforms: the big baggy trousers, the Dayglo, pacifiers. They pretty much stayed uniform in that. It was the same nationally. They had their own little dress code.

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Orbital: The '90s Revival Is On (And On)

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

Original post:
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.

Excerpt from:
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 ...