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CHATHAM, ON, June 14, 2012 /CNW/ - (TSX:L): Canadians got busy voting in the President's Choice BBQTown Contest in the hopes to bring a massive one of a kind BBQ party to their town! For their efforts Chatham is the lucky community that will host the President's Choice BBQTown Grand Prize Event on August 11!

Chatham will receive a BBQ party in their town for up to 5,000 people with fantastic food, hosted by Chef Tom Filippou, Executive Chef for President's Choice Cooking Schools and Bob Blumer , host of Food Network Canada's World's Weirdest Restaurants. There will be a performance by multi-platinum, JUNO Award winning recording group Hedley, and on behalf of the community, $25,000 will be donated to President's Choice Children's Charity to support a local nutrition program. To top it all off, Chatham residents will attempt to set a new Guinness World Records achievement for the most hamburgers assembled in one hour!

Nine other communities will win a secondary prize which includes a stop on the President's Choice BBQTown Tour:

Log on to http://www.pcbbqtown.ca on June 21st to find out where and when the BBQ party will be happening in each town!

These nine lucky communities will get a free BBQ party for up to 2,000 people in their town, complete with our best President's Choice BBQ grill items, a visit from the PC Ice Cream Shop truck, and free family entertainment such as a balloon animal artists and a fire juggler!

Have fun all summer long with President's Choice products and visit pc.ca for great recipes! Don't forget to 'Like' us on Facebook and 'Follow' us on Twitter! Twitter hash tag - #PCBBQTown.

About Loblaw Companies Limited TSX: L

Loblaw Companies Limited, a subsidiary of George Weston Limited, is Canada's largest food retailer and a leading provider of drugstore, general merchandise and financial products and services. Loblaw is one of the largest private sector employers in Canada . With more than 1,000 corporate and franchised stores from coast to coast, Loblaw and its franchisees employ more than 135 000 full-time and part-time employees. Through its portfolio of store formats, Loblaw is committed to providing Canadians with a wide, growing and successful range of products and services to meet the everyday household demands of Canadian consumers. Loblaw is known for the quality, innovation and value of its food offering. It offers Canada's strongest control (private) label program, including the unique President's Choice, no name and Joe Fresh brands. In addition, the Company makes available to consumers President's Choice Financial services and offers the PC points loyalty program.

About Hedley: Hedley's recent highlights include: near double platinum certification forStorms(2011); awarded 'Pop Album of the Year' at the 2012 JUNO Awards; double platinum certifications for every previous studio album; over 1,500,000 digital singles sold; 15 career JUNO nominations and two wins, twelve consecutive #1 videos at Much Music; multiple Top 10 singles; and listed as one of the top 100 touring artists in the world of 2010 (Pollstar, October 18 , 2010).

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MEDIA ADVISORY - CONGRATULATIONS: Chatham Wins the President's Choice® BBQTown Grand Prize Event

The iOS update to the My Xbox Live app has made it possible to use an iPhone to control an Xbox 360. Here's how to set it up.

Microsoft's update to the My Xbox Live app 1.5 brought along support for controlling an Xbox 360 straight from an iPhone. (The update was rolled out across all iOS platforms, but for whatever reason, this feature only works with an iPhone.) Here's how to get it to work.

First, you'll want to make sure that your Xbox 360 and iPhone are connected to the same Wi-Fi network. You can check the Wi-Fi status by going to settings on the iPhone and network settings on the Xbox. Once you've confirmed that both devices are using the same Wi-Fi, head over to the settings area again on the Xbox and then enter Console Settings. From there, you'll want to navigate down to Xbox Companion. Click on Available, then return to the home screen. Your Xbox is now ready to interact with any kind of companion application.

If you haven't already done so, download the My Xbox Live app from the App Store, run it, and log in with your Xbox Live credentials. One connected, you can initiate a companion link-up by sliding over to the Quick Play menu. A green title in the middle should say "Connect to Xbox." Click on the button and a notification on the screen of your TV should flash indicating that you've made the connection. Now take a look at your iPhone's screen. If a layout of Xbox buttons hasn't automatically shown up, click the three dots in the corner to bring up the menu, and select Controller.

You should now be able to navigate through the Xbox menu using the onscreen buttons on your iPhone. Functionality really doesn't go beyond that, but it might be easier to scroll through the Xbox's various media apps and content delivery portals this way.

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How to control your Xbox 360 with an iPhone

(MoneyWatch) Microsoft (MSFT) has agreed to acquire enterprise social networking company Yammer for $1.2 billion, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. The move extends Microsoft's reach into corporate information technology and lets it compete more thoroughly against Google (GOOG) by bolstering its cloud computing offerings.

Yammer is one of a group of start-ups that has targeted so-called enterprise social networking, like a combination of Twitter and Facebook aimed at private use by companies. Such technology allows employees to keep abreast of each other's activities, which should promote collaboration and innovation. The only company in this space with an even higher profile is Jive Software, which had $77.3 million in revenue during 2011 and a net loss of $50.8 million.

Yammer raised an $85 million round of funding last quarter, bringing its total to $142 million since 2009. That set an estimated valuation of $500 million to $600 million, so those recent investors will roughly double their money.

[Update: According to information that MoneyWatch received from private company financial analyst firm PrivCo, Yammer's estimated revenue in 2010 was $10 million and $30 million in 2011, which means a year-over-year growth of 200 percent. That would make the deal worth 40 times its 2011 revenue.]

The company claimed 5 million corporate users in the first quarter of 2012 and penetration into more than 85 percent of the Fortune 500. Although the bulk of these users are unpaid, Yammer uses an interesting monetization model.

It allows people within a company to set up a private social network for free. But a company must pay for administrative control over employee use. By encouraging free use, Yammer hoped to create a grassroots movement in companies, build a dependency of usefulness, and eventually encourage revenue streams using a number of pricing models.

One of the company's strategic strengths has been its decision to create an open application programming interface, or API. That allows others to create additional and extensions, like integration into SAP's popular ERP software for running large organizations. In April it announced integration with Microsoft Dynamics, the software giant's customer relationship management platform.

The acquisition adds some important capabilities to Microsoft's software portfolio. The company already has a major collaboration platform in its SharePoint product, but many companies don't make thorough use of it. Yammer gives Microsoft a way to build collaboration and communication and extend its reach. Microsoft could then add administrative and other features to its existing software packages.

Yammer also brings Microsoft some important competitive advantages in cloud computing. It could help extend the capabilities of the cloud versions of Microsoft Office and make its offerings more attractive to companies that otherwise might consider Google's cloud applications and its Google+ social network.

The acquisition could help improve the lot of social network and Internet companies, which have felt a sting in the investment market since the problems of the Facebook (FB) IPO.

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Microsoft buys Yammer for $1.2 billion

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A Zynga Inc(ZNGA.O) executive overseeing one of the social gaming company's most successful games has left to join Identified, a startup social network for young professionals.

Brian Chu, formerly the lead project manager of Zynga's hit CityVille, said Friday he will be vice president of product at the San Francisco-based startup.

CityVille had been Zynga's biggest hit over the past year, only recently ceding its position as the most popular game on Facebook to another Zynga title, Texas HoldEm Poker.

In recent months, several notable mid-level executives have left Zynga, which went public in December but has suffered a steep fall in its stock price. In March Groupon Inc (GRPN.O), which runs the daily deals website, poached Curtis Lee, a Zynga director of product management.

Chu said he left Zynga amicably and with "the door open."

"It was an intense time and very stressful," Chu said. "But I wanted the opportunity to take on the challenge of something as big as professional identity and companies like LinkedIn."

Identified, which raised $21 million in its second-round venture capital financing, claims a registered user base of 10 million. The startup provides a resume-building and networking service for young professionals under 30 - similar to LinkedIn, but with "gamified" features.

(Reporting By Gerry Shih; Editing by Richard Chang)

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Zynga manager moves to social networking start-up

By Jocelyn R. Uy, Norman Bordadora Philippine Daily Inquirer

Catholic Church leaders on Friday expressed confidence that President Benigno Aquino III would keep his word on the full implementation of agrarian reform, but vowed to remain vigilant to make sure that land distribution to farmers is completed by 2014 as promised.

Farmers across the country, however, expressed guarded optimism, hope and skepticism over the Presidents pronouncements assuring landless tillers of the land due them.

Land reform advocate Christian Monsod meanwhile said that aside from the promise of land, the farmers are also holding on to the Presidents commitment to support their transition from tenants to owner-cultivators of the land.

Monsod, the counsel for Task Force Mapalad who represented the farmers in the Malacaang dialogue with President Aquino on Thursday, said that the farmers expect the government to comply with the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program extension with reforms (Carper)s mandate that P150 billion be set aside for the implementation of land reform for five years.

Support services have suffered the most, as in the past, Monsod said in a text message to the Inquirer.

He added that it was significant that the President had committed part of the agriculture budget to farmer-beneficiaries to help their transition from tenants to owner-cultivators.

Cagayan de Oro Archbishop Antonio Ledesma said he believed that the Chief Executive would deliver on his promises to the farmers, especially now that a multisectoral monitoring body would be set up to ensure the full implementation of Carper.

There has been an instruction to form a monitoring body (and) we will closely follow this to see if President Aquinos promises would have results, Ledesma said over Church-run Radio Veritas on Friday.

The body would be composed of representatives from farmers groups, Church leaders, nongovernment organizations, the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) and other attached agencies involved in the implementation of Carper, said the prelate who was among the Church leaders present during the farmers dialogue with Mr. Aquino.

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Church upbeat Aquino will keep word; militant farmers wary