Mediaboss Marketing

NEW YORK, May 15, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Buddy Media, the social enterprise software of choice for eight of the world's top ten global advertisers, today announced many industry firsts as part of major enhancements to its social marketing suite. The enhancements -- including a unified social data API, conversion, campaign and goal tracking across paid, owned and earned social media efforts, and a new mobile content development platform enable brands to unify their social media programs with one enterprise social marketing suite.

"Social media marketing is anarchy right now within brands and agencies. Buddy Media is the only company to provide a unified solution that helps our customers to organize their teams, optimize their social programs to deliver real business results, and repeat," said Buddy Media Founder and CEO Michael Lazerow. "Buddy Media continues to lead the way in social marketing software, and our new product enhancements demonstrate why we are trusted by the largest brands, agencies, publishers, and retailers in the world."

Buddy Media is the only company to be named a charter Facebook Preferred Marketing Developer, LinkedIn Certified Developer and Google Engagement Solutions partner. The company's new industry-leading enhancements include:

Unified Social Data API

Buddy Media is the only company to allow brands to break down siloes with a unified social data API for their social media presences, conversations and ads. Brands can now:

"It is essential for brands to be able to easily export all of their social data programmatically, and integrate it with existing CRM, email or other business process software, so social can be truly integrated into greater business decisions," said Lazerow. "It's another first for Buddy Media to be able to give brands all of their social data, across paid, owned and earned media in one API and one software solution."

Universal Comprehensive Conversion/ROI Tracking

Buddy Media is the first social marketing software company to launch universal conversion tracking across its entire social marketing suite. Brands can now see in real time which content is performing best, and specifically which social posts, applications and sharing activity drive the most conversions. For example, if a user posts several updates to a social stream that link to a Buddy Media social application, the user can track the conversions driven by each specific update, such as a form submission or a video view.

"It's not enough for brands and agencies to only know qualitative data such as shares and comments. They also need to know specifically which content is driving the most actions," said Lazerow. "With Buddy Media, you can now optimize content specifically for actions, not just engagement."

Mobile application platform

More here:
Buddy Media Leads Industry Standards Forward With Unmatched Enterprise Social Marketing Suite Enhancements

The Dirty Cowboy by Amy Timberlake.

The National Coalition Against Censorship has entered the fray surrounding the Annville-Cleona School Board's banning of the award-winning children's book "The Dirty Cowboy."

The NCAC on Tuesday sent a letter to the members of the board, expressing the coalition's concern over the decision to remove the book and urging the board to return the book to the district's libraries.

View the letter here.

The school board will meet at 7:30 p.m. Thursday.

The letter was signed by NCAC executive director Joan Bertin and Chris Finan, president of the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression.

The letter notes that the objection upon which the ban was based was to "nudity" in the book, although sensitive areas of the body are not depicted. Regardless, the letter points out, simple nudity is fully protected by the First Amendment.

"There is no salacious or sexually suggestive content in the book - it is merely an amusing story of a cowboy taking his annual bath, getting even dirtier in the process," the letter states. "As the Supreme Court has observed on numerous occasions, " 'nudity alone' does not place otherwise protected material outside the mantle of the First Amendment."

The letter also states that school officials are bound by constitutional considerations, including a duty not to give in to pressure to suppress language or images deemed controversial or offensive by some.

According to the letter, the Supreme Court has cautioned that school officials "may not remove books from library shelves simply because they dislike the ideas contained in those books and seek by their removal to 'prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion.'"

Read more from the original source:
Anti-censorship group weighs in on 'The Dirty Cowboy' ban

Two anti-censorship groups want Sumner County schools to lift a ban on the teen novel Looking for Alaska.

The National Coalition against Censorship and American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression sent Sumner Director of Schools Del Phillips a letter Monday.

It urges the district to honor its constitutional obligation and allow the White House High School English class to finish reading the student-selected novel.

It is particularly disturbing that the complaint of one parent triggered a county-wide ban within the span of a single week, without following established procedure and without so much as a review of the literary and educational merits of the book, the letter states. The district has imposed one viewpoint on the entire student body, without regard to the educational consequences for students.

The groups claim Sumner County violated its own district policy, which says if a parent complains, that student can be given an alternative book to read.

Sumner County school officials said last week a parent complained to the district, which led officials to review a two-page oral sex scene in the book and pull the book from assigned reading districtwide.

The book is still available in school libraries for individual students to check out, said district spokesman Jeremy Johnson.

Our policy was broken to start with. The teacher didnt run it through that process, he said. We do not see a reason to revisit the issue and think its been properly addressed.

Under the districts controversial materials policy, he said, teachers are required to submit all titles of required reading for parents to review, but the White House teacher didnt.

Read the original here:
Anti-censorship groups want Sumner schools to lift book ban

15 May 2012 Last updated at 14:45

Pornography filters on mobile phones are "censoring" normal web content, according to the Open Rights Group.

Its report found that 60 websites were incorrectly blocked by mobile filters designed to prevent children viewing adult content.

The affected sites included political commentaries, personal blogs and community websites.

The government is considering whether to apply similar blocks to fixed-line broadband services.

Peter Bradwell of the Open Rights Group, author of the report, said the study proved such tools were ineffective.

"Child protection filters can actually affect many more users than intended and block many more sites than they should. These blunt blocks effectively add up to a system of censorship across UK networks," he said.

In a response published on the ORG website, Hamish MacLeod, chairman of the Mobile Broadband Group, denied this.

"Even allowing for the ORG missing a few, 60 misclassified websites does not amount to anything that could reasonably be described as 'censorship', particularly when mobile operators are happy to remove the filters when customers show they are over 18 and will re-classify websites when misclassifications are pointed out to them," he said.

"This is how the small handful of websites that get referred to mobile operators each year are already dealt with," he added.

The rest is here:
Mobile porn filters 'censorship'

A three-decades-old partnership between the city's black ministers and the Houston Police Department has ended after pastors refused to agree to new guidelines issued by Chief Charles McClelland that prohibits them from criticizing the police or city administration.

The ACLU and longtime civil rights activists blasted the prohibition against criticism by clergy who volunteer with the department.

McClelland changed the organization of HPD's religious volunteers by forming a group called the Police and Clergy Alliance (PACA). He issued guidelines governing the new alliance that took effect April 26.

Last week, an estimated 100 to 150 black ministers who are members of the Houston Ministers Against Crime turned in their HPD-issued credentials, saying they would no longer work with police, the pastor's group director confirmed.

The ministers against crime organization was founded in 1976, and Houston leaders have since heralded the group's accomplishments at improving relations between police and minorities at national mayor's conferences and other forums.

"It's hurting that in 2012 preachers cannot say in the United States what they want to say about what's going on that's not righteous," said the Rev. Robert Jefferson. "If anybody stands for righteousness, it ought to be a preacher. But if you got to obey a piece of paper saying you can't associate with people who are against the police department, you can't say nothing against the mayor or say nothing against the police chief, I quit because I'm going to be free to say what God tells me to do."

No individual limits

In a statement, McClelland said the prohibition against criticizing HPD is in force only while the clergy members are wearing an HPD-issued badge. The badge is essentially a photo identification card with the city's seal and motto and under the words "Houston Police Department."

McClelland said the police department has had multiple ministerial groups with various missions and whose activities were difficult to coordinate.

"With the formation of PACA this is a good way that we refocus, make sure we're all on the same page and committed to the same goals," McClelland said. "It is unfortunate some ministers feel they are being silenced by myself or HPD. As I have stated from the outset, they are free to do or say whatever they want as individuals. Any guidelines apply only when they are speaking in their official capacity as representatives of the alliance with an HPD badge."

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Pastors end partnership with HPD, accusing chief of censorship