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Vol 1, #37, Nov. 24, 2009
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November 24 , 2009




Headlines

Twitter adds description to new lists feature
Print Three launches redesigned, more robust website
NHL expands online marketing programs with Conduit
Save time and money with online cell phone rate calculator
SIRIUS Canada launches Satellite Radio app for iPhone, iPod touch
Kindle finally comes to Canada
Site empowers children to exercise their human rights
Personalized print calendars from Personera now on Facebook
Vet training certification program now online
Place you bids with new bidding platform for mobile

Twitter adds description to new lists feature

Twitter just added a bit more description to lists, a recently launched feature that lets you create and share groups of accounts to follow. I’ve put an example up above with Venturebeat’s list. You can take an existing list, click ‘Edit’ if you’ve created it and just add a description.

How is the new feature doing? Well anecdotally, judging by the lists created around our VentureBeat account, it seems like plenty of people have experimented with creating at least a list or two. Problem is, hardly anybody follows the vast majority of lists. Top of Page

Print Three launches redesigned, more robust website

Print Three Franchising Corporation is pleased to announce that it has launched a new and improved Website for its national network of print franchisees.

The new site is designed to follow the company's new marketing theme of 'Putting the right pieces together to fulfill all your print needs'.

The site features the company's services that can help customers fulfill all their print needs from one single source.

Being a Canadian leader in Digital Printing, the Website features all of Print Three's convenient Web-to-Print solutions such as ePower Online - a corporate brand management e-solution specifically designed to manage corporate communication materials. The system is designed to archive clients' branded corporate documents for seamless re-ordering, approvals, variable data modifications, online billing and tracking.

Each franchise location has its own Print Three micro site that is search engine optimized for local geo-search terms related to printing services in their geographical area.

Each Franchisee's local sites is equipped with eCardBuilders allowing customers to design and order their business cards and stationery online.

The Franchisees' sites offer clients an online print driver called GoPrint2 that customers can download and place as one of their print options on their desktops. By selecting this print driver option, a Print Three client can convert their ready-to-print documents into PDFs that are sent to their selected Print Three location with the click of a mouse, ensuring that fonts and layouts are kept intact during the transmission and print process.

"Print Three specializes in practical Web-to-print technologies, and 1-to-1 variable data print marketing. With 55 Print Three Smart Document Centres across Canada, plus our 150,000 sq ft premiere commercial print facility, and over 250 partnerships with print providers in the US, we offer controlled coordination of clients' printed materials across North American borders, and around the globe." says Andrew Hrywnak, President of Print Three Franchising Corporation. "Thanks to our new Website combined with our leading Web-to-print services and our extensive network of digital printing franchises, we can distribute and print whatever clients want, wherever they are, to whomever they want, with outstanding quality, flexibility, focus and speed." Top of Page

NHL expnads online marketing program with Conduit

Conduit, the company enabling web publishers to distribute their offerings directly and through its global network of publishers, announced the availability of the official NHL conduit  – a powerful add-on that delivers the NHL brand and content on the browser and desktop. The add-on, built using the Conduit Platform, provides a direct conduit to NHL.com and gives hockey fans instant access to their favorite NHL content, breaking news and more.
 
Last year, two NHL teams – the Detroit Red Wings and the Montreal Canadiens– deployed branded conduits that increased their web traffic and boosted ticket and merchandise sales. The NHL has decided to offer a league-wide conduit as part of their online and social media marketing strategy because it has proven to be an effective way to extend their brand and content into the browsers and desktops of fans.

 
The NHL joins Major League Baseball, the Arena Football League, USACycling, and the Women’s Tennis Association, as well as hundreds of other organizations of all sizes from different sports, including soccer, minor league baseball, Formula 1, basketball, American football, cricket, motorsports, golf, and rugby, and more, that have also leveraged the Conduit Platform to engage with their fans.
 
“Serving hundreds of sports organizations and their millions of fans around the world, Conduit has become the de-facto standard for professional and amateur sports organizations that want to connect with their users online,” said Adam Boyden, president of Conduit. “Using the Conduit Platform these organizations deliver results and create a big impact on their business objectives -- increasing web site traffic, ticket sales, and fan loyalty.”
 
The official NHL conduit can be easily added to Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari on Windows, Mac and Linux and is free to download and use. For more information about how Conduit can help your sports team or organization go to www.conduit.com.
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Save time and monry with online cell phone rate calculator

Community Entrepreneur J Ben Benjamin from globalcommunityhub.com has stepped up to the plate by creating a free statically calculated online cell phone rate calculator tool www.cellphoneratecalculator.com to save time and money for consumers and raise money for charity organizations.

This is the first comprehensive tool available in Canada for Canadians which has very unique functionalities to save time, money and minimize the complexity of choosing a cell phone plan based on individual's cellphone usage pattern or budget. Some of the key features:

  • Voice, Data, Long Distance, pre-paid, favourite and shared plans
  • Compare plans based on future usage estimate, previous bills or monthly budget
  • Bundles/add-ons options

"The cell phone rate calculator will simplify the search for the right cellphone plan. The tool is free of charge," commented Ben Benjamin, founder. Users who want to pay-it-forward may choose to make a contribution to one of our charitable partners. Top of Page

SIRIUS Canada launches SAtellite Radio app for iPhone, iPod touch

SIRIUS Canada, the country’s leading satellite radio company, has announced the launch of the first official satellite radio app for iPhone and iPod touch users in Canada.

The SIRIUS App, available for free from Apple’s App Store, will allow subscribers with an iPhone or iPod touch to access SIRIUS Satellite Radio’s unmatched news, sports, entertainment and commercial-free music content on their device.

“We’re excited to launch the first official satellite radio app in Canada and give SIRIUS subscribers a new way to enjoy SIRIUS’ unbeatable content on their iPhone and iPod touch,” said Mark Redmond, President and CEO, SIRIUS Canada Inc. “With the iPhone available from multiple carriers in Canada, this is a great opportunity for device users who are not yet subscribers to sample the incredible range of sports, news, talk, entertainment and commercial-free music programming available on SIRIUS.”

The SIRIUS App can be downloaded from Apple's App Store for iPhone and iPod touch or at www.itunes.ca/appstore and www.sirius.ca/oniPhone

iPhone and iPod Touch users in Canada who are not yet SIRIUS subscribers can sign up for a free 14-day trial of the service. Following the trial, users will be given the option to become a SIRIUS subscriber. Top of Page

Kindle finally comes to Canada

The Kindle is finally coming to Canada. Amazon.com announced last Tuesday that the popular ebook reader, with its high-resolution 15-centimetre screen, is now available to Canadians.

The gadget, which retails for US$259, wirelessly downloads books in less than 60 seconds. Lighter than the average paperback, and less than a centimetre thick, the Kindle can carry up to 1,500 books.

Amazon says its Kindle store will offer Canadian customers 300,000 book titles and a selection of more than 90 magazines and newspapers, including the Globe and Mail.

Bestsellers typically go for US$11.99 or less, Amazon says.

A company spokesman would not say if or when the Kindle and ebooks would be sold in Canadian dollars.

Ebooks purchased from other companies should also work on the Kindle, unless they're locked with a form of digital rights management.

The Kindle can also display other file formats including PDFs and Microsoft Word documents.

It's estimated that the Kindle can run for up to two weeks without needing a battery charge if its wireless connection is turned off, or up to four days with the connection left on.

Other features include an experimental text-to-speech reader, which makes the Kindle read out loud, and a built-in dictionary that supplies definitions of words at the bottom of the page.

It was about six weeks ago that Amazon announced it would sell the Kindle to readers in more than 100 countries, but Canada was noticeably absent from the list. Amazon will not say why the Kindle was not made available in Canada in October, and what delayed its release until now. Top of Page

Site empoweres children to exercise their human rights

On the 20th Anniversary of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, November 20, 2009, one organization is prepared to support children by helping them to easily understand and access their natural privileges. CyberDodo.org (or .com), a multi-platform, interactive, digital space for children, championed by an animated Dodo (CyberDodo(R)), inspires, daily, young people and their adult guardians to protect the rights of children. CyberDodo is leading the charge to inform and empower youth on the issues that matter most to them by providing free access to smart and engaging audio-visual and print material.

The multilingual, "edutainment" website, currently available in English, Arabic, French and Spanish, offers multimedia content, including 10 hours of cartoons, games and files, and is complemented by a 7-book series, or "Edupack," available to schools and those without Internet access.

CyberDodo, the animated character and universal ambassador promoting the message of the "Defense of Life", is free of any affiliation related to race, gender, religion, politics or social level. It is this unbiased approach to the mission of human rights that allows children of all nationalities and identities to access the information needed to achieve their unalienable rights. The social networking website, connected to 2 billion people, provides an easy and fun way to introduce children to their basic rights and get them involved in promoting the issues.

CyberDodo has a long standing partnership with the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, "I am pleased to say that my Office has supported the development of the project since its creation," says Mrs Navanethem Pillay. This alliance has allowed CyberDodo to become a major non-commercial source of information for children, parents, educators and all other entities involved in encouraging the rights of children.

Promoting child-specific needs and rights in a way that children can easily understand by using the latest in new media technology and traditional print publications, CyberDodo is a global education tool helping to connect and inform all communities about the pressing situation endangering the world's children and the environmental state of our planet.

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Personalized print calendars from Personera now on Facebook

Whoever declared that print was dead may soon have to swallow their words. Personera, an online to offline media technology startup, launched its unique service to Facebook users around the world last week. The company is offering the world's first print calendar that is fully personalized with a user's Facebook friends' birthdays, upcoming events, and photos.

Personera's website allows people to use their Facebook accounts to log in, making all of their social network content instantly available for product personalization. Users are able to choose a theme, automatically include their friends' birthdays and events each day, and add their Facebook photos into the monthly layouts. A high quality 12-month, 32-page printed calendar is then delivered to their mailbox anywhere in the world.

This marks a significant shift for the mainstream calendar market, as fast and easy individual personalization becomes available to more than 300 million mainstream Facebook users worldwide.

The ideas behind Personera were dreamed up by co-founders Sheraan Amod and Jaco de Wet, each of them evangelists in the radically separate worlds of web and print.

"By combining our passion for old and new media, we looked to find the best of both worlds- a simple way to customize print to the same level that people have come to expect online" the pair said in a joint statement.

This led to the development of a patent-pending process involving the latest social network and print on-demand technologies, which has become core to the company's international operations. Top of Page

Vet training certification program now available online

Veterinarians and the clinic staff members are extremely busy people. Finding the time to learn software can be seen like a daunting task when considering implementing a new practice management solution.

Business Infusions, recognizing the need for a solution to this problem, is pleased to announce the launch of the HVMS Certification Program, offering full self-serve online training for the company's HVMS Veterinary Practice Management software. The program includes instructional videos, PDF manuals, learning exercises, quizzes, user forums, and final exams to ensure core concepts have been understood and tested.

The HVMS Certification Program has 12 different training options, covering all the key aspects of HVMS - offering training specific for all staff and management functions within a vet practice. Available HVMS Certification levels include Inventory, Invoicing, Office Procedures, Accounts Receivable, Practice Management and Certified HVMS Professional, the most in-depth learning program. The expected timeframe for completion of Certification training ranges from 9 to 65 hours, depending on the Certification levels chosen.

"Based on the feedback we've received from both current and prospective customers, we identified the need for being able to offer 24/7 training for HVMS. We recognize that people today are busy so allowing HVMS users the flexibility to train online on their own schedules and timelines is very valuable," stated Scott Pickard, Business Infusions' President and CEO. "In addition, we now have the ability to officially certify potential HVMS resellers and practice management consultants, and offer them additional marketing expertise through this program."

HVMS Certification is available now for HVMS users, as well as partners interested in being able to resell HVMS to other companies and veterinary practices. Fully understanding HVMS through Certification allows for optimization of its use in vet practices, maximizing the efficiencies and profitability available through the software.
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Place your bid with new bidding platform for mobile

Hodgins Auctioneers Inc. is pleased to report progress on development of its new technology for mobile wireless bidding.

Hodgins directors, employees, and selected outside individuals, are now alpha testing the new bidding platform for mobile wireless users.

Our software contractor, Idlution.com of Saskatoon, SK, has made significant progress on this project. All research and development on the system has been completed. System and code development are near completion.

This new bidding platform has been designed specifically for initial use in the wholesale or dealer to dealer automobile sector, but could be easily adapted to accommodate other sectors.

According to statistics from the National Auctioneers Association, the auto auction sector is the single largest dollar volume sector in the industry. The five year average for the sale of automobiles by auction in North America exceeds $83 billion per year.

"Our management team is excited about the potential of this new bidding platform and eager to release a full working version to the marketplace," said Barrie Jung, President of Hodgins.

Fully functioning Beta release and rollout of this product is expected to begin in early 2010. The Company further anticipates revenues from the new initiative to begin in the second quarter of 2010. Top of Page