SEATTLE, WA, May 02, 2012 (MARKETWIRE via COMTEX) –
Varolii Corporation, a market leader in customer interaction
management, today announced its new Varolii Mobile Solutions, which
provide cloud-based customer interaction solutions for smartphone
applications. These solutions help companies enhance the smartphone
experience by making companies’ existing smartphone applications more
relevant, useful and visible with smartphone push notifications, rich
text messaging and mobile Web applications.

With half of U.S. consumers currently owning at least one smartphone,
companies need a more effective mobile strategy to reach and engage
with their customers. However, B2C smartphone application adoption
and usage remains a challenge, as the vast majority of applications
are abandoned or uninstalled within weeks of being downloaded.

“Smartphone apps provided by major corporate brands can be valuable,
but only if consumers are aware of and use them,” said Sharath
Dorbala, vice president of product management and strategy at
Varolii. “Varolii’s Mobile Solutions ‘wake up’ an application based
on real-time events that impact that customer’s relationship with the
business. Then, it pushes information to the customer — rather than
waiting for customers to choose to interact — enabling the customer
to take action through Web applications, text and voice, with options
to integrate with the company’s contact center.”

Varolii’s Mobile Solutions “interaction-enable” existing smartphone
applications by adding push notifications and rich text to
proactively engage customers based on key events and triggers.
Leveraging Varolii best practices and the Varolii Interact platform,
the solutions are also designed to further automate key customer
service touch points that most impact a customer’s relationship with
companies. By turning smartphone applications into a richer
information delivery and engagement channel, applications become more
relevant to the consumer, usage increases and customers have more
opportunities to self-serve.

“In order to capture and engage a mobile audience, companies need to
put timely, relevant and personalized information at the consumer’s
fingertips. Built on the Varolii Interact platform, Varolii Mobile
Solutions provide a way for companies to turn existing smartphone
applications into a powerful new customer interaction channel to more
effectively communicate and build lasting relationships with their
mobile customers,” said Dorbala. “And, working with Varolii’s
Interaction Design team, companies can build better brand exposure
and establish a superior experience that will drive customers to
download their smartphone applications and keep them coming back for
more.”

In addition, companies have historically not fully utilized the
convergence of voice, email, text messages, smartphone applications
and mobile Web applications into a single mobile communications
strategy to maximize reach and engagement to consumers. Varolii
Mobile Solutions also help break down siloed interactions across
text, email, voice and smartphone push notifications with
communications that are intelligent and personalized while helping
ensure regulatory compliance and increase customer reach. Companies
can also improve interaction response rates by automatically learning
and applying consumer preferences as well as enabling more
self-service options for consumers that will help companies reduce
costs.

Varolii Mobile Solutions will be provided by the Varolii Mobile App
software development kit (SDK) and hosted Varolii Interact Web
applications. With the free SDK, Varolii will create an open mobile
application ecosystem where systems integrators and smartphone
application developers can enable push notifications from their
smartphone application that links to Varolii Interact Web
applications to increase smartphone application engagement.

Other key Varolii Mobile Solution features include:

— Smartphone Mobile Alerts: Engage customers through push notifications
that “wake up” a downloaded smartphone application and launch a
Varolii Interact Web application that delivers personalized content
and a richer consumer interaction.
— Varolii Interact Web Applications: Hosted Web applications that
complement Varolii’s voice applications to address particular business
pains around customer engagement. These empower companies to share
links to their Web applications via text messaging or e-mail so they
can deliver cross-channel interactions to mobile consumers regardless
of the type of mobile phone they own.
— Personalization Beyond Segmentation: Leverage Varolii ID(TM) to
automatically personalize and refine customer interactions beyond mere
segmentation, enabling true personalization for each individual
customer or employee.
— Varolii Mobile Consent: Simplify mobile phone number collection and
expressed consent or opt-ins for texting consumers, ensuring
regulatory compliance for all text message interactions.
— Varolii Performance Insight: Enable unified analytics and reporting to
make better strategy decisions faster and maximize business results
across voice, text messages, email, Web applications, and smartphone
push notifications.
— Easy Integration with Systems of Record: Seamless integration with
customer data for existing Varolii clients, reducing time to deploy
new consumer channels such as texting and smartphone push
notifications.

Varolii enables more than 400 organizations to reach consumers or
employees in a smart, personalized and cost effective way with its
award-winning Varolii Interact Platform. Varolii works with Fortune
1000 companies, including two of the three largest U.S. banks, three
of the five largest health plans, five of the top 10 airlines and 30
of the largest U.S. utilities. Varolii applications generate more
than four million interactions each day.

About Varolii Corporation
Varolii is a leading provider of customer
interaction management applications. Our cloud-based communication
service help organizations more effectively interact with large
numbers of customers and employees through voice, text messages,
smartphone applications and email, reducing cost of operations and
improving service. The company's award-winning Interact platform
enables companies to deliver personalized communication on a large
scale, achieving better results from fewer interactions. More than
450 companies trust Varolii to manage more than four million
interactions every business day. For more information, visit

www.varolii.com .

For more information:
Jessica Kendall
Edelman PR
206-268-2231 (office)
210-859-6971 (mobile)
Email Contact

SOURCE: Varolii

http://www2.marketwire.com/mw/emailprcntct?id=CBB906FCA9261ED7

Copyright 2012 Marketwire, Inc., All rights reserved.

Financial Glossary

Words used in this article:

Edvard Munch’s The Scream, which recently sold for $120m
(R955m), is not exactly a painting for the bedroom wall, but it is possible to
blend aesthetics with investment.

Art is not an investment in the true sense of the word. It
does not generate dividends or interest and, in fact, costs you money to
maintain.

The value is often only truly recognised when it is sold.
The capital value is the only upside and is therefore a store of value rather
than an investment.

However, art is certainly an asset class that can provide
significant returns, but usually over a long period of time – the average
collector holds on to their artwork for about 27 years.

So while it may not be ideal for your basic retirement plan,
it certainly can over 30 years develop into a very valuable asset.

The best way of approaching this asset class is to see art
as an interest that has the potential of becoming a very valuable asset class.

It is one of the few interests or hobbies where you can
educate yourself while at the same time create an asset base of great value.

While there is nothing wrong with buying a piece of art
because you like it, it is not the same as investing in it.

One needs to learn about the world of arts just as one would
investigate and read up about a share or a unit trust before investing.

Most of us will buy an artwork in our life time, but we
seldom take the time to do our homework.

A good starting point is to visit galleries and art
auctions. Stephan Welz, founder of Stephan Welz amp; Co auction house, which
represents Sotheby’s interests in South Africa, says when starting an art
collection you should stick to the recognised artists, in much the same way as
a share portfolio should be made up of blue-chip companies.

A good auction house or gallery will be able to advise you
on who the recognised artists are and what they are worth. But you should also
be doing your own homework by attending auctions and seeing what prices certain
artists are commanding.

It is only in an auction that the true market value of an
artist or specific artwork can be determined because art is only physically
worth what someone else is prepared to pay for it.

There is, however, also room for a new artist in a
collection.

As one may invest a small portion of one’s portfolio in
newly listed companies, a well-chosen newcomer can increase significantly in
value.

However, this is not for novices and it is, as with
investing in a small company, even more important to do homework. New artists
also create opportunity for the small-budget collector.

If you are buying into the blue-chip league, you need a
starting investment of R50 000.

For half that amount, you could pick up a new artist.

However, the risks are far higher.

The risk with new artists is that sometimes their prices can
be overinflated as they are still to be tested in the auction environment and
they are harder to resell.

But when it does, the payoff can be immense. For example, a
William Kentridge etching in his early days went for R8 000.

Today that is worth about R500 000. But not every new artist
is a Kentridge and is far more likely to remain in obscurity than to succeed.

If you have a smaller budget and want to buy into more
established artists, you can start with collecting limited edition signed
lithographs (prints) of well-known artists.

You don’t need to be rich to be an art collector, although
it does help. There are many famous collections by people of ordinary means.

For example, a book-keeper built up a collection worth many
tens of millions of rands, yet he never owned a car because he could not afford
it. His investment was his passion.

Some people would rather buy an artwork than take an
overseas trip.

- City Press

Birmingham, UK (PRWEB) May 13, 2012

Packt is pleased to announce the release of its new book Monkey Game Development: Beginners Guide. Written by Michael Hartlef, this is the first book on Monkey which shows how to create and deploy games to most mobile and desktop platforms. It provides easy-to-follow step by step instructions on how to create eight different 2D games and how to deploy them to various platforms and markets.

Monkey is a cross-platform computer language which translates Monkey code into several target platforms. Currently the target platforms include Windows, Mac OS X, Android, iOS, HTML5 and Flash.

With this book one will learn important game development techniques like collision detection, handling player input with mouse, keyboard or touch events and creating challenging computer AI. Users will learn to quickly create eight classical games and publish them to the modern app markets. The author also explains how to emit particle effects, play sound and music files, use sprite sheets, load or save high-score tables and handle different device resolutions. Users can also use 3rd party modules like the fantomEngine game framework to speed up their game development process. The last chapter will show how to monetize the games to be commercially successful in the app market.

This book is a Packt Beginners Guide, which is packed with clear step-by-step instructions for performing the most useful tasks. The book is now available in print and popular e-book formats, for more information please visit the book page: www.packtpub.com/monkey-2d-game-development-beginners-guide/book

For the original version on PRWeb visit: www.prweb.com/releases/prweb2012/5/prweb9498996.htm

While stretching a buck seems to be harder in the summer with vacations, there are some local activities that are cheap or even free.

Your kids can play two free games of bowling every day via Kids Bowl Free (kidsbowlfree.com). This is a deal to organize with other parents, so that kids can meet up with their school friends during the summer. Kids Bowl Free offers children the opportunity to bowl two games for free all summer everyday. There is also an option to purchase a family pass so parents, grandparents and babysitters can participate.

All of the participating bowling centers are listed at www.kidsbowlfree.com.

You can register directly on the bowling center page, the registration is valid only at the bowling center where you register and cannot be used at any other bowling center unless otherwise noted.

Once you register, you will have the opportunity to purchase a family pass. The family pass was created to allow adult family members the chance to enjoy bowling throughout the summer as well. The family pass starts at $24.95 and includes two free games per person, per day.

The Family Pass can cover one to four adult family members. Valley Bowling Lanes in Carbondale and Idle Hour Bowling in Scranton are two participating locations.

Everyone enjoys a movie, especially just to cool off on a hot summer day. There are local theaters offering special discounts on selected child friendly movies. We have attended these in the past and its a great way to break up the week, and especially helpful with staying on a budget.

Cinemark Theaters ( www.cinemark.com/summer-movie-clubhouse-2012) offers 10 movies for $5 with advance purchase or $1 each at the box office. All movies begin at 10 am The screenings will begin on June 13 with Happy Feet 2 (PG). Cinemark also offers coupons on their site that can be used at any time.

Great Escape Theaters ( www.greatescapetheatres.com/) offers select movies for free and others at a discounted price. Movies start at 9:30 am The first movie screened will be Rio (G) on June 12 and13.

The Lackawanna County Library System ( www.lclshome.org/) offers a summer reading club for children ages 6 to 14, which is also free. Sign-ups begin Monday, July 11. There is also a once a week story hour for toddlers and babies. Check with your local library for dates and times.

The Everhart Museum (http://everhart-museum.org/programs/early-explorers/) offers Early Explorers for Pre-K. This program is free and suitable for children ages 3 to 5. Class is held Mondays from 1 to 1:45 pm Pre-registration is required and groups are welcome.

These are just a few children programs that wont break the bank.

Do you have a favorite summer program for children? Share it with us at facebook.com/golackawanna

Talent wasnt the problem. Perhaps it was worrying too much.

One of the things that I noticed, towards the end of the year, when we started talking about having fun, having more fun, we started playing better, defenseman Karl Alzner said. Weve got to keep the right atmosphere then. I think that it transitions into better hockey.

Going into Game 7 of the Eastern Conference semifinals at the New York Rangers on Saturday night, the Caps are hoping to again strike the right balance between having fun and channeling the right amount of pressure.

The Department of Land and Natural Resources and NOAA Fisheries announced this week that since March 2012, NOAA Fisheries, DLNR, and partners have responded to five seal hooking incidents involving four individual Hawaiian monk seals.

Three of these responses are still in progress.

NOAA and DLNR would like to take this opportunity to remind fishermen that monk seal deaths and injuries from fishing interactions can often be prevented, and adverse impacts to fishermen and seals can be reduced through early reporting of incidents.

“Monk seals are a vital part of Hawaii’s marine and cultural environment,” said William J. Aila, Jr., DLNR chairman. “While DLNR and NOAA seek to address all adverse impacts on Hawaiian monk seals, we want to acknowledge the cooperation of Hawaii fishermen and emphasize that we do not consider fishing interactions in the main Hawaiian Islands to currently pose a major threat to monk seal recovery.”

NOAA Fisheries Service data indicate that a total of 77 hooking incidents have been reported over the last 10 years, with at total of nine incidents in 2011 and eight incidents reported thus far in 2012, including the five incidents in the last couple months.

“However, in only two cases, including one of the recent cases, have hookings been deemed the likely cause of a seal’s death,” Aila added. “We want to partner with the fishermen to further reduce impacts. Following the guidelines and reporting hookings can help make a relatively small impact become even smaller.”

The agencies offer guidelines, titled “Hawaiian Monk Seals and Fishing Interactions: Guidelines for Prevention, Safety and Reporting,” that describe actions fishermen can take to avoid seal hookings and entanglement, and to reduce fishing gear and bait loss. The guidelines also stress the importance of reporting all fishing interactions.

To read the full guidelines, visit: www.fpir.noaa.gov/Library/PRD/

The toll-free, 24/7 reporting hotline for all fishing interactions and other marine mammal incidents is: 1-888-256-9840. NOAA and DLNR urge all fishermen and other ocean users to write down this hotline and/or save it in their mobile phones for timely use whenever a seal is hooked or entangled.

“We want to encourage reporting as early as possible. We feel we can develop win-win solutions with the fishermen, and their reporting is essential to achieving this,” said Jeff Walters, Marine Mammal Branch Chief, NOAA NMFS PIRO.

Timely reporting of monk seal fishing interactions is beneficial in at least two ways:

* First, reporting an interaction as soon as possible can help save a seal’s life or minimize seal injury. In at least three previous cases, real-time reporting of seals that had ingested hooks resulted in successful treatment and release of the seal back to the wild. These seals probably would have died without this intervention. On numerous other occasions, fishermen have provided timely reporting of less severe hooking and entanglements that were not immediately life-threatening, but could have become life-threatening if not responded to. These timely reports have allowed response network members to get out to the location in time to locate the seal and safely remove the gear.

* The second benefit to timely reporting is that it helps federal and state managers and researchers better understand how fishery interactions occur and thereby helps guide the development and testing of improved methods to prevent and mitigate interactions. By reporting and documenting interactions, fishermen can partner with NOAA and DLNR to find better non-regulatory methods to effectively keep seals away from fishing gear and fishing areas, while also allowing for monk seal conservation and recovery.

Of the three active hooking cases, two seals required procedures to remove the hooks May 10 at the Honolulu Zoo.

One of these seals was airlifted May 9 from Kauai to Oahu by the US Coast Guard. The two seals are currently in guarded but stable condition at the Waikiki Aquarium. A special team has been assembled to de-hook and care for these seals, including a veterinarian flown in from the Vancouver Aquarium who specializes in marine mammal anesthesia.

The third hooked seal, last seen May 9 around Oahu, has yet to be treated, but NOAA and DLNR marine mammal response staff are tracking her and plan to capture and treat her as soon as possible.

This is the second hooking incident in the past two weeks for this seal, a 9-month-old female, known to response volunteers as “Kaiwi.” With her previous hooking May 5, she was captured on Rabbit Island, de-hooked at Waikiki Aquarium, and released back into the wild the same day.

In March 2012, an adult male seal was found dead on Kauai. A hook was found in the seal’s esophagus and necropsy results indicated that the seal likely died from trauma caused by the hook.

The other three hookings reported thus far in 2012 were relatively minor and de-hooked on their own or removed in the field by marine mammal response staff.

Posted at 02:51 PM ET, 05/11/2012

TheWashingtonPost

Time Magazine breast-feeding cover: Its art historical origins, and what makes the image so sensational
By Maura Judkis

Time Magazine’s sensational cover may have made a few subscribers squirm — and it’s ignited a fervent discussion about attachment parenting and breast-feeding. Beyond that, photographer Martin Schoeller’s image of 26-year-old mom Jamie Lynne Grumet breast-feeding her three-year-old son has inspired conversations about what makes a good cover, and what pushes the boundaries of taste.

Schoeller said in Time’s “Behind the Cover” article that he looked to religious imagery of the Madonna and Child for inspiration in creating this provocative contemporary image.

This image provided by Time magazine shows the cover of the May 21, 2012 issue with a photograph of Jamie Lynne Grumet, 26, breast-feeding her 3-year-old son for a story on “attachment parenting.”
(Associated Press)

Pushing the boundaries is what makes a cover great, according to the Post’s visuals editor, David Griffin. He’s guided National Geographic and U.S. News & World Report in their cover designs previously, and was intrigued by Time’s arresting image.

“[A good cover] should always be what contemporary social norms can barely handle,” Griffin said. “My feeling is, you want to produce enough covers each year that people will remember you as a publication. When they look to renew, you risk the chance that they will forget about you.”

Designers make their cover decisions based not just on the story, but also on marketing. A provocative cover may spark newsstand sales, but more of a magazine’s earnings come from subscribers, typically — and since those subscribers have already bought the cover and may not like what they’ve paid for, it also risks offending them.

“That is the line that you ride,” says Griffin. “If it’s too safe, you disappear into the static of all other publications. If it’s too risky, you risk offending your core readership … You have to balance the short-term gain of sales against long term damage.”

Another risk: Once a sensational cover is out there, the magazine can lose control of its own image, via the viral parodies (Caution: Some of the parodies may be offensive.) that pop up on blogs. Readers have photoshopped other faces onto Grumet’s and her son’s for laughs. Even if they’re mocking the cover, viral interest in the image will only benefit Time — but Griffin thinks that’s not the only reason it was selected.

“No one picks [a cover] merely for it to go viral. You choose a photo to draw attention to an issue,” he said. “A photo, to be powerful, has to focus on one element of a story. It’s rare to find one photo that can sum up an entire story. Photography reduces concepts to the visceral, the emotional.”

This cover gets its power from the confrontational way that both Grumet and her son, Aram, are looking directly at the viewer, as if daring someone to challenge her unconventional parenting methods.

“When you think of breast-feeding, you think of mothers holding their children, which was impossible with some of these older kids,” cover photographer Schoeller told Time. “I liked the idea of having the kids standing up to underline the point that this was an uncommon situation.”

But though the cover may make some readers squeamish, its imagery has a precedent deep in art history, where the image of a woman breast-feeding — and even breast-feeding someone older than a child — is less controversial.

Schoeller’s decision to evoke the Madonna and Child brings to mind other paintings and sculptures of unusual situations in breast-feeding that go further back in history. In Roman mythology, the ancient founders of the city, Romulus and Remus, are often depicted suckling the teat of a she-wolf. According to another story from ancient Rome — this one by the historian Valerius Maximus — a daughter, Pero, saves her incarcerated father, Cimon, from starvation by secretly breast-feeding him. The image, often called “Roman Charity,” has been interpreted by painters including Caravaggio and Peter Paul Rubens, and the man breast-feeding in those paintings is much, much older than a three-year-old.

Peter Paul Rubens’s “Roman Charity”.

By Maura Judkis
 | 
02:51 PM ET, 05/11/2012

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The free event included demonstrations of YMCA fitness programs such as Zumba and yoga, dance performances by members of Filippettis Academy of Dance Arts, tours of a fire truck and a demonstration of fire-safety evacuation procedures. The Corning Police Department also offered free bicycle helmets for kids, as well as free car seat safety checks.

(The expo) embodies everything with health and wellness, said YMCA Administrative Coordinator Kristen Morse, citing the array of information and activities available for all ages.

Morse, of Corning, estimated that around 1,000 people passed through the Expo.

Each year it only seems to grow, Morse said, adding that this years event was three times bigger than 2011, the inaugural event. It took a lot of hands to put this together beyond the staff at the Y.

Families were able to visit dozens of booths set up by medical professionals such as Arnot Health, Hands on Chiropractic, Smith Allergy and Asthma Specialists, AIM, Painted Post Cosmetic Dentist Dr. Maria Marzo and more. Arnot Health, Wegmans and others also demonstrated how healthy eating can lead to a healthier lifestyle.

Karen Immerman, an occupational therapist demonstrating at the Arnot Health booth, entertained children by showing them that being healthy can be as simple as swinging or jumping through a hula hoop.

A good therapist always makes it fun, Immerman said. When children see physical education, they engage in physical education.