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SparkPeople.com inks major book deal

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SparkPeople.com has signed with Hay House, a publisher of self-improvement books and products, to publish THE SPARK: The Secret Formula for Losing Weight, Getting Fit, and Transforming Your Life. The book will give readers a proven program to improve their health, lose weight and reach their goals with a unique combination of health and weight loss advice integrated with innovative motivation and goal-setting techniques, inspiration and community. One of the unique elements of THE SPARK will be SparkPeople members directly participating in authoring and promoting the book.

With 4.5 million members and 100 million page views per month, SparkPeople.com has become one of the world’s largest and most engaged health & lifestyle websites. A powerful and inspirational web resource, SparkPeople offers nutrition, diet, health, fitness and goal setting tools, motivation, support and resources. SparkPeople.com is the only major site of its kind to make these programs 100% free to users. Over 175,000 new members join SparkPeople each month – almost 6,000 per day.

The book will be authored by Chris Downie, SparkPeople’s Founder, CEO and one of the site’s Motivation Experts.

Originally posted on December 10, 2008 @ 6:17 am

Filed Under: Web

The Salvation Army releases iPhone app

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The Salvation Army has released the Salvation Army Holiday Music application in the iPhone Application Store for $2.99, with proceeds to benefit The Salvation Army.

The application streams hundreds of holiday favorites, ranging from time-honored classics such as Nat King Cole’s “The Christmas Song” and Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” to a selection of The Salvation Army’s own signature brand of brass-flavored holiday tunes. For $2.99, consumers get unlimited listening.

This Christmas, The Salvation Army’s Red Kettle campaign is hoping to top the record $118 million donated in 2007. To do that, the Army is harnessing a range of technology and social media. This includes adding credit card scanners at some of its iconic Red Kettles, as well as an Online Red Kettle application, Facebook widgets, and the ability to donate via text message.

The Salvation Army is teaming with Seattle startup Melodeo to bring The Salvation Army Holiday Music service to iPhone users.

Originally posted on December 10, 2008 @ 7:29 am

Filed Under: Web

Burst Media survey reveals the perils of ad clutter

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Burst Media has released the results from a survey on the topic of ad clutter. The survey was administered to over 4,000 web users with the purpose of better understanding how ad clutter impacts a web users’ Internet experience, as well as its impact on the perception of advertisers who place ads on cluttered sites. Overwhelmingly, the findings reveal that websites cluttered with advertisements do a disservice to the publisher, the advertiser and the visitor.

According to the survey results, ad clutter not only annoys the audience but it also diminishes ad effectiveness. An astonishing three-quarters (75.5%) of the respondents who remain on a site they perceive to be cluttered say they pay less attention to advertisements appearing on its pages.

Additionally, although respondents accept that advertising will appear on a web page, for a majority (52.6%), there is low tolerance for more than two advertising units per web page. More than one-quarter (29.9%) of survey respondents immediately leave a site if they perceive it to be cluttered. Women are more likely than men to abandon a site that appears cluttered – 32.1% versus 27.5%.

A resounding survey finding is the negative impact advertising clutter has on a consumer’s perception of an advertiser’s products and services. One out of two (52.4%) respondents has a less favorable opinion of an advertiser when their advertising appears on a web page they perceive as cluttered. One-half (56.4%) of women claim clutter negatively impacts their opinion of an advertiser, versus 48.3% of men.

The survey also found that ad clutter’s negative impact on respondents’ opinions increases with age. Less than half (46.8%) of respondents 18-24 years were impacted negatively by clutter whereas nearly two-thirds (63.2%) of respondents 55 years and older were unfavorably impacted.

Originally posted on December 10, 2008 @ 6:26 am

Zoho makes cloud data accessible with Zoho CloudSQL

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Zoho announced the release of Zoho CloudSQL, a middleware service that uses the familiar SQL to connect business data stored in Zoho with traditional, on-premises applications as well as other SaaS offerings.

Zoho CloudSQL makes it easier for customers to access their data in the cloud because it leverages skills that most business application developers have. In addition, Zoho CloudSQL supports all major SQL dialects, including ANSI, Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, IBM DB2, MySQL, PostgreSQL, and Informix database dialects. With Zoho CloudSQL, developers don’t need to worry about using the “right” SQL dialect; they can continue using what they already know.

Originally posted on December 3, 2008 @ 6:02 pm

Filed Under: Web

Wemix.com, Phonezoo.com ink ringtone distribution partnership

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User-generated music creation community WeMix.com and Phonezoo have combined forces to launch an innovative content distribution agreement.

Specifically, the companies have partnered in a ringtone creation and distribution relationship that will allow independent artists and musicians to create ringtones of their chosen original songs and distribute them across Phonezoo’s robust, popular and free digital platform and enable its membership of millions to download the ringtones to their mobile phone.

To kick-off the partnership, a WeMix channel with profiles and ringtones of top WeMix artists will launch on Phonezoo.com.

WeMix.com was created by Grammy award winning artist Christopher “Ludacris” Bridges.

Originally posted on December 9, 2008 @ 1:23 pm