Luxe Worldwide Hotels Launches New Website
Luxe Worldwide Hotels Launches New Website: http://www.luxehotels.com
In an effort to grab a larger share of the online travel market and offer its member hotels more effective Internet distribution, Luxe Worldwide Hotels has launched a brand-new website it was announced today by Efrem Harkham, Founder and CEO of Luxe. The site is at http://www.luxehotels.com/.
Designed by Hospitality eBusiness Strategies, the new site offers consumers, travel agents, and meeting planners a beautiful, user-friendly experience to book the more than 200 properties which are members of the exclusive Luxe Hotels brand.
BENEFITS OF THE NEW WEBSITE AT WWW.LUXEHOTELS.COM
Visitors logging on to the Luxe Hotels website will find the following enhancements:
— New page design with wide-screen layout.
— Rich visual content with flash animations, video, and visual galleries
to showcase each of the Luxe member properties.
— Easy-to-use navigation to search for a hotel, locate details on
facilities and services, and make a booking.
— Luxe “Top 10 Must See Attraction” recommendations for each hotel in
the collection which provides the consumer with recommendations on
what to see and do while staying at the hotel.
— Interactive mapping and hotel directions using Google Maps API.
— A “Special Offers” section highlighting various packages at Luxe
member hotels as well as an opportunity to sign-up to become a member
of the Luxe Worldwide Hotels community to receive new hotel
announcements and exclusive offers for Luxe Hotels.
— An online request process to submit information regarding a social
event, destination wedding, or other special affair and have bids sent
from all selected Luxe Hotels for this event.
— Special sections geared toward travel agents and meeting planners who
can also fill out and submit an online RFP.
For Luxe Worldwide Hotel members, the new site offers significantly enhanced textual and destination content as well as world-class website analytics and campaign tracking to ensure that Luxe’s online and eCommerce marketing campaigns provide the most effective results for member hotels.
ABOUT LUXE WORLDWIDE HOTELS
Luxe Worldwide Hotels is a privately held, premier representation company of over 200 independently owned and operated hotels in prominent locations around the globe including world-renowned and award-winning Canyon Ranch Resorts; Establishment Hotel in Sydney, Australia; and Murano Urban Resort in Paris, France.
Luxe Worldwide Hotels provides the ultimate solution for independent hoteliers with a focus on the latest technologies and distribution strategies. Luxe offers full-service GDS representation as well as revenue management, eBusiness and Internet distribution, voice reservations, sales calls, trade shows, and much more. Luxe member hotels also benefit from the latest hospitality industry technology including state-of-the-art booking capabilities which enable individual and corporate bookings with real-time confirmation. Member hotels receive individualized, personalized attention to address their property specific challenges and maximize their profit potential.
The company is headquartered in Los Angeles, California with 13 offices worldwide including New York, London, Paris, Milan, Athens, Buenos Aires, Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Sydney. For more information on Luxe Worldwide Hotels, visit http://www.luxehotels.com/ or call 1-866-LUXE-411.
Masterbeat.com Launches First Music Download Site Focused on Dance and Electronica to Offer Music From Sony and Warner
Mixes by Platinumselling artists including Madonna, Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears, Seal, Whitney Houston, and Cher now easily found as iPod compatible mp3s on Masterbeat.com.
Masterbeat.com is a new digital download music site that offers consumers a virtual shopping mall of current hits and classic tracks across a wide variety of dance and electronica genres including House, Disco, Electro, Trance, Garage and Pop. Masterbeat announced that they have signed deals with Sony BMG and Warner Music Group that will allow the site to highlight each label’s dance remixes and electronica artists alongside their entire catalogs. Masterbeat.com is the first online niche retailer to safely and securely deliver high quality DRM-free MP3’s of dance tracks from Platinum-selling pop artists via its easy to navigate and state-of-the-art website.
(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20081015/NY39237LOGO )
Until now, no online retailer has specialized in promoting and selling dance and electronica product from the major labels. “These are the dance tracks made by and for the industry’s top DJs and remixers,” said Brett Henrichsen, Founder and President of Masterbeat, at yesterday’s announcement in Los Angeles. Henrichsen, himself an internationally renowned DJ, understands the frustration of consumers who have traditionally been unable to legally obtain mixes they hear on the radio or in a club. “These recordings were not originally intended for commercial sale. They were commissioned by the labels to be played at dance clubs and on radio mix shows to promote their artists and mainstream albums. Masterbeat.com is the first online retailer to offer the recordings to fans for commercial sale.”
Hosh Gureli, a former radio programmer turned A&R executive at RCA Music Group explained that major labels have not promoted their dance and electronica product for retail sale because mainstream retailers have traditionally been ill-equipped to handle these complex and quickly changing genres. “Hot remixes only have a week or two on the charts before another hit is rising to the top.” Now Head of Development at Masterbeat, Gureli contends that the major labels needed a retailer that understood the intricacies of the genre. “Mass merchants and online sites cannot react as quickly as the DJ’s, clubs and radio; which made it difficult for the labels to think of dance remixes as anything but promotion. That’s where Masterbeat.com comes in. We’re providing a site where fans know they can find and purchase a remix the moment they hear it.”
Masterbeat.com is a vast catalog of current and classic tracks. In addition to distribution deals with thousands of independent labels around the world, Masterbeat has secured rights to distribute the entire catalogs of Sony BMG and Warner Music Group. This makes the depth of music available on Masterbeat rival that of iTunes and Amazon.com and allows the consumer to use Masterbeat’s intuitive site to find and purchase music from all of their favorite artists across every musical genre, even if it’s not dance or electronica related. Artist’s full albums are available alongside their remixes.
The dance and electronica industry needed to be redefined. “We had to eliminate the old physical mindset of street dates,” added Henrichsen. “Fans of dance and electronica are not willing to wait for their favorite records to hit store shelves. They want their music now.” With no legal site to obtain the mixes they were hearing, many have turned to file sharing networks to find the music. In order to meet fans’ demands, Masterbeat.com built an expedient distribution system. If a label chooses to do so, a remix can be sold at the same time it is being promoted to radio and DJ’s, thus diminishing illegal file sharing by providing a legal alternative for consumers who have indicated they are willing to pay for their music if they knew where to find it.
A key element to Masterbeat is promoting the genre as a community. In addition to being a retailer, Masterbeat.com is an educational tool, offering profiles and extensive information on its featured artists, DJs, remixers and record labels. Through partnerships with Billboard, DJ’s and leading radio stations, Masterbeat.com posts weekly club charts and playlists, keeping fans up-to-the-minute on the hottest tracks.
Finally, sales on Masterbeat.com count. Masterbeat.com will be the first online dance and electronica online distributor to be a reporting retailer to Nielsen Soundscan, the company that tallies artist sales charts for Billboard. Now sales of an artist’s dance remixes can impact the record’s Billboard chart position.
“It’s an exciting time, not only for Masterbeat.com, but for the entire dance and electronica music community,” concluded Henrichsen. “These new deals with two of America’s leading record groups, signifies that the major labels are finally recognizing there is profit potential in their dance and electronica repertoire.”
For additional information, visit www.masterbeat.com .
Top Digger helps launch Tip’d, a Digg clone for financial news
Tip’d the new online community for business, financial news, ideas, and other tips launched today. Tip’d describes itself as “a place for investors… to meet, share, discuss, comment, and vote on what’s happening on both Wall Street and Main Street.” It’s a digg clone for financial news. Instead of Digging a story, users vote by hitting the “Tip It” button. The stories that receive enough votes will be featured on the site’s homepage.
The Rockstar of Social Media, Muhamad Saleem, is one of the sites 4 Co-Founders and Community Manager. He’s a top user on Digg, and very active on other social media sites like StumbleUpon, Mixx, and Reddit. A steady stream of top users from all of the sites mentioned above have signed up at Tip’d.com today….. you should too! Click here to check it out !
JustTweetit Launches a New Twitter Directory
Filed under: Site Launches, Tech News, press release
Are you interested in finding like-minded Twitter users? If so, check out JustTweetit.com The site is well designed and easy to navigate and has bright fun graphics. You can quickly add your name and information. Simply add your name to the existing directory, and then you can find or be found by others who share your same tastes.
The newest Tweeters are featured on the main page, and a brief description of each Tweeter is provided as well. The site will also include a “Featured Tweeters” section in the future, where “exceptional” Tweeters are brought into the limelight. It is also possible to suggest Tweeters that stand out in the community because they are friendly and helpful to others to be added to this forthcoming list. There is a also a “Cool Stuff” heading that collects goodies like mobile and developer tools alongside assorted Twitter graphics and services. Be sure to check out the JustTweetIt blog as well.
Website to Transform Discovery of Sporting Talent
UsportStar.com Launches on Tuesday October 7, 2008
A highly original website that showcases new sports talent is being launched at Chelsea Football Club on October 7, in conjunction with the opening of the major football business exhibition, “Leaders in Football”.
UsportStar.com is the first in a series of community driven portals by Dreamscape Media and is designed to target people with genuine sporting talent. By combining the worldwide appeal of Youtube with the extraordinary popularity of reality television shows, UsportStar.com generates content from video clips uploaded by the public. This user-created content promotes the skills and sporting ability of athletes of any age who believe they may possess star potential.
The use of the site to register and upload videos of sporting prowess and skills will be open to everyone. It is a concept which will reach out to people of all ages and backgrounds, drawing them even closer to the sports they love and increasing their sense of involvement. For many it will fuel dreams of discovery and achievement by showcasing the talent and skills of athletes of any age and ability who think they have what it takes.
Usporstar.com is expected to become a primary source of talent for professional team scouts, managers, major brands, agents and academies. The site will be a major point of reference for all professionals who are constantly on the look out for promising young sportspersons.
UsportStar.com has been developed with attention to detail, to ensure its broad appeal, ease-of-use, effectiveness and ethicality. All teams, scouts and agents will be thoroughly vetted and authorised, and all videos checked and verified; parental approval and protection of young people is intrinsic to the site’s design.
UsportStar.com’s ambition is to become the largest online sports community the in the world.
Pargat Mangat, a Director of Dreamscape Media, the owners of Usportstar.com, said: “UsportStar.com will not only allow users from around the world a chance to showcase their sporting talent, it will also provide new and incredibly diverse search options for teams, brands and organizations to view and contact these users, who previously may never have had the opportunity.”
Dreamscape Media plans to become the first global media company to embrace the power and creativity of user-generated content across wide-ranging sporting categories, enabling users to connect with a vast new audience in an entirely new way.
Make Room for the Groom Brides.com Launches Groom 101 to Offer Male Perspective on the March Down the Aisle
New Section Sponsored by Mens Wearhouse and MW Tux
Michael Arnot, Founder of GroomGroove.com, Pens Original Content
Offering a revealing look into a man’s point-of-view on weddings, Conde Nast’s premier bridal destination Brides.com (http://www.brides.com/) has launched “Groom 101″ (http://www.brides.com/groom), a section designed to help women get a peek at life from the groom’s side of the aisle. “Groom 101″ will be sponsored by Men’s Wearhouse and MW Tux, with a package that includes “brought to you” mentions and targeted ad placements throughout the section.
Brides.com signed Michael Arnot, founder of GroomGroove.com, to helm “Groom 101,” where he will explore issues such as shopping for wedding rings together, how to help your fiance bond with the men in your family, and handling bachelor party concerns.
Discovering that there were no online resources for grooms while planning his own wedding in 2004, Michael Arnot decided to launch GroomGroove.com. Four years later, the site is the Web’s leading wedding and engagement guide for men, providing wedding and engagement advice that men are likely to identify with from popping the question to dealing with a difficult fiancee and Arnot is regularly tapped as an expert on weddings from the male perspective.
“All of us at Brides.com know full well that it takes two to walk down the aisle,” said Michelle Preli, editor in chief of Brides.com. “Editorial content dedicated to the groom’s POV seemed like a natural fit for the site, as a go-to resource for any bride-to-be who wants to help make her fiance’s wedding experience as joyous as her own.”
About Brides.com
Brides.com is a premier bridal destination site, with more than 1.3 million unique users every month and 60 percent year-over-year growth in traffic. Brides.com’s dedicated editorial team creates original content, develops interactive tools, cultivates an engaged community and provides an array of beautiful imagery and video to empower the bride throughout her wedding-planning process. Brides.com commands a superior market position by aggregating content from three national magazines Brides, Modern Bride, Elegant Bride and 16 local bridal magazines.
Gale Launches New Online Content Marketplace AcquireContent.com
Filed under: Site Launches, Tech News, press release
AcquireContent.com Provides Scaleable Content Syndication and Creation Services for Businesses
Gale announces the launch of AcquireContent.com, a new online content marketplace that highlights Gale’s high-quality and unique content assets and provides robust content licensing, syndication and content creation services to Web site owners, media outlets, publishers, research database providers, Internet start-ups and other businesses. From magazines and newspapers to comprehensive encyclopedias and directories, businesses will find large volumes of dynamic, accurate content at AcquireContent.com.
A service of Gale, a part of Cengage Learning, AcquireContent.com offers over 10,000 unique sources of content covering more than 500 different topic areas. The site features content that is both diverse and compelling, covering a wide range of consumer interests, from the latest business trends and health and wellness research to how-to topics, pop culture, entertainment and more. Gale’s content will engage all types of audiences: from research professionals to general information seekers. The site enables businesses to find the content they need quickly and provides on-site tools to easily bookmark collections of content that they are interested in licensing.
AcquireContent.com offers several flexible licensing programs, allowing businesses to get just the content they need. Potential clients and existing partners can also work directly with Gale representatives to commission the creation of original, custom content developed just for their site and optimized for maximum search engine discoverability. Content can be easily integrated into a business’s site or service with AcquireContent.com’s platform services. Gale can also create custom, white label solutions for online businesses including hosted web pages, search widgets, and e-commerce.
“Content is still king, especially when it comes to building a successful business online,” said Paul Mouton, Director of Business Development at Gale. “With AcquireContent.com, you have instant access to a massive volume of unique and engaging content. And, if we don’t have exactly what you need, we have the capability to quickly create custom content that addresses your needs specifically.” With its success in serving the information needs of libraries, school, universities, and businesses for over 50 years, Gale is expanding its already strong position in the online content marketplace with AcquireContent.com, by providing scaleable content syndication solutions for any business.
For more information, contact Lindsay Brown at lindsay.brown@cengage.com
About Cengage Learning and Gale
Cengage Learning, formerly Thomson Learning, delivers highly customized learning solutions for colleges, universities, professors, students, reference centers, government agencies, corporations and professionals around the world. Gale, part of Cengage Learning, serves the world’s information and education needs through its vast and dynamic content pools, which are used by students and consumers in their libraries, schools and on the Internet. It is best known for the accuracy, breadth and convenience of its data, addressing all types of information needs — from homework help to health questions to business profiles — in a variety of formats — books and eBooks, databases and microfilm. For more information visit: www.cengage.com or www.gale.com.
About AcquireContent.com
Located at http://www.acquirecontent.com/, AcquireContent.com is Gale’s online content marketplace, and the single source for content licensing, syndication, and creation services for businesses and organizations. Offering more than 10,000 unique sources of content in over 500 different topic areas, AcquireContent.com provides scaleable content solutions for any business.
Source: Cengage Learning and Gale
The Privacy Council Launches Together We Can End SPAM Junk Mail and Unsolicited Phone Calls
Filed under: Launch Events, Site Launches, press release
The formation of a Global Privacy Council designed to set firm standards around online privacy has been announced today. In addition to bringing together industry leaders to protect personal privacy on the Internet, The Privacy Council provides a low-cost service for individuals who wish to be removed from the major junk mail, telemarketer and SPAM email lists. The Privacy Council’s website also publishes regularly updated articles about the latest personal privacy and security issues.
Junk mail destroys roughly 100 million trees per year, and it’s estimated that 44% of junk mail is thrown away without being opened. In addition, the majority of emails sent today are unsolicited marketing emails (SPAM). For these reasons, The Privacy Council’s list-removal service appeals to everyone from the environmentally conscious to those who simply want to clean up their email inboxes.
The Privacy Council is a joint venture of Yovia and HD Publishing Group, two Florida-based marketing companies. As marketers, these companies sought to take the lead in the movement toward reducing unwanted emails, phone calls and junk mail. They also understand the need to educate the public about privacy and security issues.
The Privacy Council is currently seeking marketers to aid in the fight against unwanted paper, telephone and online solicitations. For more information on how to join The Privacy Council, email privacycouncil@yovia.com or call (904) 242-2669 x 101.
HD Publishing:
Since 1996, HD Publishing Group has been pioneering data-based people search products on the web. As aggregators of more than 3.1 billion public records, HD Publishing understands the value and necessity of personal privacy. The Privacy Council was founded by HD Publishing, on the premise that people deserve a way to control the phone calls, emails and junk mail they receive.
For more information: http://www.hdpublishinggroup.com/
Yovia:
Yovia is a community of people who spread the word about things that matter. In just a few months, it has become a fast growing and influential organic network of people and websites. Based on the premise that traditional advertising methods are both ineffective and annoying to consumers, Yovia was founded to enable people from around the globe to talk about new products, discuss key issues, and in general become one cohesive group.
For more information: http://www.yovia.com/
Source: HD Publishing Group
ABSOLUT LAUNCHES PIONEERING ONLINE ART PLATFORM TO EXHIBIT HELMUT LANG’S ALLES GLEICH SCHWER
Filed under: Launch Events, Product Launches, Site Launches
ABSOLUT vodka is proud to launch a radical medium to view and experience art, as a new online virtual “gallery” goes live, showcasing Helmut Lang’s “Alles Gleich Schwer”. This, a bold new exhibition of artworks, will be brought to a global audience as part of the artist’s vision of an ABSOLUT WORLD, eradicating traditional barriers between viewer and art, consumer and gallery - accessible to all for a three month period through WWW.ABSOLUT.COM/HELMUTLANG.
To present “Alles Gleich Schwer” in a digital environment, ABSOLUT and Helmut Lang are working as a creative partnership to develop a uniquely innovative interactive platform, in which the art can live beyond physical space and outside the restraints of location. Here, users will be able to get under the skin of the art - move it, rotate it, almost virtually cradle it. Moreover, in a ground-breaking exploration of the Internet as a creative medium, visitors to ABSOLUT.COM/HELMUTLANG will be able to exclusively download and print limited edition high-res exhibition posters, with no requirements needed other than an Internet connection.
This desire to work with the web’s inherently self-regulating methodology is key to Lang’s vision, as he states, “I’m interested in the virtual platform because of its relatively democratic nature and specifically to be independent from time or geographic boundaries.” Here, users have “equal access to the same information” and are afforded “the unique experience of viewing art in an isolated manner, which also has its interesting side.”
Absolut’s Karl-Johan Bogefors adds, “the opportunity to create an environment in which participants, irrespective of where they might be, can have access to and interact with outstanding original material in an honest and forward-thinking way, has been a great satisfaction for us.”
“Alles Gleich Schwer” previewed at the prestigious kestnergesellschaft in Hannover as Helmut Lang’s first solo institutional art exhibition, curated by Frank Thorsten Moll and Neville Wakefield. The exhibition marks Lang’s move away from the physical body’s articulation through clothes towards an understanding and examination of the object. Drawing on references as diverse as the folkloric rites of maypole ceremonies and the exploration of surrogate skin, Lang has created a series of visual pieces that integrate an intimate knowledge of the human form with the personal mythologies and abstract arrangements of the world at large.
The collaboration between Helmut Lang and Absolut draws on a relationship that stretches back to Helmut Newton’s “ABSOLUT LANG” campaign (1995) and reflects Lang’s early adoption and appreciation of the Internet, which he used before any other designer to showcase fashion collections (Helmut Lang Scéance de Travail, A/W 97-98, online). Karl-Johan Bogefors explains, “Absolut as a brand has from the very beginning and throughout its well documented history communicated an innate creativity. Helmut Lang is a true Visionary, in all his output - fashion, art, even the communication of these disciplines, which is itself an artform. In this respect he is part of the language and culture of Absolut, and we are proud to be working together once more to help realise this, his new Vision.”
Absolut’s latest project with Helmut Lang is part of its larger ‘In An Absolut World’ Visionaries campaign’; an online-led brand program that engages both consumers and leading creative luminaries to express clever and daring visions of an ideal world and helps bring them to life on ABSOLUT.Com. Other recent Visionaries include Kanye West, uber-blogger Perez Hilton, comedian Zach Galifianakis, with upcoming visions expected later this year from Eddie Izzard and artist/eco-chef Jim Denevan.
WWW.ABSOLUT.COM/HELMUTLANG will be on view from September 30th - December 31st.
“Alles Gleich Schwer” will be on view at the kestnergesellschaft August 31st - November 2nd.
www.kestner.org
Time Inc. and Getty Images Jointly Launch LIFE.com
New Site Offers Access to Millions of Iconic Photographs From Getty Images’ and LIFE’s Combined Photo Collections
3,000 New Contemporary Photos Uploaded Daily from Getty Images
New York, NY – Time Inc. and Getty Images will jointly launch LIFE.com, the companies announced today at the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s MIXX Conference in New York City. LIFE.com will be jointly owned and operated by Time Inc. and Getty Images, and will provide access to the most comprehensive iconic and professional photography collections available anywhere online. Andy Blau, president of LIFE and SVP of Time Inc. Interactive, and Catherine Gluckstein, vice president of iStockphoto and Consumer Markets at Getty Images, will serve as CEO and CFO, respectively.
“LIFE.com brings together the two most-recognized brands in photography, making the defining images of our times even more accessible to people everywhere,” said Jonathan Klein, co-founder and CEO of Getty Images. “We are thrilled to partner with Time Inc. on the launch of this exciting new venture.”
LIFE.com will offer access to thousands of new photographs from Getty Images’ award-winning photographers, including today’s news, entertainment, sports, celebrities, travel, animals and many others. Consumers will also have access to millions of images from LIFE magazine, many of which have never been seen by the public. The collection contains the historic photos that LIFE published through the decades, in addition to many never-before-seen pictures of Hollywood stars, sports heroes, important people and events from the ’30’s though the ’90’s. Getty Images will be providing the majority of images at launch from its comprehensive archival and current collections. More than 3,000 new images will be uploaded daily from Getty Images.
“Image search is the fastest-growing type of online search, and LIFE.com will satisfy the public’s desire for quality and relevant imagery through a visually pleasing and easy-to-browse website,” says Blau. “Only three percent of the LIFE archive has been seen by the public,” says LIFE.com editor Bill Shapiro. “This site will put everything on display. You’ll be able to look at the biggest events of yesterday and the stories making news today with just a couple of clicks.”
The new site, which was designed with Getty Images’ industry-leading search technology, will be easy-to-use and navigate. When the site launches in early 2009, consumers will be able to interact intimately with imagery, including printing select photos, sharing photos with friends and family, playing the popular LIFE Picture Puzzle, creating collections of photos around special interests and purchasing photo albums of user-made collections. Through the site, consumers can view the photos the world is talking about by searching for recently added photos or viewing photos by topic. Searching for and viewing images on the site will be absolutely free.
About Time Inc.
Time Inc., a Time Warner company, is one of the largest content companies in the world. With more than 120 magazines, it is the largest magazine publisher in the U.S. and a leading publisher in the U.K. and Mexico. Each month, one out of every two American adults reads a Time Inc. magazine, and one out of every seven who are online, visits a company web site (more than 25 million unique visitors). Time Inc.’s popular brands and successful franchises extend to online, television, cable VOD, satellite radio, mobile devices, events and branded products.
About Life Inc.
Life Inc. publishes soft and hardcover books under the LIFE brand, distributes limited edition photography through galleries nationwide and offers fine art prints to consumers online. The LIFE Picture Collection is a working photography library dedicated to cataloging, scanning, researching, and digitizing images. Life Inc. is a subsidiary of Time Inc.
About Getty Images
Getty Images is the world’s leading creator and distributor of still imagery, footage and multi-media products, as well as a recognized provider of other forms of premium digital content, including music. Getty Images serves business customers in more than 100 countries and is the first place creative and media professionals turn to discover, purchase and manage images and other digital content. Its award-winning photographers and imagery help customers produce inspiring work which appears every day in the world’s most influential newspapers, magazines, advertising campaigns, films, television programs, books and websites. Visit Getty Images at www.gettyimages.com to learn more about how the company is advancing the unique role of digital media in communications and business, and enabling creative ideas to come to life.