Tag Archives: Unveils

Viator.com Unveils 10 Top Destinations for Summer 2012

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San Francisco, CA (PRWEB) May 31, 2012

Viators Facebook fans have spoken. Earlier this year, the team at Viator.com the leading resource for researching and booking more than 10,000 tours and activities in 800-plus destinations in more than 150 countries asked their Facebook fans to vote on what the most popular travel destinations would be in 2012. Based on their feedback, Viator has compiled a list of hot summer travel spots, from big cities rich in history and culture to those with unique attractions and amazing natural attributes, with a few suggestions on the best things to do in each.

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National Geographic Channel Headquarters Unveils New Living Green Wall Lobby

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Washington, DC (PRWEB) November 22, 2012

GSky Plant Systems, Inc., a leading provider of vertical green walls partnered with a team of young designers from Emerson\White Design to complete the installation of the first double sided, 180-degree curve, freestanding Versa Wall at the National Geographic Channels headquarters in Washington, DC.

National Geographic is one of the largest non-profit scientific and educational institutions in the world, and strives to be an international leader of global conservation and environmental sustainability. To reflect this green dedication, Emerson\White designers Kelly Emerson and Stephen White were inspired to design a lobby area that employed eco-friendly systems including flooring, lighting, and materials. The green wall serves as the focal point of the space and is a bold, environmentally conscious statement and testament to the National Geographic Channels core values.

The President of National Geographic Channel at the time approached the creative team with the goal of executing design elements that incorporated the ideals of the organization, while creating a healthy work environment for employees. National Geographic is not simply interested in educating the public about the natural environment and progression of technology, but also in the preservation of the worlds resources. GSky’s green wall system is forward thinking, self-sustaining, and brings living plant life into a space; it unites all of National Geographics ideals as a company in a single feature. The intent of the Versa Wall is to aesthetically convey these ideals as living art, embracing everything nature has to offer and meshing perfectly with the surrounding sustainable and recycled materials.

At Emerson\White, we knew we wanted a major focal point for the lobby – a central design element that made both a “WOW!” impact upon initial interaction with the lobby, as well as an organic sculptural element that provided color, texture, and visual interest to allow exploration and sensorial discovery of space. Stephen White, Designer, Emerson\White Design.

The entrance has become a pivotal point where everyone is gathered to celebrate various events. The architecture of the lobby creates a nice flow that welcomes people into the building, while establishing a branded separate society that people will immediately recognize.

The green wall is not only a conversational piece, but a focal point for our gatherings and celebrations within the channel. Many of the natural attributes of this lobby such as wood, stone, and the green wall, tie back to mother earth and are a reflection of National Geographics core values. Since the introduction of the green wall, employees have taken interest in the plants as they observe their life cycles. Carla Daeninckx, Design Director Marketing & Creative, National Geographic Channels.

Versa Wall has a recirculating irrigation system that is 100% water efficient and self-contained making the system suitable for any interior wall without the worry of spillage. It is naturally beautiful, eco-friendly, customizable, durable and economical offering flexible installation options and a variety of plant selections.

For photos of this Versa Wall installation, please visit gsky.com

About GSky Plant Systems, Inc:

Founded in 2004, GSky Plant Systems, Inc. remains a leading provider of vertical green walls in North America. The business was founded based on the explosive growth of green technology, including green wall and roof systems in Asia. GSky currently offers three green wall systems, the Pro Wall, Versa Wall and the Basic Wall. Each system is unique in terms of design flexibility, installation location versatility, plant selection variety, desired size, cost, coverage time-line, and system components. GSky also offers a suite of services including maintenance, remote monitoring, and consulting as full-service contracts or

Panasonic Unveils New Dual Voltage Technology for Tough IP Power Tools at STAFDA

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Secaucus, NJ (PRWEB) November 09, 2012

Panasonic Power Tool Division, a pioneer in cordless power tool technology, announced this week at the 2012 Specialty Tools & Fasteners Distributors Association (STAFDA) Annual Convention and Trade Show an expansion of their line of Tough IP Li-Ion Cordless Power Tools. The Tough IP line now features products with new Dual Voltage Technology, allowing select tools to be used as both 18-volt and 14.4-volt with just a switch of the battery pack. Panasonic is currently the only power tool manufacturer to have this type of technology available, making it even easier for professionals to complete a variety of jobs using just one tool.

In order to utilize the Dual Voltage Technology, construction and maintenance professionals can easily swap out the Panasonic 4.2Ah LS Li-ion battery pack or existing 14.4-volt or 18-volt batteries to achieve the desired voltage 18-volt for jobs that require longer runtime between charges and more power or 14.4-volt for jobs that require less runtime. Unlike manganese-based Li-ion batteries used in many cordless power tools, Panasonics exclusive Li-ion battery technology contains a battery overheat protection sensor that protects against excess internal heat buildup that can decrease the lifetime of the battery pack. The battery packs feature Panasonics Solid Solution technology, a proprietary process for dissolving and hardening cobalt and nickel and other key battery components, and a special heat-resistant ceramic coating layer separates cells and protects them from heat buildup. Together, the chemistry, battery design and manufacturing process add up to High capacity batteries that deliver long life.

Our top priority at Panasonic is to manufacturer the most innovative cordless power tools on the market in order to better serve our customers and help them do their jobs more accurately and efficiently while on a job site, said John Olson, Industrial Sales Manager, Panasonic Assembly Systems. With the introduction of the Dual Voltage Technology to our Tough IP line, we are providing our customers with premium tools with multiple functions, but without adding more weight to their tool belts.

This proprietary Dual Voltage Technology is now available on the Cordless

Tegile Systems Unveils Next-Generation MASS-Based Flash Array Bringing Powerful, Cost-Effective Features to Market

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Newark, CA (PRWEB) August 14, 2012

Tegile Systems, a pioneer in primary storage de-duplication in virtualized server and desktop environments, today announced innovative enhancements to its high-availability MASS architecture and the extension of its product line with the addition of two new powerful storage arrays, the Zebi HA2400 and Zebi HA2800. Tegiles Metadata Accelerated Storage System (MASS) technology separates metadata from the primary data path and optimizes functions such as de-duplication, compression, RAID and snapshot pointers, allowing for up to 75% capacity savings, while accelerating IO by up to seven times when compared to traditional storage systems.

The major flaw we see in the all-flash arrays introduced in the market is the performance and data reduction claims that are dependent on 100% flash designs, said Rob Commins, vice president of marketing at Tegile Systems. Their cost per GB claims compare with 15,000 RPM-based systems in a RAID 1 or mirrored configuration.

Commins added: Tegile’s MASS architecture enables us to differentiate and deliver performance at or above those all-flash arrays, while including high-capacity disks to address the $ /GB issue others have. All-flash arrays sell in the market at $ 5-10/GB, while Tegile’s MASS based arrays sell well below $ 2/GB. We raise the performance of near-line SAS hard disk drives to rival extremely expensive high-RPM SAS or Fibre Channel drives, thus enabling the acceleration of every storage function within the array.

With MASS, Tegiles Zebi storage system organizes and stores metadata independently to the data on high-speed devices with optimized retrieval paths. IT administrators benefit from top-end disk drive performance without the need to invest in costly storage.

This is an improvement over traditional storage systems which store data and metadata together, with metadata being interspersed with data on disks. Over time, as data is modified, deleted and rewritten, metadata becomes very fragmented. Additionally, certain storage system features, such as de-duplication, can cause metadata to multiply and grow rapidly. Inordinate growth of metadata causes significant deterioration in a systems behavior over time.

Were seeing a dramatic uptick in the number of customers who are deploying or refreshing virtual environments and finding that their legacy storage environments may not meet these new performance requirements at a reasonable cost, said Terri McClure, senior analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group. Our recent Lab Validation Report on Tegiles MASS architecture highlighted the fact that Tegiles Zebi arrays were able to provide excellent performance, were extremely flexible and optimized the use of SSD and HDD to enhance IO or throughput performance, while maintaining a very aggressive $ /GB. With this new release, Tegile is enabling customers to significantly improve their legacy storage environments and better meet the new demands imposed by virtual environments.

New FlashVols Maximize Performance

The Tegile MASS architecture has now been enhanced with an all-flash controller and the addition of FlashVols to maximize performance. Now, large and medium enterprise customers who need high-performance and high-availability storage will benefit from flash-grade performance without incurring the costs traditionally associated with top-grade disk drives.

FlashVols are volumes that are pinned in SSD so applications run at maximum performance without the potential for delay due to caching algorithms or tiering polices. Several competitive offerings use sub-volume tiering to address performance spikes found in these types of use cases. These policies are usually set to analyze usage patterns every three hours or migrate data across tiers in off-hours. But by that time, a boot storm may have completed or a spike in sales at an online retailer may have passed. Pinning critical volumes in SSD ensures these types of problems do not occur.

HA2400 and HA2800: Performance, Flexibility, Simplicity and Cost Effectiveness

Tegiles two new storage arrays, the HA2400 and the HA2800, are considerably faster than legacy HDD arrays and significantly less expensive than all solid-state disk-based arrays. Featuring both NAS and SAN connectivity, the HA2400 and the HA2800 are easy-to-use, fully redundant and highly scalable. Additionally, they come complete with built-in snapshot, replication, near-instant recovery and virtualization management features.

Highlights of the HA2400

Tegiles HA2400 enables customers to break through HDD-born performance barriers in order to better manage large-scale VDI projects that often double the number of desktops under management. Featuring a multi-protocol hybrid array with de-duplication and compression that delivers up to 125,000 IOPS, the HA2400 enables organizations to double the number of applications under management.

Highlights of the HA2800

The Tegile Zebi HA2800 is a multi-protocol, all-flash array that can be placed in front of a large pool of hard disk drives to deliver leading performance while not abandoning the aggressive cost constraints customers operate within. It delivers superior performance and can be augmented with expansion chassis to expand capacity up to 146 raw TB and resolve the $ /GB challenge other all-flash arrays cannot address.

At raw capacity, before deduplication and compression, the HA2800 reaches 200,000 IOPS and sells for $ 2.00 per GB, demonstrating significant cost savings over legacy flash systems priced at $ 5-10 per GB. After compression and deduplication, the HA2800 sells for $ 1 per GB.

Desktop virtualization was an important consideration for us as we were planning our server virtualization implementation, said Ben Croxton, IT director, Global Directories, the parent company of U.S.-Yellow Pages. We looked at several hybrid arrays and Tegile won our evaluation hands down because performance was key, yet storage systems from incumbent vendors didnt have the performance we needed. Tegile had the most powerful platform, the richest feature set and the best value for our dollar.

Pricing and Availability

Prices for Tegile Zebi arrays start at $ 60,000. Both the Zebi HA2400 and HA2800 are currently shipping and are priced at:

Indosoft unveils Q-Suite 5.7 for Asterisk, targeting Managed Contact Center Service Providers

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Fredericton, NB (PRWEB) July 31, 2012

Indosoft Inc., leading provider of multi-tenant unified communications software announces the release of Q-Suite 5.7 for Asterisk. This evolutionary, featured-filled release of the scalable multi-tenant call center software will allow service providers to setup Asterisk based call center platforms and offer managed contact center services.

Q-Suite 5.7 provides the opportunity to deploy Asterisk based call center services on a superior IP telephony platform with powerful ACD and Dialer engine to handle the most demanding call workflow requirements. Its flexible architecture scales to multiple Asterisk servers for setting up geographically distributed contact center operations. ACD with skills-based routing, Virtual and Personal Queues, Predictive, Preview and Progressive dialing, are features designed to cater to the needs of enterprise clients. Q-Suite also comes with extensive API for CTI integration through Web and .NET.

Managed Service Providers will benefit from Q-Suites built-in GUI based Call Flow builder, Agent and Admin screen theming capability, HA (High Availability) and Call Survival. A powerful Customer-Agent interaction Script Builder, real-time dashboards for supervisor monitoring and detailed historical reporting are all available out-of-the-box. .

Asterisk based call centers with Q-Suite 5.7 is a cost effective way to offer managed services and build distributed call centers. said James Terhune, Chief Technology Officer at Indosoft. With the availability of integration to reliable third party applications for call recording, workforce management, quality monitoring, TTS and ASR, Q-Suite provides an excellent opportunity to build out a complete call center platform with considerable cost savings by leveraging Asterisk.

About Indosoft Inc.

Indosoft Inc. is a global provider of call center software for Asterisk. It has been providing call center solutions to medium and large contact centers around the world for over ten years. It also licenses its ACD for Asterisk with .NET and socket library to enterprises utilizing Asterisk in their product line. Indosoft has been making available Q-Suite ACD for private label contact center technology solutions.







Motion Graphics Studio Leftchannel Unveils Sophisticated Character Animation at Columbus Nationwide Childrens Hospital

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Columbus, OH (PRWEB) June 21, 2012

The artistry of motion graphics studio leftchannel came alive Wednesday when Columbus Nationwide Childrens Hospital opened its doors for the first time since completion of a $ 450 million expansion and environmental installation, seven years in the making.

In October, 2011, leftchannel overshadowed six other design firms bidding for the coveted job of translating static graphics to elegant, organic and sophisticated motion graphics in the Hospitals magic forest and two entry corridors. Under the creative direction of leftchannel President Alberto Scirocco, Taehee Lee, leftchannels lead designer/animator on this project, while working with other leftchannel designers created a gentle and sophisticated character animation that brings birds, deer, bunnies and other woodland creatures to life with an organic quality that works with the Nationwide Childrens Hospitals child-centric, eco-friendly design.

According to Aki Carpenter, art director at Ralph Applebaum Associates, Inc. of New York, four Columbus design firms, two New York firms and one Chicago firm were close contenders for the project ultimately awarded to leftchannel.

Ralph Appelbaum Associates is the design firm overseeing the entire Nationwide Childrens Hospital expansion project, and Carpenter is the projects art director.

We had seven big players from Columbus, Chicago, and New York bidding on this project, Carpenter said. All of the firms came out on top with solid graphic design, but it all boiled down to leftchannels perfect execution of the media we provided during the bidding process.

They have a great cosmopolitan background, and theyre based in Columbus. We felt that working with a Columbus firm was important, and once we met with leftchannel we knew we had the right design team.

Scirocco says he knew leftchannel had exactly what was needed to complete the hospitals motion graphics design, but was nonetheless humbled when the project was awarded to his team.

We knew we were the ideal candidate for this project but we were up against some talented firms, Scirocco said. Earning this contract was a genuine affirmation of our teams capabilities.

Columbus Nationwide Childrens Hospital is a healthcare network that provides wellness, preventive, diagnostic, treatment and rehabilitative care for infants, children, adolescents and selected adult patients. A medical staff of more than 800 and a hospital staff of almost 4,000 provide state-of-the-art pediatric care for 500,000 patient visits annually.

The Nationwide Childrens Hospital is home to Ohios first Level 1 Pediatric Trauma Center, and its Columbus Childrens Research Institute is one of the top 10 Nationwide institutes of health-funded, free-standing pediatric research. Each year, more than 75,000 people receive health and wellness education at the facility. Two thousand students from 93 institutions, and 500 physician residents receive training at Columbus Nationwide Childrens Hospital.

Find out more about leftchannel at http://www.leftchannel.com.

About leftchannel:

Established in 2003 and headed by Alberto Scirocco, leftchannel is a motion design company comprised of multidisciplinary graphic design artists specializing in motion graphics, TV spots, music videos, broadcast identities, program titles and opens, animation and graphic design, advertising and broadcast graphics. Scirocco began his career in design and art in Italy before moving to the U.S., where he helped establish leftchannel in Columbus. An adjunct professor and head of the CCAD Motion Design program, Sciroccos passion for computer animation and motion graphics is a driving force behind the firms decisively individualistic and pioneering capabilities adaptable in a multitude of fields including film, advertising, broadcast graphics, architecture, retail planning, digital installation, projection mapping and environmental design.

Leftchannel has earned numerous industry awards including: Addy Awards (Nationwide Silver, multiple regional); Boards Magazine (multiple); Brooklyn Film Festival (Festival Identity Selection); Communication Arts Design Annual (multiple); Cracow Film Festival (Poland); Digital Arts Magazine; IdN Magazine (Music Video Annual, 15th Anniversary Book/Featured Artist); Int’l Fest of Cinema and Technology (2nd Place); iTunes Video Store (Inaugural Day Top 10); Kromotion.com; Lumen Eclipse; Motionographer.com; mtv.com (Top 5 Music Video Pick of the Week); Nemo Film Festival (France); The One Show (Merit Award); OneDotZero Film Festival (InterNationwide); RES Film Festival (InterNationwide); RES Magazine (multiple); Rushes Soho Shorts Festival (UK); STASH DVD (multiple); SXSW Film Festival (multiple); Vice Magazine.

Leftchannels client list includes A&E Network, Absolut, American Express, AOL, CMT, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Canon, The Discovery Channel, Eli Lilly, ESPN, Ford, Honda, Humana, Express, Huntington Bank, J.P. Morgan Chase, Luxottica Group, Merck, MTV, NASCAR, Nike Golf, Panasonic and Sony.

For more information, visit the leftchannel website at http://www.leftchannel.com.







AchieveIt Unveils ImproveIt Cloud-Based Software to Help Organizations Drive Execution and Performance

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ATLANTA, GA (PRWEB) June 26, 2012

AchieveIt today announced the release of its latest cloud-based application, ImproveIt, to enable organizations to enhance their performance and quality improvement initiatives by getting better results in less time.

“The cost of poor quality has been proven to range from 5% to 30% of gross revenues for most companies,” said Scott Regan, founder and chief execution officer of AchieveIt. “It is for this reason that we felt compelled to develop an application that help organizations turn organizational goals into real, meaningful, and tangible results.”

Todays market requires all organizations to develop a culture of continuous quality and performance improvement. Now, with cloud technology, organizations no longer have to worry about whether PI projects are on time or on target. From project submission to project tracking to project execution, ImproveIt puts everything is online, making projects transparent and accessible by everyone in your organization. With a Baldrige-compliant application, projects will be completed faster with better results that are sustainable over time.

Key capabilities of ImproveIt include:


Electronically submit projects using your submission criteria, including approval routing, as well as required and optional information.
Select from customizable improvement methodologies (Focus PDSA, Six Sigma DMAIC, Six Sigma DMADV, Lean Rapid Improvement Event, and Lean 6S Event) and automatically load the project deliverables and dates into the work plan.
Create custom methodologies for your department, division, or organization.
Determine project requirements and track whether and when they have been met, while tying mandatory deliverables to the scheduling of project reviews.
Follow each project through its various phases to chart progress, and easily view the status of every open project, along with current results.
Track key performance indicators, as well as project metrics currently being pursued by active project teams.
Never lose a project file again by automatically archiving closed projects in a searchable knowledgebase that provides a growing and ready resource library for future use.
Reopen projects at any time with a click of a mouse.
Create resource rules, such as how many open projects a person may serve on at one time, or the qualifications for facilitating or leading a team.
Create rules for project charters that must be adhered to by everyone in the organization.
Coordinate activities with organization-wide calendaring and communication tools.
Seamlessly integrate with ExecuteIt, which allows you to launch projects directly from our strategy development and execution application while also cross referencing KPI tracking in both modules.

About AchieveIt







Cambridge Semantics Unveils Anzo Express Starter to Address Excel Integration, Collaboration and Reporting Challenges

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San Francisco, CA and Boston, MA (PRWEB) June 04, 2012

At the 2012 Semantic Technology & Business Conference today, Cambridge Semantics announced a new, free downloadable version of the companys Anzo Express software. Anzo Express allows business users to link together data stored in multiple spreadsheets enabling real-time collaboration right in Microsoft Excel. Anzo Express also provides a dynamic, business-friendly web-based analytic dashboard for real-time reporting on data in spreadsheets and relational databases. Companies including Merck, Johnson & Johnson, Staples and GroupM, are already using Anzo to solve their key data management challenges.

Cambridge Semantics will be presenting Anzo Express with a live demo at SemTech in San Francisco on June 5th. Visit http://semtechbizsf2012.semanticweb.com/ for the complete agenda.

Organizations are facing increasingly dynamic environments where business requirements change almost daily. Traditional databases lack the ability to quickly adapt to change and have driven business users to rely on Excel spreadsheets for key business operationsfrom supply chain management to compliance information management, competitive intelligence to budget reconciliation. IT departments have tried to replace spreadsheets with more governable services but have failed to do so because traditional technologies are not as flexible as spreadsheets.

Semantic Web technologies are significantly more flexible than traditional databases and can better adapt to changing requirements, making them uniquely suited to solving the spreadsheet data integration problem. With Anzo Express ordinary users can easily collaborate and report on data stored in Excel and relational databases, transforming disparate spreadsheet data into powerful business insights.

Semantic Web technologies have been gaining momentum as businesses require greater flexibility. However there is still a steep and tedious learning curve for everyday users who need powerful tools and scalable applications, said Lee Feigenbaum, co-founder of Cambridge Semantics. With Anzo Express businesses can get the best of both worlds. End users can continue to use Excel, only with significantly greater ability to share data between spreadsheets and departments, while IT, for the first time, gets the ability to govern, track, and report on data within those spreadsheets.

As the entry-level version of the full Anzo Enterprise software suite, Anzo Express focuses on addressing collaborative spreadsheet integration and web dashboards. This is the first time Anzo Express has been available as a free download, enabling much greater adoption for business users. From compliance reporting to supplier tracking, Anzo Express solves the Excel reporting and integration challenges that every organization faces.

In addition to showcasing Anzo Express Starter at the Semantic Technology & Business Conference, Cambridge Semantics customer Staples will be presenting a use case of how the company uses Anzo to manage their complex enterprise service bus (ESB). Attendees can also visit the Cambridge Semantics booth (#101) and learn more about recent offerings such as Anzo Unstructured.

Featured Cambridge Semantics sessions at the 2012 Semantic Technology & Business Conference include: