Pricing Engine Launches the First Solution for Small Businesses to Create, Manage and Optimize Online Advertising from a Single Platform

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New York, NY (PRWEB) March 15, 2013

Pricing Engine, http://www.pricingengine.com, today announced the launch of an easy-to-use but powerful platform for online advertising that levels the playing field for small business owners looking to significantly improve the performance of their ad dollars. The Pricing Engine platform is available now for optimizing multichannel search marketing campaigns, with tools for display media, social media advertising and e-commerce coming later this year.

Pricing Engine was founded by CEO Jeremy Kagan, formerly a Vice President with the Global Digital Business of Sony Music Entertainment, and Vice President of Strategy at digital agency Publicis Modem, and Chief Technology Officer Yagmur Coker, former Lead Technologist for The Knot. Kagan, also a long-time adjunct professor of digital marketing at Columbia Business School, recognized the need for a simple tool for the smaller advertiser after years of consulting and agency work with clients of all sizes.

“The vast majority of small business owners are either too busy running their operations to effectively manage their online advertising campaigns, or can’t afford optimization platforms used by the Fortune 500 – or both,” said Kagan. “Because of this, we saw a clear need in the marketplace for a solution that allows small businesses to improve their ad performance in a simple, efficient and unified manner. Pricing Engine gives small business owners a decided edge in terms of their ability to get more sales and leads through digital advertising.”

Pricing Engine is a game-changer for small business owners lacking the time, resources or expertise to improve their search marketing and digital advertising performance. It uses patent-pending, data-based algorithms and predictive analytics to provide recommendations in plain English – not ad tech jargon – on what works, what doesn’t and how to improve.

Pricing Engine’s benchmarks are based on anonymous data crowd-sourced from peer businesses via advertising channels like Google and Microsoft. It compares a business’s ad performance against peers based on a number of user-selected parameters such as type of business, industry, geography and advertising budget. Pricing Engine provides a letter grade of performance in key areas, as well as recommended improvements – including use of keywords and ad copy – and critically, the estimated dollar value of an improvement in terms of sales or leads. Diagnostic tools designed for different business types ensure common mistakes are quickly identified and fixed.

Pricing Engine employs machine learning to refine and improve results. The system gets “smarter” over time based on the volume of data available, and on campaign performance across the various combinations of selection criteria.

During its beta period, the company has signed up hundreds of small business owners who have used the system and suggested enhancements. To accelerate the process, Pricing Engine is working with resellers in a number of industries to reach small businesses. To date it has signed reseller partners with access to more than 500,000 U.S. small business owners and will be rolling out the system with its partners across the country in the coming months.

Now Pricing Engine is being released to the general public, with a powerful yet simple dashboard that allows users to both create and manage search campaigns simultaneously across Google, Yahoo and Bing. Campaigns can be created once and deployed everywhere with changes to improve performance pushed out to all channels at the same time – making management easy and fast.

Over the next few months, enhancements will be added to the Pricing Engine platform for display advertising (Google Display and LiveIntent, among other channels), social media marketing (Facebook, LinkedIn, and others) and e-commerce (Amazon Product Ads and Google Shopping, among other channels).

About Pricing Engine

Pricing Engine is the first solution that provides small business owners access to a single, easy-to-use platform that lets them optimize their investment in online advertising across various channels without being digital media experts or expending resources they don’t have. Its “report card” feature assigns a letter grade on ad performance, based on benchmarking using variables like geography, type of business and budget, and tells users in plain English how they can improve their results. Pricing Engine’s patent-pending, powerful algorithm-based predictive analytics continually refine and improve ad performance. Now available to optimize search advertising campaigns for small businesses, the platform will soon be expanded to include tools for improving display advertising, social media marketing and e-commerce results as well. For more information, visit http://www.pricingengine.com.







Unbound Concepts Releases BookLeveler App v3.0

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Columbia, MD (PRWEB) March 18, 2013

In support of National Reading Awareness Month, Unbound Concepts today announced the release of its BookLeveler™ App v3.0, a free, in-hand tool for educators to find accurately leveled educational content for students in their classrooms. The update includes key functionality requested by users since the release of version 2.0 and provides teachers with a solution to address many of the pain points of Common Core State Standards implementation.

“BookLeveler v3.0 is a comprehensive update to our previous prototype versions, and our focus has been to ensure that the app is usable and relevant in classrooms,” commented Benjamin Bengfort, CTO & Cofounder of Unbound Concepts. “We have expanded the functionality and feature set available to educators, as well as grown the library that powers the app – a key demand from our growing base of loyal users. Another significant update is that we now include the results of our text analysis engine – Meridian™ – to provide greater insight into why books are at particular reading levels. This allows teachers to better use the app to craft standards-aligned curricula.”

Significant Additions to Bibliographic Data Result in Improved User Experience

Unbound Concepts recently added nearly 350,000 records to its bibliographic database, transforming its searchable database by 14-fold, a direct result of Unbound Concepts efforts to provide users with a more robust experience. Version 3.0 also links associated titles; as such, unknown ISBNs now prompt a search for similar titles with leveled feedback, allowing users quick access to the levels they seek. These changes provide more comprehensive coverage of K-12 books throughout the app and allow for a more user-friendly experience.

Meridian Badge Eases Implementation of Common Core State Standards

BookLeveler v3.0 introduces the Meridian Badge – an interactive manifestation of Meridian levels. Powered by collaborating educators using BookLeveler, Unbound Concepts’ language processing engine, Meridian, combines crowd-sourced levels with advanced Natural Language Processing to automatically determine the reading level of a book. Meridian also produces Indicants of a reading level – common elements found (or not found) in a book that are strong suggesters of reading level. Several Indicants, such as repetition, knowledge building, and strong relationship of images to text, align directly with Common Core State Standards.

Number of Users: Over 3000

Number of Books: Over 374,000

About Unbound Concepts

Unbound Concepts was created on the strongly held belief that a collaborative approach to knowledge sharing is, quite simply, a better way to live. Blending computer science with trusted teacher recommendations from BookLeveler, Unbound Concepts is powering a proprietary text analysis algorithm, Meridian, that can understand authored content in a deep semantic fashion, bringing value to publishers, educators and fellow scientists in pursuit of collaboration that creates good. The company is co-located in the Maryland Center for Entrepreneurship incubator in Columbia, MD and in the inaugural cohort at Socratic Labs incubator in New York, NY.







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Samoas Barely Beats Out Thin Mints As Best Girl Scout Cookie

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Los Angeles, CA (PRWEB) March 18, 2013

Samoas Caramel deLites came in as the number one “Best Girl Scout Cookie”, in a crowd-sourced ranking of over 400 people, according to Ranker.com, a consumer opinions website.

It was a tough, tough contest as Samoas barely beat second place holder Thin Mints. The two have as little as 2% difference between them. Using Ranker.com’s proprietary semantic data algorithm, the top five ranking of “The Best Girl Scout Cookies”, compiled by 400 voters, looked like this:

1.    Samoas Caramel deLites

2.    Thin Mints

3.    Trefoils

4.    Lemonades

5.    Tagalongs Peanut Butter Patties

“It’s not surprising that Samoas and Thin Mints are at such a dead heat,” said Benjamin Dunn, Content Manager at Ranker.com “They’re always neck and neck, but they have been trading places almost daily since they started selling Girl Scout Cookies this year. What’s really shocking is that Tagalongs, which are a favorite in my house, are so low.”

See the full Top Girl Scout Cookies list as well as 100s of other Food and Drink lists at Ranker.com

Ranker.com is the premier crowd-sourced platform for consumer rankings. Consumers visit Ranker.com more than seven million times a month to view, rank and vote on broad, opinion-based questions across a wide range of topics including food, sports, travel, entertainment, cars and many others. The Ranker.com results are pure, unbiased and based on semantic algorithms that assign values based on mean numbers and ranker behavior. For more information, visit Ranker.com







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JobPage Launches Crowd Sourced Job Service To Help People And Their Communities Find Employment

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London (PRWEB UK) 19 March 2013

JobPage (http://www.jobpage.com) launches a radical new concept for finding employment that democratises the job search process and connects real people to real jobs.

Breaking away from the hierarchies of company, recruiter and agency – which creates artificial barriers between the job seeker and the person hiring – instead on JobPage, you will find a growing number of everyday people helping others in their community find employment.

JobPage is a social jobs network where its members find inspirational jobs, including apprenticeships, published on company websites and then share them with their friends, family and local community who may be looking for work.

JobPage is a unique jobs service – it does not aggregate jobs, or allow mass postings from agencies – every job you see on JobPage is there because a real person has personally endorsed it to help someone else find a new job.

“People often come across jobs when browsing the web that they know would be perfect for a friend, but for one reason or another they fail to let them know” says JobPage Co-founder Matthew Ogston. ”JobPage makes it quick and easy to share work opportunities with other people, inspiring them to find a job they love.”

JobPage is free to use for both job seekers and businesses – a valuable tool that will help local communities find employment, and help small businesses to grow by finding staff at zero cost.

About JobPage

JobPage helps job seekers find work using the power of crowds and tapping into the human spirit of wanting to help others
JobPage uses social media, heavily used by the “younger digital generation”, who are currently facing the greatest barriers when seeking employment
JobPage supports the current trend in people seeking flexible ways of working, including freelance, job share, apprenticeships, internships, working from home, remote working and also including traditional permanent jobs
It’s a free service for both job seekers and businesses – helping boost employment and stimulate growth in the economy.
JobPage is an unique service, developed by an innovative tech startup based in TechHub in Google’s Campus London building (Silicon Roundabout) in London.

About Matthew Ogston Co-founder

In 2010, Matthew had a successful job working at one of the UK’s largest recruitment agencies but felt something was missing in his work life. He needed a job that inspired him. He subsequently left this job on a journey to find happiness in his work.
After nearly three years of soul searching, he built JobPage to help others in the same position. Through JobPage he found his passion – a passion to inspire others to find the job they love.

For further information, please contact:

Matthew Ogston, Co-founder of JobPage on

matt(at)jobpage(dot)com or

+44 (0)207 193 1910        

Address:

JobPage, TechHub @ Campus London, 4-5 Bonhill Street, London, EC2A 4BX – United Kingdom







PersonalWeb Releases Social Learning Platform Update Enabling College Students to 'Study Together From Wherever'

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Tyler, TX (PRWEB) March 19, 2013

Internet technology company PersonalWeb® announced today the launch of its latest version of StudyPods®, a collaborative social-learning platform for university and college students to connect and share academic knowledge with each other at their own university or at colleges worldwide. The site, created with the help of students in The University of Texas System, enables students to connect, collaborate and share academic knowledge with each other at their own university or at colleges worldwide.

“We’ve adopted a new slogan ‘Study together from wherever’ because it better describes one of the key benefits for using StudyPods so students can easily form virtual study groups,” PersonalWeb President Michael Weiss said.

StudyPods new version 2.3 provides a simplified user interface so students can navigate the study-help site more effectively. Free storage space is now increased to 5GBs for each user to ensure there is ample space to store files. Also included are intuitive prompts explaining key functions and tools featured on the site enabling students to quickly become familiar with all the features of StudyPods.

Through StudyPods, students can create individual Pods based on their college coursework. They can fill pods with anything and everything related to their classes, from presentation slides, past tests to homework assignments, notes, and images. This information can then be shared with other students with similar class subjects who can also contribute content to the Pod. Students can easily find the research they need to help complete assignments, locate similar documents and find Pods that they wish to join.

StudyPods users can also connect with each other instantly through chat and notifications; making group projects more efficient and easier to coordinate.

###

About PersonalWeb: PersonalWeb was established in Tyler, Texas by a team who has been responsible for creating some of the Internet’s most popular software and applications used by tens of millions of people worldwide. The company develops groundbreaking products based on its patented technology that is fundamental for many important elements of cloud computing technology, distributed search engine file systems, social media and content addressable storage. For more information, please visit http://www.personalweb.com







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Great Pyramid of Giza Tops Ranker's March Rankings of Historical Landmarks to See Before You Die

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Los Angeles (PRWEB) March 19, 2013

The Great Pyramid of Giza recently rose to #1 on Ranker’s “Best Historical Landmarks to See Before You Die” list, a crowd-sourced list on the consumer opinions website, Ranker.com. More than 500 people have voted on this list as of March, 2013. The Great Sphinx of Giza also appears at number six, making Egypt the most sought after destinations inside the top 10.

The rest of the Top 10 Bucket List Destinations are as follows:

1) Great Pyramid of Giza

2) Great Wall of China

3) Taj Mahal

4) Colosseum

5) Machu Picchu

6) Great Sphinx of Giza

7) Sistine Chapel

8) Stonehenge

9) Acropolis of Athens

10) Eiffel Tower

Travel writer Danielle Dauenhauer, stated: “The Colosseum usually ranks outside the top 10 in must-see attraction lists, even though it’s awesome,” Said Dauenhauer, “but since 2010 visitors have been allowed in the gladiator tunnels which makes the experience pretty epic.”

See the full List Of Historical Landmarks To See Before You Die, as well as 1000s of other Places and Travel lists at Ranker.com.

Ranker.com is the premier crowd-sourced platform for consumer rankings. Consumers visit Ranker.com more than seven million times a month to view, rank and vote on broad, opinion-based questions across a wide range of topics including food, sports, travel, entertainment, cars and many others. The Ranker.com results are pure, unbiased and based on semantic algorithms that assign values based on mean numbers and ranker behavior. For more information, visit Ranker.com.







New Hires Expand Zappix Management Team

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Boston, MA (PRWEB) March 20, 2013

Today, Zappix, the Mobile Portal and Customer Service App company, announced the hiring of two key executives for its expanding U.S. Management Team. Shay Artzi, Ph.D joins Zappix as CTO (Chief Technical Officer) and Gal Steinberg as the new Vice President of Marketing. “For any emerging business to succeed, the recruitment of top talent is essential,” said Avner Schneur, the President and CEO of Kormeli, LLC, a Boston-based investment group that provides Zappix funding. “Dr. Artzi and Mr. Steinberg each bring a rich background of innovation, professionalism and experience to their respective positions. With these critical Technical and Marketing executives now in place, Zappix is poised to launch plans for rapidly achieving market penetration throughout the U.S.”

Prior to joining Zappix, Dr. Shay Artzi served as a Senior Software Engineer for IBM. There, he was a key member of a software group leading the assimilation of social analytics research into IBM products. “I’m very excited about my new role as CTO for Zappix,” said Dr. Artzi, who received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). “The Zappix mobile portal and customer service application platform holds great potential for both technology breakthroughs and wide user acceptance. This is an extraordinary opportunity for me to help define and impact the development of this promising Mobile Portal and Customer Service Solution.” Additional credentials for Dr. Artzi include Research at IBM’s T.J. Watson Research Center, Software Team Leader for Rafael, Ltd., M.S./B.S. Computer Science degrees from the Technion (Israel Institute of Technology), the publication of numerous professional papers/articles and the securing of patents related to improving software quality.

“It’s great being a part of Zappix,” affirmed Gal Steinberg, the company’s new VP of Marketing. “What makes the Zappix application stand apart is the great user experience that bridges traditional phone calls and mobile visual menus. There’s a real need for a visual channel between consumers and enterprises, and Zappix fulfills it.” Mr. Steinberg is a proven expert when it comes to bringing software and mobile application products to market. As Vice President of Product and Marketing for ooVoo, he created an award-winning video chat app that is currently used by 40 million users. Before coming to Zappix, as Senior Director of Product Marketing for Lionbridge Technologies, Mr. Steinberg formed enterprise crowd sourcing solutions and strategic partnerships with the companies, LivePerson and Acquisio. He also served on the launch team for a statistical machine translation enterprise solution in partnership with IBM Research.

The Zappix app is available for download from the app store – Zappix for iPhone and Google Play – Zappix for Android or from the Zappix website.

More About Zappix

Zappix is already a popular application in Israel. Since 2011, the service has grown rapidly to support hundreds of companies that now deliver a streamlined way to reach customer service to over 150,000 Zappix users. The continually expanding list of Zappix-supported organizations includes insurance companies, banks, mobile service providers, retailers and government agencies. Zappix recently opened its U.S.Headquarters office in Burlington, MA. For more information about Zappix, contact Gal Steinberg, Vice President of Marketing at ZappixPR(at)zappix(dot)com, or visit Zappix on the web at Zappix.com.

About Kormeli LLC

Kormeli LLC, founded by Avner Schneur, is an investment group dedicated to funding, assisting and guiding early-stage technology entrepreneurs and enterprises. Comprised of experienced, all-CEO investors from other successful companies, Kormeli draws on this wealth of experience to establish a thoughtful path to solid business success. Kormeli focuses on building long-term relationships and providing deep, differentiated value at each stage of a company’s life cycle. With a strong background in developing and running successful businesses, Kormeli brings deep strategic and operational expertise to its investment companies. For more information, go to: kormeli.com.







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New Customizable Bag Line from FPgirl Combines Fashion and Function for Girls on the Go

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Beverly, MA (PRWEB) March 20, 2013

FPgirl.com by FashionPlaytes (http://www.fashionplaytes.com), the first girl-driven fashion and style destination, has added a new line of bags to its accessories collection, perfect for girls on the go. Bags are an essential part of every girl’s wardrobe as they move from school to sports and rehearsals to a night out with family or friends. Whatever the occasion, FPgirl’s design-it-yourself bags add the perfect finishing touch.

The new bag line includes:


    The Brooklyn Mutli Wear Everyday Bag
    The Layla Overnight Bag
    The Avery Large Tote Bag
    The Aria Fun Printed Wristlet
    The Addison Compact Messenger Bag

The new line features bright neon colors and fun prints with vibrant peace signs and zebra prints accented with bright pink or blue. FPgirl has also added a new label maker, so girls can personalize their bags with name, initials or even favorite sayings. Girls can further customize their bags by adding ribbon and rhinestone trim and other trendy embellishments including sport graphics, fun mustaches, cool high-tops and much more.

“FPgirls are full of energy and need bags that can keep up with them as they move from activity to activity,” said Sarah McIlroy, CEO and Founder of FashionPlaytes. “Our community has been asking for bags that really reflect their personality. This new line delivers style, durability and function all built in to be a perfect match to whatever event the girls have going on. Plus, girls can add fun, personal touches to make each bag uniquely theirs.”

The bags are the perfect complement to FPgirl’s new spring fashion line, which features girl-influenced designs including everything from sassy circle tops to comfy tunics and hoodies to stylish denim jackets and skirts — perfect for school, sleepovers and everything in between.

About FashionPlaytes and FPgirl:

FashionPlaytes is the creator of FPgirl.com, the online fashion and style destination where girls are designers and set the trends. The FPgirl community is filled with vibrant, talented, and supportive girls who create cool custom clothing, crowd-source designs, and share their insights about what it’s like to be a girl in today’s world. FashionPlaytes celebrates all girls, providing a fun, safe, interactive environment. Its engagement-driven ecommerce platform is fueled by girls, for girls, making it the go-to place for all things fashion related.







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Social Documentation versus Customer Support INFOGRAPHIC

Image by Mark Fidelman
Nobody knows your documentation better than your customers. Theoretically you can attempt to address ALL USE CASES, but you won’t reach the long tail of all of them. And why spend time trying when you can receive contributions for free?
Read the article here: www.mindtouch.com/blog/2010/05/30/customer-support-vs-soc…

Insurance quotes to live by everyday

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Insurance quotes to live by – “Fun is like life insurance; the older you get, the more it costs.”

 

Insurance quotes to live by – Never be afraid to do something new. Remember, amateurs built the ark; professionals built the titanic.

 

“Love is the only kind of fire which is never covered by insurance.”

 

Internalize the Golden Rule of sales that says; All things being equal, people will do business with, and refer business to, those people they know, like and trust.

 

Insurance Quotes Do not worry if you feel low; the sun has a sinking spell every night, but rises again all right the next morning.

 

“When you feel like giving up, remember why you held on for so long in the first place.”

 

Quotes To Live By “Unemployment insurance is a pre-paid vacation for freeloaders.”

 

“Asking Europe to disarm is like asking a man inChicagoto give up his life insurance.”

 

Whenever I cried he would always make me feel like he would change the world if he could so it couldn’t hurt me anymore. But now I’m crying and he’s not here.

 

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I… I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.

 

I chose and my world was shaken. So what? The choice may have been mistaken; the choosing was not. You have to move on.

 

Let go. Why do you cling to pain? There is nothing you can do about the wrongs of yesterday. It is not yours to judge. Why hold on to the very thing which keeps you from hope and love?

 

Quotes – “Just because your ad looks good is no insurance that it will get looked at.

How many people do you know who are impeccably groomed… but dull?”

 

A sale is not something you pursue; it’s what happens to you while you are immersed in serving your customer.

 

“One of the most beautiful gifts in the world is the gift of encouragement. When someone encourages you, that person helps you over a threshold you might otherwise never have crossed on your own.”

 

Always be closing… That doesn’t mean you’re always closing the deal, but it does mean that you need to be always closing on the next step in the process.

 

We must not, in trying to think about how we can make a big difference, ignore the small daily differences we can make which, over time, add up to big differences that we often cannot foresee.

 

By forgiving and choosing to move on, one takes the power back to morph it into positive energy.

 

Quotes – The art of medicine consists of amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.

 

Sometimes being a friend means mastering the art of timing. There is a time for silence. A time to let go and allow people to hurl themselves into their own destiny. And a time to prepare to pick up the pieces when it’s all over.

 

If you shoot for the stars and hit the moon, it’s OK. But you’ve got to shoot for something. A lot of people don’t even shoot.

 

Time And health are two precious assets that we don’t recognize and appreciate until they have been depleted.

 

“I consider my ability to arouse enthusiasm among men the greatest asset I possess. The way to develop the best that is in a man is by appreciation and encouragement.”

 

Look to your health; and if you have it, praise God and value it next to conscience; for health is the second blessing that we mortals are capable of, a blessing money can’t buy.

 

 

Insurance Quotes – Great place to find Quotes To Live By.

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