Blast from the past: Apogee launches online store

When I saw this news, I experienced a huge feeling of nostalgia; I just knew I had to write it up. It's crazy how many times I saw the logo you now see on the side. Apogee has announced the launch of its new online store over at http://store.digitalriver.com/store/apogee.

Gamers can now buy some of Apogee's favorite legacy titles, including Duke Nukem 3D, Duke Nukem: Manhattan Project, and the Apogee Legacy Pack. The $20 Legacy Pack is a collection of classic Apogee games including, Duke Nukem 3D: Atomic Edition, Duke Nukem: Manhattan Project, Rise of the Triad: Dark War, Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold, and Blake Stone: Planet Strike.

This weekend, you can get $5.00 off the price by typing in the Coupon Code "Father" ? the Father's Day special expires on Monday, June 20, 2011. Additionally, as a bonus for ordering the Legacy Pack, you will receive at no additional cost Extreme Rise of the Triad and the soundtrack to Duke Nukem: Critical Mass with 10 "ego-pumping" songs (Apogee's words, not mine).

Apogee was a pioneer in digital distribution 25 years ago, before the rise of the console. Commander Keen, one of the company's classics, is one of the reasons why I am a die-hard PC gamer, and always will be, rather than a console gamer.

"Apogee fostered young development teams creating a global audience through its digital distribution platform," Terry Nagy, Apogee's Chief Creative Officer, said in a statement. "Apogee will continue its tradition by providing a platform for new developers to access a global market...our online store being the first step in this direction."

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Source: http://www.techspot.com/news/44310-blast-from-the-past-apogee-launches-online-store.html

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Should user comments dictate online content?

You might not think about the comments section on a website very often. Heck, more often than not I glance over them as if they don?t exist, except for a few notable exceptions. Between the error-filled ignorance of YouTube comments and the sheer genius that can come in the section on other sites, there?s a wide range of interaction that has, in more recent times, begun to shape the face of how and what online publishers are putting out for the world to see.

In startling contrast to the glancing over that comments often get from readers, publishers toil with them on many different levels. Even here at TNW, we?ve had some of our most fiery discussions on the subjects of what comments systems to use, the pros and cons of each as well as making certain to interact and engage with our readers inside of them. To put it bluntly, the comments system and how it is used can make or break a site and should never be taken lightly.

But then there?s the other side of the story. What happens when publishers take things a bit too far in their efforts? The LA Times ran into this situation just the other day, spawning the thought to me that there were probably even bigger issues at hand when it came to online comments. So with an idea and some contacts, I went on a search for answers.

Is Hate Speech Free?

The problem that The LA Times had, specifically, was that there was a hefty amount of hate speech that was being interjected into the comments on a particularly hotly-debated post. Without getting into details or opinions here, the post was a story about Israeli security forces firing on pro-Palestinian protestors.

Obviously, this was going to cause some love loss, and that?s exactly what happened:

On Thursday afternoon, comments on the article were restricted, which means they?ll only be posted with a moderator?s approval. A note in the comments section from Reader Engagement Editor Martin Beck says, ?It?s our opinion that this discussion has run its course. And moderators will be setting a *very* high bar for approval of any more comments.?

While what the Times did in this situation isn?t inherently dangerous, it does open the door to particular problems. By stating publicly that comments would be moderated for quality, the blog puts itself into the position of judge and jury, rather than allowing its comments to be an open forum for discussion.

The larger issue at hand is that people often times feel that they are granted a right to publish whatever they want in a comments section, regardless of malice, without due recourse. Unfortunately for them, most of them fail to realize that any sort of inalienable right to free speech does not come into play when leaving comments on a site owned by another party.  Call it censorship if you?d like, but the editing of rude and inappropriate comments has another, friendlier name ? moderation.

In this particular case, the comments section was closed and The LA Times addressed the issue in another post. Without any doubt, however, the site will likely think twice before leaving a comments section open the next time that it feels compelled to publish such a work.

Wagging the Dog

The distaste that is left in a writer?s or publisher?s mouth after a battle such as the one here is second to none. There comes the point when it?s almost a natural progression to think about the reaction to a story before publishing the story itself and then to write the story accordingly. Two places can tell the exact same story in completely different ways, and this is behavior that happens on the Internet on a daily basis.

What?s left is the rather dangerous proposition of wagging the dog ? that is to say that content would be dictated by the predicted reaction, rather than the importance of the subject.

Livefyre CEO Jordan Kretchmer feels the pain of this, but offers a scenario that takes things even a step further. Kretchmer tells me that Livefyre, a third-party comments system (and coincidentally the one that we run here on TNW), is able to provide analytics that could tell a publisher what subjects are hotly-discussed across the Internet at any given time.

The obvious danger in releasing the feature, says Kretchmer, is that it could easily encourage site owners to write only the stories that are most-discussed, foregoing ones that may be equally or more important, but that would drive less interaction.

While analytics and word trends are nothing new, having a system in front of you to tell you about hot topics in real time is something that few (if any) publishers have ever been able to access. The goal, says Kretchmer, is more along the lines of allowing a publisher to contrast more or less-effective work to their own, in order to ascertain what causes discussion, rather than to simply point the publisher toward a specific direction in his or her writing.

Finding the Balance

At TNW, we try to walk that fine line of balance between allowing users to have a voice and allowing them to spew venom at others. Along the way, we try to learn what our readers care more about and find the right paths upon which to direct discussion.

There are tools for trolls that are widely available on the Internet, and blog comments are just another one of them. While it?s worth noting that people will always gripe far before they will praise, that fact doesn?t change the idea that we need to offer an open forum without letting that forum dictate our coverage entirely.

By looking at our statistics and analytics, we can tell what stories catch your attention and we can drive a focus toward them in order to provide more of what you?re wanting. But what about the things that draw attention in a negative light or seem to encourage bad behavior? Should a caution against enraging the masses guide us away from writing stories that would be deemed important if reaction wasn?t in the equation?

The quaint notion of a letter to the editor is still alive and well, only now it can be done instantly and carries with it the inability to decide whether or not to publish it when you?re using an unmoderated system. Interestingly, in a rather limited, unofficial study that I did over Twitter, 88% of those who responded said that they?d prefer that comments be moderated. Though it?s worth noting that, of those who said that they should be, 100% said that it should only be done for the purpose of policing off-topic or hate-related speech.

In the grand scheme of publishing, we (as a whole of those publishing work on the Internet) have only begun to crawl, not yet even starting to walk. There?s much to be said for allowing the comments of your users to guide your editorial direction, but there?s likely far more to be said for bringing people the news that is important for them to hear, whether or not they realized that that importance.

It?s a battle of balance that is far from over, but proves to be an interesting challenge each and every day. So now it?s your turn. Sound off in the comments and let us know your thoughts. To what extent should comments left dictate the stories that we cover? Should it happen at all? Do you trust the publications that you read to find the best news and information, regardless of reaction? Let?s hear it.

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Source: http://thenextweb.com/media/2011/06/18/should-user-comments-dictate-online-content/

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Record Food Prices Linked to Biofuels

The biofuels industry is being blamed for record food prices and high price volatility. Earlier this month a report from the World Trade Organization and other international agencies recommended that governments cut support for biofuels to ease that volatility. On the heels of that report, the U.S. Department of Agriculture issued its corn forecast; it suggested that corn supplies will be very tight this year because bad weather has limited planting and because the share of corn going to ethanol is increasing. After the report, corn prices shot to record highs, reaching $8 a bushel. Then on Friday, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development released a report predicting that food prices will remain high for the next decade.

Many experts say the unprecedented prices are at least partially driven by government subsidies and mandates that have led to fourfold increases in production of ethanol biofuel and tenfold increases in production of biodiesel between 2000 and 2009 worldwide. In the United States, multiple bills and amendments have been introduced to scale back subsidies as a way of trimming the federal budget, and on Thursday the Senate voted to end tax credits for ethanol that amounted to nearly $6 billion. (The program won't be killed unless the House passes its own law ending it.)

The WTO report cited many reasons for the high prices and volatility, including changes in demand for food, bad weather, low stock, and the recent high cost of oil. Oil prices directly affect the production costs of food by raising the price of tractor fuel and fertilizers. If oil is expensive enough, it can also increase demand for biofuels, which drives up the price of crops such as corn and sugarcane.

The WTO report also cited government biofuel mandates as a significant problem. Not only do these requirements drive up demand for crops such as corn, increasing prices, but they limit the ability of markets to respond to price changes, increasing volatility. "We've lost a lot of our ability for our agricultural system to be buffered from price shocks from weather and other things that affect production," says Jason Hill, a professor of bioproducts and biosystems engineering at the University of Minnesota.

Worldwide, 8 percent of corn produced is used for biofuels. In the United States, according to the new USDA report, 35 percent of corn in the growing season ending in 2010 went to the production of biofuels; this growing season it is predicted to be 37 percent; it is expected to be 38 percent in 2012.

Representatives for the ethanol industry say that the share of corn used for ethanol is typically overstated. After processing in an ethanol plant, one-third of the corn used, by weight, can still be used as feed, decreasing the amount of feed that ethanol displaces, according to the Biotechnology Industry Organization. The Renewable Fuels Association argues that other factors, such as the price of oil, have a far greater impact than ethanol production on the price of food.

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Political Memo: A New Twist to Wives? Playbook for Sex Scandals

Her proactive loyalty in 1992 was credited with rescuing Gov. Bill Clinton?s presidential campaign after he admitted ?causing pain? in his marriage.

Nevertheless, for years afterward, a parade of political wives stood dutifully by their errant husbands when they acknowledged their misdeeds, understanding that they were props in a drama scripted by the exigencies of politics. Not to be there would have been unthinkable; to have to speak might have been unbearable.

But in the past two years, that script has been tossed aside. From Jenny Sanford in 2009 to Maria Shriver last month, wronged political wives have been rebelling against being typecast as ?the good wife.? Now, Huma Abedin, the wife of Anthony D. Weiner, a New York Democrat who resigned from Congress on Thursday in disgrace over lewd online antics, has shredded the script entirely.

Not only did Ms. Abedin not show up at any of his news conferences, including Thursday?s in New York, when she was nearby, but she has issued no statements. Ms. Abedin, 35, who has been married to Mr. Weiner, 46, for less than a year and is pregnant, has remained mute to the media. In fact, two people close to her said, Mr. Weiner never even asked her to appear with him when he resigned.

?It was discussed but not debated because it was so clear that she wouldn?t go out there,? one said; both insisted on anonymity to preserve their relationships with her.

?She?s worrying about the bigger picture, her own family, her own life, the baby, how to get back to living a normal life,? this person said, adding that Ms. Abedin ?has no plans to leave him at this point, but that could change.? The couple is spending the weekend together in the Hamptons.

Ms. Abedin represents a new generation of political wife: strong professional women less dependent on their husbands as the sole breadwinners and more likely to say, ?This is your mess, you clean it up.?

?The rule book has been thrown out,? said Ruth Mandel, director of the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University. ?These other women started to look less like supportive spouses and more like victims. So people began to ask, ?Why does she have to do that?? ?

One reason has been children. Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster, said some women had stood by their men to try to protect their children.

Another big reason has been politics. Polling shows that a wife?s reaction is a strong cue to voters, Ms. Lake said, particularly to blue-collar women and women over 50. ?If the wife is there, they are more accepting,? she said. ?It matters to them if the wife says they are pulling together, but if she looks injured, they will turn against you.?

Mr. Weiner?s political career, for the moment, is on ice. So Ms. Abedin did not face the same political imperative that Mrs. Clinton and others have faced, to serve as character witnesses for their candidate-husbands.

Ms. Abedin deeply guards her privacy even as she is married to one high-profile public figure and works for another, Mrs. Clinton, now the secretary of state. (Ms. Abedin became an intern for Mrs. Clinton in 1996, when she was first lady, and was her traveling chief of staff during the presidential campaign in 2008. She is now her senior aide.)

Still, expectations for the betrayed wife of today have been flipped upside down. The question now is not why Ms. Abedin was not at the news conference, but why would she be there?

?It?s very gladdening to us ? and I think most people ? to see Huma not being dragged visually through this,? said Robert King, the co-creator and executive producer of ?The Good Wife.? He and his wife, Michelle, developed the CBS drama after being riveted by the scene in 2008 of Silda Wall Spitzer, a corporate lawyer, standing glumly behind her husband, Eliot Spitzer, a Democrat, when he resigned as governor of New York after being caught in a prostitution scandal.

At that point, Mr. King said, the serial images of these wives being exposed to the public in such vulnerable moments began to seem like a cliché. Everyone is now well aware of the political calculations involved, he said, and he would like to think that the show has helped bring such public humiliations ?to the end of the line.?

Ms. Wall Spitzer?s attending that news conference also inspired Jennifer Weiner, the author of ?Fly Away Home,? a novel about a political wife who stands by her husband for his mea culpa. ?I couldn?t figure out what she was doing up there,? said Ms. Weiner, who is no relation to the former congressman.

?It?s a hard posture to own in 2011,? she said. ?It?s hard to read it as anything other than some kind of endorsement or forgiveness.?

In 2009, after the Spitzer case, Jenny Sanford, then married to Gov. Mark Sanford, Republican of South Carolina, became a hero to many by being one of the first high-profile political wives to bag the obligatory joint appearance.

?Jenny Sanford really liberated a lot of these political wives,? said Ms. Lake, the pollster. ?They thought, ?I don?t have to put up with this anymore.? ?

Ms. Sanford, whose husband had cheated on her, has said that even if he had asked her to attend his news conference, she would not have. His actions, she told Barbara Walters in an interview, ?don?t in any way take away my own self-esteem; they reflect poorly on him.?

A joint appearance does not necessarily say anything about the long-term prospects for a marriage. Dina McGreevey, the wife of former Gov. James E. McGreevey, Democrat of New Jersey, stood by him in 2004 when he announced that he is gay and had had an affair with a man; they later went through a bitter divorce.

And standing by does not necessarily mean standing by passively. After Senator David Vitter, Republican of Louisiana, said in 2007 that he had sinned ? he had been implicated in a prostitution ring ? his wife, Wendy, went further than most political wives and took the microphone herself. She said she had forgiven her husband and was proud to be married to him. He was re-elected last year.

In some ways, Mrs. Vitter was reaching back to Mrs. Clinton?s playbook from 1992. But after Mrs. Clinton said she loved and respected her husband, she added, somewhat defiantly: ?If that?s not good enough for people, then, heck, don?t vote for him.? 

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White House Memo: Obama vs. Boehner: Tee-Off Time

Representatives for both men say that they will find plenty of time to talk deficit reductions and spending cuts when they tee off.

Oh, please. This game is not about debt ceiling negotiations. It is a chance for Mr. Boehner, an accomplished golfer, to take on the most powerful man in the world; for the competitive Mr. Obama, who has been working hard to improve his game, to measure himself against his political nemesis.

Mr. Obama is not taking any more chances than necessary. He is bringing along a partner: Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who, at least by the reckoning of Golf Digest, is a better golfer than his boss and Mr. Boehner.

Golf Digest estimates Mr. Obama?s handicap ? perhaps generously, in the view of some golfers ? at 17, meaning, theoretically, that the president would typically play 18 holes in the high 80s to low 90s. The magazine put Mr. Biden?s handicap at 6.3 and Mr. Boehner?s at 7.9.

Golf has long been considered a window into character, or at least personality. Both President Bushes would speed-golf through 18 holes as if they had to beat the clock, not the course, leaving little time for introspection. President Bill Clinton had a reputation for being somewhat loose with the rules.

Mr. Obama?s golf game is characterized by long, slow rounds, with a lot of time hunting for balls in the woods. The president, say people who have golfed with him, is meticulous, studied and determined to improve his game through practice, practice and more practice. He has lodged more than 70 rounds of golf since taking office, most of them at the golf course at Andrews Air Force Base.

?It?s a way for him to relax, where he can barely see the Secret Service agents who are around him all the time,? one administration official said.

The president is private about a lot of things he does during the day; he is fiercely private about his golf game, and rarely allows reporters anywhere near him when he?s on a course.

People who have played with Mr. Obama say that he is very good at getting out of sand traps. But of course, that might be construed as a very backhanded compliment; the only way you get good at getting out of sand traps is if you get into a lot of sand traps to begin with.

Mr. Boehner is a different story.

?He likes the game,? said Arthur Mason, a vice president of the lobbying firm Cassidy and Associates who has played with Mr. Boehner. ?He?s competitive, but in a cordial way.?

Mr. Boehner typically shoots in the low to mid-80s (Mr. Obama is in the low to mid-90s), but recently posted a round of 75, one source familiar with his game said. He swings right-handed, but putts left-handed.

Mr. Boehner has not been sounding like someone who plans to cut the president much slack. ?I was watching one of these cable programs ? it must have been Saturday morning, when somebody said, ?Well, you know, if the president wants strokes from Boehner, Boehner ought to say to the president: ?Mr. President, you can have all the strokes you want. It?ll just cost you a trillion dollars per stroke,? ? Mr. Boehner told a Rotary Club audience last week in Middletown, Ohio. ?I thought it was a brilliant idea.?

Mr. Boehner is friends with the golf legend Jack Nicklaus. He has also played with Tiger Woods in a pro-am tournament two years ago at the Congressional Country Club outside Washington.

Scared yet, Mr. President?

Don?t be. You?ve got Biden.

Mr. Biden, 68, did not take up golf until he was 49, recovering from two operations for an aneurism, and his doctor told him that one of the few things he could do for exercise would be to hit golf balls. A friend of his would drive him to a restaurant in Oxford, Pa., that sat on a golf course. It was there that Mr. Biden began developing his game.

Mr. Biden now has such a low handicap ? his idea of stress release is to hit buckets of golf balls at a driving range ? that he and his aides have been a little worried that it could put him at a disadvantage on Saturday.

So twice this week, Mr. Biden has made nighttime visits to the public course at Hains Point, on the Potomac River in southwest Washington, to practice.

And then, there is the last ? and most mysterious ? member of Saturday?s foursome: Gov. John R. Kasich of Ohio, a Republican.

?Kasich is the wild card,? Mr. Mason said. A solid afternoon?s worth of efforts to elicit tidbits about his golf game elicited nothing.

The one thing that is known: Mr. Kasich did build his house, in Delaware County, Ohio, next to a golf course.

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Crypto-currency Security under Scrutiny

Reports that $500,000 worth of Bitcoin currency was stolen from one user's computer this week has highlighted the poor security of the digital cash and the systems available for managing it. For the currency to gain large-scale popularity, it may need to create or work with financial institutions?making Bitcoin less distinct from the conventional currencies some users hope to supplant.

To use Bitcoin, a person downloads the official software client, which connects over the Internet to a global network of other copies of the program. Together, these implement the mathematical scheme that ensures that bitcoins can be transferred, created, and verified without any need for a central authority such as a bank (read TR's explainer on how Bitcoin works).

That official client stores the security needed to use a stash of bitcoins with minimal security, in an unprotected file known as wallet.dat. In a forum post this week, a bitcoin user whose screen name was "allinvain" claimed that a remote attacker gained access to his or her wallet file and stole over 25,000 bitcoins. The value of a single bitcoin at the time of writing (just over $19) makes the alleged heist worth nearly $500,000, although in practice converting such a large number of bitcoins at once would be tricky. It is impossible for the alleged victim to know who stole the money because the cryptographic architecture of Bitcoin is designed to preserve the anonymity of people transferring the currency. Today the security company Symantec reported it had caught a piece of malicious software that infects computers over the Internet and attempts to steal wallet files.

The vulnerability highlighted by the controversy is very real, says Jeff Garzik, one of the lead developers of the official Bitcoin client and one of a few individuals who are the closest thing the currency has to official spokespeople. Today, anyone able to access the machines of Bitcoin users, either directly or remotely?via malicious software?can grab their wallet files, he acknowledges.

An upgraded version of the client, which will encrypt a person's wallet and ask for a password each time it is accessed, will be released in "just a week or two," says Garzik.

Yet users will still essentially be maintaining their own bank vaults on their computers. "[Wallet encryption] does nothing against many modern malware techniques, such as keystroke logging," says Garzik. He advises Bitcoin users to keep encrypted backups of their wallet files away from the Internet, for example on a USB stick, since the file is needed only when sending money to others.

This may be an option for technically minded early adopters. But if the currency is to be used more widely, a new generation of simple and secure tools for using bitcoins is needed, says Amir Taaki, who leads a U.K.-based consultancy of software developers working on a range of technologies for use with Bitcoin, which operates the exchange site Britcoin.

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Record Food Prices Linked to Biofuels

The biofuels industry is being blamed for record food prices and high price volatility. Earlier this month a report from the World Trade Organization and other international agencies recommended that governments cut support for biofuels to ease that volatility. On the heels of that report, the U.S. Department of Agriculture issued its corn forecast; it suggested that corn supplies will be very tight this year because bad weather has limited planting and because the share of corn going to ethanol is increasing. After the report, corn prices shot to record highs, reaching $8 a bushel. Then on Friday, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development released a report predicting that food prices will remain high for the next decade.

Many experts say the unprecedented prices are at least partially driven by government subsidies and mandates that have led to fourfold increases in production of ethanol biofuel and tenfold increases in production of biodiesel between 2000 and 2009 worldwide. In the United States, multiple bills and amendments have been introduced to scale back subsidies as a way of trimming the federal budget, and on Thursday the Senate voted to end tax credits for ethanol that amounted to nearly $6 billion. (The program won't be killed unless the House passes its own law ending it.)

The WTO report cited many reasons for the high prices and volatility, including changes in demand for food, bad weather, low stock, and the recent high cost of oil. Oil prices directly affect the production costs of food by raising the price of tractor fuel and fertilizers. If oil is expensive enough, it can also increase demand for biofuels, which drives up the price of crops such as corn and sugarcane.

The WTO report also cited government biofuel mandates as a significant problem. Not only do these requirements drive up demand for crops such as corn, increasing prices, but they limit the ability of markets to respond to price changes, increasing volatility. "We've lost a lot of our ability for our agricultural system to be buffered from price shocks from weather and other things that affect production," says Jason Hill, a professor of bioproducts and biosystems engineering at the University of Minnesota.

Worldwide, 8 percent of corn produced is used for biofuels. In the United States, according to the new USDA report, 35 percent of corn in the growing season ending in 2010 went to the production of biofuels; this growing season it is predicted to be 37 percent; it is expected to be 38 percent in 2012.

Representatives for the ethanol industry say that the share of corn used for ethanol is typically overstated. After processing in an ethanol plant, one-third of the corn used, by weight, can still be used as feed, decreasing the amount of feed that ethanol displaces, according to the Biotechnology Industry Organization. The Renewable Fuels Association argues that other factors, such as the price of oil, have a far greater impact than ethanol production on the price of food.

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GigsWiz teams up with The Human League for fan loyalty program

If you?ve ever bought concert tickets from one of the big online companies such as Ticketmaster, you may have felt a little aggrieved at the various add-on charges throughout the booking process. There?s service charges, building facility charges, processing charges, shipping charges and even e-ticket convenience charges ? and yes, a charge for the privilege of printing off your own ticket at home.

The final chargeable sum can be as much as a third more than the advertised face-value fee, once you factor in the various commissions and charges.The music industry is crying out for changes to the ticketing system, but thankfully, revolution is in the air.

We last reported on Finnish startup GigsWiz back in February, just as the ?social ticketing? company was launching Stateside. In a nutshell, GigsWiz.com provides ticketing and social media marketing tools for event and festival organizers. It gives promoters the ability to reward artists based on the ticket sales they generate online, by informing their fans about the gigs actively on Facebook, Twitter and other direct-to-fan channels.

The Next Web caught up with GigsWiz this week at the Aalto Venture Garage, a seed accelerator in Helsinki, and the company?s co-founder Juuso Vermasheinä</a> had an interesting update.

Juuso said that at least 50% of ticket inventories are unsold each year, and solving this problem is a major challenge for performing artists. But he has just the solution ? a fan loyalty program.

GigsWiz had been doing the ticketing for The Magic Loungeabout festival in the UK where 80s favorites The Human League is a headliner act. Initially, The Human League was approached by GigsWiz with the standard GigsWiz ticketing model, which gives the artists a 5-20% reward on all ticket sales they help generate.

Subsequently, GigsWiz entered into lengthy discussions with The Human League?s manager who really liked the model and philosophy, but it seems that the band wanted to pursue something different on top of the main offering.

The guys at GigsWiz brainstormed several different models with the band, management and event organizers, and in the end developed a model that ensured all parties involved benefited. So ? how will it work?

The Human League will reward fans with discounted tickets while also picking up new online fans and followers by utilizing GigsWiz?s Fan Loyalty Discount Program. The program enables artists to pass on their reward to their fans as a discount on the gig or festival tickets.

This is just a pilot at present and I?m told by Juuso that it should be launched early next week. Here?s a peek at how the interface will look:

LoyaltyProgramme

The whole ethos behind the initiative is to enable artists to give back to their fans, whilst securing new Facebook fans and Twitter followers in the process. The pilot will also be offered to other selected artists over the summer.

Juuso does stress that The Human League isn?t endorsing GigsWiz but, he says, ?it is a great example of an artist and their management team being open minded and willing to try new ways to reward and engage fans.?

Simon Watson, Manager of The Human League, Sidewinder Management  Ltd, said:

?When the guys at GigsWiz approached us because they were ticketing a festival we are headlining, they explained how their model worked and that there was an incentive for bands to help sell tickets. We were more interested in a model that would reward the fans who wanted to buy tickets to the festival specifically to see us play live, to give something back to them, so we are pleased with what GigsWiz came back with. I believe it?s always important, particularly for a band like The Human League, to not only reward our long term loyal fans but also to pick up new and younger fans and I think this will help us to meet both those goals.?

This is a much-needed boost for the ticketing industry, and we look forward to seeing how successful the pilot proves. We hope to catch up with GigsWiz further down the line to see how it?s progressing.

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Source: http://thenextweb.com/eu/2011/06/18/gigswiz-teams-up-with-the-human-league-for-fan-loyalty-program/

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Gaming 27 - The PlayStation Ryvita

Gaming 27 - The PlayStation Ryvita

Posted on 15th Jun 2011 at 07:41 by Podcast with 8 comments

Joe, Clive and Harry are joined by David Hing, who sit down to help discuss the wealth of news that poured out of E3 2011 last week. This includes the unveiling of the Nintendo Wii U and the PlayStation Vita, as well as the release dates for Mass Effect 3 and Battlefield 3.

We didn't limit ourselves to just E3 announcements, though. A croaky Joe also let us know what the Duke Nukem Forever launch party was like, while the rest of us speculated about how the game would shape up. Check out the Duke Nukem Forever review to see how right everyone was in their predictions!


After that, we go through the usual reader mail and competition details. As always, feel free to send in any questions you might have for us too.

The bit-gamer podcast features music by Brad Sucks, and was recorded on Shure microphones. You can download the podcast direct, listen in-browser or subscribe through iTunes using the links below. Also, be sure to let us know your thoughts about the discussion in the forums.

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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/bit-tech/blog/~3/twVcw9pIGrE/

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