Hi Everyone

If you are planning to attend the CTIA in San Francisco, please let me know. I have a Finnish journalist, Raija Rapo, that is looking at covering Finnish companies that are attending CTIA in some of her press articles.

Maria Pienaar

FinNode

maria.pienaar@finpro.fi

World's First Truly Multilingual Social Network Provides Instant Global Audience and Distribution Channel for Independent Musicians; Users Can Communicate in Nearly 50 Languages From Within a Single Account

SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwire - August 26, 2008) - XIHA Life, the world's first truly multilingual social network, publicly launched today in the U.S., allowing millions of exchange students, expatriates, and multilingual and multicultural users living outside their home countries to build global neighborhoods that let them communicate in nearly 50 languages -- all from within a single account. XIHA Life also announced today XIHA Music, its global distribution channel that provides independent musicians with an instant global audience.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau's 2006 American Community Survey, more than 37 million immigrants now live in the U.S., and one in five people over age five speaks a language other than English. And, added to this are the millions of native English speakers who learn additional languages and have non-English speaking friends and colleagues. Unlike other social networks that make users choose one language for all communications, XIHA Life users can easily read and write in multiple languages, allowing them to connect with family, friends, and colleagues anywhere in the world in the most appropriate language.

"The global phenomenon of social networking has actually been hampered by the monolingual vision of other social networking sites," says Jani Penttinen, co-founder and CTO at XIHA Life. "Forcing users to choose just one language limits the number and types of communities they can participate in, or forces them to maintain multiple discrete accounts. In XIHA Life, users can communicate in as many languages as they want, centralizing all their connections. With XIHA Life, different languages are no longer an impediment to a global community."

This multilingual approach has created the first truly global audience for the world's diverse musicians. Existing music-focused social networks force musicians to communicate with fans in just one language. With XIHA Life, they can connect in the language their fans understand, increasing promotional opportunities and fan loyalty.

"There are three key benefits of XIHA Music," explained Penttinen. "Musicians with a global audience now have a way to communicate with their entire fan base. Popular regional musicians have an opportunity to connect with a global audience. And, music lovers everywhere can discover exciting new musicians and bands and engage with them directly."

XIHA Life

XIHA Life offers homepages, blogging and photo sharing tools, as well as versatile ways to integrate content with other social media websites. Users can simultaneously select as many languages as they know or want to learn, and the XIHA Life technology recognizes and filters the languages, so users automatically see only the content they understand, making the experience much more relevant and valuable. XIHA Life is successfully monetizing its social network through its popular digital content store, which offers fun products, including more than 1,000 Windows and Mac games.

XIHA Life launched internationally in October 2007, and visitors come from all over the world, with the largest communities of users in China, Brazil, France, U.S. and Spain. More than 500,000 unique visitors spend time at XIHA Life each month. At the current 20% growth rate, monthly XIHA user traffic is expected to reach 1 million by the end of 2008.

XIHA Music

XIHA Music offers musicians and bands a free account with unlimited storage for music and photos. An editable profile can also link to a musician's or band's other profile sites. XIHA Life's growing international audience is typically eager to connect with people from other countries and learn about other cultures and music, providing independent bands a way to obtain international attention.

XIHA Music's library includes artists from all over the world, and the music is freely sharable in profiles and blogs. When shared music is played on the site's music player, the band and song names are displayed, along with a link to the band's profile and an option to add the song to the listener's playlist, which continues to promote the band and makes it easy for songs to find new audiences and for quality songs to spread virally and rapidly. Users can search for music based on genre, geographical location, language and other parameters, so they can easily find Japanese rock bands singing in English or German folk bands singing in Turkish.

About XIHA Ltd

XIHA Life -- www.xihalife.com -- is developed and operated by XIHA Ltd, a Helsinki, Finland-based company founded in 2007. Co-founder and CTO Jani Penttinen has 15 years of experience in the gaming industry, including companies such as Remedy Entertainment and Electronic Arts. He has previously founded two startups in the U.S. and one in China. The name XIHA comes from Chinese and means 'fun' and 'happy' -- a name invented by the company's other founder Xiaowen "Wen" Sun, a Chinese entrepreneur who currently lives in Finland. For more information, visit http://corp.xihalife.com/.

Media Contact:

Denise Vardakas
The Conversation Group
1-650-483-5083
denise(at)theconversationgroup.com

The Association of Finnish eLearning Centre, an independent national association that promotes sharing of knowledge,
best practices and quality in eLearning, has established EduFinland island in Second Life (SLurl: EduFinland/84/140/25).

More information on the association's website, and:

Kim Holmberg,
kim [at] edufinland.fi, puh. +358 45 675 4444
Isto Huvila,
isto.huvila [at] istohuvila.fi, puh. +358 40 572 6259
Titi Tamminen,
Suomen eOppimiskeskus ry, titi.tamminen [at]
eoppimiskeskus.fi +358 40 869 6306.

***

In Finnish:

SECOND LIFEEN ON PERUSTETTU SUOMALAISTEN TOIMIJOIDEN YHTEINEN EDUFINLAND-SAARI

Second Lifeen on perustettu suomalaisten toimijoiden yhteinen
EduFinland-saari (SLurl: EduFinland/84/140/25). Suomen eOppimiskeskus perusti saaren yhteistyökumppaniensa kanssa. Saaren toimijat tarjoavat tilaisuuden tutustua virtuaalimaailmaan opastetusti.

Nyt saarella on meneillään vilkasta rakennustoimintaa. Opetus-, tutkimustoiminta ja muu toiminta saarella käynnistyy varsinaisesti vasta syksyllä. EduFinland-alueelta suomalaiset oppilaitokset ja yleishyödylliset organisaatiot voivat hankkia maata opetus- ja tutkimustarkoitukseen.

Targeted at people living outside their home country, XIHA Life allows efficient communication and content sharing across cultures and language barriers.

SAN FRANCISCO, April 23 /PRNewswire/ -- XIHA Life (http://www.xihalife.com/), a new social network targeted at multilingual people living outside their home country, introduced new features at the Web 2.0 Expo. For the first time, social network users can select multiple languages to communicate and share content with, enabling multicultural communities to form across the globe.

"Online social networking is obviously proven to be much more than a fad, a global phenomenon bringing people together and creating new type of media and communication networks", says Jani Penttinen, the Co-Founder and CTO at XIHA. "However, after going through all the leading services, we discovered a serious flaw which is common to all of them. As users typically can only select one primary language, user communities are formed around a single language. In XIHA Life, users can simultaneously select as many languages as they know or want to learn. Our technology platform recognizes and filters the languages, so that the user generated content is displayed based on the language preferences."

XIHA Life features include user homepages, blogging and photo sharing tools, as well as versatile ways to integrate content with other social media websites. To counter the industry-wide problem of monetizing social networks, XIHA Life has a popular digital content store with fun products relevant to the users. The web service is localized to over 20 languages, and the company's target is to expand to a 100 languages during 2008. XIHA Life visitors come from all over the world, the biggest countries being United States, China, Brazil, France and Spain.

XIHA Ltd
http://corp.xihalife.com/

XIHA Life is developed and operated by XIHA Ltd, a Helsinki, Finland based startup company founded in 2007. Co-Founder and CTO Jani Penttinen has 15 years of experience in game industry, including companies such as Remedy Entertainment and Electronic Arts. He has previously founded two startups in the U.S. and one in China. The name XIHA comes from Chinese and means 'fun' and 'happy' - a name invented by the company's other founder Xiaowen "Wen" Sun, a Chinese entrepreneur who currently lives in Finland.

Press contact information

Juhani Polkko
VP Business Development
E-mail juhani@xihalife.com
Tel. +358 40 543 0825

SoPlay is a new research initiative currently looking for more industry partners to join the consortium. Carried out by Games Research Lab in the University of Tampere, SoPlay will analyse and identify the criteria for successful social playability (an element that is apparent in the design of succesful social games, as well as in social media services such as Flickr or Facebook). SoPlay will build models of directions where playability and social media will evolve in the future, and use the results from research to develop design guidelines and evaluation criteria that are useful for both industry and the scientific community. For more information, contact professor Frans Mäyrä, frans.mayra@uta.fi / 050 336 7650 / www.uta.fi/hyper .

04.04.2008

Habbo, the largest virtual world for teenagers, today unveiled the results of its second Global Habbo Youth Survey.
Examining the interests, values, attitudes, online habits of a global
audience, the survey reveals teens' current media usage, consumption
behavior and brand preferences in order to better understand what
compels youth around the world.

For the study, Habbo surveyed 58,486 teens between the ages 11 and
18 from 31 countries, and identified five clearly defined behavioral
segments amongst the respondents. With each group representing
approximately one-fifth of the total teens surveyed, the five groups
were categorized and described as the following:

• Achievers: Ambitious, strong minded and materialistic. They value
  material success and whilst having lots of friends do not consider
  other people's feelings as much as other segments
• Rebels: Value gathering lots of experiences in life and
  enjoy a fast-paced lifestyle. Like Achievers they want to become "rich
  and famous", but they are not willing to compromise on having fun in
  order to achieve this goal
• Traditionals: Value having an ordinary life and see
  themselves as honest, polite and obedient. They are keen to help others but are less ambitious and pleasure seeking compared to other segments
• Creatives: Share many of the same positive traits as
  Traditionals, but with a focus on creativity. They place value in
  getting a good education and being influential in life, but they are
  also active, social and have an interest in travelling
• Loners: More introverted and less likely than other segments
  to identify with any specific personality traits. They rarely see
  themselves as active or self-assured, but are more open minded in their
  attitudes compared to Traditionals or Achievers

A major focus of the survey was how teens communicate today. 76
per cent of teens globally use the internet to Instant Message friends.
Overall, Instant Messaging is the most popular communication tool in
most of the countries. Though 72 per cent of teens still hold active
email accounts, the majority of communication with peers is no longer
conducted over email. The survey revealed that email is generally
reserved by teens more for non-personal needs such as school or work,
or correspondence with family members.

"According to the Global Habbo Youth Survey, the most popular global websites amongst teens are YouTube and MySpace," said Emmi Kuusikko,
Director of User and Market Insight for Sulake, Habbo's parent company
"Of those surveyed, 50 percent responded that they forward humorous
links and videos to their friends, while 30 percent regularly upload
content, confirming the notion that teenagers have an active online
presence."

"Perhaps surprisingly social networks appear as relatively low
online priorities for young people, as 40 per cent of teens do not view
social networks as an important part of their online experience on a
global basis. This is due to the English-language bias of most social
networks but considering Habbo's global success this also suggests that
the localisation of sites is important for teens communicating online.
In countries where social networks are considered popular though they
have become a regular communication channel between friends."

Habbo has worked in partnership with leading brands that enter the
virtual world to engage creatively with teens online. The survey showed
that brand familiarity clearly affects teens' choices as consumers,
with 74 percent saying that familiar brands guide their purchasing
decisions. Reinforcing the brand familiarity findings, global
well-known brands, such as McDonald's, Coca-Cola and Nokia ranked high
for both boys and girls. Gender differences are more visible for
example in clothing brands. According to the results, boys favor Nike,
Adidas and Billabong as their top clothing brands, whereas girls
preferred Hennes and Mauritz, Nike and Roxy.

A report of the Global Habbo Youth Survey 2008 is available to
buy as a hard copy book of 250 pages. For inquiries and orders, please
contact: marketinsight@sulake.com

Further survey results on different topics will be published in the
sulake.com blog in the following weeks. The first blog concerns mobile
phone usage among youth, you can read it here.

About the research

The research was
conducted within the virtual world, Habbo, and the total number of
respondents (after data cleaning) was 58, 486. The research was
conducted between October and November 2007. 31 countries were surveyed
and statistical weighting was employed to give all participating
countries an equal weight in the global results. The results of the
research are available on request.

www.sulake.com

EUROPRIX Multimedia Awards will acknowledge the tremendous evolution of digital media in both business and entertainment by presenting awards in 9 categories and the Inscape Special Award. Remember, the early entry deadline is June 30, 2008, so enter today and win trips to the EUROPRIX Multimedia Festival in November in Graz, Austria.

www.europrix.org

MindTrek brings together researchers and practitioners from diverse disciplines
that are involved in the development of media ­ from sociology,
economy, to technology. The organizing committee invites you to submit
original high quality papers addressing the special theme and the
topics, for presentation at the conference and inclusion in the
proceedings.

The submitted papers will be selected for the following streams of the conference:

- Social media
- Gaming
- Ubiquitous and ambient media

Feel
free to suggest workshops which are co-organized with the MindTrek
2008. Workshop proposals should include organizing committee, 1 page
description of the theme of the workshop, short CV of organizers,
duration, proceedings publisher, and schedule.

Important Dates

31st May 2008: submission of position papers (abstract, 1000 words) and workshops
16th June 2008: review statements
29th August 2008: camera ready papers from authors (5 pages)
7th-9th October 2008: conference

Conference Themes

1. Social Media

- business models, service models, and policies
- questions related to identity, motivation and values
- blogs, wikis, and collaboration designs in practice
- user-created content and social networks

2. Ubiquitous and ambient media

- ubiquitous and ambient services, devices, and environments
- business models, service models, and policies
- context aware, sensing, and interfaces for ubiquitous computation
- ergonomics, human-computer interaction designs, and product prototypes
- software, hardware and middleware frameworks
- digital television, digital film production, and new media systems
- pervasive and ubiquitous games
- ambient intelligence applications and services
- artistic works related to ubiquitous computation
- entertainment and experiences
? new human-computer interaction models

3. Games

- Theoretical and analytical contributions to the study of games and play
- Novel approaches to the design research of games
- Discussions of gaming technologies from user- or player-centred perspectives
- Studies of social play and role-play
- Analyses of online, mobile, casual and cross-media gaming
- Research into user-created game content
- Studies of pervasive games

Position
paper submissions will be peer-reviewed as abstracts, and full versions
of papers will be published both in conference proceedings and online
by an international scholarly organization. Future edited versions of
selected papers will be considered for special issues in journals, or
as book chapters. Further possibilities for publication are currently
under assessment.

More information:
www.mindtrek.org/cfp

Please, use this application to deliver news about business, markets, innovations, products, services, etc. for the Sombiz network.

While testing this new News application, I announce that now we have a logo. (Not big news for the industry, but it feels good to have a visual identity - and branding helps you to promote your message and achieve your goals, too...)