Month: December 2010

Bloggers, editors earn 20% commission on website sales

ORLANDO, Fla. (Nov. 23, 2010) – Baby Goes Pro, a company founded by tennis great Gigi Fernandez, has launched a new affiliate program. The company is offering a 20% commission on each sale of its new DVD, Baby Goes Pro – Discover Sports.

Discover Sports is the first in a DVD series that provides children and their parents with technically correct, fun and instructional products to:

• Teach the fundamentals of sports
• Encourage kids to play
• Inspire a generation to move

The DVD uses original music, sing-a-long songs, instructional flashcards and vivid 3-D animation to captivate and entertain children as they learn about the fundamentals of five sports: baseball, tennis, basketball, golf and soccer. The star of the DVDs is Emkei, an animated monkey. His name is an acronym for the building blocks of sports – E.M.K.E.I. stands for Equipment, Movement, Know-how, Elements and Instruction.

Baby Goes Pro is the brainchild of Gigi Fernandez, winner of 17 Grand Slam tennis titles and the mother of twins under the age of two. Baby Goes Pro provides children and parents with technically correct, fun, instructional products that introduce sports into the lives of children and instill healthy habits for a lifetime. The company is looking for websites and bloggers who focus on parenting, motherhood, child development, consumer products and fitness to become affiliates and expand their existing online distribution network.

“Our goal is to help parents utilize sports to raise healthy, happy and confident children,” said Fernandez. “Our products should be a perfect fit for mom bloggers and others who focus on children’s health, wellness, parenting tips and early childhood development.”

People can register for the affiliate program through the Baby Goes Pro company website. When followers buy Baby Goes Pro products through an affiliate link, the referring site will receive a 20% commission on each sale. Funds are deposited directly to the affiliate’s Pay Pal account, and all sales can be easily tracked.

Baby Goes Pro Discover Sports has a suggested retail price of $11.95.

For more information, please visit http://www.babygoespro.com/.

About Baby Goes Pro; Baby Goes Pro provides children and their parents with technically correct, fun and instructional products that teach the fundamentals of sports, encourage kids to play and inspire them to move. Created by champion tennis player Gigi Fernandez, Baby Goes Pro’s first product launch is a sports-themed DVD series developed for infants, toddlers and young children. The DVDs are entertaining, fun tools for parents to teach children about sports in order for them to grow up happy, healthy and confident. The Baby Goes Pro goal is to help children develop high self-esteem and self-confidence and instill healthy habits that last a lifetime. For more information, visit http://www.babygoespro.com.

Media contact:

Frank Wolff

Office: 407.339.0879

Cell: 407.637.6000

frank@wellonscommunications.com

Posted by Wellons Communications, an Orlando public relations firm.

One regional agency to implement an online professional learning community for the area’s teachers

Huntington, W.V. (Nov. 23, 2010) – One of West Virginia’s Regional Education Service Agencies (RESA) has selected Orlando-based eSchool Solutions® to provide technology that infuses professional learning with online collaboration tools to improve the overall support and development of educators at all levels.

It’s an online community called TeacherStudio®, and its primary function is to connect teachers from across an entire region—anytime and anywhere—so that they can share ideas, receive mentoring and keep up-to-date on global best practices.

West Virginia’s RESA 2 is comprised of eight regional agencies that are governed under the West Virginia Board of Education. eSchool Solutions has signed with RESA 2, the agency that covers Cabell, Lincoln, Logan, Mason, Mingo and Wayne counties. The goal of RESA is to initiate and implement programs in order to provide high quality, cost effective education services to students, schools, school systems and communities.

RESA 2 started using TeacherStudio® on Nov. 15.

“TeacherStudio offers schools across the country a unique and cost-effective way to expand upon the professional development of their teachers,” said Lisa Welton, Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing for eSchool Solutions. “We’re pleased that this service will now be available to the educators in the RESA 2 region, who will now be able to easily collaborate beyond their school walls.”

eSchool Solutions, a leading provider of preK-12 education technology, partnered with IDEAS to create this first comprehensive Web-based, professional community of educators.

TeacherStudio® offers:

• A professional network of educators who want to collaborate and interact with each other on a much broader scale (instead of just within a school—teachers can now collaborate across a region, state or nation).
• Multi-media professional development opportunities, including videos and interactive connections
• A cost-saving tool for administrators to manage training, mentoring and induction
• The ability to see teachers in action, including instructional strategies, lesson plans, classroom management techniques and technology how-to’s.

To learn more about eSchool Solutions and its suite of education technology products, visit http://www.eschoolsolutions.com/ or call 800-776-8774.

About eSchool Solutions

eSchool Solutions is the leading provider of integrated technology solutions for the preK-12 education market. In 1987, the Orlando-based company revolutionized substitute management for school systems, completely changing the way districts managed substitutes and employee absences. Now, as a total solutions provider, eSchool Solutions provides a full suite of products and services designed to improve administrative efficiency and help school districts work smarter. The company serves more than 500 school systems, encompassing 29,000 schools in North America.

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Posted by Wellons Communications, an Orlando public relations firm.

Performance artist who has transformed his body
into that of a lizard is immortalized in wax by Ripley artists

ORLANDO, Fla. (Nov. 22, 2010) – Look out world, there are now two Lizardmans! Erik Sprague, the green scaly entertainer who goes by the name of The Lizardman, unveiled a stunningly realistic wax figure of himself during the Attractions Expo of the International Assn. of Amusement Parks & Attractions.

A large crowd gathered around the Ripley Entertainment Inc. booth here to watch the proceedings.  “It was an amazing moment when I first saw myself,” Sprague pointed out. “These guys really nailed it. It was pretty cool to unveil myself.”
The life size figure took four Ripley artists nearly 200 hours to create. “The most time consuming part of creating this figure was the painting of all those tiny green scales,” said Ripley Art Department chief Barry Anderson, who headed up the creation of the figure. “More than 60 hours were spent on painting of the scales alone, making sure the shading and the proportions were right on each one.”

The process started in late August when Sprague spent two days in the Ripley wax studios sitting for full body castings, a tedious and time-consuming process. “We have created hundreds of wax figures of celebrities through the years, but The Lizardman presented certain challenges that we had never faced before,” noted Anderson.

The Lizardman makes his living as a performance artist and is known for his extreme body modifications including a body full of green scale tattoos, sharpened and pointy teeth, forked tongue, piercings, and subdermal implants.  According to Sprague, the tattoos on his body have already taken more than 700 hours to craft, and while most of the scales have been outlined, the process of filling in all the color continues. He says his body-based performance art has been to explore what it means to be human and differentiate himself from other humans.

Sprague joked that he should get another statue for himself and give it to his wife to keep her company while he travels the world, noting that “I can now be in two places at the same time.” Ripley officials added tongue in cheek that they “can now just throw him in the trunk and take him everywhere.”

The prototype wax figure will be on display starting Nov. 22 at the Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Odditorium in Orlando, and the second, now in the works, is slated for Ripley’s Times Square Odditorium in New York City.

Click here for high resolution photos shown in this release.

Click here for high resolution downloadable photos and videos of the creation of the wax figure.

Contact:
Tim O’Brien
VP Communications
615-646-7465
Obrien@ripleys.com

About Ripley Entertainment

Ripley Entertainment Inc. (www.ripleys.com), keepers of the venerable Ripley’s Believe It or Not! brand, is a global leader in location-based entertainment, entertaining more than 13 million annually at its 85 attractions in 11 countries.  In addition to its 31 Believe It or Not! Odditoriums, the Orlando, Florida-based company has publishing, licensing and broadcast divisions, best-selling books and the popular syndicated cartoon strip, Ripley’s Believe It or Not!, that still runs daily in 42 countries. Ripley Entertainment is a Jim Pattison Company, the third-largest privately held company in Canada.

Posted by Wellons Communications, an Orlando public relations firm.

NCG Medical to handle electronic medical and health records for eHealthConnecticut’s Regional Extension Center

ORLANDO, Fla. (November 15, 2010) – NCG Medical Systems, Inc., a global leader in electronic medical health records, is expanding its operations in Connecticut.

NCG Medical will provide eHealthConnecticut’s Regional Extension Center in Rocky Hill, Conn., with its Perfect Care EHR software system in order to support doctors and healthcare offices throughout the state. The goal is to assist doctors, clinics and other healthcare providers with the conversion to electronic health records – part of a nationwide effort to improve access to essential health information.

eHealthConnecticut is the state’s federally funded program to assist eligible providers to select, implement, and achieve meaningful use of Electronic Health Records (EHRs) and earn EHR incentive payments. NCG Medical will help the center achieve this goal by providing a Certified EHR solution for Connecticut physicians.

“We’re extremely pleased to be expanding in Connecticut and working closely with eHealthConnecticut,” said Steven Thill, national sales manager at NCG Medical. “Along with the center, we hope to help Connecticut’s providers implement and achieve meaningful use of Electronic Health Records systems in order to enhance healthcare quality, safety and efficiency.”

Based out of Altamonte Springs, Fla., NCG Medical offers a fully integrated EHR solution including practice management software, Electronic Medical Records (EMR), and document management software to healthcare providers. NCG Medical currently has 2,500 medical clients across 24 U.S. states and ranks among the top three providers in the industry.

What is EHR?

The Electronic Health Record (EHR) is an electronic record of patient health information, including a patient’s demographics, medical history, medications, allergies, progress notes, immunizations, laboratory data and radiology reports. The EHR automates and streamlines the clinician’s workflow, and has the ability to generate a complete patient record.

National certification of EHRs is part of a national initiative undertaken under the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act.  HITECH created new incentive payment programs to help doctors and other health providers as they transition from paper-based medical records to EHRs.  Individual physicians and other eligible professionals can receive up to $44,000 through Medicare and almost $64,000 through Medicaid.  Hospitals can receive millions.

To qualify for the incentive payments, providers must not only adopt, but also demonstrate meaningful use of certified EHR systems.

“The long-term goals are better national healthcare and the safeguarding of medical records,’’ Thill said. “This transaction requires health providers to learn new ways of record keeping and figuring out new efficiencies. We are excited to play a part in this important transition of our health records.”

To learn more about eHealthConnecticut’s Regional Extension Center, visit http://www.ehealthconnecticut.org/, and to learn more about NCG Medical go to http://www.ncgmedical.com.

About NCG Medical Systems, Inc. (http://www.ncgmedical.com)

NCG Medical is a global leader in integrated IT solutions for healthcare facilities and regional extension centers. Based in Orlando, Fla., NCG Medical is a pioneer and leading provider of electronic health records. Institutions worldwide choose NCG Medical for solutions in practice management, electronic medical records, and medical billing. To learn more about NCG Medical and its lead product Perfect Care EHR, visit www.ncgmedical.com.

Media Contact

Will Wellons

Office: 407.339.0879

Cell: 407.462.2718

will@wellonscommunications.com

Posted by Wellons Communications, an Orlando public relations firm,