PHP Fog Announces $1.8 Million Investment, Led by Madrona Venture Group

Portland, OR (PRWEB) January 11, 2011

PHP Fog, a PHP-based Platform-as-a-Service (PHP PaaS) cloud computing platform today announced that is has secured $ 1.8 million in financing from Madrona Venture Group, First Round Capital, Founders Co-Op, and other prominent angel investors.

PHP is the most popular web development language in the world, with millions of active developers and tens of millions of PHP-based sites already in deployment. PHP Fog is the only company offering effortless deployment and infinite scaling of PHP applications in the cloud. The company offers one-click deployments for many popular PHP apps and frameworks including WordPress, Drupal, Kohana, Zend, and SugarCRM. Also, with PHP Fogs N-tier scaling, customers no longer have to worry about reliability, since every part of their web stack has built-in redundancy and failover. The company is currently in private beta but expects to launch publicly in the first half of 2011.

PaaS is a red-hot sector and recent industry developments have validated the market need for cloud application platforms that help customers build, deploy and scale web apps, said Tim Porter a Partner at Madrona Venture Group who will join the companys board. PHP Fog identified an important customer need and developed an innovative, differentiated service with an all-star team that uniquely addresses it. Great companies start with great people and we are excited to help them grow PHP Fog to a large company.

"PHP Fog is precisely the kind of company - and Lucas is exactly the kind of entrepreneur - that Founders Co-op exists to support, said Chris DeVore from Founders Co-op, a seed-stage investment fund based in Seattle. He's a developer's developer, tackling an acute pain that he and his peers experience in scaling their own software businesses."

The company was founded in 2010 by Lucas Carlson, a PHP developer for over 8 years and one of the leading Ruby developers in the world. Prior to starting PHP Fog, Lucas was engineer #1 at Mog and helped to build and scale the site to tens of millions of monthly pageviews. Lucas also wrote the Ruby Cookbook for OReilly and is active in the open source community.

I couldnt be more excited about all the strong investors the company has been able to attract, said Lucas Carlson. We are in a space that is changing every day, but the opportunity is massive. Now we have the resources to scale quickly and provide a world-class service to PHP developers.

About PHP Fog

PHP Fog provides simple one-click installations of some of the most popular PHP applications out there.

It just works.

You get full access to the source code of your PHP application through git. Push your code changes to us and we will publish these changes to the cloud.

We handle deployment, failover, database maintenance, scaling, and all the other plumbing that can take an army of programmers and systems administrators to handle. Automatically. You pay only for what you use.

About Madrona Venture Group

Madrona Venture Group (http://www.madrona.com) has been investing in early-stage technology companies in the Pacific Northwest since 1995 and has been privileged to play a role in some of the region's most successful technology ventures. The firm invests across the information technology spectrum, including consumer Internet, commercial software and services, digital media and advertising, networking and infrastructure, and wireless. Madrona currently manages nearly $ 700 million and was an early investor in companies such as Amazon.com, Isilon Systems, World Wide Packets, iConclude, Farecast.com and ShareBuilder.

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The NPD Group: iTunes Store Still Mostly About Music

Port Washington, NY (PRWEB) September 28, 2011

According to a new report from The NPD Group, a leading market research company, one in four (51 million) U.S. Internet users now use iTunes, which is an increase of 3 percent since last year. Despite steady growth in app downloads on Apple devices, music remains the primary activity for the average iTunes user. More than half (54 percent) of all iTunes users uploaded music to an iPod or listened to music on iTunes in the past three months, while 28 percent downloaded a free app (an increase of 4 percent over the prior year) and 16 percent paid to download an app (also up 4 percent).

According to NPDs iTunes User Report 2011, the total number of U.S. consumers purchasing content from iTunes increased by one million people this year, and a larger percentage of those purchases came from app buyers. Last year 82 percent of iTunes content buyers purchased music, while just 31 percent purchased apps; however, in 2011 just 75 percent of iTunes content buyers purchased music, while 39 percent purchased apps. iTunes video buyers declined by 1 percentage point to 19 percent this year. On the device side, NPD noted that consumers who only used iPads were less likely than those using either iPods or iPhones to buy music and rent movies, primarily because of the attention being paid to apps and games.

Theres no reason the music or video industry should accept a loss of buyers, as device preferences change, said Russ Crupnick, senior vice president and entertainment analyst for The NPD Group They have significant opportunities to foster discovery, engagement, and purchases using the tablet platform.

The beauty of the iPad is that it brings together social media, access to artist websites, apps from IMDb, and Flixster, and Pandora and other streaming radio sites, all of which can be cross-leveraged to foster more awareness of movies and music, Crupnick continued. There is a continuing opportunity to build video and music revenue by creating a linear path from content discovery to content purchasing.

The information in this press release is based on The NPD Groups iTunes User Report 2011, which is based on 4,011 completed surveys from qualified respondents (age 13 and older) conducted in May 2011. Each respondent reported using iTunes at least once in the past three months. Statistical significance testing has been employed at the 95 percent confidence level.

About The NPD Group, Inc.

The NPD Group is the leading provider of reliable and comprehensive consumer and retail information for a wide range of industries. Today, more than 1,800 manufacturers, retailers, and service companies rely on NPD to help them drive critical business decisions at the global, national, and local market levels. NPD helps our clients to identify new business opportunities and guide product development, marketing, sales, merchandising, and other functions. Information is available for the following industry sectors: automotive, beauty, entertainment, fashion, food, home and office, sports, technology, toys, video games, and wireless. For more information, contact us, visit http://www.npd.com/, or follow us Twitter at https://twitter.com/npdgroup.

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Bancap Self Storage Group Sells Two Trophy Storage Properties

Rancho Santa Margarita, CA (PRWEB) January 20, 2011

Los Angeles County properties sell for $ 26 million

Bancap Self Storage Group, Inc., the "#1 Self Storage Broker in California," recently announced that the firm had successfully brokered the sale of two trophy self storage properties located in Los Angeles County. The two properties were 405 Self Storage in the Hawthorne area of Los Angeles County and El Dorado Park Self Storage in Long Beach, California. Dean Keller, the firm's president, was the sole broker in the transaction. The seller was a local private party and the buyer was an affiliate of a real estate investment trust (REIT) specializing in self storage properties.

"This was a very rare opportunity to purchase two trophy quality properties in high density coastal L.A. County locations," Keller said, "These are the types of properties that every self storage investor would love to own - great infill locations, strong markets, good occupancy and first class construction."

The properties sold for a total price of $ 26,000,000 which represented an attractive capitalization rate on the current net operating income. The all cash transaction equaled nearly $ 150 per net rentable square foot.

405 Self Storage in Hawthorne contains just over 87,000 net rentable square feet of self storage space demised into approximately 770 units. El Dorado Park Self Storage in east Long Beach contains over 87,000 net rentable square feet demised into approximately 825 units.

"Other than a couple of portfolio transactions, there have been very few non-distressed self storage properties that have sold in Southern California this past year," Keller explained, "Most owners think they cannot obtain a good price in today's market, but that just is not the case. We have several motivated buyers that are aggressively looking for stabilized facilities in good markets. The key for the seller is to hire a self storage broker with a proven track record of getting the highest and best price possible. Self storage is such a unique property type and it takes a very specific expertise with decades of experience to maximize value for sellers in this unique property niche."

Bancap Self Storage Group is the "#1 Self Storage Broker in California" with over $ 900 million in completed self storage sales, including many lender-owned REO properties, numerous portfolio sales, and a record setting single property sale at over $ 31 million. For more information contact Bancap Self Storage Group at (949) 888-5355 or visit the company web site at http://www.bancapselfstorage.com

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Rottenstein Law Group Marks Inefficacy of Vibration Treatment for Osteoporosis

New York, NY (PRWEB) November 21, 2011

According to a November 15 piece published by U.S. News and World Report, the treatment, which involves standing on a motorized, vibrating platform in the hope of building bone mass showed promise in animals. But researchers, who hoped those results might translate to humans, found no benefit for women who used the platforms for a year, according to study co-author Angela M. Cheung, an internist and director of the osteoporosis program at the University Health Network, University of Toronto, quoted in the piece.

The report notes that Dr. Joseph Lane, professor of orthopedic surgery at Weill Medical College of Cornell University, said the study appears valid and debunks the use of whole-body therapy to treat bone loss. Currently, he said, bisphosphonate medications such as Fosamax are the best initial treatment for bone loss.

But Fosamax is not without its own problems. Despite being the most popular osteoporosis treatment medication on the market, Fosamax has been linked to several serious side effects. In 2004, researchers found a causal connection between Fosamax and osteonecrosis of the jaw, a condition where the jawbone dies due to a lack of blood supply. More recently, people have suffered low-impact femur fractures after falling from standing height or less. Evidence is building that taking Fosamax or similar medications for the treatment of osteoporosis causes a dramatic increase in risk of this particular kind of rare fracture to the thigh bone, all as reported by the New York Times.

As of June 30, 2011, according to Merck itself, approximately 1,650 cases, which include approximately 2,050 plaintiff groups, had been filed and were pending against Merck in either federal or state court. The Rottenstein Law Group urges anyone whose friend or relative has been prescribed Fosamax or another osteoporosis drug to reach out to that person and recommend that he or she consult a physician immediately and then speak to a qualified personal injury lawyer. The Rottenstein Law Group maintains a Fosamax Femur Fracture Lawsuit Information Center at http://www.fosamaxfemurfracturelawsuit.com. The site has features that allow for easy sharing, including links for automatic posting on Facebook and Twitter, specifically to enable visitors to spread the word about the dangers of Fosamax.

About THE ROTTENSTEIN LAW GROUP

The Rottenstein Law Group is a New York-based law firm that represents clients in dangerous drug lawsuits. The firm was founded by Rochelle Rottenstein, who has more than two decades of experience as a lawyer, to represent clients hurt by defective consumer products. http://www.rotlaw.com


Contact:

The Rottenstein Law Group, LLP

Rochelle Rottenstein, Esq.

1259 Veeder Drive

Hewlett NY 11557

(212) 933-9500 (office phone)

(212) 933-9980 (facsimile)

rochelle(at)rotlaw(dot)com

http://www.rotlaw.com

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Gilfus Education Group Predicts Top Five Education Innovation Trends for 2010 and 2011

Anaheim, CA (PRWEB) October 12, 2010

The Gilfus Education Group announced its annual education industry predictions today. The Gilfus Education Group is led by Stephen Gilfus a founder of Blackboard Inc. (Nasdaq: BBBB) and President and CEO of the group.

Gilfus annual education predictions foreshadow major concepts on the horizon for academic and administrative education applications in Higher Education.

"Over the past several years we have had the privilege to work closely with scores of colleges, universities, school districts, private schools, vendors to academic institutions and education investors. Institutions are challenged more than ever to deliver higher quality instruction in a more efficient and accountable manner. More and more educators are depending on technology to help them address their challenges" said Stephen Gilfus, President and CEO of the Gilfus Education Group. "As a founder of Blackboard Inc. I have also watched student expectations rise tremendously over the years with regard to the quality of teaching as well as to the quality of the technology and content that support learning."

As an independent consulting organization based in Washington, DC the Gilfus Education Group predicts the following top five trends in education innovation: