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

One Million Pixels of Twitter Avatar Real Estate For Sale

Newark, DE (PRWEB) April 13, 2011

Think of it as the Million Dollar Homepage for the Twitter generation. Developer and designer Bart Hook, CEO of 320studios, created the Million Twitter Homepage as a way for socially conscious tweeters to gain followers, while donating to charities in the process.

Hooks site creates a fresh spin on the Million Dollar Homepage, which allowed buyers to leave one permanent message and image on the site for eternity. The Million Dollar Homepage was a great idea, but instead of having just one image and phrase forever, I wanted to find a way for users to keep both their message and image fresh, said Hook. And he did. The Million Twitter Homepage is an artistic display of live Twitter feeds featuring a users avatar and latest tweets.

In addition, each month users vote on which charity receives 25 percent of the websites profits. Charities rotate, but currently include the American Cancer Society, National Military Family Association, Drug Policy Alliance, Childs Play and Team Laneybug. Users can also nominate charities of their choice. I want to provide the opportunity for users to donate to causes they care about while also promoting their Twitter feeds. The current list of charities reflects causes that are important to me and my family, said Hook.

Prime pixel real estate on http://www.milliontwitterhomepage.com comes in three sizes for a limited time introductory price as low as $ 10 (US) per month for a 20 x 20 block. Standard pricing will take effect in one month. Users have the option to purchase blocks in various intervals from monthly to lifetime packages. Visit the site for a full price list. Five users who tweet a special message about the site receive a chance to win a free 40 x 40 block for a month.

About 320studios

320studios (320studios.com), established in 1999, is a web design company specializing in email marketing and WordPress development. Bart Hook is the founder and sole proprietor of 320studios.

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One Million Pixels of Twitter Avatar Real Estate For Sale

Video Game Character Throws Down an Earth Day Challenge, Dares CEO to Plant 1 Million Trees to Slow Climate Change

San Francisco, CA (PRWEB) April 22, 2012

XEOPlay, the company that designed the first accelerometer game on the iPhone, offers an Earth Day challenge! On April 22, join players all over the world to play Tilt World a beautiful game that sets Flip, the mighty tadpole, against pollution and the forces of evil Blight. Players control Flip, a tadpole determined to replant the virtual world of Shady Glen and conquer climate change in the real world by planting real trees in Madagascar through a partnership with WeForest. Begin by helping Flip rid the environment of Blight and continue with the little eco-hero to chomp carbon from air and catch seeds to restore the forest that is Flips home. Then check out the global scoreboard as players Tilt together to clear the world of Blight. Tilt World is available on the iPhone 4S, iPhone 4, iPhone 3G, iPad, and iPod Touch second generation and beyond. On sale now for $ 0.99 cents on the Apple App Store. (http://TiltWorld.com/buy_tiltworld.html)

The next time someone chides you for wasting time and playing games, tell them that you are saving the world one tree at a time. ~ Edwin Kee, Ubergizmo.com

EARTH DAY CHALLENGE:

XEOPlay is on a mission to have players break 3 Million Tilt Points through Earth Day and thats enough to send their CEO Nicole Lazzaro to Madagascar to plant the first batch of thousand trees with their friends at WeForest. All thats needed is loyal Tilt World players to team up with Flip to achieve the goal. The final goal is up to 1 Million trees by the end of the year. As a special treat this Earth Day, XEOPlay is doubling what players points would normally be worth, which means players can help to plant twice as many trees!

About the Tilt World Design Team (http://www.TiltWorld.com)

Tilt Worlds Shady Glen: drawn by Iggy Mederios with Matthew Petyo and Glenn Hernandez; soundscapes by the Emmy Award-winning Stuart Dubey, programming by Dave Gregory, Chuck Soper, Dan Super, and Erik Bryn; and award-winning game design by Nicole Lazzaro.

About Nicole Lazzaro (http://www.nicolelazzaro.com/about)

For 20 years, founder and CEO Nicole Lazzaro has made entertainment more engaging through player experience design – applying her research that unlocked how games create engagement with the mechanics of the Four Keys to Fun. Nicole has an undergraduate degree in Psychology from Stanford, was honored by Fast Company as one of the 100 Most Influential Women in High Tech, by Gamasutra as one of the Top 20 Women in Games, and one of the Top10 Women in Gamification.

About XEOPlay, Inc. (http://www.XEOPlay.com)

Headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area, XEOPlay makes games that unlock human potential to improve quality of life through play. XEOPlay utilizes the innovative research on emotion and the fun of games of its sister company XEODesign.com to develop games for change and is pioneering the playsourcing movement.

About WeForest (http://www.WeForest.org)

WeForest is an international non-profit organization established as a Belgian ASBL/VZW and incorporated as a 501(c)3 in the U.S. Its purpose is to empower local women by planting trees in tropical regions, creating bio-diverse forest gardens that restore degraded land, protect biodiversity, produce clean water, ensure food security and counter Global Warming. WeForest.org has reforestation programs currently in: Ethiopia, Madagascar, Tanzania, Zambia, The Philippines, Kenya, India, Brazil and Honduras.

Social Media:

Tilt World Twitter: @TiltWorld

Tilt World Facebook: facebook.com/TiltWorld

Tilt World Blog: http://tiltworld.wordpress.com

Nicole Lazzaro Twitter: @NicoleLazzaro

Nicole Lazzaro Blog: http://www.nicolelazzaro.com

Game Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=sCWmy0T73d4

Video Game Character Throws Down an Earth Day Challenge, Dares CEO to Plant 1 Million Trees to Slow Climate Change

190 Million Free Stock Photos for Bloggers and Journalists from Foter.com

Rybnik, Poland (PRWEB) February 28, 2012

Foter.com unveils website that allows fast and free addition of free stock photos to content-based websites. Theres also a WordPress plugin available to assist those developing their site through the popular platform.

This new service lets you search, manage and add 190 million free Creative Commons images to blogs, forums, websites and other online media.

Witold Stawarz, CEO of InnovaWeb, that owns the site, explains how they aggregated so many millions of images:

Essentially, the technology behind Foter.com is constantly scouring the internet for images holding a Creative Commons license. When found, we remotely host them and make them available to users searching on our website. Weve also developed a 1-click system for grabbing the code for easy insertion into blogs, websites and other online media, he says.

In fact, the process of grabbing the embed code is designed to be very convenient: all attribution information is automatically added to each photo. After selecting an image from the search results (images can be found via tags or keywords), users can re-size the image as well as select the position in which theyd like to appear on their blog. Its then simply a case of copying the short code and pasting it into the final site.

Images can also be downloaded for use elsewhere.

The entire functionality of the Foter.com website transfers to the free WordPress plugin, which can be used without ever having to leave the WordPress Dashboard.

As Witold attests, the feedback he is getting is very positive: Weve already got bloggers, site developers and journalists swearing by our system. They report saving a lot of time compared to their previous methods of obtaining images.

The site is free to use and can be found at: http://foter.com


About Foter

Hosting over 190 million free Creative Commons images, Foter.com allows the full customization and 1-click insertion of images onto many online publishing platforms.

This new online service lets you search, manage and add free stock photos to blogs, forums, websites and other online media.

The entire system is also available as a WordPress plugin for seamless use within the WordPress platform.

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190 Million Free Stock Photos for Bloggers and Journalists from Foter.com

SEOPressor Wave Still Going Strong: Crosses 2 Million Mark This Week

New York, NY (PRWEB) August 23, 2010

The SEO Guy Daniel Tan is currently busy toasting the success of his WordPress plug-in SEOPressor that was launched earlier this year amid a great deal of anticipation. Coming from the great guru who has been popular for bestsellers in the past such as the Backlink Syndication System and Rank Mover, SEOPressor was touted to be a big hit. That has just been proven true after SEOPressor crossed the 2 million mark earlier this week, which means there are over 2 million WordPress pages currently powered by SEOPressor.

SEOPressor now ranks among the top 10 bestsellers on the eBusiness category of their payment processor, ClickBank, a distinction that it has maintained over the past 7 weeks. People who have used the plug-in are commending on the high conversion rate, better search engine ranking, more traffic and easier sales that it is helping them achieve.

SEOPressor is a WordPress plug-in and an optimization tool both built into one. In a very innovative method, it does important search engine optimization automatically and suggests to users on how to better optimize their websites intelligently. As a result, major search engines like Google pick up the website in prominence to others since it is already well optimized.

SEOPressor Version 4.0 has also been released last month which takes care of some minor hiccups in the previous SEOPressor versions and makes it more user-friendly and intuitive. The tool performs the basic functions of its predecessors but adds to the performance with its stronger algorithms. In a nutshell, this new program can analyze keyword density and placement, length of content, title and header tags, font decorations and images and links. It can add ALT-tags to images, which, according to Daniel Tan, can improve the on-page optimization of a website.

The SEO Score, a hallmark of the SEOPressor tools has been revamped to work better with Google Analytics and to give a more precise picture of how the website will potentially rank on the Google tool. At the same time, its enhanced user-friendliness ensures that the user gets more suggestions from the service on how they can tweak their websites and make them rank better on the search engines. The intention is to bring more traffic on the website, thus enhancing its commercial prospects.

SEOPressor is available at http://seopressor.com with a video walkthrough on the features of SEOPressor.

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SEOPressor Wave Still Going Strong: Crosses 2 Million Mark This Week

SEOPressor Wordpress Plugin Scores a Big Hit Now Supporting More Than 15 Million Pages

New York, NY (PRWEB) October 12, 2010

After following a rapidly increasing popularity since June 2010, SEOPressor has now reached the enviable position of one of the most top-ranking plugins for WordPress pages. September analyses on the popularity of this WordPress plugin show that more than 15 million pages of this popular blogging platform have SEOPressor on it. Daniel Tan, the developer of the product, is currently basking in the glory of the numerous awards SEOPressor has received, with talks about it being voted as a compulsory plugin for WordPress powered sites.

SEOPressor is available at: http://www.SEOPressor.com

What SEOPressor basically does is to help WordPress websites with search engine optimization. It helps basically in keyword optimization, i.e. in finding the right keywords that should be used on webpages in order to enhance their ranking on popular search engines such as Google. The plugin suggests various optimizations to webmasters, along with various automatic optimizations that has proven to produce results.

The one thing that has made SEOPressor so highly appreciated is its very user-friendly feature of the SEO Score. This is a score generated by the plugin for the website depending on how well it is optimized for the search engines. Using various parameters, the plugin can accord an SEO score for the webpage. Intriguingly, it has been found that the SEO Score given to any WordPress blog perfectly corresponds with the ranking of the website on services such as Google Analytics.

SEOPressor is available at: http://www.SEOPressor.com

The success of SEOPressor is unprecedented. Speaking with the reporters of this website, he says, I expected SEOPressor to do well because I had developed it in response to Internet marketers requests through my Warrior Forum, but I didnt expect it to be received so well. Perhaps it is the feeling that a website needs to be good for the search engines if it has to succeed that has made SEOPressor work so well. Also, I found that SEOPressor works exactly as per my expectations and that has given me the courage to work for something bigger in future.

SEOPressor is also being praised for its consumer-pleasing interface and for its search engine performance. There is a customer support of 24/7 for all global users of the plugin.

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Related WordPress Seo Plugin Press Releases

SEOPressor Wordpress Plugin Scores a Big Hit Now Supporting More Than 15 Million Pages

WP Engine Secures $1.2 Million in Series A Round of Financing Led By Silverton Partners

Austin, Texas (PRWEB) November 15, 2011

WP Engine, the WordPress hosting and security service for bloggers and small businesses, today announced the closing of their Series A round of venture financing.

The $ 1.2 M investment was led by Silverton Partners from Austin, TX, and includes angels Eric Ries, Loic Le Meur, Dharmesh Shah, Jeremy Benken, Bill Boebel, Rob Walling and others. Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, also participated with a strategic investment.

Automattic today also announced VIP Support for Web Hosts, a new partner program for web hosts that excel at hosting WordPress sites and blogs. WP Engine is the launch partner for the program.

Kip McClanahan, a partner at Silverton, joins WP Engines board of directors.

This round of funding allows WP Engine to further recruit for and scale its product and customer happiness teams, which are comprised of the very best WordPress developers and consultants. The company also plans to ramp partner relations with other elite WordPress service providers.

WP Engine has grown rapidly since its launch in 2010 and now has an install base of over 30,000 personal and professional WordPress blogs.

WP Engine leads the managed WordPress hosting segment with fastest page-load times, scalability, security and a staff of WordPress experts. Additionally, WP Engine provides all customers with a managed CDN for static content delivery, full daily backups, a complimentary staging area, and consultation on themes and plugins.

Were devoted to providing the absolute best customer service and the investment from Silverton allows us to expand the WP Engine platform with the right people to support our growing customer base, said Jason Cohen, founder and CEO of WP Engine. Our roadmap balances building out the features, add-on services and high-touch support teams that customers ask for the most, while avoiding services creep, which is critical. We want to remain the fastest and simplest WordPress hosting company, period. Trust in this business is everything.

Because of the one-stop approach, WP Engine works closely with a network of top WordPress consultants to provide them with the tools they need to get client sites up and running faster than they could alone.

“We’re excited to add WP Engine to our portfolio of leading Texas technology companies,” said Kip McClanahan, a Partner at Silverton. “WP Engine is helping to build out a high-touch platform and services ecosystem for bloggers and consultants, so everyone can focus on what they do best. There is a big opportunity between the plethora of lightweight, downstream hosting companies that casually talk about WordPress on their marketing pages, and Automattics VIP program, which is for only the largest sites and services. WP Engine is for anyone who is serious about WordPress, but not yet ready for VIP.

WP Engine was founded to be the fastest and easiest way to keep your content or commerce-based blog up and running at optimal speed. Key features include:

WP Engine Secures $1.2 Million in Series A Round of Financing Led By Silverton Partners

MailChimp Announces $1 Million Integration Fund

Atlanta, GA (PRWEB) November 18, 2010

MailChimp, the leading email technology platform with over half a million users worldwide, today announced the creation of a $ 1 million fund to support the development of integrations on the MailChimp platform.

The MailChimp Integration Fund is now accepting applications from anyone interested in building an integration on the MailChimp platform. Possible categories for development range from sign-up modules to more complex data sharing. Development can also focus on increasing the utility of an existing integration or plugin.

Interested parties should complete a short form online at http://www.mailchimp.com/about/integration-fund to begin the application process. Funds will be applied on a per-project basis and the amount of funds allocated to any one project will be determined based on the requirements of each specific project.

Weve been amazed at the number of third parties building MailChimp integrations on their own, in addition to ones that weve commissioned or built ourselves, said Ben Chestnut, Co-founder and CEO of MailChimp. The functionality that good integrations add to the MailChimp eco-system is really important. By continuing to decrease barriers to development, we hope to encourage even more people and companies to build compelling integrations with MailChimp.

More than 80,000 users currently access MailChimps application via their API. The software-as-a-service company has existing integrations with many companies like Facebook, Twitter, Picnik, Highrise, PayPal, Google Docs & Contacts, Eventbrite and plugins for WordPress, Expression Engine, Drupal and more. A complete list of current integrations and plugin can be found here.

A few years ago I had to decide between hiring a sales guy or investing in MailChimps API by hiring a programmer, said Chestnut. We went with the programmer and focused on making a solid, well documented API that was easy to integrate with. Making something more useful is the best way weve found to get and keep customers, so we created this integration fund to encourage entrepreneurs and startups out there to do the same.

In tandem with announcing the integration fund, MailChimp also released version 1.3 of their API. V1.3 makes accessible all of the data available within their application including geo-targeting and tracking data, making the possibilities for integration exponentially larger.

MailChimp is also a founding member of the Small Business Web, a network of web applications who integrate with one another via open APIs with the goal of making life easier for small businesses.

Companies like Freshbooks, Batchbook, Zendesk, Formstack, Wufoo, Shoeboxed and more are on the SBweb, said Chestnut. Once we started integrating with them, things began to snowball. Now we manage 200 million API calls each month.

About MailChimp

MailChimp is a leading email technology platform that is improving the user experience by providing seamless, yet powerful email marketing features that are easy and affordable enough for a small business to get started, but powerful enough for a large company looking for an enterprise level solution. With headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, MailChimp has 10 years of experience making it easy for customers to create professional email marketing communication. They offer users a fast and robust application for creating, targeting, delivering and tracking their email-marketing efforts. Customers enjoy cutting-edge features, like designer templates, advanced social segmentation and data, geo targeting, and free reports with every campaign. MailChimp’s platform uses an open API, and its already integrated with many third party applications including WordPress, Joomla, Drupal and Google Analytics. Plus, they provide a directory of third-party API Experts who can help customers set up the specific integration needed for their business. And best of all, prices start at free. All the information youve ever wanted is available at http://www.mailchimp.com.

Media Contact:

Caren West

Caren West PR

404.614.0006

caren(at)carenwestpr(dot)com

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MailChimp Announces $1 Million Integration Fund