Stick of Rock represents a new breed of communication consultancy – one founded on the principle that strong, joined-up, strategic, organisational communication offers businesses a point of competitive advantage. The name is a visual metaphor for our credo as we believe organisational values should run through a business like letters through a stick of rock.

As well as offering the services of a traditional PR consultancy, such as public and media relations, and crisis and issues management – all with a fresh twist for the web age – we offer strategic consultancy to audit and ensure businesses are projecting an authentic and consistent story to their key communities – both internal and external – in order to maximise reputational capital.

If you want to find out more email : crispin.slee@stickofrock.com

LG unveiled at the Mobile World Congresss 2009 the GD900, the world’s first transparent design phone. The GD900 comes with a sliding, translucent keypad. The crystal, glass-like LG GD900 will be released in Q2 2009. The phone will also come with a transparent headset.

source: Akihabaranews.com

The popular Live Messenger application for Facebook – embedding MSN directly into your Facebook Profile or Page – has just been re-launched for 2009, to the delight of its 400,000 strong fan-base!

The application has an impressive feature set, allowing your Facebook Friends to chat to you anytime on MSN via your Facebook Profile or Page. Widgets can be embedded on Business Pages, your main personal profile, Boxes tab or Info section.

The application homepage lets you view a real-time contact list with live status updates as well as engage in multiple, tabbed conversations and assign multiple MSN addresses to your Facebook account. The “Live Lounge” has also been introduced, an opt-in feature allowing users to meet and chat with new people from all over the world. There’s also handy access to SkyDrive (Microsoft’s free virtual hard-drive feature), Hotmail, Live Today and your MSN Profile.

Get Live Messenger for your Page

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Facebook Pages which use the application receive free advertising within the application too. It’s a particularly useful widget for Pages, since it enhances business communication and accessibility, allowing Pages to provide live support or points of contact for their clients…

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Notably users don’t actually even need to have an MSN account to chat to their friends, thanks to a unique ‘Visitor‘ sign in system. It means anyone can contact a business or friend from their profile without signing up to MSN. By its very nature, you’re instantly contactable when you are offline facebook or when Facebook’s own rather temperamental chat service is playing up! It’s a useful alternative to the MSN program itself, bypassing security restrictions or network issues as and when they occur, perfect for 3G users coming in and out of hot spots.

The official Windows Live Presence/IM APIs lie at the core of the application, enabling the web based chat functionality and powering the profile widgets.

Get the new Live Messenger for Facebook now and share it with your friends!

I’m delighted to share with you the launch of the first ever real world conferencing service enhanced and complimented by a virtual world arm. The system allows businesses to reach new audiences from both real and virtual world sources, providing a solution to global SME collaboration and interoperability. eOffice will be the first company worldwide to offer facilities of this nature to their clients, a move in touch with their forward thinking mentality.

The system consolidates real and virtual world resources in a way which not only enhances the reality of both, but creates a more engaging experience for participants. They can share video, stream webcam, audio, VOIP, images, URLs and collaborate on Documents, synchronised in real-time within an attractive virtual environment. It makes the powerful multimedia and communications potential of virtual worlds far more accessible to the masses, over a combination of platforms.

About Second Life

Second Life is the leading platform for 3D Virtual Reality worlds and a key player in the blossoming of the next era of the internet, with some 15 million residents.

Here, surfing becomes an immersive multimedia experience, interacting with sound, pictures, PowerPoint, video, other people and tangible objects as you walk, fly or teleport through a virtual universe.

Second Life opens the flood gates to a new level of collaboration, sharing and networking. Enabling real-time communication and dynamics between the real world and the virtual world, Second Life allows your virtual actions to have real consequences, unleashing endless possibilities to businesses with a virtual presence.

All this takes place within a real economy, across some 800 million sq meters of virtual land, with $1.5 million being spent on virtual goods every day.

The only limit in this environment is the imagination. Realism is a choice, not a prerequisite. Second Life is what you want it be.

Second Life Business Network
Second Life Tour

About the Designer

Mark Alexander set up his own business – Uproar Design – in 2007, as a Second Life Architect and Web 2.0 Specialist. He is currently reading a double Law degree at King’s College University London and Université Paris 1 – Panthéon Sorbonne. After winning a scholarship to study at Rugby School, he went on to spend a year working on pervasive messaging technologies at IBM and was selected to join their team at the Wimbledon Tennis Championships. Mark’s work with virtual reality at IBM was shortlisted for the Computing Awards for Excellence 2007.

By building bridges between real and virtual worlds he seeks to encourage a new model of interaction and communication as awareness of virtual worlds and their positive impact on real world business grows.

Mark Alexander
0044 (0)7896 825506
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Official Second Life Solutions Provider
Computing Awards for Excellence 2007 Shortlisted