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Alltel Wireless, with American's Largest Network, Provides Support for Gulf Coast Customers as Hurricane Gustav Approaches

Network teams in place to support customer communications

LITTLE ROCK, Ark.-- August 30, 2008 --Alltel Wireless, with America's largest network behind it, is continuing to provide digital service to customers across the Gulf Coast as Hurricane Gustav approaches the area. The company has network crews in place throughout the region ready to provide reliable network coverage when the hurricane makes landfall. The crews are prepared to respond to any weather-related emergencies that might threaten communications services in coastal states.

"Alltel takes very seriously our responsibility to ensure our customers stay connected to friends and family during Hurricane Gustav," said Chris Smith, executive vice president of network services for Alltel. "Alltel has made significant investments in its wireless network to improve coverage and reliability, and we have once again taken all the necessary steps to prepare for Gustav."

Earlier today, the company began closing retail stores in south Louisiana to support evacuation efforts. The following closings were announced through Monday:

    * 1043 West Tunnel Blvd. in Houma, La.; 1818 Manhattan Blvd. in Harvey, La.; 2701 N. Causeway Blvd. in Metairie, La.; 1000 W. Esplanade St. in Kenner, La.; 9424A Three Rivers Road in Gulfport, Miss.; 808 Highway 190, Suite B in Covington, La.; and 1302 Corporate Square in Slidell, La.

Alltel will continue to monitor the storm through its command center operations so that it can respond quickly and effectively with manpower, generators and equipment to keep customers in communication with friends and family once Gustav makes landfall.

Alltel also works to help customers in hard-hit areas. All other retail stores will remain open as long as possible. Stores that are closed will reopen as soon as conditions permit to allow customers access to phone chargers and batteries. Alltel opens mobile retail stores in particularly hard-hit areas.

Network preparations to this point:

    * Secured agreements with vendors to provide fuel to keep trucks and generators running.
    * Placed generators on standby in hurricane-prone areas, and tested on-site backup generators for readiness in case of a power outage.
    * Prepared to provide lodging, RVs, food and water for technicians working in storm-hit areas.

Customers can prepare for Gustav by:

    * Verifying that wireless phones are working properly.
    * Programming wireless phones with emergency contact numbers.
    * Making sure wireless phone batteries remain fully charged.
    * Keeping additional charged batteries on hand along with car chargers. Phones, batteries and chargers should be kept in dry, easily accessible areas.

In addition, once Gustav makes landfall, customers should consider:

    * Using Text Messaging instead of trying to place a call.
    * Limiting non-emergency calls, whenever possible.
    * Waiting 10-15 seconds before dialing again if a call fails to go through.
    * Using their camera phones to record damage for insurance purposes.

Alltel is owner and operator of the nation's largest wireless network and has more than 13 million wireless customers.
Contacts

Alltel Wireless
Andrew Moreau, 501-905-7962
Vice President - Corporate Communications
andrew.moreau@alltel.com
or
Scott Morris, 501-905-4094
Manager - Corporate Communications
scott.l.morris@alltel.com

// posted by (hris @ 11:28 PM 0 Comments

Yahoo! Launches Fire Eagle

New Platform Enables Users to Easily Update and Manage Their Location Information Across the Web

SUNNYVALE, Calif.-- August 12, 2008 --Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO), a leading global Internet company, today announced the general availability of Fire Eagle (http://fireeagle.yahoo.net), an open platform that helps users take their location to the Web while giving them the ability to easily control how and where their location data is shared.

Fire Eagle gives users a place to store and manage information about their location, and offers developers clear protocols for updating or accessing that information. Because it's open, any networked service can use Fire Eagle to respond to a user's location - to help them find their friends, annotate the world or find nearby services or local information.

"Fire Eagle is about making everything on the Internet more useful, fun or interesting by adding the element of location," said Tom Coates, head of product at Yahoo! Brickhouse. "We're here to help people take their location to the Web by giving them the ability to control how much detail about their location they want to share and which applications they want to share it with."

Fire Eagle makes it much easier for both users and developers to create Internet experiences that are geo-aware:

    * For users, Fire Eagle acts as a simple interface for managing location information and deciding how - and with whom - to share it. Users can authorize Web, mobile or desktop applications to update their location automatically, or they can do it themselves manually on the Fire Eagle Web or mobile sites. Then they can decide how much of that information to share with their favorite services. At any time they can hide themselves, change their sharing preferences or delete any of their stored information.

    * For developers, Fire Eagle takes away much of the costly and complicated heavy-lifting of developing geo-aware applications. Developers can focus on how they can use location in their services without having to build the infrastructure to work out where their users are. Fire Eagle - combined with Yahoo!'s full suite of geo technologies - now makes it practical for any service to become location-aware easily and inexpensively.

Fire Eagle was built at Yahoo! Brickhouse, a home for start-up like projects inside Yahoo where small teams seize on new ideas and create products around them. Since its private beta launch in March of this year, Fire Eagle has been integrated into over fifty live applications, including Dopplr, Pownce, Movable Type, and Outside.in, through the platform's well-received API.

"The combination of Outside.in's new Radar feature and Fire Eagle's amazingly simple and powerful API means that our users can now see all the news and buzz within 1,000 feet of their current location, updated from any number of applications and devices," said Steven Johnson, co-founder of Outside.in.

"Fire Eagle allowed us to easily add location data to Pownce using their simple API," Leah Culver, co-founder, Pownce. "Pownce users can now say where they are and geotag their notes which adds a new dimension to the service."

Services built on Fire Eagle during the private beta period include:

    * Brightkite: Brightkite is a location based social network that allows users to track their friends' locations and meet new people in their area.

    * Dash: Dash is a two-way, Internet-connected GPS navigation system offering an innovative solution to traffic monitoring.

    * Dipity: Dipity is the easiest way to make and share interactive stories for the people and topics users care about.

    * Dopplr: Dopplr is a service for intelligent travelers that helps them make the most of their trips by sharing their travel plans with the people they trust.

    * ekit: ekit is the leading communications provider to international travelers, offering a range of services including mobile phones, satellite phones, SIM cards, global calling cards, and recently the ekit travel journal.

    * Lightpole: Lightpole is a mobile application service provider that distributes location-specific information to mobile devices in real-time and engages mobile users in interactive communities.

    * Movable Type: Movable Type is a fully integrated, scalable, proven social publishing platform for building highly interactive websites, blogs and social networks.

    * Navizon: Navizon provides a software-only wireless positioning system that triangulates signals broadcasted from Wi-Fi access points and cellular towers to help users find their location.

    * Outside.in Radar: Outside.in's Radar is personalized local news with you at the center of the map. Radar shows you everything going on nearby, wherever you are, from the stories on your street, to the events in your neighborhood, to headlines in your city.

    * Pownce: Pownce is a way to keep in touch with and share messages, files, links and events with your friends.

    * Loki: Loki adds your location into your favorite social networks so you can share it with your friends. Loki, powered by Skyhook Wireless, automatically informs your friend of your whereabouts, using platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Fire Eagle, RSS Feeds and more.

    * SPOT: SPOT, the world's first satellite messenger, sends users' GPS location and custom messages to family and friends or emergency responders over a satellite communications network from virtually anywhere around the globe - even the most remote places - independent of cell phone coverage.

    * ZKOUT: ZKOUT enables mobile device users to create content - messages, photos, videos - on the ZKOUT network from any location, and share it instantly with the people near you.

Developers wishing to learn more about Fire Eagle can visit: http://fireeagle.yahoo.net/developer.

About Yahoo! Inc.

Yahoo! Inc. is a leading global Internet brand and one of the most trafficked Internet destinations worldwide. Yahoo! is focused on powering its communities of users, advertisers, publishers, and developers by creating indispensable experiences built on trust. Yahoo! is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. For more information, visit pressroom.yahoo.com or the company's blog, Yodel Anecdotal.

Contacts

Outcast Communications
Andrew Schmitt, 415-392-8282

// posted by (hris @ 11:36 PM 0 Comments

Rebtel expands low-cost and free interational mobile phone service to Beijing and Hong Kong.

Stockholm, Sweden  -  April 23 -- First Shanghai. Now Beijing and Hong Kong. In just three months, Rebtel http://www.rebtel.com, the people's global communications company, has delivered on its promise to expand low-cost and free international calling to more Chinese cities.

Starting today, Beijing and Hong Kong residents can use their mobile phones to call any phone, anywhere in the world for just pennies per minute, and make free calls to friends, family, and work colleagues in more than 40 countries.

Using Rebtel Direct, calls from Beijing and Hong Kong to the U.S. and Canada, for example, cost less than 2¢ per minute whether you're calling a landline or mobile phone. By comparison, the same calls on China Mobile will cost $1.16 per minute.

"But if you think Rebtel Direct rates are still too expensive you can use our Smart Call system and make that same calls for free," said Hjalmar Winbladh, Rebtel's co-founder and CEO. "With Rebtel you can now call friends and family in more than 40 countries around the world from Beijing or Hong Kong for nothing more than the cost of calling around the corner."

A Rebtel account can be set up in just a minute or two. The service works with any mobile phone just the way it is, and is registered and authorized to work with all Beijing and Hong Kong mobile operators.

There is no charge to set up a Rebtel account. All new comers get a free 10 minute call to test the service.

After an account is set up subscribers only pay for the minutes they use. Smart Calls between the counties served by Rebtel are always free and only one of the two people on a call must be a Rebtel subscriber.

"This is a great time to be expanding our service in China," said Winbladh. "Hong Kong and Beijing have been important international business centers throughout history, and now athletes and media from more than 200 countries around the world will soon converge on China for the Summer Olympics."

How Rebtel works
Rebtel gives people local phone numbers in their country to call their friends, family or work colleagues who live abroad.

By making all calls local, people can call each other as often as they like and talk as long as they want, for little or nothing more than the cost of the local calls.

That means, for example, Rebtel gives someone living in Beijing a local Beijing phone number that will connect them to their friend in New York. And Rebtel gives the person living in New York a local New York phone number to call their friend in Beijing.

Getting started is fast and easy:
1. Go to http://www.rebtel.com and enter your mobile number and your friend's mobile number.
2. Rebtel creates local numbers and sends them in text messages (SMS) to each phone.
3. Save the number in your phone's address book and use it any time to call your friend abroad.

About Rebtel
Rebtel is a global communications company for individuals and businesses that make international calls. With Rebtel it's possible to call any phone, anywhere in the world, for just pennies per minute. Rebtel's services can be used with any mobile phone without modification or software downloads. There is no charge to set up a Rebtel account. No monthly fees, no connection fees and no hidden costs. Anyone may make a free 10 minute call to test the service. Thereafter, customers only pay for the minutes they use. Smart Calls between the 46 counties served by Rebtel are always free and only one of the two people on a call have to be a Rebtel customer. For more information, or to start using Rebtel services, go to http://www.rebtel.com.

Press Contact: Greg Spector
Company Name: Rebtel
Phone: +1 415 717 4666
Website: http://www.rebtel.com

// posted by (hris @ 9:27 AM 0 Comments