Celebrate A Very Chic Summer At Kildare Village

Next weekend, 21st and 22nd July, Chic Summer at Kildare Village will have a special treat for visitors. Members of the Irish Chamber Orchestra will be on hand to delight you with a repertoire of summer favourites. For those looking for something a little bit more upbeat, fashion blogger DJ Alex Donald will also be on hand with live sets. Expect a cool, chic, vibe along the open-air promenades of the Village. Finally, on the music front, shoppers will also have the privilege of hearing renowned Irish saxophone player Keith Donald.

Don't think music is the only thing to look forward to. Shoppers can also enjoy a ballet performance choreographed by Muirne Bloomer of ’The Ballet Ruse’. The performance, inspired by the birds of summer, will take place Friday 20th and Saturday 21st at 1pm, 3pm and 5pm. If the performing arts are your thing, this weekend will also see a parade of butterflies that will flutter their oversized wings throughout the Village. They will land at intervals so you can say hello and capture a family photo.

The ‘Chic Summer Festival’ at Kildare Village is much, much more than just these two new additions. The festival has seen Kildare Village transformed into a garden of delights, where visitors can enjoy a host of chic summer activities from bespoke floral couture installations, an artisan food pop-up and a Heritage & Genealogy trail.

Of course, Kildare Village is always about one core activity: shopping. With more than 60 luxury boutiques offering the authentic previous seasons’ collections of luxury fashion and lifestyle brands with savings of up to 60% on the recommended retail price, and sometimes more, all year round, you’re guaranteed to come home a happy shopper.

Kildare Village is open seven days a week and offers late night shopping on Thursday and Friday until 8pm, and Saturday until 7pm.

Log on to KildareVillage.com for more details on Chic Summer Festival at Kildare Village.

NASA: Spacecraft 3D

NASA has launched a new app that lets you get up close with NASA’s robotic space explorers. The ‘Spacecraft 3D’ app shows you how the robots work and in addition highlights two actual NASA missions: the Curiosity rover that will touch down on Mars on 5 Aug 2012 and the twin GRAIL spacecraft, Ebb and Flow, currently orbiting the moon.

Using your iPhone or iPad camera, the app uses an AR functionality to display the spacecraft and then overlays content and information directly onto the 3D spacecraft.

Download the app here: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/spacecraft-3d/id541089908

30-Hour Videogame Marathon Sets New Guinness World Record

----- Press Release -----

DUBLIN, Ireland – July 9, 2012 — With thousands of people watching worldwide, Laura Rich of Cardiff, Wales, and Kathleen Henkel of Oakland, New Jersey, set a new Guinness World Record Wednesday for Longest Videogames Marathon Playing a Card Game, and raised tens of thousands of pounds for charity: water in the process. The event, which took place simultaneously in London and New York, involved each participant playing PopCap Games’ latest social game Solitaire Blitz on Facebook for 30 consecutive hours totalling more than 1,500 hands. PopCap has also confirmed that Solitaire Blitz is currently in development for iOS, allowing more players to experience the Guinness World Record-setting game in a new dimension when it launches on iPad®, iPhone® and iPod Touch® later this year.

All proceeds from the related pledge drive, which garnered US$92,577, will enable charity: water to build 18 new wells that each will provide 250 people in developing nations with clean drinking water for at least 20 years. Combined with PopCap’s own pledges of $5,000 per player, marathon players Rich and Henkel utilized a unique pledge mechanism created for the occasion to garner pledged charitable contributions from more than 1,400 people around the world. Both women exceeded the minimum 25 consecutive hours necessary to establish the record, and both stopped playing after exactly 30 hours, thereby sharing the record.

The most significant innovation in more than 20 years of the beloved card game played by more people than any other, Solitaire Blitz has already attracted five million lifetime players and more than 600 million games played per month since its official launch on March 12. Combining the simplicity of standard solitaire with social camaraderie and friendly competition, as well as the bonuses, power-ups and beat-the-clock excitement of PopCap’s other hit social games Bejeweled® Blitz and Zuma® Blitz, Solitaire Blitz has seen two billion hands played since launch making it a game that is incredibly easy to play and impossible to put down.

"Laura has showed resilience and an unshakeable passion for gaming over the last 30 hours, and she has certainly earned her place in the Guinness World Records family. Congratulations to Laura and her support team for an incredible record-breaking accomplishment,” said Gaz Deaves, Gaming Editor for Guinness World Records.

“While achieving a world record today is an amazing feat, the thrill of helping earn nearly $100,000 for an organization as great as charity: water is arguably just as exciting,” said Laura Rich, 31-year old mom of three from Cardiff, Wales. “To know that my love for a videogame helped bring clean drinking water to thousands of people is an honour I will never forget.”


About charity: water
charity: water, www.charitywater.org, is a non-profit organization bringing clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations. We raise awareness about the one billion people living without life’s most basic need and invite others to join our mission. Then, we use 100% of public donations to fund clean water solutions in areas of greatest need.

About PopCap
PopCap Games, www.popcap.com, is the leading global developer, publisher and operator of casual video games: fun, easy-to-learn, captivating games that appeal to all ages across PC, mobile, social and other platforms. Based in Seattle, Washington, PopCap was founded in 2000, was acquired by Electronic Arts in 2011, and has a worldwide staff of more than 600 people in Seattle, San Francisco, Vancouver, B.C., Dublin, Seoul, Shanghai and Tokyo. PopCap's games have been downloaded over 1.5 billion times by consumers worldwide, and its flagship franchise, Bejeweled, has sold more than 50 million units.

Carlsberg launches ‘Crate Escape’ in Ireland

Today, Monday 9th July 2012, Carlsberg have released the details of their latest TV ad 'Crate Escape'. This Thursday, 12th July, Carlsberg's humorous take on the film ‘The Great Escape’, will air in Ireland before any other market.

The ad is set in a remote health spa where a bunch of lads have been forced to join their partners on a luxury spa break. Obviously the lads in question would much rather be somewhere else. This leads to an ingenious plan to add a much needed element to the whole experience: a cold Carlsberg.

Our hero calls on his mates to break out and smuggle a crate of Carlsberg back into the spa, and just like Steve McQueen and the lads in The Great Escape these crafty chaps use a host of cunning and oddball methods to get the job done. To be honest though, you should just watch it...

Speaking about the new ad, Karen Murphy, Senior Brand Manager, Carlsberg, said: “We’re delighted with our new TV ad ‘The Crate Escape’ and to be chosen as the first market to air it. The commercial reinforces the Carlsberg brand message and offers some light-hearted entertainment as our hero steps up and comes good by his mates and his girlfriend. Carlsberg has a reputation for producing - memorable ads with clever wit and we believe ‘The Crate Escape’ will be really well-received amongst our audience. To coincide with the launch we are running a themed competition on the Carlsberg Ireland Facebook page to giveaway a weekend break to either Barcelona or Berlin for four mates.”

Developed by creative agency Fold7, the 30, 50, 80 and 90 second ad was directed by Peter Lydon whose work includes hit Channel 4 TV shows Shameless and Teachers, and features music from the Elmer Bernstein score for ‘The Great Escape’. The ad will be rolled out across Carlsberg's global markets, kicking off in Ireland, Sweden and Belgium on 12 July.

To view the new ad first and be in with a chance of winning some fantastic Carlsberg Crate Escape prizes, visit Facebook.com/CarlsbergIreland.

Electric Ireland: The Road To London

Electric Ireland have launched a new Facebook game to celebrate their involvement with Team Ireland at London 2012. There are lots of prizes to be won including an all expenses paid trip to the Olympics!

Check it out for yourself here.

A really nice feature to the app it that it also allows you to customise your Facebook cover photo at the end to show your support for the Irish Team.