Friday 16 November 2007

ROK completes share exchange, goes public

The ROK Entertainment Group Ltd. which owns ROK Comics and many other mobile services built up over several years, has announced the completion of its share exchange transaction with Cyberfund, Inc., a US public company.

The combined company will operate initially under the name of Cyberfund and will continue to be listed on the NASD’s Over-the-Counter (OTC) Bulletin Board under the trading symbol, CYFD.

The full press release about the listing appears on the ROK Corporation web site.

Following the share exchange that is part of the copany's transformation, ROK’s existing management assumed their same positions with the publicly-traded company.

Commenting on the transaction, Laurence Alexander, Chief Executive Officer, said: “We are delighted to complete this transaction which creates a dynamic new force in the global mobile entertainment industry. We believe the demand for mobile content is set to grow exponentially over the next decade. As an enlarged Group with access to public markets and a proven management team, ROK is well placed to exploit these trends for delivering shareholder value.”

“I am hugely proud of our achievements to date,” added Jonathan Kendrick, Chairman of ROK, “as it’s taken a massive amount of effort, initiative and perseverance by all our staff to have reached where we are today.”

As well as creating ROK Comics, ROK currently has three registered patents and 42 additional patent applications pending for new technologies which it has developed for the delivery of video entertainment to mobile phones. The technologies facilitate delivery of services, including, on-demand mobile TV streamed over mass-market 2.5G via GPRS, the storage of copy-protected movies stored on memory cards for play on mobile phones, Java, SMS and P2P games, place-shifting to mobile devices and VoIP mobile calling.

It is the Company’s plan to continue the roll-out of its products worldwide and maintain its investment in research and development to improve current products, and increase compatibility and user features, as well as work on new technologies and products.

A focus on technology exposes the business to risks of technological change and the Company is now actively acquiring, creating and aggregating content and services to deliver across the rapidly expanding network of content distribution.

The Company has a number of operational deployments as of the end of October 2007, including ROK TV with AIS (Thailand), Telenor (Pakistan), BSNL (India), Avea (Turkey) and Vodacom (South Africa), as well as ROK’s mobile TV service marketed direct-to-consumers. ROK Media has deployed a variety of innovative mobile entertainment applications to include ANSA, ROK Comics and Fonepark in the United Kingdom, the United States, China, Pakistan and Russia.

ROK New Net in China is providing lottery services and selling lottery tickets for the Beijing Welfare Lottery, as well as a number of other mobile value-added telecommunications service operators (VAS).

ROK also has a phone hardware division, supplying handets to several operators globally. (You never know you, may have one of our phones yourself). It has also launched a mobile conferencing system, RokTalk, which aims to make organising conference calls a doddle, and costs less for everyone involved.

Before the end of the second quarter of 2008, ROK aims to achieve a significant global reach in mobile television (FreeBe TV and ROK TV), as well as expand the Company’s product portfolio and breadth of commercial deployment of these services (through cross-sales of products and services), through ROK’s existing and growing partner distribution network which includes Mobile Operating companies and handset manufacturers.

Tuesday 13 November 2007

I'm A Comics Celebrity!

ROK Comics has teamed up with UK TV company ITV to enable I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here fans to create comics based on the stuck-in-a-jungle reality entertainment show, which has just begun its seventh season.

The first of its kind for a broadcaster, this truly interactive services is a simple point and click solution letting any web or WAP user create a comic based around the current celebrities and the best of previous shows.

Users can make up their own quips using speech bubbles and insert themselves into comic strip. Once completed users can then choose to buy their masterpiece or send it onto a friend for £1.50.

UK residents can check out the special IACGMOOH Comic Creator over on ITV Mobile. (There's also a WAP version of the Creator that enables yout to create comics on your mobile).

Comics cost £1.50 each and you can also send them to friends (if you know their network). All comics are moderated prior to publication.

Also as part of the offering from ROK, a daily professional comic strip based around the exploits of the celebrities is being created by ROK Comics and published on both web and WAP.