My youngest daughter woke up a few times last night meaning of course I got a late start which translates into blogging late. I have been scanning the net for a while and here are some of the stories that caught my eye.

Ditech Communications Voice Quality Assurance solution was recognized at 3GSM with a “Highly Commended” label. While this award must seem sweet to executives at Ditech it comes without the added calories of this next story involving Dannon Yocream Frozen Yogurt going with a CRM solution from Sage Software. "Our biggest gain from Sage CRM is the ability to share customer and prospect databases with all users," explained Brad Gaylor, information systems manager for Yocream International, Inc. "We were aiming to better manage leads and accomplish more sales growth, which is what we are seeing as a result of implementing Sage CRM."

Frozen yogurt became the “in thing” when I was in college and the University I went to was still using punch cards in some departments when I enrolled. And that was 1984! The department of Computer Science at UCONN decided that to get students used to using punch cards, they would force them to submit course changes via these horrid pieces of paper.

The University of Connecticut in fact had a punch card fetish to such a degree that the school library was designed to look like a punch card. Apparently as technology left the punch card in the dust, so too the library’s brick face started to disintegrate and throughout my college years bricks would randomly fall on the ground. Thankfully I didn’t visit this building often enough to be at risk. :)

I recall the frustration of my first punch card experience and it ranks right up there with waiting in line for my passport to be renewed. But speaking of college, check out the leading edge applications that are being deployed at Wake Forest. This University is certainly on the leading edge using PDAs, laptops and cell phones as well as IBM WebSphere Multimodal Voice Portals. I wonder if their library is in the shape of a Blackberry. Of course today is a big day for RIM, the company that makes these addictive devices.

When you graduate college you are supposed to go out into the real world and earn money. Earning money is exactly what US LEC just did with revenues in the latest quarter of over $100 million and EBITDA of $14 million. VoIP was a factor in this sales increase and it shows you that the CLEC market is not dead at all if you made it this long.

We all know that few companies make money like Microsoft. They are basking in billions as they say (do they really say that?). Of course no one sits still at the Redmond-based software company and they are looking for ways to generate the next trillion. To that end, Steve Ballmer, the company’s illustrious leader announced the upcoming availability of Microsoft Office Communicator Mobile at 3GSM World Congress.

Communicator Mobile is a unified communications client that provides information workers with a premier mobile collaboration experience through native integration of mobile applications with enterprise-grade, real-time communications tools. The client goes beyond simple voice services, incorporating connected communication modes such as security-enhanced instant messaging (IM), presence awareness and integrated Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephony.

I am looking forward to testing this out for myself.

With that I am off to the coffee pot for cup number 2! ;)