First Coffee

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Coleman Hawkins, an underrated saxophonist. He wasn't flashy but he sure was good:

 

True Companion's Roxxxy the Sexbot - we just read off the cue cards here, folks -- is a 120-pound, 5-foot, 7-inch mechanical with an anatomically-accurate mechanical skeleton hidden underneath real-feeling "flesh," according to its maker.

 

"No matter how real she may feel, I can't shake the thought that she's a cross between Joan Jett and Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, with a dash of Chrissy Hynde of the Pretenders thrown in for good measure," says industry observer Brennon Slattery. Obviously she's got your basic Rock Slut appeal.

 

Roxxxy debuted at the AVN Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas, yet another event we were not invited to, and at the show, Slattery says, "had a laptop plugged into her back." No, sorry, we don't have any pictures. We've seen the pictures, and trust us, actually seeing the robot makes it all just that much more pathetic.

 

But you'll be glad to know she's also Wi-Fi capable, and "her little quirks, like the way she holds your hand, can be shared with other sexbot owners through the True Companion Web site."

 

Roxxxy has attitude, Slattery reports, "with several personality types you can elicit at the touch of a button: "Frigid Farrah is reserved and a bit chilly; Wild Wendy lives up to her name; S&M Susan, well, you know; and Mature Martha has that experienced thing goin' on."

 

 Owners can also change Roxxxy's hair color, cup size, race, and other characteristics until they get that perfect creature, Slattery reports, adding in the key observation: "However, you cannot take away the cold, dead stare."

 

Her creators claim the sex aspect is mere marketing, that Roxxxy is "all about companionship," probably in much the same way Las Vegas claims it's all about family entertainment, not gambling, and guys say they read Playboy for the articles.

 

Slattery says Roxxxy's built with technology that allows her to carry out simple conversations, and we can believe she would certainly be a more sprightly conversationalist than the majority of live women the sort of men who would fancy Roxxxy are used to.

 

Douglas Hines, the robot's inventor, insists that "She's a companion. She has a personality. She hears you. She listens to you. She speaks. She feels your touch. She goes to sleep. We are trying to replicate a personality of a person."

 

Prices will hover around $7,000 to $9,000, depending on "the level of customization," Slattery says.

...

Time Warner Cable has announced its customer sweepstakes for the month of February -- "a chance for customers to win an array of prizes including a Sharp 46" LCD TV and a year of flowers from 1-800-Flowers.com."

 

The perfect His 'n' Hers twofer, in other words. "Pick out any flowers you want, honey."

The sweepstakes celebrates Time Warner Cable's partnership with Universal Pictures' Love Happens, available on video on demand for Time Warner Cable customers, just in time for Valentine's Day.

 

"I wish we could send all our customers flowers to show how much we appreciate their support," said Marissa Freeman, Senior Vice President of Marketing Communications for Time Warner Cable, "But we love that our customers have the chance to win great prizes and that we're able to connect them with the entertainment and music they love."

 

We wish you could send us all 46" LCD TVs to show how much you appreciate us, too, but we'll make do with the sentiment.

 

In addition to the Grand Prize TV, customers who are eligible also have a chance to win other prizes, including a 16GB iPod Nano and a $50 iTunes card. Customers can enter for a chance to win by visiting http://www.twondemand.com/love/. The sweepstakes runs until March 1, 2010.

All the usual rules and regulations and fine print and valid here but not valid there and family and friends and batteries not included and side effects may include and not held liables at the Web site.

 

...

After being "blown away" by the amount of mobile Web traffic NBC Universal received during the Beijing Olympics, NBC officials say the network is "investing even more heavily in mobile for the Vancouver 2010 Olympics."

 

Industry observer Tricia Duryee writes that in the summer of 2008, the Olympics were considered one of the largest digital events to date, and NBC executives were "stunned by the 6.5 million unique visitors coming to its mobile Web site during the games." But with smart phone adoption and data consumption "steadily increasing since, this Olympics could draw even bigger crowds to the mobile phone."

 

An NBC spokesperson told Duryee that this year they've added "two apps, a smart phone version of the NBC Olympics mobile site, and new social media features to its mobile offerings." In addition, "NBC said they have been able to attract advertisers to mobile -- not because it was part of a larger media TV or online buy, but because of the strong performance numbers from Beijing," she reported.

 

For the Olympics, NBC has launched two apps, Duryee says: "The NBC Olympics application is basically an extension of the site. It has news, results and video, but also social networking elements. For instance, users will be able to follow the Twitter feeds of athletes or share items with Facebook. It also uses technology from AT&T that allows you to chat with friends, publicly or privately."

 

And for the mobile Web, NBC has added a new smart phone version to its mobile site, "which will display well on phones with big screens, such as the iPhone, Android phones, and some BlackBerry phones. Users will be able to personalize the site for their favorite sports, or their region with content from the local NBC affiliates."

 

...

 Glowpoint, a carrier-grade provider of managed services for telepresence and video conferencing, has  announced that a global private investment firm, with more than $7 billion of capital under management, has expanded its use of Glowpoint's managed services to a total of nine sites.

 

Glowpoint originally implemented services for the firm in 2007, with an initial deployment of three sites in the U.S. Since then, the company has added more sites in the U.S. and in Western Europe, in cities such as London and Paris.

 

Glowpoint President and Co-CEO Joseph Laezza mentioned that the financial services sector represents more than eleven percent of Glowpoint's revenues, and the demand from this community continues to be strong.

 

Glowpoint's managed services for the firm minimize the cost and time lost from flights abroad, while also reducing company's carbon footprint, Glowpoint officials say, adding that their product also enables on-demand, impromptu collaboration globally between managing directors and executive partners.

 

The investment firm gets a lower total cost of ownership for infrastructure, Glowpoint officials say. The firm, whose name is kept confidential due to its policies, handles a family of funds that include venture capital, distressed debt, private equity, and public equities.

 

Laezza said "Our client's expansion validates the value proposition of Glowpoint as an everyday communications tool. In addition, Glowpoint's 'in the cloud' managed services eliminate the extraordinary challenge and expense of purchasing and managing a video infrastructure, allowing the firm to focus on their primary mission of managing capital for their customers."

 

Given Glowpoint's expertise and experience related to this vertical market, our company will continue to aggressively expand its footprint in the financial sector in 2010."

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is To The Bone, and wonderfully idiosyncratic collection of The Kinks doing a lot of acoustic material, a la Unplugged: Industry analyst Olga Yashkova will be the featured speaker for a Frost & Sullivan Webcast titled "Customer Experience Management and Service Assurance: A Happy Marriage?" It will be held Tuesday, February 9 at 11:00 a.m. East Coast time.

 

"The service assurance market offers tremendous opportunities for vendors," Frost & Sullivan officals say, emphasizing that it is "an extremely competitive market with high barriers to entry."
 

This is so partly because service assurance is a broad concept in a fragmented market: "There are over 50 participants in this market. In addition to being fragmented, different types of vendors cover various aspects of service assurance."

 

Recently, the analyst firm has found, "there has been a shift toward all-IP networks, delivering VoIP, IP video, data, and wireless applications, that have demonstrated better performance and throughput than legacy networks. From a service assurance vendor perspective, the emergence of these highly technically complex technologies creates a multitude of opportunities in such a difficult financial period."

 

Converged networks are known for their complexity, and because of the increasing number of IP-based applications on them and the augmented emphasis on quality of end-user experience, the need for effective service assurance solutions is expected to increase.

 

This briefing is pitched to "Service Assurance Vendors, Test Equipment Vendors, Component Manufacturers, Network Equipment Manufacturers, Original Equipment Manufacturers, Wireless and Wireline Service Providers," officials of the analyst firm say.
 

"The level of QoE ultimately determines whether customers will keep the service or leave for another operator... A holistic view of the network and complete end-to-end network and applications monitoring is necessary to deliver positive customer experience, and prevent customer churn," Yashkova says.

...

One of the largest electric cooperatives in the nation, Lee County Electric Cooperative, has chosen the ENERGYprism Customer Care and Energy Vision Operational Efficiency prodcuts from Aclara, a vendor of Intelligent Infrastructure and part of the Utility Solutions Group of ESCO Technologies.

 

Officials of Aclara say their customer portal and meter-data-management system will help LCEC "transform its advanced metering infrastructure into a foundation for smart-grid development." These additions to the utility's information systems will allow Lee County Electric "to turn consumption data into powerful knowledge for utility workers and customers alike," they say.

 

Based in North Fort Myers, Florida, LCEC has been collecting daily consumption data from its 210,000 customers since 2002 via the Aclara Two-Way Automatic Communications System technology, a fixed-network AMI that transmits meter readings over power lines.

 

With the addition of the Aclara Software MDMS, "the utility gains the ability to validate, store and integrate data from many utility systems, giving utility managers better decision-making power," LCEC officials say.

 

The Aclara applications also give each utility customer online information on household energy use, as well as tools to understand bills, "compare usage to similar households, pinpoint where energy dollars go based on a home profile, and learn ways to make smarter energy choices," according to company officials.

 

In addition, Aclara's "Bill-To-Date" feature lets customers see how much their electric bill is at any point in the billing cycle, determine what the final bill may be at the end of the billing period, and set a customizable threshold that triggers an alert from the utility.

 

"We're opening up an all-new dialogue with customers," says Dennie Hamilton Sr. VP & CEO for LCEC, "by giving customers the power to have us call, text or e-mail with alerts before a high bill arrives."

 

Hamilton also notes that the MDMS positions the utility to support emerging technologies. "It won't be long before people come home from work, plug in their cars and expect vehicles to be charged for a morning commute," he says. "With the MDMS, we'll be able to implement an hourly meter-reading schedule, and we'll have two-way communications into each household. That means we'll be ready to balance charging load as more and more plug-in vehicles hit the road."

...

Market intelligence vendor IDC, working with supercomputing experts from Teratec, France, Daresbury Laboratory, UK, Leibniz-Rechenzentrum, Germany, and Forschungszentrum Jülich, Germany, has been awarded a contract by the European Commission to develop a strategic agenda for high performance computing in Europe.

 

The study is scheduled to be a seven month contract, which will provide policymakers with an analysis of the HPC industry from 2010-2020, a view on the technology requirements from the HPC industry in 2020, and a strategic agenda for HPC in Europe.

 

The study is intended to provide the research and analysis needed to "increase the HPC capabilities available for the advancement of open science and to increase the competitiveness of the European Union in the supply and use of HPC systems," IDC officials say:

 

"The study has a mandate to look at the key strategic developments in HPC through to 2020, as well as examining the investments, structures, and coordination needed to develop supercomputing e-infrastructures across Europe."

 

Chris Ingle, associate vice president of Consulting at IDC, says this is "a critical moment for high performance computing leadership. Europe has been a leader in this field in the past and, with the right investments, can continue to develop a strong HPC industry and benefit from the use of HPC in science and throughout society."

 

Gabriella Cattaneo, director of Competitiveness & Innovation Policies & Strategies, Europe, at IDC Government Insights, notes that a policy agenda for HPC "will help support the European Commission's goal to develop EU ICT infrastructures for e-science, strengthening the European scientific research and high-tech capabilities."

 

The research contract requires a detailed comparative analysis of HPC investments and funding structures globally, as well as the impact of HPC on scientific and industrial leadership. Earl Joseph, program vice president of IDC's Technical Computing group, says that although the United States and Japan have vied for supercomputing performance leadership over the past few years, "other countries are quickly developing their own HPC industries and capabilities in order to increase their economic competitiveness and scientific leadership."

...

A recent survey of more than 1,200 business professionals in the United States, Japan, South Korea and China has found that video chat/conferencing is "rapidly being adopted worldwide," for both business and personal use.

 

The survey, conducted by Research Now and sponsored by Global IP Solutions, concluded that business professionals across multiple industries are adopting video in an effort to communicate and collaborate more clearly and effectively.

 

 Joyce Kim, Chief Marketing Officer at GIPS, says the results of this survey "underscore the increasing value of video in business communication. With demand for Unified Communications and desktop video conferencing on the rise, video quality issues such as delay and freezing must be addressed in order for users to effectively connect and collaborate."

 

The survey found that 79 percent of those who use video rely on consumer applications such as Yahoo!, Gmail, AOL and Skype, while 21 percent used video conferencing systems such as those offered by Cisco and Polycom.

 

Well over half, 61 percent, indicated video delay and video freezing as the largest concerns of video chat/conference use. In the US, 40 percent of business professionals surveyed indicated that their company will be deploying a video communication solution within the next 6-24 months.

 

Research Now programmed the online survey on behalf of Global IP Solutions to 1,200 senior business professionals in a variety of industries and employment positions across the United States, China, Japan and South Korea. The survey was conducted in late 2009 and all respondents were working in office environments that required them to operate a computer frequently during the workday.

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is our very own "Rockin' Country" playlist, featuring Hayes Carll, Jack Ingram, Steve Earle, Robert Earl Keen, Reckless Kelly, Charlie Robison, Chris Wall, Slobberbone, just all kinds of great stuff:

 

Webtrends, an enterprise customer intelligence company, has announced that Spirit Airlines, an Ultra Low Cost Carrier in the United States, Latin America and the Caribbean, will use Webtrends Analytics, Visitor Data Mart, and Optimize offerings to help improve the company's online customer service.

 

Spirit Airlines will also integrate Webtrends Analytics with Yesmail's Enterprise e-mail marketing platform. "Together," Webtrends officials say, "these products and partners will enable Spirit Airlines to execute marketing campaigns, and analyze data."

 

Spirit Airlines was in need of "a truly open customer intelligence platform," airline officials say, one that integrates with other marketing partners. The Webtrends Open Exchange allows this, resulting in an open framework of tools "working together and sharing information."

 

Spirit Airlines' Senior Director of Consumer Marketing Bobby Schroeter noted, correctly, that "The competition within the airline industry is incredibly fierce, and it is critical for us to go beyond that of which our customers demand," adding that with Webtrends' flexible architecture "we are able to integrate Web analytics in our daily processes and fully expect this to help drive our marketing."

 

Through their implementation, Spirit Airlines will use Webtrends Optimize to execute multivariate testing, segmentation and customer targeting to "maximize revenue and streamline the purchase processes in regard to online and offline marketing activities," airline officials say.

Spirit Airlines will also integrate Webtrends Analytics 9 with Yesmail for closed loop re-marketing: Webtrends officials say they're targeting low-use segments specifically, "and will also integrate the products with their custom voucher and coupon marketing system."

 

Yesmail offers e-mail marketing products, data management, media, social marketing and award-winning services for businesses of all sizes. Founded in 1997, the company's a subsidiary of Infogroup, and a part of the new Infogroup Interactive division.

...

Level 3 Communications officials say the company will provide live compressed and uncompressed high-definition television broadcast video services to CBS for Super Bowl XLIV.

For the first time ever, instead of sending the feed to a production truck for compression and delivery to the broadcast studio, an uncompressed 1.5 Gigabit per second feed will be sent from Miami to CBS studio headquarters in New York via Level 3's fiber-optic network.

 

In total, Level 3 officials say, "over 2,800 hours of video content will be acquired, encoded and transported across the Level 3 Vyvx services platform for overall Super Bowl coverage."

 

Bob Mincieli, director of Broadcast Operations at CBS, said "This year, we worked with Level 3 to test uncompressed HD feeds in the delivery of various NFL games and have been impressed with the results."

 

The NFL has used Level 3 Vyvx broadcast services for 21 consecutive years. During the 2009 football season, Level 3 worked closely with the league and broadcasters to provide video transmission for every regular season and playoff game, totaling more than 5,600 total feeds.

This season Level 3 also worked with the NFL to create a virtual private network that connects clubhouses and provides league teams with a secure, reliable means of sharing footage from games, interviews, practices and more.

...

TrustedOnes has announced the launch of a destination for recommendations from people you trust.

We hear they have a special section just for politicians.

 

Available on the iPhone and all Google Android phones, TrustedOnes "allows users to keep track of the places they visit, products they use, and businesses they frequent, to rate and share their experiences -- good and bad -- with the people they know and trust."

 

Oh, so it's not "Don't ever go out with Steve." Evidently it's also available on the Web.

 

According to the latest Nielsen Global Online Consumer Survey of over 25,000 Internet consumers from 50 countries cited by TrustedOnes officials -- and hey, we're going to take their word for it - 90 percent of consumers trust recommendations from people they know.

 

"TrustedOnes was founded on the principle that personal recommendations carry more weight than any other type of referral," says Arno Grbac, Founder and CEO, TrustedOnes. "Advertising, publicity, search engines and reviews from people we don't know are interesting input but, when it comes down to decision-making, carry little weight."

 

Interesting theory -- we wonder if we find a restaurant or movie reviewer is "right," as far as we're concerned, enough times, if that qualifies as "trusting" her?

 

TrustedOnes "learns from the experiences, questions and answers contributed by each individual member of a trusted group, and distributes that knowledge to the other members in the group," company officials say: "Unlike open or anonymous topical review sites dedicated to travel or restaurants, TrustedOnes allows users to define their own areas of interest and dictate their personal sphere of influence."

 

So if anybody would like to know where to eat in Istanbul, let us know. You can trust us. Really.

TrustedOnes is fully integrated with Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites, of course, allowing users to tap into existing friends networks: "Users can write a personal 'note' from their phone or the trustedones.com website, and have it instantly appear on Twitter or Facebook news feed."

 

And there's a "Social IQ selector," which gives users "the ability to filter information according to the degrees of separation from the source, virtually eliminating spam." As well as nuts who have no idea what constitutes a "good" restaurant, we imagine.

 

Based in Boston, TrustedOnes is a service of Cerimbrium.

...

In the insanely overcrowded field of iPhone apps, this sounds like a genuinely useful addition to the corpus: WellCare Today has announced the release of HealthAssist, described by company officials as "a medication adherence and health management application available on the iPhone and iPod Touch. "

 

There are actually four alerts as part of the app. "CalendarAlert" provides the user with a scheduled text reminder for each medication. "RefillAlert" provides the user with a reminder of when they need to request a prescription refill.

 

The "HealthAlert" function gives the user a monthly update on "condition-related" issues, such as breaking-news headlines, health management articles, dialogue forums or chat rooms and clinical trials.

 

And the "EMRAlert" provides the user with a way to store and update a private electronic medical record.

 

The application is free and can be downloaded through the Apple apps store.

 

It's an application there's a large and appreciative audience for: The New England Healthcare Institute notes that "one third to one half of all patients do not take their medications properly.

 

Patients with chronic diseases -- which affect more than half of all Americans -- are particularly susceptible to spotty adherence practices that leave them vulnerable to otherwise unnecessary hospitalizations and additional medical risks."

 

In fact, a recent article on the topic is headlined "Medication Non-Adherence Cost U.S. $100 Billion and 125,000 Lives." As we said, there's a need for this app. For quick access via the Apple apps store, type "healthassist" using the apps search function.

 

WellCare Today specializes in improving healthcare outcomes via applications on smartphones, with the first release for the iPhone: By texting application users medication reminders and educating patients via Web links to condition-related articles and social media sites, WCT officials say they "expect to improve chronic disease outcomes and reduce healthcare costs."

 

The applications are free of charge to the user and sponsors get condition-related branding opportunities.

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Beethoven's Sixth Symphony. Seemed appropriate for a rainy, pastoral type of day:

 

NICE Systems, which sells products that lets enterprises and security organizations "extract insight from interactions," according to company officials, and AnswerOn, which sells customer retention, acquisition and loyalty products to telecommunications service providers, have announced that Cincinnati Bell has selected the joint NICE-AnswerOn Customer Churn Reduction product.

 

It integrates NICE Interaction Analytics and transactional data analytics from AnswerOn.

The end-to-end product helps Cincinnati Bell create more accurate churn prediction models by integrating multidimensional analysis results into their churn reduction models: "It cross-references customer interaction and transactional data, and alerts customer retention personnel in near real-time," company officials say.

 

It helps Cincinnati Bell build offers for at-risk customers, deliver the offers and basically measure, monitor and fine-tune the effectiveness of churn models and retention offerings. It's deployed in a hosted model via a managed service.

 

Jeff Baker, Director of Planning and Support at Cincinnati Bell, says to provide service to our customers and ensure customer satisfaction, "we need to be able to use insights from both customer interactions and from transactional data."

 

 For instance, he explained, "if we see highly emotional calls, combined with a drop in phone usage, this requires our immediate attention or a change in the service package." Indeed. More red flags in one place would qualify as a Communist march.

 

"Retaining subscribers is vital, where a mere two percent monthly churn rate can result in many millions of dollars lost on a monthly basis, even for mid-sized service providers," said Barak Eilam, president of Interactions Business Applications at NICE.

...

Marketo, a marketing automation company, was honored with "Best Mass E-mail" product as part of Salesforce.com's AppExchange Best of '09 Awards. Winners were determined based on feedback and reviews from Salesforce.com customers, according to Salesforce.com officials, who added that Marketo's mass e-mail product has received more than 45 reviews with perfect 5-star ratings for ease of use, value, and support.

 

Last year Marketo Lead Management also won the AppExchange Best of '08 Award for "Best Marketing Automation" product.

 

Phil Fernandez, president and CEO, Marketo, said "receiving an AppExchange Best of Award two years in a row and continuing to earn perfect 5-star reviews from our customers is proof of our customer success-focused culture at work."

 

Hundreds -- hundreds, friends, hundreds -- of companies around the world are now using Marketo products, company officials say, to "manage e-mail dialogues with each and every sales prospect, create lead nurturing and lead scoring campaigns, and measure and analyze marketing effectiveness with less effort - resulting in increased lead conversion, higher response rates, and improved efficiencies."

 

The Mass E-mails category, one of ten separate categories, recognizes products that let users build segmented e-mail lists, create and distribute e-mail templates, and track post e-mail drop activity within Salesforce CRM.

...

 Benefit Software, a Software as a Service provider of online employee benefits enrollment and communication products, has announced the results of its 2010 client/employee satisfaction survey, finding that more than 90 percent of employees polled give Fringe Facts Online high marks as a tool that helps them make decisions regarding their benefit elections.

 

Employee satisfaction surveys are important to the Fringe Facts Online service, as employers use survey results to improve their employees' online enrollment experience.

 

Results from this year's ninth annual survey include the following nuggets:

 

·         For nine consecutive years, more than 90 percent of surveyed employees report that they found their online enrollment service easy to use.

·         For nine consecutive years, more than 90 percent of surveyed employees report that they would like to use the online service again.

·         For nine consecutive years, 8 out of 10 employees report that the online enrollment resources helped them make more informed decisions.

 

Sounds like the past nine years have been fairly stable.

 

Decision support tools have become more important as plans are increasingly complex and employers have given employees more responsibility in selecting their own options. In fact, Towers Watson's Annual Enrollment 2010 Flash Survey found that getting employees to understand new plan features was "the biggest challenge employers faced."

 

So to address the challenge, nearly half of employers surveyed -- 45 percent, nearly half indeed -- offered online decision-support tools to assist employees with their decisions, and three-quarters (do your own math) believe employees altered their plan decisions based on the use of these tools.

 

"Altered" to mean "improved," of course.

 

William Smith, Vice President of Sales at Benefit Software, said "starting in 2009, some of our larger clients asked us to drill down further into their survey results. We started to analyze satisfaction by gender, years of service, age, salary, and employee status. We also measured how these population segments used online resources and rated benefit options."

 

These larger clients, Smith said, have seen "statistically significant differences in responses in areas such as overall satisfaction and web site resource usage."

...

When Domino's Pizza asked consumers to tell the truth, it ended up back at the proverbial drawing board. Cutting board, sorry.

 

Recently, Domino's Pizza did something practically unheard of in the business world. First, it asked its customers for honest feedback. Second, it actually listened to the painful truth -- according to its documentary ad, "The Pizza Turnaround," unflattering words like "cardboard" and "totally void of flavor" were tossed about with abandon.

 

Finally -- and here's the shocking part -- the company reinvented its product from the crust up.

Do you listen to your customers like this? Don't be too sure, says new product development expert Dan Adams, who said instead of giving your customers what they want, you're most likely giving them what you want them to want.

 

Adams, author of New Product Blueprinting: The Handbook for B2B Organic Growth, says most companies are starting with a product and trying to talk their customers into giving it their stamp of approval: "What looks like soliciting feedback is really a bit of a dog and pony show."

 

Ask your customers what they want in a way that lets them know you really hear them, Adams advises: "A lot of companies pay lip service to this idea. As consumers we've all had survey cards slapped down in front of us or fielded post-purchase telemarketing calls. Reconsider how you are collecting customer feedback. Are you doing it in a way that really engages the customer so that you can get the truth?"

 

If you watch Domino's ad, you can see how ego-crushing it was for the company's employees to hear customers speak their minds about the flavorless crust and ketchupy sauce. Yet, you can also see how necessary it was for them to hear the harsh truth, Adams says -- it energized them to revamp their product and make it much, much better.

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Al Stewart's Year Of The Cat. Yes it was more than an extended single, there was a whole album, and it's pretty good - listening to "Flying Sorcery" now:

 

Soffront Software, a vendor of mid-market CRM software, has announced that Edgewood Partners Insurance Center is using Soffront CRM to "improve customer support, sales opportunities, and marketing activities."

 

EPIC is a Californian insurance brokerage, risk management, and employee benefits consulting firm. The firm's officials say they chose Soffront CRM over others because it fulfilled all of their needs within their budget: "We are impressed with the software's ease of use and ease of customization," says Brian Talebzadeh, EPIC's Information Technology Managing Partner.

 

The IT department at EPIC is using Soffront's Help desk module to "more efficiently manage customer information" as well as to "enhance communication with clients," company officials say. "With Soffront all customer information is easily available and organized," Talebzadeh says, adding that the software "allows us to automatically track customer issues, quickly assign ownership, and escalate issues."

 

The Web-based, self-help and knowledge management functions of the software provide knowledge base capabilities to EPIC's customers, partners and employees, company officials say. EPIC's sales and marketing departments are streamlining processes using the sales module of the CRM software.

...

 

 

 

 

...

 

Sage North America has announced that Castle CRM has added a cloud computing version of Sage SalesLogix to its CRM offerings.

 

Castle CRM, a Sage CRM Solutions business partner, has deployed an initial phase Sage SalesLogix cloud implementation for M. Frank Higgins and Co. Castle has also created a data migration tool to help customers who select Sage SalesLogix transition from competing CRM systems "at no additional cost," company officials say.

 

"The Sage SalesLogix cloud computing and Castle CRM value propositions both focus on customer benefits not vendor conveniences," says Tony Castle, CEO of Castle CRM. "Data security is paramount for our customers because they will not risk co-mingling their data with a vendor's other client data."

 

Castle CRM implemented Sage SalesLogix version 7.5.2 in the cloud for M.F. Higgins and Company, a commercial flooring contractor in Newington, Connecticut. Castle built customizations in Sage SalesLogix for Higgins, including a manpower report that helps the company schedule employees and resources on concurrent projects, replacing multiple iterations of spreadsheets.

 

"We do not staff IT personnel nor have the infrastructure required for many CRM systems," explained Steve Cloud, president of M. Frank Higgins and a guy who should start his own self-named computer consulting firm, adding that Higgins next plans to work with Castle CRM to add Sage SalesLogix Mobile for its employees.

...

 

Intelestream, open source CRM consultants and developers of intelecrm, the small business on-demand CRM product, has announced a partnership agreement with Visao, which is joining the Intelestream Channel Network as a Gold Partner, the highest level available. 

 

As a Gold Partner, Visao can directly sell, provide consulting services, and further customize the intelecrm application. The company will also use its experience to provide on-demand training to intelecrm users and administrators, Visao officials say.

 

As a former Technical Training Specialist with a prominent open source CRM vendor, Visao CEO Emilio Taylor is "well positioned to offer intelecrm training solutions provided by his team," says Channel Partner Manager for Intelestream Julian Kopald. "Although we are especially thrilled about this aspect of the Visao partnership, the company's services will of course extend beyond training."

 

Developed by Intelestream in 2008, intelecrm is marketed as a product offering "enterprise level CRM functionality to small and medium sized businesses" by the company. Pricing for the application follows a model that charges subscribers according to the quantity of records and data storage used, rather than the number of users accessing the system.

 

Intelestream also has applied what the company terms as a "pay-for-what-you-need" approach to intelecrm, where customers are billed for only the features and add-ons they require. Company officials say this is "an especially appealing option" for small businesses on a budget. Basic edition pricing for intelecrm, which includes unlimited users, starts at $20 per month.

 

The application is designed as an affordable, turn-key CRM solution that can be easily customized according to individual requirements - "an Iinternet connection and a Web browser are all that is needed to use the application," company officials say.

 

Intelestream Inc. is a Chicago based Customer Relationship Management product development and consulting firm that offers Open Source CRM Professional Services. Intelestream is the developer of intelecrm, the online CRM for small and medium sized businesses with a highly affordable pricing model for unlimited users. Intelestream also develops industry-specific verticals based on a CRM workflow. Our consulting expertise includes intelecrm, SugarCRM, info@hand, and other Open Source CRM related services. With Intelestream's diverse team of experts in both business and technology, the company is made up by many of the brightest minds in CRM.

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Tom Waits's hodgepodge collection of outtakes and unreleased material, Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers and Bastards. The material on this collection is so strong you wonder he couldn't find a place for it on the studio releases -- then you listen to those and realize yeah, those were pretty good too:

Mindjet, seller of collaboration and personal productivity tools, has made the MindManager 8 for Mac application available after the launch of its Web-based collaboration product Mindjet Catalyst last October 2009.

This latest version of the tool, which company officials describe as "a mind mapping application," is billed as having "further functionality and integration with native Mac applications" for information management for Mac users.

MindManager uses visuals on an expandable canvas, or "map," to capture and organize ideas and processes so that users and teams can see the forest and the trees -- what a novel concept -- "compared to documents, presentations and e-mail that constrain one to working one page at a time," company officials said.

Pricing details were not mentioned.
...

Facebook is now the most-visited social network on the mobile Web among Opera Mobile users, according to Opera's State of the Mobile Web report.

 

Unique users of Facebook grew more than 600 percent during 2009, a statement which could be taken in a couple of interesting ways ("Those must be some tall people!").

 

You'll never guess what site was formerly the most popular social network among Opera Mini users: VKontakte. Ever heard of it? We haven't. Maybe that's because the top 10 countries ranked by number of Opera Mini users are -- in order -- Russia, Indonesia, India, Ukraine, China, South Africa, United States, Vietnam, Nigeria, and United Kingdom.

 

And Nigeria is back on the list after a three-month absence, pushing Poland out of the top 10 for the first time. That might explain it: "Given the popularity of Opera in Russian-speaking countries, VKontakte used to be in the top position based on unique users, but it was overtaken by Facebook in 2009," company officials explain.

 

Twitter saw its usage increase more than any other social network, surging more than 2,800 percent in just one year. And Friendster, must suck to be you: All of the listed social-networking sites, except for Friendster, showed "significant" user growth from Opera Mini users in 2009, company officials said. FTL, Friendster.

Opera's State of the Mobile Web report, published monthly, provides information on the top global trends affecting the mobile Web. This month the report highlights Southeast Asia and examines social networking on the mobile Web.

 

In December 2009, more than 46.3 million people used Opera Mini, an 11 percent increase from November 2009 and more than 159 percent compared to December 2008. Those 46.3 million people viewed more than 20.7 billion pages in December, and since November, page views have gone up 10.1 percent.

 

Opera Mini users generated over 315 million megabytes of data for operators worldwide in December 2009, and since November, the data consumed went up by 10.5 percent. Bear in mind that data in Opera Mini is compressed up to 90 percent -- "if this data were uncompressed, Opera Mini users would have viewed over 2.9 petabytes of data in December," company officials say, noting that since December 2008, data traffic is up 206 percent.

...

Given the growing interest by enterprises for mobile collaboration and social networking, Research In Motion has announced that it is further mobilizing IBM Lotus Software on the BlackBerry platform.

To that end, they've released the BlackBerry Client for IBM Lotus Quickr, which enables secure mobile access to IBM's document-based collaboration software from BlackBerry smartphones. RIM is also releasing a new version of the BlackBerry Client for IBM Lotus Connections for enterprise social networking.

 

These applications join the BlackBerry Client for IBM Lotus Sametime for unified communications and collaboration.

David Yach, CTO for Software at Research In Motion, said the company has "made it easy for IT departments to align with corporate policies and deliver these capabilities."

BlackBerry smartphone users can navigate IBM Lotus Quickr libraries and folders using the tool, company officials say, as well as upload, preview or download content and edit files within Quickr's version controls.

 

The application also integrates with the BlackBerry e-mail application and the Documents To Go suite on a BlackBerry smartphone so users can edit Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint files.

There are updates to the server component as well with the BlackBerry Social Networking Application Proxy server, which is billed as a tool that "optimizes the data sent between IBM Lotus Connections or IBM Lotus Quickr and BlackBerry smartphones in order to improve performance and minimize data plan usage. Administrators can also generate usage reports."

...

A single negative experience with a customer call center would likely cause 68 percent of the respondents to take their business elsewhere, according to a recent survey released by Teleperformance, an outsourced contact center vendor.

The results of the customer care survey, Teleperformance officials say, show that the quality of experience with a company's customer contact center determines consumer sentiment and brand loyalty.

 

Survey results also revealed consumers expect excellent service in return for brand loyalty, finding that 87 percent of people felt they had a right to a better contact center experience if they regularly spend money with a company or stay loyal to a brand.

 

Almost exactly half of people said the main reason for their dissatisfaction with a company is poor customer service or a bad contact center experience.

 

The survey was commissioned by Teleperformance and conducted by YouGov. Over 1,000 U.S. adult consumers completed the survey recently.

"In a tight economy, retaining customers is critical," said Dominic Dato, Executive Chairman of Teleperformance USA. "Companies can't afford not to make quality customer service a priority."

Recently Teleperformance has announced a new customer experience concept, Teleperformance Platinum, with "affordable" pricing. The program allows the customer's environment to be "reproduced at the agent workstation to address specific customer demands, ranging from complex issues related to technical support to building strategic relationships," vendor officials say.

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is the East Village Opera Company's wonderful eponymous album. Such a good idea, you wonder if it was that nobody other than Malcolm McLaren thought of it before, or nobody outside of Malcolm McLaren on Fans could pull off this kind of thing:

Digium, the Asterisk Company, and Aumtech, a vendor of speech and computer telephony integration products, have announced a partner relationship between the companies.

Asterisk users now have a speech alternative, featuring server-based licenses that support 48+ ports of Automated Speech Recognition for less than the cost of one or two competitive ASR licenses.

Aumtech's offering provides 48+ ports of multi-language speech recognition for the Asterisk platform with support for $1,975 per port. Aumtech officials say users can now support an entire ASR server with 8, 24, or 48+ ASR licenses for a first-year cost of just $1,975 and $1,275 annually thereafter.

Aumtech is introducing its Media Resource Control Protocol Connector utility, which lets Asterisk customers access the Microsoft Speech Services 2007 ASR. This includes, company officials say, "unlimited grammars and multiple languages of ASR; the list of 14 available languages and voices is constantly growing, and there are successful installations in North America, South America, Europe and the Far East."

 

Asterisk users can access the speech product on Asterisk and on a variety of Interactive Voice Response tools, including Aumtech's VoiceXML 2.1 Certified IVR platform, or other standards-based IVR platforms.

The Aumtech MRCP Connector for the Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 Speech Server lets companies using Linux build speech-driven applications with the Microsoft ASR product. Since the MRCP Connector is based on the WC3 Forum's open standard, applications running on open platforms such as Asterisk can access Microsoft's speech recognition functions through Aumtech's Connector.

...

Dan Kirk, IT director for Tappan Street Restaurant Group, and his three-person staff spent much of their time traveling from one Taco Mac restaurant to another to resolve outstanding IT issues, make menu changes and pricing updates to point-of-sale systems in the company's 24 restaurants.

 

At least they saved on lunch expenses. Not sure you'd want to be his wife when he got home, though. But after developing some rather specific tastes in Mexican food they turned to Cbeyond, a vendor of communications and IT products.

"Before Cbeyond, my IT team spent significant time traveling to the restaurants to fix IT issues or make minor updates," Kirk says. "Because our restaurants are so far flung, the travel alone was taking up a significant amount of time."

 

He says they were looking for a communications system stable enough to support remote access capabilities, and with scalable services that would support growth and geographic expansion.

Now, with Cbeyond's small business communication solutions in place, Kirk and his team can do virtually anything from their work or home offices, and order Chinese for lunch once in a while. The system lets Kirk and his team pull sales and labor data every hour from every location, giving them the visibility they were looking for to get restaurant performance and revenues in real-time.

"Cbeyond is the backbone and infrastructure for everything we do, from hosting our Web site to providing the broadband connection that enables us to deliver our in-restaurant Wi-Fi," Kirk says. "Not to mention, I can easily check and pay my bill with CbeyondOnline."

Known for its Buffalo wings, "unparalleled beer selection" and service, Taco Mac began in Atlanta in 1979 when a couple of guys from Buffalo, New York made a pit stop in Atlanta on their way to Florida. After touring the city and enjoying the weather -- guys from Buffalo enjoying Atlanta weather, imagine -- they decided to stay and bring Buffalo wings to the sunny South.

 

Thirty years later, Taco Mac now has 24 stores in metro Atlanta and Chattanooga, and continues to grow, with new locations expected to open in Charlotte later this year.

...

Zeroing in on call center customers who want to do more with less, EQAOfficeCubicles.com has announced a newSegment Call Center Cubicle design to withstand the wear and tear of 24-hour customer service contact centers. Why, it's virtually "indestructible," company officials say.

 

Constructed only with metal and wood laminate tiles, EQA's Segment cubicle design is billed by the company as the most dirt-resistant "indestructible" cubicle on the market.

Yes, it's dirt resistant, company officials say: "Keeps work environment looking new longer, especially in dusty and dirty work environments."

We suppose this is an important quality in 24-hour customer call centers, although it never really struck us before, but the cubicles are advertised as being "graffiti-resistant. Hard surface materials protect the wear and tear from worker abuse, particularly in 2-3 shift or temporary worker environments."

And of course, along with being dirt-resistant and graffiti-resistant, it's "easier to disinfect since no fabric tiles are used that can retain moisture and germs."

 

But fear not, it's also "attractive." Company officials say the "designer-looking work environments attract higher quality workers and increase overall morale." To cut down on the graffiti, presumably.

According to an EQA Office Cubicles spokesperson, the segmented call center cubicles come with a five-year warranty, and "are available in a range of colors and textures that add aesthetic appeal to the call center and help attract and hold qualified customer service personnel."

...

Verint Systems has announced that Bouygues Telecom, a French telecommunications operator, is implementing the Impact 360 Quality Monitoring from Verint Witness Actionable Solutions.

Bouygues Telecom is deploying the software across some 2,000 agent seats in its six customer relations centers located across France.

The company operates its own customer contact centers, "supports the European Foundation for Quality Management, and is committed to ensuring consistent quality across its contact centers, Bouygues Telecom Club Stores and online operations," company officials say. One has to believe they have a strict policy of not hiring former Parisian waiters if they're interested in providing quality customer service.

 

"At Bouygues Telecom, workforce optimization tools, such as quality monitoring and speech analytics, can play an important role in helping us deliver on our service pledge," comments Thierry Prat, contact center IT manager, Bouygues Telecom, adding that Verint Witness Actionable Solutions "has a distinct approach to how unified, analytics-driven workforce optimization technology can help."

David Parcell, managing director, EMEA, Verint Systems, notes that the company "already works with EMEA communications providers."

Founded in 1994, Bouygues Telecom has more than 9.7 million customers, achieved 2008 sales of over $6 billion, and employs some 8,650 staff -- 2,000 of whom work as customer advisors in the company's six customer relations centers all located in France. This year, for the third year running, Bouygues Telecom was chosen as the top customer relations performer in the BearingPoint/TNS Sofres ranking of mobile phone providers in France.

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is The Kinks' scorching live set One For The Road:

Small and mid-sized businesses are becoming "more sophisticated" in their technology purchases, trying out software-as-a-service (SaaS) and managed services, new research from CompTIA finds.

The survey of more than 400 SMBs across the United States finds that "nearly 30 percent of them plan to implement SaaS in 2010," with the primary reason given being "to lower costs and maintain their competitive edge."

 

That's up from 22 percent and 14 percent respectively in the two prior years.

 

"Between 70 percent and 80 percent of the SMBs we surveyed consider the usage of ERP, CRM and online e-commerce capabilities as strategic to their business," says Tim Herbert, vice president, research, CompTIA. "IT solutions that are tied to instant return on investment in business communication and customer outreach efforts have the highest likelihood of adoption."

Thirty percent of SMBs say they intend to implement managed services in 2010. Perhaps not surprisingly, 42 percent of SMBs do not have a formal IT department, the study finds, "relying instead on workers handling IT needs on a part-time basis." Obviously with such jerry-built IT things fall through the cracks, things having to do with customer service, clients, customers and profits. Hence the need for managed services.

 

SMBs, the study finds, want technology to "drive revenues, produce immediate results to the bottom line and have a direct, positive impact on the customer's experience." As a result there's growing adoption of enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM) and related products.

Though the study found SMBs "somewhat upbeat" about business prospects in 2010 -- seven in ten expect positive revenue growth -- they said they want to keep current IT systems operational as long as they can -- hey IT budgets are lean, too. Nobody's looking for excuses to rip everything out and start over.

"Technology providers may be well advised to approach SMBs with either new IT tools that represent low perceived risk or replacements that positively impact productivity and efficiency," Herbert advises.

The survey was conducted among 409 SMBs during the fourth quarter of 2009 to determine their adoption, purchase plans, perception, mindset, spending, purchase decision making and related issues vis-à-vis IT products and services. Respondents were representative of businesses with 10-499 employees in manufacturing, finance and insurance, healthcare, government and other industries.

...

"Unlimited" plans are the best deal, right? Maybe. Maybe not.

 

AT&T and Verizon Wireless recently lowered pricing on unlimited voice plans, generating headlines of increased competition and consumer benefits. Great. But, ask officials of Validas, an online wireless billing analysis and service vendor, "do consumers really know whether the new unlimited plans will actually benefit them?"

 

Tom Pepe, founder and CEO of Validas, says "the reality is that the more options there are and the more plans change, the less consumers actually know what's best for them."

In some cases, Pepe says, "subscribers will actually be forced to pay more for the wireless plans, especially in the case of family plans. Because carriers are now offering fewer options for big family plans, more people are being forced to move up-plan into unlimited plans, even though unlimited plans are actually oversized for them."

 

For example: Validas officials say some popular 4,000-minute family plans were discontinued with the introduction of the new unlimited plans. "Now a family of five will actually pay $480 more per year on the new unlimited plan, which is the closest option to their previous plan." 

Pepe notes that in an industry "where the FCC is asking carriers to simplify wireless billing practices, new services, applications and calling plans are continuously coming to market, which inevitably creates more confusion."

Validas sells online wireless billing analysis, providing an online service letting customers optimize rate plans.

...

Sprint is the official wireless telecommunications service provider of the National Football League.

 

So if you want to call a friend, clergyman or mental health professional to agonize about Brett Favre deciding to throw a complete brain-lock interception on the last play of regulation instead of running for a few yards to give reliable kicker Ryan Longwell a decent shot at the field goal to send them to the Super Bowl, the NFL would appreciate it if you used Sprint to do so.

 

Sprint officials say they have enhanced and rolled out the company's network playbook in preparation for the 2010 Pro Bowl on January 31 and Super Bowl XLIV on February 7 in South Florida.

 

This is the first time in this reporter's life he's heard of anybody planning anything for the NFL Pro Bowl, the most meaningless event in the American sporting year. The Bud Bowl generated more passion and the Lingerie Football League plays more compelling football.

Sprint has invested more than $2.3 million on telecommunication enhancements for game-day communications, in addition to more than $53 million in network improvements Sprint made during 2008 and 2009 in Florida's Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties to augment its wireless networks, company officials say.

"Hundreds of thousands of fans are expected to visit South Florida," says Bob Azzi, senior vice president of Network for Sprint, adding that at Gate G of Sun Life Stadium in Miami, the Sprint 4G Mobile Marketing Vehicle will be available for three hours before the start of the Pro Bowl and the Super Bowl to give attendees hands-on demonstrations of Sprint 4G products and services.

Sprint is the first national wireless carrier to test, launch and market 4G technology. It's already available in 27 markets and "will continue to expand to new cities," according to company officials, who tout speeds of up to ten times normal service.

To handle the increased traffic for the Super Bowl -- the Pro Bowl will generate about the same increase in traffic as a busload of lost Japanese tourists -- Sprint will deploy five Cell Sites on Wheels -- cute acronym -- near Sun Life Stadium and the Miami Beach area for additional network coverage and capacity.

Sprint will also add fifty new cell sites between 2008 and 2009 in South Florida to enhance wireless coverage.

...

In response to the devastating 7.0 magnitude earthquake that struck Haiti on January 12, officials with the District of Columbia and the Haitian Ambassador to the U.S. have opened a Command Center at the Haitian Embassy in Washington, D.C.

 

The Command Center includes WebEOC as the emergency information management system. WebEOC officials say it "will enable the Haitian Embassy to more effectively manage its relief efforts."

 

Jerome DuVal, ESi VP for Federal Services and head of the D.C. office, said "we were able to get the Embassy Command Center fully operational within 48 hours."

The District of Columbia Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency, with the Office of the Chief Technology Officer, set up the command center in the embassy on January 17. The resources donated include 20 laptop computers, 20 telephones and phone lines, and training for embassy staff.

 

Verizon contributed the phone line installation, and ESi is hosting the WebEOC emergency information management software. "Communications resources is crucial to ensuring that the maximum support possible reaches Haiti," says HSEMA Acting Director Millicent Williams.

A team of WebEOC experts from ESi worked in the embassy and from remote locations around the world to stand up an instance of WebEOC on ESi's remote servers, WebEOC officials say: "The team created situation boards tailored to the needs of the mission, including boards for tracking missing persons, managing volunteers, and accepting donations."

"This is a significant opportunity for us to contribute to Haiti's recovery from this terrible disaster," says Nadia Butler, CEO and President of ESi.

Augusta, Georgia-based ESi is a crisis information management technology vendor. WebEOC and the company's other products are designed to connect crisis response teams and decision makers at national, state and local agencies, healthcare providers, airlines and corporations worldwide.

 

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is John Coltrane's highly accessible but not wallpaper album, My Favorite Things. We'll follow that with Workout from an underrated trumpeter, Hank Mobley:

PRC, which sells outsourced customer contact management services, marked its third anniversary as a member of the Colorado Springs community with a celebration on January 14 in the PRC offices at 6805 Corporate Drive in Colorado Springs.

As part of the celebration, local employees pledged 1,000 hours of community service to the Colorado Springs area through PRC Community Care, a company-wide initiative that encourages and enables PRC employees to take an active role in improving their local communities.

 

Each month throughout 2010, PRC employees will participate in a specific volunteer activity, raise money or collect items for donation to organizations that address homelessness, youth and family matters and provide support for U.S. soldiers serving overseas.

"Giving back to the community has been a part of the PRC fabric since our inception nearly 30 years ago," says PRC CEO Steven Richards, who attended the celebration in Colorado Springs. "We are very pleased to be a part of the Colorado Springs community and look forward to working with our employees, local leaders and community organizations to further improve the economic outlook and quality of life for residents in the area."

You know how it goes if you've been reading this space for any time at all: If a company's doing charitable work, they get to be a bit puffy here. It's First Coffee's "thank you" for what they do.

At the January 14 event, PRC officials announced the company's hiring plans for 2010. The company's bustling call center handles in-bound customer service calls for a client in the telecommunications industry.

"PRC's job growth in Colorado Springs is welcome news, especially given the current challenges facing our economy," says Mike Kazmierski, President & CEO of The Colorado Springs Regional Economic Development Corporation. "We are pleased to see one of our key primary employers expanding in our community since one of our objectives at EDC is to help create an environment that is conducive to corporate growth."

Representatives from local nonprofit organizations participating in the PRC Community Cares initiatives were on hand to announce plans for the coming year. Care and Share, Pikes Peak Family Connections, The Children's Literacy Center, and TESSA are all on the list to receive aid from PRC employees.

"Support from local businesses is essential in running our organization," says Lisa Amend, director of marketing at Care and Share. "PRC's commitment to help the Colorado Springs community is appreciated especially among individuals and families in need."

In the past three years, PRC and its employees have contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars in charitable donations to local community groups and organizations in the areas where the company does business.

The company was also recognized by ContactCenterWorld.com as a top global provider of outsourced contact management services. Headquartered in Ft. Lauderdale, the company is privately held.

...

LG Electronics MobileComm U.S.A. (LG Mobile Phones) hosted the LG Mobile World Cup, a speed-texting competition, crowning Young-Ho Bae, age 18, and Mok-Min Ha, age 17, from Korea as the winning team.

The duo took home the title of LG Mobile World Cup Champions, and split the $100,000 in prize money, after beating out 24 participants from 12 other countries after an intense five game series in New York City.

In addition to the main competition, the players attempted to set a new Guinness World Records mark for fastest texting. And in fact a new record was set by Pedro Matias, age 27, from Portugal who typed a 264-character text in just 1 minute 59 seconds, slicing 23 seconds off the previous record, set by Finland's Arttu Harkki on April 27, 2005.

Contestants competed for the title on sLG mobile handsets, including LG enV3, LG BL20 and LG GW520.

"It is amazing that our team won the world title! Every moment in every round of the texting game was just awesome!" said Young-Ho Bae. "It's an additional delight that we got to meet new friends from different countries in one of the most exciting cities in the world."

Morgan Dynda and Kate Moore from the United States placed second, winning a joint $20,000, and Juan Ignacio Aufranc and Agustina Montegna from Argentina placed third, divvying up $10,000.

During the competition at Gotham Hall, players competed in various texting missions, including break the wall, monster popping, moving pillar, running relay and racing replay: "In each mission, contestants were tasked with the challenge of typing in phrases on their mobile devices exactly as they appeared on nearby plasma screens with no typos or abbreviations while trying to be quicker than their opponents," LG officials explained.

Finalists selection for the LG Mobile World Cup began in May 2009 with a series of national texting contests across 13 countries including Canada, Indonesia, Portugal, Brazil, Russia, South Africa, Mexico, Argentina, Korea, Spain, Australia, and New Zealand. After several months, 26 contestants were chosen to compete in teams of two in the hopes of becoming the word's fastest texter.

...

Soft Solutions, based in Delhi, has launched a new software -- Image to OCR Converter, for text recognition in images, pdf and scanned documents.

The OCR -- Optical Character Recognition -- software can read text from bmp, pdf, tiff, jpg, gif, png and "all major image formats," company officials say, and "saves the extracted text in word, doc, pdf, html and text formats with accurate text formatting and spacing."

One can see the advantages, of course: It avoids retyping of scanned documents by converting the scanned image and pdf files back to text based formats.

Image to OCR Converter recognizes more than 40 different languages, company officials say, adding that images, pdf and scanned documents in any supported language can be converted back to the original language text complete with all language fonts and styles.

Image to OCR Converter recognizes English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, UK English, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Dutch, Portuguese, Brazilian, Galician, Icelandic, Greek, Czech, Hungarian, Polish, Romanian, Slovak, Croatian, Serbian, Slovenian, Luxembourg, Finnish, Turkish, Russian, Byelorussian, Ukrainian, Macedonian, Bulgarian, Estonian, Lithuanian, Afrikaans, Albanian, Catalan, Irish Gaelic, Scottish Gaelic, and Basque.

And we're betting you didn't know there was enough of a difference between Irish and Scottish Gaelic to merit a separate language designation.

The software also provides security features such as password protection and watermark to the converted documents to prevent unauthorized viewing and copying or illegal distribution. Image to OCR Converter can automatically detect and correct rotated, skewed and tilted documents, company officials claim: "Broken text and characters is also reconstructed to provide better accuracy and recognition."

...

No Tie Software has introduced 9,999 Ringtones Uncensored and AutoRingtone text to speech, both for iPhone and iPod touch devices.

"Musical ringtones are so 2009," company officials say, sniffing that "everybody has the same one and you have to guess which tone is for which contact. What people want is Talking Caller ID Ringtones."

Whatever your name is, whomever is calling, No Tie officials assure you "there's a ringtone for that. Users can select from 20 voices including quality commercially licensed voices such as British Man or Woman. They can also use 100+ introductory sound effects as fun attention getters."

Type the name of a contact to create a talking ringtone and you're away: "Ringtones Uncensored lets users type any message they want and have it turned into a talking ringtone," company officials say.

Over 100,000 unique AutoRingtones have been created so far -- if you want, you can have each caller's name, title, and a personal message spoken out loud. No more guessing who is calling or whose phone is ringing. Although this reporter would be a bit careful with that feature. Awkward social situations come readily to mind.

You'll need an iPhone or iPod Touch 2.2.1 or later (ringtones are needed on Touches?) Ringtones Uncensored and AutoRingtone PRO are both currently available at an introductory price of just $0.99, and there are even free lite versions of AutoRingtone so users can try before they buy. 
 

In addition to the iPhone .m4r ringtone format, ringtone sound files can be downloaded in .AIFF format, for use on other phones.

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Duke Ellington's "Track 360:"

SpoofEm.com has launched their latest service, Wiretrap. "Most anti-spyware programs detect spyware on a computer, but Wiretrap is a Web-based service that will detect 'who' installed spyware on an individual's computer," company officials say.

"The main objective of a hacker is to somehow get spyware installed onto a victim's computer. This spyware allows the hacker to follow every keystroke that is entered through the system," explains Sheehan Toufiq, IT Spokesperson and Assistant Developer to the Wiretrap Project. "With this information a hacker can enter an e-mail account to steal personal, social, and even financial information."

Evidently when a hacker opens the Wiretrap set by the user and clicks the link in an attempt to steal information, the hacker's IP address, information and location is sent back to the victim, as Toufiq explains: "If the individual who installed the spyware has a Webcam or microphone attached, or built into their computer, Wiretrap will take pictures or an audio recording of the culprit."

 

Then the pictures, audio recording, IP address, and other information of the individual who installed the spyware will then be e-mailed to the victim. "It's an exciting new concept. Once a hacker opens up our decoy message and that web link is activated, BAM, your hacker has just been caught red handed," says Toufiq.

SpoofEm.com's flagship product is a caller ID spoofing service which allows users to call any number and have any 10-digit telephone number show up in the caller ID. It also includes features like voice disguising, call recording, and text messaging from a different number.

...

NCIC Inmate Telephone Services has announced the implementation of Virtual File Store from Iron Mountain to its Inmate Call Engine.

 

This lets The Virtual File Store allows "virtually real-time" back up of inmate telephone call recordings and call detail to multiple data bunkers located around the country. The recording server is connected directly to the ICE platform recording system, so it can record the calls live without any access from jail or NCIC staff.

The Virtual File Store program with Iron Mountain is used -- "by most Fortune 500 companies," company officials claim -- to store data off-site for redundancy and security. It has added a "future-proof" feature to NCIC's secure, encrypted storage capability in that it can handle up to 100,000X's growth capacity instantaneously.

"As an added bonus," Iron Mountain officials say, the company offers professional witnesses for courtroom testimony to guarantee the security and authenticity of the original call: "This encryption protocol now means you are Defense Attorney Ready, as NCIC now offers you a comprehensive records management system."

The feature doesn't allow any type of deletion of any call recordings or call detail by jail staff or employees of NCIC for up to one year of the original date of recording. Each file is "stamped" by Iron Mountain to ensure that no call can be modified or manipulated.

NCIC guarantees 100 percent redundancy of recordings and data during any outage or major disaster as well.

The company operates a network of inmate calling platforms across the United States, and owns a multilingual customer service call center in Texas in addition to selling collect call and prepaid inmate telecommunication services for the detention and jail industry.

...

Cignias has released its free BlackBerry smartphone app, MusicNAO, and announced the general availability of the NAO Symphony and NAO Symphony Noir.

 

The NAO Music Systems offer a music product to "transform a BlackBerry smartphone into a wireless home entertainment device." company officials say: Using the app BlackBerrys can wirelessly stream music from the device or control an iPod docked in the music system in their home network, "while still using BlackBerry smartphone features including making phone calls or sending e-mail with negligible impact to the BlackBerry battery."

 

Shawn Saleem, CEO of Cignias, says the product came from a personal need: "As music lovers we were frustrated that no product existed to let us stream music over Wi-Fi from our BlackBerry smartphones to high-quality speakers," he said adding that it's designed "with no hassle and incredible smartphone battery conservation."

The NAO Symphony automatically downloads firmware updates as well as new features as they become available, providing users with what company officials say is "a future-proof sound system. As Cignias continues to add features to the NAO Symphony, the system will update itself and supply users with the latest technology."

The products give full access to playlists, albums, artists, genres, etc from docked iPod, intuitive color LEDs for navigation, instantaneous song skipping and a 50 watt speaker system. NAO Symphony and NAO Symphony Noir are available for $299.

...

Epicor Software, which sells enterprise business software to the midmarket and Global 1000, has introduced Epicor Retail Mobile Marketing for retailers, billing it as an "interactive and personalized marketing channel to target mobile consumers."

Delivered via a partnership with mobile messaging and technology provider Impact Mobile, the Mobile Marketing tool lets retailers deliver customized messages, coupons, and promotions to mobile device users. Company officials say it's designed to "encourage consumers to interact with the store environment, helping retailers strengthen brand and customer loyalty, while helping to drive revenues."

It can be used in-house by retailers to support SMS -- text messaging -- campaigns, distribute mobile coupons, and support a wide range of additional types of promotions. Additionally, Epicor's Retail CRM Services team is available to help retailers create, manage and launch mobile marketing campaigns via Epicor Mobile Marketing, "which can augment existing CRM initiatives or be incorporated as a part of the turnkey execution and management of ongoing CRM campaigns," company officials add.

Epicor officials see mobile device/smart phone users as a rapidly growing and potentially lucrative customer segment: Deloitte's most recent Annual Holiday Survey of retail spending and trends projected that nearly one in five consumers would use a mobile device to assist in their Christmas shopping this upcoming holiday, to find store locations, research prices, find product information, get coupons, read reviews and more.

 

Not only that, an estimated one in four consumers are projected to make a holiday purchase with their phone.

"For years, we have envisioned a combination of in-store mobile devices and consumer mobile devices," says David Henning, executive vice president and general manager for Epicor Retail. "Over the past 18 months this vision has begun to take shape as we have seen a major uptick in interest from retailers in mobile marketing."

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Frank Sinatra's Only the Lonely, the album of dark, moody ballads he called his "suicide songs" collection:

OpDecision, a corporate wireless expense management firm, has formed a sponsorship with Cell Phones for Soldiers.

 

More than 150,000 troops are serving overseas and are away from their families, and OpDecision and Cell Phones for Soldiers wants companies and individuals to help them out by donating cell phones. 

"We are in the wireless business, and no one is more worthy of regular communication than our soldiers who serve overseas," says Jay Milgrom, CEO of OpDecision. "That's why we have formed a sponsorship with Cell Phones for Soldiers, which lets our soldiers connect with loved ones back home."

Cell Phones for Soldiers was founded by teenagers Robbie and Brittany Bergquist from Norwell, Mass., with $21 of their own money. Since then, the registered 501c3 nonprofit organization has raised almost $1 million in donations and distributed more than 500,000 prepaid calling cards to soldiers serving overseas.

Approximately half of the phones are reconditioned and resold. The proceeds from each donated phone are enough to provide an hour of talk time to soldiers abroad, CP for S officials say.

"During the past few years, we have been amazed by the generosity of others. But, we have also seen the need to support our troops continue," says Brittany Bergquist, Cell Phones for Soldiers co-founder. "It is easy for Americans to make a small sacrifice of support by donating their unused cell phones and providing families with a much-needed connection to their loved ones overseas."

...

CBTReferee, a new app for the iPhone and Android, provides users with mobile tools to assist in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, a type of psychotherapy that involves journaling and reflecting to deter dysfunctional emotions and feelings.

 

So when we say "yep, there's an app for that" about pretty much everything, we mean there's an app for that.

 

This particular app lets users "jot down their thoughts and learn from them while on the go," company officials say.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, of which this reporter was completely ignorant of and suspects he's not the only one in that basket, is a psychotherapeutic approach that aims to solve problems concerning negative emotions, behaviors and cognitions through a goal-oriented, systematic procedure.

 

The treatment requires the patient to jot down negative thoughts or feelings, analyze them by noting cognitive traps such as generalization or catastrophic thinking, and finally, writing down a healthier statement that supports positive feelings.

The problem, company officials concede, is that "negative thoughts don't always occur in a therapist's office, or when you have a pad and pen handy." Or an iPhone, but nothing is perfect.

"I found myself always needing to carry around a notebook to practice CBT, since negative thoughts and feelings happen at random," said Andrew Arrow, creator of CBTReferee. "As a result, I decided to build a simple app for my own use. Finding it personally effective, I decided to put it in the app store, not really knowing if it would be useful for others."

 

The feedback he received convinced him otherwise: CBTReferee sales, he says, "have been increasing on a weekly basis, and based on its reviews, has provided some real value to its users." Which is, of course, all to the good.

"CBTReferee can be activated on the user's phone whenever and wherever a negative thought occurs," company officials say, explaining that the three steps deliver Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in a structured manner:

The user types out the negative thought. The next screen provides a list of ten potential fallacies that are possibly present in the statement, such as Nothing or All (black and white thinking where one small flaw kills an entire concept), Conclusion Jumping (assuming facts that don't exist), Emotions as Evidence (assuming that if you feel a certain way, it must be true) and others. Users scroll through the list and select the fallacies that apply to their negative statement.

Then the user is presented with a type-in screen titled "Referee Says." On this screen, based on the statement and the fallacies chosen, the user is prompted to type in an objective assessment to negate the negative statement. The app also keeps a "thought record" allowing users to reference previous thoughts and notice patterns in the way that they think.

And hey -- it's only five bucks. No negative thoughts there.

...

IPOWOW!, a developer and service provider of market research tools for gathering viewer opinion through online video, has struck a partnership with Digital College Network, a media company specializing in advertising signage in college-based retail environments.

Beginning this week, DCN will incorporate iPOWOW!'s survey interface into videos on DCNLive.com, a site described by iPOWOW officials as "exclusive to the college community," to collect real-time data and feedback for their upcoming spring break events.

 

DCN broadcasts original content created by students and professionals in five channels: Music, Lifestyle, Entertainment, Sports and All College. The network also encourages students to opt into a mobile platform, which can be used by advertisers to provide coupons or gather data.

 

Students are also directed to DCNLive.com, where they can view and upload videos, play games, enter contests and share information with other students.

 

IPOWOW!-enabled videos will "create polling opportunities and gather live audience opinion," providing the sort of data treasured by major advertising brands. They will also be used in DCN broadcasts to digital signs across their network of campus bookstores, collecting student survey and focus group results.

DCN is a North American collegiate digital network airing user-generated content from colleges and universities around the country, reaching over 4.3 million college students, faculty and alumni every month in more than 300 locations, according to company claims.

Company founder Gary Davis says their relationship with DCN "will enable brands to optimize their engagement with college viewers, an audience that is highly digital. Whether in dorms, on their mobile phones or in the campus bookstores, advertisers will be able to reach this key demographic."

"We're always looking for ways to help our advertisers get the most out of their outreach," said Chris Esposito, president and chief executive officer of DCN.

...

Given Argentina's soaring mobile and pay-TV penetration, the country still has not seen the same level of development in converged and bundled offers than in other markets in the region as regulators continue to block competition, according to the latest report from Pyramid Research, the telecom research arm of the Light Reading Communications Network.

 

Mobile penetration in Argentina is estimated at 120 percent at year-end 2009, compared with 89 percent for the region as a whole, while its pay-TV penetration, at 64 percent of households, is among the highest in the world, notes Luis Portela, Analyst at Pyramid Research and co-author of the report.

"Argentina: Regulators Block Competition in Key Telecom Sectors" offers a profile of the country's converged telecommunications, media, and technology sectors based on proprietary data from research in the Argentinean market.

 

The 30-page report provides detailed competitive analysis of both the fixed and mobile sectors, tracks the market shares of technologies and services, and monitors the introduction and spread of new technologies, such as WiMax, IPTV, and VoIP.

 

It provides a view of the Argentinean communications market by analyzing key trends, evaluating near-term opportunities, and assessing upcoming risks factors. Download an excerpt from the Web site.

"The number of double-play connections will continue to increase over the forecast period at a 3.2 percent CAGR through 2014, and triple-play connections will expand nine-fold over the same period," says Portela, "but the latter could expand even faster if telecom and cable companies manage to find an agreement with the regulator over pay-TV and voice service provision."

 

The high pay-TV penetration in Argentina, the report finds, would make it ripe for multiplay offerings, however, "regulations preventing operators from offering IPTV and VoIP services mean that the Argentinean multiplay market is not as developed as it could be."

From a service revenue perspective, mobile broadband Internet access is one of the most promising. "Mobile operators are increasingly focusing on this application as the killer application for its 3G network, translating into an estimated 59 percent CAGR over the forecast period, to reach $343 million by 2014," says Portela.

 

With mobile operators competing for 3G value-added services, near-term mobile capex spending will be driven mainly by continuous network expansion, capacity increases and upgrades to new technologies, such as mobile broadband technologies -- UMTS/HSPA, Portela thinks: "Also, if the regulator allows telecom companies to offer pay-TV services, opportunities in IPTV may arise with Telecom and Telefonica."

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is the wonderful sounds of silence. Hey everybody needs a break now and then:

Raise a beer, sports fans, Verizon says you've won: The Federal Communications Commission ruled last Wednesday that incumbent cable television providers that control unique, regional sports programming can no longer unilaterally refuse to provide access to that programming, including high-definition feeds, to competing providers. 

In a 4-1 decision, Verizon officials say, FCC commissioners concluded that withholding regional sports programming presumptively violates section 628 of the Cable Act and is anti-competitive: "The order, approved at Wednesday's open meeting, includes standstill language barring cable companies from cutting off access to programming during program renewal negotiations."

Verizon competes with Cablevision in the television market with its FiOS TV. It filed a program access complaint against Cablevision in July because the cable incumbent, in the words of Verizon officials, "continually denied Verizon access to high-definition versions of regional sports programming Cablevision controls in New York and parts of New Jersey and Connecticut."

 

Hey Cablevision, can you hear Verizon now?

Kathleen Grillo, Verizon senior vice president of Federal Regulatory Affairs, said "This is a big-time victory for television sports fans." So, see, it has to be true.

 

"The FCC's decision to make must-see regional sports programming, including high-definition feeds, presumptively available to competitors, puts viewers in the driver's seat," she added. "This ruling means that consumers will no longer have to stick with their incumbent cable provider in order to watch local teams in high definition."
...

Raising the level of journalistic inquiry a few notches, this reporter is investigating the news that Hooters Calendar and On The Go Girls  have announced today the launch of Hooters Calendar Sexy Screen Wash in the App Store. 

 

I know, you think the life of a freelance business technology journalist is all glamour and glitter, but friends, there are some things expense accounts just don't cover.

 

The announcement, Hooters says, demonstrates "the new ways in which successful brands are reaching consumers on today's smart phones."

Hooters Calendar Sexy Screen Wash is based on the popular Sexy Screen Wash applications from On The Go Girls, which have been downloaded by over one million users. The first edition of the new Hooters App features six women from the 2010 Hooters Calendar: Adrean Butler, Stephanie Le, Megan Brady, Brittany Smith, Claudia Gestro, and Priscilla Carey, for no-lifers to whom those names actually mean something. 

 

Users simply select the Hooters Calendar Girl of their choice, who then performs a virtual screen wash with a squeegee or feather duster. Hours of fun on a slow Saturday night, guys.

"We are thrilled to offer fans of Hooters Calendar such an innovative way to enjoy their favorite 2010 Hooters Swimsuit Calendar Girls on the iPhone and the iPod Touch," said Charles Melcher, publisher of the Hooters Calendar.

"Hooters Calendar is the ideal partner for Sexy Screen Wash," says Alan Johansen of On The Go Girls. "Their history of innovation, talented models, and worldwide appeal provides a compelling combination for iPhone and iPod Touch users." We're just quoting here, folks.

Hooters Calendar Sexy Screen Wash is available on the App Store.

On The Go Girls is a smart phone app publisher dedicated to "combining sex appeal with nerd appeal by bringing hot apps to the public." Nerds and techno sex appeal. Whoever would've thunk of that winning combination?
...

Norsat International, a vendor of satellite products, has announced that several of its portable satellite units, specifically its GLOBETrekker andNewsLink models, have been deployed in Haiti to offer immediate communications solutions on the ground.

Specifically, The Joint Enabling Capabilities Command's Joint Public Affairs Support Element, located in Suffolk, Virginia, which is an early entry capability that enables the joint force commander to "gain and maintain the initiative in the information domain," according to Norsat officials, is using Norsat's GLOBETrekker, a back-packable broadband satellite system to facilitate communications capabilities in Haiti. 

 

The GLOBETrekker features built-in intelligence to enable an operator to establish a reliable broadband link of up to 8Mbps) anywhere in the world, Norsat officials say, "especially in remote, harsh and hostile conditions."

In addition, the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit and the U.S. Navy have deployed their NewsLink portable satellite units to Haiti and will be used to support public affairs efforts. 

Norsat's NewsLink is a complete Ku-Band portable satellite terminal capable of broadcast quality MPEG-2 video of up to 10 Mbps, and offers simple setup and alignment and enables staff with minimal training to have the NewsLink up and transmitting "in just a matter of minutes," Norsat officials say.

At the onset, most of these systems will be used for public affairs and information-type applications. The systems will be generator powered and can last indefinitely due to the logistical strengths of the U.S. military.

Dr. Amiee Chan, President and CEO of Norsat, said while our hearts and prayers go out to the people of Haiti, "we are gratified to know that our GLOBETrekker and NewsLink portable satellite units have been deployed and are assisting in communications efforts, which is a top priority in the daunting task of disaster relief."

 

The systems, Chan says, are "durable, can withstand the harsh elements on the ground and are simple to use, making assembly quick and easy for the end user. Our staff remains on standby if additional units or support services are needed in the coming weeks."

...

The iPhone's massive lead in the total number of apps may no longer be translating into a similar advantage in the marketplace, according to a new analysis by Facebook mobile app store Mplayit.

 

"'How many apps?' is the wrong question," said Michael Powers, CEO and founder of Mplayit. "People just want to get the job done. It doesn't matter if there are 50 different to-do list apps on iPhone, because Android or BlackBerry just need a couple of good ones to make consumers happy."

Apple's iPhone has over 100,000 apps, while its closest competitors are eating dust -- there are about 20,000 Android apps and 4,500 on Blackberry App World. The case would seem to be closed for the time being.

 

Mplayit officials say they looked at the most popular application categories across platforms and "compiled the top apps in each category for iPhone, Android and BlackBerry." Their conclusion? There's "a great deal of similarity in the most popular apps in the most active categories, demonstrating that despite the big differences in the number of apps available by device, for the majority of consumers, there is less and less to choose between them."

 

Mplayit's app store on the Facebook platform offers mobile consumers a single destination for discovering apps for iPhone, Android, BlackBerry and Java phones. 

 

"To a customer, the app catalog is a key component of the smartphone experience.," said Powers, noting that Mplayit's cross-platform store on Facebook offers a place to directly compare what's available. "And we crowd-source our recommendations to expose popular apps that you don't find necessarily find in Top 20 charts."

Cross-platform apps did particularly well. Evernote registered among the top three of the most popular apps in the Lists and Notes category on iPhone, Android and Blackberry. 

Similarly, Pandora Radio is among the top three music apps on all three smartphone platforms. The analysis, Mplayit officials say, "showed that Barcode readers have recently shot to the top of the most sought after apps on all the three leading smartphone platforms." Currently, all of these platforms offer barcode tools from different vendors.

But of course, if you want it as an app, iPhone's got that.

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Creedence Clearwater Revival's Cosmo's Factory. One of the sturdiest bands in the history of American rock music, CCR's genius was that they created a sound that could take uninspired material and carry it along so it's not a distraction between the highlights:

As of Friday, Sprint has been advancing 80 percent of the funds of the mobile giving donations from its customers to the relief efforts in Haiti, with the remaining 20 percent to be submitted under Sprint's normal 30 to 90-day settlement cycle, company officials say.

This advance payout "will encompass all of the Haiti disaster relief shortcodes in which Sprint has waived standard text messaging fees, including the American Red Cross International Response Fund."

 

And as regular readers of this space know, if your company's pitching in for worthy charitable causes we'll let you get away with a bit of P.R. here.

Between now and Sunday, January 31st, Sprint is waiving all fees and charges for Sprint customers sending text messages to and from Haiti. "During times of emergency, it has been shown that sending text messages rather than calling is more reliable form of communications and frees calling lines for critical communication between first responders, other emergency personnel and aid workers," Sprint officials say, adding that waived text-messaging fees do not apply to customers roaming on other networks.

Sprint "realizes the need for monetary resources and support for this effort from our customers has been overwhelming," says Ralph Reid, vice president of corporate social responsibility for Sprint. "We want to ensure customer contributions are put to immediate use and Sprint is transferring these funds to bring relief to the people affected by the earthquake in Haiti as quickly as possible."

Since January 12th, Sprint customers have contributed more than $3.1 million in mobile-giving donations to Haiti relief efforts and 100 percent of all the money donated through texting is given to the respective non-profit organizations.

The Sprint Foundation is also matching any American Red Cross earthquake-relief donations made by Sprint employees from Wednesday, January 13th through the 31st. The Sprint Foundation will match employee contributions up to a total matched amount of $50,000.

To date, Sprint employees have contributed more than $24,000 with donations continuing through the end of the month, bringing Sprint and its employees' total philanthropic contribution to $98,000. Sprint's giving includes the Sprint Foundation grant of $50,000, more than $24,000 in employee donations and an additional $24,000 in matching Sprint Foundation donations.
...

NICE Systems, which sells tools to "extract insight from interactions, transactions and surveillance," company officials say, for business performance, reduced risk and safety reasons, has teamed with AnswerOn, which sells customer retention, acquisition and loyalty products to telecoms for a project to give Cincinnati Bell the joint NICE-AnswerOn Customer Churn Reduction.

 

The hosted product integrates NICE Interaction Analytics and transactional data analytics from AnswerOn, NICE officials say.

The product lets Cincinnati Bell create "more accurate churn prediction models" by integrating multidimensional analysis results into their churn reduction models, NICE officials explain: "It cross-references customer interaction and transactional data and alerts customer retention personnel in near real-time."

 

Cincinnati Bell officials say they want to build more personalized offers for at-risk customers, "deliver the offers in a proactive and timely manner, and perform on-going measurement and monitoring for fine-tuning of churn models and retention offerings effectiveness."

"We continuously look for ways to increase customer retention," says Jeff Baker, Director of Planning and Support at Cincinnati Bell, saying to do that, "we need to use insights from both customer interactions and from transactional data. For instance, if we see highly emotional calls, combined with a drop in phone usage, this requires our immediate attention or a change in the service package."

Eric Alan Johnson, AnswerOn's President and CEO, says by integrating data from NICE's Interaction Analytics, "we were able to increase the accuracy of our predictive model by 30 percent, resulting in an forecasted increase of 61 percent in saved revenue over the next 12 months."

Retaining subscribers is vital in an industry where a two percent monthly churn rate can result in many millions of dollars lost on a monthly basis, "even for mid-sized service providers," says Barak Eilam, president of Interactions Business Applications at NICE.

...

Following the devastating earthquake in Haiti, Ectaco, a vendor of hand-held translation devices, has released an English-Haitian (Creole) Speech-to-Speech Medical translator.

Ectaco has worked in the developing and manufacturing of linguistic products for over 20 years. The SpeechGuard handheld speech-to-speech device was initially requested by the Department of Defense to be developed for translation use by the military, company officials say, adding that it has subsequently "become used by many, including law enforcement, medical and Homeland Security agencies throughout the United States."

Ectaco's SpeechGuard MD-5 is a handheld electronic speech-to-speech device with first responder and medical content that affords translation from English to Haitian (Creole). Simply speak into the SpeechGuard in English and it will translate and repeat what you say in Haitian (Creole) instantly based on the recognition of its Audio Phrasebook. 

 

"In support of disaster recovery and emergency medical efforts in Haiti, we have readily made available thousands of dedicated units to be shipped," notes Ectaco CEO, David Lubinitsky.

Company officials say the handheld and pocket sized SpeechGuard is "easy to operate and takes 15-20 minutes of handling to get familiarized with its use. Users can speak a command, phrase, or question into SpeechGuard and be understood in numerous languages based on the modification."

 

Modifications include PD-5 (Law Enforcement), GI-5 (Military), HS-5 (Homeland Security), and MD-5 (Medical).

...

IQServices.com has announced the releaseZIP code using their telephone keypad and our text-to-speech engine delivers the location information in a realistic human voice."

One can see the obvious savings possible here. "Xtreme Locator IVR can save you hundreds of hours in human CSR time by automating the process of sending callers into your stores," Tremaine points out. "Since we have the capability to handle nearly an unlimited number of concurrent calls, customers will never have to wait and information will always be up to date and accurate." of its Xtreme Locator IVR Dealer Locator Application.

William Tremaine, Director of Sales, is pitching the product as "for companies that are unable to keep up with calls from customers trying to find out where to buy their products. Xtreme Locator IVR technology allows companies to automate telephone requests for store locations with packages starting as low as $50 per month."

It's a companion to the Xtreme Web Locator, and can handle "hundreds" of concurrent phone calls, company officials say: "Callers simply enter their

 

An added option allows for your callers to 'Patch Through' to speak directly to the nearest location when they need more information, he adds.

Emphasizing what he characterized as the "low setup fees and low minimums," Tremaine says this is "for businesses of any size. We expect that a lot of companies who thought such technology was out of reach will find this to be just what they were looking for."

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is The Kinks' Something Else:

Convergys has announced that it has been positioned by Gartner in the Leaders quadrant of the first ever "Magic Quadrant for CRM Contact Center BPO for North America," released in late 2009.

Gartner officials say they evaluated providers on "their ability to execute, criteria for which included product/service and customer experience." Gartner also looked at providers' "completeness of vision," they say, including "innovation, business model, market understanding and marketing, product, industry, geographic and sales strategies" in making its determination.

So as you can see, friends, it's pretty well determined.

Andrea Ayers, President, Customer Management, Convergys, credited the company's position in the quadrant to their "leadership, execution abilities, and investments in our portfolio, which includes agent-assisted care, automation, self-service, and analytic services." 

Gartner's evaluation also encompassed each provider's set of offerings for CRM programs, including the ability to provide such things as advisory, consulting and migration services, "insight across industries," technology advisory and integration services for both voice and multichannel care such as Web chat, e-mail response and Web self-service as well as what Gartner officials called "a comprehensive set of business process services across CRM functions, including customer selection, acquisition, retention and extension."

As a single-source vendor Convergys sells analytic services, technology and agent services for the customer experience and relationships.
...

To "streamline sales and marketing throughout its growing business," worthy goals indeed, Enpirion, an analog semiconductor company with expertise in power management, has standardized on an Oracle Accelerate solution fromBizTech for Oracle CRM On Demand Release 16.

Enpirion was started in 2001 by power management technology alumni from Bell Labs. Things progressed, and by 2008 demand for Enpirion's high density power systems embedded chips increased, company officials say, to the point where they were putting pressure on its "time and resource-strapped" sales and marketing organization.

Obviously what was needed was a revamp of its internal technology footprint. Enter Oracle, with Certified Advantage Partner BizTech to replace its existing homegrown database of spreadsheets.

As a midsize company, Enpirion doesn't have sackfuls of cash to blow on unnecessary resources or will-o'-the-wisp investments. Enpirion and BizTech used the Oracle Accelerate program to get a CRM implementation to meet their business needs today "and well into the future." Oracle CRM On Demand has been adopted across Enpirion's sales and marketing.

BizTech led Enpirion's Oracle E-Business Suite ERP implementation. BizTech officials say the project gave Enpirion the functionality required to accelerate demand creation and design in engagements, fit into the daily workflow of Enpirion's sales and marketing employees regardless of location and produce business reviews and reports.

...

The Internet -- surprising, we know -- continues to be the top destination for consumers shopping for products and services. Yes yes, you knew that, but evidently it's the hot place to check out mortgage and real estate financing as well.

It might even be more popular, but Kaleidico officials say the experience is "often frustrating, with over 60 percent of customers never getting responses to their inquiries." Evidently somebody doesn't want 60 percent of the business that comes knocking.

Kaleidico sells lead management software, and the vendor has announced that it is working with Google on its AdWords Comparison Ads feature, giving advertisers participating in Google Comparison Ads a way to receive, distribute, and immediately respond to every inquiry.

"Kaleidico has been in the lead management and Internet lead generation business for a long time," said Bill Rice, CEO of Kaleidico, "and nothing closes an Internet lead more consistently than immediate follow-up."

The integration of Google's Comparison Ads and Kaleidico's Sales Manager is intended to give the online shopper "the simple and responsive experience they are accustomed to when using other Google services," Kaleidico officials say: "Sales Manager connects advertisers to interested customers who've requested to be contacted via an anonymized phone number, and helps them discipline their immediate follow-up to every lead."

The goal for the advertisers using Google's new Comparison Ads was "to make our software feel like a seamless part of Google--simple to implement, simple to use, and best practices for lead conversion already in place," Rice said.

...

We like including unusual business locations whenever they crop up, and today's winner comes from Hampton, New Hampshire, home of ProTracker Software, a vendor for the financial services industry, which is introducing ProTracker Cloud, a hosted remote client relationship management tool.

 

"Without security there is no privacy," says Warren J. Mackensen, President of ProTracker Software. "Many states have enacted privacy laws that require a written information security program."

 

ProTracker Cloud builds on the ProTracker Advantage product, a contact, client and practice management program. ProTracker Cloud provides a hosted offering that includes the ProTracker Advantage client relationship management system, Microsoft Office 2007 (MS Word, MS Excel, MS PowerPoint), and Microsoft Outlook for e-mail.

 

All come standard with ProTracker Cloud and are accessible using a Web browser.

Mackensen says ProTracker Cloud has "two-factor authentication" to ensure data security: "Financial advisors can now connect with secure access to their client and appointment information anywhere, 24/7, from their laptop." The authentication is based on user name and a "strong password," he says, plus a physical security key "similar to a car door clicker."

ProTracker Cloud supports personal digital assistants and smart phones as well. Download a free, 30-day demo: www.protracker.com.

...

Here's another off-the-beaten-track business locale: From Nijmegen, The Netherlands, comes the news that CWR Mobility has released version 4.2 of its flagship product CWR Mobile CRM.

The product's a mobile tool for Dynamics CRM, with a client roster including Danone, Nestle, Hitachi and Sanofi Pasteur, according to company officials.

 

What's new in 4.2, you ask? Among other improvements are a native mobile CRM client for BlackBerry and iPhone, evidently since the company realized everybody except Melinda Gates has one. CWR Mobile CRM 4.2 is availablevia a global network of certified partners, and online in the USA and Canada.

 

There's also improved security, a software development kit, power management and remote application management.

Erik van Hoof, CEO of CWR Mobility, says "we want to give our customers the freedom of choice, so we built mobile CRM clients for BlackBerry and iPhone as well as an Express version which supports mobile Web browsers. All clients have full Dynamics CRM capabilities while having the look and feel of the device it runs on. Our new Express version also runs on Android, Palm Pre and any other internet enabled Smartphone."

CWR Mobility is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, BlackBerry Alliance Member and member of the iPhone Enterprise Developer Program. The CWR Mobile CRM clients are available on the Apple App Store, BlackBerry App World and Windows Mobile Marketplace.

Erik van Hoof: "We have built CWR Mobile CRM on the same pillars as Microsoft CRM: it fits your people, fits your business and fits your environment."

...

CRM vendor Maximizer Software has launched a marketing drive to bring the business benefits of CRM to franchise operators.

 

Three cheers.

 

Maximizer Software, according to company officials, gives franchisees "a holistic view of their customers and prospects," through access on site, over the Web or via smartphones and mobile devices. Its CRM product is billed as a way to bring together information "from all data sources within the franchise operation, as well as from outside if needed, to allow customer-facing employees to make decisions, identify opportunities and track customer activity."

"Franchises are a popular way to start out in business and appeal to those who want to buy into an established brand," says Mike Richardson, Managing Director EMEA, Maximizer Software, adding that Maximizer CRM can "revitalize franchise operations that have been trading for a number of years, reducing workload by automating business processes."

Company officials say the system is strong on customer service case management for tracking, management and resolution of inbound call issues and field service cases, including collaboration across organizational boundaries: "Trouble tickets can be generated following a phone call or by incoming e-mail, and managers can choose from a range of standard reports."

MaxMobile CRM is available on smartphones and mobile devices. Maximizer CRM also takes care of extracting and transferring financial data from the system through integration with accounts packages such as Sage Line 50, MS Dynamics and QuickBooks.

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is :

IQServices.com has announced the release of its Xtreme Locator IVR Dealer Locator application, for "companies that are unable to keep up with calls from customers trying to find out where to buy their products," according to company officials.

 

William Tremaine, Director of Sales, says Xtreme Locator IVR technology "allows companies to automate telephone requests for store locations with packages starting as low as $50 per month."

The Xtreme Locator IVR is a companion to the Xtreme Web Locator, a vendor of locator products since 2000, and is engineered to handle "hundreds of concurrent phone calls," company officials say: "Callers enter their zip code using their telephone keypad and our text-to-speech engine delivers the location information in a realistic human voice."

The locator, Tremaine says, is designed to "save human CSR time by automating the process of sending callers into your stores. Since we have the capability to handle nearly an unlimited number of concurrent calls, customers will never have to wait and information will always be up to date and accurate."

 

The company also offers an option for callers to "Patch Through" to speak directly to the nearest location when they need more information.

...

Customer experience systems vendor Amdocs has announced that Claro Brazil, a mobile service provider, will deploy Amdocs to support customer ordering, sales force automation, e-commerce and Web self-service.

The Amdocs products will support all Claro Brazil's current sales channels, including call centers, dealerships and kiosks, and "will also improve a new channel -- the Internet." Claro Brazil officials say they will introduce e-commerce as a new service

Ricardo Santoro, chief information officer of Claro Brazil, called the Brazilian market "heavily-penetrated," adding that the Amdocs products should give Claro customers "improved convenience and control through the new e-commerce and Web self-service offerings."

Claro Brazil officials say the company will deploy products from Amdocs' CES product portfolio to "modernize and standardize customer ordering, customer management, e-commerce, and product catalog management." They add the company will "benefit from the efficiencies gained by having one centralized system to manage and update, which reduces errors and operational costs."

Claro already has billing and partner relationship management products from Amdocs in production. Claro is a wholly-owned subsidiary of America Movil, S.A.B. de C.V. and its subsidiaries provide wireless and fixed communications services in Latin America.

...

According to Ovum, moving into 2010, contact center outsourcing providers need to take into account that in-house CRM budgets will remain very tight, says industry observer Avinder Batra.

This is based, Batra says, on a recent Ovum contact center manager survey finding that "across North America, Western Europe, Australia and New Zealand, only one out of five believed that their budgets would grow, with approximately 80 percent stating that theirs would contract or remain flat." 

Batra says from the perspective of the contact center outsourcer, "this means new contract opportunities with firms looking to maintain or improve customer service levels, but that can only work within limited means." 

There is a marked trend for enterprises to want to use their contact centers for the purposes of developing more revenue opportunities and end-user loyalty.

...

It's a given by now that social media is changing the world of customer service as we know it. And Seth Wadley Ford, of Pauls Valley, Oklahoma, is a dealership that gets it.

The dealership is using tools, including the Web and social media marketing services of GOSO, to connect with their community, according to Zach Butler, Internet Manager at Seth Wadley Ford.

There you go -- how many auto dealerships have an "Internet Manager" at all?

 

"We realized early on that social media shouldn't be ignored. That's where our customer's are, so it seems pretty clear that we should be there too," Butler said.

Seth Wadley Ford began working in social media over a year ago, setting up a Facebook account first and then Twitter, Flickr and finally YouTube. They do just what everyone else does, company officials say, "post things they find interesting."

 

As well as send Farmville lambs, mai-tai cocktails and take polls on whether or not they think Tiger Woods should get divorced or not, presumably.

"I just wanted to connect with our customers. I wanted to know what they think about this or that. If I am able to make a connection, then hopefully we can work together on getting them a new truck, or maintenance service. If not, then we've made a friend. So no matter the outcome we benefit," Butler said.

Seth Wadley claims to be the first Ford dealer to use the GOSO Facebook Application, launched last week. "Once we mapped it out, I realized the capabilities of sites like Facebook and Twitter," said Butler. 

 

On Seth Wadley Ford's social networks, Butler talks about industry and dealership news, reviews, and Oklahoma events. The dealership also pays attention to awards, reviews, testimonials and giveaways. Butler's networks "thrive on content that is outside the box and interesting to followers and fans," he says.

"Social media is about providing a new outlet for customer service and opening dialogue with your community," said Butler. "Our goal is always customer connection and service. The customer is the consistent part of all our marketing and branding ideas. Without the customer, we're just a big parking lot with a bunch of trucks."

GOSO is a subsidiary of BOALT, an interactive agency based in Washington, D.C.

...

Istanbul-based Global Bilgi A.S., a 100 percent subsidiary of Turkcell Iletisim Hizmetleri (NYSE: TKC), has announced that it has developed and is launching a program called Customer Check-Up.

The program "aims to address potential customer issues before they become complaints," company officials say, "to establish an infrastructure that provides proactive solutions by analyzing specific issues and customer concerns, so preventing the repetition of any issues."

Turkcell is the first operator in Turkey to offer its customers such a program. Impressive -- they have 45 percent market share and were ranked as the world's third best call center in the autumn of 2009, they're still innovating.

The Customer Check-Up program is intended to ensure that each call made to Turkcell Global Bilgi's call centers will be monitored and assessed according to specific criteria, including the duration of call, whether the issue was solved the first time the customer called and the number of calls that the customer placed regarding the same issue.

 

Customers who may not be fully satisfied will receive follow-up calls from an expert in the call center to ensure customer satisfaction and loyalty, Global Bilgi officials say, adding that in addition, "the history of the customer will be recorded to ensure answers are suitably tailored to their questions and that the customer is satisfied with the way the issue was addressed."

Turkcell has interests in international Mobile operations in Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Northern Cyprus and Ukraine and together with Turkey had approximately 61.9 million subscribers as of September 30, 2009. It's the only NYSE listed company in Turkey.

...

Denver-based NCH Software, a vendor of audio, video, business, VoIP tools and utilities, has announced that its Express Dictate digital dictation software is now available as a free iPhone app.

Express Dictate, called "Pocket Dictate" at Apple's app store, allows you to record and send dictation directly from your PC, Mac, PocketPC, Palm, SmartPhone, and now iPhone. The software is a professional dictation voice recorder that works like a traditional Dictaphone with HIPAA compliant for secure encryption.

Accounting firms, medical practices, and law firms in particular are going to be targeted: "A lawyer can dictate while at the courthouse, hit send and have the audio file e-mailed to their transcriptionist instantly," company officials say.

It will also use any microphone and speaker combination. Company officials are pushing it as something that can "cut out the secretarial services traditionally needed for dictation."