By David Sims
[email protected]
The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music
is the best currently available Donovan anthology, Troubadour:
The Definitive Collection 1964 – 1976:
Luxembourg-based Gemplus International S.A., one of the
world’s largest providers of smart card based products has been picked by “operator
galaxy” T-Mobile
to provide its new GemXplore
Generations operating system as the basis for future card and service
deployment.
T-Mobile evidently liked GemXplore’s ability to comply with
the latest multimedia features and standards releases, both of which can be
updated over the air at any stage of the SIM lifecycle – thereby reducing time to
market.
Przemek Czarnecki, Executive Vice President Terminal
Technology, T-Mobile said the Gemplus’ GemXplore Generations was “revealed to
be the most technologically advanced concept of OS.”
First CoffeeSM lives on the Mediterranean coast
and loves how foreigners use English. Locutions that would never occur to a
native speaker sound almost… poetic.
T-Mobile will use GemXplore Generations to provide a common
smartcard platform for the T-Mobile group.
Gemplus International S.A. is, company officials claim, according
to Gartner-Dataquest (2005), Frost & Sullivan and Datamonitor “the world’s
leading player in the smart card industry in both revenue and total shipments.”
It has sold over 5 billion smart cards, and its 2004 revenue was just north of
a billion dollars.
…
First CoffeeSM hopes you’re sitting down, because
the latest Network
Management Group study shows – hold onto something – that “commercial-free radio over mobile phones and the ability to download music to phones are the two most interesting advanced mobile services to young adults,”
according to Reuters.
They’d also rather put up with ads and get free mobile video
than sign up – and pay – for subscription video services of the kind offered by
Verizon Wireless and Sprint for about $15 a month, the survey finds. Streaming
music or video and music downloads might not be as heavily-demanded, in other
words, as wireless service providers hope.
Reuters reports that “about 40 percent of 1,000 phone users
between 13 and 34 years old would be very interested in commercial-free radio
over their mobile phone… nearly 35 percent of those surveyed showed an interest
in wireless music downloads.”
40 percent of users showed “strong interest” in ad-supported
video services, while “less than 20 percent” would be “very” or “extremely”
likely to pay either a monthly mobile video subscription of $4 a month or a fee
of 30 cents per video clip.
Oh, here’s another shocker – teens are more interested in multiplayer
video games on their phones than other demographics. Right, First CoffeeSM
can’t either.
…
AltiGen Communications, Inc., a provider of
next generation IP telephony systems, has announced it is partnering with Commtech, a distributor of Internet, networking and
security products in Ireland, to distribute AltiGen’s IP phone systems and call
center tools to the Irish market, in line with AltiGen’s hitting the European
markets.
AltiGen lost $858,000, or 6 cents
per share in Q2 this year, which Gilbert Hu,
AltiGen’s president and CEO partly blamed on the Asian lunar new year.
…
FYI: Argentine firm Nektra Advanced Computing is announcing the
release of a new version of its flagship product, OEAPI, “to enhance Outlook Express with new extensions,” according to
company officials.
Nektra officials say Outlook Express API makes it possible to write plug-ins
using many programming languages, develop products and services for use in
horizontal markets, CRM, mail encryption, antiphishing, antispam, mail
automation, and Outlook Express integration with an ERP project.
…
C-Media Electronics, a Taiwan-based manufacturer
of audio controller ICs, is announcing a
series of new products, aimed at boosting its penetration into the growing
VoIP and wireless audio controller markets, Digi Times reports.
The new products include new controller chips for USB VoIP
phones, four Wi-sonic controller chips for 2-channel speaker systems, the CMI
8788 multimedia audio controller, the CM108/109 single-chip USB VoIP audio
controllers and the CM220 updatable USB 2.0 card reader controller.
The company has also received orders from global vendors for
its new CM220 updatable USB 2.0 card reader controllers.
…
Also, more in the way of a public service announcement,
Montreal-based software evaluation firm Technology Evaluation Centers has created
an enterprise content management evaluation center to “help companies navigate through the demanding process of choosing an
ECM software solution,” according to company officials.
The company’s projections suggest that revenue in licensing
for ECM will grow from $1.28 billion to $1.86 billion through 2009 due to “current
governance and regulatory compliance regulations” making ECM “more and more
important in order for organizations to be able to meet the requirements of
these acts,” thinks Hans Mercx, ECM and BPM analyst at TEC.
The TEC ECM Evaluation Center “enables
end users to match their requirements to the functionality provided by a
variety of ECM solutions,” according to company officials: “Organizations can
use the center to analyze vendors on approximately 1,200 criteria covering ECM
functionality.”
…
First CoffeeSM’s heard that Nuasis Corporation, the IP
contact center company, has integrated
its software-only, IP-based contact center system with Siebel’s CRM.
The Nuasis NuContact Center handles customer inquiries via
the phone, e-mail, Web and fax. The integration of the Siebel CRM application
with the software-only, IP-based Nuasis contact center system theoretically
increases efficiency and productivity.
When CRM applications are integrated with the NuContact
Center, companies can “pop” existing customer information from the CRM database
onto the contact center agent’s desktop, giving the agent detailed customer
information to use during the call.
Kevin McPartlan, vice president, product direction, Nuasis
said the company chose to use open standards such as VoIP, SIP, and SOAP rather
than proprietary CTI protocols.
…
Bored by baseball, soccer’s too slow, missing basketball,
waiting for football? Try one of North America’s other pro sports leagues
for low-cost family fun this summer:
Major League
Lacrosse fields teams in Baltimore, Philadelphia, New Jersey, Long Island,
Rochester and Boston. The season began on Friday, May 20 and runs through
August. The league was founded in 1999 by fitness entrepreneur Jake Steinfeld
and Timothy B. Robertson, former CEO of The Family Channel.
Or check out World
Team Tennis, the “successful failure” of a pro tennis league with ten or so teams
scattered around the country. Started by Billie Jean King thirty years ago, it
has music, mascots and even NFL-style instant replay challenges. This year
Patrick Rafter, Martina Hingis, John McEnroe, Venus Williams and Martina
Navratilova will appear.
There’s also “The Toughest Game Of All,” First CoffeeSM’s
favorite, the American National Rugby League
just starting their season, with teams mostly in the Northeast. Play rugby, drink beer, give blood.
If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/
for the fully-linked version. First CoffeeSM accepts no sponsored
content placement and, uncompensated, recommends ‘72 VW Beetle ragtops, dark
roast coffee, monogamy, T.S. Eliot and
Moose Drool Beer.
