By David Sims
[email protected]
The news as of the first
coffee this morning, which in my case this morning is iced coffee, simply a
more efficient caffeine delivery system, heck you can ingest three times the
amount of liquid in iced form than you can hot in half an hour, and the music
is Neil Young’s Ragged Glory, one of
the more appropriately-named albums ever released:
Cingular Wireless is announcing today the
immediate availability of Cingular Video on-demand streaming video service
with a large selection of popular mobile content.
You can now watch video clips
of TV shows, sports, news and weather, entertainment and “premium content” if
you’ve got a high-speed 3G capable Cingular phone.
Demand for wireless video and
other data services continues to grow with the proliferation of wireless
broadband networks, so to make the most of that, Cingular Wireless has
partnered with media and entertainment vendors for a wider variety of mobile
content than might be available elsewhere.
In fact, Sam Hall, vice
president, Mobile Browse and Developer Program, Cingular Wireless goes so far
as to say that “Cingular Video offers the highest degree of personalization and
the widest selection of desirable content in the U.S. market.”
Cingular Video does offer exclusive
content, such as Fox News clips, and a comprehensive sports coverage package
including ESPN, Fox Sports, FUEL and SPEED. It also has local weather forecasts
in 100 cities across the country, “three times more cities than any other
service provider,” Cingular officials point out.
For families, basic Cingular
Video service includes more options and, later this month, NCAA basketball fans
can watch NCAA men’s basketball video highlights.
Other highlights:
From the Cartoon Network there’s
“The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy,” “The Powerpuff Girls” and “Dexter’s
Laboratory.” From something called Adult Swim there’s “The Brak Show,” “Aqua
Teen Hunger Force” and “Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law.”
CNN offers content from “Now
in the News,” updated hourly, and programming offered from categories, including
Top Stories, Business News, Sports, Politics and Entertainment. There’s a lot
from the Disney Channel, including “Playhouse
Disney,” Disney Channel’s curriculum-based programming for preschool-age kids.
One wonders what they’re doing playing with Mommy and Daddy’s high-speed 3G capable
Cingular phone, of course.
There’s also Disney
Mobile Studios offering “The Muppets,”
Disney Classics, and Disney Originals 2D and 3D animated shorts. Hey, call me
when you get the original Bugs Bunny and the TV show cartoons.
Lots of sports, too. Lots.
…
Thanks to The Writer’s Almanac for
pointing out that “it was on this day in 1876 that Alexander Graham Bell received patent No. 174,465 for the telephone.
He filed for his patent on
the same day as a Chicago electrician named Elisha Gray filed for a patent on
basically the same device, TWA writes: “Bell only beat Gray by two hours. Bell
offered to sell his patent to Western Union for $100,000, but Western Union
turned him down.”
Also today, in 1933, a man
named Charles Darrow trademarked a board
game called “Monopoly,” which allowed people during the Great Depression to
imagine they were rich by wheeling and dealing in Atlantic City real estate.
…
Nuasis Corporation has announced
the availability of NuContact Center 3.0 software.
This release supports agents
located anywhere, higher system scalability, and advanced conditional routing
based on customer intelligence and business analytics, according to Nuasis
officials, who say “NuContact Center 3.0 features continue to highlight the
extensibility of the software-only product architecture.
With this release, the
product extends functionality to customer service agents beyond the formal call
center and uses customer intelligence from multiple enterprise software
applications to improve routing decisions.”
Practically speaking, NuContact
Center 3.0 supports the use of any hard phone device for remote or home-based
agents, a capability which allows customers to quickly address call center
staffing challenges that include limited recruiting pools, commuting issues,
and business continuity, since customers can deploy agents at low cost within
hours without the need for the proprietary phone sets required by other vendor products.
Agents simply download the
NuContact Center desktop software over the internet and sign onto the system
from any available phone set.
Kevin McPartlan, vice president
of product direction, Nuasis said the company’s focus with NuContact Center 3.0
was “to simplify deployment requirements and lower the cost of supporting
home-based agents while assuring business quality voice.”
NuContact Center 3.0 provides
remote agents with the same feature set that is available to agents at major
call center operations. Call center
supervisors also have the full set of management features available for
monitoring remote agents, viewing real-time statistics, and reporting on remote
agent status and performance.
This new capability extends
the product’s Enterprise Routing Architecture beyond the physical confines of
formal call center locations. Customer
contacts are routed to a single virtual pool of agents who can be distributed
physically across the system regardless of geographic location. This same capability can also be used to
extend call center functionality to customer service personnel stationed in the
field who are not normally part of the formal call center staff.
In related news, Nuasis is also announcing the signing of a
major contract with Southwest Gas Corporation.
The Nuasis NuContact Center
was chosen by Southwest Gas in part because of “its ability to manage multiple
contact center sites with a single software application,” according to Nuasis
officials. The system will be used to apply common rules, policies and
resources across Southwest Gas locations, they say.
Southwest Gas is engaged in
the business of purchasing, transporting and distributing natural gas to more
than 1.6 million customers in Arizona, Nevada and portions of California. The
company is one of the fastest-growing natural gas distribution companies in the
country (excluding mergers and acquisitions).
Nuasis
itself delivers call center products such as Nuasis NuContact Center, which “intelligently
routes customer inquiries via phone, e-mail, and web to self-service or live
agents located anywhere,” according to company officials.
It’s
marketed as an alternative for mission-critical call centers over legacy ACD,
IVR, and CTI systems, and competes
against contact center products offered by companies like Aspect Software,
Avaya, Nortel Networks and Cisco.
…
CRM vendor Parature would like you to know that contact
management marketing vendor SharperAgent
has implemented Parature’s Customer Support Solution, and saw a decrease in
the overall number of tickets submitted by clients from a daily average of 370
to approximately 100, due to an increase in the use of self-service tools.
…
So be honest here, guys: It’s Anna Nicole Smith vs. Pamela
Anderson. What’s that? You’re waiting to see what the Supreme
Court says? Buncha geeks.
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