By David Sims
David at firstcoffee d*t biz
The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Bix Beiderbecke's "Ostrich Walk:"
Intridea has announced that VisualCV has integrated Intridea's MediaPlug media appliance server with its software for building, sharing and managing Internet resumes.
As a result, company officials say, VisualCV customers can create "media-rich resumes," called "VisualCVs," that include photos, audio, video and more. Because MediaPlug uses cloud computing via Amazon Web Services, VisualCV doesn't have hardware requirements to manage and store data-intensive media files.
"VisualCV is committed to changing the way recruiting and career management are conducted online, and Intridea is a strategic partner in that effort," said Scott Herman, vice president of product development at VisualCV. You can view an example of a visual CV, Herman's own, at www.VisualCV.com/scottherman.
Web services using Ruby on Rails has allowed integration between VisualCV's resume application and Intridea MediaPlug. When members want to upload multimedia files, MediaPlug takes the files from the VisualCV application, transcodes them, re-sizes them as needed, checks for viruses and then store them on the Amazon Simple Storage System.
"Though handled by different servers," company officials say, "the media files and resumes appear to members as a single online document."
Herman said his company "went from engaging Intridea in October 2007, to delivering alpha code in December, and then launching our public beta in February 2008."
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RightNow Technologies has introduced August '08, the latest version of the company's on demand, customer relationship management (CRM) product.
Company officials say the product is for organization to "transform their static Web site support environments into branded, highly interactive online service experiences for customers."
With the RightNow customer portal, organizations can "brand and personalize the Web site service experience," using "interactive Web 2.0 information resources," company officials say.
The customer portal is part of RightNow Service and includes best practices for online customer self-service, and is designed to support consumers' "increased reliance on digital mediums to make informed buying decisions, with the ability to incorporate Web 2.0 technologies in the form of widgets, video, forums, and blogs."
The product also includes a studio development environment to create and manage the online service experience, including integration with Adobe Dreamweaver.
There's also something company officials are calling "The Collaboration Key: Co-Browse and Proactive Chat," offering "live, interactive assistance exactly when online consumers need it."
Evidently the products' co-browse feature lets consumers securely invite an agent, either on the phone or during an online chat session, to share their desktop and navigate or browse together, whether for resolving a problem, filling out a form, or guiding them through an online purchase.
Proactive chat is described by RightNow officials as "a new feature of RightNow chat that presents a chat invitation to a consumer based on specific, definable circumstances, such as being a premier or gold customer or spending a certain amount of time on a site."
"With more access to information, more sensitivity to price, and less sensitivity to advertising, customers are getting harder to win and keep. Organizations try to woo these empowered consumers with mediocre experiences - but it won't work.