By David Sims

David at firstcoffee d*t biz

 

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is dumb rock 'n' roll fun well done -- John Mellencamp's uh-huh. Mellencamp was so good when he didn't take himself seriously and just enjoyed bashing out good-time music. Lately he seems to think he's the reincarnation of Woody Guthrie -- he's not -- issuing tedious jeremiads:

 

Mobile Web data released by Bango today confirms, officials say, that mobile Web usage not only is gaining traction in the United States but soon will surpass the United Kingdom, "where consumers have accessed the Internet from phones for years."

 

According to data supplied by Bango officials, the top five countries accessing the mobile Web via Bango in July 2008 are the UK at 19.35 percent, the US at 18.88 percent, India at 10.82 percent, South Africa at 8.82 percent and -- here's the one you didn't expect -- Indonesia at 4.08 percent. 

 

Bango identifies users by country and network of origin. The ranking is produced by measuring the number of user visits to mobile Web sites from each country.

 

"The USA share of the browsing market has grown as an increasing number of phones come with bigger screens and service contracts that include unlimited internet access," said Adam Kerr, VP of Bango North America at Bango, adding that. "We fully expect the US will overtake the UK in this ranking as early as this month."

 

Forrester Research told The Wall Street Journal last month that the number of inquiries it received from businesses and service providers wanting to talk about the mobile Web jumped 40 percent last year.

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Satuit Technologies, a vendor of sales force automation (SFA) and client relationship management (CRM) products for the professional investment markets, has announced that for the second year in a row it has been named to the annual Inc. 5000 list of the fastest-growing private companies in the United States.

 

In 2007, Satuit ranked 1,619th. This year, Satuit ranked 1,523th and is one of only 14 software companies from Massachusetts on the list.

 

Satuit ranked 65th out of 195 companies in Massachusetts and 115th out of the 283 software firms on the list.  Among software companies in the Northeast, Satuit ranked in the top 20.

 

"We are very excited to make the Inc. 5000 list for the second consecutive year," said Karen Maguire, CEO of Satuit, saying the ranking "demonstrates the growth and ongoing market potential for targeted CRM products such as our SatuitCRM."

 

SatuitCRM offers professional investment firms and practitioners CRM functionality, application configuration, pre-built integration APIs and application extension functionality. Company officials say the product was designed specifically to "enable asset management and hedge fund companies to increase sales... and master information-intensive business relationships." 

 

The Inc. 5000 identifies companies it deems the fastest growing among the more than seven million companies with employees in the U.S.  The 2008 Inc. 5000 list measures revenue growth from 2004 to 2007. To qualify for the Inc. 5000, nominees must be private and independent U.S.-based companies that are not subsidiaries or divisions of other companies as of December 31, 2007. Companies must have earned at least $200,000 in revenue in 2004 and $2 million in 2007.

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ReachForce, a provider of OnDemand software and data services for targeted lead generation, has announced the integration of its role-based contact data services with Eloqua's demand generation applications.

 

Business-to-business marketers can use the resulting product to "build custom role-based contact databases to fuel their multi-modal marketing campaigns" executed via Eloqua's marketing automation platform, ReachForce officials say.

 

ReachForce products are pitched to marketing and sales teams as providing "the ability to target their initiatives at the right decision maker at the right company, every time." The product identifies a person's role within an organization instead of just a title, company officials say.

 

With the integration of ReachForce, Eloqua customers can now "request and build role-based contact lists instantly from within Eloqua's Marketing Automation platform," Eloqua officials say.

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Greenville, South Carolina-based Acumen I.T. has announced a partnership with Mimosa Systems, a vendor of live content archiving products to provide archiving products for Acumen's customers worldwide.

 

The partnership combines Mimosa's e-mail archiving and eDiscovery products with Acumen's portfolio of IT products and services, including server virtualization and storage products. Officials of both firms say the companies will focus on delivering "practical" offerings for the collection, processing, review and management of electronically stored information.

"Our partnership with Acumen will enable us to provide customers with migration services to help prepare for eDiscovery by allowing them to migrate large amounts of data from backup tapes and legacy data formats to the Mimosa NearPoint archive, making that data faster and more cost effective to discover," said Christophe Culine, senior vice president of sales of Mimosa.

 

David Pence, CEO of Acumen, said by pairing their I.T. products and services, "including our emphasis on server virtualization and storage," the partnership will be able to help clients "archive high volumes of historical data."

 

Acumen sells Microsoft Dynamics accounting software and customization services in addition to other applications like customer relationship management (CRM), enterprise resource planning (ERP), and point-of-sale systems.

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PowerObjects has announced that Charles McIntosh and Pratima Surapaneni have earned their Microsoft Dynamics CRM certification, identifying both individuals as "expert" in the latest version of Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

 

The Microsoft Dynamics CRM certification process was developed to equip IT professionals with the ability to install, configure and administer Microsoft Dynamics CRM products.

 

"We place a tremendous value on our employees delivering technology products and applications to our customers," said Jim Sheehan, COO of PowerObjects, adding that these certifications will help "offer our customers best-of-breed CRM products."

 

Established in 1993, PowerObjects is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner specializing in CRM products. Headquartered in Minneapolis, the vendor sells services to businesses and non-profit organizations in multiple industries including insurance, financial services, publishing, distribution, manufacturing and professional services.

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GeoSentric Oyj's GeoSolutions BV Business Unit (GyPSii), a mobile digital lifestyle application and geo-mobility social networking platform, has announced that it has signed an agreement with Nanjing MyNet to make the GyPSii mobile social networking platform available to customers of China Mobile.

 

MyNet provides mobile services and applications to China Mobile's 480 million-plus subscribers. The agreement with GyPSii means that MyNet will offer GyPSii location and mobile social networking features and services to China Mobile customers.

 

The agreement has provisions for GyPSii to share revenues based on current business models for mobile social networking that provide a range of revenue streams, including both subscriptions and advertising revenues.

Yang Guang General Manager of Nanjing MyNet, said he's confident that GyPSii will be "popular with our customers."

 

GyPSii officials characterize their offering as a mobile-centric application on the Chinese market incorporating a range of location-specific functions and mobile lifestyle services -- including user generated content, content-sharing, mobile content search and social networking, as well the ability to view it all on a map -- in a single platform.

 

Using GyPSii, users can access and enjoy "real-time" mobile features on their device, such as "Locating Friends" and sharing information on nearby point of interests, including places -- restaurants, bars and clubs -- contributed by friends and fellow GyPSii users.