The news as of the all-important third cup of coffee, and the music is The Marshall Tucker Band's 1974 jam session Where We All Belong. Call 'em Allman Brothers clone wannabes if you must, but that's both an unfair and a too curt dismissal of a fine '70s southern rock jam band:
MrTed, a vendor of talent acquisition products, has announced the beta availability of SmartRecruiters, described by company officials as "a 100 percent free applicant tracking system" for corporate recruiters and hiring managers.
Designed for businesses with as many as 2,500 employees, company officials say the product is "easy to use, works in two minutes, and runs every facet of a recruiter's business."
Unlike their predecessors, MrTed officials say, SMB recruiters in 2008 "are comfortable using online tools to find and recruit employee talent." SmartRecruiters, they says, "fits this mold -- and breaks the mold of conventional ATS products -- by combining powerful functionality" with ease-of-use.
"In providing a free product for the masses, we are doing something that has never been done before," said Jerome Ternynck, CEO, MrTed. "There are six million small businesses in the US with as many as 2,500 employees. We are telling small businesses, 'Throw away your old ATS, you don't need it anymore.'"
SmartRecruiters is described by company officials as "free, limitless and easy to use," with an open architecture that "connects users to other recruiters and essential pay-per-use services such as job posts and background checks."
A set of features allows recruiters to tailor the look and feel of corporate career Web sites, front office and online application forms. Recruiters can edit job ads in real-time, rate candidates, screen candidates and track history of actions and interactions with candidates from within the application.
In addition to being the first free, full-featured ATS, SmartRecruiters also is pioneering a new segment of the SaaS category known as "Open SaaS," a mash-up of SaaS and open source concepts, products which typically derive revenue through alternative channels such as pay-per-use services.
An appliance built to eliminate five common knowledge-sharing obstacles has been announced by Yakabod. Version 3.0 of the Yakabox Knowledge Network, a workgroup collaboration system used since 2003.
It has an interface described by company officials as "so intuitive that users are productive the first time they log on," which "deploys up to ten times faster than traditional knowledge management products."
Two government security agencies are already using pre-release versions of the system, according to Yakabod CEO Scott Ryser.
"Seventy percent of KM initiatives fail for five reasons," says Ryser. "They take too long to deploy, they're too hard to secure, they're a bear to integrate or they're functional dead-ends. But usually it's because people can't -- or won't -- use the systems."
The Yakabox Knowledge Network meets National Security Agency Protection Level 3 security requirements. "Program managers who've had a sneak preview of Yakabox 3.0 get it right away," says Ryser. "The user experience is as intuitive as e-mail. Most important, stuff that matters doesn't disappear into a black hole when you need it most."
The system "learns" which topics, events and categories each team member deems relevant, then delivers that information to the desktop Activity Viewer, company officials say, adding that "unlike data-centric architectures, the Yakabox captures soft knowledge, the experiences and insights teams generate every day, then lose in shared drives and in-boxes."
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And now it's time for Silly Songs With Larry, the part of the show where Larry comes out and sings a silly song.
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Rave Wireless has announced deeper product integration between Rave's safety applications and the BlackBerry.
Rave Wireless officials say they'll benefit from the global use of BlackBerry smart phones, and will work with Research In Motion's sales groups to market Rave Wireless' products within higher education and other vertical markets. Expect marketing efforts to kick off this week at the EDUCAUSE Annual Conference.
Rave Wireless sells mobile safety applications to higher education. Company officials say many institutions use its Rave Alert emergency notification system, and others have launched the Rave Guardian personal mobile alarm.
The "deeper product integration" lets organizations use the Rave Alert system to send emergency notifications to BlackBerry smart phone users via PIN messaging. A PIN uniquely identifies BlackBerry smart phones on the wireless network. By sending alerts via PIN message, administrators can track who has received and opened the messages.
This new delivery mode will join text messaging, e-mail, RSS and recorded voice messages as ways to send notifications through Rave Alert, further increasing broadcast alert deliverability and accountability.
It also gives police officers and other first responders the ability to monitor Rave Guardian personal mobile alarm cases on their BlackBerry smart phones. Rave Guardian is a phone-accessed application that can be armed, and when triggered, automatically sends the user's picture, mobile number and personal information to campus police.
Company officials say Rave Guardian works on any cell phone from any provider in the U.S., and in many cases can even display the user's GPS location on a map for campus police or other first responders to provide assistance more quickly.
ItracMEDIA, a vendor of e-mail marketing software and CRM technology, has been selected as the "official supplier" of marketing CRM software products used by Online Sales Counsellors with Drees Homes.
Aaron C. Tackett, National Sales Director, M.I.R.M., C.S.P., said "their technology is superior and they have a proven success ratio."
A Toronto-based marketing CRM software company, itracMEDIA's technology is used by over 45 of North America's developers, comprising almost 250 separate development projects. Specializing in real estate e-marketing, itracMEDIA's e-mail marketing CRM software enables developers to capture leads, identify prospects and conduct lead scoring.
As part of the deal each of Dress Homes' ongoing developments now has its own Web site. Through user sign-in on the Web site, itracMEDIA's technology tracks a potential buyer's site usage, monitoring which pages are viewed, how long they are on the site, the number of times that person returns, things like that. ItracMEDIA then transforms this information into a lead scoring system.
"In the end, Drees Homes' decision came down to our lead scoring analytics," says itracMEDIA's Justin Parker. "Real estate is a highly competitive and challenging industry."
Not the sort of thing First Coffee usually covers, but Datacap's a regular on the show: A vendor of capture and forms processing software solutions, they've announced the recipients of the Third Annual Datacap Channel Excellence Awards.
Datacap created the awards to recognize VARs that have mastered and expanded Datacap software functionality and pushed its products and technology into new regions or markets.
"Datacap salutes the 2008 Channel Excellence winners for demonstrating innovation in design, implementation and customer service," said Scott Blau, Datacap CEO.
The 2008 Datacap Channel Excellence Award winners include Cutting Edge Solutions of Kansas City; RJS Software Systems, a vendor of information management products; Metafile, a privately held software development and systems integration company headquartered in Rochester, Minnesota and vendors of the MetaViewer line of imaging products.
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