By David Sims

David at firstcoffee d*t biz

 

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Joe Cocker's slapdash revue Mad Dogs & Englishmen. The history of how this show was put together and promoted is a textbook of how not to do a rock promotion -- the whole thing was conceived, cast, arranged, performed and forgotten inside of a year -- but Cocker, Leon Russell, Rita Coolidge, et al produced some fine brassy rocky-tonk music that holds up well today, some 38 years later:

 

AccuWeather.com, which likes to call itself "the World's Weather Authority," has announced that it has added flight delay information covering the entire U.S., viewable in map and text form, to its mobile site.

Jim Candor, Senior Vice President of New Media for AccuWeather.com, said he believes that by adding flight delay information, "we will make the site even more useful for business travelers and vacationers."

Flight delay information on the AccuWeather.com mobile site includes national and regional maps with color-coded indications of delays at various airports. For each airport where there is a delay, a text description will appear below the map. All forms of delays are reported including weather and non-weather related delays.

 

AccuWeather.com mobile officials claim there is "now one of the few mobile Web weather sites to offer flight delay information and the only site to offer a national map view of flight delays."

To see the flight delay information, go to AccuWeather.com mobile on a Web-enabled cell phone and select the Flight Delay link on the home page.

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The i-Station Rotate is a speaker system from Logic3's i-Station brand. Costing $129 i-Station Rotate is an iPhone-compatible speaker featuring a built-in rotating dock mechanism.

 

This is CRM news insofar that everybody who works for a CRM company has an iPod and has wanted a player to plug it in at work that at least has the option of rotating. Heck I should be reviewing John Grisham and Dean Koontz novels on here too, since everybody reads those as well.

 

"The beauty of this practical design," company officials say, is that "once in the cradle, any iPhone, iPod touch or the new iPod nano can be turned sideways for watching full screen videos without straining your neck."

 

Logic3's Rotate is "compact, loud and packed with the latest technology, at a price accessible to all," says Michael Kirkham, Development Director at Logic3.

It's 12.5 inches wide, five inches high and two inches thick, so obviously the company's going for film and music fans on the move with the design. Early reports are that it offers decent audio quality for both video and music tracks available in such compact design.

 

The i-Station Rotate also has TDMA noise suppression technology to remove static interference noise when your iPhone rings or when surfing the Web, and it has a Video Out function for iPhone and iPod, meaning videos can be displayed directly on your TV - a fairly cool feature.

 

It has a remote control with iPhone/iPod Menu navigation and Class D Amplifier for sound quality at high volume.

 

It needs four AA batteries, and has a 3.5mm stereo line-in socket, meaning a wide range of other media devices can be connected.

 

Can't get it for Christmas, though, as it's not available until January.

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SDL plc, which sells Global Information Management products, has announced that the Mobile Communications Business division of Microsoft has selected a terminology product from SDL.

 

The SDL MultiTerm technology is intended to provide a platform to create a repository of terminology designed "to help enhance the quality and consistency of global content for their mobile communications products in more than 20 languages," according to company officials.

 

The MCB team is responsible for the international functionality, globalization and localization for Windows Mobile products in more than 50 markets. MCB needed a product that would allow them to "manage terminology for their software that runs on numerous OEM handheld devices," according to SDL officials.

 

The market terminology management product from SDL was selected because of its ability to "manage the large volume of multilingual terms needed by MCB and ensure Microsoft brand consistency," according to the SDLians, adding that ease of use was a key factor to MCB, "in particular, the customization of entries and attributes within the tool."

 

SDL MultiTerm's ability to work in a graphical interface, incorporating both text and images, will allow the translators to "better understand the devices they are translating," company officials say: "The system will provide access to approved terminology for translators, creating global content for MCB mobile products and ensuring the consistency of product documentation in multilingual versions."

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DocuSign, a vendor of cloud-computing software services for Electronic Signature and Online Contract Execution, has announced the release of DocuSign Connect for Salesforce, unveiled last week at the Dreamforce '08 Conference sponsored by Salesforce.com.

 

Specifically designed for Salesforce.com users, DocuSign Connect for Salesforce is a suite of on-demand services providing integration between DocuSign's enterprise-class electronic signature and online contract execution product and the Salesforce platform.

 

It's being pitched as a tool for organizations "looking to shorten their sales cycles."

 

Ted Girdner, Senior Director of Sales Operations at Comcast Business Services, says integration between these two platforms is "what Comcast needed to improve its contract management processes."

 

As a part of this release, system administrators will have access to DocuSign Connect for Salesforce QuickStart, a free AppExchange package described by company officials as offering a DocuSign Connect for Salesforce configuration designed to "accelerate the system deployment time."

 

The product offers cloud-based contract execution built directly into your Salesforce account, including online document origination, real-time status, and management dashboard, as well as direct document form data mapping into any Salesforce object - designed to "eliminate the need to re-key information," company officials say.

 

Bob DeSantis, Vice President of Sales for DocuSign, says the system is designed to "eliminate the time constraints, hassle and lost opportunity of working and managing contracts between applications."

...

 

Glovia International, a subsidiary of Fujitsu and a provider of ERP products for engineer-to-order and high volume manufacturers, has announced the availability of glovia.com Order Management on Salesforce.com's Force.com.

 

Built on Salesforce.com's Force.com platform, the Glovians say that glovia.com Order Management provides "visibility into sales orders and quotes as well as the inventory, fulfillment and invoicing required to complete transactions."

 

Yuji Nakasu, President and CEO, Glovia International, said the firm was "able to deliver our order management ERP application entirely on Force.com in just a few months."

 

Customers "re asking us for ways to run their enterprises completely in the cloud," said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO, Salesforce.com. "Not only can ISVs use Force.com to build and deliver any application in the cloud, but now, companies can use Force.com to run their entire business in the cloud."

 

Meredith Manning, Vice President of Marketing for Sally Ride Science, a science content company founded by America's first woman in space Dr. Sally Ride, said with glovia.com Order Management on Force.com "we have ERP integrated with Salesforce CRM for quoting, ordering, shipping and billing -- all delivered in the cloud, with no additional infrastructure for us to manage."