Santa via Cisco, Mobile Innovations, OpenLogic, Pandora Media, Salesforce.com Japan, Vitech CRM, IPhone Jobs App

David Sims : First Coffee
David Sims
| CRM, ERP, Contact Center, Turkish Coffee and Astroichthiology:

Santa via Cisco, Mobile Innovations, OpenLogic, Pandora Media, Salesforce.com Japan, Vitech CRM, IPhone Jobs App

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is a scientific comparison of Robert Earl Keen's three live albums. Right now Live In Austin, Texas, the more acoustic country-fried one, is holding a slight edge over Live At The Ryman a decidedly more rocking show. No. 2 Live Dinner is maybe not as good at either his country or rock sound as either of the above, it does feature more between-song patter, which, unfortunately, is not Mr. Keen's strong suit -- Arlo Guthrie or Todd Snider he is not.

But we must say we do love No. 2's inspired, blazing "The Road Goes On Forever" and "Think It Over One Time" versions. There is such a thing as a saving grace.

Children at the Bristol Royal Hospital for Children and the Nottingham Children's Hospital based at the Queen's Medical Centre can stop worrying about Santa being too busy to visit. With the help of some video communications technology and elves from Cisco, St. Nick will drop in to speak to them directly about their Christmas wish lists.

Using Cisco Unified Communications technology, the hospital's young patients and their families spoke directly to Santa at the North Pole via a video link installed in the hospital. While the children checked their Christmas lists with Santa twice, Mrs. Claus and Santa's elf helpers, Cisco division, were on hand to give gifts to the children.

"Children in hospital can sometimes miss out on the excitement of some traditional Christmas activities," says Claire Hardy, play specialist at the Nottingham Children's Hospital. "The Santa Connection helps make Christmas special for them, bringing that piece of Christmas sparkle direct to the ward, whilst providing a relaxing moment for family and friends."

Cisco's Santa Connection helps children who are unable to leave hospital during the festive period to enjoy a bit of Christmas spirit, company officials say: Now in its third year in the U.K., the program has also benefited children in the U.S., Canada and Germany over the last six years.

"Christmas is a busy period for Santa, but by using video communications, he's able to meet with some younger patients. We hope the Santa Connection brings a smile to everyone's face this year. The children's bravery, and the determination of those looking after them at this time, continue to inspire us," says David Meads, executive sponsor, Corporate Social Responsibility and Civic Council at Cisco.

Yes, and if you're doing that kind of thing, then First Coffee will give you publicity and say "thank you."
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Mobile innovations have topped a consumer poll of the top technology innovations of the last decade. 

The consumer poll, commissioned by mobile messaging specialists Airwide Solutions

Both men and women identified GPS as the number one innovation (48 percent for men, 42 percent for women). For women, the games console Nintendo Wii, was the second greatest innovation (receiving 36 percent of votes); for men, the Wii ranked only fifth (receiving 23 percent of votes). The men's second most popular choice was the LCD TV, which women
surveyed placed at number five.

By contrast social networking received surprisingly few votes, poll officials say, with Facebook collecting only 19 percent, and Twitter just 6 percent. Mobile broadband came in second with 35 percent of the votes.

Jay Seaton, Chief Marketing Officer at Airwide Solutions, notes that Airwide has gone from the sending of the first text message back in 1992 to the app phenomenon of 2009: "The trickling stream of mobile innovation has become a torrential river, and the question is no longer 'what is the next killer app' but 'what is the killer multipurpose utility?'"

He continued: "In the case of GPS and location based services in particular, the mobile world is realizing that location can become a valuable enhancement," noting that an increasing number of mobile devices, such as smartphones, offer built-in GPS.

The survey was carried out on behalf of Airwide by market research agency Opinion Matters. A follow on survey is available via the Airwide sponsored blog,
Mobile Messaging 2.0. , surveyed over 2,000 people from the UK and saw GPS-enabled devices, including mobile phones, receive almost half the votes (44 percent) -- "more than even the iPhone, which came in third with 32 percent of votes," company officials say.
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OpenLogic

No doubt another valuable service is helping them avoid lawsuits, such as happened with fourteen well known consumer electronics manufacturers this week,
alleged to have violated terms of the GPLv2.

"Companies that distribute open source software under certain licenses must also offer source code, and the instructions needed to build the object code," explains Jason Haislmaier, an open source lawyer and partner at Holme, Roberts and Owen, LLP. "This week's copyright infringement lawsuit by the Software Freedom Law Center filed against 14 well known consumer electronics manufacturers underscores the importance of understanding and complying with all the open source software embedded in your products." , a vendor of enterprise open source software packages, has announced Open Source Fulfillment Center, a service designed, as company officials say, to help companies "ensure compliance with open source licenses."
So there. 

Although this is the official launch, company officials say OpenLogic has offered its Open Source Fulfillment Center to larger clients for some time.

The Fulfillment Center offers advice on the development of the processes and procedures needed to comply with the open source licenses, including distribution of source code. This includes a review of proposed processes by outside legal counsel with expertise on open source licensing. 

The company's personnel use a variety of tools to scan and analyze software and identify any embedded open source code, and give customers a warranted and indemnified report of open source software and licenses, the relevant license obligations, potential license conflicts and a "compliance checklist."
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Pandora Media

For comparison purposes that's roughly the combined population of the 30 largest U.S. cities. Pandora has added a total of 20 million registered users across all platforms -- home, PC and mobile devices -- in 2009.

Pandora garnered 44 percent of all Internet radio listening hours in October, according to Ando Domestic Ranker and Pandora's internal metrics. Total average daily users currently exceed three million, with mobile users comprising one-third of the total. Recent comScore data also show that Pandora's delivery of coveted ad targets beat out both Hulu and ESPN with nearly twice as many daily visits among 18-24 year-olds. 

Pandora has increased its iPhone user base by 400 percent in 2009, growing from two million registered iPhone users in December 2008, to more than 10 million in early December 2009. As we say here in the biz, "Not bad."

This Christmas season some advertisers, such as Starbucks, have pulled back from television advertising to focus on online and mobile marketing. 

And in keeping with its brand promise and with First Coffee's policy of giving companies who do good a bit more P.R. puff than normal, Starbucks wanted to drive consumers in-store to participate in a charity drive. Donations of $1 from each sale of the "Playing for Change" CD went to the Global Fund to help fight AIDS in Africa. To drive this campaign Starbucks created a branded playlist on Pandora that, with one click, could be added to the consumer's personal tuner online and on smart phones.
, an Internet radio service, has topped 40 million total registered users in early December.
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The Japanese arm of Salesforce.com

Over the next year, Salesforce.com officials say they hope to have 100 systems developers signed up for the program.

Companies can already use the Force.com platform to develop software that they can sell to third parties, which must form contracts with both the developer and Salesforce.com, company officials say.

Firms joining the OEM Partner Program will sign an undisclosed private contract with Salesforce.com, agreeing to pay a fee based on the term of the contract and the scale of use.

The new business, which Salesforce.com calls the OEM Partner Program, will allow systems and software developers to use the Force.com platform to devise products they can independently price and market under their own brands.

IT companies that have already joined the program include such systems developers as NEC, Fujitsu and two Hitachi group firms -- and seven software developers, including Giraffa Factory and Opro Japan.
will debut a business offering information technology firms a way to use its cloud infrastructure and development platform to create their own-brand services.
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Vitech Systems Group

In addition to the V3 Benefits Software, Vitech provided SAG-PH with related implementation services.

The service provides call tracking and service management features, including the integration of phone, e-mail and fax communications.

The new system provides customer service capabilities to SAG-PH call center personnel in Burbank -- this is the Screen Actors Guild, where did you expect their call center to be, Biloxi? -- Ventura and New York. The system was installed using Vitech's V3 Benefits Administration System, consolidating data from multiple legacy systems into a single service.

"The system allows us to offer an ever increasing level of service to our membership while harnessing operating efficiencies and containing long term costs," says Bruce Dow, SAG-PH's Chief Executive Officer.
, which sells Benefits Administration and Customer Relationship Management software, has announced that it has completed a major V3 Benefits System CRM implementation for the Screen Actors Guild-Producers Pension & Health Plans.
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Looking for a job? Yep, there's an app for that.

Stephen Covey, author of the best-seller, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, and Jennifer Colosimo, chief learning officer at Franklin Covey

Users can get research-based assessments help users to discover personality, strengths and career interests, or access the network-building and -nurturing tool -- "enables users to take specific actions and track them to build and maintain their most important career relationships," Covey officials say.
, have launched a iPhone app, Great Career, developed in partnership by FranklinCovey and Signal Patterns. It costs $9.99 on iTunes.

This is the first time FranklinCovey has brought its ideas to the mobile platform. The iPhone application is a companion to Stephen Covey and Jennifer Colosimo's new book, Great Work, Great Career: How to Create Your Ultimate Job and Make an Extraordinary Contribution.

The app lets users access rich media content, combined with specific career-building exercises and other resources from the iPhone.

It also lets users submit questions to Stephen Covey and Jennifer Colosimo as well as get answers to frequently asked career questions.

Stephen Covey says the iPhone application is "designed to help people discover their unique strengths, talents, and experiences -- and then understand how to put those qualities to work to find opportunities, solve problems and make a difference in the workplace, thereby becoming indispensable."

Colosimo says candidates who get jobs and keep them are "those who continue to grow and develop."


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