The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is our very own "Rockin' Country" playlist, featuring Hayes Carll, Jack Ingram, Steve Earle, Robert Earl Keen, Reckless Kelly, Charlie Robison, Chris Wall, Slobberbone, just all kinds of great stuff:
Webtrends, an enterprise customer intelligence company, has announced that Spirit Airlines, an Ultra Low Cost Carrier in the United States, Latin America and the Caribbean, will use Webtrends Analytics, Visitor Data Mart, and Optimize offerings to help improve the company's online customer service.
Spirit Airlines will also integrate Webtrends Analytics with Yesmail's Enterprise e-mail marketing platform. "Together," Webtrends officials say, "these products and partners will enable Spirit Airlines to execute marketing campaigns, and analyze data."
Spirit Airlines was in need of "a truly open customer intelligence platform," airline officials say, one that integrates with other marketing partners. The Webtrends Open Exchange allows this, resulting in an open framework of tools "working together and sharing information."
Spirit Airlines' Senior Director of Consumer Marketing Bobby Schroeter noted, correctly, that "The competition within the airline industry is incredibly fierce, and it is critical for us to go beyond that of which our customers demand," adding that with Webtrends' flexible architecture "we are able to integrate Web analytics in our daily processes and fully expect this to help drive our marketing."
Through their implementation, Spirit Airlines will use Webtrends Optimize to execute multivariate testing, segmentation and customer targeting to "maximize revenue and streamline the purchase processes in regard to online and offline marketing activities," airline officials say.
Spirit Airlines will also integrate Webtrends Analytics 9 with Yesmail for closed loop re-marketing: Webtrends officials say they're targeting low-use segments specifically, "and will also integrate the products with their custom voucher and coupon marketing system."
Yesmail offers e-mail marketing products, data management, media, social marketing and award-winning services for businesses of all sizes. Founded in 1997, the company's a subsidiary of Infogroup, and a part of the new Infogroup Interactive division.
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Level 3 Communications officials say the company will provide live compressed and uncompressed high-definition television broadcast video services to CBS for Super Bowl XLIV.
For the first time ever, instead of sending the feed to a production truck for compression and delivery to the broadcast studio, an uncompressed 1.5 Gigabit per second feed will be sent from Miami to CBS studio headquarters in New York via Level 3's fiber-optic network.
In total, Level 3 officials say, "over 2,800 hours of video content will be acquired, encoded and transported across the Level 3 Vyvx services platform for overall Super Bowl coverage."
Bob Mincieli, director of Broadcast Operations at CBS, said "This year, we worked with Level 3 to test uncompressed HD feeds in the delivery of various NFL games and have been impressed with the results."
The NFL has used Level 3 Vyvx broadcast services for 21 consecutive years. During the 2009 football season, Level 3 worked closely with the league and broadcasters to provide video transmission for every regular season and playoff game, totaling more than 5,600 total feeds.
This season Level 3 also worked with the NFL to create a virtual private network that connects clubhouses and provides league teams with a secure, reliable means of sharing footage from games, interviews, practices and more.
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TrustedOnes has announced the launch of a destination for recommendations from people you trust.
We hear they have a special section just for politicians.
Available on the iPhone and all Google Android phones, TrustedOnes "allows users to keep track of the places they visit, products they use, and businesses they frequent, to rate and share their experiences -- good and bad -- with the people they know and trust."
Oh, so it's not "Don't ever go out with Steve." Evidently it's also available on the Web.
According to the latest Nielsen Global Online Consumer Survey of over 25,000 Internet consumers from 50 countries cited by TrustedOnes officials -- and hey, we're going to take their word for it - 90 percent of consumers trust recommendations from people they know.
"TrustedOnes was founded on the principle that personal recommendations carry more weight than any other type of referral," says Arno Grbac, Founder and CEO, TrustedOnes. "Advertising, publicity, search engines and reviews from people we don't know are interesting input but, when it comes down to decision-making, carry little weight."
Interesting theory -- we wonder if we find a restaurant or movie reviewer is "right," as far as we're concerned, enough times, if that qualifies as "trusting" her?
TrustedOnes "learns from the experiences, questions and answers contributed by each individual member of a trusted group, and distributes that knowledge to the other members in the group," company officials say: "Unlike open or anonymous topical review sites dedicated to travel or restaurants, TrustedOnes allows users to define their own areas of interest and dictate their personal sphere of influence."
So if anybody would like to know where to eat in Istanbul, let us know. You can trust us. Really.
TrustedOnes is fully integrated with Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites, of course, allowing users to tap into existing friends networks: "Users can write a personal 'note' from their phone or the trustedones.com website, and have it instantly appear on Twitter or Facebook news feed."
And there's a "Social IQ selector," which gives users "the ability to filter information according to the degrees of separation from the source, virtually eliminating spam." As well as nuts who have no idea what constitutes a "good" restaurant, we imagine.
Based in Boston, TrustedOnes is a service of Cerimbrium.
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In the insanely overcrowded field of iPhone apps, this sounds like a genuinely useful addition to the corpus: WellCare Today has announced the release of HealthAssist, described by company officials as "a medication adherence and health management application available on the iPhone and iPod Touch. "
There are actually four alerts as part of the app. "CalendarAlert" provides the user with a scheduled text reminder for each medication. "RefillAlert" provides the user with a reminder of when they need to request a prescription refill.
The "HealthAlert" function gives the user a monthly update on "condition-related" issues, such as breaking-news headlines, health management articles, dialogue forums or chat rooms and clinical trials.
And the "EMRAlert" provides the user with a way to store and update a private electronic medical record.
The application is free and can be downloaded through the Apple apps store.
It's an application there's a large and appreciative audience for: The New England Healthcare Institute notes that "one third to one half of all patients do not take their medications properly.
Patients with chronic diseases -- which affect more than half of all Americans -- are particularly susceptible to spotty adherence practices that leave them vulnerable to otherwise unnecessary hospitalizations and additional medical risks."
In fact, a recent article on the topic is headlined "Medication Non-Adherence Cost U.S. $100 Billion and 125,000 Lives." As we said, there's a need for this app. For quick access via the Apple apps store, type "healthassist" using the apps search function.
WellCare Today specializes in improving healthcare outcomes via applications on smartphones, with the first release for the iPhone: By texting application users medication reminders and educating patients via Web links to condition-related articles and social media sites, WCT officials say they "expect to improve chronic disease outcomes and reduce healthcare costs."
The applications are free of charge to the user and sponsors get condition-related branding opportunities.
