The news as of the second cup of coffee today, and the music is Van Morrison's St. Dominic's Preview. We had an iTunes shuffle on, and as usually happens, within the first few songs there was one which led us to think okay, that's the album we want to hear:

 

 Fonolo, which interestingly catchphrases itself as "the company that makes it easier and less frustrating to call large companies," has announced the availability of its free iPhone application.

 

What? Ah, here we go: "The frustration of having to 'press 1 for this, press 2 for that' to navigate through lengthy phone menus is universal. From quickly changing a flight time, to reaching an agent about your phone bill, Fonolo allows consumers to visually navigate a company's phone menu with a single tap of the iPhone, before making a call."

 

Wow. We need this app.  

 

"Users have long been asking for a way to use Fonolo on-the-go," said Fonolo COO Jason Bigue. We bet they have. We didn't even know this app existed six minutes ago and we're asking for it. "OuriPhone application is a powerful way to access Fonolo's unique service eliminating the hassle of dealing with phone menus, no matter where you are."

 

With Fonolo for the iPhone, reaching an agent is as simple as "tapping" on a company's menu.  Fonolo automatically does the rest -- calling the company, navigating their phone system and connecting users when it reaches the right spot in the menu.  

 

"Fonolo's mission has always been to improve the experience customers have when calling their large service providers," said Bigue. "Happier callers is a top priority for companies seeking to build brand loyalty and distinguish themselves from their competitors."  

 

Companies that deploy Fonolo-powered products can offer their customers "visual navigation, integrated directly into their web or smart phone properties, in addition to other customer experience enhancements."  

 

Fonolo is privately held and based in Toronto. It received mention in "50 Best Websites 2009" from Time.com.

 

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Quickoffice, a vendor of mobile Office productivity tools, has enhanced its mobile application line for iPhone and iPod touch users with additional products which are "available soon in the iTunes App store," company officials say.

 

The new application, Quickoffice Connect Mobile Suite, includes the functionality of the company's Office Suite and the "Connect" service, which provides users access to cloud storage providers, including Apple MobileMe, Google Docs, Box.net and Dropbox.

 

The app rounds out the company's portfolio of iPhone products lineup -- there's Quickoffice Mobile Suite, which is an Office productivity suite without cloud services, Quickoffice Connect, a stand-alone free application offering access to cloud services and Quickword and Quicksheet, the stand-alone Word and Excel applications.

 

Consumers can buy Quickoffice Connect Mobile Suite in the Business category for an introductory price of $9.99. It has viewing, editing and creation capabilities of Microsoft Office '97-'08 Word and Excel files and is integrated with the Quickoffice Connect service, providing access and an interface to mobile cloud services.

 

The product lets users "create, access and edit documents stored on their devices, as well as access remote content and share via email and/or return to their remote repositories," according to company officials, who added that users also have access to Quickoffice's file manager, e-mail attachment forwarding capabilities and desktop file transfer via WiFi or mounting the device as a drive."

 

Additional access providers and subsequent services will be available in future releases as upgrade options. And Quickoffice Mobile Suite provides the same editing functionality as the "Connect" version, but without access to cloud storage providers. It costs a couple bucks less.

 

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 Green Hills Software, which sells embedded software, has announced "record revenues and earnings for 2009," signaling what company officials say is "an end to the embedded industry recession."

 

Well, guess it's a good sign the recession's over somewhere. Green Hills officials claim 27 consecutive profitable years.

 

Green Hills Software's Q4 2009 sales increased by nearly 40 percent over the prior quarter, according to Dan O'Dowd, chief executive officer, Green Hills Software: "The market for embedded software has rebounded strongly from its slumber between Q3 2008 and Q3 2009. Many of our customers and partners share this observation based on their own improved business prospects. There is no doubt that the embedded recession is over."

 

Q4 2009 was the first full quarter following Wind River's absorption by Intel Corporation, according to Green Hills officials, who cited "industry expert Jack Ganssle" saying in June "I find it inconceivable that Intel would want to support other vendors' chips, so suspect that over time VxWorks support will be pruned to just the x86."

 

O'Dowd says in his opinion, "customers require support for heterogeneous processors across classes and generations of designs, and developers value our ability to support their hardware choices with an open and consistent software ecosystem."

 

Contributing to Green Hills Software's financial results is the company's entrance into the enterprise market through its subsidiary Integrity Global Security, which recently signed a global alliance with Dell to sell and support Integrity-178B in government enterprises.

 

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Revenue from U.S. consumer technology sales, defined as sales include IT, imaging, audio, video, and consumables, and exclude video game hardware and software, PC software, and mobile phones, fell almost five percent in 2009 to $106 billion dollars, according to market research company The NPD Group's Consumer Tracking Service.

 

"While overall revenue may have been down, that should not be taken as a sign that consumers were not buying," NPD officials say, explaining that "total units sold increased marginally, with the industry selling over one billion devices, gadgets, and accessory products excluding consumables."

 

But such a slight increase in units wasn't enough to offset the decline in average prices. Average prices dropped about six percent from 2008 to 2009 to an average of $92 for each piece of electronics purchased.

 

If you want to find a positive spin to put on things you can look at the fact that sales results improved as the year progressed, culminating in just a 1.5 percent decline in the fourth quarter, which NPD officials termed "a huge improvement from 2008, when fourth quarter sales fell seven percent."

 

The fourth quarter's the crucial one, as every retailer knows. For consumer technology, sales in the fourth quarter represented almost 32 percent of the year's revenue.

 

And the traditional brick and mortar retailers did well: For the fourth straight year they increased their share of consumer technology sales. The sales strength, the study finds, was "propelled by computers and TVs, both of which saw retailers' share of total sales increase more than two points."

 

Best Buy once again ruled the roost, selling the most electronics products in 2009 and gaining more revenue share than any other retailer. Wal-Mart, Staples, Target, and Apple's retail store chain rounded out the top five.

 

The top five online retailers were Dell, Amazon, Best Buy, HP, and Apple, study officials said: "The real success story in the online sales channel came from third party retailers, such as Amazon and Newegg. Third party online-only retailer sales increased 9 percent over 2008."