RedHorse Systems, Kayak for IPhone, Salesforce.com Foundation, CRM SpellCheck, Jaspersoft Open Source

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RedHorse Systems, Kayak for IPhone, Salesforce.com Foundation, CRM SpellCheck, Jaspersoft Open Source

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music, sorry if you're tired of hearing about it but we must be truthful, we can't say we're listening to Mozart when we're actually listening to Aimee Mann's Live At St. Ann's Warehouse, which is probably the album that's soundtracked more First Coffee work than any other:
 
Officials of RedHorse Systems, which sells business management products, say that "in response to customer requests," the company is releasing an updated version of its customer relationship management product, RedHorse CRM v2.5.
 
Company officials say they're "committed to producing a CRM product with the functionality that its customers need," so follow a policy of releasing updates on a quarterly basis. In January they released v2.4, containing a list of new functions, and began work on the next version scheduled for release next quarter.
 
Customers "identify much needed functionality that incorporates their custom use of the application into standard functions that RedHorse provides," company officials say, adding that "we felt that these requests would provide a whole new set of possibilities for customers furthering the extensibility of RedHorse."
 
As a result, "we decided to produce an interim release for our customers rather than waiting three months to release with the next version," says founder Connie Koch.
 
Koch says with this new release RedHorse users can now perform standard RedHorse functions like e-mail merging, e-mail rules and global updates using filters based on their own custom data in the system.
 
In related news, RedHorse has also released a new version of their link with Microsoft Outlook, RHOLink, which adds the capability to synchronize up to 19 phone numbers per contact between RedHorse and Outlook. Company officials bill this as a way to improve customers' ability to sync as many phone numbers as necessary to a handheld device or smart phone.
 
"We really are committed to providing a system that users want, rather than a system that we think they should have," says Koch, adding that the company is also "beginning background design work on our web based version and incorporation of Windows Workflow Foundation to provide automated processing of activities in the system."
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Travel search engine Kayak has released a new version of the Kayak for iPhone application integrating the site's baggage fees tool. "Coming only two months after the company launched a major upgrade to the application, the updated app also adds new flight, hotel, and car rental search capabilities," company officials say.
 
Saying mobile travel search is "a major focus of our product innovation," Kayak Chief Architect Bill O'Donnell said "people want to know how much different airlines charge for checking bags, so we're pleased to add this feature to our iPhone app."
 
New features include the aforementioned baggage fees tool, flight tracking, other flight search filters and a hotel search by name. There's also a function for maps for hotel and car rental searches, faster search results for flight, hotel and car rental searchs and e-mail share for search results.
 
In addition to the free Kayak for iPhone app, Kayak also updated the paid version of its iPhone app, Kayak First Class, that includes the ability to search for first and business class airline fares. The company also plans to include these new features in upcoming updates to its Android and BlackBerry applications.
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The Salesforce.com Foundation, the philanthropic arm of the company, has announced the growing success of its mission to inspire companies around the world to give 1 percent of their resources forward to support organizations that are making the world a better place.
 
Today, foundation officials say, "hundreds of companies of all sizes including Atlassian, C-Level Management, FinancialForce.com, Google, LiveOps, NewVoiceMedia and Seal Shield have adopted Salesforce.com's unique 1/1/1 integrated corporate philanthropy model," where 1 percent of a company's time, 1 percent of its equity and 1 percent of its products are given forward to the community.
 
The idea behind it is to "harness the power of a company's resources," foundation officials say, such as the intellectual wealth of its employees, technology or products and financial resources "to improve communities and promote compassionate capitalism."
 
When all three elements are deployed together, foundation officials say, "companies can ensure a dedicated focus and greater impact on the nonprofits and causes whose missions they're trying to empower."
 
According to the model: One percent Time: Salesforce.com employees are awarded 6 paid days of volunteer time to use over the course of a year. To date, 178,000 hours have been donated by employees.
 
One percent Product: The Salesforce.com Foundation facilitates the donation and discount of Salesforce CRM licenses to nonprofits helping them to increase their operating effectiveness and focus more resources on their core mission. 8,000 nonprofits in 70 countries are benefiting from these licenses today.
 
One percent Equity: Using 1 percent of founding stock to offer grants focused on technology innovation in nonprofits and youth development programs, Salesforce.com has given nearly $20 million in grants to qualified nonprofits.
 
"Ten years ago, Salesforce.com set out to change the way companies think about philanthropy, and today more than ever it continues to define our focus," said Suzanne DiBianca, executive director, Salesforce.com Foundation. "The hundreds of other companies that have joined us in giving their resources forward to empower nonprofits to realize their missions are truly exemplary of the power that business has to affect positive change."
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FYI: Spell Checker for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 is now available. It allows businesses using or considering the CRM prodcut to "assure a more professional image," Microsoft officials say, claiming that Spell Checker "returns its investment quickly at a purchase price of only $10.00 per CRM user."
 
As we said, FYI.
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Jaspersoft, creator of business intelligence software, has reported "significant momentum behind its open source software community," demonstrating "strong growth and accelerated adoption of Jaspersoft products," according to company officials.
 
The company's open source community recently surpassed 10 million software downloads, contributions to 350 open source projects and nearly 120,000 registered community members, company officials say: "Jaspersoft's community includes members in more than 150 countries around the world, with top ten membership coming from Argentina, Brazil, China, Colombia, Germany, India, Italy, Mexico, Thailand and the United States."
 
Comparatively, in the last year, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany and France ranked among the top five countries with the highest commercial adoption of Jaspersoft products.
 
Brian Gentile, CEO of Jaspersoft, notes that in total, Jaspersoft and its members have contributed nearly a quarter of a million lines of code to each of its core projects in JasperReports, iReport, JasperServer and JasperAnalysis. The BI reporting tool in JasperReports and iReport, along with the server-based projects in JasperServer/JasperAnalysis are freely downloadable open source projects, licensed under the terms of the LGPL or GPL.
 
Ohloh.net estimates Jaspersoft and its members have contributed nearly nine million dollars in full-time equivalent engineering investment to these projects.


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1 Comment

REDHourse are the best in the market, I love them

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