The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is whatever pop song is on the house system here at The Sharing Shed near Ruakaka just off State Highway 1 between Kaiwaka and Whangarei, can't quite make out what the song is:
HP is ranked No. 1 on Corporate Responsibility Magazine's (formerly known as CRO Magazine) 11th annual 100 Best Corporate Citizens List, climbing from fifth place in last year's rankings.
HP, which likes to call itself "the world's largest technology company," Moving from fifth place in last year's rankings, HP gained the No. 1 spot by the result of its scores in seven criteria categories: environment, climate change, human rights, philanthropy, employee relations, financial and corporate governance.
"Global citizenship is integral to the success of HP's business," said Michael Mendenhall, senior vice president and chief marketing officer, HP. "At HP we strive to harmonize our business goals with our impact on society and the world around us, working with multiple stakeholders including customers and suppliers."
Mendenhall said HP holds themselves "to high standards of transparency and accountability, and I'm proud that this award recognizes our continued commitments in this area."
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If you're looking for tags for your RFID project, it would stand to reason you would want to check out RFIDTags.com, for their information on RFID tags and now sample packs for testing.
"For any RFID project, RFID tag testing is an integral piece," company officials say, adding that a major pain point for end users is "finding, ordering and testing possible RFID tags."
RFIDTags.com has a selection of RFID tags and, hopefully, in company officials' words, "makes it painless to locate RFID tags for your project by providing multiple search options" and online sample pack order fulfillment.
"The new interface is much more user-friendly, placing the RFID tags under four groups: Vertical Market, Application, Frequency and Tag Type," says BlueBean President Gregg Maggioli. "We feel that the new upgrades will make it easier for RFID users to identify, order and receive RFID sample packs."
RFIDTags.com is part of BlueBean's suite of RFID-related Web sites.
The vendor is offering a special on RFID tag sample packs where end users and systems integrators can purchase the tags in small quantities - and get free 2-day shipping as well. All tags are in stock and ready to be shipped, company officials say.
Users can find passive RFID tags, active RFID tags, RFID labels and RFID cards for their specific applications. RFIDTags.com provides rankings on the first page for all major search engines. Different RFID tag types -- active, passive, apparel, rugged, laundry, LF, HF, UHF and more -- can be researched and sample packs ordered.
"RFIDTags.com is proud to have Alien Technology as our cornerstone sponsor, UPM Raflatac as our HF category sponsor and Avery Dennison as our UHF category sponsor," company officials say.
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From Playa del Rey, California comes the news that David Kirsh, professor of cognitive science at UC San Diego, working with a grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has chosen SmartAction Virtual Agents to capture and report on student illness symptoms at an elementary school in 4S Ranch, California.
Smart Action provides automated virtual agents powered by artificial intelligence that answer and make calls for contact centers, company officials say: "The system also features natural language speech recognition and synthesis technology."
The pilot project was established to determine if increased information about medical absences reported to schools would lead to improved intelligence about contagious diseases, possible biological attacks or other notable trends in student health, Kirsh said: "This type of system greatly improves information quality and enables more rapid analysis, allowing us to detect trends in symptoms and disease."
SmartAction officials explained how it works: When parents call the school to report children absent or ill, the SmartAction Virtual Agent answers the call and asks a number of questions about symptoms. Information provided goes into a database for later reporting and analysis.
The Virtual Agent identifies parents or relatives based on Caller ID, and remembers yesterday's symptoms for speedy reporting. The system also gives callers the option to provide additional information, which is recorded.
The results are then reported to researchers either by e-mail with a summary of information captured, including recorded parts, via a real-time database update to the university system or by a Web-based report with a click-to-listen feature.
"After a poor experience trying a conventional interactive voice system, it was clear we had to find something more advanced to do the job," Kirsch said. "Smart Action had the technology to provide an optimal caller experience and capture the needed information."
Peter Voss, CEO of Smart Action, called it "an ideal project for our artificial-intelligence-based Virtual Agents. Not only is the necessary information captured but it is available to the school district and the CDC in a database. They have real time access to current health trends and will be able to mine growing historical data to uncover longer-term trends."
At the conclusion of the pilot program at the end of the school year, Kirsh and other researchers will present their findings to the CDC and hope that it will be adopted as the new way to gather such information in schools and districts across the state and country.
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NEAS, a national Employee Assistance Program, has selected the North Carolina company Proforma Document Management Services as its primary software option for paper forms automation.
As Employee Assistance Programs have become more popular in recent years, NEAS' growth and business strategy necessitated the adoption of an efficient document management system, company officials say, adding that staff in its Provider Relations Department will use the product to automate billing, streamline insurance updates and provide NEAS with a system for document management via the Internet, "all completely integrated with NEAS's proprietary case management software."
Proforma's Chief Technology Officer, Jonathan Taylor, a former McKinsey consultant, said "I love finding efficiencies." He is a McKinsey man, recall. "How can we keep the things in your system that work for you but turbo-charge it? Most of the time, employees have great ideas, but their current software just can't do it. We realize their vision of a robust, fully-optimized operation."
NEAS selected a business process outsourcing Proforma module that enhances functionality of NEAS's current software by building onto it with a Lego-like component, company officials explain, adding that now they manage all billing forms, care provider clinical service packets, statements of understanding, and releases without touching paper.
Proforma officials say they handle the paper, auto-files and auto-data with barcodes and Optical Character Recognition, explaining that now, NEAS employees can share information from a centralized database available at any location, and "it's integrated with their current software so they have new forms automation functionality without learning new software."
