First Coffee

The news as of the first coffee this morning, which is being consumed college-style, where you get up in the morning and there's a cup of some flat brown liquid, you know it's last night's coffee or Diet Coke or something, but the point is it's caffeinated, so you don't just throw it out, you simply pour in the morning's fresh coffee, add milk and sugar to taste and stir, and the music is our theme song, Adam Carroll's "Ol' Milwaukee's Best:"

Breaking news: A final recount has declared Felipe Calderon winner of the Mexican presidential election. Al Gore demands a recount.

Good morning good morning, thank your institutional officer for turning your radio dial to Radio KCRM 98.6, All Weird Al Yankovic, All The Time! In today's top news we sent our Radio KCRM Special White House Correspondent to the White House to get President Bush's reaction to gauge the level of tension over North Korea's nuclear tests, and found the president doubled over laughing too hard to answer questions, but we did manage to transcribe the following… "fell into the ocean… biggest flop since Dan Rather's Air National Guard memo story… ["Dong" joke]… hey get Josh on the phone, have him tell 'em we're really scared now… Dick, get the wig and do your Kim imitation, that busts me up every time… [garbled "Dong" joke]… maybe we oughta tell those granola-crunchers in Seattle to head for the bunkers anyway… all those poor damn fish… up and down in what, less than ten minutes? Yeah, reminds me of [surprisingly funny "Dong" joke involving a prominent Democrat member of Congress]… oh my sides… Slick Willie caved in to this putz? Good heavens… Condi, I feel the need to run our own nuke tests, got a good location in mind…

Breaking news: A final recount has declared Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador winner of the Mexican presidential election. Al Gore blames Stephen Hawking.

Moving along, according to the Nigerian industry journal This Day, in a bid to improve Contact Centre products in Nigeria Weco Systems Group, a Nigerian IT firms in Nigeria has entered into partnership with Bucher & Suter, a Cisco "advanced technology outfit."

Uchenna Obidike, Chief Executive Producer of Weco System told This Day, and Radio KCRM quotes, "the whole essence of bringing together egg heads in contact centres in Nigeria was basically to educate our customers on the need for contact centre. We know a lot of them have been talking about it but they approach it wrongly and we believe that Butcher & Suter is the best as far as Cisco Internet protocol Contact Centre (IPCC) is concerned."

Today's business, Obidike explained, " is all about doing more with less, and in order to improve our shareholders' value, you must begin to work at the total cost of ownership reduction in terms of buying a new telecommunication infrastructure. Cisco gives you a better integration both on CRM, PBS and others."

Obidike said that "the Contact Centre system will solve the problem of a typical retail service. Contact Centre is integrated with a Customer Relationship Management (CRM). The technology has a great reporting system which retrieves a lot from the data base. It is built in such a way that anybody within the bank can be configured to act as an agent. It also involves a supervisor who oversees everything."

Andreas Stuber, Chief Executive Officer of Bucher & Suter of Switzerland, confirmed that "contact centre is all about increasing customers services in Nigeria and by this, customers will stay more loyal."

The Managing Director of Cisco systems Nigeria, Maduka Emelife said at a recent conference that "in any human interaction where there is exchange of money for goods and services, the recipient of the service usually has an expectation that the service they paid for be backed by some type of support. As such you can say that as far as when people started buying and selling goods and services, customer service has been a standard expectation."

One of the Nigerian officials at the conference then told reporters that his uncle, the late Minister of Gold Mining, Diamonds, Oil, Platinum and Other Really Profitable Stuff for Nigeria, who was killed in a recent coup, had managed to save $14.8 million from living frugally and shrewdly investing his government salary, and in his dying words had passed on the secret bank account number to his trusted nephew, who only needs someone's personal banking information to transfer the funds to a safe location.

Breaking news: A final recount has declared Katherine Harris winner of the Mexican presidential election. Stephen Hawking tells Al Gore "I can dance better than you."

Jetting over to the other side of the world, but not in Sergey Brin and Larry Page's tricked-out 767 Party Jet, currently in for routine maintenance of the hot tubs and to have the special high-altitude lava lamps and strobes installed at an undisclosed location, all the way to Hong Kong to find… CDC Software, a wholly owned subsidiary of CDC Corporation, vendor of enterprise software applications, announcing that CMT Latin America has joined the company's Franchise Partner Program.

The program, which includes $20 million designated for investment in channel partners, was recently launched by CDC Software to "establish strategic relationships with franchise partners in selected geographies to accelerate mutual business expansion."

CDC, last seen drowning its sorrows in a bar after getting totally, decisively, definitively slam-dunk faced, flowers-in-the-face don't call us we'll call you, something about the last company left on earth after a nuclear holocaust the answer's still no REJECTED by Onyx, has to satisfy itself with owning Pivotal CRM.

CMT Latin America hasn't been too shabby as a partner, representing CDC Software for eight years. As a distributor of the Pivotal CRM product line, CMT has signed on new customers in seven countries, including Monsanto Argentina, Corpbanca Chile, Canon Brazil and Prochemex of Mexico, as well as Syngenta and Telefonica Empresas, each operating throughout Latin America.

Breaking news: A final recount has declared Salma Hayek winner of the Mexican presidential election. Bill Clinton offers to congratulate her in person.

Through the Franchise Partner Program, CDC Software is working with selected partners in high-growth geographies, including Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Latin America, India, China and Asia/Pacific.

CDC Software will acquire a 10 percent equity stake in CMT Latin America, with an option to acquire an additional 9.9 percent. CMT will also receive funding in an undisclosed amount to support its expanded marketing and sales activities in Argentina, Chile, Brazil and Mexico.

In addition to selling the Pivotal CRM products in Latin America, CMT will begin selling CDC Software's recently acquired c360 add-on products for Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

Breaking news: A final recount has declared Hamas winner of the Mexican presidential election. Jimmy Carter offers warm congratulations and calls on America to "do whatever they want and nobody gets hurt. For now."

Wrapping up the show here on Radio KCRM 98.6, All Slobberbone, All The Time, SYSPRO, a vendor of enterprise software for SMB manufacturers and distributors, has announced the addition of oh, just hundreds of new features and functionalities to SYSPRO Customer Relationship Management software, an enterprise-class software system that enables a business to manage internal resources, customer, supplier and prospect relationships, marketing campaigns, sales opportunities, as well as service contracts and incidents within a single CRM/SRM program. SYSPRO CRM 5.0, as with all prior versions, is fully integrated with SYSPRO Enterprise Software.

SYSPRO CRM 5.0 now supports Microsoft SQL Server 2005 and offers improved e-mail synchronization capabilities with Microsoft Outlook with added support for GroupWise. A built-in Executive View comes standard with SYSPRO CRM 5.0, enabling managers to display charts of key Sales Statistics and Service Tickets for easy graphical analyses and greater insight into weekly or monthly performance.

Breaking news: A final recount has declared Jimmy Carter winner of the Mexican presidential election. 107 million Mexicans run for the American border.

If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/ for the fully-linked version. First Coffee^SM accepts no sponsored content.

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Willie Nelson's recording of "When The Roll Is Called Up Yonder:"

This morning The Wall Street Journal is reporting that AOL "is considering offering its entire menu of services, including e-mail, free of charge to anyone with a high-speed Internet connection."

The proposal, "which AOL Chief Executive Jonathan Miller presented to top Time Warner executives in New York last week," WSJ reports, would mean "AOL would stop charging a subscription fee for users who already have a high-speed Internet service or dial-up service from another provider."

Oh if you have traditional "dial-up" Internet access you still pay the monthly fee. 30 percent of AOL's customer base of 18.6 million already has high-speed access, WSJ says, "but the company expects that 8 million of its existing dial-up customers would cancel their subscription to take advantage of the new offer."

The plan could cost AOL as much as $2 billion in subscription revenue "in a gamble aimed at boosting the Internet service's advertising revenue." And of course you know where the cost-savings will be made up: It would "likely lead to thousands of job cuts in marketing and customer service."

And hey, you heard it here first, folks: The final score of the World Cup final will be Italy 1, France 0. Ain't nobody getting around that Italian defense, the United States will go down as the only team to score a goal on Italy the entire 2006 World Cup.

Telenity, a vendor of converged services platforms and applications for communications networks, has announced the addition of video services designed for subscribers of video-enabled devices to its Canvas Converged Value Added Services Solution.

The Telenity product includes "enhanced multimedia content, integrated messaging and location-based services; and provides enhanced personalization capabilities across various networks and mobile devices," according to company officials.

Telenity has recently proven its Canvas product in a Tier 1 customer trial in Europe, where its new video-enabled services including video call services along with other Canvas service delivery products were tested in an IP network environment targeted for 3G and IMS.

Phil Marshall, Vice President at Yankee Group, has said recently that video presents "great revenue upside opportunities" in the marketplace. With peer-to-peer video services heavily dependent on 3G handset penetration, Marshall noted, "Application to person (content downloads and streaming) that do not require high end 3G handsets will initially create revenue opportunities from next generation video."

Such services will most likely come through a service delivery environment that serves both fixed, broadcast and mobile broadband 3G, evolving WiMax and 4G network standards, Marshall thinks.

Nitin Patel, Vice President of Strategic Marketing at Telenity said that Telenity's Canvas product is "IMS compatible, supporting next generation SIP standard architecture," which is adding video "as it brings a new breadth to content, messaging and location-based services allowing for rich user experience, personalization and as a result increased revenues to our customers."

One service currently provided by Telenity is video ringback tone enabled Canvas CoolRings, Personalized Ringback Tone Service. In addition to audio ringback tones, with video-enabled Canvas CoolRings, callers can view a variety of multimedia content including music videos, celebrity clips, personalized messages, infotainment clips or promotional messages instead of just hearing the standard ringing, busy or call waiting tones when placing a video call.

Apresta, vendors of wireless access products, have announced support for the Motorola Q, the latest cellular smart phone that runs handheld applications on Microsoft's Windows Mobile 5.0 operating system.

With Apresta, company officials claim, Motorola Q users can now "gain seamless, real-time access to data from any back-end enterprise database system, including CRM, ERP, financials, and more."

The phone is designed to give users real-time access to enterprise data formatted specifically for handheld devices, such as the Motorola Q, BlackBerry, or Treo.

What Apresta's selling is a way to connect multiple back end systems, access and organize data fields from those systems, and then publish the data to the handset. It provides real-time, two-way access to customer and account information at the point of need, when a salesperson is calling on a customer, or a service representative is on site.

And Apresta officials say their product accommodates data access security, supports changing business rules, and lets you build custom reports and displays without any programming.

Rich Koch, vice president of marketing for Apresta says part of the marketing strategy is that with Apresta, "we can increase the value of the Motorola Q for mobile workers, giving users access to information when they need it. Now customers can access sales reports, financial data, ERP and CRM information, inventory, pricing or delivery data, and more from their Motorola Q."

The Apresta data delivery model is similar to iTunes for music delivery: Rather than having to download an application, Apresta delivers selected data when and where you want it.

Apresta is a division of CRM software vendor Saratoga Systems.

EBSuite.com, an on-demand Customer Relationship Management vendor, has announced that Asteres Inc., the maker of ScriptCenter, the industry's first prescription drug pick-up kiosk for retail pharmacies, has adopted EBSuite's Customer Support and Sales Force Automation product.

Asteres needed a CRM product to help manage customer support calls and case processing workflow. In addition to sharing all documents on customer accounts, including case history, information on decisions made and support activities, Asteres wanted something to be cost-effective and customizable.

"EBSuite is intuitive and easy to use which made implementation quick and easy," said Stefany Goldman, Manger of Client Relations at Asteres. EBSuite, whose customer base and revenues increased more than 100% from fiscal year 2004 to 2005, has established international headquarters in Fremont, California.

Today's date in history: In 1957 an English teenager named Paul was hoping to pick up girls at a church dance in St. Peter's parish. So on July 6th he rode his bike over for the carnival and a parade with decorated floats, and saw a band from the church playing on one of the floats. Paul liked the band -- he played a little guitar himself -- and saw the same band at the dance afterwards.

After the dance Paul went over to talk to the lead singer and guitar player of the band, who didn't really pay much attention to him until Paul said he knew how to tune a guitar, which was something, since nobody in the band knew how to do that, they'd been asking local musicians to do it for them.

Paul asked the singer why he made up new words to the popular rock'n'roll songs he'd been singing, he said it was because he couldn't remember the lyrics. So Paul wrote out the lyrics to a couple of the songs, including "Be Bop a Lula," and that's how Paul McCartney and John Lennon became friends.

If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/ for the fully-linked version. First Coffee^SM accepts no sponsored content.

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Stan Kenton's 1945 recording of "Artistry in Rhythm:"

Had us a nice American music festival yesterday here in Istanbul, in honor of the Fourth, started out with Aaron Copland's Appalachian Spring, moving on to Miles Davis' Kind Of Blue, a selection of '30s and '40s swing and some Bob Dylan. Say whatever you want about American politics or this and that, but we're the greatest country ever for our music alone.

Take the past hundred years. We have, just for starters, Duke Ellington, Elvis Presley, B.B. King, Hank Williams, Frank Sinatra, Bob Dylan, Billie Holiday, Johnny Cash, Aaron Copland, Bill Monroe, Leonard Bernstein, Chuck Berry, Ella Fitzgerald, The Carter Family, Lerner and Lowe, Aretha Franklin, Cole Porter, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Benny Goodman, John Cage, Louis Armstrong, Muddy Waters, Mahalia Jackson, Philip Glass, Robert Johnson, Bing Crosby, James Brown, Charlie Parker, Rodgers and Hart and Hammerstein, Woody Guthrie, Jerome Kern, The Ramones, Kronos Quartet, Bessie Smith, Jimi Hendrix, Tommy Dorsey, The Beach Boys… plus it's worth noting that Keith Richards lives in Connecticut. And you have… who, exactly?

Oki Electric Industry Co., Ltd. and DIS Solution Co., Ltd. have announced that Intelligence, a Japanese recruitment agency, has selected Oki's CTI server, CTstage 4i for .NET, for their IP contact center system. 

The system will start with 125 seats, with plans to increase that number according to the business expansion. DIS Solution, a strategic IT partner of Intelligence, was in charge of system integration.

Since 2003, Intelligence has been using a PBX-based contact center system with 50 seats, the main function of which was to respond to inquiries from job seekers and register data for temporary staff. As the business grew, Oki officials say, the contact center was expanded to 100 seats and "Intelligence looked into improving the system efficiency so it could expand the scale further and provide high-level functions such as counseling services for job seekers."

"We are pleased with Oki's CTstage 4i-based IP contact center system. We believe it can improve our business efficiency at our contact centers, which is an important channel for maintaining customer contact," said Hiromu Nishida, Manager of Contact Center, Corporate Support Division at Intelligence.

One of the reasons Intelligence decided on Oki's system, Nishida said, was simply because nothing succeeds like success: They have the No.1 market share in Japan. "The system also will enable us to connect with other Windows-based systems and easily develop a contact center system," he added.

The system manages the operators' workload depending on traffic density by collecting and analyzing various incoming call logs. An efficient inquiry service can be achieved by using the computer and telephony in an integrated system, which enables operators to talk on the phone while displaying callers' information on their PCs.

While the previous contact center system was based on telephone lines, Oki's system is based on an IP network that lets Intelligence flexibly allocate people and equipment, resulting in faster response to various situations.

Founded in 1881, Oki Electric Industry Co., Ltd. is Japan's first telecommunications manufacturer.

I bet America's second tier of musical talent -- e.g. Hilary Hahn, Patsy Cline, Tom Waits, Van Cliburn, Howlin' Wolf, Dizzy Gillespie, Janis Joplin, Earl Scruggs, George Gershwin, Lang Lang, NWA, Sarah Vaughan, Stephen Sondheim, Lou Reed, Al Dimeola, Lionel Hampton, John Williams, Count Basie, Jimmie Rogers, Bill Evans, Sam Cooke, Aerosmith, Thelonious Monk, Willie Nelson, Louis Jordan, Hair, Elmore James, John Lee Hooker, Stevie Wonder, Oscar Peterson, Steve Reich, The Supremes, Scott Joplin, the Stanley Brothers, John Adams, The Grateful Dead, Bix Beiderbecke, W.C. Handy, Gene Krupa, Otis Redding, Stanley Clarke, Frank Zappa, Charles Mingus, Samuel Barber, Phil Spector, Art Tatum, Nirvana, Eminem, Carol Kaye, et al -- is still better than your first tier. Plus it's worth noting that Itzhak Perlman lives in New York.

Face to face meetings no longer dominate our working lives and have been replaced by virtual meetings in companies across Britain, according to independent research amongst 3,000 IT managers conducted by Vanson Bourne, commissioned by storage, voice and networking distributor, Zycko.

69% of respondents across all industries "frequently" use either voice or video conferencing in their work. The financial services sector is the most frequent user (68%), however, 65% of IT managers in manufacturing and 56% working in retail, distribution and transport industries also claim to frequently use the technology. 

Only 9% of companies questioned have never attended a virtual meeting.

"UK business executives are fed up of wasting money and time travelling to face to face meetings. Advances in technology, such as the advent of virtual whiteboards and improved call quality have encouraged companies across the UK to adopt virtual meetings. Businesses are benefiting from faster decision making, greater collaboration with global colleagues, increased employee productivity, money savings, as well as the knowledge they are reducing the environmental impact of carbon emissions through air travel," commented Phil Marshman, director of VoIP at Zycko.

The survey revealed that 57% of IT managers are reviewing their voice and data requirements in 2006 and that 73% would embrace IP convergence to reduce business operational costs.

You know, I'd put America's third tier of musical talent up against your first tier, although here's where Great Britain might be able to start making an argument -- Carole King, Chicago, John Corigliano, Paul Simon, Garth Brooks, James Taylor, Dave Brubeck, Michael Jackson, Cab Calloway, Run-DMC, Leonard Slatkin, Taj Mahal, Dick Clark (yeah that's right, I said Dick Clark, you got a problem with that you don't know a whole lot), The Neville Brothers, Tony Bennett, the Allman Brothers, Wynton Marsalis, Marvin Gaye, Lorin Maazel, Bruce Springsteen, The Producers, George Crumb, Mose Allison, John Prine, Les Paul, Buddy Rich, R.E.M., Willie Dixon, Charles Ives, Ned Rorem, Anita Baker (such a voice), Elmer Bernstein, Rent, Little Richard, Tod Machover, Quincy Jones, Loretta Lynn, The Eagles, Ma Rainey, Prince, Buck Owens… plus it's worth noting that Johnny Hallyday is French.

Broadband Network Systems Ltd, together with partner PTC Ltd, has secured a deal to provide H.264 SD live encoders and decoders to Vietnam to enable the first broadcast quality video transportation in the country.  

The Envivio H.264 SD live encoders and decoders will be used for the commercial launch of broadcast quality video transport from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City by an undisclosed top Vietnamese telco.

"As the fastest growing economy in Asia after China, Vietnam is rapidly emerging as a regional economic power with consumer entertainment needs to match," said Jeffrey Soong, CEO of Hong Kong based BNS, who called offering H.264 broadcast quality video transport a "significant milestone in transforming Vietnam's entertainment landscape." 

Hell, Wayne Newton'd probably be on the stamps in your country.

If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/ for the fully-linked version. First Coffee^SM accepts no sponsored content.

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Ornette Coleman's "The Face of the Bass:"

Israel Business Arena is reporting that start-up e-Glue Business Technologies Inc. has raised $10 million in its second financing round.

Evergreen Venture Partners led the round with a $5 million investment, IBA says, "and was joined by existing shareholders Cedar Fund and Giza Venture Capital, private investors Shimon Alon and Ron Zuckerman, and Kibbutz Ein Shemer and Kibbutz Maagan Michael. This was Evergreen's first investment from the Evergreen V Fund."

Founded in 2001, e-Glue, which had raised $7 million previously, "develops and markets a software package for improving performance and quality, and increase sales in real-time to customer service call centers."

Proceeds from the financing round are intended to further development of new applications for customer service centers and the marketing of new products worldwide, according to IBA.

The journal says e-Glue was founded in Ein Shemer "on the basis of know-how of young programmers from the kibbutz, including CEO Omer Geva and VP business development Moshe Avlagon. The company's software provides customer service call centers, sales centers, and support centers with real-time information to improve their efficiency and boost company sales."

Today is the birthday of two writers, Franz Kafka and Dave Barry. One was born in 1883, one was born in 1947. One writes about existentialistic despair and the alienation of man's spirit in a world suffused with mechanical and psychological terror, about the injustices regularly meted out on helpless people by cruel governments. The other writes about beer, Barbie dolls, cows, exploding toilets and booger jokes.

One died penniless and in obscurity, the other is one of the most widely-read, highly-paid English majors on the planet. Yet another example of the genius of the free market at work.

So as First Coffee readers are known to be a highly intelligent, literary lot, we'll perform a running literary quiz through today's column, posting quotes and passages from these two world-class authors, and it's up to you to detect the nuances in style, theme and context to identify the author. First passages:

A. "We need the books that affect us like disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us."

B. "Although golf was originally restricted to wealthy, overweight Protestants, today it's open to anybody who owns hideous clothing."

At a recent conference in Birmingham, England, Customer: Strategy & Management, participants showed that "integrated customer management is even higher on the agenda of senior management," according to conference organizers.

"Implementing an effective customer management strategy is top of mind for senior management," said Simon Mills, Event Director, Customer: Strategy & Management. "Organizations are looking at overall strategy first then the blend of technology solutions coupled with training and consultancy."

Surveys of conference attendees found that 75% of respondents said their  customer strategy is led at "board level," and 80% of the attendees were from "senior management positions or above," an 8% increase from the 2005 event.

In a figure event organizers called "encouraging," 54% of the visitors came to the show with an existing customer management strategy in place and were looking for ways to integrate and fine tune their procedures, while 39% of the attendees used it as a starting point to develop and then implement their strategy.

Over half the visitors stated that they are in active buying and investigating cycles and 50% expected their budgets for customer management products & services to increase by at least 10% in 2006.

Time for another literary poser, as you play guess the author: Dave Barry or Franz Kafka, today's birthday boys:

A. "You can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the world, that is something you are free to do and it accords with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering you could avoid."

B. "I now realize that the small hills you see on ski slopes are formed around the bodies of forty-seven-year-olds who tried to learn snowboarding."

Art Technology Group, Inc., a vendor of licensed and on demand technology for e-commerce sites and customer service, has announced a "wide-ranging partnership" with Steria, a European IT systems integration and consulting services business.

The partnership is to focus on "delivering consulting and services in support of ATG's European business," according to ATG officials.

Peter Ford, ATG Alliances Director for Europe, Middle East & Africa, said "the partnership will offer Steria customers the opportunity to extend their existing CRM infrastructure and significantly enhance online customer experience and support services using ATG's products."

Gilles Graziani, Director at Steria said his company sees this alliance with ATG as "a strategic decision to provide our clients with time-to-market world class solutions in customer experience and selfcare."

ATG's products, Graziani said, "will help our clients to better understand how end users interact with the business at every touch point and allow them to improve the potential value of every customer interaction, whether it is an outbound marketing campaign, a commerce transaction, or a request for service support."

Part Three of the Great Literary Mystery: Franz or Dave?

A. "Anyone who cannot come to terms with his life while he is alive needs one hand to ward off a little his despair over his fate... but with his other hand he can note down what he sees among the ruins."

B. "I went with my wife and another guy to a Mexican restaurant which we thought would be the ultimate test for an anti-flatulence product. There's a reason most of Mexico is located out of doors."

A. "A first sign of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die."

B. "You can only be young once. But you can always be immature."

Give up? Franz Kafka is "A," Dave Barry's "B." Here's a final thought from the one who has demonstrated the deeper understanding of the human condition:

"What may seem depressing or even tragic to one person may seem like an absolute scream to another person, especially if he has had between four and seven beers."

If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/ for the fully-linked version. First Coffee^SM accepts no sponsored content.

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music should be The Kinks' Village Green Preservation Society, but iTunes doesn't have it yet. The government should regulate such things:

First Coffee almost feels like John Henry Cardinal Newman here, who had to write one of the classics of Western thought, Apologia Pro Vita Sua in the 19th century to defend his conversion from the Anglican Church to Roman Catholicism.

While not giving up my libertarian preferences in favor of government interventionism, I do feel at odds with my usual anti-government, anti-regulation drinking buddies on the net neutrality issue, as has been pointed out to me by those who normally agree with me and have accused me of all manner of perfidy, of desiring half-wit government bureaucrats controlling the Internet and moving towards a Soviet Russian-style government hamstringing of the free markets.

It's particularly risible to find phone companies complaining about how the government should keep their noses out of phone business, the very same phone companies which wouldn't exist today had the government not stepped in and busted up AT&T's monopoly. Reminds me of the French squeaking about American power, without which les grenouilles are die Frösche today. Fine. Next time, Pierre, you're on your own. Hope your grandchildren enjoy being difda.

At the same time I find myself on the same side as those you normally move away from in airport seating lounges, such as Daily Kos, People for the American Way, MoveOn.org and other cretin life forms whose thinking is only as deep as "Hey, if it's bad for President Bush I'm all for it!"

So what's going on here? Maybe we can combine an analysis of the issues driving both sides of the net neutrality debate with the historical concept of The Commons. Not having the brainpower of Cardinal Newman -- few do -- such an analogy is the best First Coffee can offer.

In civil society, laws should represent the way things should be, and they're noticed to the extent that they don't conform to the society's natural instincts. Nobody particularly notices a law requiring people not to steal that which belongs to others, we feel that's a pretty good law, everything considered.

While we can each think of instances where stealing something would be desirable in individual cases, and if we're liberal Democrats we think stealing other people's money in the form of government taxation is acceptable, but few question the principle behind the law that stealing is wrong.

So a law mandating the theft of your neighbor's property would be wrong, precisely because it contravenes our notions of right and wrong, the primordial soup from which laws evolve.

Communism of the sort enacted in the Soviet Union was an attempt to work backwards, to impose an artificial concept of right and wrong ("You don't really want to work for your own personal good, you really want to work for someone else's personal good!") on a populace instead of a populace creating a government reflecting their own values.

Such unnatural laws destroyed the Russian nation and left a populace deeply screwed up -- nihilistic, alcoholic and confused even today, a generation after the Soviet Union's fall. Actions based on bad ideas have bad consequences.

Economists and historians speak of "the tragedy of the commons," where a natural resource used by all and owned by none will, sooner or later, wither away from overuse and neglect. So when you make your entire economy a commons, as Russia did, your entire economy withers away from overuse and neglect. Which it did.

And while I'm certainly more in favor of individual rights than communal "rights," I believe in the concept of the village green, with the minimal government regulation necessary to preserve it, and avoid the inevitable tragedy of the unregulated commons.

Historically in English villages there was private property, every yeoman owned his own house and sheep and garden, but there was a village green, open for all to pasture their animals. Nobody owned it, everyone owned it. It wasn't fenced off, if you had livestock they could graze there. This strikes common-sense people as a good way to do it.

Then one day somebody, probably the kid everyone else had picked on in school, went to the king or whoever, Parliament, and convinced them that he had the "right" to fence off part of the village green for himself.

Whether he had that "right" or not isn't the point. In British society and under British law if he did, he did. The point is that after a while there were no communal village greens left in England. Again, whether that's a good or bad thing isn't the point, if you were rich enough to grab a juicy piece of pasture you thought it was a good thing, if you now had nowhere to graze your animals you thought it sucked. Sure the grass was kept nice and green, but that didn't help you as much as the old lower-quality but still available grass did.

I said I was in favor of individual over communal rights, and I am. I'm not a doctrinaire straight-ticket yellow dog libertarian, the orthodox libertarian position's as logically incoherent and hypocritical as the pacifist's or anarchist's or Communist's. Nobody would want to live in a pure libertarian society, we all like a certain level of government action, health inspecting Chinese restaurants, building roads and maintaining libraries.

The Internet is a pretty close analogy to the English village green. What we're seeing now is attempts to fence off parts of it, the most desirable parts, for the purpose of charging money to let animals graze off that choice grass, instead of the scrabbly crabgrass that'll be left after all the high-speed bandwidth's auctioned off to the highest bidders.

Great, say the phone companies and those who can afford the high-speed pasture. Hey, wait a second, say everyone else. That strikes us as unfair, especially since you didn't exactly create the grass in the first place.

Again, let me make it perfectly clear that while I believe all men are created equal, I don't for one second believe they all do or should end up that way. Hard work, strong moral values, brains and luck count for something, in that order. If somebody is down and out in this world, then unless they live in North Korea or Somalia the odds are much greater that they're lazy or they made bad choices than that bad luck or overarching stupidity is keeping them from being where they want to be. No commies here at First Coffee.

The point is, do phone companies have that right, to piece off the village green? They didn't create the Internet any more than English peasants created the grass, it was there provided as an act of God. Man, being man, promptly screwed up God's creation as much as possible, but the Internet, unless we're missing some key verses from Genesis, is a creation of humans -- and most certainly not of phone companies.

Which is why all this talk about "ownership" and "rights" coming from those who want to "own" the Internet for their own personal profit is so juvenile, wrong and otherwise stupid. Phone companies don't own the Internet. They didn't create the Internet. They did not take the entrepreneurial risk of investing in the Internet.

All they do is provide lines for people to access the Internet. The entrepreneurial risk they take is limited to laying fiber. They don't own what goes across that fiber -- this morning I placed an order to Land's End online. Neither I nor Land's End owe Verizon anything for "enabling" that transaction, we already pay them for the service they've contracted to provide, which is my access to Land's End's servers.

If phone companies had created the Internet -- if they actually owned it -- then fine, all this self-important bleating blather about private property and the "right" to charge whatever they want has merit. But they do not own the Internet, they own the means by which we access the Internet. It's presumptuous, dangerous and destructive for them to act as if they own the Internet itself.

Can they charge what they want for the use of their phone lines? Depends if you think the owners of the Mass Pike toll road can charge more toll for different cars. The false analogy phone companies use is that while trucks pay more because they inflict more wear and tear on the road, they should charge more to heavier users of their lines.

But of course that's not what the phone companies are talking about here, leave aside the fact that using fiber doesn't damage it the way trucks damage pavement: they're talking about charging one trucking company higher tolls than another trucking company to use the high-speed lanes on the turnpike.

Sometimes government regulation is to save people from their own stupidity. Trust-busting legislation is a good example of this, unless you think New York to Los Angeles long-distance rates were better back when AT&T held the monopoly. The Internet got to where it is today not because of phone companies deciding who got good service and who didn't, but because the vendors themselves had to continually provide the sort of service which differentiated themselves from their competitors one click away. Phone companies did nothing but piggyback on that.

And having phone companies, rather than consumers, decide what the heavily-trafficked sites will be, based on the sites' ability to bribe the phone companies, would be as artificial, anti-competitive and stifling a situation as Soviet Russia.

If  read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/ for the fully-linked version. First Coffee^SM accepts no sponsored content.

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Joe Jackson's Night and Day album:

First Coffee's 30 June piece on net neutrality generated a bit of reaction, we'll take the good, the bad and the ugly here. It really needs all the italics and bold text, so hit the link at the bottom if you're reading this off the First Coffee blog page.

I really enjoyed your TMCnet article on Net Neutrality. Two observations:

["Anyway, UPI quotes Cleland as saying that Net-neutrality legislation would hinder broadband access providers' ability to offer more than one service. "How does a new entrant succeed? You differentiate and you innovate," he said. "(Net neutrality) is saying you have to have the same price, and the same terms and conditions."

[I have no idea what the hell he's talking about, do you?"]

Unfortunately, the double talk you so rightly point out seems to be the norm rather than the exception these days. That is why I do not listen to or read mainstream news anymore.

Oh it's good to scan the MSM news media once in a while to see what the liberals are up to. And as Anne Coulter correctly points out, it makes a lot of people's jobs a lot easier, if you happen to be the al-Qaeda director of counterintelligence all you have to do is read The New York Times, and you're done by 10:00 a.m.

"If anybody should rightfully get to cash in off today's Internet it's the government, specifically the Department of Defense, not the Johnny- come- lately phone companies."

It is not the government who should cash-in, but the taxpayers who fund government activities through taxes. Instead of getting a return-on-investment, we are the ones that will pay more.

Keep up the insightful reporting.

Thanks Ron. Oh don't worry, not everyone was so nice, here's Mailbox 99 writing in:

David you are a caricature of America's fast-growing whiny entitlement culture.

That's a relief, I'm glad I'm not a representative example of it.

"I really like the internet and those guys make a lot of money so I should get whatever I want however I want it."

How about this David- THEY built the networks- THEY own them. I am sure if someone came to you decided they knew best how to manage a personal possession of yours you would throw a temper tantrum. But when it is to your supposed benefit you are all for it! If only we could all be so ignorant and hypocritical.

If I were renting out my "personal possession" to someone who was paying me money to use it, as the phone companies are doing, I guess I'd have to at least listen to their opinion on it, wouldn't I? And I'd certainly expect them to want some sort of "benefit" from it, whether it was in my power to grant it or not I wouldn't think it unreasonable for them to want some benefit from something they're paying to use, it'd be rather "ignorant" and" hypocritical" not to, wouldn't it?

Putting aside the fact they OWN the networks, how about this: The solution you support will put a bunch of half-wit government bureaucrats in charge.

Is that as opposed to the fully-witted ones or the quarter-wits? Or the half-wit government bureaucrats who enabled the birth of the Internet in the first place?

The internet can be run like your local DMV- wouldn't that be great!! Not to mention the enormous corruption that will certainly follow in its wake.

Leaving aside the fact that my DMV doesn't have two lines, a fast one for those who pay more and a slow one for those who pay less, how does "enormous corruption" follow from not allowing rich sites to bribe service providers to slow down their competitors? I guess I'm not following the logic on that one.

Lastly, once it is established that whiney, entitled US citizens such as yourself can, on a whim, take the property of others or at least make significant restrictions on how others may run their business, NO ONE will ever invest 10 cents in another project, let alone $10 BILLLION dollars. Why take the risk?

Why take the risk? Why not ask those who did -- the very service providers who are spending billions, they claim, to build bandwidth they demonstrably don't need; who are, in other words, doing exactly what you say they're not doing? Must be hard to defend an argument that's being disproved in reality even as it's being made, I'd have thought.

Try to look past your own selfish entitlements and put a little thought into this issue-- or maybe move to Russia, they ran their entire nation in a manner you propose and look how well-off they are.

Sorry, that was gratuitous, but sometimes simply quoting someone's own words is the best argument you can make against them. Just ask John Kerry.

I liked your article about net neutrality. But what can be done about it? I'm in a state with all democratic congressmen, and I think I read that every Democratic Congressman voted in favor of Net Neutrality. Is my only option to sit back and see what happens, or is there more I can do?

Good question. As far as what can be done about it, I honestly don't know. I guess if enough people felt as you did it could become a hot button issue, but I don't sense there's the groundswell out there right now.

The whole issue is confusing, at best, and dishonest at the worse. Reading the list of proponents of this bill is certainly enough, at least for me, to kill the whole idea of Net Neutrality: MoveOn.org. Daily Kos, People for the American Way, and on and on of nearly 100% Leftist/ Socialists.

How did the net get this far without a laundry list of laws and regulations coming out of Washington? You want a "level playing field", as the liberals constantly whine about, go to an ice rink!

That's the one thing that worries me about my supporting net neutrality -- if it puts me on the side of the Democrats in Congress and RINOs like Snowe, not to mention the truly brain-dead wingnuts like Daily Kos and MoveOn.org, I have this nagging feeling there's something grossly wrong about it I'm missing. All I can figure is that even a stopped clock is right twice a day, and even a blind hog gets a few acorns.

Brady writes in response to Mailbox 99:

C'mon man, get a grip. The amount of bandwidth one gets one pays for today via ones service provider, yes? That is what the phone companies should charge you for, whatever link speed you wish to pay for. Period. Done. They are making money, plenty of it. But you want to give them control way beyond that... full control over the traffic on the net. That gives them the ability to throttle any competitive traffic... hey, Skype... no, they don't pay us so even though you have a 6 Meg DSL connection we'll throttle that Skype traffic to an unusable speed... and since it doesn't then work well at that speed we'll raise our regular phone rates because we know you have to use regular phone service again. Monopoly time.

That's well said. In other words, my service provider isn't being paid to decide which sites are more attractive to me and which aren't, it's being paid to bring me all the sites and let me choose for myself. I mean, that's how they did it in Russia, isn't it?

Please please read up on this my friend... David is pretty much right in that our politicians are bought and fairly useless and that this could destroy a great deal of innovation on the net. It would be no less than tragic.

That's what keeps nagging guiltily at me, libertarian that I am: I like the fact that I get to decide which sites I can hit, I don't want my service provider to make that choice for me.

Really sharp article, David.

I was reading about the 11/11 tie in committee, and it sounded surreal, with some 70 telecom reps in the room furiously passing talking points up to the speakers so that at times our congressional representatives were nothing more than readers for the lobbyists.

And Olympia Snowe, whom I find both admirable and frustrating in equal measure, does pin the issue down neatly. There's an "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" angle to the argument, but you correctly raise the larger issue of this being a rider on an omnibus bill, of the sort that tend to get passed.

Good reporting on this – keep us informed.

Maybe it's my jaded past as an MSM reporter myself -- I'm not proud of it, I have repented -- but the tableau of the telecom reps pulling the strings of the congressmen strikes me as maybe a bit more gauche than normal, but accurate.

As a confirmed libertarian I'm opposed to government regulation and corporate monopoly in equal measure, so when they collide, as they do in net neutrality, it's kind of like a team from Texas playing a team from California, you wish there were a way they could both lose. But if I have to pick a "winner," I'll go for the one that doesn't screw up what's admittedly a good thing.

And finally Scott had a pretty good observation I hope turns out to be more accurate than my feeling about how things are going:

"Innovation is rarely the province of large corporations, it's almost always the little guys."

Which is why the whole "OMG! Google is going to load slower!" is a red herring. Network providers and operators aren't that stupid. They know they can't predict the next big site, so why risk losing subscribers by slowing down sites? 

I don't think the plan is to differentiate at that fine of a grain. I can see providers wishing to do it at the protocol level - VoIP gets a larger "chunk" of bandwidth than say web traffic. That can be made into a selling point, but saying some random website loads faster than with the other guy's network isn't. 

Here's hoping your scenario is the result if net neutrality fails, Scott, I'm happy to stand you a beer if it does -- living in Istanbul I can say things like that, of course -- especially the part about the granularity of control. That quote by Smith in my original article, however, gives me the willies.

Thanks for all comments, more are always welcome.

If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/ for the fully-linked version. First Coffee^SM accepts no sponsored content.

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Creedence Clearwater Revival's Chronicle, probably the best greatest hits package ever assembled:

It's time to delve into net neutrality, see what yesterday's Senate committee vote meant, what portents of doom are portending and if Google of Yahoo! is going to win the bidding war for premium service the telecoms are slavering for.

The basics: Don't confuse the apples with the apple cart. Net neutrality is but one part of an omnibus legislation phone companies are keen to see get passed so they can start doing things like offering pay-television services in competition with cable companies, according to industry observer Amy Schatz:

"The Senate bill's main focus is creating a national video franchise system that would allow phone and cable companies to bypass the sometimes lengthy negotiations with local authorities over offering pay-television service," Schatz writes. "But the bill also contains a wide variety of other requirements, from antipiracy technologies for television broadcasts to changes in a federal fund that subsidizes phone services in rural areas."

In fact, in typical Congressional restraint, there are over 200 amendments. One vote yea or nay passes or kills the whole schmear, if you want to kill any one of the amendments you have to kill all of them, which means if you want net neutrality you have to do without competition for your pay-TV service and whatever the hell the other 199 amendments are -- marble and gold-plated bridges in Alaska that don't go anywhere, if Ted Stevens was in the room when it was being written.

If phone companies could wave a magic wand they'd have the whole kit 'n' caboodle passed, and get to open a bidding war between large Net users -- Amazon, Yahoo!, Google, all those XXX and online gambling services nobody ever actually hears about but which are by far and away the most profitable things on the Internet and which'd quietly get way, way more profitable for whoever owns the broadband.

The phone companies are grinning, cackling and drywashing their hands in anticipation. The Washington Post reported in December 2005 that William L. Smith, chief technology officer for Atlanta-based BellSouth Corp. told reporters and analysts that yeah, an Internet service provider such as his firm should, in fact, be able, for example, to charge Yahoo! Inc. for the opportunity to have its search site load faster than that of Google Inc. A law allowing him to do so is a license to print money.

But they have to find some way to spin it like they give a crap about you the consumer, so in typical pretzel logic they're poormouthing about all the money they're having to invest -- billions! -- in upgrading everything to broadband, and who's gonna pay for all that? Of course you are. It's noteworthy that this argument is so threadbare that it only takes two logical jumps to get back to your wallet.

Craig Newmark, founder of Craig's List, recently held a Wall Street Journal Point-Counterpoint style debate with former Clinton press secretary Mike McCurry, where Newmark was pro-net neutrality and McCurry wanted to throw orphans out in the snow, evict grandmothers from their homes at midnight and outlaw ice cream.

Newmark pointed out that " I also work with some of their engineers, talking about the way big telecoms operate and issues like network capacity. It turns out that they have lots of unused capacity for bandwidth, but the big telecoms have been very remiss in implementing the newer Internet protocols (IPv6) required for growth, due to bureaucratic inertia."

In other words, running out of fiber anytime soon is not a problem. Newmark quotes an article Fiber Optic Association President Jim Hayes wrote on StreamingMedia.com in late 2004 saying "The backbone was terribly overbuilt… ninety-three percent of all the fiber that's been installed is still unused."

McCurry asked Newmark what the definition of "is" is.

That should settle the intellectual part of the debate, since "invest in broadband" is the only fig leaf the service providers can come up with to cover a naked money grab. What do they care what you think? You don't want to pay up? Fine, go read a book.

Ironically, it might be the phone companies' overarching greed that'll cost them with net neutrality. There are so many goodies stuffed in this Christmas stocking that the debate might break down over the sheer volume of it all, what with summer break coming up for Congress there simply might not be the time. Win the battle, lose the war.

It's rare First Coffee finds himself agreeing with RINOs like Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine, but whoever writes her public statements uncorked a good one with "Net neutrality has been the founding principle of the Internet and has been the single greatest reason for its growth and its success." Ditto here.

After all, it's not like the phone companies invented the Internet, or even subsidized its early years, or have done anything but make money off it. They have tons of unused bandwidth lying around, do they expect us to believe their tatty excuses that they need more? No, I don't think they really do, they just need some mantra their bought and paid for legislators can repeat at press conferences. "Need to invest in more bandwidth" will do for the intellectually lazy, those who dig deeper, well, screw 'em. Who cares?

Uberdork Steve Forbes tut-tuts that net neutrality is a wolf in sheep's clothing, warning us that it will "stifle innovation." Which, of course, is the standard threadbare soundbite corporations always use when somebody might keep them from wringing every last dollar out of customers. Don't believe a word of it. Innovation is rarely the province of large corporations, it's almost always the little guys.

Honestly, the arguments the anti-fairness guys use are just plain stupid. Scott Cleland's the founder and president of Precursor LLC and chairman of NetCompetition.org. Incidentally, you can be almost 100% sure that anything which has to call itself "netcompetition" is pushing for anything but, that's why they have to try to snow you with the name. Remember the Democratic Republic of Germany, a.k.a. East Germany?

Anyway, UPI quotes Cleland as saying that Net-neutrality legislation would hinder broadband access providers' ability to offer more than one service. "How does a new entrant succeed? You differentiate and you innovate," he said. "(Net neutrality) is saying you have to have the same price, and the same terms and conditions."

I have no idea what the hell he's talking about, do you? That statement has absolutely no connection with any reality I'm aware of in the debate on whether megacorporations should be allowed to discriminate in supplying your Internet content based on who can stump up more cash. If Google outbids Yahoo!, well then Google loads faster and if you prefer using Yahoo!, go suck eggs, pal. Tough toenails.

What do differentiation and innovation have to do with that? Absolutely nothing, Cleland's just hoping you're too stupid to realize that.

Hal Singer, president of Criterion Economics, is someone else who thinks you have oatmeal for brains. First Coffee's almost always on the side of the free markets -- when it's a product or service that was developed via the free markets, which the Internet was not. The Internet was created and developed by the government and large research universities, about as far from the free market as you can get in America. The free market didn't develop it because it wasn't profitable to do so.

Now you can make a buck off the Internet, so the phone companies are blustering around like they took losses for years "innovating" and "differentiating" as they nursed the Internet along, and now they want to cash in on what's rightfully theirs.

Bushwa. If anybody should rightfully get to cash in off today's Internet it's the government, specifically the Department of Defense, not the Johnny- come- lately phone companies.

Anyway Singer claimed that a lot of the pro-Net neutrality talk is based on "misconceptions about what access providers want to do," according to UPI: "The debate suggests some anti-competitive motivation from access providers," he says.

Refer to the Smith quote above for why you can safely disregard anything else Singer, or anybody else who claims you can trust service providers, says.

If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/ for the fully-linked version. First Coffee^SM accepts no sponsored content.

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Jim White's (The Mysterious Tale Of How I Shouted) Wrong-Eyed Jesus, First Coffee's favorite American album made since Tom Waits' Rain Dogs:

Is First Coffee shocked that Net neutrality failed in Congress? Not really. It's not the absolute stupidest thing Congress has ever done -- there's way too much competition for that title -- but since ensuring it would have required adherence to principles other than kowtowing to contributors it's not particularly surprising that it got toasted.

We'll look at it for a couple days and have more to say about it Saturday, once all the shakin' and hollerin's over.

Children International, an international nonprofit humanitarian organization which runs a sponsorship program uniting children and sponsors, has gone live with Aptify CRM on an enterprise-wide basis. Aptify, a vendor of customer and member relationship management, e-Business, education management and other applications, will enable CI to provide what CI officials hope will be "responsive and personalized service for its sponsors, donors, and field offices worldwide."

Established in 1936, Children International aids needy children in 11 countries including Chile, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, India, Mexico, the Philippines, the United States and Zambia. Sponsors' contributions help provide poverty-stricken children and families with necessities such as health and dental care, educational assistance, decent clothing and nutritional assistance.

Basically, the charity will use the technology to track marketing campaigns for sponsorships and donations, provide a robust reporting tool set and employ fundraising management to handle donations and in-kind gifts.

"Aptify's out-of-the-box standard processes supported 70 percent of our unique needs," says Barry Sanders, CI's IT director who seems to have found a rewarding career after football (rimshot). Additionally, CI has fulfilled the rest of their requirements by using Aptify's flexible configuration tools.

Future plans for Children International include incorporation of the Aptify e-Business suite into the children.org website to enhance its online capabilities for its current sponsors and contributors.

Aptify, headquartered in Washington, D.C. has been recognized twice by the Inc 500 as one of the fastest-growing privately held companies headquartered in the United States.

Stop the presses, CRM systems starting to deliver real benefits at last.

The proportion of companies who describe their CRM applications as "very successful" has more than doubled in the past 12 months, according to the latest survey from the British consultancy PMP Research. Their positive experiences are encouraging other organizations to review their implementations in the hopes of achieving additional benefits. The research has been commissioned by the Evaluation Centre.

"For the past two years, PMP's annual survey on CRM has found only a very small number of satisfied customers (4%)," PMP officials say. First Coffee presumes this means that only four percent of CRM customers were satisfied with their CRM systems, not with PMP's survey. Where have all the copy editors gone? Long time passing.

But this year, the proportion who state that their CRM applications have been "very successful" in delivering all the benefits anticipated has leapt up to 14%. Release the doves, Krug all around.

A further 39% label their CRM efforts as "successful" and say that the business has seen some, if not all, the benefits expected. "Put together," PMP officials point out, "this means that half of this year's sample (53%) reckons to be seeing real improvements as a result of implementing CRM applications."

It's a general rule of thumb that about half of CRM implementations fail. But companies are nothing if not dogged: Two-thirds (66%) told PMP that they are currently making changes and additions to their implementations in order to get more of the benefits they originally sought, or say they have plans to do so shortly. Just 11% have ruled out further improvements completely. Six have jumped off the window ledge and are unavailable for further comment.

Respondents were asked to rate their motivations for adopting CRM technology on a scale of 1 to 5, where 5 for "very important" and 1 is for "couldn't care less." The aggregated results show that the two most common drivers for introducing CRM systems are "desire to improve customer satisfaction levels" at 3.96 and "requirement to improve customer lifetime value," 3.70.

Presumably "desire to get off this stupid committee and kick it over to IT" wasn't an option. But "attracting new customers" came in at the bottom of the list of desirable outcomes, 2.84. The East German judge gave it a 5.

The study also found that "the company website (91%), e-mail (87%) and web forms (64%) are all now common methods of online customer communication," according to PMP officials. Again, the wording leaves us to idly speculate what other forms of "online customer communication" are available, if one does not use the website, e-mail or web forms. The telephone was the unchallenged king of interaction at 96%, and fax came in at 85%.

Maybe expectations for CRM simply aren't all that high anymore. PMP found that the biggest proportion -- 47% -- of companies they surveyed estimate they have invested "less than £250,000" on CRM over the past three years.

Technalign, Inc. has announced they are partnering with InsynQ's Appgen Business Software group to provide Appgen's MyBooks Professional and Custom Suite accounting software products to partners and customers via the Technalign Partner/Distributor distribution network.

Technalign will deliver Appgen applications through their partner network, starting with a single user small business accounting application priced at only $59.00, and an Executive Dashboard reporting module for only $295.00.

The second phase of the partnership will involve interfacing MyBooks Professional with Technalign's HiAtlantis CRM, a product scheduled for release in the first quarter of 2007.

"MyBooks Professional and the other Appgen applications fill a large gap we've experienced with our customers and partners alike -- to get accounting software on the Linux Desktops and Servers," says Technalign CEO Dianne Ursini. "Many companies have been hesitant in the past to move from Windows to Linux in the SOHO and SMB markets, given the inability to run their accounting department software completely on Linux."

HiAtlantis currently "interfaces to accounting software using a spreadsheet file to import to legacy accounting applications," according to company officials.

The Appgen applications will be available with Technalign's Frontier, on the distribution CDs; version XI customers may download the TAFusion MEPIS package of MyBooks.

Hey Tim Henman, nobody expects you to be the next Brit to win Wimbledon any more, we're waiting for Andrew Murray, but certainly you could put up more of a fight than 6-4, 6-0, 6-2? Yeah okay, it's Roger Federer, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, but even he doesn't routinely win 6-0 sets in majors. It's one thing to lose honorably to a demonstrably better opponent, it's another to roll over and stick your paws in the air in front of the home crowd.

If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/ for the fully-linked version. First Coffee^SM accepts no sponsored content.

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Commander Cody and the Lost Planet Airmen's "Truck Stop At The End Of The World:"

Way back in the late '90s -- 1990s -- when First Coffee started working in the CRM field (eye roll, "Here goes Gramps again, fetch his ear trumpet,") I worked with Bob Thompson of CRMGuru.com fame. At the time Bob was trying to get something called "Partner Relationship Management" off the ground, the idea of treating channel partners as customers. "He wants to own the buzzword," a mutual associate said to me at the time.

Not a bad ambition. I've seen worse. I've had worse. I've accomplished worse.

It didn't really catch fire then. In March 2005 I looked at PRM again for TMC, and found that it still hadn't. "For the majority of manufacturers, PRM rarely fulfilled its promise of being able to synchronize product introductions, train workers and foster teamwork among resellers," CRM Daily wrote at the time. Instead, the PRM platform became a foundation for managing, publishing and controlling pricing throughout channels.

At the time Siebel still had their PRM stuff for sale -- heck, at the time there still was a Siebel. Here's how it was described:

"Siebel Partner Relationship Management provides companies with an enterprise-wide platform for managing relationships with partners and resellers. Using Siebel PRM, companies can plan and execute collaborative sales, marketing, and service programs; enhance forecasting accuracy and pipeline visibility; reduce partner management costs; and improve their ability to orchestrate channel operations on a global basis. Moreover, Siebel PRM provides native support for industry-specific PRM best practices, leading to greater partner program effectiveness and increased end customer and partner satisfaction."

As I wrote at the time, reading that seemed as nostalgic as reading old plot lines from Happy Days. Basically PRM's a great idea, automating the most common tasks involving channel partners, manufacturers and distributors. It grew like San Francisco Giants sluggers on steroids during the dot-com bubble, and collapsed about as fast.

It didn't go into a coma because the idea was bad. Much of it simply wasn't worth the keep. One vice president of sales recalls his dilemma with PRM: "I could [either] use Fed Ex tubes and have an admin crank out labels, or implement an entirely new system just for that. Fed Ex won."

Last October Bob told me " I think PRM got lost in the downturn and never really came back. That said, channel-centric companies understand that while they have to 'manage' partner relationships a bit differently, the same principles apply. The main difference is that business partner's view of value is generally revenue or profit."

The problem, I noted back in March 2005, is that what PRM was supposed to do, companies can do using low-cost items like Microsoft SharePoint, low-cost portals, freeware for project collaboration, salesforce.com, Siebel-IBM OnDemand initiatives and other hosted alternatives. Plus it just kind of… smelled like something somebody was creating to get you to buy their stuff. Remember PartnerWave?

Then lo and behold, earlier this week salesforce.com announces Partnerforce, Salesforce Partner Edition, described by company officials as "a new on-demand offering from salesforce.com that connects enterprises, channels and partners through the power of the AppExchange and The Business Web."

Salesforce Partner Edition "now allows companies to deliver all the benefits of salesforce.com's industry leading Salesforce CRM and marketing services to any partner." PRM, by a bit of a back door, but still.

Salesforce Partner Edition is described as a tool that lets vendors "distribute sales and marketing information quickly and efficiently across a multi-tiered distribution channel through a customized, on-demand portal that is as easy-to-use as a website."

The idea, evidently, is that this helps ensure high partner adoption as it provides sales managers with an accurate, integrated view into their entire sales pipeline. Using the salesforce.com product, integrated dashboards can display forecasts and pipeline views across both the direct and indirect sales organizations, while an integrated lead management system proactively ensures that lead distribution is aligned across both internal sales as well as channel partners.

PRM's even getting some love from the analysts. "The ability for companies to be able to analyze their sales and marketing pipelines and programs across both direct and indirect channels is a critical component to any successful growth effort," said Tiffani Bova, research director at Gartner. "An integrated view delivers productivity and increased effectiveness to both sides of the sales model, ultimately driving revenue and profitability for both vendor and partner."

So is PRM the Next Big Thing (again)? That cliché of an overnight success after nine years of hard work? Bob can get out of that parvenu Burlingame and move his family onto the Big Island?

Not so fast, thinks industry observer David Bradshaw. "Yesterday, salesforce.com announced that it would be offering a partner relationship management (PRM) software extension to its CRM software-as-a-service," Bradshaw wrote recently. "The new product extends the functionality of salesforce.com to channel partners. The product enables product or service-producing companies (or 'brand owners') to let their partners deal with them using a dedicated version of salesforce.com."

As Bradshaw notes salesforce.com already has partners using it, including its currently largest customer Cisco, which is running a pilot program in EMEA.

And it's not PRM itself Bradshaw has a problem with, understand. He calls it a "very important area," noting the same dynamic Bob noticed years ago: Only around one-third of goods and services are sold directly, meaning that two-thirds of the market for CRM is up for grabs via PRM offerings.

Nevertheless Bradshaw sees "three key problems over the adoption of PRM systems."

One: Channel partners "often work with multiple 'brand owners', so see no reason for using one brand owner's system." Refer back to the FedEx observation earlier.

Two: Many partners are "fiercely defensive about their ownership of the customer relationships and don't want to make it easier for the brand owners to usurp that ownership." Self-explanatory.

And third, "there are the usual issues over adoption of the system, which have increased because the end users are someone else's employees, not employees of the brand owner." In other words, unless it's Wal-Mart requiring you the supplier to use certain RFID products, which they can because they're Wal-Mart and you're… not, why should I install this stuff or use these hasselous processes just because it makes your life easier?

The advent of hosted software, not much of an industry presence back in the days when Bob 'n' Dave were tearing up the CRM world, ASP was as close as it got, goes a long way to addressing these three issues which didn't originate with Bradshaw nor suddenly become problems this year. They've been around for a while.

Salesforce.com's betting that its hosted model overcomes a lot of the resistance to PRM, mainly by not requiring costly installs, and that might have legs, but as Bradshaw notes, salesforce.com "will have a much tougher job with external users of PRM. What will really make a difference is if the brand owners offer sufficient incentive for their channel partners to adopt the PRM systems, and that is beyond salesforce.com's control."

Look, PRM's a good idea, but it's not an idea to build an industry around. "I don't know if specialized PRM vendors will be around much longer," Lawrence Lindsey, vice president of engineering for BPA software vendor Nsite told Marshall Lager last year. And Forrester analyst Liz Herbert told Lager "The most notable part of this trend is that it's largely the hosted-CRM vendors who are announcing partner and channel management additions."

So basically, if you can do PRM with CRM or e-commerce stuff, you should. No new billion-dollar buzzword, though. Don't we have enough of those already?

If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/ for the fully-linked version. First Coffee^SM accepts no sponsored content.

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Elvis's "Kentucky Rain:"

That does it. First Coffee is officially Disgusted And Finished with taking World Cup soccer seriously. If I want pre-fixed matches I'll watch Italian league soccer.

Italy-Australia yesterday. Slow match, the ref wants to liven things up, thinks "Hey, I'd like to see Italy play a man down," throws a red card on an Italian player for an ordinary foul that might -- might -- have elicited a yellow card from a Premiership or Bundesliga referee. If the referee's wife had been beaten senseless by the player in the parking lot before the game. Might. If the ref really wanted to stretch it. S-t-r-e-t-c-h it.

Italy pulls back on defense, and since Australia's already playing without their star goal-scoring winger Harry Kewell it's a tough match -- Italy can't crack the Socceroos' gutsy defense, and Australia's strategy in the Azzurri box seems to be to let Italian defenders take the ball away and hope for an own goal or something, the only goal Italy's allowed all tournament. But Australia's looking good.

It's 0-0, then in stoppage time -- three minutes? Where the hell did three extra minutes come from? As the game wound down First Coffee told his wife "Looks like there won't be any stoppage time either" -- the ref looks at his watch, twelve seconds left, thinks "Holy cow, I've got a date with the hospitality hostess after this match, I can't let it go to extra time," calls a foul in the penalty box on an easily-avoided Australian player for lying on the ground when an Italian player decided to change direction and step on him.

The only people who thought it was actually a foul were the Italian player, his mother and the hospitality hostess. But no matter -- the ref had decided to award the game to Italy, either because he didn't want his evening attenuated or because he liked the snazzy Italian uniforms more than the Socceroos' admittedly unstylish green and yellow. One Italian player, Gennaro Gattuso, even said later "the referee made a mistake."

Right, tough beans mates, g'day, don't let the door hit your butt on the way out. No replay, no appeal, the preference of Italy over Australia of one Spaniard can't be challenged even when it's perfectly clear to 45,998 of the 46,000 human souls in the stadium and any honest soccer referee at any level that you don't give a game-winning penalty kick for such a picayune foul, if it was a foul at all, in the World Cup.

''They look after the big nations,'' Socceroo Scott Chipperfield observed correctly afterwards. ''They want the big nations through to the semis and finals. It's always the way.'' Indeed, the refs did everything but carry Brazil over Australia in group play, and no doubt the TV ratings will be better with Brazil and Italy advancing and FIFA will make more money. Funny how these… coincidences work out this way.

In the NBA the refereeing obviously favors the big stars and big-money teams, one reason First Coffee doesn't watch it. Sad to see World Cup's the same way.

CRM vendor Onyx Software Corporation's officials seem most anxious that everyone know what's going on with its impending buyout by M2M Holdings -- AND NOT CDC! -- as they're publishing the banns of marriage, reporting that the company has received notification from the Federal Trade Commission of early termination of the waiting period under the Hart Scott Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act ("Improving Antitrusts Since 1976"), as amended, "relating to the proposed acquisition of Onyx by M2M Holdings, Inc."

Completion of the HSR review satisfies a regulatory review condition to closing the transaction. The closing of the transaction remains subject to approval by holders of a majority of Onyx's outstanding common stock and other customary closing conditions, Onyx officials say. Onyx expects the transaction to close during the third quarter of 2006.

The deal echoes the takeover of MCI by Verizon. Qwest had actually offered what on paper seemed to be a better deal for MCI, but the long-distance carrier opted for the more stable situation with Verizon.

The story so far, if you're just tuning in: In January the Chinese company CDC Corporation announced its intention to purchase Onyx, and in March announced that CDC Software, a wholly owned subsidiary of CDC Corporation, had "presented a new proposal to the board of directors of Onyx Software for a strategic transaction that would combine Onyx Software with CDC Software."

Onyx's board of directors said it would review the proposal, and that was the end of CDC as far as Onyx was concerned, evidently. It was manifestly plain to all that Onyx did not want to be acquired by CDC, and just as plain that CDC wasn't giving up easily.

The full-court press started in March, when John Clough, chairman of the executive committee for CDC Corporation and vice chairman of the board for CDC Software, said CDC Software still really, really wanted to acquire Onyx, particularly for its Pivotal CRM division. CDC Software was disappointed with Onyx's response to CDC's original proposal in early January 2006, and professed in March to be "even more surprised by the lack of interest" it received from Onyx.

Hong Kong-based CDC had offered to combine all the assets of CDC Software with Onyx, and $50 million in cash, for a majority of Onyx's common stock, keeping Onyx a publicly-listed company. Onyx's management announced right around New Year's Day 2006 they were rejecting the deal and never publicly budged from that stance, giving as reasons that CDC Software assets are performing poorly, CDC lacks a sustained history of profitable operations and has a poor record of delivering shareholder value the like.

Then earlier in June Onyx announced that it signed a definitive agreement to be acquired by privately-held M2M Holdings Inc., the holding company that is jointly owned by Battery Ventures VI, L.P. and Thoma Cressey Equity Partners and whose primary asset is Made2Manage Systems Inc., an enterprise software and services company.

It's an all-cash transaction valued at $4.80 per share, or approximately $92 million. The parties anticipate closing the transaction in the third calendar quarter of 2006. "We believe that this transaction is the right decision for Onyx shareholders, customers, partners and employees," said Janice P. Anderson, chairman and chief executive office of Onyx.

Last week, Reuters reported, Onyx rejected a takeover bid by CDC, "saying an agreement to be acquired by privately held M2M Holdings Inc. offers shareholders better value."

And shortly thereafter Onyx officials issued a statement reaffirming their "support of the all cash transaction with M2M," unless "the Onyx board of directors reasonably determines in good faith, after consultation with its financial advisor and its outside counsel, that the CDC announcement constitutes or would reasonably be expected to lead to a transaction that is superior to the definitive agreement with M2M."

Onyx officials note that CDC's June 20, 2006 press release described an all cash $4.85 offer, "yet only two days later, CDC has abandoned its all cash offer and now purports to offer Onyx shareholders only a combination of cash and stock, demonstrating CDC's inconsistent statements and unpredictable behavior." They add that the stock could be trading as low as $4.50 by the time the deal went down, too.

...

Dutch journal ComputerPartner is reporting NetSuite Inc.'s plum deal with CompUSA Inc., to provide NetSuite's on-demand business software in all U.S. stores.

"The deal is the first of its kind where a U.S. mass-market retailer will resell on-demand software, according to Zach Nelson, chief executive officer of NetSuite," the journal says. "Software-as-a-service is going mainstream," it quotes Nelson saying.

"Of as Tuesday, 10 CompUSA stores in New York and Connecticut will offer NetSuite software. After a month, NetSuite and CompUSA will evaluate how the partnership has been working and then continue the gradual rollout of NetSuite until the hosted software is available in all CompUSA stores across the U.S., Nelson said," the article reports. "Customers will be able to purchase NetSuite software through CompUSA Business Services' 1,100-strong direct-to-business sales force."

If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/ for the fully-linked version. First Coffee^SM accepts no sponsored content.

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Steve Martin's "King Tut:"

Gotta hand it to Portugal, winning -- surviving -- one of the absolute ugliest sports events First Coffee's ever seen. I've seen pro wrestling matches and Australian Rules Football (a.k.a. No Rules Football) games conducted with more class than last night's Netherlands-Portugal World Cup match. Sharks vs. Jets couldn't have come up with noticeably more violence, real or staged.

Ref Valentin Ivanov, who must've thought he was back to officiating those Chechens vs. Russians prison matches, threw a record-tying number of yellow cards for a World Cup match, 16 in all, and four red cards, two to each side, so by the final whistle the Netherlands and Portugal were playing 9 on 9. Had the Dutch equalized during the 90 minutes they'd have been down to two-on-two drills by the end of extra time.

Some of my best friends are Dutch, but the last two matches the Dutch team played are two of the reasons soccer won't catch on in the United States: It can be stupefying boring, and players whine incessantly like spoiled brats over faked-up "fouls."

Holland's final group match against Argentina was between two teams who'd already advanced, with the winner playing Portugal and the loser Mexico. Not exactly a life or death, winner plays Togo and loser gets fed to Brazil incentive. Neither team cared who won, and boy, was it ever obvious, a 0-0 yawner where four to five starters on both sides rested out for the whole game.

You do not have that in the NFL. Regular season games are meaningful since there are so few of them, and playoffs are the best players on the field, everyone giving a damn, at all times. Even in baseball, the American sport rivaling soccer in dullness, by the time you're in the playoffs there are no rest-the-starters, "doesn't matter if we win, lose or draw" games. Just ask the 2004 Yankees.

Then in the knockout round both Portugal and Holland put on a mucking and chopping Neanderthal affair with far more flops and fakes than actual painful encounters, despite all the cards and genuinely nasty fouls. Any American who tuned into that game to give soccer another chance, 50 million Brazilians can't be wrong and all that, would click off the set reassured in their preference for the clean, sedate National Hockey League.

See, a large part of soccer game strategy is for grown men to cry for as many fake fouls as possible. The endless fake-cry-argue-complaining players do turns Americans off, we feel like yelling "Just play the game, you bunch of whiny, lying little girls!" at the screen.

Last night at one point there was incidental contact with a player's jaw. He immediately dropped to the grass, clutching his eye -- right: his eye -- like he's been shot by a deer rifle, writhing in "pain" and screaming in hopes of getting a yellow card thrown. Americans don't respect junk like that, we don't want to watch grown crybabies endlessly lying, faking and pleading for special benefits they don't deserve, we subsidize that at the United Nations every day. We like our sports to be a break from childish irresponsibility, not more of the same.

Oracle has announced that their net income for the period ended May 31 was $1.3 billion, up 27% compared to the same period last year. Life's good in Redwood Shores. The strong fourth-quarter results boosted Oracle's performance for the full year, goosing net income for the year rose 17% over 2005 totals to $3.4 billion. Revenues were up 22% to $14.4 billion. No word on when Larry Ellison will retire from running Oracle to manage his philanthropic foundation full-time.

Oracle's applications business was their fastest-growing segment in the fiscal fourth quarter, what with new software license revenue from applications in the period reaching $640 million, up 83% from the quarter a year ago. Total applications software revenues for the period hit $1.3 billion, a 66% increase from the fiscal fourth quarter of 2005.

"We saw extraordinary growth in the quarter," said Oracle CEO Larry Ellison on a conference call with financial analysts. "We are growing the applications business faster than SAP."

Gotta get those anti-SAP digs in there if you're writing press releases for Oracle. Ellison's taken to pronouncing it "sap," as in the stuff you make maple syrup from, instead of the vendor's preferred "ess-ay-pee."

Much of the growth in Oracle's applications business has come through acquisition. Over the past 18 months, Oracle has acquired several enterprise application vendors, including PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, and Siebel. Burp.

In the fourth quarter, Siebel especially delivered a significant boost to Oracle's revenues, with the sale of Siebel CRM software for the quarter kicking in $81 million to the kitty, nearly double what Oracle had expected, said co-President and CFO Safra Catz.

No word yet on which multibillionaire will bankroll Larry Ellison's philanthropic foundation dedicated to reducing the violence in World Cup soccer.

Oracle's applications business, however, also saw significant organic growth during the quarter. Excluding revenues from Siebel and Oracle's Retek acquisition, Catz said, license revenue from the company's applications business grew 56%.

Oracle officials, however, stopped short of declaring the growth of its applications business an indication that businesses generally are opening up IT spending. "We can't tell at this point if it's an IT spending indication or a direct response to the state of the economy or people getting more comfortable with Oracle and buying more products," Catz cautioned. "But it does seem more Oracle-specific."

No word yet on whether Larry Ellison, uh, has a philanthropic foundation.

Oracle's cost of providing services, however, also grew by 24% during the quarter. Catz attributed part of that increase to the cost of maintaining the on-demand CRM service which Oracle acquired along with Siebel. Catz said the contractor providing Siebel's on-demand infrastructure had not reduced costs commensurate with the increasing scale of that business. Oracle plans to move the CRM on-demand infrastructure, Catz said. Siebel had previously identified IBM as the provider of its CRM on-demand infrastructure.

No word yet on whether or not Larry Ellison throws quarters to street beggars, or asks for change when he does so, or establishes that the beggar has not received any compensation from SAP before doing so.

DiamondCluster International, which earns its keep as a management consulting firm, has recently conducted a profitability analysis of one key marketing channel deployed by a major consumer services company, finding that… 86 percent of the $30 million being invested annually in that company's channel partner program was poorly spent because proper measurement was missing from the equation.

No word yet on whether Larry Ellison's philanthropic foundation, currently working to serve the needs of under-30 Stanford-educated beauty queens, is responsible.

The firm's newest white paper, "Profitable Channels: The Right Metrics Make All the Difference," reveals how to conduct an effective marketing channel check-up and capture millions of dollars in direct and indirect opportunity. To request a copy of the white paper, send an e-mail to profitablechannels@diamondcluster.com.

"Often times the data executives need to evaluate marketing channels and negotiate deals is easier to get than they think," claims Bill Abbott, a partner in Diamond's telecom practice who spearheaded the analysis. And rooting out those truffles "doesn't necessarily require a multi-million dollar CRM system or even IT department involvement."

No word yet on whether Larry Ellison can spell "philanthropy" without breaking into uncontrolled giggles. "Philanthropy? Yeah, give Tom Siebel half-price off the lunch buffet in the company cafeteria, there's your philanthropy."

You'll have to get the whole report for all the goodies, but suffice it to say that dropping unprofitable partners can, just as you suspected, immediately generate millions of dollars in cost savings: Diamond found that only 10 of the 74 partnerships were contributing value to the firm, an insight that quickly led to an increase in net channel value of $6 million per year.

If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/ for the fully-linked version. First Coffee^SM accepts no sponsored content or philanthropy.

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is "One Bud Wiser" by John Rich:

It's Saturday, but that doesn't mean there's nothing happening, or that there's nothing you might have missed, CRM-wise, this past week, but it does mean you might get the news confused with those game shows on TV:

Talisma Corporation, which styles itself a vendor in the "enterprise Customer Interaction Management" space, has announced a joint partnership with Japanese reseller Vital to sell Talisma's newly released Japanese products, Talisma CIM 7.0j, and CRM 7.0j.

In addition to releasing the new products, Talisma is also announcing the launch of the company's first Web site localized in Japanese. The announcement was made during a press conference with Vital at IBM Japan affiliate, LBS. Now let's take a commercial break and come back and visit with our contestants.

The partnership allows Vital to sell Talisma's products in Japan to companies such as Canon, Toyota, Epson, Sony, and Sharp, who are already using Talisma's products in other markets. One of Japan's most prestigious universities, Keio University, recently deployed Talisma's CRM product to enhance fundraising initiatives in association with its sesquicentennial (150^th, but you knew that) anniversary celebration in 2008.

Jocelyn Young, Research Director of Datamonitor has said recently that as organizations in Japan seek to acquire and expand their customer relationships, "the market for Internet-based customer interactions will increase." Just how much, of course, is the $64,000 Question.

Talisma CRM 7.0j is built primarily for the higher education market, as the product is billed as providing "increased functionality that yields significant enhancements across all areas of the institution and the student/constituent lifecycle."

Jim O'Farrell, VP of Corporate and Channel Marketing at Talisma Corporation promised that the announcement is "the first of many to come regarding internationally localized Talisma products offerings and Web sites. The growing market in Japan is at a point where customers are demanding that the existing model for customer service be replaced," and all this can be yours if the… price… is… right!

X10DATA Corporation, developer of the x10DATA Mobile Platform, has announced that it has mobilized Microsoft's Dynamics ERP and CRM applications on Palm's Treo 700w smartphone.

Why is this newsworthy? Because when powered by the x10DATA Smart Client, Treo users can navigate financial, sales, service, and project management applications real-time over Verizon's EvDO broadband network using 10 intuitive, single-handed commands and a year's supply of Turtle Wax.

Nobody questions anymore the benefits of mobile workers holding the ability to track and update critical business information while in the field, since those who do are here in our studio audience today. The power of field mobility is now available to small and midsized companies that use Microsoft Dynamics ERP and CRM applications, thanks to the technological advancements of x10DATA, Palm and Verizon Wireless.

"The Palm Treo powered by x10DATA enables sales managers, service reps and CEOs to do what they do best -- from servicing customers and taking orders to managing projects and cash flow," says Doug Migliori, President of x10DATA Corporation. "It means being 100% effective, 100% of the time, wherever you are."

That's great. Jay Stewart, tell us about it: After Palm introduced the Treo smartphone, it quickly became one of the most popular devices on the market, integrating a mobile phone with e-mail, organizer, web access, camera, and more. And now, the Palm Treo 700w combines the functionality and ease of use Treo smartphones are known for with the power of Windows Mobile.

(Pause for Carol Merrill to run fingers lovingly along the product).

And with the x10DATA Smart Client installed, it's the perfect balance of ease and power, delivering everything needed to be fully productive while away from the office, with one-handed operation. You can have the x10DATA or what's behind door number two!

"Whatever you can do from your PC, you can do from the palm of your hand with 10-command navigation and your thumb," states Mr. Migliori.

x10DATA Corporation is a recent spin-off from ADC Technologies Group, Inc. The company is a Microsoft Gold Certified ISV Partner and software developer of the x10DATA Application Platform and the EasyTrac Supply Chain Execution Systems powered by x10DATA.

Also this past week Oracle announced from Geneva revenues of $4.7 billion in US GAAP basis for the fiscal year 2006, ended 31 May 2006, for the Europe, Middle East & Africa region, a 10% growth compared to fiscal year 2005.

Operations in the region accounted for 33% of worldwide FY06 revenues, and new license revenues grew 10% compared with the previous year.

For the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2006, new license revenues were also up… the survey says… 20% on the fourth quarter 2005, as the region saw increased demand from a broad span of industry sectors, in particular public services, financial services, retail and telecommunications, as well as the small, medium enterprise market.

Many world-class commercial enterprises such as Thomas Cook AG, Telecom Italia, Virgin Atlantic and Société Générale and Rice-A-Roni, the San Francisco Treat, have selected Oracle products in database, middleware, business intelligence, business applications, and collaboration to improve their business processes, and to help them gain better information, high availability and performance, and to deliver superior customer service.

Sergio Giacoletto, Executive Vice President, Oracle Europe, Middle East and Africa commented, "This has been a good year for the region, with growth across all lines of business. We have increased our revenues; consolidated our leadership in our bedrock markets of public services, financial services and telecommunications; and extended our presence substantially in the healthcare, retail and transport and logistics industries."

Overall it's a good area to be in now, especially if you want to buy a vowel. According to the latest Gartner report "Market Share: Database Systems Software Market, EMEA, 2005," dated 20th June, 2006 Oracle is the number one supplier in the EMEA region in the relational database segment with 48.3% market share.

According to Paul Lynde to block, the RDBMS segment continues to be the engine for growth, at 6.7%, accounting for 84% of the total database management systems. Overall, the DMBS market 5.8% in EMEA, totaling 4.7 billion euros.

Fairfax, Virginia-based Fairfax County Federal Credit Union has chosen for its credit union enterprise software The Complete Credit Union Solution, to handle its data processing needs. The software is made by Open Solutions Inc.

The credit union has also selected several of Open Solutions' complementary applications including cView, the company's CRM tool; the collection module and financial accounting products including general ledger and ProfitVision for profitability.

Fairfax County Federal Credit Union, with more than 18,000 members and $210 million in assets, recently expanded its charter to serve the entire county. As a result, the credit union sought a new core processing system, as its 27-year legacy system could not accommodate its growing needs, placing it in… Jeopardy!

If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/ for the fully-linked version. First Coffee^SM accepts no sponsored content. This has been a Mark Goodson-Bill Todman production, from Merv Griffin Enterprises.

The news as of the first of many coffees and Diet Cokes and first French toast -- Freedom Toast, excuse me -- this morning, and of course the theme song of Radio KCRM 98.6 is Adam Carroll's "Ol' Milwaukee's Best:"

So there I am with my invitation to the T-Mobile Sidekick Party in L.A., adjusting my cummerbund and wondering if I can swing up to Carmel to drop in on James Ellroy after Ellay (some excuse about a gardener last time I was out there, fine, keep the Coronas on ice, I'll take a rain check even though it never rains in LoCal SoCal) when I get a call from someone named Brittany Brower wondering if she can jump a ride to the airport in my stretch.

Sure sure, I say, distracted, wondering if Koz is firm on that $23 mil for the Nantucket place or if I can knock him down to $22.5 and a file in a cake, what with the Turkish lira tanking ahead of the regularly-scheduled army coup we're struggling for liquidity in the face of irrational exuberance here at… Radio KCRM 98.6, "All Louis Jordan, All The Time," your one-stop shop for disjointed stream-of-semi-consciousnesses having sometimes a tangential yet meaningful and caring relationship with Customer Relationship Management.

Note to self: Check with friends at Swift to see how The Kozman's picture looks today, $21 might not be out of the ballpark like a Barry Bonds juiceball if pitched correctly.

Okay, this Sidekick 3, the Ed McMahon of tech toys, let's see, reax from propellerheads in the audience… that's right, it's Radio KCRM Open Mike Night, and instead of Jeff from Tarzana we have bboyredcel from WENG, Engadget, fun-lovin' bunch over there, okay Mr. No Girly T-White Cells what's your studied take on this piece of technology… you say you've clicked on Brittany's link above and you'd like to discuss the merits of Sidekick 3 a bit further with her? I tell you she's got great etchings too, my man, now strap on the drool cup and tell the folks who've invited you into their living rooms tonight whatcha think of the tech toy du jour…

…" is this thing on, testing one, two, three, okay, what a waste of time and money… paralyzed epileptic monkeys on who had one too many acid-laced bananas. They do nothing, and restrict the user to over-priced ringtones, over-priced games, lack of open development for software, and a complete lack of synchronization capabilities, BT networking, hi-speed internet, a capable web browser (w3c compliant) and a slew of other things now standard in similar devices that cost less money (if not a few well spent $ more)... what a complete disgrace."

Hoookay, so you probably shouldn't hold the line open for T-Mobile's invite to the panel discussion and Meet Brittany Brower Reception afterwards, not to worry, Radio KCRM'll whisper in her ear why you couldn't make it as you'll be figuring out exactly what a paralyzed epileptic monkey dropping tab actually does with a cell phone…

… We've been asked by the Radio KCRM 98.6 head office in Milwaukee to take a more positive spin on things, what with all the bad news in the world it's good to be a force for positive good! So the boys over in rewrite tell us that the good news is from our friends over at Gartner pointing out that 30 percent of IT projects succeed, or actually meet expectations! Organizations who are spending billions of dollars each year aren't completely wasting all of it because sometimes they select the right hardware, middleware, and software, as a result of adequate vendor information and evaluation processes! Such successes can be found within price-sensitive small and medium enterprises, which require accurate IT information to be collected quickly and cost-effectively during software evaluation processes! And friends, sometimes it happens!

Whew, as we scrub off the clown greasepaint and try to work our mouth out of that rictus smile let's listen to Jimmy Buffett… the soft tropical breezes and soothing calypso music, much better… margaritas, changes in latitudes, sunsets over Miami… buy at two and three-eighths and sell at five -- oh sorry, wrong Buffett… stumbling around on a beach with a bottle of rum in one hand and Brittany Brower in the other, ah, that's better, except for that ringtone… it's Brittany's Sidekick 3, can't see where she pulls it out of, can't see where she's wearing enough fabric to hide anything that big… it's bboyredcel saying "and it doesn't even make toast, how lame, what an utter insult to anybody with an I.Q. over their shoe size, who'd buy this thing anyway? Is Brittany there? Know how to work the camera feature? Okay, can you ask her to stand next to -- "

Moving right along on Radio KCRM, 98.6 on your dial, in your heart and hopefully other significant bodily organs as well, here's a Goldie Oldie Retriever, our good friends in North Carolina, SAS, who'd like to remind listeners that Sun Hung Kai Financial, one of the largest and longest established Hong Kong financial services groups, has selected SAS Customer Relationship Management (CRM) to "improve its return on investment and increase both its profitability and market share," according to company officials.

I know, that's the sort of out-of-the-box thinking that gets you one of the largest and longest established Hong Kong financial services group, that and the right kind of friends in Beijing. The Group is aiming to extend its wallet share and generate more revenue by -- get this bleeding-edge strategy, revealed publicly here on Radio KCRM for the first time anywhere -- "matching its financial products to individuals' needs."

Hey who needs books studying the business acumen of Ernest Shackleford, Coach K or SpongeBob Squarepants when you have that kind of gray matter sitting around your conference table? Radio KCRM, "All John Cage, All The Time" salutes those folks.

Rebecca Neufeld, Head of Strategy and Corporate Marketing of Sun Hung Kai Financial noted that SAS has a "proven track record of success in the financial services industry in Hong Kong and Greater China," which didn't hurt them in the selection process either.

For their part, SAS has developed a complete roadmap for Sun Hung Kai's CRM strategy, with Denny's and Holiday Inns conveniently marked along the way, from customer profiling to predicting customer behavior and implementing marketing campaigns.

The first stage will start with establishing customer centric profiles, allowing Sun Hung Kai to identify the most profitable customers -- a vital step in populating the official Christmas card mailing list, sure, but also for drawing up tactics for boosting the effectiveness of database marketing. The initial process will take about three months.

Edvan Chan, General Manager, SAS Hong Kong and South China noted that by using cleaned customer data and advanced analytic technology, "predictive marketing such as cross-selling and up-selling can be executed."

SAS's CRM product is built upon the open-standards-based SAS 9 platform, and can be readily integrated with an organization's current infrastructure.

Switching to the community service announcements now, critic Ted Fry notes that while the new Adam Sandler movie Click predictably sucks, "all it really cares about is the carefully composed tableau of Adam Sandler farting with his butt poised inches from David Hasselhoff's face." In other words, funnier and more intelligent than a Stephen Colbert routine.

And time for the Radio KCRM 98.6 Trivia Challenge, first prize tickets for two to see any good movie, which country has the lowest rate of broadband penetration, Estonia, Ireland, Slovenia, Greenland or Lithuania? Well, okay, Greenland, but who's second-worst? That's right, Ireland.

The Irish Times reports that latest figures from the Commission for Communications Regulation show that "by the end of March, there were 270,000 broadband subscribers -- around 120,000 more than there were a year earlier. But ComReg's last quarterly report also showed that broadband penetration here remains the lowest among EU countries, at 5.34 per cent."

Why? Oh, maybe the fact that while broadband products that cost 20 a month, Irish Times says, "the true cost of securing broadband from most of these providers is actually 19.99/20 plus the 24.18 a month they pay to their landline operator -- usually Eircom -- for line rental. Landline rental is higher in the Republic than in any other EU country."

Friends, earning nickels here keeps you from pulling in dollars there. Think that maybe making broadband a lot more accessible by lowering the stinkin' fees will repay itself in increased government revenue from taxes paid by successful businesses and businessmen? Let's try it and see, shall we?

If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/ for the fully-linked version. First Coffee^SM accepts no sponsored content.

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is the most casual, breezy, fun album Frank Sinatra recorded, Come Fly With Me:

A recent survey by Reader’s Digest finds New York to be “the world’s most polite major city,” beating out large cities in 35 countries. “Coming in a close second was Zurich at 77 percent, Toronto at 70 percent, and Berlin, Sao Paulo and Zagreb, Croatia, all with 68 percent,” according to a Reuters report on the findings.

Rounding out the top ten were Auckland, Warsaw and Mexico City. Politeness was measured with door-opening tests, “dropped- document” tests and seeing if service personnel would say “thank you” for a purchase.

“The more than 2,000 tests of behavior showed that people under 40 were more courteous than those over 40, men were more polite to other men and women were more polite to other women,” Reuters said, adding that “People around the world tended to offer the same explanation for their polite behavior – they were polite because they had been brought up to be that way.”

Got that? New Yorkers are the most polite big city people in the world, and under-40 New Yorkers are more polite than the over-40 crowd because they were raised right.

Now somebody named Sharon Jayson at USA Today, vendor of bite-size News McNuggets, comes along with a much more thinly-researched article, cherry picking quotes, sources and experts in an effort to try to convince you the reader that those durn kids today are just in their own world and don’t respect anyone, which besides being the most boringly oft-repeated claim every generation has ever made about the generation immediately following it, would seem to be blown out of the water by the more real-world Reader’s Digest findings.

Jayson’s bogeyman? Three guesses and the first two don’t count. That’s right, newfangled personal technology!

Evidently what’s responsible for kids today not giving a tinker’s damn about anything or anyone but themselves and their friends are IM, iPods, cell phones, Xboxes, a laundry list as boringly predictable as was my parents’ generation blaming television and stereos for the precipitous decline in Western civilization rampant in my generation.

Yawn. First Coffee cannot think of any personal technology, from the sticks and berry dyes used in the Lascaux cave paintings to smoke signals to zoetropes to moving pictures to vacuum-tube floor radios to television to record players to transistor radios (which of course led to listening to the Cubs on WGN when you shoulda been haying in the barn, kid, who’s gonna want to hire someone who listens to the radio instead of working? You better start showing some respect around here…) to Apples (“Chuck just spends all night up there programming that silly computer…”) to Pong to personal computers to Ataris to Walkmans to video games to the Internet to VCRs to Game Boys to portable CD players to cell phones to IM to TiVo to PlayStations to iPods on, which has not been blamed for a “breakdown in the social fabric,” “heightened rudeness,” “buncha damn kids not respectin’ their elders,” “increased drug use,” “not learning how to value money,” fill in the blank with whatever names, dates or countries you wish.

It’s a little-known historical fact that after filling the backlogged orders for Bibles, Johannes Gutenberg’s second job with his newfangled printing press was to run off a broadside for a sociologist at the University of Mainz complaining that the youth of the 15^th Century Rhine Valley were not respecting their elders’ social conventions and norms, and spending way too much time with such cutting-edge personal technology as sharpened sticks and charcoal, and their preoccupation with their peer group was keeping them from appropriate interests in pigslopping and buying indulgences from itinerant pardoners.

Recently historians have discovered that Alexander Graham Bell’s second utterance over his newly-invented telephone, after “Come here Watson, I want you” was “Sure hope my daughter doesn’t get a hold of this, we’ll never get her off. Kid’s in her own world – I ever tell you about that time last week, Watson, when we asked her to fill the coal scuttle, and she was too busy talking to Mabel to listen? I tell you, that kid’s in her own little bubble, doesn’t listen to her mother and wears only six layers of petticoats like some Italian immigrant hussy, you’re lucky that you don’t have kids today, Watson, I tell ya, when her generation start running things I just don’t… Watson? Watson? Hello? Operator, someone must have disconnected this call…”

Jayson’s article colors in the same numbers: Kids today, sheesh, whaddya gonna do, they seem to be in their own world alla time, don’t pay attention to nothin’ we tell ‘em, and you should see their clothes! Heavens to Betsy, my momma’d have done whupped me. Once they grow up and start runnin’ the country I don’t know what’ll happen, it’s like they don’t even care what our expectations are, they don’t even listen to me nag them about it, all they care about are their friends and toys, and their clothes, good gracious!

“They’re tuned out in some ways to the social graces around them and the people in their lives, in their physical realm, and tuned in to the people they’re with virtually,” sociologist Sherry Turkle of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology tells Jayson, oblivious to the fact that if she dropped her documents detailing this truth on the streets her best bet for someone helping pick them up would be an American under 40.

(The sociologist at M.I.T., isn’t that like the sportswriter for The Wall Street Journal?)

In one way the older generation is learning from the generation they love to criticize so much: Moving with cyberspeed, the anti-MySpace backlash has kicked into gear faster than any backlash against any teen-friendly technology yet.

Some teacher in Cupertino, California (hi Steve) tells Jayson “I don’t think we’re requiring civic responsibility anymore – the social graces, ceremony and ritual, dress codes, social mores and manners… My students seem to be saying, ‘I can separate myself from whatever experience I’m in and create my own bubble.’”

Sure, right up until you need help, then you’d better hope there’s a teen in his own bubble, talking on his cell phone, listening to his iPod floating past instead of a 48-year old who’s never IMed once in her life and needs her 11-year old to program the VCR so she can watch that hunky Kiefer Sutherland on 24 Hours when she gets home.

It’s amazing that young people, demonstrably more courteous to strangers than their parents who are too busy harping on how rude kids are to notice that their kids have stopped to open a door for someone the parent walked right past, could say they were “brought up” to be polite. Evidently learning by negative example takes.

Online commentator Dick Meyer gets it. “This impulse that new is worse, when combined with the eternal tut-tutting about ‘kids today,’ goes far in explaining why grown-ups worry so much about the weird things kids today do with gadgets and gizmos. I’m sure the guy who invented the smoke signal was brutally besmirched by his father, who thought the owl call was perfectly adequate,” he writes.

Despite working for CBS News Meyer’s capable of honest reportage, as he notes he personally doesn’t approve of all the techno-fixation among “kids today,” so as a news editor he “helped send a small squadron of bright reporters (who all use IM with gusto) out into the cyber world to find some bad news about teens and technology. They found almost none.”

Leaving aside the nonchalantly accepted practice of sending news reporters out to find a certain conclusion, instead of asking them to investigate an issue and report on what conclusion they actually do find, a practice First Coffee remembers from his shameful past as an MSM journalist himself, Meyer’s stand-up enough to admit that “As a parent of a teen and an almost-teen, I see tons of kids who on the whole do have the traits I think must be atrophying because of lives lived too much online, on cells and on call; they’re social, polite, imaginative, articulate, learned, and athletic. I don’t know many cyber slugs.”

And it’s not like technology is destroying reading, a criticism repeated ad nauseum ever since the first television broadcast: A recent Yankelovich/Scholastic study found that “contrary to popular belief, kids who use technology platforms to read or listen to books, are more inclined to be high frequency readers (34%), than those that do not (25%).”

So lay off kids enjoying iPods and cell phones and IM. Odds are they’re just trying to get away from your witching at them the way you used to turn the volume up on your stereo when your parents came in to nag you. And they’re turning out to be more polite than you are, so don’t mess with a good thing you can later take credit for.

If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/ for the fully-linked version. First Coffee^SM accepts no sponsored content.

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Dizzy Gillespie’s “Ow:”

No, say it ain’t so! We CRM guys love Southwest Airlines. Love, love, love ‘em. Herb Kelleher, the airline’s late, much-lamented CEO is our Farrah Fawcett-style poster boy for How A CEO Should Be: Hard-nosed yet fair and honest on the business side, your favorite uncle when dealing with customers. When companies came sniffing around Company Days for secrets of success Herb used to make them do the Macarena.

We love the plastic, reusable boarding passes. We love stewardesses hiding in the overhead luggage bins. When First Coffee flew Southwest back in college, before I knew it was an Anointed CRM Icon, I loved the wine coolers before takeoff and the stewardess uniforms of hot-pants shorts and t-shirts.

We love them because they’re so common-sense even those of us who don’t have MBAs can understand what they’re doing. Southwest President Colleen Barrett told this reporter a few years ago “Other airlines can’t do what we do, because what we do is too simple.”

But mainly Southwest is revered by us in the CRM commentariat for their historically stratospheric – by airlines’ standards – customer satisfaction ratings. People will fly Southwest if they have any choice at all, because they simply like the way they’re treated, they like the way things are done to focus on the customer, and they like the fact that it’s different. Which is the entire theory of CRM: Treating your customers the way they want to be treated will bring them back for more. Company culture par excellance.

A hallmark of that culture might get toasted as Southwest is proposing experimenting with (sigh) assigned seating. You know, like your third-grade teacher, who wanted you all to sit in the same seats, she claimed it was so she could “learn your names” easier, which of course wasn’t true since she never called on you she always called on that teacher’s pet Sally B. Joyner, who should’ve had a little brass toad on her desk.

You’d think a business as successful as Southwest – 31 consecutive years of profit, market value greater than all other major airlines combined, which sure is due partly to common sense-radical ideas such as standardized aircraft, and keeping good employees happy to cut down on turnover – wouldn’t kill the golden goose. And maybe they’re not, maybe people really like assigned seating. I don’t, but then again I don’t like American Idol or moussaka either, but I do notice that “first-come first-served” means people tend to show up on time a lot more often than when they have an assigned seat.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting this morning that Southwest “will try out several different boarding methods using assigned seating on about 200 flights departing from San Diego International Airport beginning July 10.”

That’s it? Come on, lighten up Dave, it’s not like they’re suddenly going to turn into customer service troglodytes like Northwest or Delta overnight, are they?

Well, no, and it’s not like they’re the only ones using what the vulgar refer to as “cattle car” seating, as if you don’t feel distinctly bovine from the minute you walk into any airport for any plane anywhere. On other planes you simply get an assigned stall number.

But open seating might be a thing of the past. Jane Gardner writes that low-cost Australian airline Jetstar will discontinue unassigned seating. See, when rock concert promoters use unassigned seating it’s called “festival seating,” although granted, festival seating got a bad name after that Who concert in Cincinnati, so why is it “cattle call” on airlines? Inquiring minds want to know, just as they’d like the euphemistic simp who decided to soften terrorists into “insurgents” and “militants” to please get back to reality.

Since Jetstar began flying over the Great Southland a couple years ago it’s used open seating, but Gardner reports “Jetstar chief executive Alan Joyce said automatic seat allocations will begin on all domestic services on or after October 29.”

And why, pray tell, screw with a good thing beloved by families with young kids, for whom flying’s such a chore that anything to ease the ordeal is as welcome as sunglasses on the Sahara? Let’s see what Joyce told the Australian Tourism Exchange: “Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah manage the costs blah blah blah blah blah blah blah those costs can be managed.”

Yeah, journalists get like a dog in a Far Side cartoon if they stay in this business long enough. “Mr. County Supervisor, is it true that you knew the state would build the mental hospital on that plot of scrubland out past the old MacPherson place on Route 29 when you bought it for 29 cents an acre on the advice of your pal Weenie Hoskins, chair of the State Land Appropriations Committee, which is now buying it for $5,000 an acre?”

“Son, ah dunno what yer insinuatin’…” Right. Where’s that whiskey bottle…

So the idea is that assigning seating saves money. How? There’s a science of boarding planes, according to a good sketch in Aircraft Maintenance Technology.

We’re all familiar with what’s called, in complicated industry jargon, the “back-to-front” method of boarding a plane. You know the drill: “Those sitting in rows 28 through 48…” You’d think that’d be the common-sense way. But it’s actually “probably the slowest way we could possibly do it,” according to Mark Ahasic, director of operational planning for JetBlue.

Evidently there are myriad options: “America West uses the ‘reverse pyramid’ method; Delta the ‘rotating zone;’ and United the ‘window-middle-aisle’ method,” AMT says, in pursuit of saving a minute or two of sitting at the gate.

Jet Blue conducted trials on more than 100 actual flights, as well as on a computer, recalcitrant barnyard animals and Abu Ghraib inmates and found the best way to board is known, in specific technical terminology, as “every man for himself:” On a 156-seat plane, AMT says, “passengers boarding all at once, after the elderly and those needing special assistance, took 17 minutes to settle into their assigned seats, about a minute faster than any other method Jet Blue tried.”

Such random seating is “less labor intensive,” Dean Breest, a spokesman for Northwest told AMT, and certainly the last thing First Coffee wants gate attendants doing is any extra work by having to pay attention to passengers as they chat with friends about how bravely the pilot for the flight you’re boarding is currently upholding the airline’s honor in the bar by taking on the entire Australian national rugby team in vodka Jell-O shots.

But really, AMT admits, the dirty fact is that “there’s no consensus among the airlines on the best way to avoid bottlenecks among child-toting, luggage-lugging, aisle-blocking passengers.” Which of course you, I and every yip-yappy dog in a carrier knows.

America West tried something called the “reverse pyramid” which “cut its average boarding time by two minutes and experienced a 21 percent decrease in flight delays,” and United thinks boarding according to “window-middle-aisle” will save four to five minutes per flight and $1 million a year.

Hey, airlines, how stupid do you think we are? You really expect us to believe that saving a minute or two boarding will help you do a better job of taking off and landing on time when after boarding EVERYONE HAS TO SIT ON THE PLANE FOR FORTY-FIVE MINUTES BEFORE TAKE-OFF?

Southwest even has the fastest boarding method, AMT admits, of dividing passengers into groups according to arrival time and letting them pick their own seats. Alas, it also “reportedly is the airline’s chief source of customer complaints.”

So even the best-run companies do get some customer complaints, and even in Eden Eve bites the apple. Southwest, after all, does have a business to run, and if assigned seating is really such a huge money-saver, well, that’s how it has to be, I guess. Entropy.

If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/ for the fully-linked version. First Coffee^SM accepts no sponsored content.