By David Sims
[email protected]
The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music
is Dave Brubeck’s landmark 1959 album Time
Out, the first jazz album to feature all original
compositions, and the first jazz instrumental album to sell a million copies:
Cingular Wireless is offering Good Technologies Inc.’s mobile e-mail service for business
customers – at a nice price: free.
Cingular, the largest mobile phone service provider in the
United States, will bundle the GoodLink service with its wireless Internet
service for mobile phones free of charge, the Associated Press reports, “charging
$45 a month for unlimited usage. Previously, users also paid the equivalent of
$27.50 a month to GoodLink.”
The one-time account fee of $1,500 and one-time set-up fee of
$99 for each individual user still apply, though. Gotta make money somewhere.
This is a huge boost for Good, still far short of BlackBerry
and their over three million customers. Under a previous agreement Good
Technology users had to sign separate contracts with the company and Cingular.
They’ll now use the single-contract system Cingular does for BlackBerry.
Cingular Wireless executive Michael Woodward told Reuters
there aren’t any problems with BlackBerry, but “we heard our customers saying…
they were looking for some choice, a little bit of flexibility.”
This is the first time GoodLink, compatible with other
providers’ mobile devices “will be sold directly by a major carrier in nearly a
year,” according to AP: “By contrast, Cingular and the other four national cell
carriers already sell BlackBerry devices… and its complimentary e-mail system
directly to corporate customers.”
Good’s growing fast, but it’s nowhere near BlackBerry. As of
this morning’s announcement it claimed about 6,000 corporate accounts. Cingular
claimed 50.4 million customers, both business and personal, at the end of March.
...
First CoffeeSM’s heard from Voice Genesis, which claims that
customers can create and respond to e-mail on mobile phones up to 20 times
faster by speaking. They’re announcing the immediate availability of Vemail, voice-enabled e-mail for mobile
phones, to customers of Alltel and other major wireless carriers.
Using Vemail, customers can not only retrieve, read and type
e-mail, but they can also speak e-mail
messages. "Vemail is unique in its combination of a visual interface
for message review and voice interface for message response," says J.
Gerry Purdy, principal analyst with Cupertino-based MobileTrax.
Customers can download Vemail over the air directly into
their mobile phones and enjoy unlimited use for a monthly fee of about $5.
Using Vemail, you can speak e-mail messages, ead incoming e-mail on a mobile
phone with no additional device required, type e-mail messages when silence or
a text format is needed, import up to 10,000 contacts from your computer to
your phone (supports most popular e-mail programs, including Outlook) and access
messages most recently viewed or heard, even without a signal.
Company officials say it’s easy to install, learn and use
with an intuitive user interface with help for every screen. Users can access multiple
e-mail accounts as it supports AOL, Yahoo Mail Plus, Hotmail Mail Plus, MSN,
Earthlink, Netzero, and most other standard POP or IMAP e-mail addresses.
...
Motorola is announcing an $80 million one-year frame agreement with
Mobile
TeleSystems, the largest mobile operator in Russia.
Under the agreement, Motorola will supply Global Systems for
Mobile/General Packet Radio Service infrastructure, letting MTS to increase its
coverage area and the capacity of its network across the Moscow region, Central
Russia and the Urals.
Approximately $20 million of this revenue has already been
recognized so far this year and the one-year agreement has a projected value of
$80 million.
The GSM/GPRS infrastructure, which includes Motorola’s
Horizon II 900/1800 MHz base stations, should simplify the future development
of the MTS network as the company looks to incorporate 2.5G GPRS.
Although Motorola and MTS have worked together for eleven
years, Margaret Rice-Jones, corporate vice president and region management, Motorola
Networks EMEA said this is “the largest contract we have signed with MTS.”
Mobile TeleSystems is the largest mobile phone operator in
Russia and the CIS. Together with its subsidiaries, the company services over
40 million subscribers. Since June 2000, MTS’ Level 3 ADRs have been listed on
the New York Stock Exchange as “MBT.”
…
Parature is announcing this morning that
Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center, a hospital – First CoffeeSM
refuses to polysyllabificate “hospital” to “healthcare provider” – in Baton
Rouge, Louisiana has replaced Peregrine’s
Service Center with Parature’s Help Desk Support Solution.
“The biggest obstacle we experienced with Peregrine was its
inability to adapt to our changes as we continued to grow,” stated Shannon
Simpson, Director of MIS at Our Lady of the Lake Medical Center. Simpson added that Parature’s wide range of
modules, which include self-service customer support features “will provide us
with an immediate return on investment.”
Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center is the dominant
institution in health care – see, we can cut “dominant institution in health
care “ to “biggest hospital” – in the Greater Baton Rouge area and is the
largest private medical center in Louisiana, with 763 licensed beds.
Established in 1923 by the Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady, in a given year
Our Lady of the Lake treats approximately 25,000 patients.
…
Just before the Memorial Day weekend Workopolis, which bills
itself as “the largest job site in Canada” announced
that it has picked NetSuite CRM for sales force automation,
customer service/support “and more,” according to NetSuite officials.
Workopolis wantsNetSuite to track sales orders from lead to
close, provide customer support and deliver real-time, accurate reporting
capabilities to employees. Workopolis
will use NetSuite’s advanced customization capabilities via NetFlex, customizing
SFA to have multiple service reps attached to a single customer record.
Previously using Siebel, Workopolis came to NetSuite for
attributes that fit the specific needs of Workopolis’ fast-growing business,
including integration with the existing e-mail and calendar system, customer
support/case support, and level of customization.
...
You may have seen this one before, but just before the
Memorial Day weekend the International Packet Communications Consortium
announced the completion of several
technical white paper drafts that cover a variety of topics including
interconnection, session border controllers, wireless and wireline convergence,
and a process for evaluating voice quality for VoIP calls.
Michael Khalilian, chairman of IPCC, said they’re trying to drive “common
methodologies and metrics for VoIP,” and says IPCC’s Working Groups, comprised
of IPCC member companies “have worked hard to ensure each document is company
and vendor-neutral, and represents an unbiased view of solutions to critical
VoIP issues.”
…
A little more about today’s music, The Dave Brubeck Quartet’s Time Out, that rare work popular
with the non-jazz set yet highly respected among jazz musicians. A good parallel in American art would be the
poetry of Robert Frost, which can be read from kindergarten to post-grad
seminars with enjoyment and meaning.
According to a good review by Steve Huey in All
Music, it was a risky move – “Brubeck’s record company wasn’t keen on
releasing such an arty project, and many critics initially roasted him for
tampering with jazz’s rhythmic foundation,” Huey writes. But with a smash
single in “Take Five,” Time Out became an unexpectedly huge success, today
second only to Stan Getz’s Jazz Samba
in commercial success.
Brubeck, almost kicked out of college when they found he
couldn’t read sheet music (he graduated after promising he’d never teach piano),
served four years in World War II with Gen. Patton’s Third Army, fighting in
the Battle Of The Bulge. He formed The Dave Brubeck Quartet in 1951, and after
he hired a black bassist, Eugene Wright, he cancelled many shows when club
owners insisted he use a white bassist for the gig.
Despite Time Out’s
ubiquity it’s hardly wallpaper music, like some popular jazz albums (cough
Norah Jones cough). “Blue Rondo à la Turk” blends jazz with classical form and
Turkish folk rhythms (which Brubeck heard in Istanbul), and “Take Five” itself
is written in 5/4 meter – the entire album was the first jazz work to make full
use of time signatures outside the standard 4/4 or 3/4 time.
The pretentious set sniffs at Time Out because of its
enduring popularity among – shudder – the non-pretentious, but you’ll find few
jazz musicians working today who haven’t been in some way inspired or
influenced by it.
If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/
for the fully-linked version. First CoffeeSM accepts no sponsored
content placement, so after much deliberation and consultation with his 7 and
6-year old sons has concluded that the coolest animals are definitely owls,
dolphins and snow leopards.
