Welcome to another broadcast of Radio KCRM 98.6, All Allman Brothers All The Time, and today we have some special guests, kicking off with Ned Lamont, the winner of the Connecticut Democratic Primary over three-term incumbent Joe Lieberman. Ned, thanks for appearing on the First Coffee blog.
"Blogs? Don't know anything about them, never heard of them."
Uh, Ned, you shot TV ads featuring you playing kissy-face with leftist bloggers, you had bloggers traveling with your entourage, you raised mucho dinero through leftist blog donations, yours was the first American political candidacy to be almost wholly a creation of the left-wing blogs, do you really think we're so stupid as to believe you when you claim you don't know anything about blogs?
"Blog, um, sorry, name doesn't ring a bell, no. My victory was due to the fact that my experience as city councilman in Greenwich was what the voters were looking for, that and my inherited fortune and my membership in an all-white, all-male country club that doesn't have too many Liebermans, if you catch my drift."
Ned, you make Dan Quayle look like Winston Churchill. Congratulations on winning the Miss Liberal Connecticut Beauty Contest, we look forward to seeing you get your butt whipped in the election that really counts in November, but hey, thanks for costing the Democrats a safe seat the Republicans couldn't have pried open with a crowbar.
Let's play a song while we get our next guest in here on Radio KCRM 98.6, All East Village Opera Company All The Time… SpikeSource, a vendor of business-ready open source products, has announced the addition of Open-Xchange Server to the company's applications lineup, targeted to both small and medium size enterprises and larger companies through authorized channel partners.
Open-Xchange Server Spike Certified, according to company officials, integrates open and reliable messaging and collaboration tools into a single product, and is seen as a " complement" to the company's current application offerings, which include open source customer relationship management (CRM) and content management applications.
"E-mail, calendaring and collaboration applications are in high demand by the SME market," observed Joaquin Ruiz, vice president of marketing for SpikeSource.
Open-Xchange Server Spike Certified provides features and functionality of asynchronous collaboration software: e-mail, calendar, address book/contacts, portal, project/task tracking, document sharing/version control, and bulletin board/threaded discussion/forum. End-customers can use this functionality anywhere and with any device, company officials say: "Extensions, 'Oxtenders,' enhance customer flexibility to integrate to existing IT infrastructures, or even extend capabilities such as Fax, Backup, Archiving, Mobile Communication, or CRM."
"Open-Xchange is built with ease of use, installation and management in mind," said Dan Kusnetzky, EVP Marketing for Open-Xchange.
Okay, we got our next guest in here… yes, folks, please welcome Reuters Global Picture Editor Tom Szlukovenyi. Tom, thanks for dropping by First Coffee, I can't imagine you're very fond of blogs either at this point.
"Why, I don't know what you're talking about. I love Daily Kos, that guy's so balanced and fair-minded."
Well, the whole, um, scandal, you know, where Reuters has been running such obviously faked Photoshopped fauxtographs from Lebanon that they've been ridiculously easy to spot. The Little Green Footballs blog was the one to point it out.
"Oh, that, yeah, I remember hearing something about that. One of our stringers from Lebanon was cleaning the dust from a print and inadvertently altered one image in a minor way, I think."
Actually, Tom, Reuters had to withdraw over 900 photographs. Don't you think that's quite a lot? Like this one here, it's surprising a photograph this obviously faked made it in print -- isn't that your job, Tom? To watch out for things like this?
"Well, this photo isn't… I mean, it's entirely possible that the 35-foot high Godzilla shown in the photograph rampaging through Beirut could have actually been there, neither you nor I are on the ground there, we can't see the story developing in real time, that's why we rely on stringers, see."
Hoookay, public service announcement time here at Radio KCRM 98.6, All Charles Mingus All The Time: Tech analyst firm Frost & Sullivan is holding its 2006 Quarterly Analyst Briefing Presentation Tuesday, August 15, 2006 at 3:00 pm EDT.
Enterprises large and small have begun to treat their contact centers as the strategic corporate asset that they really are, Frost & Sullivan believes -- "critical to corporate brand image, customer retention and growth," according to company officials.
Finding a way to optimize agent staffing and stop the bleeding from soaring attrition rates has become a major concern for contact centers today, while at the same time there is continued pressure to reduce overhead, cut real estate costs and trim operational expenses. Stop me if you've heard any of this at your contact center.
Highlights of the F&S briefing, company officials say, include an understanding of the benefits as well as the challenges inherent in deploying work-at-home agents.
To participate, please e-mail Mireya Castilla at [email protected] with your full name, company name, title, telephone number, e-mail address, city, state and country. Upon receipt of the above information, a registration link will be e-mailed to you.
"There are both push and pull factors accelerating this movement to home- based agent staffing in contact centers," notes Frost & Sullivan Industry Analyst Michael DeSalles. "The power of the model lies in agent quality, flexibility and lower attrition -- happier employees who stay with a company longer. Clients recognize that high-quality interactions add significant value to the customer experience."
This briefing is aimed at contact center managers, HR professionals, outsource solution providers, CRM and workforce optimization vendors as well as prospective work-at-home agents interested in understanding how this agent model is evolving in the market.
Our next guest… what's that? Where… London? No cell phone… Folks, the engineer in the control booth's saying our next guest, a Mr. Khan from England, says he got held up at the airport…
Okay, not to panic, we've got Maurice Clarett on the schedule for the sports segment to talk about his indoor football team, the Mahong Valley Hitmen's upcoming season in the … what? Arrested and on $5 million bail? Oh for… here's a statement from Hitmen owner and coach Jim Terry saying Clarett's recent violent arrest will "not affect his status with the team," according to Youngstown's NewsNet5: "They plan to stand behind him."
Why would they "stand behind" someone who was arrested with a loaded arsenal in his car, wearing a bulletproof vest, close to the home of someone scheduled to testify against him in another court case? Coach Terry says his team's season ticket and memorabilia sales "have skyrocketed since Clarett signed on with the team." Oh, right. Of course. Silly me. What else did I expect from a team calling themselves the Hitmen? Who's the team mascot, Sirhan Sirhan? O.J. Simpson? Terry must be drooling over himself with joy.
Any public service announcements to run… let's go to Astea International Inc., a vendor of service lifecycle management, and Fuji Xerox New Zealand, who are commemorating ten years of "a strong and fruitful relationship."
"In our initial search, we evaluated many service management products, and Astea was the only product on the market that fit our needs and could help us achieve our business goals," said Martyn Smith, Information Systems Manager of Fuji Xerox New Zealand, who said the Astea product "makes it fast and easy for our field service team to access all of the information they need" for customer service.
Yeah I know, but you try finding instant air. So this is Radio KCRM 98.6, All Adam Carroll All The Time, signing off.
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