The news as of the second cup of coffee this morning, and the music is The Horace Silver Quintet’s Song For My Father.

 

PacificNet has said it has signed an agreement to sell its entire interest in Epro Telecom, a telecom, call center, and CRM company in China, for $21 million Hong Kong dollars, or about $2.6 million United States dollars, of which the company has already received partial payment.

 

The company expects the sale to free up cash for its gambling operations.

 

Additionally, PacificNet said it expects to achieve minimum $30 million revenue for fiscal year 2008. The company also revealed the receipt of a non-compliance letter from the Nasdaq on April 16, owing to the delay in the filing of its Form 10-K for the period ended December 31, 2007. PacificNet officials say they company intends to file its 10-K annual report within one month.

…

 

Etelos has announced new technology that enables what company officials call “true data ubiquity and application portability beyond simple online and offline synchronization.”

 

Any browser-based application from the Etelos Marketplace enabled with these new technologies can exchange data with any other AOP-enabled application, they say.

 

Etelos has filed multiple patent applications for technology that enables browser-based applications to function offline, reconcile changes made while offline, and synchronize data with any other AOP-enabled application when returning to the cloud.

 

In addition, Etelos AOP Beta is now available to users and developers.

 

“Etelos has created a platform-agnostic method for enabling truly distributed computing,” Etelos President & CEO Jeffrey L. Garon said. “It’s imperative that users have the freedom to choose the applications that will help them best build their business and run their lives.”

 

Regardless of the availability of an Internet connection, “this technology manages the potential conflicts between multiple users and their edits and allows for interaction between different applications,” Etelos officials say, adding that these patents are the basis of the technology behind the Etelos ecosystem, which includes the Etelos Application Server, Version 6.

 

The system for running a Web-based application offline is encompassed in Apps on a Plane, which enables any Web-based application distributed through the Etelos Marketplace to function offline, online and anytime. Etelos App Sync manages applications when synchronizing.

 

It all started with the idea that “for business users, you should be free to take your Web app anywhere. For developers, you should be comfortable knowing that enabling AOP requires no code changes to your app,” Etelos Founder & CTO Danny Kolke said.

…

 

Extrapolating data from the January 2008 Forrester Research report titled “E-Mail Marketing Trends,” StrongMail, an on-premises e-mail marketing software firm, has deduced that the British public is annually inundated with 250 billion e-mails.

 

Forrester also found that a good 60 percent-plus of e-mails received by the British public are unrelated to work or personal life and are deleted before they are read. First Coffee wonders, of course, how the content is determined of an e-mail which is deleted before being read. But then again, First Coffee wonders many things.

 

These finding have prompted some in the industry to call for tighter self-regulation and control by the firms responsible for the unwanted e-mail, StrongMail officials say.

 

Paul Bates, UK managing director of StrongMail, says the scale of the problem is “costly for everyone. UK Marketing departments face bills of £100,000’s to send e-mails that are never read, while the public is wasting millions of hours trolling through and deleting them.”

 

The research found two-thirds of the British public delete most e-mails before reading them. For UK firms who’s marketing departments pay e-mail service providers on a “per message” basis, this is a costly exercise, StrongMail officials contend rather reasonably:

 

“In any other marketing discipline, such a low return on investment would lead to policy changes or revisions,” they say, yet e-mail marketing “continues to follow the same strategy, without looking at changes, such as using event-driven or transactional e-mails to create more personalized communications.”

…

 

Major U.S. brands have incorporated mobile marketing into CRM as well as their traditional advertising campaigns and call centers in order to “increase response, enhance loyalty and improve customer relations,” according to the New Media Institute.

 

“Most people today use a cell phone. Lack of cell phone spam translates into a major channel of communications without the noise of traditional channels,” explained John Spagnuolo, President of the New Media Institute.

 

“The closer you connect with consumers within their lifestyle, the better your results will be,” noted Bob Gold, President of Gold Mobile, adding that in his opinion, when “properly executed,” mobile marketing can increase traditional response rates by five to 20 percent.”

 

The NMI is offering tips for mobile marketers, including the suggestion to “offer an incentive for individuals to opt-in to your mobile community,” and segmenting your message: “This is not a new concept for marketers, but mobile technology makes executing this task easy.”

 

To receive more mobile marketing tips, text mtips to 51684. To download the white paper, go to http://www.newmedia.org.

…

 

Integrated Document Solutions has announced the launch of Referral Marketing Manager, described by company officials as a CRM-enabled tool designed to provide radiology practices “granular oversight of their report turn-around times and referral sources, ensuring that key business decisions are based on sound data.”

 

Born out of a desire to understand exactly when and why a radiology practice’s report turn-around times and referral volumes drop, IDS officials say, Referral Marketing Manager generates real-time graphs and reports that help IDS clients identify internal issues and validate performance with staff and clients.

 

“Human perception can be unreliable, but the data is indisputable,” said Yaniv Dagan, CEO of IDS. “The Referral Marketing Manager keeps everyone on their toes because of the level of transparency it provides.

 

As a result, practices can analyze report approval times, tabulate studies by referring physician, location, date, and generate trend reports, providing information to managers and principals.

 

In addition, the product includes a customer relationship management (CRM) component to help marketers and administrators manage their interactions with current and prospective referring physicians.

 

A contact manager and call scheduling module allows marketers to manage their daily call volumes and for administrators to confirm that regular follow-up efforts are being made.

 

Based in Ft. Lauderdale, Integrated Document Solutions is a privately-held technology products and services company providing workflow and forms management, speech automation, dictation-transcription, and productivity measurement tools for healthcare and general business.