The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is an iTunes shuffle of The Kinks. First Coffee agrees with the considered opinion of sportswriter Peter King, who saw the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame show in Madison Square Garden recently with an all-star lineup, including Kinks frontman Ray Davies schooling Metallica on "You Really Got Me" as part of the show: "We've forgotten how great The Kinks were:"
Intermedia, a vendor of Microsoft Exchange hosting, will offer free migrations to its hosted Exchange 2010 customers when the service debuts. If "free" fits into your budget you might want to take a look.
Company officials hope the free migration offer is of particular interest to SMBs looking to upgrade from Exchange 2000 or Exchange 2003. Jonathan McCormick, chief operating officer, Intermedia, said the migrations will be handled to "minimize disruption to their business and preserve the value of their existing Exchange set-up."
The vendor's Exchange Concierge team will perform the migrations using proprietary tools for hosted Exchange 2003 and 2007: "The tools are being readied for use with hosted Exchange 2010, in part through the hosted Exchange 2010 beta Intermedia launched in May 2009. Exchange 2010 is not yet available for sale from Microsoft," they explain.
You can get the free migration if you're a new customer or existing customer upgrading to an Intermedia Exchange 2010 hosting plan. And because Intermedia's Exchange 2010 beta is hosted, no software downloads or installations are necessary, of course. .
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Salesforce.com has announced, much to everybody's surprise, Dreamforce 2009, modestly billed as "the cloud computing event of the year."
Benioff's Merry Band does have a truly impressive special guest, General Colin L. Powell, USA (Ret.), the 65th U.S. Secretary of State as a speaker.
You can get the free migration if you're a new customer or existing customer upgrading to an Intermedia Exchange 2010 hosting plan. And because Intermedia's Exchange 2010 beta is hosted, no software downloads or installations are necessary, of course. .
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Salesforce.com has announced, much to everybody's surprise, Dreamforce 2009, modestly billed as "the cloud computing event of the year."
Benioff's Merry Band does have a truly impressive special guest, General Colin L. Powell, USA (Ret.), the 65th U.S. Secretary of State as a speaker.
They're evidently expecting over 12,000 attendees this year. So if you're not doing anything from November 17-20 and you happen to find yourself around the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco. drop in since they're offering "free keynote and expo passes" to Dreamforce. Hit the link for details.
According to Salesforce.com officials, Dreamforce 2009 will focus the Sales Cloud, the Service Cloud and the Custom Cloud. "In addition, attendees will meet with Salesforce.com product teams, hear from more than 300 users at customer and partner companies, get hands-on training" and hear best practices and strategies for cloud computing.
There's also quite a push for nonprofits -- "more than 800 nonprofit attendees are expected at Dreamforce this year," company officials say, adding that through the Dreamforce Gives Forward program, "nonprofits will be matched with attendees for pro bono technology assistance."
According to Salesforce.com officials, Dreamforce 2009 will focus the Sales Cloud, the Service Cloud and the Custom Cloud. "In addition, attendees will meet with Salesforce.com product teams, hear from more than 300 users at customer and partner companies, get hands-on training" and hear best practices and strategies for cloud computing.
There's also quite a push for nonprofits -- "more than 800 nonprofit attendees are expected at Dreamforce this year," company officials say, adding that through the Dreamforce Gives Forward program, "nonprofits will be matched with attendees for pro bono technology assistance."
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AT&T Business Solutions, the business unit within AT&T selling services for business customers, completed the third quarter 2009 'highlighted," company officials say, by an "outreach to small and midsize businesses that included new offers and customer support programs."
The company pointed to their small business efforts, "driven by a series of announcements that emphasized the company's efforts to embed AT&T's 3G wireless technology into netbooks and laptops from device manufacturers."
AT&T Business Solutions, the business unit within AT&T selling services for business customers, completed the third quarter 2009 'highlighted," company officials say, by an "outreach to small and midsize businesses that included new offers and customer support programs."
The company pointed to their small business efforts, "driven by a series of announcements that emphasized the company's efforts to embed AT&T's 3G wireless technology into netbooks and laptops from device manufacturers."
AT&T also announced that in the first half of 2010 it will offer remote access support services built on Intel vPro technology.
The business unit rolled out several support programs during the quarter, including the introduction of Tech Support 360 Desktop Helpdesk Minutes, an expansion of the popular Tech Support 360 service that is now available to midsize businesses with an average 15 to 50 employees.
The service is described by company officials as offering "remote online computer support, installation assistance and PC performance tune-up 24 hours a day, seven days a week via any high speed Internet connection."
The quarter also saw an expansion of AT&T Small Business InSite, an online portal for small business owners, with a series of free "how to" articles, podcasts, Webinars, and videos.
Other business unit highlights during the quarter included a $45 million Networx contract with the U.S. Department of State, an agreement with Barnes & Noble to provide complimentary in-store AT&T Wi-Fi service to any customer that visits a Barnes & Noble bookstore nationwide, the expansion of AT&T's Wi-Fi presence in Europe and China, bringing its global Wi-Fi footprint to 125,000 hotspots, and the expansion of its managed security services to India.
The quarter also saw an expansion of AT&T Small Business InSite, an online portal for small business owners, with a series of free "how to" articles, podcasts, Webinars, and videos.
Other business unit highlights during the quarter included a $45 million Networx contract with the U.S. Department of State, an agreement with Barnes & Noble to provide complimentary in-store AT&T Wi-Fi service to any customer that visits a Barnes & Noble bookstore nationwide, the expansion of AT&T's Wi-Fi presence in Europe and China, bringing its global Wi-Fi footprint to 125,000 hotspots, and the expansion of its managed security services to India.
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HarperCollins and Skype have created "Cecelia Ahern's Virtual World Tour," an event to promote the publication of Ahern's latest novels, The Book of Tomorrow and The Gift around the world.
HarperCollins and Skype have created "Cecelia Ahern's Virtual World Tour," an event to promote the publication of Ahern's latest novels, The Book of Tomorrow and The Gift around the world.
Ahern is evidently one of the UK's best selling authors. You may have heard of PS: I Love You. Maybe you saw the movie voluntarily. Maybe you were more or less dragged to the movie.
Book tours are a staple promotion tactic for many authors, but Ahern can't tour due the arrival of her first baby. So hey -- enter Skype.
Book tours are a staple promotion tactic for many authors, but Ahern can't tour due the arrival of her first baby. So hey -- enter Skype.
HarperCollins and Skype are bringing the author to fans through real-time Skype video: "Ahern will join events live from her home in Dublin, and will appear on screens at selected retailers in central city locations. Events will range from celebrity-hosted evenings to invite-only retailer events."
The publishers says some fans will be able to speak to the author and buy signed copies of her new books. The tour kicks off with an event at the new Liverpool Waterstones store on Friday 13th November -- Cecelia's not superstitious, evidently -- with further events scheduled in Frankfurt, Johannesburg, Sydney and Singapore.
Cecelia Ahern has sold 12 million books in over 48 countries in only five years. At 28, she is one of the biggest success stories in commercial fiction. She is also the creator of the TV drama series, Samantha Who?
Jonathan Watson, Skype's marketing manager, said he hopes "this is first of many virtual book tours we will facilitate with Harper Collins."
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CyanGate, a McLean, Virginia-based media technology company, has announced their newest application, S-Drive.
Cecelia Ahern has sold 12 million books in over 48 countries in only five years. At 28, she is one of the biggest success stories in commercial fiction. She is also the creator of the TV drama series, Samantha Who?
Jonathan Watson, Skype's marketing manager, said he hopes "this is first of many virtual book tours we will facilitate with Harper Collins."
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CyanGate, a McLean, Virginia-based media technology company, has announced their newest application, S-Drive.
Company officials say it will be usable by CRM vendor Salesforce.com's professional and enterprise edition customers to "store and share their files without any storage limits."
S-Drive uses Amazon's storage cloud for file management while providing an interface within Salesforce.com platform. Bulent Dogan, Senior Solution architect at CyanGate, says companies using Salesforce.com CRM platform will be able to store and share their sales and marketing collateral, product documentation, customer documents and even any type of media files via S-Drive:
"Companies can allow their customers to upload and download case files, product updates and documentation directly from Salesforce.com's customer portal without file size and storage limitations," he said.
Salesforce.com have released a new Adobe Flex Builder recently to go with their Internet application initiative. S-Drive is being marketed by company officials as "a showcase for these type of applications that will enhance the CRM experience for companies," and allow applications to be built on the Salesforce.com platform.
Since the launch of S-Drive's newest edition on AppExchange, customer feedback supports that this application is easy to use and is an improvement to Salesforce.com's document management. To get started companies need to sign up for a single company account from AppExchange.
The update "adds AT&T Synaptic Storage to the list of cloud services the cloud storage client supports, as well as Amazon S3, Google Docs and EMC Atmos.
Jerry Huang, co-owner of Gladinet, said the newest version of Cloud Desktop will "essentially make AT&T Synaptic Storage a virtual drive or folder on the user's computer and allow both drag-and-drop and set-it-and-forget-it file backup to AT&T Synaptic Storage."
Company officials see the appeal of Cloud Desktop v1.3 to SMBs in its ability to integrate multiple third-party Web services into users' individual desktop operating systems on an open platform.
This means, they say, that cloud services like Amazon S3, Google Docs, Google Picasa, EMC Atmos, EMC Atmos onLine, Box.net and now AT&T Synaptic Storage "no longer require users to manage numerous accounts and interfaces; instead, each can be mapped as a network drive directly accessible from Windows Explorer."
In addition to support for AT&T Synaptic Storage, other tweaks to Cloud Desktop v1.3 include the new Gladinet Online service, which encrypts and stores user profiles online for access from multiple computers running Gladinet Cloud Desktop.
