March 2005 Archives

In the past couple of days, two releases appeared on TMCnet about video relay services that facilitate communications between deaf and hearing people:

Increasing Popularity of Hands On Video Relay Service Spurs Opening of New Call Center

Innovative Video Relay Services Launched by CSD

I don't know why I was never familiar with this kind of service before, but it seems to me a fantastic use of video conferencing and Internet telephony technologies. These services make a live sign interpreter available remotely to interpret between a deaf person using a webcam and a hearing person using a telephone.

The two organizations that put out these releases each have fascinating and amusing videos on their Web sites showing their systems in use:

See the Hands On video here. (Requires QuickTime.)

And the CSD video here. (Click on "Watch Video Now.")

Here is a still shot showing a hearing man on his cell phone using the Hands On service to communicate with his deaf girlfriend (the woman you see is an image of the remote sign interpreter, who is communicating with the deaf user via webcam):

This picture below shows a deaf man using the CSD video relay service to call up and make a reservation at a restaurant. He's using a D-Link videophone system to make his call:

I was interested to learn that Sprint has been operating a video relay service since 1994.

AB -- 3/31/05

An announcement just came out today that Harlem Park has chosen communications service provider RCN to provide triple-play services at its new $230 million multi-use complex going in at 125th St. and Park Ave. in New York City.

RCN describes itself as "the nation's first and largest facilities-based competitive provider of bundled phone, cable and high-speed Internet services delivered over its own fiber-optic local network to consumers in the most densely populated markets in the U.S."

You can see today's release at:

RCN Gets 'Triple Play' at Harlem Park

Here's an architect's rendering of the exterior of the complex, scheduled to open late in 2006:

AB -- 3/31/05

Two press releases from today brought to mind the problem faced by many suppliers of products and services. See if you can guess what these two news items have in common:

Jacada Wins Significant Contract with Large Telecommunications Provider

PFSweb Contracted for Dedicated Call Center to Serve U.S., Canadian Customers of Consumer Electronics Firm

Yes, in each case the (no doubt smaller and more desperate) supplier was not able to get permission to identify the name of the (no doubt larger and holding-most-of-the-cards) customer. Having done stints as a PR copywriter, I can sympathize with the poor suppliers in both of these cases. You've made a big sale to an important customer and for whatever reason you're not able to crow about it and milk it for publicity -- drat!

I suppose in some cases the big customer might have a legitimate concern -- maybe they don't want to reveal some aspect of their business strategy to competitors. Wouldn't it be a shame, though, if the insistence on anonymity was just the result of somebody throwing their weight around to show how much power they have? Think that could ever be the case?

AB -- 3/30/05

This afternoon, I sat in on a Web conference hosted by Siebel Systems to introduce release 7 of their CRM OnDemand product.

Generally I have to be dragged thrashing and wailing into press briefings, but once I am chained to my chair I settle down and begin to enjoy the experience. And this one wasn't too bad.

If you want to learn about the new product release, an announcement and pretty good overview is here:

Siebel CRM OnDemand Delivers Industry's First Prebuilt Hosted Contact Center Solution

The Web conference today was hosted by Bruce Cleveland, senior VP and general manager for SiebelOnDemand. The actual demo of the product was conducted by Mike Betzer, a VP at Siebel who was the founder and CEO of Ineto, the company purchased about a year ago by Siebel for its on-demand contact center technology. Cleveland referred to Betzer as "the luminary in this industry."

Siebel positions CRM OnDemand as a "complete customer communications platform." I was impressed by Siebel's efforts to provide a product that can be used in an integrated way. Betzer said that "customers are tired of buying multiple-point solutions and trying to integrate them."

In product presentations, I'm most interested in seeing what the user experience is like. Siebel CRM OnDemand does what seems like a good job getting everything into one interface using a tabbed format with left-hand navigation. Here's a sample screen -- might turn out to be kind of small but should give you an idea what it's like:

Some random take-aways I noted from the presentation:

• Siebel acknowledges that Salesforce.com is its chief competitor but claims that Salesforce farms out a lot of capabilities that Siebel's product includes as part of the offering.
• Siebel likes to tout its "Blue Chip customer list," one of which is Ingersoll-Rand, which participated in the presentation and gave a nice mini-case study of how it's using OnDemand to unite its call centers and integrate customer information.
• CRM OnDemand provides a key reporting benefit in providing CRM and call center reporting together.
• Siebel is definitely in the on-demand application business and is investing a lot in this market area.

AB -- 3/29/05

I just wanted to pass along from David Sims, one of our technology reporters, a response he received from one of our readers who appreciated David's article from March 23, 2005, titled "Texas AG to Lasso Vonage."

The article reported on the lawsuit filed against Vonage Holdings Corp. by Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott under the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act. Abbott claims that Vonage misrepresents the type of 911 emergency service it offers.

This comment is from reader Thomas Junker from Houston, Texas:

In May, astronauts on the International Space Station will begin working with Clarissa, a speech-powered virtual assistant created using speech recognition software from Nuance. This is according to an announcement released by Nuance today:

Speech in Space: International Space Station Blasts Off with Nuance Speech Recognition; Voice Automation Market Leader Fuels Speech-Powered Astronaut Assistant

According to the release, in the future Clarissa will "talk astronauts through thousands of important procedures related to life support systems, medical exams, and equipment check-out." Previously astronauts had to scroll through instructions on a laptop for many procedures, an awkward task in zero gravity.

Clarissa includes a dialogue manager that is able to recognize spoken words and sentences. Describing a recent test, the release says that Clarissa "led astronauts through several water quality analysis procedures, listening for 'next,' 'complete' and 'repeat' commands before reading the appropriate directive."

Below is a photo from NASA showing a scientist demonstrating how the technology can be used for conducting water analysis:

To see more about the Clarissa "voice-operated procedure browser," as NASA refers to it, visit:

http://tc.arc.nasa.gov/projects/clarissa/

AB -- 3/28/05

The other day I saw a bottle of this increasingly-popular preparation rolling around on the desk of my boss Rich Tehrani:

I've used this stuff and love it. From all appearances, the folks who make Airborne, Airborne Health, are building a great business positioning the product as a cold-preventive remedy for people in high-risk work, such as air travel and teaching elementary school. Rich travels a lot and was sick recently, so he has good incentive to try something like this.

My wife Virginia works at Trader Joe's and has recently been bringing home this competing product:

Emergen-C (made by Alacer Corp.) seems to contain some of the same stuff as Airborne, but Airborne purportedly includes a mix of herbal additives as well.

I've been trying to fend off a cold recently, so I've been fizzing up quite a bit of Emergen-C. So far I'm holding my own and haven't regressed beyond a scratchy throat.

Does any of this stuff really work as far as preventing a cold? I don't know for sure, but I think the real appeal of these fizzy products (at least for us baby boomers) goes back to this product from the 1950s and 1960s:

If you're too young to know what Fizzies are, as our CRM columnist David Sims said recently, you may be dismissed to go play in the sandbox now.

For those of us whose formative years included the consumption of Fizzies, it's comforting to be able to lift a glass to our lips and hear once again the evocative sparkling fizz of effervescence.

AB -- 3/25/05

This announcement from MCI appeared not long ago via our news feeds:

MCI Provides Update

MCI, Inc. said today that its Board of Directors met today to review the latest Qwest proposal presented on March 16th. MCI's Board has determined to continue its discussions with Qwest and has instructed its advisors and management to begin this process promptly. Verizon has consented to MCI's request for a waiver permitting these discussions.

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AB -- 3/23/05

TMCnet has a new article by our Network Management columnist Robert Messinger, who writes some of the most practical, readable content on our site. Just wanted to call attention to this contribution, as it might be particular helpful if you are considering a VoIP project for a small business:

IP Telephony for Small Business: When Failure Is Not an Option

AB -- 3/23/05

Here is a reassuring headline that appeared today:

Law Enforcement Associates Successfully Introduces Its Production, Less Lethal STUN PISTOL at the Trexpo Conference

AB -- 3/23/05

As Web editorial directory for TMCnet, I am the consumer of about 2,000 press releases a week, which come into our site partly via feeds and partly through submissions by company PR reps using our Content Submission tool.

This one about multi-language IVRs came in today via PRNewswire and is a praiseworthy example of good copywriting if for nothing other than its headline:

Press 1 for English, Press 2 for Spanish, Press 3 for Urdu, Press 4 for Macedonian

REDONDO BEACH, Calif., March 22 /PRNewswire/ -- As the global economy expands, and as the population of foreign-born-residents living in the U.S. increases, businesses, healthcare providers, and government agencies, are being asked to accommodate the needs of people who speak languages other than English.

The first contact with clients is often by telephone, and more and more businesses, hospitals, and government agencies, are making accommodations in their telecommunications systems.

The Translation Station, a 13-year old translation and interpretation company, now offers Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system recordings in any of 150 foreign languages.

"This works particularly well in fields where non-English-speaking clients can get most or all of the information they need from an automated system," says Jennifer Gilbert, The Translation Station's Marketing Director. "The financial community is probably the biggest user of the service since virtually all account information can be retrieved over the phone."

According to the U.S. Census bureau, at the end of 2002, the U.S. had 33 million people, 11.8% of the population, who were natives of other countries. By comparison, in 1990, some 20 million people, or 7.9% of the population, had been born abroad.

"When we started the service several years ago, we primarily worked with Spanish," adds Gilbert. "Now it's not unusual for a client to ask us to input a dozen or more languages, and many require the more exotic languages, such as Haitian Creole, Hmong, Farsi, Arabic, Hindi, Armenian, Azerbaijani, and so on."

The Translation Station supports its clients with two additional language services.
"First, for those that need to have more in-depth conversations with their clients we now provide both Over-The-Phone and Onsite Interpretation services. And, second, we offer document translation services between English and any of 150 foreign languages," says Gilbert.

The Translation Station, one of the nation's largest language companies, has provided translation and interpreter services to many of the Fortune 500 corporations, Top 100 intellectual property and international trade law firms, and government offices, including, the Department of Defense, NASA, the U.S. International Trade Representatives, and The White House.

For more information contact:
Jack Bernstein
310-792-3637
Internet Fax: 509-984-3576
[email protected]

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AB 3/22/05

Looks as if Level 3 has decided to take the pressure off the FCC by withdrawing its petition asking forbearance from liability for PSTN access charges for VoIP services. See this release that appeared tonight:

James Crowe Comments on Withdrawal of Level 3 VoIP Forbearance Petition

AB -- 3/21/05

Symantec today issued its latest Internet Security Threat Report, covering attacks and vulnerabilities measured during the second half of 2004. Highlights of the report are available in this release:

Symantec Internet Security Threat Report Highlights Rise in Threats to Confidential Information

Key findings of the report include:

• Rise in Threats to Confidential Information
• Steady Increase in Phishing Attacks
• Increase in Attacks Against Web Applications
• Rise in Number of Windows Virus/Worm Variants
• Increase in Severe, Easy-to-Exploit, Remotely Exploitable Vulnerabilities

The report covers trends in attacks, vulnerabilities, malicious code, and other areas.

Symantec warns of the following emerging and future trends:

-- The use of bots and bot networks for financial gain will likely increase, especially as the diverse means of acquiring new bots and developing bot networks become more prevalent.

-- Malicious code targeting mobile devices is expected to increase in number and severity. With many groups researching vulnerabilities in Bluetooth-enabled devices, the possibility of a worm or some other type of malicious code propagating by exploiting these vulnerabilities increases.

-- Symantec expects that client-side attacks using worms and viruses as propagation methods will become more common.

-- Attacks hidden in embedded content in audio and video images are expected to increase. This is worrisome because image files are ubiquitous, almost universally trusted, and an integral part of modern day computing.

-- Symantec expects security risks associated with adware and spyware will likely increase. Impending legislation to curb these risks is not expected to be an effective or sufficient deterrent on its own.

AB -- 3/21/05

This afternoon, a press release came into our TMCnet Web site through the PR Newswire feed. I was interested to see that the release referred to a new form of advertising that recently appeared on TMCnet itself:

Epygi, Content Directions Break New Ground With Interactive Multilink Ad

This interactive "MultiLink" ad format was developed by a company called Content Directions. I had noticed these ads on our Selecting VoIP Solutions channel, but I didn't realize that TMCnet is the first place where they have appeared. Check them out -- they're interesting!

This statement from Epygi CEO Jeff Kirchner sounds like it was manufactured by Content Directions' copywriter, but it does give an idea how the ads work and how they might deliver value:

"CDI's implementation of DOI technology allows Epygi to syndicate our marketing and sales information globally in real time ads and information updates all over the Web. We can instantly update information in every channel, keeping pace with an accelerating business. Knowing that public information and channel information is updated automatically via CDI's MultiLink creation and maintenance process represents a breakthrough in sales support and channel development for Epygi. The same MultiLink can also be disseminated as a contextual link within product reviews, white papers, news articles, electronic feeds, blog entries, and downloadable marketing brochures. It is a permanent link that always brings customers back to our most current product information."

AB -- 3/21/05

The FCC is due this coming Tuesday (March 22, 2005) to make a decision on Level 3's petition asking forbearance from interstate access charge rules on payments for calls terminated over the PSTN.

We've been hearing that the FCC might jump the gun and rule sooner on this issue. The body's decision could have a significant effect on the cost of VoIP services.

Because of the interest in this issue, we have created a buzz page at this location:

Level 3 and the FCC: Will VoIP Providers Pay PSTN Access Charges?

AB -- 3/18/05