AT&T Deal Not Likely to Pull Palm Out of the Muck »
Palm is expanding the distribution of its smartphones, the Palm Pre Plus and Palm Pixi Plus, by making them available through AT&T. While the move isn’t likely to hurt Palm’s fortunes, it’s not clear whether it can do much to help the flailing company. AT&T will start carrying the Palm mobile phones in a few [...]
Customer Operations Excellence: Edging Toward Your FCR Revolution »
Contact center managers have started to think beyond “service levels,” “average talk time” and “wait time.” Slowly yet steadily, FCR has found its way into customer operations dashboards. A dual function of customer experience and contact center efficiency, FCR accurately portrays the overall health of your customer service. Given its significance, FCR has always been [...]
Online Bill Payments, Part 2: A Big CRM Opportunity »
Paying bills with a few computer clicks sounds like a great idea for consumers — and it is. Online bill paying is increasingly popular with millions of consumers, and the potential for paperless payments is many times greater than it is today. The number of households that used an online payment service provided through a [...]
Burn the Silos and Jump Into the Data Pool »
Improved data center productivity now appears to be a natural progression from converged infrastructure. Many enterprise data centers have embraced a shared service management model to some degree, and now converged infrastructure applies the shared service model more broadly to leverage modular system design and open standards, as well as to advance proven architectural frameworks. [...]
Top 5 Web Site Usability Mistakes »
Although many usability principles might seem like common sense, they are often overlooked in Web site redesign. Among companies large and small, the same usability issues arise over and over again: not having a call to action for your marketing slideshow or product showcase; not having a search box; not understanding the effect of “banner [...]
Palm Beats Itself to a Pulp »
Palm has issued sales projections that are much worse than expected — even though expectations were already low — sending its shares plummeting by 27 percent and prompting discussions about whether the company has any future at all. In the third quarter of fiscal year 2010, Palm’s total revenue on a GAAP basis was $349.9 [...]
Viacom v. YouTube: Finger-Pointing Turns to Mud-Slinging »
Viacom’s billion-dollar copyright-infringement lawsuit against Google’s YouTube took a nasty turn Thursday as a series of documents were released to the public. “Fostering and countenancing piracy were central to YouTube’s economic business model,” Viacom’s filings charge. Viacom “overtly and covertly uploaded to YouTube a vast array of their own video clips for marketing purposes,” Google [...]
A Start-Up’s Guide to E-Commerce Security, Speed and Scalability »
All new e-commerce businesses should address one vital question first and foremost: Will you collect and store payment card information on your Web site or offload credit card processing to a PCI-compliant merchant like PayPal? The answer to this question is paramount and should be well thought out when you are planning and developing your [...]
Survey Totes Up Value of Excellent Online Customer Service »
Excellent online customer service may be worth $17.3 billion in 2010, according to a new Ovum survey commissioned by StellaService. That’s the round figure for the 10.7 percent premium the report suggests customers are willing to pay for good customer service. The survey was conducted across multiple categories — financial services, healthcare, utilities and retail [...]
Amazon Wrangles Publishers as iBookstore Grand Opening Looms »
With an unwavering focus on Apple’s forthcoming iBookstore, Amazon reportedly has begun pressuring e-book publishers to sign three-year contracts that ensure that no competing retailers will get better prices or treatment. The new tactics come hard on the heels of Amazon’s conflict with Macmillan earlier this year over the publisher’s switch to an agency model, [...]
Dots Do It Better, Says Phone Camera Chip Designer »
InVisage Technologies, a venture-backed startup, announced on Monday a technology in the field of digital photography. Called “QuantumFilm,” it uses quantum dot-based image sensors instead of the more traditional silicon. The new technology will offer four times the performance and twice the dynamic range as silicon, InVisage claims. The company is targeting the cameras in [...]
Who’s the Boss in Cloud Land? »
Cloud computing — certainly a hot topic at the RSA conference held earlier this month in San Francisco — is in some ways being eclipsed by security and accountability concerns. Who owns the data? Who is answerable if the cloud fails? Who is responsible if a virtual machine holding data from a company under strict [...]
Google Should Build Better Products – Not Call Apple Names »
Some weeks, truth is stranger than fiction. As I was thinking that nothing strange would happen this week, up pops a new Google hire, Tim Bray, and he starts trash-talking Apple. Let’s see — Google is under investigation by the FTC, stock is down 10 percent, Wave and Buzz are crap, and it is getting [...]
Would Linux Be Better Off Without the FSF? »
Linux fans may be united in their love for FOSS, but when it comes to the Free Software Foundation, opinions tend to diverge dramatically. There’s no doubt the advocacy group has done a commendable job of promoting and defending the use of free software licenses; what’s less clear, however, is whether its hard stance has [...]
Photo Gallery
You know things are bad when the cartoonists begin taking aim– on Obama!
Local Farmers: New Safety Regs Will Kill Us
Massachusetts and Scott Brown Snub Obama
The New GM Proudly Introduces The 2010 Obama Car
Obama: “Health Care Reform Cannot Wait”
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