Today Voxeo is acquiring IMified, a company which operates a hosted platform that provides its clients simplified ways to off automated Instant Messaging services regardless of protocol or proprietary service provider. It’s all part of Voxeo’s efforts to support what it refers to as “Unified Self-Service” as part of a broad suite of Unified Communications services.
Now that we know the price and release date of the Palm Pre, I’d like to pour some fuel on the flames that are illuminating Palm (and Sprint’s) strategy for voicemail and other speech-enabled services.
Microsoft’s go-to-market partners provide the best testimonials regarding the uptake and financial benefits of implementing Office Communications Server 2007 R2 (OCS, for short).
Yesterday executives from Yahoo! Search held a “Chalk Talk” to describe both their guiding principles and major product initiatives. Today, Yahoo! formally launched a major upgrade to the Yahoo! Mobile application for iPhone owners. Among the improvements in the iPhone… Read More ›
This story by Dean Takahashi in Venture Beat provides vivid evidence of the changing models for call origination among social network participants. According to one report, this is about 12% of the traffic level on Skype these days, but given the much smaller user base, it speaks to the power of linking voice channels to all the increasingly addictive and immersive social networks.
Jill Colvin’s article in the New York Times has had a ripple effect among both users and planners of communications services. The gist of the comments and Tweets (if there is such a thing as a “gist” for a 140 character declaration) is “It’s about time!” As the executives interviewed in the article explain, retrieving voice mail can is a time-waster for busy executives. But the conclusion is wrong that the logic is fundamentally flawed.
eBay issued a letter to its customers saying that it was removing the Skype-based click-to-chat or click-to-talk buttons from their listings, effective June 10. EBay’s management cites “limited buyer and seller usage”. But it is more likely that the company, which derives significant revenue by taking a percentage of the value of transactions carried out through its resources, had no incentive to encourage interactions, and the subsequent transactions, to be carried out over a synchronous voice or text-chat conversations.
A comprehensive study into consumer perceptions and attitudes in Australia and New Zealand has found increasing concern that current forms of identity verification, such as PINs and passwords, are less than adequate security measures in preventing identity theft. In an online survey of more than 400 consumers, callcentres.net found 67% of respondents were “very or mostly concerned” about identity theft compared to 63% a year ago.
And while high-profile security breaches and subsequent media coverage may fuel this public concern, the study, sponsored by Salmat VeCommerce, found 37% of Australians (and 22% of New Zealanders) have directly experienced, or know a friend or family member to have experienced, identity fraud or theft.
Additionally, consumers are increasingly uneasy that PINs and password could be guessed or otherwise compromised leading to stolen information and possible theft. According to Laurence Jackson, research manager with callcentres.net, the ever-growing number of PINs and passwords is adding to the uneasiness.
“There is considerable frustration among consumers at having to remember multiple PINs and passwords when dealing the various organizations,” says Jackson. The study found that 70% Australian consumers have more than 4 active PINs or passwords and account for some 63 million total.
Underscoring consumers’ caution towards the more traditional methods of identity verification, the study found voice biometrics as the preferred method of identification processes (45%), followed by PIN (21%), password (18%) and personal details or history questions (16%). To provide a clear understanding of how a biometric identification process works, Jackson said the respondents were each given a brief demo of the technology and then asked whether they would use it.
Still, some of the data presented in the study signals that consumers’ perceptions of identification technologies remains conflicted at best. For example, asked when an organization uses more technology, “I feel my personal information is secure” some 33% of consumers “strongly or mostly” disagreed compared to 26% in 2008. And when asked “how simple or complex a process you would ideally like organizations to use when identifying you,” 75% of Australians wanted a “very or fairly” complex security process, up from 64% the year before.
Jackson says these contradictions are perception realities and reflect a need for technology providers to better educate consumers, as well as pointing “in a good direction toward future technologies, like biometrics.”
In a move designed to make it easier for network operators to support cloud computing, Cisco launched a new Unified Service Delivery package that includes the Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS), a data center-optimized version of CRS-1 (its flagship Carrier Routing System) and the Cisco Nexus 7000 data switch. The CRS-1 integrates two 10Gb modules and a 40Gb forwarding processor in order to support service providers’ ability to deliver resource and network intensive video and data services directly fropm from their data centers.
In what it terms a “million Euro investment”, Voxeo has increased its capacity in Europe to over 10,000 ports of VoiceXML and CCXML conformant voice self-service resources.