Articles by Erika Morphy

Google's presence in Brazil might be threatened by a dispute with that government's law enforcement agency over user data. Brazil's public attorney has filed suit against Google demanding information on users of its social networking site, Orkut, who are suspected of engaging in child pornography and other illegal activities Google has complied wit...

Sprint has entered the hostedcontact center space, a submarket that is rapidly expanding, with the introduction of an IP-based offering that is powered byAvaya technology It is Sprint's first toll-freeVoIP product, Barry Tishgart, director of product marketing, told CRM Buyer. "We have always supported the largest contact centers with toll free net...

Microsoft's efforts to build out its advertising network received a considerable boost with the announcement that Facebook has signed on with the company to receive online advertising services As part of the multiyear contract, Microsoft will be the exclusive provider of banner advertising and sponsored links on Facebook, which will use the company...

YouTube is exploring ways to monetize its traffic flow of 100 million downloads a day by launching a pay-for-play video advertising service. Its inaugural spot is a promotion for Paris Hilton's new album, "Paris." YouTube will feature one ad each day, which site visitors can rate and comment on in the same way they evaluate consumer-created videos....

First it was support for e-mail marketing, then it was a user interface that displayed real time system data -- also known as the "Dashboard." Now the latest must-have feature in on-demand CRM, at least as evidenced by two separate offerings, is paid search Both NetSuite and Salesforce.com have introduced new features that support paid search adver...

Accessing the Internet in India can be a major problem, discovered Akiba Stern, a partner with New York-based Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, on a recent visit to anoutsourcing service provider's facilities there. It wasn't that the firm's connectivity services were poor. Rather, itssecurity processes were so tight that there was only one room in the building that permitted access to the Internet -- and even that access was fairly constrained, the outsourcing specialist told CRM Buyer...

U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor of Detroit has ruled that the Bush Administration's warrantless wiretapping program -- uncovered by a media investigation some eight months ago -- is unconstitutional. Civil libertarians are hailing the decision as a major victory The suit, brought by the American Civil Liberties Union and other advocacy groups...

SplendidCRM has created what it says is the ideal "compile once, run everywhere" cross-platform application with its release of SplendidCRM 1.2 for Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and SplendidCRM 1.1 for Novell Suse Linux Enterprise Server 10 The company used Novell's Mono open source toolset to leverage Microsoft's .NET tools, according to president...

In separate filings, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the World Privacy Forum have asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate AOL's release earlier this month of search term queries that had been made by 650,000 of its users over a three-month period. "This release was a violation of section 5 of The FTC Act," Pam Dixon, president of the World Privacy Forum, told the E-Commerce Times...

More companies are viewing the Software as a Service model as a viable delivery option for functions beyond CRM -- the area in which it has probably developed the greatest traction -- according to a new study by Aberdeen SaaS implementation times and return on investment cycles are growing shorter in such areas as sourcing and procurement, supply c...

Microsoft has released the beta of a desktop blogging application that it hopes users will use in conjunction with either Windows Live Spaces, its own browser-based blog application, or a third party application such as Blogger, LiveJournal, Typepad or WordPress Microsoft is positioning the beta of Windows Live Writer as an easy-to-use tool for blo...

Oracle has released the next version of PeopleSoft's CRM application, version 9, fulfilling a promise made to PeopleSoft customers concerned over Oracle's acquisition of the vendor Included in the new release, according to Doris Wong, vice president and general manager for PeopleSoft Enterprise products, are industry-specific applications for thefi...

Not long ago, if a company wanted to outsource non-core operations -- such as contact center or back office processes -- India was the locale to choose. End of story That was then, though. Over the last few years, markets around the world -- as well as the outsourcing industry itself -- have evolved dramatically, giving companies a whole new set of...

In what appears to be a victory for plaintiffs, a decision was made last week to consolidate seventeen class action lawsuits against telecom providers that are cooperating with the U.S. government's widespread surveillance of its customers. These cases will be moved to the California federal court where the first suit was filed against AT&T in January by the Electronic Frontier Foundation...

Logitech and Skype have developed a new product to target Skype consumers who miss the sophisticated call features of their traditional, deskbound telecom systems but still want to use the Internet-based network. Named EasyCall Desktop, the product includes a mouse, headset and speakerphone It also features a Skype-specific keyboard that includes o...

Software systems -- from off-the-shelf applications to enterprise suites -- have become easier to use and implement, Stephen Kerr, a managing consultant in PA Consulting Group's IS Implementation practice, is the first to admit. That relative ease of implementation is obvious from the end-user's perspective, at any rate Does that mean that systems ...

AOL's accidental release of search term queries made by its members over the course of three months -- many of which were specific enough to identify actual users -- is bound to cause trouble for the search engine industry in Washington. Privacy advocates have already starting calling for stricter controls on what data search engines can retain. One bill, admittedly still bottled up in committee, is the Eliminate Warehousing of Consumer Internet Data Act, proposed by Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.)

Loyalty Lab, an on-demand CRM application for consumer brands, has introduced Loyalty 2.0, an upgraded product to help retailers and grocery stores incorporate e-commerce channels into their first-generation loyalty programs, and to better segment their customers. It is part of the summer 2006 release of Loyalty Lab's CRM Suite In essence, it is ta...

Wincor Nixdorf, a German-based provider of IT applications for the banking and retail industries, has introduced its eServices platform in the United States for the first time Bits and pieces of the application, which connects Wincor Nixdorf service management with customers via an electronic network, have been available here before, says Steve Sim...

AOL has apologized for inadvertently posting on the Internet search data of 658,000 AOL members that used the proprietary software to conduct searches over a three month period. The data, which has since been taken down, had been collected for academic researchers and did not directly connect search terms to users' names Bloggers who found the data...