Articles by Erika Morphy

CDC Software's Pivotal CRM Customer Service and Support has launched, with major changes to the application's integration with social media and email, and more configuration options. ...

Nielsen's latest statistics on smartphone sales in the U.S. are more than a little eye-catching. They suggest that an important tipping point is on the horizon: The majority of mobile phone users will soon own smartphones, as opposed to feature phones. The majority of cellphone users still own feature phones, Nielsen says, based on its May survey ...

Several weeks after the Sony PlayStation Network was brought to its knees by a massive security breach, the company has decided to clean house with an executive reshuffling. Among the changes: Akira Sato, chairman of Sony Computer Entertainment, and Ken Kutaragi, honorary chairman, will retire, effective almost immediately. Kutaragi is leaving his...

Imagine a customer service agent who can do virtually no wrong. She typically answers questions in about three seconds, with an astonishing 94 percent accuracy rate. ...

Not even 24 hours had passed following Google's sneak preview of its new social networking initiative -- Google+ -- before the grumbling began. Briefly, one of the key features of the service, which is still in field-test mode, is +Circles, which allows users to group people into different classes or categories such as work friends, family and so ...

French search company 1plusV has stepped up its battle with Google over how its algorithms rank sites, filing suit against the search engine giant in the French Commercial Court. It is seeking US$423 million in damages from business it claims it lost due to alleged antitrust practices by Google. At $423 million, it is the largest claim filed again...

Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt foresees more troublesome days ahead between the search engine giant and the governments of the world. Censorship is on the rise around the globe, he said Monday, at a Dublin summit on militant violence that was organized by Google, according to press reports. How freely information should flow has been a th...

LoopFuse has updated its marketing automation application with functionality that includes new integration for Web form hosting through the popular Wufoo, as well as more support for global users and tighter integration between the inbound marketing features and the CRM app. ...

Two events in the CRM industry this week are shining a spotlight on a broad and sometimes nebulously defined space. First, Oracle announced its agreement to acquire FatWire, a provider of Web experience management software. Second, Adobe rolled out its Digital Enterprise Platform for Customer Experience Management. Customer experience management, ...

One way or another, change is clearly coming for the online television website Hulu. Either it will be acquired by Yahoo, or it will put itself out on the market to be snapped up by another deep-pocketed company. Yahoo apparently has made an unsolicited offer for the company, according to news reports citing anonymous sources. However, this is no ...

The Federal Communications Commission has declared war on the practice of telecom carriers surreptitiously nickel-and-diming their customers through a practice called "cramming." This refers to those nagging mystery charges that pop up on many consumers' telephone bills -- some 20 million people all together, the government agency has estimated --...

Amazon's self-publishing e-book platform appears to be overrun by spam or low-quality e-books, according to an analysis of the ecosystem by Reuters. Of the thousands of digital books being published through Amazon's self-publishing system each month, many are spam, either developed via Private Label Rights or even using toolkits that help people p...

This week, Take-Two subsidiary2K Games and independent developer Gearbox Software debuted "Duke Nukem Forever" for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC. For the game's developers, it was a momentous occasion. Fans had been waiting 15 years in video game purgatory, they said, for the launch of the mythical Duke Nukem game.

Listrak has incorporated new features into its email marketing platform that give its users analytic and behavioral targeting capabilities. It also has brought more oomph to its shopping cart abandonment dashboard by developing more granular metrics for it. ...

Wireless carrier T-Mobile has entered the group buying market with its own daily deal offering. Called "More for Me," the nationwide service aggregates deals from such originators as Living Social and Groupon. The service is available to anyone who owns an Android handset, T-Mobile spokesperson Anna Friedges told the E-Commerce Times -- not just T...

A new partnership between Comcast and Skype will let Comcast subscribers place video calls through their television sets. The new service will require some setup -- customers will need to install Comcast-provided equipment including an adapter box, video camera, and special remote with a QWERTY keyboard that connects to the service. Using this rem...

If you like speaking with live customer service reps about service issues without having to first endure a long and frustrating wait on the phone, then shop at Sierra Trading Post. That is one conclusion that can be drawn from a study of online retailers released by StellaService, which found that the retailer made customers wait on hold for just ...

Daily Discount Coupons: Pay Dirt or Raw Deals? - Part 3 Somewhere in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., I just know the owner of a certain day spa is rubbing her hands with glee. You see, on New Year's Day morning, as I was blearily checking my emails, I clicked on one of the many group buying sites to which I subscribe and saw an offer I simply coul...

Pandora, an Internet music service, is scheduled to begin trading shares in an initial public offering on Wednesday on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol "P." Last week, the company ramped up its plans, increasing its IPO price range by at least a third and boosting the number of shares to be sold by as many as a million.

Daily Discount Coupons: Pay Dirt or Raw Deals? - Part 2 Seen on the MarketSharing daily deal website recently: ...