CRM Update – Mar 14 : 2:41 pm

It’s official. More than six years after its last stable release, Audacity 2.0 is now available. This open-source, cross-platform audio recording, editing and mixing tool is often bundled with audio hardware devices and has garnered a huge following since it first appeared.
Audacity 2.0 is based on the 1.3.x beta channel, which means those currently running this version of Audacity, the only version to support the latest Windows and OS X operating systems, won’t notice any differences between this and the latest beta release (1…

What if you could survey multiple segments at once?
If you’re only using online surveys to gather basic data, you’re going to love this article.  One of the ridiculous secrets about QuestionPro is that it’s absolutely loaded with high-end features and most of us users don’t even know it!
One of these features is the ability to use what’s called “skip logic”.  Skip logic gives you the ability to segment your respondents and then ask them questions based on their previous response…

If your shelves are getting cluttered with DVD and Blu-Ray boxes, Walmart has a (legal) solution: Starting April 16, customers can bring in their physical copies of movies and get a digital version stored in the UltraViolet cloud for $2 each.

The cloud storage system will offer access from a variety of Internet-connected devices, says L.A. Times, and high-definition upgrades for standard DVDs will be available for $5 each.

Walmart announced the news as part of an exclusive arrangement with five Hollywood studios…

Likely in the not-too-distant future, many of our appliances, lights, medical equipment and much more will all be connected to the Internet, making up an “Internet of things.” Arm Holdings has unveiled its latest processor that it says is the “world’s most energy-efficient microprocessor” design and will help expand this Internet of things.
“It’s allowing us to provide connectivity everywhere,” Geoff Lees, of Freescale, one of the firm’s that’s licensed the new tech, told the BBC…

Does your business have a plan for bringing on social media marketers?Are you wondering how to work with experts outside the company while maintaining a consistent brand experience?Before you jump in headfirst or turn over the social media reins , check out the following eight tips to make sure your employees or contractors correctly represent your company.#1: Create a Social Style GuideAgreeing on a style for outward-facing content helps solidify your company’s identity and character, and is the starting point of good social media employee training, because it puts all agents on the same page…

Seems awful suspicious to us…
Earlier today, Daily Deal Media received a tip from a regular reader, alerting us to two little tidbits that struck our interest; both have to do with domain names.
Big internet companies like Google, Twitter, Facebook and others, tend to buy domain names that are similar to theirs, to prevent other people from creating phony sites that may be stumbled upon by a misspelling or misunderstood URL.
Today, a Daily Deal Media reader stumbled upon www.yahoodailydeal.com…

Your business is your livelihood. But, there comes a time to move on. The first step is simply evaluating how ready your business is for sale. These checklists will help.The first issue you and anyone else considering a business exit faces is simple: Is your business a good sale prospect?In other words, will someone pay money to acquire your business or are you better off selling its physical assets and walking away?Too many owners assume they won’t find a buyer. Therefore they automatically default to ending their businesses through liquidation…

Want to increase your revenue? It’s time to get smarter about how your customers’ minds really work, suggests a new book.Roger Dooley wants your business to succeed. So he’s laying down the facts and dissecting recent brain and behavior research to enable you to tap into consumers’ brains.Fact No. 1: People aren’t always rational thinkers. In truth, research shows that a huge amount of decision-making is actually based on subconscious factors.In both his new book, Brainfluence, and in a recent interview, Dooley offered several ways to use “neuromarketing” to do a better job persuading consumers…

Rovio has teamed up with MTV in the social game maker’s first effort to drive social change. Angry Birds Space players will unlock a secret Golden Egg level when they support MTV’s “A THIN LINE” campaign, which fights digital abuse, bullying and discrimination.
“We know how big the game has become and the ways people are engaging with it,” Jason Rzepka, MTV vp of public affairs told Mashable. “We saw this as a place we could really connect with young people…

Hot on the heels of the slightly delayed official unveiling of Firefox 11 FINAL comes Waterfox 11.0, an optimized build of the Firefox source code for Windows 64-bit users.
Waterfox 11.0 contains exactly the same updates as Firefox 11 (see below), plus one major change of its own, a switch from AMD’s Core Math Library (ACML) to the AMD LibM library, which is optimized for 64-bit processors.
Aside from the change to AMD LibM library, Waterfox 11.0 has also been compiled with a new set of flags from the original Firefox 11…

The latest version of Apple’s iPad is coming to the U.S. and nine additional countries on Friday, Apple has revealed.
The device will arrive at Apple’s retail stores at 8:00 a.m. local time Friday in the U.S.
It will also become available in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, Switzerland, UK, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Apple’s new tablet sports an improved “retina” display, a 5-megapixel camera with 1080p video recording, LTE support, 1 GB of RAM and an improved A5X CPU with quad-core graphics…

Gary Vaynerchuk, Tim Ferriss, and others offer advice on landing celebrity advisors, how to offer them equity, and the best ways to leverage their clout.Plenty of start-ups would kill to have someone like Gary Vaynerchuk as an advisor.But access to a high-profile advisor and investor like Vaynerchuk is tough to get. So without any stellar introductions, what’s the best way to approach an advisor?”If you want it, you gotta try everything,” Vaynerchuk said recently on a panel discussion at the annual South by Southwest Interactive conference…

AOL Instant Messenger has been circling the drain of social irrelevance for a while now, and now it’s gotten to the point that the company apparently no longer believes in the future of AIM. AOL laid off 40 workers at its West Coast office, shedding seemingly all critical staff in the Instant Messenger division and leaving only a skeletal support infrastructure.

The New York Times reports this is just the beginning of the latest AOL bloodletting, with as many as 100 more employees expected to see pink slips by the end of the month…

1. Pi Symbol Ice Cube Tray

You can’t have a Pi Day party without Pi-shaped frozen water!
Cost: $12.98Click here to view this gallery.Pi Day is upon us once again! Obviously, March 14 (3.14) is an appropriate day to celebrate the irrational number — and it also happens to be Albert Einstein’s birthday!
Here at Mashable, we’re geeking out with 10 awesome accessories that honor pi. From clothing to kitchen accessories, we’ve found a range of items that feature everyone’s favorite mathematical constant…

The hype is nearly impossible to avoid or overlook. According to some in the mobile industry, near field communications technology is the biggest development in mobile since the smartphone itself.
But with the predictions and projections for the NFC market growing bigger and bolder by the day, one has to wonder if the hype is starting to get out of hand.
As recently as March 8th, a new study by Juniper Research projected that NFC will facilitate transactions valued at $74 billion by 2015. That’s a fairly optimistic forecast, given that NFC remains a relatively new technology that consumers are hardly familiar with…

It’s not all about saving the world or ‘helping’ the next generation. You’ll be surprised by how much you get out of it, too.My son Jared is a high school sophomore. This is his first year running track, and none of us had any idea which event might be best for him. For Coach Joe, it was never an issue. Jared would be running varsity hurdles. “Is he that good?” I asked. “He will be,” said Joe. The man should know. He’s been coaching track for 50 years. Fifty. In his first track meet, Jared came home with a silver medal in the 300-meter hurdles, missing first place by one-tenth of a second…

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Computers and Electronics

Tanga…

So-called training courses can be a huge waste of time and money. Here’s how to make sure they’re more useful.Companies spend billions of dollars every year on sales training–and, frankly, a lot of that money is wasted. I was recently interviewed by Mindflash.com (Part 1 and Part 2) on the matter, but I thought it might be useful to encapsulate my remarks here.Entrepreneurs often wrongly assume that they can increase sales by getting the assistance of a top training firm. However, every training firm has its own strengths and weaknesses, and their area of expertise may not match what’s needed…

Welcome to this morning’s edition of “First To Know,” a series in which we keep you in the know on what’s happening in the digital world. Today, we’re looking at three particularly interesting stories.
Encyclopaedia Britannica to Stop Selling Print Edition
After 244 years, Encyclopaedia Britannica will stop selling its print edition and switch to digital editions only. Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc. President Jorge Cauz says this does not mean the Britannica is dead; on the contrary, the digital editions are selling well…

If you came of age in the 1980s or early 1990s, your internet was called the encyclopedia. You probably haven’t touched one in decades, and apparently neither has anyone else because they pretty much no longer exist in their old form. Encyclopedia Britannica drove a long-overdue stake into the heart of the outmoded medium by announcing it won’t print a 2012 edition, making the 2010 version of its biennial set its last.

CNNMoney reports the company will focus on its digital editions, as well as other educational efforts…

A simple yet effective manner in which to use analytics to prevent competitors from poaching customers in the telecommunications sector, campaign sensitivity analysis is sure to become a common practice in the field of business intelligence / data mining over the coming years…

The daily deals marketplace is being overwhelmed with new entrants. Nearly every kind of retailed service or product is now offered via discounted online deals. Consumers once enthralled by savings coupons from daily deal portals now seem exhausted with the overload of coupons and emailed promotional campaigns. Though daily deals are a relatively recent phenomenon, they might soon enter a phase of stagnation where customer retention is sure to emerge as the biggest issue. Understanding the gravity of this problem, leading daily deals providers are pushing for premium, customer loyalty programs…

Bad chemistry between partners can break an otherwise solid company. These questions can help you tell whether you’ve got the right co-pilot.As a professional development coach, I spend a lot of time helping clients determine who they can trust in their careers. It’s a charged topic. Professional relationships are often as emotionally fraught as personal ones. Nothing, however, compares with the intensity of an entrepreneurial partnership, where an entire career can be ruined by a single act of betrayal…

While many telecom operators undergo customer experience transformation engagements, many fail to take into particular focus one specific part of the customer experience – the handset sales cycle. Not only is this area a particularly lucrative one for telecoms, but it also is one that allows for stronger bonding with the customer…

If you harbor a dream of your child graduating from college without being buried in student loan debt, you’re probably going to have to save up a heck of a lot of money for the cause. The earlier you start saving, the more you’ll be able to contribute. But it’s important that you get your kid in on the effort.

Bargaineering suggests starting a fund when your child is an infant and contributing to it regularly as he grows up. My favorite piece of advice from the post regards getting your child to buy in to what you’re attempting to accomplish, convincing him to set aside part of his allowance and money earned from odd jobs to the cause…

It’s hard enough to find the right price for your product or service — without everyone lying to you about it.How hard a game is pricing? Learn from my example.Many years ago, I ran a manufacturing company that supplied a number of large U.K. and U.S. retailers. Our customers beat us up all the time on pricing. Sometimes I gave them breaks, mostly out of fear. Eventually, in the recession of the early 90s, I had to close the business. A year later, I ran into the buyer for our largest customer. She told me how sorry she had been to see us close, because she had been unable to find a product similar to ours at a similar price…

All daily deals sites aim to help consumers save money by featuring coupons and discounts from a wide array of retailers. However, Fairfield Coupon has taken this a step further by making a commitment to the local community as well. It will feature daily deals and coupons from local retailers. The aim is to ensure that business stays in the locality. Apart from this, Fairfield Coupon has committed to helping local charity Boys and Girls Village.
Fairfield Coupon will promote the Boys and Girls Village Laugh Out Loud event…

The star athlete on why he’s getting his Ph.D., how he chooses business ventures, and the weirdest pitch he’s ever received.One Shaquille O’Neal you probably know: The retired basketball player who has four NBA championship rings and an Olympic gold medal, who was voted an All-Star fifteen times, and who ranks 6th on the all-time scoring list.Or you might know another Shaq: The one who appeared in movies, released rap albums, was a character in video games, had a reality TV series, and is now an NBA television analyst for TNT…

Google continued its practice of spotlighting innovators who are obscure to the general public on Wednesday with a tribute to Akira Yoshizawa, the “grandmaster of origami.”
Yoshizawa, who would have been 101 years old on Wednesday, is credited with raising origami – the technique of folding paper into decorative forms — from craft to art. For much of his early life, Yoshizawa toiled in obscurity, but he got his big break in 1951, when a Japanese magazine hired him him to fold the 12 signs of the Japanese zodiac…

Welcome to Day 2 of corporate carnage in the Worst Company In America Octagonal Steel Cage! Starting things off for today is another pair of bloodthirsty bankers out to prove they are just as astoundingly inept as any other business in the bracket.

Wells Fargo may look like it just stepped off a bus from the prairie, but don’t mistake this bruiser’s “aw shucks” facade just masks what must be a concerted effort to not give a good damn about customers.

Or maybe Wells changed its terms of service to prevent customers from suing the bank because it didn’t want you to get your hopes up that you’d win in court?

And perhaps it sent thousands of statements to the wrong addresses so that the world could share in customers’ joy of being a Wells Fargo patron?

Of course those fees Wells Fargo continues to test are really all about keeping you on your toes to make sure you’re reading your statement every month…