CRM Update – Apr 16 : 1:09 pm

Workplace stress is not inevitable. Here are some simple techniques to lower your own levels.Stress sucks. According to the American Psychological Association, stress can result in headache, muscle tension, muscle pain, chest pain, fatigue, upset stomach, insomnia, anxiety, restlessness, lack of motivation, lack of focus, irritability, depression, eating problems, addiction … and social withdrawal. Yow!Fortunately, stress isn’t inevitable, even in today’s hyper-connected, highly competitive world…

Is Twitter working for your business?Are you looking to grow a larger and more relevant Twitter following?This article will show you four actionable steps you can take to improve your Twitter experience.Why Twitter Is Not Just a Numbers GameMany brands, businesses and marketers have already discovered how powerful Twitter is for finding and engaging their audience.Its low cost, immediacy and viral nature make it a favorite tool for everyone from news organizations to celebrities to small businesses…

Crytek has released the latest update for its CryEngine 3 SDK, which is now at version 3.4.
It also launched a nifty trailer showing off some of the most important features in the new version, and boy do they look good!
CryEngine 3.4 brings revamped DirectX 11 tessellation, improved glass shattering effects, a multi-layer AI navigation mesh, and improved skin rendering and eye shading.
In practice, this means the 3D objects in games (and their shadows) will look far more realistic than ever before, with tessellation potentially increasing the polygon count by the millions…

Microsoft is taking the wraps off the latest iteration of its Media Platform, which is now hosted on Windows Azure and includes third-party integrations, at the NAB show.

Marsha and her fiancé have a long-distance relationship right now. Normally, that wouldn’t be relevant, but that it means that by the time he bought an Archos Android tablet for her, configured it, and sent it to her on the other end of the country, she was past the ten-day return window Staples allows. When her tablet wouldn’t connect to the Internet, she had to turn to Archos for a warranty replacement. But instead of grabbing a tablet for her from the “refurbished and restored” pile, they grabbed one for her from the “scratched, dirty, and full of porn” pile…

Inc. 5000 Applicant of the Week Nasty Gal transformed from a vintage clothing store on eBay into an international fashion website.As applications for the 2012 Inc. 500|5000 arrive, we thought it would be worthwhile to shine a spotlight on some of the companies that are vying to appear on our ranking of the fastest-growing private companies in the U.S. (For more information and to apply, click here. One that caught our eye was Los Angeles-based Nasty Gal. Working in the lobby of an art school, then 23-year-old Sophia Amoruso received friend requests on MySpace from eBay vintage clothing sellers…

Michael was having a pretty minor problem with playing television programs in iTunes. Sure, it doesn’t even rank as the a serious first world problem, but he contacted Apple to get it resolved, because that’s what Apple is supposed to do. A senior representative tried to resolve the problem by resetting his iTunes password. Nice idea if it had worked. It didn’t. Now this cord-cutter, who uses his Apple TV to catch up with favorite shows, can’t watch those shows at all. Being locked out of his iTunes account and all…

Evolution
 
The phenomenal growth of information and communication technologies coupled with technological advancements and innovations in microelectronics, computer hardware and software has played an underlying role in the evolution of Enterprise Recourse Planning System. During recent decades, the data models and software structures have been modified significantly to support interoperability. Simultaneously, business environment has been becoming increasingly complex. Booming economies raised customer demands resulting in mushrooming of versatile SMEs and multinational corporations…

Google co-founder Sergey Brin is worried about the future of the internet. There are “very powerful forces that have lined up against the open internet on all sides and around the world,” he said in an interview with The Guardian.
According to Brin, one of the biggest threats to the openness of the internet is pressure from governments, which are trying to control the information flow on the internet.
The overzealous entertainment industry, which is trying to end piracy, is another threat, and walled gardens raised by companies such as Facebook and Apple, which control what software can be released on their platforms, is equally dangerous, claims Brin…

As informed above MRP & MRP II were customized systems, tailored specific need of a company. Same was the case of ERP in its initial years but gradually the growing popularity of ERP resulted in marketing of ready to use ERP systems. Even such ERP systems require certain customization.
 
A company, no issue if it’s a small, mid-size, or huge one, always has to have no shocks about its primary needs. Be it a service-based company or a product-based company, ERP (Enterprise Source Planning) is a primary need of all companies…

To say the weekend social media and tech news was eclectic would be an understatement. We figuratively traveled from the icy clouds of Uranus to the gloomy depths of the ocean, taking in all the spectacular sights and sounds in between.
And you’re in luck! We’ve gathered all we found right here in the form of your trusty Weekend Recap, listed in a neat column for your reading pleasure.
What better way is there to start the week? Dive in, and then go out there and attack the week with gusto:
News & Opinion Essentials

HTC Titan II: The Other LTE Windows Phone Is Big, Beautiful, Pricey [REVIEW]
Cruises Then and Now: The Tech Behind Titanic [VIDEO]
Top 10 Tech This Week [PICS]
14 Tech-Forward Concepts Reshaping Our Future
Mobile Mistrust: Are Texters Cheaters? [INFOGRAPHIC]
Parents Win Round One in Freemium Games Suit Against Apple
Filming Starts Next Month For Steve Jobs Movie Starring Ashton Kutcher
Where and When Do Most People Lose Their Phones? [INFOGRAPHIC]
Why Was Apple Meeting with Game Developer Valve? [VIDEO]
J…

Forward: This post is in response to my friend, Michael Brito. He responded via Twitter to last week’s post about Social CRM and Reservoir Dogs with the following tweet:

Challenge: Accepted….
Goin’ All Scarface All Over Everyone’s Social CRM
Few American movie protagonists are as loved for being evil as Oliver Stone and Brian De Palma’s 1983 classic Tony Montana character. Brought to life by the enigmatic Al Pacino, as the displaced Cuban-American who worked himself up through the Miami cocaine racket trying to achieve what he felt was his right: the world…

Do you have a billion-dollar idea? From a fun pastime to a billion-dollar business, these savvy business owners changed the rules of retail.Scaling a business is akin to balancing a set of fine china while walking a tight rope; it’s a fragile operation requiring precision and skill. It must be carefully planned and maneuvered and the cost of one wrong move may be small–or it could be devastating.Yet businesses across the globe are successfully traversing this virtual tight-rope by combining ingenuity, creativity, calculated risk, and a lot of dedicated, hard work…

Social Media: Getting Down To Business [Research]
Marketers are increasing their social media budgets. Specifically, they plan to allocate 7.4% of their overall marketing budgets to social media in 2012 and expect this amount to increase to 19.5% by 2017, according to a Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business poll of CMOs taken in February. This is a sign that social media continues to mature. As it does so, it’s time for marketers to start using social media as a key marketing tool. 
Here are seven steps to create an effective social media marketing plan every marketer can use…

There are a number of things that new tenants usually discover soon after signing a lease — pipes that leak, mice in the walls, noisy neighbors, angry ghosts that haunt the premises. A family in New Jersey is suing their landlord over one of these reasons… take a guess which one it is.

It was only on March 1 that the family of four had moved into the house in Toms River, NJ. But they tell the Asbury Park Press that they immediately noticed they may not be alone:
The family would come home and find their clothes and towels ejected from the closets and strewn over the floors…

A little friendly rivalry can boost employee performance. But if you don’t handle contests carefully, they can backfire. Whether on a sales team or anywhere else in an organization, reward programs and contests are supposed to motivate each member of a team to perform at the top of his or her game.But I’ve seen situations—even in large, sophisticated companies—where the program becomes a hotbed of resentment and frustration.If you want your award program to promote achievement and team morale while taking you closer to your corporate goals, follow these five rules…

Customers often have their own ideas about how to build your products. That doesn’t mean you should listen to them.It’s a familiar story: You come up with a new idea for a product. You bring your product to market, and it turns out what you envisioned is not precisely what your customers want. Instead, they seize on a particular feature of your product and begin using it—a lot—in a way you had never planned. You’re wise enough to follow the market and so you adjust your plans to suit customer preferences…

It’s been a few weeks since Comcast announced that data chewed up by customers who use the cable company’s Xfinity Xbox app won’t count toward their monthly data cap. The move ignited a debate over whether or not Comcast was unfairly making its product more readily available than those provided by others, like perhaps… Netflix. Well, yesterday, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings decided it was time to make his position known.

Posting on his Facebook page, Hastings wrote:
Comcast no longer following net neutrality principles…

The best problem solvers see a complex problem through multiple lenses. Heres how to become a better strategic thinker and leader yourself.In 2009, J D Wetherspoon, a chain of more than 800 pubs in the UK, was facing declining sales. Demand for beer had been down for five years. In addition, pricing pressure from super market chains was intense, and higher alcohol taxes further squeezed his already tight margins.What would you say is the company’s real business problem?Most people see it as a sales problem and recommend better marketing and promotion…

Engagement with Facebook ads in the U.S. dropped eight percent between the final quarter of 2011 and the first quarter of 2012.
Meanwhile, the average cost-per-thousand impressions for Facebook ads has increased by 41% worldwide over the past year. Cost-per-click rates have risen as well, and Facebook has become increasingly competitive with Twitter in directing readers to news sites.
This all comes from a first-quarter Facebook analysis by the advertising agency TBG Digital, which works with an extensive roster of high-profile clients including jetBlue, Heineken and Coca-Cola…

When you clock out of work, do you leave your email behind as well? If so, you’re definitely in the minority.
A recent survey of 543 business execs by ad agency Gyro and Forbes Insights found 98% of such workers check email during their “off” time. If that’s not bad enough, 63% say they check on their email at least every one or two hours when they’re out of the office. The trend holds up when the execs are on vacation — only 3% say they don’t check work emails…

Nobody wants to collect cash at the door of their dinner party, but feeding a group of friends can be expensive. A new startup wants to stop this conundrum from leading to fewer dinner parties.
The site, Zokos, gives guests a way to pitch into dinner party costs without an awkward exchange of cash.
Using the platform, hosts can set a minimum and maximum number of guests they’d like to invite to dinner, send invitations through Facebook or email, and request that each guest contribute a certain amount to the cost of the party…