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Ashton Kutcher is the Twitter king.

The actor triumphed over CNN in their much ballyhooed race to be the first to reach a million followers on the microblogging Web site. Kutcher surpassed that benchmark in the early morning hours Friday, narrowly edging out the Time Warner Inc.-owned network.

The actor had long trailed CNN, but he staged a rally in recent days that captured the attention of the Web.

After his come-from-behind win, Kutcher celebrated by tweeting “Victory is ours!” and webcasting a video live on ustream.tv.

At the same time, Oprah Winfrey made her entry to Twitter, joining the site and holding a Twitter special on her show Friday with Kutcher as a guest. She gained 100,000 followers in less than a day.

Kutcher, CNN and Winfrey pledged to mark the occasion by purchasing mosquito bed nets to combat malaria. Kutcher donated $100,000 to the Malaria No More Fund, the charity said Friday.

Though celebrities have become commonplace on Twitter — where people “follow” each other’s updates of 140-characters or less — Winfrey’s entry was sure to cause ripples.

The talk show host was welcomed onto the site with messages from George Stephanopoulos, Ellen DeGeneres, Jimmy Fallon and Shaquille O’Neal.

Faced with growing opposition, Time Warner Cable announced Thursday that it was delaying the rollout of trial plans that would charge customers according to levels of how much they downloaded.

In a statement, the company said it would “alter plans to test Consumption Based Billing, shelving the trials while the customer education process continues.”

‘Great Deal of Misunderstanding’

CEO Glenn Britt said that it was “clear from the public response over the last two weeks that there is a great deal of misunderstanding about our plans to roll out additional tests on consumption based billing.” He added that the company will not proceed with the trials until there has been “further consultation with our customers and other interested parties.”

The company also said that it would make measurement tools available “as quickly as possible,” so that customers could see how much bandwidth they actually use.

In the statement, Britt specifically mentioned that Time Warner looks forward “to continuing to work with Senator Schumer,” among others. Charles Schumer (D-NY) had recently joined Rep. Eric Massa (D-NY), the largest newspaper in Rochester, N.Y., and various consumer groups in protesting the planned rollout of the metered plan in that area. Massa has said he is preparing legislation to counter the tiered approach, which he said hurts America’s capability to compete globally by limiting access to broadband.

Additionally, Rochester-area competitor Frontier Communications announced this week that it was dropping its own plan for tiered DSL service — and looking to accommodate any disgruntled Time Warner customers.

Time Warner’s metered plan began last year in Beaumont, Texas, where a company spokesperson said that only about 14 percent of customers used enough bandwidth to hit the caps. The other trials, besides Rochester, are planned for Greensboro, North Carolina, and San Antonio and Austin in Texas.

In the most recently released version of…

Nokia on Thursday reported its worst quarterly profit in more than a decade. Nevertheless, the cell-phone maker’s shares rallied in the wake of optimism expressed by CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo.

The Finnish company said its profit declined to 122 million euros (US$160.7 million), from 1.2 billion euros (US$1.6 billion) a year earlier. Sales fell 27 percent.

Nokia’s Devices & Services unit saw net sales decline 33 percent year-on-year to 6.2 billion euros (US$8.2 billion). Still, the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, one of its flagship devices, sold 2.6 million units in the quarter and more than three million since it launched in late November. But its services division saw a five percent decline over the same period last year.

Nokia remains the largest mobile-device maker in the world with a market share of 37 percent in this year’s first quarter. However, that’s down from 39 percent in the year-ago period. Nokia expects industry sales to continue to decline this year, estimating a 10 percent overall slide from 2008.

A More Predictable Future

“In what has been an exceptionally tough environment, we continue to invest in a focused manner in consumer Internet services delivered across our broad portfolio of mobile devices. Combined, these solutions will drive our future growth,” Kallasvuo said.

As a first-quarter example, Kallasvuo pointed to the performance of Nokia’s first mass-market touch product, the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. Together with Comes With Music, he said it’s a great example of Nokia providing solutions that consumers value.

“Regarding the health of the overall mobile-device market, the inventory already in the sales channels decreased substantially during Q1 due to extensive destocking by operators and distributors. This adversely impacted our sales volumes in the quarter,” Kallasvuo said. “However, it has also resulted in the demand picture becoming more predictable as we enter the second quarter.”

Increasing Market Share

Nokia expects industry…

Following Apple’s success, application stores for mobile devices have been popping up like mushrooms after a rainstorm. Now Verizon Communications is planning an application store for its stationary new Hub device, which is intended to be an all-in-one home phone with a small display for limited Internet access.

The company hopes that, like Apple’s App Store and others that have followed for BlackBerry, Palm, Android and other devices, applications sold or given away through a prominent online location will stimulate third-party developers to produce more software, and thus increase the value of the device. Verizon is also planning the release of a software development kit.

According to news reports, Verizon is looking to launch its Hub app market this year.

Offered to Anyone

The Hub has been on sale since Feb. 1 for Verizon Wireless customers, but Verizon Communications said it is dropping that restriction and will allow anyone to buy the device. The company is marketing the Hub to customers who not only need a phone, but who would also like to have some Internet access to news, weather, sports and daily menus at the local high-school cafeteria.

Additionally, Verizon and other traditional phone companies are concerned about the numbers of customers who are dropping landlines for either cell phones or Voice-over-Internet (VoIP) phones. The Hub is a Net phone, running off an Internet connection.

The company is reportedly preparing new versions of the Hub, including sleeker models that look like a digital picture frame and models that support multi-touch interaction.
Verizon will also be offering its own widgets, or small software programs, cooking videos, games and other applications.

Industry observers are wondering if the Hub is a viable device in this recessionary economy, especially given the $199 price for the hardware and an additional $34.99 per month for the service.

Competing with Netbooks?

The…

How Bizarre…

FAIRFIELD, NJ (April 15, 2009) – StayinFront, Inc., a global provider of enterprise-wide customer relationship management (CRM) applications, decision support tools, data services, sample inventory management solutions and eBusiness systems, announced today that StayinFront CRM was selected by ISM Inc., Social Media, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Contact Center strategic advisors, as a Top 15 CRM Small & Medium Business Software Award winner for 2009. This is the fifth consecutive year that ISM has selected StayinFront CRM to its Top 15 Award list.

“The winners of the 2009 Top 15 continue to raise the bar for the CRM community with significant advancements in both functionality and connectibility. Mobile access as well as Social Media are of increased importance to sales and marketing professionals and their always-on, always-connected Digital Clients,” said Barton Goldenberg, president, ISM.

StayinFront CRM was chosen after intensive testing by the ISM Software Lab at its Bethesda, Maryland-based headquarters. Each package was rated according to 217 selection criteria, including 102 business functions, 51 technical features, 36 implementation capabilities, 11 real time criteria, and 17 user-support features.

“StayinFront is to be praised for obtaining the Top 15 honor as ISM’s software selection process is strenuous and comprehensive,” said Goldenberg. “StayinFront is a leader in the CRM industry.”

The Top 15 selections are featured in ISM’s 17th edition of The Guide to CRM Automation and in a Top 15 CD available at (www.ismguide.com).

About StayinFront

StayinFront, Inc. is a leading global provider of enterprise-wide customer relationship management (CRM) applications, decision support tools, data services, sample inventory management solutions and eBusiness systems.

StayinFront offers rapidly configured and implemented solutions and services to manage and integrate all points of customer interaction including sales, marketing and customer support. StayinFront has been chosen globally as a strategic CRM partner by many of the world’s top life sciences, consumer goods, financial…