TEAM STATION VIDEOCONFERENCING - The new Intel Team Station Videoconferencing was recently used at the TechLearn Conference to bring in a few international guests. What was awesome about this system was it's size (small), it's ability to use ISDN lines, WAN and the internet. The cost is very reasonable and it performed perfectly. The system can also be used as a presentation system in a conference room and can access content from a corporate network to use in a meeting. The site location to find out more about it is http://www.intel.co m/proshare/ conferencing/products/teamdata.htm

E-MAIL RESPONSE-MANAGEMENT PACKAGES - Manually routing and answering e-mail is time- consuming, with one Internet research company placing the cost of dealing with each message at $2.75. With that in mind, two companies are poised to introduce new software packages that are designed to improve response automation and personalization. Aptex Software's SelectResponse 3.0 uses technology that can interpret the meaning of unstructured text to provide quicker and more accurate answers to e-mail queries. Brightware's Contact Center software generates automated answers for a predetermined set of questions and routes other messages to the appropriate company contact when a question requires a more complex response. "The Internet can be either the least expensive or the most expensive customer channel, depending on the level of automation you have," says Brightware's CEO. Using such software should bring the cost of dealing with e-mail questions down to as little as 25 cents apiece. (InternetWeek 3 Nov 98)