A good morning to one and all, welcome to Radio CBM 98.6, all Byrds all the time, the pride of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

"Bucking the economic trend over the past twelve months," Alterian has announced revenue growth of 73 percent for the year to 31st March 2009, company execs said, with "particularly buckin' strong performances in the UK, Europe and Asia Pacific and online marketing software."

Highlights for the year include more than 200 new customers signed including Jaguar Land Rover, 25 new channel partnerships secured, customer retention rates of more than 90 per cent and "no massive deaths of company executives from swine flu. We like to look on the bright side," Alterian officials explained.

Company officials say they believe marketing is "in the midst of an operational shift," since in their view "some customers are now demanding a two-way, multi-channel conversation with marketers, especially the ability to call us during dinner for a buckin' change."

Compuware has completed an agreement for Micro Focus to acquire about 300 employees and certain intellectual property from Compuware's Quality Solutions product line for approximately $80 million.

"Completing this transaction increases Compuware's ability to focus our people, technology and investments on IT strategic problems," said Compuware President and COO Bob Paul, adding that for $80 million Micro Focus could have picked up decent starting left-handed pitching instead, but "they found free agency pretty slim this year. Maybe they'll give Tom Glavine a call, he's looking for work."

Newbury, England-based Micro Focus provides enterprise application management and modernization products.

In politics, on the eve of President Barack Obama's trip to Saudi Arabia, his aides said that the president has "experienced Islam on three continents" and that growing up in Indonesia he had "a Muslim father." Reporters noted that this contradicts what candidate Obama said on May 22, 2008, in Boca Raton, Florida that his father was "basically agnostic, as far as I can tell, and I didn't know him." Democrat Party officials attributed the change of story to "stunning new information."

Lithium Technologies, seller of on-demand customer community tools, has acquired Keibi Technologies, a vendor of automated content discovery, analysis, and moderation for online communities.

Company officials said yeah, while it's usually true that someone would take lithium to achieve moderation, in this case "we're turning the tables a bit."

Keibi's technology will give the Lithium application a content analysis platform used for social networking site Bebo, as well as brands, such as the coyly described "world's largest beverage company." Keibi's engine processes user-generated content including text, images, animations, and video, measuring and scoring content across multiple dimensions to find insight into their customers' behavior.

In sports second-seeded Roger Federer advanced to the semifinals of the French Open, a tournament the Swiss star is desperate to win. His path was eased by the shocking loss of top seed and perennial champion Rafael Nadal. Also exiting early were third seed Andy Murray, fourth seed Novak Djokovic and every other top ten seed except No. 5 Juan del Potro. "He'll lose too, if he knows what's good for his family," Federer said after huddling with some large Italian men in a restaurant near the Roland Garros stadium.

Preparing for his first state visit to India later in the year, President Barack Obama's aides have announced the startling finding that the president's mother was actually the reincarnation of Radha Krishna.

Contact center outsourcer Envision Telephony has announced the availability of Envision InteractionIQ, a speech analytics product designed to process, search and report speech data from audio recordings. The product lets contact center and enterprise management incorporate speech data into the WFO analysis equation.

Rodney Kuhn, Envision's CEO, said his company "took a fresh approach" to developing a speech analytics product that is "easy to implement, use and cost justify."

Keith Dawson, principal analyst with Frost & Sullivan, said up to now "we have not seen wide spread adoption of speech analytics, even though it can offer insights to agent, center and organizational performance and trends."

Other industry observers suggested that's maybe because it's expensive to implement and maintain, too complex to run, doesn't really have definable ROI and demands additional resources, "if you're one of those squeakers who always goes around looking for things to get real nitpicky about."

With a state visit to Japan scheduled for next spring, President Barack Obama praised his parents' "strong, devoted Shinto faith" as a "beacon of light for me as a child" in the weekly White House press conference.

Beauty retailer Sephora says it's expanding its US customer satisfaction feedback program to Canada and Puerto Rico using Enterprise Feedback Management products from Medallia. Sephora Canada is already live with Medallia's system and Puerto Rico's program is scheduled to come online in the summer of 2009.

Sephora chose to replace its existing programs in Canada and Puerto Rico with Medallia because of Medallia's track record at Sephora USA and the fact that it speaks French and Spanish, which company officials noted was key to their goal of breaking into the Los Angeles market.

That's the show for today, we're off to invest in Guinean firewood.