In brief: AT&T adds to customer service portal

AT&T announced last week that it is adding a number of bells and whistles to AT&T BusinessDirect, the company's portal for customer service management and trouble reporting. Among the new attractions are a "click-to-chat" feature that allows customers to chat online with a human being, as well as an expansion of the portal's graphical network map to 88 more countries. BusinessDirect has been an important component of the company's so-called Concept of Zero effort, the crux of which is to reduce the person-to-person and person-to-computer steps needed to make things happen.

Skype Technologies has completed testing the latest version of its Internet telephony software with a new video feature and is now encouraging users to download it. Version 2.0 of Skype's widely used VoIP software is available for free. It also allows users to organize their contacts by creating groups, such as colleagues, friends and family, and provides new buttons to display their Skype status on their blog or Web page. Currently, the software is available only for computers running Windows 2000 or XP. The new video feature requires XP.

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AT&T announced last week that it is adding a number of bells and whistles to AT&T BusinessDirect, the company's portal for customer service management and trouble reporting. Among the new attractions are a "click-to-chat" feature that allows customers to chat online with a human being, as well as an expansion of the portal's graphical network map to 88 more countries. BusinessDirect has been an important component of the company's so-called Concept of Zero effort, the crux of which is to reduce the person-to-person and person-to-computer steps needed to make things happen.

Skype Technologies has completed testing the latest version of its Internet telephony software with a new video feature and is now encouraging users to download it. Version 2.0 of Skype's widely used VoIP software is available for free. It also allows users to organize their contacts by creating groups, such as colleagues, friends and family, and provides new buttons to display their Skype status on their blog or Web page. Currently, the software is available only for computers running Windows 2000 or XP. The new video feature requires XP.

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