the Philippines

Convergys Corp., a business services outsourcing provider, said Wednesday that former Alltel Corp. executive Jeff Fox will take over as president and CEO.

David Dougherty, who led the company less than three years, will stay on as a consultant, the company said.

Fox, 47, has agreed to head Convergys at least one year, the company said. The former chief operating officer of wireless provider Alltel became a Convergys board member one year ago.

Convergys chairman Philip Odeen said the board decided it was time for a new leader.

Marvin J. Cetron with David A. Patten in NewsMax Magazine:

by Michael Blim

by Michael Blim

There is a growing trend in the CRM space towards alternative delivery and design methods, versus traditional on-premises applications written to proprietary software. These Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and open source models have several advantages, including flexibility, avoiding vendor lock-in, shorter lead times, and cost savings.

Alternative CRM solutions are also becoming more feature rich and robust. Here are two recent examples:

The interview with Dean Karlan is very good.

Dungeons & Dragons & lawyers, oh my -- eight people face accusations they illegally posted the pioneering role-playing game's newest handbook for download on the Internet.

Wizards of the Coast LLC, a subsidiary of Hasbro Inc., is seeking unspecified damages in three copyright infringement lawsuits naming a total of eight defendants in U.S. District Court in Seattle.

Noam Chomsky in The Nation:

National libraries and the U.N. education agency put some of humanity's earliest written works online Tuesday, from ancient Chinese oracle bones to the first European map of the New World.

U.S. Librarian of Congress James Billington said the idea behind the World Digital Library is not to compete with Google or Wikipedia but to pique young readers' interest -- and get them reading books.

"You have to go back to books," Billington said in an interview in Paris, where the project was launched at UNESCO's headquarters. "These are primary documents of a culture."