Now in its 23rd year, the TechAmerica Tech Summit is an annual event hosted in Sacramento to provide TechAmerica member companies with an opportunity to interface with key decision makers in California and discuss the relationship between the high-tech industry and the state. TechAmerica, formed by the merger of AeA (formerly the American Electronics Association), the Cyber Security Industry Alliance (CSIA), the Government Electronics & Information Technology Association (GEIA), and the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA), kicked off this year’s Tech Summit last evening with a dinner honoring AeA’s 2008 Legislators of the Year.

Sentiment has begun to track upwards again in the past month, a movement that is likely due to Apple’s strong first quarter earnings report for 2009 and to consistent rumors about the release of a new iPhone and new computing device likely to come this June at Apple’s World Wide Developers Conference. … That said, Apple’s sentiment graph has rebounded off bottoms near the 2.6 level and have begun recovering in the past month as rumors about Steve Job’s departure have been dispelled and hope for new devices in June, paired with the release of a new software platform for the iPhone, have given Apple sentiments a lift.

To create a task with a due date in Calendar, click on an empty space in month view or the all-day section of week view, and be sure select the “Task” option.

…    * To keep track of due dates before they arrive, there’s a nifty new “Sort by due date” feature available in the Actions menu at the bottom of your task list.

InsideView today announced the immediate availability of real-time social media monitoring on Twitter and Google Blog Search along with Compete.com Web statistics, in all major Customer Relationship Management (CRM) applications through the company’s leading Sales 2.0 application, SalesView. The new SalesView “Buzz tab” is the first instance across all platforms where intelligence gleaned from Twitter and other forms of social media are accessible directly within a CRM application, providing a more comprehensive view of prospects and customers. … The Buzz tab, which is available in both the stand-alone application and CRM mash-up, is also included with SalesView FREE™, making it immediately available free-of-charge to all InsideView partners and their customers: Landslide, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Oracle CRM On Demand, Salesforce.com and SugarCRM. “Monitoring end-user sentiment across social media channels, such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, is opening up new ways for businesses to collect valuable insights that can improve sales and marketing effectiveness,” said Alex Jefferies, senior research associate with the Aberdeen Group. “Access to social buzz about prospects and customers, especially when this content is integrated directly into existing enterprise systems such as CRM, will give sales professionals a newfound competitive edge that can dramatically impact sales productivity and deal velocity.”