Group items tagged

The article by Eric Geier is mainly an informative piece as well as a basic tutorial of Internet Explorer Settings. Geier focuses on security, the core of a browser's purpose next to actual browsing. He provides a few tricks that aren't always set for users, such as tracking protection, a feature that protects your privacy and reduces pop-ups, especially from unwanted ads. The largest focus of the article is what I find most important, and it's most talked about for a reason. Staying on top of a browser's update is essential for not only the browser's performance but most importantly for your computer's security. To put it into perspective, every time you get on Internet Explorer, it's like leaving your house. If you update your browser constantly, you are always making sure the door is locked. But the longer you wait between updates the more likely the door will be unlocked. And if you completely forget to update for an extended period of time it's like leaving the door open for malware, or malicious software.

This article is explaining how Henry Harteveldt, an airline and travel industry analyst, believes that GDSs will evolve into value creation hubs, or VCHs, over the next five years. He believes GDSs have served airlines the best among many transactionally based industried; however, many areas of airline marketing, sales, distribution and e-commerce are looking for more. He specifically states that airlines are looking for "more flexible, robust commerce platforms built on contemporary software and architecture", as well as "commerce platforms that can support extensive fare and product transparency, dynamic pricing, rich basic and ancillary product merchandising and retailing and the ability to reliably and securely process the massive volume of shopping sessions." VCHs will be used to support the high-volume, high frequency shopping, similar to GDSs, and the system will the new technology that powers airline CRS/PSS host systems, reducing the need for costly conversion disruption.

Forget about whether there is free wifi in room or not when travelling. Hyatt Hotels Corporation has introduced the internet accessed In-Room television where basically your In-Room TV not only performs the normal functions, but everything you can possibily imagine with your laptop, mobile phone, etc... from browsing websites, ordering room service, dinner reservations to receiving customized messages from meeting and group planners and much more! With this new service, I would simply see it as an electornic bulter where every guest could enjoy whenever they stay with such properties.

In this paper a computer network is defined to be a set of autonomous, independent computer systems, interconnected so as to permit interactive resource sharing between any pair of systems. An overview of the need for a computer network, the requirements of a computer communication system, a description of the properties of the communication system chosen, and the potential uses of such a network are described in this paper.

The goal of the computer network is for each computer to make every local resource available to any computer in the net in such a way that any program available to local users can be used remotely without degradation. That is, any program should be able to call on the resources of other computers much as it would call a subroutine. The resources which can be shared in this way include software and data, as well as hardware. Within a local community, time-sharing systems already permit the sharing of software resources. An effective network would eliminate the size and distance limitations on such communities. Currently, each computer center in the country is forced to recreate all of the software and data files it wishes to utilize. In many cases this involves complete reprogramming of software or reformatting the data files. This duplication is extremely costly and has led to considerable pressure for both very restrictive language standards and the use of identical hardware systems. With a successful network, the core problem of sharing resources would be severely reduced, thus eliminating the need for stifling language standards. The basic technology necessary to construct a resource sharing computer network has been available since the advent of time-sharing. For example, a time-sharing system makes all its resources available to a number of users at remote consoles. By splicing two systems together as remote users of each other and permitting user programs to interact with two consoles (the human user and the remote computer), the basic characteristics of a network connection arc obtained. Such an experiment was made between the TX-2 computer at Lincoln Lab and the Q-32 computer at SDC in 1966 in order to test the philosophy.' Logically, such an interconnection is quite powerful and one can tap all the resource of the other system. Practically, however, the interconnection of pairs of computers with console grade communication service is virtually useless. Firs

The M/S Viking Grace was launched in January 2013 and is considered the most environmentally friendly large cruise vessel to have been built. The ship travels between Finland and Sweden as a cruise ferry. The ship is powered by a liquefied natural gas (LNG). The shipbuilder says all emissions into the sea have been eliminated and emissions into the air are now lower than any other cruise passenger ship. Besides the lower emission the M/S Viking Grace also has passenger space that minimizes environmental impact and a new machinery configuration, which saves energy. I think this is significant that the M/S Viking Grace has basically eliminated a good percentage of emissions. I believe the cruise industry, from both luxury liners to cruise ferries, has a considerable amount of work to do to become more environmentally friendly. The use of LNG to power a ship is important for other ferries and cruise lines to look at for the future. Cruise vacations are popular worldwide and saving the sea for future generations is incredibly important. Even though this is just one ship that sails in the Baltic Sea, I think the M/S Viking Grace can have a large positive impact on the region.

Subsidizing a product to get a long-term use commitment from a consumer base is nothing new; it existed before high tech hardware was made affordable by software or service agreements. Think about the razors you buy, assuming of course that you're not a fully bearded male. The initial cost of the razor isn't all that expensive, but replacing the razors for a month costs upwards of twice the razor itself. And if you've shopped for a printer lately, you know the same strategy applies here. The printer itself isn't the greatest expense over the life of the asset; the ink, which is required and usually specific to the device itself, is where you will spend the most money. The most well known form of subsidization, or at least most glaring, comes from the coupling of cell phones and cell service providers. An iPhone, for example, costs a lot more than most people actually pay for it. The new iPhone 5, the basic version with 16GB will run you $649. Not to mention the cost of new adapters, chargers, cases, etc. However, if you commit to (or renew) a two-year service contract with AT&T, Verizon, or Sprint, the phone itself costs $199. How does this work? The same way the printers and printer ink work. The service providers (i.e. AT&T) subsidize the majority of the cost of the phone in order to lock customers into a contract that ends up costing much more in usage and data charges over the life of the contract. The idea is to make the cost of entry relatively cheap. Then, the cost the company loses at the initial purchase is recouped through purchases, or service charges, over the long term. Unscrupulous? Not really, although some would say so after receiving their phone bill. But that has more to do with not being aware of the stipulations of the contract you sign to get the cheaper phone at the outset. Although I personally find it annoying, I try to look at as something akin to amortizing the asset, and remember that, at least for me, a monthly fee

Many restaurants use their POS as their basic needs. They probably did not realize what other functions the POS has. This article introduces 3 ways to save cost by using the POS. First, it helps keep track of inventory management. It will track the products from the beginning of the day until you close. It prevents from theft and keeps track of the proper timing to order products when running low. New employees may not be trained enough to charge the proper amount of discount or daily specials meals. Instead of relying on employees to input the correct price, you can utilize your system to input the correct calculations for them. At the end of the day, you are not going to experience money being short. Third, it also helps to manage time and attendance for the employees. It is easy to lose track of your employees' attendance especially in the early morning or late night shifts. To avoid employee time theft, it is possible to set up the time and attendance software in your POS. In conclusion, the POS system does more than what people think. The POS is being underestimated and it is a good idea to take an advantage of the system to save your cost instead of setting up systems that cost much more money than this.

The Back office Accounting System is an integrated back office accounting software.It covers basically all the cost and expense related management functions.The main functions of this software is control consumption costs,reduce operating costs and interfaces with other systems to better finish the tasks in a hotel.

This article give a good perspective of the Ipad as a menu in restaurants, Ipad, will make your restaurant trendy, because nowadays many restaurants are implementing this advise. Also says how the Ipad will make your business save time and money, since you don't have to print menus again this will contribute to the environment is paperless and you will be able to change the menu as many times as you want even during a day depending on your inventory or other reasons. Basically this article agree that having the Ipad as menu will give more positives aspects and in the end will improve profits to the business. 

This article discusses the accounting application needs for restaurants. Restaurant accounting systems need to "address two categories: kitchen operations and POS. These programs can map the costs of "kitchen operations, inventory control, recipe and menu costing". The accounting software is usually integrated with POS for a seamless solution. There seem to be many options for businesses to have detailed, comprehensive, and complete accounting overview of their operations. Utilizing integrated accounting software would allow managers to quickly analyze ways to save money, what needs improvement, and to understand their basic financial reports.

This article basically talks about a successful adoption of HRIS system for Wente Family Estates. This company is comprised of numerous business units including a vineyard and winery, a restaurant, and a world class golf course. Their HR team and managers are responsible for a wide range of people, jobs, and related to the company's workforce. So they needed a solution for better talent management, sustainability, and improved time management and selected the Ultimate Software's HRIS system. The HRIS system enables HR team to easily assess employee performance against measurable goals and job competencies, create employee development plans, identity high performing employees for key positions, and build an environment that maximizes talent and rewards their best performers. Besides, it enables their employees to go online to view relevant details about their hours worked and schedules. It also enables managers to log on to the system at any time to stay on top of hours and labor costs so that they can quickly make decisions such as modifying schedules or job responsibilities, if needed, to control costs.  This type of cloud based HRIS system will bring many benefits to companies comprised of diverse business units to manage their human capital.

For large corporations is indispensable to count with the right HRIS that will assist the companies to organize in a logical order all the such as employment activities and job analysis.

The article talks about a integrated cloud computing system developed by HP for the travel and hospitality industry. It will allow a user to book a flight, hotel and car rental all using one system which will then generate a electronic receipt, thus also rendering the operation paperless. Articles like this shows us that we are in a ever changing industry, our adaptation needs  to be immediate if we want to keep our customer happy. Programs like this let us know that our customer can also come from the most unexpected places in the world, because we are not just providing a service like hotel or restaurant, we are serving a much larger  objective for our customer which is 'the need travel" 

This article speaks about combining all aspects of travel and hospitality that guests utilize. For instance, hotel, car rental and flight. This is a really good idea because it makes it easier for the guest to pay for and make travel arrangements.  It also allows for collaboration between the industries which would, as the article says, change the travel and hospitality industry. Creating the system in the cloud makes it easily accessible to all those who would be collaborating. There would be no need to host the server because that would be an extra expense. For this idea to be implemented, serious considerations and development have to be looked at for an internet back up. Should companies accept the Agilaire Passenger Service Solution cloud network, then their success and functionality depends on the constant functioning of the internet.

This article talks about how does the tourism industry had develop in the past years and how connected are all the branches that form part of it. Hotels, Airlines, Car rental, are the basics of this industry. With all the technologies growing faster, these business still complain about a miss conection between them. This is what HP is trying to fix, developing a Agilaire Passenger Service solution to create a foundation on top of which the company is bulduing a new scalable cross-company reservation and billing system that will reside in the cloud. the basic idea is to allow companies in the travel industry to leverage a common transaction processing system built using modern Linux, Java J2EE and service oriented architecture (SOA) technologies wrapped around an easy-to-use interface. Where this gets interesting from a business perspective is that if you can break down the transaction barriers between companies in the travel and hospitality industry. We can see how the cloud is growing and helping industries to be integrate all together

Traditional PMS functionality is still the critical core at every property. By tracking and managing all aspects of guests' data, it's both a source and collection point for the crucial activity and preference information that forms the basis of all future relationships with the guest. But with the change of technology and the manner we do business today, hotels now need a wider function set than what a traditional PMS provides. Having a PMS on the web and in the clouds is getting more popular. These new Web services make it easier for new vendors to develop fresh approaches and link them quickly and effectively into established systems, providing hoteliers with richer and more varied options. There are more advantages than disadvantages when using cloud computing. The world is changing rapidly and in other for hotels to survive, they have to keep up with those changes.

Hey all, here is an article I found that talks about the traditional PMS systems for hotels and how it once rained supreme. Now a days, traditional PMS systems are not cutting it anymore because businesses are growing and are trying to find systems that have more functionality. This article brings up a few different options that a business could adopt and put into use. Installing software applications at the property is becoming unmanageably complex. Despite very worthwhile gains in functionality, no PMS will ever cover everything a hotel needs; none offer telephone service, for example. As more guest and operating information needs to be captured and managed, many hotels and resorts need multiple other systems to complement the PMS. The first option the article bring up is Virtualization, Server virtualization is not a new technology, but its adoption by the hospitality industry is relatively recent. The basic concept is that specialized control software allows the physical resources of a single computer server-memory, disk space and computing power-to be divided as needed between several different software applications, each perceived to be running on its own dedicated server. The second option is running a cloud based system, we all know what that is so I will let you read the article. Enjoy

The author attributes a growth in 'hotel complexity' that is driving the need for a change with traditional PMS systems and the limits of their capabilities. According to the article, the current PMS system is unsustainable and will need to evolve to meet client's demands- such as cloud computing, which is highlighted as being beneficial to hotels especially with regards to flexibility, better security, speed of implementation, etc. The pros and cons of cloud computing are clearly described, the cons mainly being loss of connectivity and security breaching. Although traditional PMS are essential for most hotels, cloud computing could put them at a competitive edge.

This article mainly talks about icloud basics and the cost of icloud. Icloud has lots of benefit for the customer who uses apple devices. Icloud do not replace local storage on iPhones, ipads and iPod touches. Icloud keep data in sync between any apple device and PC that you own. Every data are available across devices from Iphone to ipad. All the documents can be shared in any apple devices and people do not need e-mail or USB to store and transfer files. It brings lots of conveniences to the customers. Also, icould provide excellent backup function for customers. Another advantage of apple devices is that third party apps are able to use icloud as well. The cost of this service is not really expensive and apple will provide 5GB I cloud storage for free. Apple charges some extras money for additional storage, but it is not very expensive. Icloud will help apple not only enhance current market, but also can expand the future PC and other digital devices market. People who own multiple iOS devices will get the most out of iCloud, because it saves the hassle of manually transferring data between iPhones, iPads and so on. Therefore, more and more people will purchase apple devices in order to get the most out of icloud.

Choosing the most appropriate Accounting Software for a restaurant can be a tough decision. As this article states, the Accounting Software is extremely important in the restaurant business because you can intelligently control expenses by tracking costs and sales for each menu item and managing food inventory. It also helps to determine each day what your profits are and you can analyze this information comparing it weekly or monthly for marketing purposes.

This article basically emphasizes the importance of having an accounting system. All the questions that needs to be asked for the success of one's business can be answered with the implementation of an accounting system. For instance, "Are vendor prices up, down or sideways? Where do you make your most profit?" Im not saying that an accounting system will resolve all issues but it will make managing one's business easier and seamless.

One of the hottest negotiation issues now a dyas is to stay green in whatever field of industry you're working at. That includes the Hospitality Management as well. In the hotel business one of the very basic, at the same time very important need is providing Hot Water. With the help of new sustainable hot water technology, the hotel properties can provide hot water without any trouble even during the peak hours while saving money!  These Solar Thermal heating Systems figured out to be very cost effective and practical that quickly began to rise interest between hoteliers.  In this way , they not only save energy and help our planet to stay green but also help them to save their budgets to be spent on some other parts. 

This article mentions how Cloud VoIP services could help reduces the costs of utilizing older phone system technologies as well as offer new opportunities for guests to communicate with various departments of the hotel. As cell phones are now basically ubiquitous, the use of in-room telephones in hotels has decreased significantly, making them dead weight. VoIP systems would lower the overhead costs as well as offer guests customized options for contacting valet, food services, or concierge desk. Ultimately the adoption of VoIP phone services would save the hotel significant resources as well as possible increase revenue.

Gipsee announced the new Interactive Allergy Software designed for the restaurant industry especially for non sit-down dining sector in the industry. Most sit-down dining places often maintain eight or more allergy-specific menus.Customers with restrictions have to manually search for items which will be safe for them to eat. This newest offering eliminates the need for restaurants to produce multiple allergy-specific menus and replaces them with an "on-demand" capability based on dynamic user requests. The basic working process is the restaurant staff select and enter food allergies or ingredient restrictions that a customer may have into the software and then instantly produce customized menu choices for the customer. Customer have the flexibility of selecting from hundreds of ingredients and thousands of combinations of restrictions representing a more pragmatic approach to food allergy occurrences. This new software offers advantages including cost-savings and reduces communication errors occurs particularly during busy time slots. Also this new software is available and increasingly used by restaurant such as iPad and other touch-screen display devices

Information technology is of vital importance to how businesses operate effectively in this century. The article puts into focus the significance of the coordination of inputs and outputs. Management Information systems (MIS) help to coordinate activities within the hospitality industry. The conclusive thought is that MIS drives our economy and therefore it is imperative to strategically monitor and manage because decisions that are made on a day to day basic relies on information technology.

This article is to introduce useful software which is made by ITA used for Flying on Android phone or Iphone. Also the author introduced the basic operation about this software. ITA has just been purchased by Google on 2010. The software makes the guests have a convenient way to search or book tickets by themselves. However, the software is unlike other airline ticket applications, it is for specific customer. If the customer wants to have a best experience for using it, he needs to know how the airline tickets work. The guest only needs to type the basic information like destination, departure time then the software will give the choices to the guest. It will include the stops, price, miles and other information. Finally, the author told his opinion that he thought the ITA software on the fly for Android is the best software he has experienced.