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The congressional measure, approved overwhelmingly by the Senate Judiciary Committee on November 29th, would require criminal investigators to obtain a search warrant from a judge before being able to coerce internet service providers (ISPs) to hand over a person’s e-mail.

Cheap storage, wholesale access to the internet, powerful mobile phones and ubiquitous social networking have dramatically increased the amount of private data kept online.

As a consequence, the international telecoms treaty that emerged focused on how telephone traffic flows across borders, the rules governing the quality of service and the means operators could adopt to bill one another for facilitating international calls.

n order to better support data-intensive applications in data centers, these “richly-connected” network architectures are designed with the major purpose of ensuring high communication performance and robustness. These architectures have two characteristics in common: over-provisioned network resources and inefficient power usage. An excessive number of network devices and redundant links are provided aggressively for the busy-hour load. However, most of the time, the traffic in a data center is far below the peak value and varies greatly between daytime and night, which leaves a large number of network devices to stay idle.

A new liquefied natural gas (LNG)-powered cruise ferry entering traffic between Finland and Sweden on January 15, 2013 will be the "most environmentally friendly large cruise vessel ever built," according to STX Europe

Management of telephone charges, equipment fees, VoIP traffic, internet usage, and provider discounts is a difficult task. Most communication managers demand the necessary tools to allow administrators to monitor, evaluate, forecast and allocate communications management services and expenses.

Communications facilities are continuing to evolve at a rapid rate. Call accounting is generally the centerpiece of a complete communication management solution (CMS) to allow customers to track, process and allocate communications transactions (analog, VoIP and data).

Good call accounting software provides exception management reports which highlight long duration, excessive cost and misdialed calls.

Top POS Predictions for 2017 “Windows will no longer be the number one operating system in the market, as multiple operating systems are being offered to allow greater flexibility to consumers. Data collection will be a bigger selling point for consumers, not only to track sales and inventory, but also to manage shifts and training, as well as deploy customer loyalty programs.” — Bematech “We will see increasing configuration flexibility to adapt to more fluid layouts in a hyper-channel oriented world, smaller counter footprints, more intensive future-proofing and increased value.” — Fujitsu America, Inc. “Major restaurant chains will continue to adopt online ordering and line-busting technology and POS hardware will do a better job of connecting wirelessly to each other (Internet of Things) and to mobile (smartphone and tablet) devices. It will also integrate with sensors, cameras and video monitors to provide smart advertising to customers based on environment and purchasing trends.” — Epson “A lot of the new requests for hardware are around supporting initiatives for increasing customer engagement. These come in the form of minimizing the barrier for traditional POS, installing kiosks of varying sizes and form factors, mobility solutions, and customer-facing screens on the POS for supporting both touch and non-touch versions.” — Par Technology Corp. “In the end, hardware is simply the platform for software and consumer omnichannel demands. The rise in mobile payments and the EMV mandate will prod hospitality to upgrade legacy POS systems because of the need for security compliance and to accept more payment options. Tablets, smartphones, software- (SaaS) or POS-as-a-service models, and cloud-based POS will continue to drive the need for POS hardware to adapt to new IT and consumer interaction.” — Posiflex “POS hardware will expand connectivity in keeping with the IOT revolution, so operators will be able to provide a more personalized experience to customers at checkout.” — Toshiba “There will be increased investments in WiFi, location-based services (LBS), mobile computers and data capture solutions as more consumers use their smartphones to engage in mobile ordering and loyalty programs for personalized offers. In addition, businesses will have an increased need for visibility in automating food safety processes.” — Zebra

In many ways ecommerce is more competitive than hospitality – with more focus on price and less flexibility to differentiate your offering with an exceptional guest experience.

Focus on the landing pages

ensure your hotel description pages are very compelling.

Now" for Urbanspoon Rezbook, enabling diners to view immediate table availability at their favorite restaurants, both for reservations and walk-ins.

new functionality gives diners the immediate gratification of securing a table when they want it, and accessing table availability at a broader pool of restaurants that may not take reservations or have heavy walk-in and waitlist traffic.

Restaurants have a unique opportunity to market open inventory that's never been available to them before."

Ayers Saint Gross used a combination of satellite, GIS and aircraft imaging to create the 3D map, which can be constantly updated as new buildings arise and others are torn down.

Ayers Saint Gross is in the process of working with Apple and Android to create smart phone versions of the app, and could not give an estimate of when it would be ready for the public.

Not only does it allow tourists to navigate the city, but it also sells the city to potential clients interested in bringing their meetings and events to Baltimore, he said.

E-Booking The first role of the internet in the hospitality industry is online booking. As aforementioned in the past, travel agents were the most common source for booking hotel rooms and other travel components like flight tickets and travel tours. However, the internet has changed this; manual booking and reservations have been transformed to E-booking or online booking via Central Reservation Systems (CRS). As of March 2008, there are over 1.4 billion internet users (Internet World Stats, 2008) and according to the Computer Industry Almanac, this number is assumed to increase to 1.80 billion in 2010 (Clickz Stats, 2005). The Travel Industry Association in the United States stated that in 2002 about 64 million out of 619 million online users were online travelers and used the Internet to purchase travel-related services and products (Zhang, 2004, p.3). "Online leisure travel sales totaled $20.4 billion in 2002 and hotel booked online reached $3.8 billion" (Ibid). In 2005 the online travel revenue reached $27.7 billion in the U.S. alone and has steadily increased (Webmetro, 2005). Now imagine how big these figures would be on a global basis.

Another important role of the internet is the use of it as a marketing tool. Before a hotel can offer e-booking it has to set up its own website. The hotel can apply attractive designs and offer guests a virtual tour of the entire property and show various room types. This strategy is considered a minor but may get a lot of appeal from online users. The internet also allows hotels to reach more customers by using search engine optimization (SEO), which is a tool that helps increasing the traffic and page ranking in search engine results (Hotel Travel Check, n.d.). Another internet marketing strategy for the hospitality industry is electronic customer relationship management (eCRM), which are activities to manage customer relationships by using the internet and web browsers (Hotel Marketing, 2007).

Originally developed to replace blackboards and status binders used in central reservation offices, CRSs have become the primary source of chain-wide availability and rate data. 

Once one-way in their data flow (delivering reservations data from the CRS to the PMS), these interfaces evolved into two-way links in which "downward" reservations traffic is combined with "upward" inventory availability updates and even rate modification data and departed guest information, dispatched automatically from PMS to CRS.

The evolution of the CRS is far from complete.  Today, in addition to providing precise inventory management and distribution functions, the CRS increasingly serves as the nucleus of a tightly integrated product management system, which includes not only reservation processing, but also advanced revenue management capabilities, chain-wide data collection, warehousing and mining, and electronic distribution through private and Internet-based links to a growing spectrum of reservation sites.

Mayan prophecies aside, 2012 is all about mobile customers. If you're not mobile, you're simply not competitive. And your ecommerce business will suffer as you lose sales to competitors who provide a good shopping experience on mobile devices.

The biggest game-changing trend we've seen in technology is the growing usage of mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets, and how consumers use them for ecommerce.

"We have seen an explosion in traffic coming from smartphones. We've seen an even bigger explosion in the rate of orders coming from tablets," said Buzzeo.

Technology, if used correctly, can assist in the automation of business processes (thus freeing precious resources), provide situational awareness for all agencies involved and provide real-time information to users. This article reviews the uses and benefits of one such technology solution, E-Sponder, at two major events (The 2004 Presidential Debates held at Washington University in St. Louis and the 2005 Super Bowl held in Jacksonville, Fla.) as well as provides guidelines when choosing a technology solution.

Gragnani and Smiley immediately saw that E-Sponder – a collaboration and information-sharing portal developed by Convergence Communications based upon Microsoft Office Professional Enterprise Edition 2003 technologies – offered the potential for real-time collaboration because it delivers collaboration functions such as e-mail, forums, calendars, shared documents, task lists and messaging that allow stakeholders to efficiently work together remotely. Gragnani and Smiley knew that Convergence would be willing to work with them to customize the solution to accommodate their changing needs.

Out of this need for heightened security stems a dichotomy between necessity and reality. The necessity of an organization to provide heightened security is oftentimes at odds with the reality of the entity's ability to furnish the needed man-power and absorb the costs associated with hosting a large-scale event. All too often, a city or county is given the designation as a lead agency to provide security for an event, but is given little-to-no financial assistance to make certain that the event takes place without a serious threat to the public.

According to a recent study by Cornell University on the so-called billboard effect, almost 75% of the traffic that booked on a hotel brand website visited an OTA prior to making the purchase, and three to nine of those bookings, were directly influenced by the OTA listing. The take away: a listing on the OTAs, will generate more bookings (on your site and the OTA). Furthermore, if you have high quality, large photos, videos and/or 360-degree tours on your website and on the third party sites you will generate more booking, period.

Quality visuals will create a positive and lasting impression of the property that helps customers decide where to book. Even a slight increase in the percentage of bookings from rich visuals shows a significant increase on your bottom line.