Hospitality Technology

computer security is definitely still a "hot topic." But why are we spending all this time and money and still having problems? . Systems based on "Default Permit" are the computer security equivalent of empty calories: tasty, yet fattening.The most recognizable form in which the "Default Permit" dumb idea manifests itself is in firewall rules.Another place where "Default Permit" crops up is in how we typically approach code execution on our systems. 2.Why is "Enumerating Badness" a dumb idea? It's a dumb idea because sometime around 1992 the amount of Badness in the Internet began to vastly outweigh the amount of Goodness. "Enumerating Badness" is the idea behind a huge number of security products and systems, from anti-virus to intrusion detection, intrusion prevention, application security, and "deep packet inspection" firewalls. 3."Penetrate and Patch" crops up all over the place, and is the primary dumb idea behind the current fad (which has been going on for about 10 years) of vulnerability disclosure and patch updates. 4.Hidden in Parker's observation is the awareness that hacking is a social problem. It's not a technology problem, at all. "Timid people could become criminals." The Internet has given a whole new form of elbow-room to the badly socialized borderline personality.If you're a security practitioner, teaching yourself how to hack is also part of the "Hacking is Cool" dumb idea. 5."Penetrate and Patch" can be applied to human beings, as well as software, in the form of user education.Dealing with things like attachments and phishing is another case of "Default Permit" 6.There's an important corollary to the "Action is Better Than Inaction" dumb idea, and it's that: "It is often easier to not do something dumb than it is to do something smart."

ATLAS sands for Advanced Technology Lodging Access System is designed for hotels that need to have a better control over their back office operations and that can rely on a system to provide secure access to their premises and accurate.

I used to use this systme to make key cards for the customers in the hotel. It's really easy to make a key card and safe for both of the customers and hotels. For example, if a customer lost his/her key card, we can remake a new one that the old one is not able to open the door in case of a theive pick up the room card to access to the guest's room. I think in the future the access system will be more advanced like you can use a cellphone to access to your room or you just use your finger print or pupil to access your room. It also works for the access for the employees. Employees may access to the working area by using their figer print or pupil to in case of some of the stranger to access to the working area. This locking system may be still have a large space to develop. This will make the hotel more fashionable and more intersting for the customers. We used to have the oringinal keys but now most of the hotels use key cards. Today also some of the hotel use mobile phones to access to the room, here still some security issues to be pay attetion like if someone lost their mobile phones. So from my opinion the future room key fotr the hotels will be better to use the unique identity of the human to access to the room.

Intel has three main processors, the i3, i5, and i7. However the biggest market for Intel is the primary mid-range processor i5. It is targeted at the heart of the market, with pricing that is not at budget levels but still affordable, and performance that is extremely quick but not the fastest Intel offers. Intel Turbo Boost is a standard feature on all i5, and i7 processors. As expected, the more you pay, the more you get. For instance, the Core i5 2300 has a base clock speed of 2.8 GHz and a maximum Turbo Boost speed of 3.1 GHz. The Intel Core i7 2600, on the other hand, offers a base clock speed of 3.4 GHz and a maximum Turbo Boost of 3.8 GHz. Another significant performance difference is how the Core i7 and Core i5 products will be handling hyper-threading. Hyper-threading is a technology used by Intel to simulate more cores than actually exist on the processor. While Core i7 products have all been quad-cores, they appear in Windows as having eight cores. This further improves performance when using programs that make good use of multi-threading. However, all Core i5, processors have hyper-threading disabled and all i7 processors have multi-threading enabled. This is a major difference of the two different core processors and gives the i7 an edge over the i5 processors. Last but not least, the average difference in price between the two different processor is about $80 dollars with the i7 processor coming out to be $294 and the i5 processor ranging from $177 to $216 dollars. You are basically paying for the difference of 100 MHz clock speed on the processor and the ability to have multi-threading capabilities.

Nowadays, TripAdvisor play an important role in tourism industry. Most of people will review TripAdvisor ranking and then make their own holiday arrangements. On-line user review rankings are important in contemporary society. As the TripAdvisor president said, trip advisor is a honest person's opinion. TripAdvisor website plays the role of trusted intermediary for the independent traveler. However, some hoteliers concern about their personal reputation. I read another article that hotel owner Duncan Bannatyne complains the consumer resource is bad for business. For example, if a hotel was reported for bad bug exist, this definitely is a fatal effect on hotel reputation even this hotel already take proper action to kill all bad bugs. On the other hand, as TripAdvisor CEO stated, "Ninety-eight percent of our audience when we surveyed 'Do you trust the reviews,' the answer was 'yes' because they read the reviews, they go and they stay and it matched expectations. The system works." TripAdvisor also take '"most of hoteliers" concern into their consideration, they have a decade of expertise at catching people who are try to spam their system.

From my experience in the industry. I know how much people really depend on trip advisory to help them decide on where to stay when they choose the destination they will be traveling. But I have heard stories on how the Owner of the hotel I used to work for would write on trip advisor amazing comments of the hotel to bring more crowd in and then he would invite his friends to write in trip advisor as well. This makes me question how real are all these comments posted in trip advisor. If you think about it, anyone can make up a profile and fill out a comment about a specific hotel. What makes us so sure about this website overall?

This article is about a new form of software that makes the entire stay easier! The software is called LIFE l WARE. What it does is, when a guest enters the room it provides everything he/she needs. The are able to monitor and view entertainment, control the room temperatures and even helps the the staff with public info and cut operational costs and allowing more efficiency. Life l Ware can be customized for any hotel and when a guest enters the room he can use the TV interface to view and select services and view the amenities that the hotel has to offer. The software can be used to book reservations, watch TV and adjust the lighting and temperature in the room. Management can also use the software with guest complaints and also can be used for the daily running of the hotel; for example, check ins and check outs and also room cleaning. Additionally, management can also use the system to help cut energy costs by monitoring unoccupied rooms. The software helps the Hotel all around!

Backing up your computer data is very essential. Many properties may not realize how important it is to back up their data. Imagine you, a human being losing all the information you have learnt from the day you were born. You would be lost and confuse. So same for a company, if all their data are lost the property would be in severe trouble. Today backups can be done in many ways. Some are more expensive than the other. Drives like Tapes and CDs/DVDs are less expensive to use than Micro drives. Another way to backup you data is online. Online backups are getting very popular with all types of properties. Some backup data are stored on site and others offsite. In case of fire or theft to a property, offsite backup comes in very handy. Also, it is very important to test your backup data on a regular schedule.

Google+ launched the business pages platform, which is similar as the platform of Facebook. The advantages of Google business pages is not obviously, but one thing very clearly is that if a hotel joins in Google+ platfrom, it could be more easier to search on Google and show on the top than pages or accounts on their competitors' sites.

Basically the restaurant Ruth Chris is going to go high tech. They are tossing out their old menus and upgrading to having their menus presented on ipads along with the pictures to entice the guests to try something new off of the menu. It will also offer wine selections to partner up with certain menu items. I think that this is a smart idea. Yes, they will up their expenses on getting the ipads and keeping them all up to date but in the long run it becomes a novelty that the restaurant can offer. They only thing I would be worries about with this upgrade is that the restaurants would only need food runners and a few waiters for drinks. Most likely any question a guest could have would be answered by the ipad due to the explanations offered by the application.

New software called Ipet has been launched in 2011. The software gives the pets' owners the ability to interact with their animals while at work. Ipet consists of a video camera, remote-controlled arm with a kitty-toy and software which allow the toy to dance and jiggle. This software allows pet owner to have controlled of their cats or dogs. Since as humans, animals also need companionship and love,  I think it's a great idea to develop this software because  it give pets owners who works long hours , the ability to play  virtually with their animal , and also making sure the animal is eating and well during their absence. This software also has its negative side because if the owners spend too much hours interacting with their pets while at work, their performance at work will be less efficient and may cause the company profit to decrease.

Technology has opened a new door to the consumer's lifestyle, and a great opportunity for the restaurant owners to make a significant profit; people are using the PC via internet and the mobile devices (smart phones) to place food orders and right away make the payment of their order getting the receipt via email. Consumers can see the menu and pictures of the different dishes with the description of the ingredients of each one and nutritional value. Consumers can place the food orders while they are in their office, school, home, etc. Also, social networking sites are playing an important tool for these restaurant owners in their marketing strategy, it helps to create brand loyalty, inform the consumers for the new events, and also advertise the job opening.

Social media nowadays becomes a very important role in hospitality industry, and most travelers will search a third party's property reviews like Tripadviser before making their decisions to choose a hotel. You can find either good or bad comments for the hotels around the world from it, and people believe that it has some influence on the travelers' decisions. However, most great hotel groups do not have a website for that use, and Daniel Craig thinks it is because hotel groups not only take care of the customers but also the owners, and as we know hotel group also has franchisers, so if just one unit not operated well, all the other properties will also suffer the reputation issue. But there are also some hotel groups try to do that but with some tricks. Starwood allows the guest to post reviews for some of its brands and list by ratings with the best first, and Marriot set up a new website for its members to post reviews and list by time with oldest first. In my opinion, most hotel groups focus so much on the influence of their brand loyalty, which is also very important, but comparing with the increasing influence of words of mouth that I list below, I strongly agree that those hotel groups need to have a trustful review website for their own ASAP: 1. 90% of consumers online trust recommendations from people they know; 70% trust opinions of unknown users (Econsultancy, July 2009) 2. 83% of all holiday shoppers are influenced by customer reviews. (ChannelAdvisor "Consumer Shopping Habits Survey", August 2010)

This article, posted on the Visa website discusses how McDonald's UK plans to implement a new type of payment method for customers. This "cash free" payment methods allows for customers to use only debit or credit cards and pay up to 15 euros. Visa states that it is a quick and easy way for customers to purchase a coffee or lunch at a fast food establishment. As stated in the article, this form of payment helps companies save money with regards to operating costs and improves risk management because less cash is available at the restaurant. In my opinion, I believe this is a quick and convenient way for customers to get in and out of the restaurant - which is essentially what a fast food establishment caters to do. The down side of this new hardware addition to McDonald's is that it may reduce the amount of jobs in each store because the computers will be able to do the work, humans once did.

To me this is just a given. Of course contactless payments are going to increase. They already are especially in big cities where everyone is always on the go. I know that I barely ever have cash on me. I end up having to run to an ATM. Paying with cards is the easiest and an fastest way of paying for things.

I agree with both comments. I just wonder why they cap the amount to £15, which converts to $19.25. Is that to encourage individual transactions? To clarify, the only thing I can think of is they are trying to discourage people from purchasing for others. But that doesn't really make sense since the purpose of contactless payments is increasing convenience for the customer who wants to make on-the-go purchases and thus increasing profit for the business. Just something I was wondering.

Fujitsu has released a 2-inch mobile receipt printer that is compatible with apple iOS, blackberry, and android systems. It also has bluetooth and USB interfaces to support connectivity with various mobile computing devices.

Pretty Neat article. Sticky notes provided!

With Apple came a new era to the contemporary technological world in which some people and businesses can not operate with PC, because Mac interface and overall features seem to be more user-friendly, but however most of those people and businesses want to operate Mac, using PC features. So, this article suggests how to keep both systems working and what are the means, advantages and disadvantages to that

This article briefly summarizes how the The Serai resort in the coffee country of the Indian state Karnataka has been harvesting rain water to use for watering their gardens. This article doesn't go into too much detail itself but I did some other research and found that this region of India only gets 8% of their annual rainfall in the months of January-May. This really puts a strain on the region and being able to harvest and store rainwater from the wet season helps especially with superfluous water usage like watering and maintaining hotel gardens. The state made it mandatory to reduce water waste and The Serai has created a surplus. (http://www.karnataka.com/profile/rainfall.html) The Serai resort also uses other green techniques like using waste wood to make furniture for the resort. (http://theserai.in/en/responsible-citizenry.html) I think it's great that the government there has made laws requiring the saving and re-using of rain water. It is especially important for them due to the drastic differences of the dry and rainy seasons but this could be applied almost anywhere. Part of the draw of some hotels is their scenery and gardens but watering these can get expensive and become a waste, especially if there are people in the area who go without a reliable source of drinking water. I think policies like this should be instituted everywhere. I have to give the Serai resort a lot of credit too. Yes, they were forced to start capturing and storing rain water but it seems like they have taken their green initiatives a step further and do more than the bare minimum.

This article talks about the full integration between Hotel Concepts' Integrated Distribution Property Management System (IDPMS), the Brilliant PMPRO property management platform and the 3CX Hotel Module, a comprehensive PBX telephony system designed specifically for the global hotel industry. The 3CX is an add on that turns the 3CX phone system into a full featured hotel PBX, and with this new integration, it can directly interface with hotel concepts 'IDPMS or Brilliant PMPRO. this is one of the inexpensive ways/means to carry out property operations when compared to other PBX providers who charge high premiums, making it very affordable along with the VoIP technology. since the hotel and travel market is on an upward trend , integrated technology solutions like these can make those operations cost-efficient, as making calls all over the world is so expensive, and along with this, also streamline the operations by combining the extensive telephony experience with the knowledge of the global hotel industry, which will also set new standards in hotel management and communication.

The integration of software and Hardware is what makes any type of system function. A computer system has various hardware components. The motherboard, which allows all hardware components to connect and interact with each other. The Processor, performs all calculations and actions. Ram, provides the processor with data. And finally the hard drive, which stores all the software and personal data. On the other hand, the software is what allows any device(computer or electronic device) to operate. In the case of a computer it requires an operating system to function.Windows and Linux are two forms of operating systems. Hardware can't exist without software or viceversa.

Lots of news coming out on New Orleans Hotels this month. New year new new software. The New Orleans Hotel Collection has switched to Target Net a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). This is a cloud based service can be accessed from smart phones, tablets and anywhere one can access the internet. The sales and catering platform keeps employees in the know on the go and making smart productive decisions for group business.