Cutting down the Queue. iPad use in Coffee and Snack Bars

iPads are the latest technology to be used in coffee shops and quick food outlets. We've seen it hit restaurants and hotels but is there an iPad / iPhone App for ordering and paying for your meal at your favourite coffee shop or fast food outlet? Well we've scoured the Internet to find some success stories and some companies servicing this market for Coffee shop Apps.

Aptito (http://aptito.com/blog/2011/07/13/technology-prediction-order-food-ipad-%E2%80%93-the-next-big-trend-for-coffee-shops-cafes/) is a menu technology company in the United States whose App for the iPad has worked wonders for some coffee shop / sandwich outlets. Coffee shop proprietors say that it cuts queues and enables the customer to comment on their coffee shop experience for each menu item and their visit in general. See the following video testimonies:

And:

Let us know what you think of this as a time saving device. Would it work in your coffee shop? See also the article on Technology trends in Hotels.

A computer in your pocket? Yes it's here!

Have you ever found yourself in a position where you're working on some project on your PC [or Mac] with all your programs and desktop laid out just the way you like it and then you have to go somewhere else? You could hall along your laptop, cabling but there are bound to be times when even that is too big to carry for where you're going. Another scenario might be that you're a developer of Android Apps and you'd like to have a separate operating system to test your App, but don't want to work off two laptops? Or perhaps as a developer you want to run a server off another PC which is networked to your laptop rather than the computer your working on but you can't lug another desktop or laptop around with you everywhere? Well a PC (Personal Computer) solution may soon be available for under €150.00, which you can fit into your wallet. Well The Cotton Candy PC, named after an American confection because it weighs less than 21 grams and developed by a Norweigen company called FXI Tech, may be just the thing.



The Cotton Candy has a dual-core 1.2-GHz Samsung Exynos ARM CPU (same as in the Galaxy S II), 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, HDMI-out and a microSD card slot for memory and most importantly has a USB key on the other side. Designed to be slotted into any monitor, TV, lapto, Desktop PC or Mac or connected via Bluetooth to an iPhone, iPad or other device the miniature PC is loaded with an Android operating system although it supports Ubuntu too and will take power from the device its plugged into. Once plugged in an Android window will open up on whatever desktop, monitor / TV device you are using, take over that device virtualising all input and output devices and displaying all your own files and programs that you own and like to have at your fingertips. You can move files from the host computer onto the Cotton Candy and either store the information there or sync the data to a Cloud service. The device can also support 1.2 Gigapixels of 3D graphics output, quite impressive!


Check out the CEO talking about it recently:

My only wonder is how hot the device could get? There is also another device called the Rasberry Pi which is a another mini-computer which will cost less than €25.00. Equivalent to the performance of a PC from 2002 (Pentium 2) it is not for the general market but is aimed at the educational market to encourage children of 16 and 17 to get interested in computer science. The developers are a charity based in Cambridge University, England who have been working on this project for three to four years. The developers are aiming to go into production in early 2012. See the video explanation below:

Earlier this year, I along with three other colleagues explored possible ways of bringing IT skills like computer programming and hardware development skills to Irish Transition Year schools. We found from our research that there is tremendous demand from all stakeholders but in this climate nobody is willing to cough up money to support such a scheme and because there is such a shortage of skilled practicioners it is dificult to find volunteers with time on there hands to teach kids or too expensive too employ professionals to teach to secondary school persons. The Computer Dojo Club in Limerick and Dublin will begin to fill that gap and some sterling work is being done in the technology in education sections of colleges like Tallight Institute of Technology and The College of Ireland but there is still room for other players to get involved in nurturing IT skills in schools and among the unemployed pool. The Rasberry Pi PC may go someway to bringing computers to everybody in the cash strapped environment of today


Please leave a comment about this article.

And check out the following sites:

http://www.raspberrypi.org/sample-page
http://blog.laptopmag.com/usb-stick-contains-dual-core-computer-turns-any-screen-into-an-android-station#comments

Hotel Tech Talk – Are you ahead of the curve?

Although it’s a while since I worked full time in the hotel industry and even longer since it dominated my career goals, I have nevertheless kept my proverbial toes in the waters of the hospitality industry here in Ireland in one capacity or another since 1997 which is when I returned to Ireland after a ten year absence. Indeed there have been occasions over the last ten years or so, when I worked full time, initially after the foot and mouth disease decimated the tourist industry and consequently my tourism research business and latterly as an addition to freelance work and/or periods of third level study.

Since 2003 I have been dipping my toes and quite often allot more, in my work for the Conrad Hilton Hotel, Dublin.  After a refurbishment of the hotel in 2004 and 2005 I noticed that for a hotel of that size and stature it was way behind the curve in the technology arena and about as far away from “Eco Friendly” as old mother Russia after the fall of communism.  Indeed the refurbishment of the public rooms in 2005 had probably managed to increase rather than decrease the electricity bill, going by the number of extra spot lights to be seen.
Back then I did my best to pack the suggestion box full of ideas to save on water and electricity bills even pointing out how other hotels in Dublin had saved thousands of Euro on similar measures. If you could invest thousands of Euro in a refurbishment project on the assumption that it would lead to increased sales, could you not so too invest thousands of Euro in technology knowing for certain, depending on best and worst case scenario’s for energy and water costs, that you’d get your money back over three to five years I asked? “Well, it depends on cash flow”, I was told, “…if you can come back to us with a proposal which has a payback period of one year we’ll take a serious look at it”! I wonder what a refurbishment of the hotel would look like if it required a payback period of one year?  But hey, maybe I’m missing something here after all I'm not much more than a casual observer and not immersed in the day to day management of the hotel.

I am pleased to say now though that I get the very real sense that the hotel has moved on from that view point and in 2006 after merging with the Hilton parent company, (don’t ask me to explain), everybody woke up from wherever they were and began to think ‘Eco’ and to realise that guests will actually hold you [the hotel] in good stead if you leave a note on the bed asking if you REALLY need your linens and towels changed EVERY morning?  Unfortunately this epiphany came too late to take any real advantage of the 'War Chest' that every good business had back in the roaring naughties and before we could say boo to a goose all those lovely tourists and business types stopped coming.  We [the Irish Tourist Industry] have recovered somewhat from the low ebb of 2008 / 2009 but the world is still in a precarious position and we must stay on our toes if we are to keep ahead of the curve.

Despite the budgetary constraints, however, the present general manager has a very pragmatic view on using technology to improve the competitive edge for the  [Conrad] hotel, introducing flat-screen televisions, by now an expectation in any five star hotel worth its salt, (no pun intended), energy saving and other technologies.  In the last two to three years the Dublin Conrad Hotel has had very high ‘SALT’ (Standards and Loyalty Test) scores among its guests, second only to, I believe, Conrad Maldives and is among the top five for guest satisfaction among Hilton brands in the UK and Ireland.

However despite my recent experiences I have always been a firm believer in using technology to gain competitive advantage and every refurbishment should be looking at ways to cut costs and not to increase them while accepting little or no compromise on creating a better impact, both visually and in making the guest’s stay more memorable.

And so it came to my attention that this week in Berlin, leading IT managers came together for the sixth European Hotel Technology Next Generation Conference. Among the topics that this organisation has been involved in is putting together a model for IT vendors for ‘Shared Services.  In an earlier report following a survey among senior IT managers among eighteen of the world’s top hotel companies it found that, “Hotels were least interested in sharing marketing and customer information applications. On the other hand, 80% or more were willing to share such applications as guest-room device management, concierge, point of sale, housekeeping, facilities management, and applications for six back-office and human resource functions”.  Earlier in June Adjunct Associate Professor at Hotel Icon, the world’s first teaching hotel based in Hong Kong, said, at the Hotel Technology Conference at the Marina Bay in Singapore that, “…the use of technology has not merely been solely for the use of guests, but that the hotel had made use of it to go paperless and help drive bookings”.  “We make extensive use of IT,” Hatter said, “From using things like cloud computing for printing, to having almost 40% of our bookings coming from the Internet.”

Despite my relatively recent introduction to all things IT, I think I can say with some intuition if not authority that the Apple iPad, iPhone and other tablet and Smartphone equivalents will have a big impact on hotels, especially business hotels such as the Conrad Hotel, Dublin both for the guests and back of house. I was recently pondering on what sort of iPad / iPhone Apps might be introduced into the hotel and rather than producing an Application [App] to complete one task my inclination was, if I were the software vendor or IT manager requesting a bespoke App, to produce an App suitable for all guest needs rather than just check-in / check-out, in-room dining or mini-bar ordering. Another App with different access controls might be useful for back of house functions such as mini-bar stock control, room maintenance and housekeeping etc for employees. However in my recent research into the HTNG organisation I came across a software vendor from Orlando in Florida called Intelity who won the 2010 HTNG organisation’s 2010 award for “Most Innovative Hospitality Technology”. These award winners are a telling example of what’s in store for guests’ convenience and hotels’ competitive advantages in the future.  The following excerpt is quoted here:

“The winning technology, ICE (Interactive Customer Experience™) Touch on iPads, presents the hotel guest with the full array of hotel services (thirty or more depending on the hotel). An iPad is assigned to each guestroom where it is mounted on special stands or cases. With the touch of their finger, guests can order in-room dining, turn downs and wake-ups, request restaurant reservations, book transportation, make housekeeping requests and other services. In 2010, following the introduction of the iPad tablet, Intelity developed a guest interface that was deployed in September at the Royalton Hotel in New York City. Since then, it has been deployed at New York's Plaza Hotel. Others, including the Hilton Inn at Penn in Philadelphia, will be premiering soon. This is Intelity's second year on the award stand: last year, their ICE software product was runner-up”.

Check out the following:
Intelity's ICE Touch Premiers at The Plaza Hotel from Intelity on Vimeo.

Guests can use their own hardware device or request to borrow one from the ‘Desk’. The system is already in use with two of the American Conrad Hotels and Resorts and a few American Hilton properties.


“This year's first runner-up technology, from Corning MobileAccess, focuses on personalizing the guest experience by providing guests with high quality access to their mobile content and services such as streaming video and gaming. The MobileAccessVE architecture enhances hotels' cellular coverage by leveraging existing LAN cabling for cellular signal distribution while maintaining full Ethernet and wireless LAN capabilities. MobileAccessVE allows hotels to address 2G/3G as well as 4G services. With this technology, hotels have a cost effective, quickly deployable, non-disruptive path to migrate to premium LTE service, with smart MIMO antenna technology, and the ability to support migration to enterprise femtocell solutions as guest bandwidth demands increase.”

Another area which will become an expected norm in the future will be the ability to by-pass the check in desk with push notifications telling the guest that their room is ready and being able to access their room using their hardware device. Security would be an issue but one can only assume that this has been ironed out since the third place in this year’s awards went to, Allegro Online-Mobile-Kiosk Check-in/out Solution from Ariane Systems.

“Allegro's self-service technology allows guests to check in/out, pay, and manage their reservation from any web-enabled device, including cell phone, PC, laptop, PDA, iPad or even the lobby kiosk. Leveraging the power of a fully-featured "cloud-based" platform Allegro automatically detects the device used during check-in and sends notifications and instructions to the guest via "push mode." Through integration with OpenWays mobile key technology, it is possible to bypass the traditional "front desk" completely, as guests can use their mobile phone as a securely encrypted room key.”
 
In summary I think we can say with some certainty that the best chance for business hotels to get ahead of the curve is through sharing out IT costs on 'Cloud Systems' among numerous hotels for common hotel functions. The other major push should be in mobile devices to enhance the guest experience while simultaneously improving sales revenues, yield management and stock control.  Saving energy and water remain important investments however and should, in my opinion be given the same level of importance as investment in refurbishment, indeed the two should go hand in hand.

Finally, although a bit out dated one should download and read the following PDF from HTNG @: http://www.htng.org/white-papers, which reminds us that we need to think about how the current younger generation thinks and what their technological expectations will be in five to ten years from now. "

“ 'The Guest of the Future: In-Room Technology Preferences Today and Tomorrow'  represents an amazing view into the needs of tomorrow’s guests, and what it will take to satisfy them. Hotel rooms being built today will, over the course of their lifetime, be occupied mostly by people who are still under 30, or even 20. Their expectations will not be the same as today’s travelers, and if the hospitality industry is to succeed at meeting those expectations, it needs to understand how the expectations of younger generations differ from those of older ones – and how they are likely to continue to evolve over time." Alternatively I can highly recommend reading, 'Grown Up Digital' by Don Tapscot, see: http://www.grownupdigital.com/archive/.

And most importantly, PLEASE take a few minutes to join up and comment on my blog. Thankyou.

References: http://www.networksasia.net/content/hotels-and-cloud-match-made-stars?page=0%2C0

http://www.htng.org/images/stories/publications/htng_shared_services_position_paper_1.0.pdf

http://www.intelitycorp.com

World class rugger stripped to it's bare essentials!

Were you all watching the rugby world cup recently? You were? Wasn't it exciting, gripping stuff? Cool, well me too and well done to those Kiwis, but did you watch the Nude Blacks [almost] all male rugby team? You did? ...Oh you didn't....oh OK well I can tell you now that they got thrashed by the all female Spanish Conquistadors rugby team.

It seems the Kiwis have been playing nude rugby for the past ten years and decided to get the Official Tournament off to a resounding start by staging their own 'Alternative World Rugby Tournament' in a town called Duneine [I gather somewhere in Kiwi land]. The score was 20 to 25 to the girls but they were not sure if the positive score had anything to do with the girls promising to remove an article of clothing every time they scored a try? Anyhow the girls were warned before the match that they were not to hold onto their oponents tackle in a tackle and the guys were told to make sure the women didn't grab their balls as well as the ball! In the end however it was all clean good natured fun from what we hear.

During the match a spectator, who was clearly also a Harry Potter fan, was apparently heard to say, "I would like to stick my wand in their chamber of secrets!".

So what has this got to do with technology and the Internet you may ask? Well bugger all! But I'm here to keep you amused as well. Anyway if you'd like to check out the Nude Blacks' tackle techniques or if you've always wanted to know how people play with odd shaped balls, why don't you check out the game for yourself on Youtube, just click here: The bare essentialls

NFC...National Football Conference?, National Flight Centre?

So who has heard of NFC? NFC I hear you say....National Federation of Call Centres? National Federation of Children... hardly? Not for Christmas? Ok so how about Near Frequency Communication? So at this stage you're either saying, "What the hell is that when it's at home?" or "Yah I wasn't born yesterday of course I've heard of NFC!" Well up to eight months ago I was one of the - "What the hell is that when it's at home?" - people. I had stumbled across it because of a talk I gave on business opportunities using QR Codes back in January which led to my meeting other people who were thinking of opportunities surrounding QR Codes and, well NFC devices. Just to bring everybody up to the same level of understanding here I should point out, for any of you who might be dazed and / or confused, what exactly we mean by QR Codes. Quick Response or QR Codes according to Wikipedia is:

"... a type of matrix barcode (or two-dimensional code) first designed for the automotive industry. More recently, the system has become popular outside of the industry due to its fast readability and comparatively large storage capacity. The code consists of black modules arranged in a square pattern on a white background. The information encoded can be made up of any kind of data (e.g., binary, alphanumeric, or Kanji symbols).

Created by Toyota subsidiary Denso Wave in 1994 to track vehicles during the manufacturing process, the QR code is one of the most popular types of two-dimensional barcodes. It was designed to allow its contents to be decoded at high speed.

The technology has seen frequent use in Japan; the United Kingdom is the seventh-largest national consumer of QR codes."

Irish readers will be familiar with QR Codes in their national papers, such as the property section in the Irish Independent newspapers. So NFC devices are, in effect, the electronic 'data chip' equivalent of QR Codes. Instead of a visual triger, an embedded computer chip pushes data to a 'reader'. Wikipedia describes NFC thus:

"Near field communication, or NFC, allows for simplified transactions, data exchange, and wireless connections between two devices in close proximity to each other, usually by no more than a few centimeters (Near Field)" and "Many smartphones currently on the market already contain embedded NFC chips that can send encrypted data a short distance ("near field") to a reader located, for instance, next to a retail cash register. Shoppers who have their credit card information stored in their NFC smartphones can pay for purchases by waving their smartphones near or tapping them on the reader, rather than using the actual credit card."

If any one has any experience using a passive NFC device for any particular purpose or knows of any examples please leave a comment. It's quite likely that I will have more to say about QR Codes and NFC opportunities in the future.

Steve Jobs 1955 - 2011

Well it seems only right that I say something in response to the death of Steve Jobs, however I'm no expert on his life and times. Nevertheless one lesson that sticks out for me, especially in the context of the sort of business model he has created in Apple is that whether or not your actual products and / or services are unique, one way of ensuring you grow and keep your customers is to ring fence your business. With Apple products and services when you buy the products you are rquired to sign into an iTunes account to match all your music and other media files with your new prodcuct. If you start off with an Apple service such as iTunes they work best or only with Apple technology items.

Recently on our Enterprise Innovation course we went through a process of brainstorming for business ideas. Some of our group came up with an idea for ring fencing a garden centre business, (no pun intended). If we were to develop a club which used our garden plots in our garden centre we would have a permanent list of customers that would have to buy from our garden centre business to develop their graden plots, which could have vegetables, fruits or flowers, whatever. Extra services such as training could also be offered. Just like Apple we'd ring fence our business and provide ourselves with a guaranteed customer base.

The ability to recognise trends quickly and know when to give up on something and try another direction is also an important lesson that Jobs has left us.

Now let's hope Apple can survive and thrive without its mentor. If it does it'll be a true testament to how extraordinary Steve Jobs really was.

R.I.P.

Third time lucky?

Have you tried writing a blog before, well I have but after a few weeks I've kinda stopped, then a year later added a bit more and so on. Well now it seems I have to write one as part of my current part-time course. You see I'm a life-long learner, at least that appears to be what it's called nowadays. My definition of this is that since I completed my primary degree (circa 1994) there's hardly been a year when I wasn't signed on to do some course or other. However since the year 2000 when I really started to use the web, as part of my Masters by research degree, I have become particularly interested in The Internet and in particular, how it and technology affects society today.

Of course a blog is bound to evolve, especially if others are bothered to read my ramblings and even more bothered to comment on them but for the moment I see it as a space to comment on Internet and technology trends and some other social issues.

So to continue with my blog I need your support. I hope it will be interesting enough for you to comment on and share ideas so I invite you all to leave a comment, preferably a serious one. In return I promise to bring to your attention interesting trends and ideas for you to consider and of course some tech talk too.