I'm in West Palm Beach at one of Marriott's Courtyard by Marriott properties. Years ago their saying when they first introduced this mid priced, business person's oriented property line which transformed the hotel industry was "Designed by Business Travelers, For Business Travelers" because Marriott actually spent time asking the business traveler, who up until then … Read more
Marriott, which is still backpedaling from their $600,000 fine from the FCC for blocking users of Mi-Fi's at their Nashville area Gaylord Resort and Conference Center, is now in the process of introducing content from providers like Netflix, Hulu and Pandora right to guest room tv's. For a fee. This begs the question, are retailers, … Read more
Citrix, best known to many readers here for GoToMeeting and many other enterprise services is getting in the phone business. The are quietly inviting GoToMeeting users into a soft launch for Convoi and they are aiming it to be your second line on your mobile phone, but with features that are geared around business, all based … Read more
AliBaba, the Chinese eCommerce giant has launched a social business communications service called DingTalk in Beta (Translation required) bringing back memories of what eBay hoped to and failed to do with Skype. The dream back when Skype was acquired by the online marketplace pioneer was to connect the business to business ecosystem that powered it … Read more
Marriott Hotels has reversed its position on Wi-Fi and will no longer pursue their lobbying efforts with the FCC when it comes to blocking. For travelers who use Mi-Fi's this is good news, but more importantly, it shows that Marriott is beginning to rethink their digital strategy, and are beginning to listen to the public … Read more
WebRTC is alive and well, and in reality all the AT&T announcement did this past week was move it from the world of early stage and forward looking companies like Citrix with their free version of GoToMeeting, to Switch.co, Talko, Wire, iotum with Calliflower and a cadre of collaboration service providers like appear.in who all … Read more
Last night I popped two stunning, well aged and certainly, not close to being finished in life red Chateauneuf du Papes from Domaine du Pegau. The two wines, from the 1998 and 2000 vintages were about as different as different could be. The 1998 was a old school style Chateauneuf du Pape, loaded with black fruit, wild meat, … Read more
Having been a fan of Tuscan producer Vignamaggio since their wines hit the shores in the USA back in the 90's it was a treat to discover them available again after some years of absence. Add to that with the fact that I love Italian wines that made the 2007 Vignamaggio Castello di Monna … Read more
One of my favorite producers in the Languedoc was always Pic Saint Loup's Chateau La Roque, back in the day when Jacques Boutin was the winemaker. For me, when I was discovering wines from my favorite region, La Roque was a great way to understand Mourvedre based wines, and in reality, were easily rivals to the great … Read more
Re/Code is reporting how Marriott and other hotel operators want FCC approval to be able to effectively block the use of mobile hotspots. If the hotels provided reliable WiFi so work can get done, the need for mobile hotspots wouldn't be necessary. But they don't. What's more this is really a "wolf in sheep's clothing" … Read more
