We're happy to announce the launch of the new version of nexushospitality.com. Nexus Hospitality is owned by Doug Brooks, who has been in the luxury hospitality industry for 25 years, having opened and worked for world renowned properties. 
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Hello! (Please note: if you do not wish to receive this email or other messages from us, you can safely click the unsubscribe link at the bottom of this email.) You may have noticed that we missed a few issues... we apologize if that caused any confusion. Nathan went through some personal life changes, none of which involved alien abduction, and the size of Web Maestro actually doubled—all within a short few months. The good news is that we're hitting the ground running for 2011 and are excited about the future! Technology Equals Changeby Nathan Lyle Until electricity goes away, technology will continue to be a driving force in business. If you are afraid of change or otherwise unable to cope with the ever increasing pace of change in technology, you are almost guaranteed to be left behind. Rather than being doom and gloom, however, the very same technology changes can help you keep up and even get ahead. Websites have been around for a little while, and most people have come to accept that to be in business you need to have a website. (Not everyone jumped on board immediately with this idea, and we see some holdouts even today.) However, the websites we've gotten used to are not an ending point. They are merely one stop along an always changing spectrum of ways that people interact with each other. The research firm Gartner predicts (tinyurl.com/afbxam) that mobile phones will overtake PCs as the most common way of accessing the Web by 2013, an even shorter time period than Morgan Stanley's projection of four years. While the exact time period might be up for debate, the direction seems unarguable. So, if you're one of those people who just got around to putting a website in place, there's not much time for a breather. For knowing which devices and software deserve your focus, hiring a professional becomes an ever more important step. It's easy to become caught up in a particular new Web service, hand held device, or other flashy cool new thing. Whether or not everyone else is also using it is often less clear. Finding a professional who is able to help you compare the options will save you a great number of headaches. Looking at websites as served up to mobile devices, a little bit of breathing room might be found if your website was designed and developed to utilize modern standards in layout and coding. A well designed website will actually display reasonably well in many mobile devices. However, those devices are not being used to view websites in the same way as computers have been. Content delivered through mobile devices is typically more to the point—no long winded company histories, mission statements and visions. The mobile device content is not intended to replace a business website, but rather to enhance it, extending the digital interaction. In less fancy terms, it's an opportunity for you to solidify your relationship with your customer. One way of targeting mobile devices is to have an "App" (application) created that performs a specific function, which is then offered up for free or sold online. These are developed in programming languages specific to the mobile device it's being built for. A variation on this are "Web Apps" which are essentially stripped down websites that are designed to be used by mobile devices rather than the desktop PC. If you're a restaurant owner, you might consider providing current menu information. If you're an auto dealer, you might want to have a constantly updated stream of current vehicles coming out. The best ideas will be ones where other people haven't already done it a lot—never underestimate the value of a "new" idea. If you can't get there first, though, then try to come up with some variation that makes what you're offering unique. As new technology comes out, it can provide inspiration for looking at things differently. Technology equals change, and to be afraid of it to the point of avoiding it will only hurt you. For what you don't have the time for or interest in to learn on your own, find a professional to help. Once you get past any initial fear, the potential future really is amazing! Want to read more articles? Read previously published articles on our website's article archive. What You Must Know About SpamGuest Article by Mihaela Lica What Is Spam? Some search engines use the term to describe websites that try to attain a high listing rank by submitting identical or mirror pages. In this article I am going to give you a few tips about email Spam. If we give a too general definition to the word, we might end up taking for Spam perfectly legitimate emails. Not "any" unsolicited mail is Spam. Spam means unsolicited bulk email. If a message is unsolicited that doesn't make it Spam. The same goes for bulk. A message is Spam only if it is both unsolicited and bulk. When you receive an unsolicited job enquiry, you do receive an uncalled-for email. But is that Spam? No. What about a newsletter? That is bulk, but no Spam if you are a subscriber. Why Do You Get Spam? Spam Scams What about the emails from different Nigerian (or other nationalities) citizens offering you a percentage of a vast sum of money? Yes, you've got that right: scam. You'll only loose your money on this one. Better don't be curious. They will ask you to pay a fee in advance - a so called transfer tax, and guess what: some complications will appear, you have to pay more and more and end up with nothing. And don't believe the "you won money" lottery sweepstakes either. You'll only spend. The same goes for the Nigerian purchase scam: they want to buy something from you, pay by check and they wish the goods to be sent in Lagos, Nigeria. A Major Don't Spam Fighters Associations such as to the Anti-Phishing Working Group, the American Federal Trade Commission (FTC) or other volunteers' organizations are there to help protecting you against scam or other illegal emails (children pornography for example). Detailed information about Spam, Spammers and ways to fight against them you can find here: www.spamhaus.org. About the author: Mihaela Lica is a skilled journalist and PR consultant, founder of Pamil Visions - www.pamil-visions.com Previously she used to work as a military TV redactor for Pro Patria and the Military Media Trust within the Public Relations Directorate of the Romanian Ministry of Defence. Miscellaneous Maestro MinutiaeWe're currently working on a new design for our newsletter and are hoping to have it ready in time for the next edition. Or the one after that, depending on how often the phone rings. If you haven't been to our Facebook page recently, take a peek to see a photo from Obama's visit to our office (during his recent trip to Marquette) to discuss a redesign of the whitehouse.gov website.
That's it for this time, thanks for reading! Please feel free to let me know what you find useful or what you'd like to see us cover in future issues. Sincerely, |
Notable Quotes"Motivation is the art of getting people to do what you want them to do because they want to do it" "To open a shop is easy, to keep it open is an art." advertisement
Web/Technology NewsIs it evil to fire a revolting employee?What do you do when one of your marketing guys decides to take a few weeks off and help overthrow a medium-sized government? Google, as a matter of corporate policy, did not choose to protest against the Mubarak regime. Google does what Google normally does, which is search Web pages, sell ads, and code. But now, one of their employees is famous. He's not famous for doing something that everyone can agree is special. He didn't win a Pulitzer, he didn’t win a gold medal at the Olympics. He helped overthrow a government. [read more] Privacy protection and IE9: who can you trust?Among the most significant new features in Internet Explorer 9 is a framework for giving users more control over their online privacy. I downloaded the first four Tracking Protection Lists and took a close look inside each one. What I found might surprise you. [read more] For alcohol brands, social media a stiff cocktailOn a Monday morning late last month, at the headquarters of the Finger Lakes Wine Country Tourism Marketing Association, the promotional vehicle for a vineyard-speckled region about four hours northwest of Manhattan, something was amiss with Foursquare. Namely, the Corning, N.Y.-based tourism group's account on the location-sharing social-media site was doing something funny: It was triggering friend requests. [read more] White House will propose new digital copyright lawsThe Obama administration has drafted new proposals to curb Internet piracy and other forms of intellectual property infringement that it says it will send to the U.S. Congress "in the very near future." It's also applauding a controversial copyright treaty known as the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, or ACTA, saying it will "aid right-holders and the U.S. government to combat infringement" once it enters into effect. [read more] Microsoft responds to Google's copycat claims, againFollowing the recent fracas over whether Microsoft was culling search results from rival Google, Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft's senior VP of its Online Services Division, has weighed in, reiterating that Google's claims are false. "We do not copy results from any of our competitors. Period. Full stop," Mehdi said in a post on Bing's community blog titled "Setting the record straight." [read more] How Was Egypt's Internet Access Shut Off?Egyptians recently took to the Web—Facebook and Twitter, in particular—as a means of organizing their protests against Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's three-decade-old government. Shortly thereafter, however, there no longer was much of a Web to take to—at least not in Egypt. In an unprecedented turn of events, at 12:34 A.M. local time in Cairo five of the country's major Internet service providers (ISPs) shut down their connections to the Internet. [read more] Big Brother on the Internet?There is a move afoot in the U.S. government to require Internet service providers to keep tabs on their customers. Criminal investigations "are being frustrated" because no law currently exists to force Internet providers to keep track of what their customers are doing, the U.S. Department of Justice told Congress. The department's position on mandatory data retention says Congress should strike a "more appropriate balance" between privacy and police concerns. [read more] MySpace CEO confirms heavy layoffsMySpace CEO Mike Jones recently announced a "significant organizational restructuring that will result in a 47 percent staff reduction across all divisions globally and impact about 500 employees," confirming many rumors that the News Corp.-owned social network would be going through heavy layoffs before possibly seeking a new buyer. Formerly a social-networking sensation, MySpace lost more and more ground to Facebook over the past few years until it finally underwent a massive redesign that focuses on pop culture media-sharing for young users rather than attempting to be a universally appealing social network. [read more] Six big trends to watch in 2011Contrasting cross-currents are going to make 2011 a fascinating and turbulent year, in which SaaS enters the tornado and mobile enters the bowling alley at the very same time as cloud trips over the chasm. [read more] How to crash the InternetWe know you can take down Web sites with Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. We know that a country, like Egypt, can knock down a country's entire Internet infrastructure. And, we thought we knew that you couldn't take down the entire Internet. It turns out we could be wrong. [read more]  Latest Blog Postsother places you can find us 
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