HOTELS

Adam Kirby

Google 2010
July 8, 2008

One of the many innovations Google is working on is called Android, which would be an open-source operating system for mobile devices. Google last year challenged programmers to come up with applications for Android, and the company has since published descriptions of the 50 most promising submissions. 

Some of these are years away from coming to market, if they ever do, but there's some pretty nifty ideas in there. There is a handful of apps that hoteliers in particular should keep an eye on.

Beetaun
Description: "Social network around geographical content created by the people and for the people."
Why you should care: It sounds like a hybrid of TripAdvisor and a global-positioning system. It's just one more place you'll have to manage your hotel's content and online reputation.

gWalk
Description: "Enables tourists to discover a destination individually using context sensitive information."
Why you should care: I'm not entirely sure, to be honest, as the limited detail out there about what gWalk actually does is ambiguous. So it's possible you shouldn't care.

Jigsaw
Description: "Enables users to capture, process and share whiteboard data."
Why you should care: Rather than buying expensive digital whiteboards for meeting spaces, hoteliers could purchase non-digital whiteboards and use Jigsaw-equipped cell phones for digitization instead.

SynchroSpot
Description: "Location-based personal reminders and location-based ads."
Why you should care: This application lets advertisers send marketing alerts directly to the phone when they are physically in a certain location. I hope the potential benefits of this to a hotel are obvious.

Posted by Adam Kirby on July 8, 2008 | Comments (0)