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NFC technology with Bluetooth gives hotel guests streaming music

Lucy | November 12, 2013

This new service could help to easily and conveniently enhance the overall guest in-room experience.

It has become exceptionally common for travelers to bring smartphones into their hotel rooms with them, many of which are enabled with Bluetooth and NFC technology and the capability for picking up the hotel’s WiFi in order to stream music in a wireless way.

Now, hotel technologies are picking up on this in-room experience in order to provide sleek new audio solutions.

Among them is the iHome audio solution that is designed to help to make guests feel more at home throughout their stay. This service from Hotel Technology involves a device with NFC technology, Bluetooth, and USB charging. It has already been launched at a convention held in New York, and is now being worked into the experience at hotels that wish to stay at the cutting edge of what tech has to offer their consumers.

Many hotels are already embracing the mobile world, and the use of NFC technology and Bluetooth speaks to that.

NFC Technology and streaming music According to the Hotel Technologies national sales manager, Ely Ashkenazi, “Bluetooth technology is a worldwide wireless standard that will be around for many, many years.” He also added that the service is completely automated and has lower power consumption and low interface, which will ensure that it remains very simple to use and convenient from the side of consumers. He also added that NFC technology would also be worked into the service, so that the best of both capabilities could be leveraged.

Overall the NFC technology and Bluetooth support provides hotel guests with the ability to stream music up to 30 feet away and to enjoy the sound from a true stereo experience instead of the built in speaker from their device. It allows for better sound clarity and quality and improved power consumption rates when compared to using the device alone in the room. Moreover, guests can also use the systems as a speakerphone for a crisp and clear conversation. This way they can feel more comfortable, even when they are quite a distance away from the place that they actually call home.

Social media marketing ads are now on Instagram

Lucy | November 7, 2013

It hardly comes as a surprise, but the time for using this network without advertising has now passed.

Instagram has now officially changed its social media marketing strategy as sponsored advertising is now being delivered to its users in the United States, eliminating the “preview” time in which user feeds were free of ads.

Sponsored photos will become a regular part of this Facebook owned network’s feeds.

Among the first social media marketing campaigns that will be viewed as sponsored ads on Instagram for U.S. consumers will be courtesy of Michael Kors, the fashion brand. The ad will feature one of the watches from that company’s collection of Timeless pieces. When this first ad is posted on the site, it will mark the close of the “preview” period on the site that was designed to help the network’s approximately 150 million active users to become accustomed to the idea of seeing images and video ads within their feeds that had previously been free of any advertising at all.

This has become what is appearing to be a social media marketing trend that is closing in on universal.

American users of Instagram will see the Michael Kors image regardless of whether or not they are following the brand on their accounts. This ad will include a sponsored label to identify it as a placement that has been paid for by the brand. Viewers will then be able to choose to hide it, leave it as it is, or even provide feedback if they don’t appreciate the content of that ad or any others that will be displayed in the future. The hope is to help to integrate the social media marketing into the feeds without taking away from the user experience.

Social media marketing with ads in feeds has not been present on Instagram throughout its entire three year lifespan, so far. However, when the service sold to Facebook, last year, for $1 billion, it had intentions to offer magazine-quality ads that it hoped its viewers would like. This appears to be the first visible phase in that new effort to further monetize the network.