Ellen Muraskin

I editorially directed and wrote this sponsored Supplement to Nation's Restaurant News 2014

I editorially directed and wrote half the content for this sponsored Supplement to Nation's Restaurant News 2014

Restaurant Tech Column--

A Look Behind, Ahead, and in the Moment at What We Mean by Office Lunch Orders

IBM's Watson brand has held a place in public mindshare for years -- long before the term internet of things ever...
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surfaced. Many knew Watson first as the supercomputer Jeopardy! contestant of 2011. Some of us who covered speech technology were wowed even earlier when, in research stages, IBM demonstrated Watson's natural language processing and real-time machine translat...

"Please listen carefully to the following options, as our menu has recently changed."
Here's a phrase you've been hearing since soon after the auto attendant was invented, circa 1989. You certainly don't listen carefully, if at all, since the menu hasn't likely changed since the last office manager left. You just hope the phone navigation will be simple, the "next available" agent intelligible, and the hold time brief; less time than it takes you to turn on speakerphone, resume what you were ...

Google "Nest thermostat" -- the device that pushed IoT into consumer consciousness -- and you'll come up with dozens of places to buy: big box stores, like Best Buy and Home Depot; general online marketplaces, like Amazon; carriers, like Verizon Wireless' Smart Home shop; and dozens of online electronics stores, not to mention Nest Labs' own site. Click, pay, get a package. Follow easy installation instructions, download an app, save on heating bills.

Surely there are IoT apps with as wide a ...

Issue Summary
This Report includes the results of Channel Partners’ fifth annual survey of channel partners’ interest in — and challenges with — selling cableco telecommunications services to businesses. Since we started tracking this market in 2011, cable companies have gotten more serious about their indirect sales strategies, and our survey shows that channel partners are taking notice of partner program improvements. Breakout hikes appear this year around in-person sales support, commissi...

Dell Technologies is today one of the loudest members of the IoT chorus. By coming in at the base (hardware) level and acquiring or attracting its tenor, alto and soprano companies, the company has signaled to the IoT marketplace that it can supply all the parts, from device to cloud or data center and back again to controller.

IoT and 3D printing might look like the greatest marriage of two buzzwords in the history of tech.

Paula Ravin, real estate agent, starts her Tuesday workday by clicking on a link she's populated into every 8:30 am Tuesday slot on her Google calendar: it's the weekly update she attends virtually with four colleagues at Winston-Kemmerman Realty. She can see them all, with their company-logoed coffee mugs, reporting from the office on Broad Street or from their home offices.
The videoconference -- a free feature of the hosted communications service WKR subscribes to -- is the agents' chance ...

In 2018 we will start to see more businesses adopt video calling as part of their omni-channel customer service. Should yours be one of them?
Given that a) most laptops are equipped with cameras nowadays, b) even desktop computers typically sport add-on webcams, and c) most callers have video-ready bandwidth, this is not a decision that calls for capital investment.