In an analysis conducted by USA Today on TripAdvisor, traveler reviews including complaints of bedbugs in hotels have jumped 11 percent nationwide.

The study was prompted because of repeated headlines in New York City regarding an influx of bedbugs in hotels there. In fact, the study found a 12 percent jump in bedbug complaints in Big Apple hotels.

The nationwide analysis took a snapshot of TripAdvisor hotel reviews for the first eight months of 2009 and 2010 and compared them to find the 11 percent jump in bedbug mentions.

Bedbugs are tiny parasitic insects that feed preferentially on human blood, and though they were thought to have been largely eradicated by DDT in the developed world, they have lately been resurging. And, in the New York area at least, they seem to have expensive taste.

In July, the creepy crawlers invaded the Manhattan offices of CNN, and they infested a Hollister clothing shop in SoHo, causing the shop to close down.

In another incident, Pop Singer Lauren Hildebrandt complained of painful, itchy bumps after staying in a posh, $500-a-night NYC hotel. Upon examination they were discovered to have been bedbugs, which had plagued her during her sleep.

Hildebrandt was so put-off by the incident that she instructed her public relations team to issue a statement warning travelers about the bugs. She would not, however, release the name of the hotel.

In July, the USA Today ran a poll via their Hotel Check-In service that surveyed 4,200 people. Of those surveyed, 47 percent said they don’t fully unpack their bags, many citing fear of bringing bedbugs home.

Late Thursday, Hurricane Earl will be within striking distance of North Carolina.  Earl is expected to turn northwards right before the coast and not make landfall, but that remains to be seen.   When predicted to make the turn, any delays in as little as a six hour time window will determine if the Hurricane will cross onto land or not, and at what force.

Earl had been classified as a Category 4 hurricane, but is now Category 3.  However, despite being downgraded, it is still a major storm.  Hurricane warnings are in effect in North Carolina, with tropical storm warnings up the coast.

Airlines have made announcements preparing travelers to expect delays or cancellations.  Continental Airlines in particular is offering penalty-free changes to itineraries affected up to and through September 5th.

Evacuation orders have been issued for islands along the eastern seaboard.  Coastal residents in general need to prepare for Earl, as even without landfall the hurricane’s effects will reach the mainland.

A fully charged cell phone is a necessity, and a smartphone can have multiple emergency uses.  It can be used to stay informed of Earl’s progress through weather websites with up-to-the-minute tracking.  Two-way, push-to-talk radios and cell phones are good to have as communications alternatives.  And some smartphone models even have a flashlight app.

Have an evacuation plan ready for the family, including rally points, and communication contingencies.  A Google Groups or similar collaboration site is perfect for emergency family planning and communication, and in case of separation can be used anywhere with internet access.

Last Sunday, I found myself sunk in my couch, arranged with a plate of chicken and rice for dinner, a drink in one hand and a remote control in the other. I had a blanket over my legs and my iPhone on the cushion next to me. I was ready to watch my favorite television shows on HBO. Gradually, however, a thought began to inch into my mind. Like a tick, this thought began to discomfit me. I wanted my laptop. I could see it in the other room. It beckoned me. How was I supposed to surf the Internet during my shows without it?

I observe situations like this almost everywhere I go: I notice it on the elevator when I grab for my iPhone to avoid interacting socially with the strangers in my proximity; I see it at the gym when exercisers flip through television channels as they pump their legs on treadmills; I see it at dinner parties when my friends lower their eyelids like poker players to tap out texts during a lull in conversation. It appears that now, with cell phones in our pockets and with Google algorithms primed fantastically to feed us answers to our questions, the tiniest windows of time are being filled with media. And while this media can turn moments of downtime into productive blips, a long-standing debate over the pros and cons of constant connectivity is becoming more volatile.

A study from the University of Michigan tested the capacities of two groups of people to concentrate and learn information. Before studying identical information, one group took a stroll in nature and the other group took a stroll in an urban setting. The nature group learned significantly better, leading the researches to conclude that processing a lot of information, characteristic in urban environments, causes the brain to tire. Therefore, giving the brain time to recoup, as it did in the natural environment, enhances its capacity to learn.

Perhaps even more alarming is the assertion by Harvard-educated scholar, Nicholas Carr, who wrote an article called, “Is Google Making us Stupid?” In the article, Carr explains that the rapid functionality of the Internet—with pop ups, links, email notifications, and a tendency toward shallow consumption of information—is actually rewiring the circuitry of our brains. Carr writes, “My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.”

Carr contends that our ever-malleable brains are constantly being remodeled as nodes are unplugged and new circuits are routed. Since our brains adapt so quickly, the old channels that used to serve higher concentration on, say, books or creativity, are becoming eroded. This erosion, some scientists suggest, could lead to attention deficit disorder or depression.

It’s not all bad though. Camped on the other side of the debate are people like Wired Magazine’s Clive Thompson. In his essay, “the New Literacy” Thompson argues that people are reading and writing far more than they did during the 70’s, 80’s, 90’s and early 2000’s when television was the main medium. Thompson writes, “Before the Internet came along, most Americans never wrote anything, ever, that wasn’t a school assignment. Unless they got a job that required producing text…they’d leave school and virtually never construct a paragraph again.”

Thompson also points out that the new type of writing, geared toward reaching an audience, requires concise and communicative prose, a positive step away from the esoteric pontifications of writers before. In his assessment, this democratizes the language. Where people used words like esoteric and pontification, they are now tending toward words like lofty and preachy—which the average reader understands. For Thompson, Twitter updates and text messages are a far cry from defilers of the English language. They are the promoters who bring regular people into it.

Taking the argument even further is writer and NYU professor Clay Shirky, whose idea of “cognitive surplus” posits that the low cost and the ease-of-sharing associated with the Internet has been a boon to creativity. In a TED presentation, Shirky explains that advances in technology have opened up vast amounts of free time for human beings. Until the Internet, this free time used to be eaten up by passive entertainment like television or video gaming. Now that the Internet is available, Shirky says, a shift has occurred in that humans with free time are devoting it to creating.

“The very nature of these new technologies fosters social connection—creating, contributing, sharing,” Shirky said in an interview with Wired Magazine. “This lets ordinary citizens, who’ve previously been locked out, pool their free time for activities they like and care about.”

Shirky says the free time we have for creating, or “cognitive surplus,” is poured into everything from the trivial site lolcats.com, where people post funny pictures of cats, to serious political activities like Ushahidi.com, where people update and map instances of social suffering. Though some sites are less substantial than others, they still spark peoples’ creativity.

More importantly, when people collectively collaborate on the Internet new feats of humanity and knowledge become attainable. Shirky sites Wikipedia as an example. The articles, the edits, and the arguments behind the articles represent about 100 million hours of human labor. Wikipedia, the most extensive encyclopedia, was built virtually for free through collective cognitive surplus.

So where does this leave us? Are we doomed to being shallow-thinking automatons ruled by Google, or is the Internet helping us dig deeper to reach new potentials of creativity and collective conscious?

Most are inclined to think it’s a combination of both. These are the typical convulsions of new technology. Plato lamented the invention of the written word, saying it would supplant the need to exercise memory. Yet, he couldn’t see the vast historical repository, the potential for teaching, the aid in deeper contemplation that the written word brought about.

This past summer a group of neuroscientists from both sides of the argument went on a rafting trip down Glen Canyon, Utah to study the effects of nature’s respite on the brain. At the end of a lengthy New York Times article, the scientists remained unconvinced either way. They felt relaxed after having been in nature, to be sure. However, they said the adaptability of the brain allows our circuits to become exercised and better able to cope with the barrage of information that we are constantly immersed in during our urbanite lives.

At the end, they recommended the Golden Mean: if your thinking gets cluttered, go for a stroll without your earbuds and your iPod.

Maybe instead of getting up for my laptop, I should’ve given my brain a rest by eating my Sunday night meal in the sanctity of my own thoughts.

This morning, the news came down the wire that AT&T U-Verse customers would no longer have access to Hallmark Channel programming. Crown Media has stated via press release they are happy to re-start negotiations with AT&T. Talks broke down over new carriage agreements sometime last week, and as of 12:01AM ET, the Hallmark family of channels went dark. We’ve all seen these stories before, where renegotiations are going on, and both sides are urging customers to contact the other company to demand they do not lose programming.

This situation has been no different except that the Hallmark Channel has found a way to use social media to their benefit, even though they negotiations have still fallen through and the channels have been blacked out. They sent a very powerful message through Facebook and Twitter, both on their sites, and the AT&T U-Verse site.

Starting with the Don’t Take My Hallmark Site, Hallmark drove traffic both to their site as well as the AT&T pages, urging customers to comment and share their concerns. The results have been impressive:

• Over 1500 comments urging AT&T to keep the family programming channels.
• 4,580 FaceBook likes to the U-Verse related posts on the HallMark Channel fan page.
• Multiple tweets and conversations with current fans of Hallmark.

Despite the failed negotiations to continue carrying programming for AT&T U-Verse customers, Hallmark more than doubled their traffic to their social sites and web site, and all since August 26th when they started the campaign. The number of likes they have gotten from the campaign and the comments on their pages will undoubtedly remain, and the Google search for “Hallmark Channel” have their Twitter, Press Page, and FaceBook on the first page of results. What can you learn from Hallmark Channel’s campaign?

• Call to action. Not only did Hallmark tell their customers what was going to happen, they told them what to do about it – go to the AT&T U-Verse fan page and let their thoughts be known.
• Monitoring. From the looks of things, Hallmark was prepared for social media to hit the ground running. Not only were they looking for mentions of their company, but they were directing their people to use it to get the message out.
• Gave a reason why or why not. Every couple of months, battles like this arise, but Hallmark was quick to state what the negotiations were NOT about, taking to Twitter to clear up rumors they wanted more money. “It wasn’t Hallmark demanding big $$$ that got the networks taken off. We’re actually very disappointed that this happened. Thank you”.

What do you think? Did Hallmark hit a homerun here, even though they are no longer carried on U-Verse, they did get a HUGE turn out through social media and can show their results right on their Facebook page. Did they win or lose?

Note: You can check out the individual press releases from Hallmark and AT&T.

Loopt Star is an iPhone app that gives you local and immediate rewards when you “check in” at certain locations.  For example, if you were to check in at a Starbucks, you might have a 10% discount waiting at the counter.  For today, if you check in at select locations in San Francisco or Los Angeles, you will receive a two-for-one plane ticket deal from Virgin America Airlines to Mexico.  Not only that, but you can get two tacos for $1 as well!

Checkins and check in rewards are fast becoming available in many places.  It was only recently that checking in at a location would simply get you in-game points or rewards.  But now businesses are realizing the potential of people with smartphones in their shops.  Using actual real-world rewards to encourage people to stay and buy, or return again is the natural and powerful next step.

Loopt Star is the real-world rewards version of Loopt, a previous iPhone app that used GPS positioning for users to check in and get points usable only within the app itself. Loopt Star is also one of the first apps to base itself on the new Facebook Places location sharing program.

Other GPS-location sharing, checkin apps not far behind with real-world rewards and discounts for their players are Foursquare and Gowalla.

In the last week, we’ve had a high number of MagicJack customers being unable to connect to our service. Magic Jack is a phone device that utilizes VoIP technology (PDF link) to make phone calls. After talking to some customers, we‘ve learned that MagicJack is blocking our conference number. We’ve done some research and wanted to share with you our findings.

Here are some things we know:

• MagicJack is blocking only direct dial/non-toll free numbers.
• A message is heard advertising MagicJack conference service.
• MagicJack is not just blocking AccuConference, it is blocking most providers who have non toll free numbers.
• We’ve been instructed to send an email to MagicJack to request that our services to be unblocked.

We are in the process of sending this email, but there is a limit to what we can do to get MagicJack to unblock our numbers. Unfortunately, we cannot provide an ETA on when these numbers will be available again, or, honestly, if at all, because this is in MagicJack’s hands.

A similar situation happened a few years ago with AT&T and Qwest blocking free conference services and the FCC ruled that they could not do that. Since VoIP services like MagicJack are new and grew quickly in popularity, rulings on these kinds of practices are still pending from the FCC.

Until the FCC rules on these issues, we here at AccuConference cannot force MagicJack or any other VoIP provider to unblock conference numbers. All we can request is that they do not block their paying customers from using conference numbers. Until they do this, our hands are tied. When possible, use a land line or cell phone that can connect into a direct dial/non-toll free number. If that’s not an option, you can try another VoIP provider and see if your call will go through.

We will continue to do everything on our end to resolve the issue with blocked numbers, but in the meantime, you can call us to see if there is anything we can do to help. As I learn more, I’ll keep you updated on the situation.

The Indian government delayed a ban on Blackberry services, which was threatened for Tuesday, allowing the wireless company, Research in Motion, to continue operations pending a 60-day security test.

This is the latest development in an ongoing tug-of-war between RIM and India, who are debating how much access the country’s government should get to Canadian-based BlackBerry’s encrypted data services.

The Indian government says access to email and data services are essential in maintaining the country’s national security; meanwhile, RIM is reluctant to turn over peoples’ private correspondence to the government.

It appears that the parties reached some sort of agreement, though it remains unclear what consensus was struck.

In a statement, the Indian government said Blackberry allowed access to certain portions of information, which would be operationalized immediately. However, the government showed some skepticism saying, “The feasibility of the solutions offered would be assessed thereafter.”

The Indian government, along with several others, says terrorists exploit the encrypted data services, using them to correspond clandestinely. The government says terms of use agreements obligate wireless phone companies to divulge information as it is requested by law enforcement agencies.

RIM says that it can’t provide unencrypted messages and e-mail. The only servers that can decode the messages are owned privately by RIM’s corporate customers. So, messages are encrypted automatically by the phones and reach RIM’s servers in Canada in encrypted form.

The battles between RIM and countries like India and the United Arab Emirates have caused skepticism among investors, causing the company’s shares to drop significantly. On Monday shares closed at $45.59, down .88 percent.

One of the funniest memories I have of college was the day I showed up for class and changed my mind. You see I was a freshman at the time, drunk off the ability to set my own class schedule and have freedom on if I came to class or not. One afternoon, I went to class with my friend from high school and before class started, we looked at each other and said, “Let’s blow this pop stand and go get some lunch.” We grabbed our purses and American history books, and we high tailed it out of there. On the way down the hall, we came face to face with the professor of that class. Oops. We did not plan our escape and when he asked us where we were going, we sputtered out the first thing we could think of, “Just to the bathroom!”

I’m sure he figured out we ditched after about twenty minutes. If it didn’t, then Dr. H is still standing in the halls of McBrien waiting for us to come back. Now I know what you’re thinking – How could the history nerd walk out of an American history class? The answer is simple – Dr. H was the worst public speaker of all time. Don’t be surprised. He was a nice man, I’m sure he was a very smart person, but he simply was not an engaging professor. Here kids, read this syllabus. Here, let’s all read chapters from our history books out loud. He was dry and I barely passed his class by the skin of my teeth.

On the flip side of the coin, I had a World History teacher, Dr. S, who was the most engaging professor I have ever come across. Every day in her class was exciting. She always had some sort of story about the historical figures we were discussing – like how Napoleon is the reason there are three buttons on military jackets. His men were always wiping their runny noses with their sleeves and soiling them. Napoleon added another button to the sleeve so that they wouldn’t be able to wipe their noses.

Dr. S knew how to use little interesting tidbits to engage us and in comparison to Dr. H, I passed her class with flying colors. When it comes to engaging with your audience there are some things you can do to be like Dr. S.  She made sure that: 

She was incorporating facts we may not know. Sure everyone knows who Napoleon is, but the button thing – had no clue. Dr. S knew that the key to getting her audience to retain information was to tell them something new, instead of just repeating old information we’d heard since 1st grade.

• Try to introduce your participants to new information or updated facts that will benefit your attendees.

She was communicating with us, instead of speaking at us. We were a part of the conversation and not just observing a lecture. She lobbed questions at us, surprising us by calling on those who may not be paying attention.

• Have a conversation with participants and don’t just tell them things. Even if they are quiet and listening intently, you can still get them involved by using humor or asking questions.

She had the best tone of voice. Dr. S loved what she did, and you could tell by the way she spoke about history. She was never anything but enthusiastic while teaching us. Every time she opened her mouth, there was love and passion for the subject of history. It’s something I learned from her.

• Remember that if you’re going to speak about something, it should be something you’re passionate about – your tone of voice is the most powerful thing that you have to get your audience’s attention.

Dr. S was a great professor, and above all the super cool things she told me, she was also memorable and I wanted to take her classes again. When it comes to hosting presentations and events, becoming memorable and enjoyable is what is going to keep people coming back for more. What are you doing to make your presentations unforgettable? How are you like Dr. S?

Take a look at what you’re doing today to get a hold of your customers and friends. Is there anything that you’re doing right now that you hadn’t thought of doing a month ago? (Perfect example – FaceTime) How about two?  What about a year ago? How much has the way you communicate changed in the last 15 years? I know the answer – a lot. Things keep changing and eventually, there will be some avenues of communication that will be in a museum somewhere one day. Here are five communication trends I am starting to see.

1. Social Media – Probably the biggest trend in past years is the growth of social media as not only a platform to communicating with friends, but also as a way to reach customers. It’s being used for everything right now – advertising, customer service, and marketing. It’s taking away the need to send an email to your cousin or to pick up the phone and call a local business to get an answer or help. You just send out a tweet and hopefully) the business will respond promptly.
2. Decline of Emails – Currently, the use of emails as the preferred medium in an office is on the decline, despite the availability of emails through the mobile technology. The reason for this could be related to a couple of things:  more companies are adopting IM technologies that provide a quicker means of response and idea sharing, or it could be because companies are encouraging social media relationships with customers.
3. Travel is stressful and expensive, and companies are cutting down on expenses. To keep the flow of business, there’s an increase in use of conference calls to get employees together, and saving the air travel dollars for special reasons.
4. Less Tech-Speak – I’ve found that more places and people are coming down to their customer and client levels when it comes to sales.  Speaking above your customers head doesn’t mean that you’re going to get that client. What’s probably truer is that you’re going to confuse them, and if they are confused, they won’t want your services. More companies are trending to speak on a level the customer can understand.
5. Decline of Automated Systems – While there are still plenty of these out in the world, I’ve noticed a slow decline of auto mated systems in the past six months. More customer service lines are opting to use the automated system to gather an account number and name, and then patching you into a live person.  In fact, a few have even done away with the auto operator on the whole. I hope this is a trend that continues.

There are a ton of other communication trends happening out there.  What have trends have you been noticing and embracing in your own communication?

Cisco reportedly made an offer to acquire Skype in an effort to nab the telephony company before its IPO, according to a source who spoke with the technology blog, TechCrunch.

The source said that Cisco may be looking to acquire the company with an offer in the ballpark of $5 billion, though TechCrunch has been unable to confirm the report with an official statement.

The secrecy is apropos of a company that is on the verge of an IPO, a move that usually requires high degrees of confidentiality—especially in the stages right before going public.

Some analysts say that $5 billion may be a little much, especially since Google recently released its own version of VoIP powered through Gmail. These analysts point out that the VoIp atmosphere is heating up, so the increased competition may cause a devaluation of Skype. Also, Ebay recently sold its 70 percent share of Skype and valued the company at $2.75 billion.

As of the time of this writing, neither Skype or Cisco have issued any statements concerning the matter, though some analysts say it’s likely that Skype will accept the offer so they can remain competitive with Google.

More updates as the story unfolds.