Travel + Leisure hooks readers, advertisers with ... - Luxury Daily

Travel + Leisure August 2012

American Express Publishing?s Travel + Leisure released its annual World?s Best Awards comprising editorial on the most sought-after travel destinations combined with ads from marketers including Louis Vuitton, Waldorf Astoria and Lexus.

Similar to other ?best of? magazines lists, the World?s Best awards heavily influence how many and which advertisers get maximum exposure in the edition. Indeed, other marketers spanning automotive, travel, fashion and consumer electronics brands all want a piece of the action.

?Travel + Leisure?s August issue is always a favorite with our subscribers and newsstand buyers,? said Nancy Novogrod, editor in chief of Travel + Leisure, New York. ?It is where we present? the results of the magazine?s annual World?s Best Awards survey.

?The awards offer the combined opinions of some of the best traveled people out there ??Travel + Leisure readers,? she said. ?This year?s issue also has the advantage of the intensive head-to-toe redesign we launched in June, which means that photographs are larger, the pages more open and engaging and the navigation easier.?

Travel + Leisure has a rate base circulation of 950,000. Its readership has an average household income of $97,170.

Cream of the crop
The World?s Best list is curated by the opinions of tens of thousands of Travel + Leisure readers, according to the publication.

The list includes categories such as top cities, islands, cruise lines, car-rental agencies and hotels in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, Hawaii, The Caribbean, Bermuda and the Bahamas, Mexico and Central and South America.

Part of the World?s Best awards

The Best of Awards includes symbols that indicate a World?s Best debut, great values, hall of fame and T+L find.

Full-page images are incorporated as both background and stand-alone pages throughout the 12-page spread.

?Although we always cover a wide range of destinations, I would say there is a lightness and brightness to summer issues, a sun-filled quality that is appropriate to the season,? Ms. Novogrod said. ?And then the service component has special significance for the season ? for instance, the roundup of adventure travel outfitters in Strategies.

?There is also a bit of a surprise and texture in the way we handled our Cure for Jetlag piece, to break up all those alluring photographs of destinations,? she said.

Winner?s circle
Brands including Louis Vuitton, The Resort at Pelican Hill, Newport Beach, CA, Rolex, Viking River Cruises, Bellagio, Boeing and Crystal Cruises took up front-of-book ads for this issue.

Louis Vuitton ad

In addition, Dorchester Collection, Oceania Cruises and Bose have ads speckled in the editorial features.

Not surprisingly, ?best of? lists for high-end publications are beneficial marketing opportunities for luxury brands.

For example, brands including Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Hublot, Herm?s, Roger Dubuis, Bellagio, McLaren and Lamborghini went for a tactile experience in the print version of Robb Report?s Best of the Best list in June (see story).

?The World?s Best Awards are our biggest platform of the year, revealing interests and trends in places, accommodations and types of travel,? Ms. Novogrod said. ?It is a hit list of sorts for the devoted travelers that make up our audience.

?The Awards also underscore the mission of the magazine: to make travel irresistible by highlighting the most seductive and interesting places and opportunities for experiencing the world,? she said.

Final Take
Rachel Lamb, associate reporter on Luxury Daily, New York

Rachel Lamb is an associate reporter on Luxury Daily. Her beats are apparel and accessories, arts and entertainment, education, food and beverage, fragrance and personal care, government, healthcare, home furnishings, jewelry, legal/privacy and nonprofits. Reach her at rachel@napean.com.

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Source: http://www.luxurydaily.com/travel-leisure-hooks-readers-advertisers-with-world%E2%80%99s-best-awards/

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GOP senators launch tour warning of defense cuts

WASHINGTON (AP) ? Senate Republicans warning of the devastating impact from looming defense cuts will hit four presidential battleground states next week, ratcheting up the political pressure on President Barack Obama even though Congress endorsed the reductions.

Sens. John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Kelly Ayotte announced Thursday that they will hold a series of town hall meetings in Florida, North Carolina, Virginia and New Hampshire ? states that are home to military installations and defense contracting jobs.

The three said in a statement that they will "sound the alarm about the profound negative consequences of these cuts to our national security and economy. These communities, which provide our troops the equipment and support they need to defend our country, will bear the brunt of the defense sequestration cuts."

McCain, R-Ariz., voted for the cuts last August; Graham, R-S.C., and Ayotte, R-N.H., opposed them.

Republicans have blamed Obama for the automatic, across-the-board reductions in projected defense spending, but Republicans as well as Democrats voted for the cuts as part of a $1.2 trillion deficit-cutting plan.

The Senate by voice vote Wednesday night approved a bill requiring the administration to detail how it would make the cuts. The bill, which had already been approved by the House, now goes to the president.

The law implements nearly $500 billion in cuts over 10 years as the nation emerges from wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. If Congress can't find a way to avert the automatic cuts, known as sequestration, defense and domestic programs would face another round of cuts of about $500 billion apiece beginning on Jan. 2.

The cuts were set in motion by the failure of the bipartisan congressional supercommittee last November to produce $1.2 trillion in spending cuts.

Lawmakers have called the reductions catastrophic for the military. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta issued a fresh warning of his own on Wednesday.

"I sure as hell hope that sequestration doesn't happen," Panetta told a joint House panel focused on veterans issues. "It would be, as I've said, time and time again, a disaster in terms of the Defense Department, as far as our budget is concerned and as far as our ability to respond to the threats that are out there."

Panetta said it would mean double the defense budget cuts and the 100,000 personnel cut.

In real terms, however, the base defense budget has nearly doubled over the last decade, from $297 billion in 2001 to $529 billion in 2011. That amount does not include the billions spent on the two wars. The Pentagon envisioned spending would increase to $700 billion in 2021.

If the automatic cuts kick in, next year's Pentagon budget would face a cut of about $55 billion in projected spending from a half-trillion-dollar budget.

Graham, who traveled through his state of South Carolina in May, warned that the automatic cuts would force more than 180,000 out of the Army, cast doubt on the future of Fort Jackson and mean the termination of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, which is supposed to be based at the Marine Corps Air Station in Beaufort and Shaw Air Force Base outside Sumter.

Since then, Graham, McCain and several Democrats have discussed a possible one-year alternative to the automatic cuts that would involve raising revenue through changes in the tax rates. That idea, however, hasn't won much support from Republicans resistant to raising taxes.

Graham said in an interview that to force the issue in Congress, it's necessary to "create pressure outside the body. ... I hope Democrats will do what we're doing on the non-defense side. If I were a Democrat worried about the NIH's budget ? I'm worried about it myself ? I'd be out there doing what we're doing."

But he made clear he is frustrated with Obama.

"I think he's been AWOL," Graham said. "Quite frankly, it's an abrogation of his commander-in-chief responsibility to go to the VFW and criticize us when you haven't done anything to solve the problem."

Obama said in his VFW speech on Monday. "There are a number of Republicans in Congress who don't want you to know that most of them voted for these cuts. ... Now they're trying to wriggle out of what they agreed to."

Graham said he hopes to attach any plan to a bill to keep the government operating.

On the House side, the top Democrats on the various committees sent a letter to Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, calling for bipartisan negotiations to replace the automatic cuts with a balanced deficit reduction plan.

"We are confident that we can identify revenue sources and prioritize investments in a bipartisan fashion to avoid the sequester while achieving our deficit reduction goals," the 21 Democrats wrote.

___

Associated Press writer Susanne Schafer in Columbia, S.C., contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/gop-senators-launch-tour-warning-defense-cuts-184901728.html

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The Adorable Grill Is So Small You Can Carry It On Your Bike [Cooking]

You know what they say about BBQ gear: the best grill is the one you have with you. So forget about spending thousands of dollars on a miniature backyard furnace when Bodum's new FYRKAT grill is small enough to take with you wherever you go. More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/XHJ8WKevx-I/this-adorable-grill-is-so-small-you-can-carry-it-on-your-bike

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Thread: Drat, budget cuts are annoying... - Family Woodworking

Just when I wanted to go pick up an EZ-pass so my work travels will be just 'that much' easier, NY goes and shuts down 4 regional 'walk in' centers. Now i can still pick up an EZ pass locally ,but it will require my going home, accessing their website and setting up my account, whereas the walk in center I'd have been good to to go immediately.

*sigh*

ah well, supposedly they're saving $1,000,000 per year by closing the centers. I suppose fiscal responsibility is a good thing, so I can't fault them for trying to balance the budget... however... they could have waited til the end of the year! Argh!

Source: http://familywoodworking.org/forums/showthread.php?28057-Drat-budget-cuts-are-annoying

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Video: Gingrich, Limbaugh defend Bachmann?s accusations about Huma Abedin

The female face of HIV: 'Everyone's at risk'

More than a quarter of new infections in the United States every year are in women, and of the 1.1 million Americans with the AIDS virus, 280,000 are female, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Black women are especially vulnerable.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036697/vp/48308995#48308995

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Kohistani strikes blow for Afghan women

While most Olympic athletes are backed by strong support in their home countries, Afghanistan's Tahmina Kohistani has encountered not just disapproval, but outright opposition.

But the 100m sprinter said her appearance at the London Olympics, as her country's only female athlete, was important not just for her, but for all women in conservative Afghanistan.

"This means a lot for me and my country. There were a lot of people who were trying to disturb me, to stop me from training, but I am here," she said on Tuesday.

"A lot of people will be watching me," she added. "Being a Muslim female athlete is most important for me.

"I represent a country where every day there are suicide bomb blasts. It is important that a girl from such a country can be here."

Kohistani, 23, from the north-eastern province of Kapisa, admits it would be a "miracle" to reach the 100m final, let alone claim a medal.

The 1.60m (five foot three) runner, instantly recognisable on the track by her traditional headscarf, has a personal best of 15.0sec -- more than four seconds slower than the late Florence Griffith-Joyner's long-standing world record.

The slow time is not surprising given Kohistani comes from a country with few facilities, where many people are openly hostile to the involvement of women in sport.

She is part of a six-strong Afghan team in London including Rohullah Nikpai, whose taekwondo bronze at Beijing 2008 was the war-ravaged, deeply religious country's first ever Olympic medal.

"I know that having a medal at the Olympics is very difficult, but I am here to open a new way for the women of Afghanistan because in my society there is no sport for females," Kohistani said.

"My people do not accept sport for women, they think sport is not good for them, but my family supports me and they have no problems."

And Kohistani, who will take part in the 100m heats on August 3, holds out the faint hope that a slip-up by her rivals could open the way to a place in the final.

"It is all in the mind. The race is fast. If any of the favourites make a mistake, maybe it will be a miracle for me," she said.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/kohistani-strikes-blow-afghan-women-201209142.html

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Ensuring Successful Unified Communications Deployment | CIO Event

by Nigel Pink, our VP & GM, UK & Ireland.

www.ipanematech.com

Unified Communications (UC) can be a powerful, positive thing. It can allow companies to communicate across vast distances as though meeting face-to-face. It allows for integrated features like instant messaging, desktop sharing and video conferencing. It uses the best of Web 2.0 applications. By bringing companies together across numerous branch offices, it can even make remote working feel a little less remote. The list of positives for UC goes on and on. Accordingly, companies have been noticing. Gartner?s 2011 research indicated that the uptake of UC is on the rise1. Offices are increasingly investing in UC to help streamline their communications and maximise their time.

Yet UC, for all its benefits, has an undeniable dark side: it stresses networks. This stress is particularly pronounced along Wide Area Networks (WANs). Consider desktop-to-desktop video communications. Video conferencing, even when scaled for a standard desktop, requires around 200kb/s of IP bandwidth (upload and download). If an office?s 30 employees use video conferencing, which is usually bundled as part of the UC service, the bandwidth requirement is 6mb/s. Most companies aren?t enabled to handle such
heavy movement along the network.

In the same way that the number of cars on a given road is rarely constant, so does the amount of traffic from UC vary along the network. UC flows are made up of video and voice, which is dynamic traffic. This means traffic levels grow or subside based on user demand. In turn, this can result in UC applications impacting the performance of other business-critical traffic during high demand.

The network ?roads? that UC travel across have, in recent years, become increasingly clogged. Employees are now using company networks for their own recreational activities.

During an average week, 56% of UK office-based employees watch online video while at work. Roughly 66% of UK employees indicated they watch more than one hour of online video per week from the office 2. Simultaneously, offices are becoming more mobile, with employees working from home and/or bringing their own devices.

These difficulties are particularly pronounced for companies with multiple branch offices. As branch offices communicate with one another using UC, they multiply the potential risks to business critical applications.

Stalls, jitters and failures of UC due to network stress can be expensive. Vendors in Gartner?s research indicate that on average, the cost for UC per user ranges between USD 250 ? USD 300 at the low end, and up to USD 350 ? USD 500 at the higher end. These numbers don?t include telephone equipment, wiring, and so forth. To have UC fail would waste such investments. Similarly, the failure of business critical applications can cost an organisation. For instance, a high-volume online store bringing in ?25,000 per hour could crash due to a single network failure. If the outage lasts several hours, the monetary impact can be quite significant. IDC recently estimated the cost of an 11-hour IT outage at around ?600,000.

Why bandwidth isn?t the complete answer

There are two solutions: companies can purchase more bandwidth; or companies can use what they have more effectively through WAN governance tools, which monitor and regulate the flow of applications across networks.

Adding more bandwidth isn?t the complete and only solution, as more bandwidth is rarely enough. Critical applications will take as much bandwidth as possible. This is due to the way that internet protocol is designed. TCP (Transport Control Protocol) operates as a layer for protocol on top of IP. Designed with the internet in the 1980s to be able to share limited, poor quality resources, TCP is structured to seize available bandwidth. When the network is struggling to deliver resources to the protocol, it means TCP will sense delays and start to go more slowly, creating congestion situations. It?s a protocol where every data transfer, every application, will try to take as much network resource as possible. This means more
bandwidth, applied indiscriminately, isn?t the solution.

Another issue lies in the inability of additional bandwidth to respond appropriately to the variable nature of UC traffic. Consider an example: at 3pm, a company has an international call supported by UC. The call, occurring across many branch offices and numerous locations, might require 90% of bandwidth. At 4pm, the call is finished. Only 20% of bandwidth is used. This means expensive bandwidth is sitting dormant. Nor does additional bandwidth differentiate between business-critical applications and non-critical applications.

Perhaps during the call, an employee decides to download a YouTube video. Another streams music from an online host. Suddenly 100% of the company?s bandwidth is used, with equal priority given to the call and the recreational activities. Should another person need to join the call, or a business-critical function need to occur, the bandwidth is already at capacity. Something will have to give somewhere. Bandwidth doesn?t know or highlight where.

Finally, additional bandwidth doesn?t allow for efficient troubleshooting. When issues occur as traffic moves across the network, having a larger ?road? won?t allow companies to see where, when, and why. More bandwidth doesn?t provide diagnosis tools. Companies need something more.

It?s not size, it?s sophistication

The solution lies in having tools that allow a company to control applications as they flow across the network. Such monitoring and controlling is known as WAN governance. Through WAN governance, companies can see how applications are moving, who is using them and for what purpose. Companies can then prioritise applications accordingly.

If we consider the example of networks as roads, and applications as cars, a WAN governance tool might be a police officer. It can direct cars into appropriate queues. It can slow cars or speed cars depending on priority. This then allows vehicles to get to their destination in a timely, secure fashion ? regardless of the amount of traffic on the ?road?.

Branch offices in particular can take advantage of such tools through recently developed low cost, ultra-compact devices. These devices, aimed at branch offices with fewer than 50 employees, allow enterprises to manage traffic according to their business needs.

Companies can then guarantee the performance of UC applications without the need for costly bandwidth upgrades, while simultaneously ensuring that even rapidly growing intra-branch IP traffic is visible, controlled, and intelligently routed.

Such tools provide guaranteed performance and visibility to a company?s IT department.

This means the impact of UC flows can be fully understood and communicated to business leaders in a simple, clear manner. Finally, through such tools, UC is intelligently routed across the most appropriate network type. For instance, UC could be sent along the Internet or MPLS depending on the availability and performance of each network as things occur on a second-by-second basis.

Bottom line

The uptake of UC is on the rise. Companies must be prepared to handle challenges to their infrastructure. While purchasing additional bandwidth can mitigate some of the difficulties, a more comprehensive solution involves using WAN governance tools.

www.ipanematech.com

1
http://www.gartner.com/technology/reprints.do?id=1-1728DMD&ct=110823&st=sb
2

http://bit.ly/zsJnXr

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Source: http://cioevent.wordpress.com/2012/07/23/ensuring-successful-unified-communications-deployment/

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