Did you know that July is National Vacation Rental Month? I?m sure everyone has been planning their summer vacation for some time now and has either just gotten back or is about to go! Lennox, Kyle and I are headed out for our family vacation in just a few weeks and we are so excited! So with all those summer plans in mind, there are 5 simple money-saving tips for a family summer vacation!
Eat in! We all love to eat out on vacation but is it necessary for every meal of the day? Breakfast is a great meal to eat in. Breakfast is the most inexpensive meal to provide at home usually, but can be just as pricey as lunch or dinner at a restaurant so why not eat it at home? Stop by a local bakery or grocery store for some cereal, juice, muffins, etc. You can also pack sandwiches for lunch to bring to the beach or park with you!
Do your research. There are so many free or very inexpensive activities for any age range in almost all destinations. Do a little research before heading on your vacation. You can fill your day at a free beach, free museums and other free tourist attractions pretty quickly if you know where to go ahead of time!
Quality Family Time! Make sure you get your family together for some quality family time while on vacation. Sometimes vacations can be so hectic, and even though you are all together, you don?t always get the best quality family time. Plan a family game night ? even just a card game if you have to pack light! Turn the iPhone/iPad off and just be together ? this is some fun that can be had for free!
Get the inside scoop from locals! Find out what the best spots are in town from the locals. Most tourist destinations are full of ?tourist trap? restaurants. They may be great restaurants but expensive! Surely there are some places that are cheaper but just as good or better ? just ask around!
Skip the hotel and get a rental property. If you have a large group or family going ? you can really save in some tourist spots with a rental property, especially if you are staying for a week or more! Having a rental property, similar to what Wyndham Vacation Rentals has to offer, can give everyone a lot more space, flexibility and allow you to enjoy your vacation to its fullest! There are so many advantages to staying at a vacation rental property! Staying in a vacation rental offers more space and many of the conveniences of home such as fully-equipped kitchens, washer/dryers units and multiple bedrooms.
Although, some may be leary about the quality and safety when renting a vacation property, the Wyndham has taken this into mind and strives to be the best.?For peace of mind, book with a professionally managed vacation rental provider such as Wyndham Vacation Rentals? that has a ?Vacation Rental Bill of Rights?? service pledge ensuring quality standards (vetted rentals with accurate images), comprehensive customer service and real-time payment and bookings.
And what about the luxury of a hotel ? housekeeping ? parents are on vacation you know! With Wyndham Vacation Rentals, travelers may enjoy the best of both worlds ? the space and comfort of home with the conveniences and amenities of a hotel stay including housekeeping, Wi-Fi, shuttle services and a concierge desk.
So what are you waiting for??Wyndham Vacation Rentals is offering summer deals at up to 35 percent off nightly rates on bookings made throughout July at?www.WyndhamVacationRentals.com. Where are you going to go this summer?
I was selected for this opportunity as a member of Clever Girls Collective and the content and opinions expressed here are all my own.
Heather is a Montessori Mom to Lennox, Blogger, Designer and a toes in the sand girl at heart! She traveled across the country from Cape Cod to meet her husband and now they raise their little family in Fort Worth, Texas.
SUBJECT: The easy way to Recover iPhone SMS, Contacts, Call History, ect on Mac/Windows KEYWORDS: iphone data recovery
Get Back Your Lost Contacts, Photos, Messages and More...
Freaking out cause you accidently deleted photos, text messages or other crucial stuff on your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch? iPhone is broken or damaged and now the data?s gone? Failed updates kill your data? Whatever the problem, the doctor is in! Wondershare Dr.Fone for iOS is an easy-to-use tool that can help you easily recover data that you thought you?d lost forever, such as photos & videos, contacts, SMS, call logs, memos and more! It offers you two kinds of recovery mode: to recover data directly from the iOS device and to retrieve previous data by extracting it from iTunes backup!
Download for Mac User: http://hotdownloads2.com/trialware/download/Download_mac-drfone_full1318.dmg?item=8799-328&affiliate=604674
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Related Guide: How to Recover iPhoen Messages > How to Recover iPhone Contacts > How to Recover iPhone Call History >
If you?re in need of a cash title loan, stop by and meet with one of our customer service representatives at our new branch.
Woodbridge, VA (PRWEB) July 09, 2013
TitleMax, one of the nation?s largest and most reputable car title loan companies, opened its fourth location in the Greater Woodbridge, VA Area on Wednesday, June 5, 2013. Residents can now visit this store for all of their short-term cash needs.
The new store is located at 13590 Jefferson Davis Hwy, Woodbridge, VA 22191. Store hours are Monday ? Friday from 9:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m., and Saturday from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. The store can be reached by calling (703) 490-9724.
?Opening this additional location in Woodbridge will allow us to better serve the residents of this community,? said Otto Bielss, Senior Vice President of Operations for TMX Finance. ?If you?re in need of a cash title loan, stop by and meet with one of our customer service representatives at our new branch. They will guide you through the process and you could have the cash you need in as little as 30 minutes.?
About Car Title Loans
A car title loan is a fast way for credit-challenged individuals to obtain the short-term cash they need. To secure a car title loan with TitleMax in the state of Virginia, an individual must have a clear, or lien-free, car title, a government-issued ID and proof of income. With these items an individual can obtain a loan up to $5,000 while still maintaining the use of their vehicle. No insurance is required, there are no credit checks and most loans can be processed in as little as 30 minutes.
There are more than 70 TitleMax stores in the state of Virginia. To find a TitleMax near you click Title Loan Stores.
About TitleMax
TitleMax, a subsidiary of TMX Finance, provides financial products to people without access to traditional credit alternatives. TitleMax has been a trusted consumer lender for over 14 years, helping hundreds of thousands of people in getting cash when they need it. Since its inception in 1998, TitleMax has grown to over 1,100 stores, spanning 13 states and provides car title loans to over 2,000 people each day.
Please visit http://www.titlemax.biz for more information on car title loans and how TitleMax can be of service.
Posted on: 4:30 pm, July 9, 2013, by Jeff Rhineer, updated on: 05:58pm, July 9, 2013
SALT LAKE CITY ? University of Utah Athletic Director Chris Hill announced that Utah and BYU will continue their rivalry in early September of 2017, and they play in the final game of the regular season in 2018.
Hill said he expects the PAC 12 Conference to approve the schedule in early August.
?We value the BYU-Utah rivalry,? Hill said. ?We know it?s important to our student-athletes, to our university, to our fans, and to the media.?
Utah and BYU will play on September 9 this year in Provo, but they will not play against each other in 2014 and 2015. The rivalry will resume on September 10, 2016 in Salt Lake City.
[unable to retrieve full-text content]Scientists have used a range of analytical methods to identify the techniques used by violin master Antonio Stradivari in the 17th century, and attempted to replicate his craftsmanship. Antonio Stradivari is universally recognized as one of the most famous violin makers in the world. During his life, he and his apprentices built more than a thousand violins, violas, cellos and other stringed instruments.
[unable to retrieve full-text content]Many parents have a difficult time persuading their preschool-aged children to try vegetables, let alone eat them regularly. Food and nutrition researchers have found that by offering a dip flavored with spices, children were more likely to try vegetables -- including those they had previously rejected.
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Eliot Spitzer is re-entering politics to run for New York City comptroller, five years after resigning as New York governor in a prostitution scandal, the New York Times reported on Sunday.
"I'm hopeful there will be forgiveness. I'm asking for it," Spitzer, 54, told the newspaper in an interview carried on its website.
Spitzer, a Democrat, told the newspaper he saw a more activist role for the comptroller, the city's chief financial officer. "It is ripe for greater and more exciting use of the office's jurisdiction," he said.
Spitzer rose to national prominence when he became New York state's attorney general in the late 1990s. His aggressive prosecution of financial crimes earned him the nickname the "Sheriff of Wall Street." He rode that reputation to a landslide victory in the 2006 race for governor.
Just over a year after taking office, the Times reported that Spitzer had been a client of a high-end prostitution agency. Spitzer resigned within days, with his wife standing at his side.
The deadline for filing a petition to be on the September 10 primary ballot is Thursday.
Current Comptroller John Liu is running for mayor. Candidates hoping to succeed him include: Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer; Republican John Burnett, a Wall Street executive; Green Party candidate Julia Willebrand, a former teacher; and former madam Kristin Davis.
Spitzer's announcement comes as former U.S. Representative Anthony Weiner, another scandal-tarnished New York Democratic politician, attempts a political comeback. Two years after admitting he had sent lewd photographs of himself to women, Weiner is a frontrunner in the New York mayor's race.
(Reporting by Ian Simpson; Editing by Will Dunham)
By all accounts, the Sixers and Andrew Bynum have had little to no contact about the big man returning to Philadelphia.
That doesn't, however, mean other teams aren't interested.
Despite not playing a single minute last season, ESPN's Mark Stein is reporting that both the Dallas Mavericks and Cleveland Cavaliers have expressed serious interest in Bynum.
According to Stein, the Cavaliers are hoping to land Bynum on a one-year deal, while the Mavericks could potentially offer Bynum up to three-years. As was the case last season, a major concern for both teams is the health of Bynum. Stein says that the Mavericks are in the process of doing an "exhaustive" evaluation of Bynum's knees. Dallas became interested in Bynum once they lost out in the Dwight Howard sweep stakes.
Of course, the Sixers said they did the same thing last season before they made the trade, and we all know how that turned out.
Even with the major red flags Bynum carries, his potential is once again appearing to be too good for a team to pass up. With few legitimate centers in the league, the idea of bringing Bynum- and his career averages of 19 ppg and 12 rpg- is tempting.
If Bynum were to agree to a deal with either the Cavaliers or Mavericks, the Sixers could talk to both teams about a possible sign-and-trade. There has been some speculation that if Bynum were to head to Dallas, the Sixers could trade his rights to the Mavericks in exchange for Shawn Marion- and his $9 million dollar expiring contract- along with a draft pick.
Landing an expiring contract along with a pick would be considered a win for the Sixers, and while it won't undo the damage the Bynum trade did to this franchise, it would aid in the rebuilding process.
Follow Eliot Shorr-Parks on Twitter at @EliotShorrParks
NEW YORK, July 8 (UPI) -- Crude oil prices in New York settled slightly Monday morning, easing back to $102.83 per barrel from an earlier peak of $103.22.
Prices soared to a 14-month high during the weekend, as political tension in Egypt continued to shake confidence in consistent supplies from the Middle East.
In price movement Monday, reformulated blendstock gasoline lost 2.06 cents to $2.8762 per gallon. Home heating oil shed 1.47 cents to reach $2.975 per gallon.
Natural gas added 11.2 cents to $3.729 per million British thermal units.
At the pump, the average price for a gallon of unleaded regular gasoline was $3.474, unchanged from Sunday and down slightly from $3.487 a week ago, the AAA Fuel Gauge report said.
AMMAN, Jordan (AP) ? A radical Muslim preacher described as a key al-Qaida operative in Europe rejected terrorism charges Sunday linked to alleged plots targeting Americans and Israelis in Jordan, his lawyer said, hours after Britain deported him to bring an end to a decade-long legal saga over his extradition.
Jordan first submitted an extradition request to U.K. authorities for the militant cleric known as Abu Qatada in 2001, but it was blocked in British and European courts over human rights concerns. Last month, Britain and Jordan ratified a treaty on torture aimed at easing those worries, paving the way for the 53-year-old preacher's deportation.
Abu Qatada arrived at Amman's civilian airport early Sunday on board a British aircraft and was immediately whisked away by heavily armed anti-terrorism police for questioning at a nearby courthouse. Police sealed off the area as the convoy drove against traffic to the court building, just across the street from the airport. Armed policemen kept a crush of journalists at bay.
After nearly two hours of questioning, Jordanian prosecutors charged Abu Qatada with conspiring to carry out terror attacks in Jordan twice ? once in 1999 for a foiled plot against the American school in Amman and another time in 2000 for allegedly targeting Israeli and American tourists and Western diplomats during new year celebrations.
In both cases, Abu Qatada was convicted in absentia years ago and sentenced to life in prison. With his return, those sentences have been suspended and he will receive a new trial.
Abu Qatada's lawyer, Tayseer Thiab, said his client "told military prosecutors that he is not guilty of terrorism and rejected the charges against him."
Jordanian authorities ordered Abu Qatada held for 15 days pending further questioning, according to one of the prosecutors. He said the cleric will be held at Muwaqar I, a prison in Amman's southeastern industrial suburb of Sahab. The military district attorney banned the publication of the prosecutors' names.
Thiab said he will try to free his client on bail Monday.
Outside the courthouse, Abu Qatada's father, Mahmoud, told the Associated press that his "son is innocent and I hope the court will set him free."
The cleric's younger brother, Ibrahim, said he and his father met with Abu Qatada for 15 minutes in the prosecutor's office and that his brother "looked well and in high spirits." He said the three prayed together and that the cleric "kissed my dad's hands and feet when he saw him." He told them British and Jordanian authorities had not used hand cuffs.
"How do you think I felt seeing my brother after 22 years?" Ibrahim said. "Look at my eyes and you'll know the answer."
Abu Qatada, whose real name is Omar Mahmoud Mohammed Othman, has been described in courts in Britain and Spain as a senior al-Qaida figure in Europe who had close ties to the late Osama bin Laden.
Britain accused him of links with Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person charged in the United States over the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and with shoe bomber Richard Reid. Audio recordings of some of the cleric's sermons were found in an apartment in Hamburg, Germany, used by some of the Sept. 11 hijackers.
Abu Qatada arrived in Britain on a forged passport in 1993 after fleeing a Jordanian government crackdown on militants. He was granted asylum in the U.K. a year later, but he eventually wore out his welcome because of his suspected militant activities, which allegedly included raising funds to finance terror plots in Jordan.
British authorities first tried to deport Abu Qatada in 2001, then detained him a year later under anti-terrorism laws, which at the time allowed suspected terrorists to be jailed without charge. Though he was released in 2005 when the unpopular law was overturned, the cleric was kept under close surveillance and detained in various ways.
He most recently was being held at London's Belmarsh prison after breaching a bail condition in March which restricted the use of mobile phones and communication devices.
In London, British Home Secretary Theresa May announced Abu Qatada's departure Sunday in a statement, and expressed confidence that the U.K. public would welcome the end to the saga.
"This dangerous man has now been removed from our shores to face the courts in his own country," she said.
British Prime Minister David Cameron expressed his "delight" at Abu Qatada's deportation, which he called "a priority" for his government.
Britain's original efforts to deport Abu Qatada were blocked by courts over concerns that evidence obtained under torture could be used against him. After years of successfully fighting the numerous attempts to expel him from the U.K., Abu Qatada recently indicated he would voluntarily return to Jordan if it and Britain ratified a treaty on torture.
That treaty ? which explicitly bans the use of evidence "where there are serious and credible allegations that a statement from a person has been obtained by torture or ill-treatment" ? was ratified by Britain and Jordan last month, clearing the final hurdle for his deportation.
Jordanian Information Minister Mohammed Momani said the kingdom "is keen on credibility and transparency" in handling Abu Qatada's case. He also said the cleric's deportation "sends a message to all fugitives that they will face justice in Jordan."
___
Associated Press writer Cassandra Vinograd in London contributed to this report.
A Quebec town was evacuated and one person was reported dead after a train carrying petroleum products derailed and exploded in the early hours of Saturday morning. NBC's Michelle Franzen reports.
By Tracy Jarrett, NBC News
A driverless train carrying petroleum products derailed and exploded early Saturday in a Quebec town, setting off a massive blaze that killed at least one person and burned for hours as responders feared additional blasts.
Railroad officials said a crew parked the train outside of Lac-Megantic and wasn't aboard when several hours later it somehow began rolling down the tracks and derailed around 1 a.m. local time.
Four tanker cars exploded in a blast that set ablaze multiple buildings in the center of the lakeside town of 6,000 people close to the U.S. border.?Burning crude spilled into the storm sewers and rose up through street manholes, setting buildings on fire, the head of the rail company that ran the train told Reuters.
As of Saturday afternoon, one person had been confirmed dead, Sgt. Gregory Gomez del Prado of the Quebec Provincial Police told NBC News.
"When you see the center of your town almost destroyed, you'll understand that we're asking ourselves how we are going to get through this event," town Mayor Colette Roy-Laroche said at a news briefing, according to Reuters.
Fires were still burning at the center of the devastation, nearly 24 hours after the blast.?
"There are still wagons which we think are pressurized. We're not sure because we can't get close, so we're working on the assumption that all the cars were pressurized and could explode. That's why progress is slow and tough," local fire chief Denis Lauzon told Reuters.
S?ret? du Qu?bec
Smoke rises from a devastated portion of Lac-Megantic, Quebec, hours after a train derailment caused explosions and a huge fire on Saturday.
Police officials said they believe at least 50 tanks caught fire. The train had 72 cars and five locomotives.
?It?s dreadful,? Lac-Megantic resident Claude Bedard told the CBC. ?It?s terrible. We?ve never seen anything like it. The Metro store, Dollarama, everything that was there is gone.?
Over 1,000 people have been evacuated from the center of town and are being housed in a nearby primary school, Del Prado said. It is unknown when these residents may be allowed back into the area.
The blast ruptured a water main, forcing the town to bring in tankers for drinking water, Reuters reported.
The Canadian Red Cross said it had set up an information center at a local high school, Polyvalente Montignac. Over 300 people has already reported to the facility, the Red Cross said.? The will be set up as a shelter at least through Saturday night, according to Red Cross director of communications Myrian Marotte.
?We will provide shelter, food, clothes if needed, and moral support,? Marotte said.
Industry Minister Christian Paradis, who handles Quebec affairs for the federal government, indicated the death toll was likely to rise, Reuters reported.
Montreal, Maine & Atlantic, which operates the rail line, said in a statement released Saturday evening that it had received reports of "a number of fatalities and injuries."
Police are working to locate any missing persons before investigating the cause of the derailment.
?There was a bar in the area open at the time of the accident. We know from the witnesses, that some of them were able to get out and escape the fire, others, they were with people that are still missing. We don?t know what happened to them,? Gomez del Prado said.
Edward Burkhardt, chairman of Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway, told Reuters that an engineer had parked the train outside town a few hours before the disaster.
"He claims he set the brakes on all five of the engines. He also claims he set the brakes on a sufficient number of cars on the train," Burkhardt told Reuters.
Montreal, Maine & Atlantic owns some 510 miles of track in Maine and Vermont in the United States and in Quebec and New Brunswick in Canada, according to Reuters.
The Transportation Safety Board of Canada said it sent four investigators to the scene.
?At this point what we want to do is gather information,? said Chris Krepski, a spokesman for the TSB. ?We will travel to the site to gather information, interview witnesses and talk to the operator, but we will have to wait until the area is safe and secure before we go in and examine wreckage.?
Prime Minister Stephen Harper tweeted that his "thoughts & prayers are with those impacted in Lac Megantic. Horrible news."
In the meantime, firemen from the surrounding area, including some from Franklin County, Maine, worked to put out the fires.
?All of the firefighters in the surrounding areas have come to help,? Gomez del Prado said. ?This blast, it?s a catastrophe for the town, a catastrophe for the people, and a catastrophe for the environment.?
NBC News? Ian Johnston contributed to this report.
Paul Chiasson / The Canadian Press via AP
Smoke rises from railway cars that were carrying crude oil after derailing in downtown Lac Megantic, Quebec, Canada, Saturday, July 6, 2013. The derailment sparked several explosions and forced the evacuation of up to 1,000 people.
This story was originally published on Sat Jul 6, 2013 10:13 PM EDT
The nonprofit group Christine's Hope for Kids has given more than $300,000 in donations and in-kind support to groups in New Jersey and across the country that work with children.
By David Karas,?Contributor / July 2, 2013
Jean Gianacaci, center, speaks with a youth at a book fair last summer at a Trenton (N.J.) Housing Authority property. She is joined by volunteer Claire King, left. Christine's Hope for Kids hosted a book fair for residents of the property, offering books, fresh fruit, and healthy snacks.
Courtesy of Christine's Hope for Kids
Enlarge
In January 2010, Christine Gianacaci was visiting Haiti with a team from Lynn University in Boca Raton, Fla., on a trip to help children and the underprivileged when she ? along with five others ? were killed in a massive earthquake that rocked that country.
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When her parents, John and Jean Gianacaci, took on the unimaginable task of planning their daughter?s funeral, they both agreed that they had to find a way to continue their daughter?s good works. They also wanted to find a way to put the money that could be used for flowers to good use.
?At her funeral we decided, in lieu of flowers, we would start a foundation,? Mrs. Gianacaci says. ?We decided to start a foundation to help underprivileged kids and kids with differences.?
Christine?s Hope for Kids was born.
The mission of the organization ? helping to give kids a chance to just be kids ? is significant in a number of ways to the Gianacaci family.
Christine grew up with learning differences and had been diagnosed with Tourette?s syndrome, her mother says.
?She knew what the challenges were for kids like her,? Mrs. Gianacaci says. ?She knew what that was like. She had a very big heart for kids that lived with adversity.?
Christine was able to attend college, and her Tourette?s syndrome waned with age, her mother says.
In college? she became involved with Students for the Poor, a branch of the Food for the Poor organization. That?s where the other motivation behind the family?s foundation comes in.
?The kids went to Haiti to make a difference, and do some good, and they lost their lives doing it,? Jean Gianacaci. She says she felt ?We have to do something to honor this.?
Gianacaci recalled her daughter?s experience on a similar trip in 2009 to Jamaica, and the changed outlook Christine had when she returned home.
?The things she saw, and the poverty she saw, were overwhelming for her,? Gianacaci says. ?When you grow up here, you?re not exposed to poverty at that level.?
But what impacted Christine most, her mother says, were the children she met.
?What touched her heart the most were the kids who lived there,? Gianacaci says. ?The kids were happy. They were in such poverty ? but yet, they were happy.?
Jean and her husband, John, with the help of a part-time assistant and a score of volunteers, have since taken up Christine?s mission. To date, the foundation has given more than $300,000 in donations and in-kind support to organizations in New Jersey and across the country that work with children.
The family has decided to focus on helping children in the United States.
?Kids need help everywhere, but we wanted to stay here because there is a tremendous need right here in our very own country,? Gianacaci says.
Another benefit is the ability to more easily see the results of donations and support.
?I can see where our money goes,? Gianacaci says, adding that she makes sure donations are put to the right uses on behalf of supporters. ?We are very grateful that people are willing ? with all the choices they have ? to donate to Christine?s Hope for Kids.?
From supporting community organizations such as Big Brothers-Big Sisters to partnering with schools to raise money or assembling pajama bags for disaster victims, Christine?s Hope for Kids has teamed with the wider community.
It also supports individual children, sending some to summer camps and providing equipment for others so that they can participate in athletics.
?Kids are shut out of games and activities because of money issues. It is overwhelming to me,? Gianacaci says. ?Where will their memories be if they don?t get a chance to do anything??
The foundation also helped bring a group of New Jersey kids to the seashore ? for the first time.
?We sent kids to the Jersey shore last summer who have never seen the ocean,? she says. ?And they live in Jersey.?
Another project supported youngsters taking a photography course in Florida ? something Gianacaci hopes will be a positive memory for them whether they take up the hobby or not.
The Gianacaci family also aims to help teach kids how to help other kids. Partnering with schools can be a big part of achieving that goal.
?Everybody needs a little help some time,? Gianacaci says. ?Just because you don?t have a brand-new bike doesn?t mean you are less of anything. It just means you don?t have a bike.?
While her formal title with Christine?s Hope for Kids is ?president,? Gianacaci prefers to be called something else.
?I really like ?mom? the best,? she says.
? For more information on Christine?s Hope for Kids, to volunteer or provide support, visit http://www.christineshope.org.
[unable to retrieve full-text content]Astronomers have spotted a distant galaxy hungrily snacking on nearby gas. Gas is seen to fall inwards towards the galaxy, creating a flow that both fuels star formation and drives the galaxy's rotation. This is the best direct observational evidence so far supporting the theory that galaxies pull in and devour nearby material in order to grow and form stars.
This is a Firefox and Google Chrome theme designed especially for serious Spartans fans. It brings all the latest news from NSU athletics and it integrates with Facebook, Google+ and Twitter.
The Norfolk State University add-on is designed to work with the Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome web browsers. This add-on does not require a browser restart.
Ferrari President Luca Cordero di Montezemolo waves to media after the World premiere presentation of the new La Ferrari hybrid model car. Ferrari recently told employees they could not include more than three people per email to curb the deluge of mail workers receive.
Their cars are some of the fastest in the world, but Ferrari is putting the brakes on group emails to more than three people.
Concerned that messages are slowing down their 3,000 employees, the luxury Italian car manufacturer said in a statement that workers will only be able to ?send the same email to three people in-house.?
Stefano Lai, the vice president for communications, said the company was rolling out an application that would block messages when a fourth name was typed in.
?It is not a war or a battle against email,? he said. ?It?s more about making people think than punishing them. It is not a question of productivity, more a question of efficiency.
?Sometimes people are so flooded by e-mail that it is difficult to find what is important,? Lai added. ?If it is important it is better to call rather than wait and see what the answer is??
?We hope people will call or go to the office and say: ?When can we solve this thing,? instead of waiting for an answer.?
Lai refused to confirm speculation in the Italian media that the idea had come from the company?s aristocratic chairman Luca Cordero di Montezemolo, who is also the president of NTV an Italian company which is Europe's first private open access operator of 190 mph high-speed trains.
?Our chairman always says, ?We take a decision at 9 o?clock in the morning and by 9:30 a.m. it is implemented,? he said.
He added that they could not predict whether productivity would increase at their campus in the northern town of Maranello.
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MEXICO CITY, July 5 (UPI) -- U.S. airlines that canceled dozens of flights into Mexico City Thursday due to fears about ash from a rumbling volcano said they restored schedules Friday.
A number of airlines canceled more than 40 flights into the capital when the Popocatepetl volcano, which has been has been rumbling all year, began spewing ash and steam this week, the BBC reported.
US Airways, Delta, United, American and Alaska Airlines canceled flights Thursday before returning to normal schedules Friday.
Flights to Mexico City from Houston, Dallas, Denver, Phoenix, Chicago and Los Angeles were affected by the cancellations.
"We are closely monitoring the situation in Mexico City as volcanic ash continues to be emitted from Popocatepetl," American Airlines spokesman Matt Miller said.
Mexican authorities have established a 7-mile no-fly zone around the volcano, 40 miles southeast of the Mexico City airport.
Philadelphia, PA (My Sportsbook) - The NFL has been taking its lumps recently because of a spate of arrests since the Super Bowl, headlined, of course, by the first degree murder charges pinned on ex-Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez.
The current narrative coming from most is that "The Shield" has been tarnished, but that's hyperbole. For every Hernandez, there are dozens of NFL players who spend their free time trying to make society and their communities better places.
Take Minnesota Vikings defensive Jared Allen, a four-time All-Pro who has had his own off-the-field problems. An immature Allen was once arrested for DUI on three separate occasions and suspended by the NFL. His last brush with the law came on Sept. 26, 2006, however.
Since then, Allen has cleaned up his act and turned into one of the NFL's premier pass rushers. Off the field, he's been even more impressive.
These days, Allen is busy teaming up with the Professional Bull Riders in an effort to help his own Homes for Wounded Warriors charity, something the Dallas native started in 2009 to provide handicap-accessible homes and remodels to wounded veterans who served in either Iraq or Afghanistan.
Since 2012, Allen worked with the PBR as the owner of three bulls currently competing on the sport's elite Built Ford Tough Series, and has raised more than $100,000.
"This is a great match," Allen said. "I've attended a few PBR events this year, pulled ropes for a few of the cowboys before their rides and took care of my bulls. It's cool to get back into that world a little bit."
Allen's love for the rodeo stems from his youth while he grew up on a ranch in Morgan Hill, Calif., and he still shows it off virtually every Sunday with his patented calf-roping celebration after his sacks. His deep respect for the military comes form his family ties. Allen's grandfather and younger brother served in the Marines.
"PBR and (my charity) have a natural tie-in; they stand for some of the same principles, God and country," Allen said. "The fact that I can merge my interests to the benefit of both is great."
Allen, who has 117 career sacks, also serves as an advocate for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation which raises funds through his "Sack Diabetes" program, and was among four NFL players sent overseas on a NFL-USO tour to visit with U.S. military troops.
In September 2010, Allen even gave $3,000 to a Downey, Calif., animal shelter's reward fund for information leading to an arrest in connection with a horse being starved and abandoned on a Los Angeles city street.
In today's 24/7 news cycle, which is largely driven by ratings, Allen's kind of philanthropy isn't going to sell, but statistics say it should.
Believe it or not, there really hasn't been a significant spike in NFL player arrests this offseason. According to the San Diego Union-Tribune's exhaustive NFL arrests database, league arrests between the Super Bowl and July 1 are up this year to 27 from 21.
They are also the highest they have been since 2008, when 41 were taken into custody. That said, 27 isn't all that much more than the 25 who were arrested in 2010 or the 23 in 2009. The difference is this year's total is not overwhelming and remains comfortably under the national arrest average by nearly 2 percent, according to FBI numbers.
Among young men between 22 to 34, things look even rosier for the NFL, which has a 3.5 percent arrest rate since 2003 compared to a whopping 9.9 percent national average.
Sometimes the facts get in the way of a good story, though, and news organizations thrilled by the ratings that the Hernandez scandal has generated aren't about to play up numbers that say NFL players as a whole behave better than the rest of society.
That doesn't mean there isn't room for improvement.
"One (arrest) is too many," NFL spokesman Greg Aiello told USA TODAY Sports when discussing the issue recently.
Aiello's right.
Most crime is directly attributed to poverty, and NFL players certainly don't have that hurdle to clear. There are no logical explanations for any NFL player to be arrested save for the facts that young people make mistakes on occasion and there are a few bad apples in the world.
High profile legal cases often skew perceptions, but don't blame football for Aaron Hernandez, a bad guy who probably would have went off the rails far sooner without the game. Instead, take comfort in the fact there are far more Jared Allens in the NFL.
The Fujifilm X100S ($1,299.95 list) is the follow-up to Fuji's groundbreaking X100 digital camera. Like its predecessor it features a retro design that makes it look more like a 1960s-era Leica than a modern digital camera, a hybrid viewfinder system that can toggle between a big, bright optical view and an EVF, and a fast f/2 lens with a 35mm (full-frame equivalent) field of view. The sensor has been upgraded to a 16-megapixel X-Trans CMOS design that is capable of producing some incredible results at extremely high ISO settings, and a notoriously sluggish autofocus system is now a reasonably quick one.
The X100S's field of view is a little narrower than?our current Editors' Choice prime-lens compact camera, the 28mm-equivalent Ricoh GR. The Ricoh has some things working in its favor that the X100S can't match?it's small enough to slide into the pocket of your jeans, and its asking price is $500 less. The X100S is a low-light king, and even though its lens isn't as sharp edge-to-edge as the Ricoh's, you'll be anything but disappointed with the images that it captures. It too deserves to be called Editors' Choice.
Design and Features Olympus was the first company to wow us with a chic retro design camera with its original digital PEN Micro Four Thirds body. But Fujifilm took the torch and ran with it when it announced the X100 in 2010. From a distance it looks a bit like a chrome Leica M camera, albeit with a few extra dials and a smaller footprint. A silver finish adorns the top plate, bottom plate, and lens, and black leatherette surrounds the body of the camera. It measures just 2.9 by 5 by 2.1 inches (HWD) and weighs just a smidge under a pound. That's a bit heavy for its size, but there's no skimping on the build quality?the X100S feels like a solidly built product. The Leica X2 is almost the same size (2.7 by 4.9 by 2 inches), but a bit lighter at 11.2 ounces. That camera features a 35mm f/2.8 equivalent lens and an image sensor of equal size, but doesn't include any sort of built-in viewfinder.
The lens is a 23mm f/2 design, which delivers the field of view of a 35mm lens in terms of full-frame photography. It's a classic prime design that delivers a moderately wide-angle field of view. There are a few other premium compacts that match that perspective, including the full-frame Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX1. There is a wide-angle adapter available ($349) that broadens the perspective of the X100S to match the 28mm field of view delivered by the Ricoh GR, but it adds a good amount of size and cost to the camera.
Rather than using a mode dial, the X100S takes a more classic approach to setting a shooting mode. The lens has a physical aperture ring with 1-stop clicks from f/2 through f/16, as well as an A setting. The shutter speed dial, located on the top plate, allows you to set the shutter in one-stop increments from 1/4-second to 1/4,000-second, and also has an A setting. Setting the shutter to A and controlling the aperture ring manually puts you in aperture priority mode; setting the aperture to A and adjusting the shutter speed is the equivalent of shutter priority mode. And if you leave both settings to A, you'll experience the equivalent of program shooting. Full manual shooting is also available?just set your ISO, shutter speed, and aperture and go to town. There's an EV indicator bar on the left of the rear LCD and visible in the optical finder as well; it lets you know if you are under or overexposed at current settings. A half-press of the shutter will also show you what the scene will look like when captured, assuming you are using the EVF or rear LCD at that time.
Any shift in exposure can be dialed in using the top-mounted exposure compensation dial. It ranges from -2 to +2 EV in 1/3-stop increments. There's also a programmable Fn button on the top plate, to the right of the shutter release; by default it adjusts the current ISO setting. It can be set manually, or to auto; it's also from here that you'll be able to set the desired minimum shutter speed for auto ISO shooting. The default is 1/60, but you can set it to values ranging from 1/4 to 1/125-second.
There's one way to take control of your shooting, which is essentially an ISO priority mode. If you set the camera to auto ISO but manually select the shutter speed and aperture, the camera will do its best to capture the correct exposure. It's still possible to select a combination that will result in an over or underexposed image. The camera will tell you that you've done this in a couple ways: The shutter speed will turn to red on the information display, and the EV bar will let you know how far over or underexposed that the shot will be. Pentax SLRs have had this feature for years, and it carried on to the Ricoh GR as TAv mode. Recent Nikon SLRs, including the D800 and D7100 have it as well.
There are some additional controls on the rear of the camera. There's a jog switch at the top?pressing it left or right will shift the aperture or shutter speed when shooting in program mode, but only if the ISO is set to a specific value. Pressing it in magnifies the live view frame, helpful for confirming focus. There's also an AEL/AFL button, a button to select the active autofocus point, one to enable macro shooting, another to control the flash output, and a button for white balance control. These last four are at each point of a four-way controller/control wheel that is used to navigate through menus and to move the active autofocus point.
To the left of the LCD you'll find controls to enter playback mode, change the metering pattern, select from continuous drive shooting options, and change between the rear LCD, eye-level finder, or activate an eye-sensor to make that changeover automatic; there's also a control button to the right of the rear LCD that changes how much information is overlaid over the optical finder and live view frame. Finally there's the Q button, in the rear right corner. It brings up a menu that allows you to change most of the settings that we've just listed off, as well as some that relate to the JPG output. These include the color balance (there are some film emulation modes that emulate classic Fuji emulsions like Velvia and Provia) as well as image sharpening and noise reduction, and the LCD brightness. This is also the quickest way to enable or disable the self-timer?you'll have to dive into the camera's main menu to do so if you don't utilize the Q function.
In its biggest update yet, Vine is trying to beef up its isolated and popular service?people love Vine, but once you're in Vine, it's so lonely! The billboard new feature? "Revines", which are exactly what they sound like.
The newly updated iOS app now has 15 content channels that make browsing for stuff inside Vine easier. There are also new camera tools. Take that Instagram video. [Vine]
Ready to save some cash on your tech buys? Then you've come to the right place. Our sister site gdgt tracks price drops on thousands of products every day, and twice a week they feature some of the best deals they've found right here. But act fast! Many of these are limited-time offers, and won't last long.
Today's hottest deals include a 55-inch LED HDTV and Canon DSLR available at prices worthy of fireworks-like oohs and ahs. Want the latest deals delivered to your inbox? Join gdgt and add the gadgets you're shopping for to your "Want" list. Every time there's a price cut, you'll get an email alert!
Sharing your location through Glympse has been a time-sensitive affair, with friends and family receiving links to maps that would plot your position for a few hours at most. Now, however, Glympse has partnered with Evernote to save records of your travels. Simply share your current location broadcast to Evernote and the complete trek will be saved to a "My Glympse Trails" folder. Android users are getting the first crack at the new feature starting today, but folks running the iOS app are set to receive the integration shortly. Check your handset for the update or click the bordering source link to grab ahold of the app.
Google is responsible for giving birth to tools that have changed the entire world: Google search, Gmail, Android and so forth. It should be celebrated! However, Google is also responsible for the death of many of its own products as it re-focuses its priorities: Google Labs, Google Reader and many other less celebrated Google products. It should be charged with murder!
Military technology doesn't simply spring forth fully formed from a DARPA engineer's head like some GI Athena. It requires extensive development cycles and field testing before it's put on the front lines. At this year's semi-annual Network Integration Evaluations (NIE) at the White Sands Missile Range, in New Mexico, Army researchers put a trio of technologies through their paces. Technologies that could radically alter how future wars are waged by delivering a more complete battlefield view to troops in the line of fire.
New hardware design protects data in the cloudPublic release date: 2-Jul-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Andrew Carleen acarleen@mit.edu 617-253-1682 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
A new hardware design makes data encryption more secure by disguising cloud servers' memory-access patterns
CAMBRIDGE, Mass -- Cloud computing -- outsourcing computational tasks over the Internet -- could give home-computer users unprecedented processing power and let small companies launch sophisticated Web services without building massive server farms.
But it also raises privacy concerns. A bank of cloud servers could be running applications for 1,000 customers at once; unbeknownst to the hosting service, one of those applications might have no purpose other than spying on the other 999.
Encryption could make cloud servers more secure. Only when the data is actually being processed would it be decrypted; the results of any computations would be re-encrypted before they're sent off-chip.
In the last 10 years or so, however, it's become clear that even when a computer is handling encrypted data, its memory-access patterns -- the frequency with which it stores and accesses data at different memory addresses can betray a shocking amount of private information.
At the International Symposium on Computer Architecture in June, MIT researchers described a new type of secure hardware component, dubbed Ascend, that would disguise a server's memory-access patterns, making it impossible for an attacker to infer anything about the data being stored. Ascend also thwarts another type of attack, known as a timing attack, which attempts to infer information from the amount of time that computations take.
Computational trade-off
Similar designs have been proposed in the past, but they've generally traded too much computational overhead for security. "This is the first time that any hardware design has been proposed -- it hasn't been built yet -- that would give you this level of security while only having about a factor of three or four overhead in performance," says Srini Devadas, the Edwin Sibley Webster Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, whose group developed the new system. "People would have thought it would be a factor of 100."
The "trivial way" of obscuring memory-access patterns, Devadas explains, would be to request data from every address in the memory -- whether a memory chip or a hard drive -- and throw out everything except the data stored at the one address of interest. But that would be much too time-consuming to be practical.
What Devadas and his collaborators -- graduate students Ling Ren, Xiangyao Yu and Christopher Fletcher, and research scientist Marten van Dijk do instead is to arrange memory addresses in a data structure known as a "tree." A family tree is a familiar example of a tree, in which each "node" (in this example, a person's name) is attached to only one node above it (the node representing the person's parents) but may connect to several nodes below it (the person's children).
With Ascend, addresses are assigned to nodes randomly. Every node lies along some "path," or route through the tree, that starts at the top and passes from node to node, without backtracking, until arriving at a node with no further connections. When the processor requires data from a particular address, it sends requests to all the addresses in a path that includes the one it's really after.
To prevent an attacker from inferring anything from sequences of memory access, every time Ascend accesses a particular memory address, it randomly swaps that address with one stored somewhere else in the tree. As a consequence, accessing a single address multiple times will very rarely require traversing the same path.
Less computation to disguise an address
By confining its dummy requests to a single path, rather than sending them to every address in memory, Ascend exponentially reduces the amount of computation required to disguise an address. In a separate paper, which is as-yet unpublished but has been posted online, the researchers prove that querying paths provides just as much security as querying every address in memory would.
Ascend also protects against timing attacks. Suppose that the computation being outsourced to the cloud is the mammoth task of comparing a surveillance photo of a criminal suspect to random photos on the Web. The surveillance photo itself would be encrypted, and thus secure from prying eyes. But spyware in the cloud could still deduce what public photos it was being compared to. And the time the comparisons take could indicate something about the source photos: Photos of obviously different people could be easy to rule out, but photos of very similar people might take longer to distinguish.
So Ascend's memory-access scheme has one final wrinkle: It sends requests to memory at regular intervals -- even when the processor is busy and requires no new data. That way, attackers can't tell how long any given computation is taking.
###
Written by Larry Hardesty, MIT News Office
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
New hardware design protects data in the cloudPublic release date: 2-Jul-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Andrew Carleen acarleen@mit.edu 617-253-1682 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
A new hardware design makes data encryption more secure by disguising cloud servers' memory-access patterns
CAMBRIDGE, Mass -- Cloud computing -- outsourcing computational tasks over the Internet -- could give home-computer users unprecedented processing power and let small companies launch sophisticated Web services without building massive server farms.
But it also raises privacy concerns. A bank of cloud servers could be running applications for 1,000 customers at once; unbeknownst to the hosting service, one of those applications might have no purpose other than spying on the other 999.
Encryption could make cloud servers more secure. Only when the data is actually being processed would it be decrypted; the results of any computations would be re-encrypted before they're sent off-chip.
In the last 10 years or so, however, it's become clear that even when a computer is handling encrypted data, its memory-access patterns -- the frequency with which it stores and accesses data at different memory addresses can betray a shocking amount of private information.
At the International Symposium on Computer Architecture in June, MIT researchers described a new type of secure hardware component, dubbed Ascend, that would disguise a server's memory-access patterns, making it impossible for an attacker to infer anything about the data being stored. Ascend also thwarts another type of attack, known as a timing attack, which attempts to infer information from the amount of time that computations take.
Computational trade-off
Similar designs have been proposed in the past, but they've generally traded too much computational overhead for security. "This is the first time that any hardware design has been proposed -- it hasn't been built yet -- that would give you this level of security while only having about a factor of three or four overhead in performance," says Srini Devadas, the Edwin Sibley Webster Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, whose group developed the new system. "People would have thought it would be a factor of 100."
The "trivial way" of obscuring memory-access patterns, Devadas explains, would be to request data from every address in the memory -- whether a memory chip or a hard drive -- and throw out everything except the data stored at the one address of interest. But that would be much too time-consuming to be practical.
What Devadas and his collaborators -- graduate students Ling Ren, Xiangyao Yu and Christopher Fletcher, and research scientist Marten van Dijk do instead is to arrange memory addresses in a data structure known as a "tree." A family tree is a familiar example of a tree, in which each "node" (in this example, a person's name) is attached to only one node above it (the node representing the person's parents) but may connect to several nodes below it (the person's children).
With Ascend, addresses are assigned to nodes randomly. Every node lies along some "path," or route through the tree, that starts at the top and passes from node to node, without backtracking, until arriving at a node with no further connections. When the processor requires data from a particular address, it sends requests to all the addresses in a path that includes the one it's really after.
To prevent an attacker from inferring anything from sequences of memory access, every time Ascend accesses a particular memory address, it randomly swaps that address with one stored somewhere else in the tree. As a consequence, accessing a single address multiple times will very rarely require traversing the same path.
Less computation to disguise an address
By confining its dummy requests to a single path, rather than sending them to every address in memory, Ascend exponentially reduces the amount of computation required to disguise an address. In a separate paper, which is as-yet unpublished but has been posted online, the researchers prove that querying paths provides just as much security as querying every address in memory would.
Ascend also protects against timing attacks. Suppose that the computation being outsourced to the cloud is the mammoth task of comparing a surveillance photo of a criminal suspect to random photos on the Web. The surveillance photo itself would be encrypted, and thus secure from prying eyes. But spyware in the cloud could still deduce what public photos it was being compared to. And the time the comparisons take could indicate something about the source photos: Photos of obviously different people could be easy to rule out, but photos of very similar people might take longer to distinguish.
So Ascend's memory-access scheme has one final wrinkle: It sends requests to memory at regular intervals -- even when the processor is busy and requires no new data. That way, attackers can't tell how long any given computation is taking.
###
Written by Larry Hardesty, MIT News Office
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
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Public release date: 2-Jul-2013
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