Watch a video of the hotel before you decide to stay April 28, 2007
Posted by Shel in Travel, Trends.add a comment
Here’s a good way to really ensure that you have a hotel room that you like thanks to Trivop that is said to be the first online hotel video portal, the hotel gives a video walk-through, with videos starting at the street outside the hotel, into the lobby, public spaces and then the rooms. Springwise reports that there are video’s for each type of hotel room. The French Trivop allows users to upload their own videos of the hotel and has 154 hotels in Paris and 11 hotels in London listed on it’s site.
Trivop’s main challenge is to build content and traffic quickly, since TripAdvisor (which has 20 million unique visitors each month and is owned by Expedia), started letting users upload videos last month.
Reliance outbids competition for Park Circus market April 28, 2007
Posted by Shel in Retail.add a comment
Reliance Retail will be redeveloping Kolkata’s Park Circus civic market after it beat out competition from three Kolkata based real estate developers. The market has is owned by the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC). Reliance has 154,000 sq ft of space in a total area of 230,000 sq ft in the Park Circus market, and 400 stall holders will have to be rehabilitated. Reliance will develop the bulk of the market into a shopping centre, multiplex or mall, with an estimated 10-15% of the total area kept aside for the corporation.
First Reliance Digital opens; company plans its own electronic brand April 28, 2007
Posted by Shel in Retail.7 comments
Reliance Retail launched it consumer electronics label calledReliance Digital, with a store at Shipra Mall in Ghaziabad. Reliance will be investing Rs 1,000 crore over the next 3-4 years to set up 150 Reliance Digital stores, of which the first store opened in the NCR on this week. A second outlet will openin the NCR, followed by 3-4 stores in south India. At its Reliance Digital stores, the company will sell the entire range of consumer electronics, including TVs, home theatres, refrigerators, cooking ranges, dishwashers, computers, mobile phones and many more items. Most stores will be in the range of 15,000-30,000 sq ft in size.
Live the good life in Bozeman, Montana April 24, 2007
Posted by Shel in Real Estate, Travel, Trends.add a comment
While the majority of people don’t think of most of the Midwest as traditionally picturesque or beautiful, I fell in love with the grandness of the sky of the Midwest. The big sky is quite common in most of the Midwestern states, and it’s an awe-inspiring feeling, to be dwarfed by the immensity of the world. The problem is that unless you’ve been there, you’ll never know how amazing the experience is and tourism and real estate are at the front of this new push towards the Midwestern states. Ever since movies such as A river runs through it and The Horse Whisperer have been made, bozeman montana real estate where the movies were shot have really picked up.
Other than tourism, the high quality of life is also attracting lots of people to smaller towns like Bozeman, Montana, people who want to try to lead simpler lives. It’s is really tempting actually, because you can be connected to the whole wide world via the Internet and telephone, while still being able to live in a beautiful open environment, short commutes if any and overall save money by not paying exorbitantly high rents and utility charges.
Private label products on the rise in the US April 24, 2007
Posted by Shel in Retail.add a comment
US customers are increasingly becoming accustomed to private label food products, which have been quite common in the UK. Tesco plans to use its stock of private labels when ic starts stores in the US, under the Fresh & Easy brand, which will be neighborhood stores that focus on providing all the basic necesseties regarding food. Prepared food will make up a substantial part of the stores. Target also recently announced that it would be pushing its private label grown from 2-3% to 15% in the next three to four years. Another US company Publix Super Markets is holding a promotion where consumers who purchase nationally branded products get free products of the same amount of Publix private label.
Big box retailers embrace green movement April 21, 2007
Posted by Shel in Marketing, Retail, Trends.add a comment
Big Box retailers are taking note of the green movement that is taking place in all aspects of the retail industry. While the majority of retailer have sold eco-friendly items for years, they are now getting more proactive about promoting them and advertising the fact that they are selling them. Critics also say that retailers are using this to deflect protests about large retailers moving into their communities. A lot of consumers never though of Wal-Mart as a ‘green’ retailer, and have been surprised to find a lot of eco-friendly products available there such as energy saving bulbs, organic milk and pasta etc.
Part of the new focus on green retailing can be attributed to the success of Gore’s movie, An Inconvenient Truth, which details the possible perils of global warming.
“It has gotten a lot of high-level [retail] executives thinking about this,” Daniel Butler, a vice president at the National Retail Federation, said of the film.
However, Butler, who follows environmental issues for the federation, said the move toward more eco-sensitive selling has been building for years. “I don’t see this as being a fad,” he said.
The U.S. organic industry alone grew 17 percent to reach $14.6 billion in consumer sales in 2005. The market for energy-efficient products is also estimated to be in the billions of dollars.
On feed aggregators April 20, 2007
Posted by Shel in Blogging/Writing.add a comment
Checking my feed stats today, I saw that no one uses Bloglines to read my feed. Currently, my feeds are divided between Feedster, Google Feedfetcher, BlogPulse, web browsers and others. I was quite surprised to not see Bloglines in there, since it simply is the best one out there. I’ve been using it for a long time, (over two years is a long time in the blogworld right?) and absolutely love it. This morning when I went in to read my feeds, the site was down for maintenance, but with their cute plumber guy shrugging his shoulders you just have to smile.
For those not in the know about feed aggregators, they are simply places where you can subscribe to all the blogs that you read, so you can access them all in one spot. They get updated automatically, so you don’t need to go to 10 different (63 in my case!) sites to read new posts. All feeds are saved online and accessible anywhere you go.
JC Penney on a roll again April 20, 2007
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JC Penney’s is coming back in a big way. The company’s market capitalization rose $5.8 billion in 2006 and the company announced that it would be adding 250 new stores in the next 5 years, and would be increasing it’s profit targets. One of the company’s new stores that has opened in Fort Worth, in the Alliance Town Center is one of its new versions. The store also has a Sephora store inside, which the company plans to increase to 47 stores. Designer Ralph Lauren is designing a collection of apparel called American Living that will be available at Penney stores next year.
Penney’s mix of 50 percent private brands and 50 percent national brands gives it more control, Mr. Hicks said. “We have the highest concentration of private brands within our competitor group, and that gives us an advantage because we can control the product, prices and get stronger margins.”
Personally, I am very happy to see JC Penney rising high again, since I did my internship with them and simply loved the way the stores and company was run. The company never compromised on the quality of its merchandise. The designs, admittedly became a bit stodgy after a while, but one never found anything shoddy at Penney’s.
Amazon launches indie music brand April 19, 2007
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Amazon announced that it will be launching a new independent music label called Go Indie, for which it had tied up with over 30 independent music labels. The label will have close to 700 titles, with 150 titles priced at just $9.99. The company feels that while the indie music fan base is increasing, it has been hard to for fans to find the music. The store will also feature videos from six indie artists, which will also be available at Amazon Indie deals page for some time.
More than 30 music labels are participating in the limited-time offering, including: Alligator Records, Anti, Astralwerks, Barsuk, Beggars Group, Bloodshot Records, Compass Records, Domino Records, Epitaph, Fat Possum, Hellcat, Koch Records, Matador, Megaforce, Mute, New West, Putumayo, Rykodisc, Sci Fidelity, Silva, Six Degrees, Smithsonian Folkways, Spin Art, Sub Pop, Sugar Hill, Touch N Go, Ultra, Vagrant, World Music Network and Yep Roc.
Online or offline dictionary? April 19, 2007
Posted by Shel in Blogging/Writing.add a comment
Do you still use a regular dictionary? Or have you completely switched to an online one? I keep a Webster’s New World Dictionary on my window ledge beside my desk and although I do use it from time to time, I find myself using the online dictionary more and more lately. Which is really surprising since I love to read, love the smell of books and pretty much everything else too. Online dictionaries have got pretty good lately, but for some words a regular dictionary is definitely better. I have my system set up for US-English, so if I am looking for a more UK angled word then I’m not going to find anything in my computer’s dictionary.
