If your mum is hardworking and deserves a little spoiling, then this year’s Mother’s Day is the perfect chance to say thank you and send her either on a spa day, or for a spa break the weekend in a luxury hotel. The majority of hotels will offer a treat for your mum at your request, allowing you to organize a fantastic day or weekend out, with an extra little surprise in it for her as well.

Weekend health spa breaks are getting more and more popular, and are the perfect Mother’s Day gift. It’s all too easy to get drawn into the hustle and bustle of everyday life, with no time to devote to your physical or mental health.

A weekend spa break is a great way to unwind and de-stress. It’s difficult to imagine a more different pace of life from the one most of us are caught up in, but even if it is just a day of relaxation, every little helps. It is the time and place where it’s fine to have breakfast in bed, to slink around in slippers all day and relax, relax, relax.

If you aren’t quite sure which spa your mother would like to visit, then you could always get her a spa gift voucher that can be used at a variety of locations, allowing her to choose where to go, and select the treatments she wants most.

Other popular gift ideas for Mothers’ include ‘The Slanket’ which is a gigantic fleece blanket with arms so your mum can do useful things like hold cups of tea, or make your dinner, while keeping warm! Great for those who feel the cold or are trying to keep the heating bills low.

Of course, most mum’s enjoy the decadent taste of chocolate, so treats such as boxes of chocolate or luxury cupcakes wouldn’t go amiss. For those on a smaller budget, mums would appreciate a home baked cake or handmade cookies – made with love.

If your mum wants to skip the calories, then indulge her in some cosmetic bliss with such delights as bath bombs, hand-made soaps, salt scrubs and of course candles to decorate the bath.

Promotional merchandise forms an integral part of advertising for business promotion today. Fiercely competitive commercial world has prompted the entrepreneurs across the globe adopting multiple types of methods to promote their products and services online. In the forefront of the list of useful business promotion tools is the promotional merchandise.

From T-shirts to badges and desktop accessories to promotional bags, promotional Products is available in divergent forms. Not only there are a host of promotional products but they come in numerous shapes, sizes, styles, and prices. Only common feature in respect of all of them is that the names, logos, and brands of the company are imprinted on the merchandize.

Innovative use of the promotional merchandise can be made in developing marketing solutions and addressing the marketing challenges. It can help creating brand awareness that is extremely indispensable part of business promotion today. At the same time increase in tradeshow traffic as well as retention of valued employees are other advantages of using promotional products as gift to customers or own employees of the enterprise.

Impacts of brand images could be significant on consumers. Recipients of the printed promotional products will have the brand name, logo, or messages before their eyes all the while. In addition the visitors who put visit to them will also be finding them alive before them. In tandem the process creates a lot of customers for your purpose of active business promotion. In addition this can immensely improve the overall image of the business. Existing customers will stick to qualitative brands, new customers will be attracted, and the best part of it is that both will recommend your brand to others making your business take the real jumpstart.

Currently, the replica versions are known basically for their cheapness. They come in various sizes, shapes and designs. As a result, their prices vary a bit. But the fact remains that, they are all within affordable rates. Every woman on earth can easily save to purchase some of the models.

General Description
The Replica Dior handbags are known for their wonderful model versions. They all bear the same name but with different model numbers. The model numbers appear in overlapping series. Both their names and model numbers together with the logo of the company are engraved on their front panels. You are likely to see their model numbers in these forms: Dior 08941, Dior 80941 and so on.
The replica models are made of solid leather materials and other exotic fabrics that make them appear very beautiful, cute and sound.

In all, the replica handbags are known for their affordability.

Original Article: Tomorrow (September 9), a giant worldwide game of Monopoly will commence, using the real world. That is, the real world on Google Maps. Hasbro, the creators of the classic board game, are launching the game called, “Monopoly City Streets,” in which players will fight for the largest empire in the world.

The official site for the game offers the following description:

A live worldwide game of MONOPOLY using Google Maps as the game board. The goal is simple. Play to beat your friends and the world to become the richest property magnate in existence.

Own any street in the world. Build humble houses, crazy castles and stupendous skyscrapers to collect rent. Use MONOPOLY Chance Cards to sabotage your mates by building Hazards on their streets.

I have to say, I’ve seen some interesting things done with Google Maps, but this is one of the most interesting. I’ve always been a fan of Monopoly, but to create a massive online game of it, using the actual world (as seen by Google Maps) is just brilliant.

What I have not seen yet is a rulebook for the game. How does the game translate to such a large-scale project? How do you roll the dice and take turns? Is there a “Go to Jail…Do not pass go, do not collect $200″ card? Are there even Community Chests?

There are a lot of questions, but they should be answered tomorrow. Daily Mail does have a few details. Players will start with $3 million. Pennsylvania Avenue (home of the White House) costs $2 million, and rent is automatically paid each day from $50,000 for a house to $100 million for a skyscraper.
source:http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1211686/Monopoly-goes-global-giant-online-game-using-Google-Maps.html

To a certain degree, this move makes more sense than other advertising tie-ups. Game shows often involve money and products that are available for purchase, after all, putting their viewers into a consumer-y frame of mind.

A post on Google’s Let’s Take it Offline blog also adds, “As the premier television network for games, GSN produces some of the most popular original casino and game show series on TV today. The typical demographic for GSN is pretty broad, with its audience consisting of adults in all ranges, who are interested in live game shows and interaction with TV shows.”

Anyway, as the picture below proves, this development follows a number of other impressive partnerships involving Google TV Ads and various networks. Despite the struggles and eventual demise of Google Audio Ads and Google Print Ads (with which Google TV Ads shared the “Offline” blog), Google TV Ads just keeps getting stronger.

Would-be users should know, “Once you upload your ad and set the CPM and budget, your ads will then be entered into the auction. After your ads air, you will have access to reports measuring the number of impressions, CPM and audience retention based on accurate set-top-box data.”

GIPS has provided the underlying voice technology for Yahoo Messenger for the last three years. Now GIPS is providing its VideoEngine to add the video element to the messenger.

“With the launch of Yahoo! Messenger 10, we’re allowing people to instantly communicate with friends and family around the world through new interactive and social features like video calls,” says Dave Merriwether, senior director of Yahoo! Messenger. “The GIPS VideoEngine enables us to provide the Yahoo! Messenger community with the best video experience possible. Now people can enjoy full-screen, face-to-face chats with friends and family at no cost, in the familiar Yahoo! Messenger environment.”

“Yahoo! Messenger is the leading communication platform that provides people with the greatest choice to stay connected to one another through text IM, PC-based calling, mobile text messaging and now video calling,” says Emerick Woods, GIPS’ CEO. “”We’re proud to work with Yahoo! to deliver a truly differentiated high quality video experience for the hundreds of millions of people on Yahoo! Messenger around the world.”

On a semi-related note, Google just recently launched a new voice/video chat application for the iGoogle homepage.

Every time British businessman Robert Charlton cheated on his wife, he bought her some extravagant jewelry to try to make amends. After 26 years of marriage, long-suffering Elizabeth Charlton had more than 40 glittering pieces.

Charlton’s infidelity cost him nearly 300,000 pounds ($492,400) it emerged last month, when his daughter auctioned off the late couple’s jewelry collection.

“He bought her a lot of things to keep her happy and to ease the pain of his many affairs,” said Clare Durham, a spokeswoman for Woolley & Wallis, the auction house that handled the sale. “I think everybody knew it was a fairly open secret.”

Over the course of his romances, Charlton, who died in 1974, bought his wife antique diamond earrings, bracelets, rings and necklaces. One piece, a riviere necklace made up of 54 diamonds, was the most expensive item auctioned, fetching 50,000 pounds.

The riviere was once bought in the 1900s for around 400 pounds, the auction house said, a sum that would have made it extremely expensive when Charlton bought it in the 1960s.

“The big diamonds were Edwardian and Victorian so they were antique pieces when he bought them for her in the 60s and 70s,” said Durham.

Charlton’s daughter chose to auction a total of 43 pieces from the guilt-ridden collection after other family members declined to accept them. The family kept other pieces.

“He didn’t just buy her jewelry when he played away. He did buy her gifts for birthdays and Christmas and things like that. I don’t think he was that bad,” said Durham.
source: http://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idUSTRE57H2GD20090818

“Today, you’ll find that people are looking for Israeli wines that meet international standards and the good thing is we are actually producing wines like that,” Israeli wine critic Daniel Rogov says in an interview at a busy Tel Aviv wine shop.

“There is no contradiction between wines that are kosher and wines that are excellent.”

Israeli wineries, both industrial-scale and boutique, make over 33 million bottles a year, according to the Israeli Wine Council, but the vast majority of Israeli wine is kosher or made in accordance with Jewish dietary laws.

Whilst the rabbinical seal has long been associated with wines made to appeal to observant Jews rather than connoisseurs, the quality of Israeli wines is improving, helped by government incentives for smaller producers, and some vintages are now garnering international plaudits.

Robert Parker, among the world’s most influential wine critics, has heaped praise and points on some 40 Israeli wines. Fourteen of them won more than 90 out of a maximum 100 points in Parker’s rating system.

Wines from neighboring Lebanon, which traces its winemaking industry back over 4,000 years, have been winning international awards for decades. Israel enjoys the same Mediterranean climate.

Weighing in with 93 points was the red 2003 Yatir Forest label from a subsidiary of Carmel Winery.

Founded by the Baron Edmond James de Rothschild, an early 20th-century Zionist philanthropist, Carmel is Israel’s largest winery, accounting for 40 percent of the Jewish state’s contemporary wine market.

But along with many of its 200-odd rival Israeli wineries, Carmel has recently been applying methods learned from France, Australia and California, to locally grown grapes.

“Our chief winemaker studied in France, so we’ve learnt from the traditions of France but we also make use of the technologies from places like Australia and California,” Adam Montefiore, marketing director for Carmel Winery, said at a wine festival in Jerusalem this month.

“We feel in the last 10, 15 years, Israeli wines are really making world class wines.”

Montefiore says Carmel produces a range of wines both for those who want to “drink wine without tasting it” and for connoisseurs. Prices range from $10 to $100 a bottle. Half of Carmel’s annual production of 15 million bottles is exported to the United States, Europe and Asia.

Israel exports roughly $22 million dollars worth of wine a year, according to the Central Statistics Bureau.

EXPERTS AND EXPORTS

Founded in 2002, the family-owned Pelter winery in the Golan Heights benefits from the cool climate and water-rich soil of the plateau, which Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 war and annexed in 1981 — a move rejected by the United Nations.

Sam Pelter, whose son Tal founded the winery after extensive wine-making studies in Australia, says he combines Australian techniques and technology with Golan grapes. His wines sell at $18-$50 a bottle and are sold in the United States and Europe.

Some 18-20 percent of Israeli wine comes from the Golan, according to wine critic Rogov, though wines made on disputed land can sometimes invite controversy.

Last December, Syria protested to U.N. leaders that Israel had distributed Golan wine as year-end holiday gifts to U.N. staff. In 2006, Israel complained that Sweden was labeling Golan wines as coming from Israeli-occupied Syrian territory.

Israeli settlers also make wine on occupied Arab land in the West Bank, sometimes drawing boycotts by peace activists.

Political sensitivities have not stopped Pelter’s wines making a splash abroad.

Pelter’s most famous wine is Trio 2007, which took a double gold award at Finger Lakes competition in New York. A blend of cabernet sauvignon, merlot and cabernet franc grapes aged 14 months in French oak barrels, it has hints of fruit and cocoa.

Chris, an American visitor attending the Jerusalem festival, described Trio 2007 as a “different and surprising” wine.

Other tourists also expressed surprise over the lightness of Carmel’s red wines, and the sweetness of their whites.

“For my taste, (the red wine is) a little on the light side. I’m looking for a red wine that has the kind of body that I would find in, say, a good robust Australian red wine,” said Malcolm Kessin of Atlanta, Georgia.

While Israel’s wine industry is growing, Rogov says vintners have yet to sort out the best of Israel’s 42 grape varietals.

“We have to find out which grapes are most suited to our particular sub-climates, different regions of Israel, et cetera, which is no sin,” said Rogov. “Remember — we’re still young.”
source: http://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idUSTRE57H1R520090818?sp=true

Google has now decided to add Picasa photos into the mix. This makes perfect sense, considering Google owns Picasa.

“Millions of people already rely on Picasa Web Albums to share their photographs with friends and the internet community,” says Daniel Cotting, Software Engineer, Google Zurich. “Now, their public geo-tagged photos will help Google Maps users to get a better impression of a geographic place, especially for areas where we may not have any Panoramio photos.”

Google selects Picasa photos by looking for geo-tagged public images. They apply face detection to screen out images with identifiable individuals and image matching so they are including the most relevant pictures.

“The feature is available at major landmarks around the world, in places as different as Paris, Tokyo, and New Zealand,” says Cotting. “When you try it out, you’ll discover how easy it is to seamlessly navigate between images from Street View, Panoramio, and now Picasa — particularly with our new photo-zoom feature.”

This year, Google also added some new zooming functionalities to Street View. You can read more about that here.

source: http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2009/08/14/google-taps-photos-on-its-own-picasa-for-street-view