Family Hotels In Miami - 14 Practices That Will Ruin Your Twitter Reputation

Source - http://www.forbes.com/
By - Press Release
Category - Family Hotels In Miami
Posted By - Inn and Suites In West Miami

 

Family Hotels In Miami

In just a few years Twitter has become the go-to method of connecting with customers and potential clients, but you know that already, right? A new study of 200 executives by LiveFyre, a company specializing in social engagement and curation, found that 93% of respondents turned to Twitter when gathering real-time social activity—more than any other social platform. We all make mistakes from time to time, but you don’t want to make a wrong step with this real-time platform. Here are 14 practices that could be devastating to your Twitter reputation.

1. Fake a Twitter hack. Getting your account hacked is bad enough because people might wonder whether or not you can keep their information safe. However, faking a hack, as Chipotle recently did in a 20th Anniversary PR stunt, can leave a worse impression—that you have poor taste and judgement.

2. Talking politics. A lot of businesses and CEOs have taken heat for expressing political opinions. Unless people are following you for your opinion on a wide variety of topics, be measured in your statements.

3. Deleting a comment instead of engaging. If you find yourself getting in a heated discussion or tweet something you regret, don’t try to make it disappear by deleting your tweet. Instead, confront the issue and engage in conversation and express the remorse you may be feeling.

4. Not engaging at all. If you are a business and you have a Twitter account, and you request website visitors to follow you with those buttons on your site, make sure you’re actually corresponding and tweeting! People follow because they want information, give it to them.

5. Tweet only when you want something. It’s understandable that having direct access to customers provides a tempting proposition. However, this power should not be abused, but respected. It’s okay to ask for things, but it should be balanced.

6. Posting inappropriate pics. This sounds like a no-brainer, but apparently some people need a quick reminder. Inappropriate pictures can range from party shots to employees doing bad things. Don’t do it.

7. Tweet negative comments about co-workers. Your followers don’t need to know about internal drama. Worse, expressing rifts in a public forum shows a lack of consideration for your co-workers and the situation.

8. Fail to disclose a paid endorsement. Back in 2009 the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) established guidelines that requires bloggers, celebrities and “word-of-mouth” marketers from endorsing products or services for pay without disclosure. So aside from it being illegal, if it ever did come out that you were getting paid it would be a PR nightmare.

9. Tweet before verifying. News spreads lightening fast on social media and it’s easy to get caught up with the crowd. More than ever it’s important to slow down and verify the information before retweeting. How many celebrities need to #RIP and then come back to life before we get the message?

10. Spam with DM. Just the other day I started following a new professional and within 24 hours I had a direct message to purchase their product. To be honest I follow people because I’m interested in their message, but it’s never a good idea to push a sale like this before extending a “hello.” Twitter’s an amazing platform to make connections, so make one before selling.

11. Tweet from the wrong account. A lot of folks on Twitter have more than one account, and third-party tools have made it really simple to swap between them. Make sure you’re on the right account before you tweet your personal thoughts or opinions.

12. Inconsistently tweet. There’s a lot of disagreement about tweeting too much or too little. One thing you should not do is tweet 10 times in a day and then disappear for a week, then tweet twice and then disappear for two weeks, and then tweet just once. Consistency is the key to staying engaged.

13. Not shorten your URLs. You only have 140 precious characters. Don’t waste them on a long URL when they could be dramatically shorter; offering you the opportunity to add context to the link. If the majority of tweets you’re sending are only links you’re wasting a huge opportunity to connect with your followers.

14. Capitalize or sell products from tragedy. A lot of terrible things happen in this world and when they do millions turn to Twitter to keep informed. It’s really bad form to spin the tragedy or to use a trending hashtag for personal gain. Be a good social media citizen and show respect.

Hotel Near Miami Beach - PC Industry Fights To Adapt As Tablets Muscle In

Source - http://www.nytimes.com/
By - NICK WINGFIELD
Category - Hotel Near Miami Beach
Posted By - Inn and Suites In West Miami

 

Hotel Near Miami Beach

The death of the personal computer may be an exaggeration. But the industry around personal computers seems to be in limbo. 

Like the mainframe, which was said to be dead decades ago but has remained a meaningful business, the PC will almost certainly cheat death. True, mobile devices like the iPad will continue to gore PC sales. Those mobile devices, though, will most likely never satisfy spreadsheet masters, film editors and other workers who depend on multiple screens and the precision of a keyboard and mouse. 

Still, there is a strong view among many longtime tech executives that the PC’s relevance will steadily diminish. 

“In my humble opinion, the PC as we have known it is in a continuous decline and being relegated to a utility device for businesses,” said Hector Ruiz, the former chief executive of Advanced Micro Devices, a company that makes chips for PCs and other devices. 

The mood around the PC industry has become increasingly glum. The business is effectively in a recession, and there is no upturn in sight. During the second quarter of the year, global PC shipments fell around 11 percent, for their fifth consecutive quarter of declines, the worst downturn since the advent of the PC more than 30 years ago. 

Intel, supplier of the chips in most PCs, and Microsoft, which makes the Windows operating system on the vast majority of those machines, have delivered disappointing financial results. An overhaul of Microsoft’s software, Windows 8, did not lift sales and may have made them worse. 

The once-mighty Dell, deeply weakened by the PC slump, is mired in a struggle with shareholders over a plan to go private, seeking relief from investor pressure. In their bid to take the company private, Michael S. Dell, the founder, and the investment firm Silver Lake have argued that they would turn the company into a corporate software services provider. A vote on Dell’s future is expected this week. 

While sales of PCs to businesses remain steady, demand among consumers has plunged, largely because people are instead buying iPads, Kindle Fires and other tablets. 

Still, a reality check: more than 300 million PCs are expected to be shipped this year globally. That is a lot of widgets for a business that has caught a cold. 

Tablet sales are growing explosively. This year, there are expected to be more than 200 million shipments of the devices, which will for the first time exceed shipments of notebooks, the largest category of PCs, estimates Gartner, the research firm. 

Steven P. Jobs, the Apple chief executive who died in 2011, predicted several years ago that PCs would become something like trucks, workhorses used by many people but outnumbered by tablets, the cars of the technology business. (The analogy is somewhat undercut by stats: the most popular vehicle in the United States for several years has been a truck, the Ford F-150.) 

One theory is that tablets are leading PC shoppers to postpone purchases of new computers, perhaps by a year or two, but that eventually people will be ready for a fresh machine. “Replacement cycles are being pushed out,” said Toni Sacconaghi, an analyst at Bernstein Research. 

A more pessimistic view is that a lot of the consumer demand for PCs will never return. Daniel Huttenlocher, the dean and vice provost of Cornell University’s new New York City technology campus, said consumers began buying PCs in big numbers beginning in the 1990s largely because no better device existed for getting on the Internet. 

But the PC, he said, was always better suited as an office machine for the production of documents, presentations and other work. In his view, tablets are better for the consumption of content, whether that is watching Netflix or surfing the Web. 

“There are way more consumers than producers, period, even in a world with lots of user-generated content,” Dr. Huttenlocher said. 

In the first quarter, 53 percent of computer shipments were to the consumer market while 47 percent were to the commercial market, estimates the research firm IDC. 

Many consumers will still favor PCs for tasks like editing home movies and writing term papers. But tablets are already invading the turf of PCs in many professional niches, from flight manuals for airline pilots to cash registers in restaurants. 

The incumbents in the PC industry — especially Microsoft and Intel, the software-chip duopoly with the most to lose from the decline of the business — have a seemingly straightforward response: redefine the PC to make it more tabletlike. Microsoft designed Windows 8 to work well on touch-screen devices. If users tire of finger gestures, they can switch to a classic Windows desktop interface that they can operate with a mouse and keyboard. 

Intel, meanwhile, has refined its chips so that they are more thrifty with their consumption of battery power, an important requirement for mobile devices. 

The changes have given rise to a frenzy of crossbreeding in devices, effectively blurring the boundaries between PCs and tablets. Now notebooks can turn into tablets either by flipping their screens or through fully detachable displays. Many otherwise ordinary notebooks come with touch displays for quickly jumping between different modes of operation. 

Microsoft and Intel are betting that devices coming out in the fall will finally get PC shoppers back in stores. Microsoft plans to release a new version of its operating system, Windows 8.1, that responds to complaints its customers had with the earlier version. 

“What you’re going to see over the next few months is a lot more designs from every PC manufacturer,” said Adam King, a director of product marketing at Intel. 

Using the automotive analogy of Mr. Jobs to different effect, Frank Shaw, a spokesman for Microsoft, said the car business kept subdividing into many categories, including luxury models and electric vehicles. “You can say the same thing is happening in computing,” Mr. Shaw said. 

Anand Chandrasekher, the chief marketing officer of Qualcomm, which supplies chips for some mobile Windows devices, says he expects Microsoft will successfully adapt to the changes in its business. “I admire Microsoft for the changes they’ve made,” Mr. Chandrasekher said. “We’re bullish that they will have a strong presence in the marketplace.” 

Some people are deeply skeptical that creating a new hybrid class of devices will help stop the momentum of tablets from Apple and companies with devices based on Google’s Android operating system. Marc Benioff, the chief executive of Salesforce.com and a frequent Microsoft antagonist, said customers had already shunned new types of devices, like Microsoft’s Surface. 

“The reason why they’re not accelerating growth is for one simple reason,” Mr. Benioff said. “There’s a better technology.” 

Whatever happens to the PC business, the iron grip that companies like Microsoft and Intel once wielded over hardware makers appears to be no more. Hewlett-Packard now makes a notebook using Google’s Chrome OS software and a tablet based on Android, Google’s mobile operating system. Lenovo, the world’s top seller of PCs, is big seller of Android smartphones and tablets, especially in China. 

In an earlier era of computing, those would have been considered intolerable acts of disloyalty. 

“We’re a device company,” said Gerry Smith, a Lenovo senior vice president and head of its Americas division. “We’re agnostic on hardware and agnostic on software, whether Android or Windows.” 

Meanwhile, Microsoft has struggled to maintain its influence with software developers, which have gravitated in ever greater numbers to Apple and Google’s mobile technologies. 

Aaron Levie, the chief executive of Box, an online storage company that has developed software for Windows 8, said that influence was once Microsoft’s most powerful asset. 

“It wasn’t the absolute value of the technology,” Mr. Levie said. “It’s that you have mindshare and ecosystem support. Microsoft is now in a very different world these days.”

Attractions In West Miami - Why This Apple Lover Sold His iPad

Source - http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/
By - Steve Kovach
Category - Attractions In West Miami
Posted By - Inn and Suites In West Miami

Attractions In West Miami

Do you want to carry around your favorite movie collection, your humongous music playlist or your life’s history in photos, all at the same time on your Android phone? Yes! You can do that and more, without even having your phone’s memory all swallowed up.

This is what the truest form of portable technology, Cloud storage lets us to do. A Cloud storage solution is one of the most acclaimed segments of the charismatic Cloud computing technology; in fact it has become an omnipresent feature of the Cloud that promises users limitless resources and computation.

What’s the Hype Around Cloud Storage?

Cloud Storage involves the storage capacities of some of the most gigantic computing machines, virtualizes them and puts them at the disposal of user. A Cloud storage solution is like an additional repository for all the devices you use, whether at work or at home.

Furthermore, with synchronization that is the main differentiator of Cloud Storage, you get to access your files from everywhere, without having any file transition hindrances.

Cloud Storage for Android – How Good is it?

Other than desktop devices, Smart phones are considered second most commonly used devices through which majority of the people interact with data, internet and varied other IT resources. Moreover, through a study it has been learned that by 2014 Smartphones will replace the desktop web usage. Hence it’s quite an ability of Cloud Storage solutions that allow users to consume data, share it, store it and synchronize it all through their Smartphones.

Android powered phones being the forerunners in the smart phone industry get to attain the most out of this trend as more and more Cloud storage providers are inaugurating their service support for Android. Cloud computing is literally bridging the gap that users previously endeavored while handling data through multiple devices. Now they can access their Cloud storage for saving gigantic files or retrieving their favorite music, movies, pictures, or other sensitive files on the go from their Android phones.

Benefits of Using An Android Supportive Cloud Storage Solution

The thought of having your entire storage of the most cherished files on your phone without having its memory at stake, is enough to attract some of the most ardent Android fans. However, there are other things as well that you can do all from your phone once it gets your Cloud storage Client installed.

The anytime/ anywhere accessibility slogan of Cloud, is denoted well with Android Cloud Storage solution. If you are away and you want to share pictures with your loved ones, Android powered Cloud storage solution lets you do the job more efficiently. Moreover, if you use the same Cloud storage solution at work, you can tally your documents or make amends directly from your phone- this feature is great for users who have their Cloud Storage spaces shared among other users.

Besides, synchronization, robust security, support and more, Android Cloud storage solution never lets you worry again about your phones internal memory. If you want to save something that is big, just select it or download it directly to your Cloud storage on the fly.

Top 5 Android Compatible Cloud Storage Solutions

Providing plethora of features and ease, fortunately for use there are like various Android Cloud storage providers present today. However, some are highly significant in terms of their offerings and pricing. Read on below, the Top 5 Cloud storage services that are a must-have for every Android phone users.

Dropbox: Being the first Cloud storage app, Dropbox is the most widely used solution. It takes the lead for providing users some of the very functional and efficient features that nowadays other Cloud storage solutions are also adopting.

It lets Android users upload anything and everything and access them without any issues. Dropbox grants great amount of storage even on its free subscription, but of course specifies nominal charges if you want more.

Box: Just like Dropbox, Box also provides users a complete control of their ‘stuff’ which they can access through their android phones. With box uses have the ability to share their data with their contacts; however, on the downside this app doesn’t sync your data with your other devices automatically.

Google Drive: It was previously termed as Google Docs; however Google remodeled it so that it would accommodate Cloud storage services, however, coupled with Android, this Cloud storage app works flawlessly. Users can upload their documents, make changes and access it from anywhere.

SkyDrive: Similar to Google, Microsoft too has its own version of the Cloud storage service which is known as SkyDrive. Skydrive lets you store all of your data on to the primly maintained Microsoft Cloud servers. This is also a very cool android Cloud storage app which features a metro style user interface and lets users create or delete folders and share files and photos.

Verizon Cloud Storage: Verizon just recently launched its android supportive Cloud storage app and since then it has been generating waves of popularity. With Verizon Cloud customers can do everything they are likely to be doing with Dropbox. You can safe keep your data into the Verizon cloud ensuring it remains intact if your phone gets lost or needs to be wiped.

Conclusion

The aforementioned Cloud storage solutions are all but the best storage options that are out there. However, the choice on whom to pick is yours. If you feel like being on the free account suits your needs the best, then I guess you need to pick the one that provides that biggest storage capacity for free.

On the other hand and especially in terms of functionality I believe that Dropbox Clearly holds the distinction for being the most popular and proficient Cloud storage solution there is out there.

Holiday In West Miami - Bad Sleep? Blame The Moon

Source - http://news.yahoo.com/
By - Charles Choi
Category - Holiday In West Miami
Posted By - Inn and Suites In West Miami

Holiday In West Miami

The moon could be to blame for a bad night's sleep, researchers now say.

These findings are the first reliable evidence that lunar rhythms can influence sleep in humans, scientists added.

The moon often gets blamed for madness on Earth. In fact, the Latin name for the moon, Luna, is the root of the word "lunatic."

However, research has repeatedly shown the full moon apparently has no effect on human health. Although a few studies have found weak links with the full moon and increased aggression, unintentional poisonings and absenteeism, a 1985 analysis found no convincing evidence that full moons spur uptakes in mental hospital admissions, psychiatric disturbances, and homicides or other crimes. A 2010 study similarly found a lack of excess criminal activity on full-moon nights. 

As such, chronobiologist and sleep researcher Christian Cajochen at the Psychiatric Hospital of the University of Basel in Switzerland was skeptical when people complained about poor sleep around the full moon. However, over drinks at a pub one evening on a full moon, Cajochen and his colleagues recalled they had completed a lab study on sleep a few years before whose results they could review for possible evidence of effects the moon had on people.

Unexpectedly, the scientists found "the lunar cycle seems to influence human sleep, even when one does not see the moon and is not aware of the actual moon phase," Cajochen said.

Circalunar rhythms

Over the course of four years, the researchers had monitored the brain activity, eye movements and hormone secretions of 33 volunteers in the lab while the participants slept. All the participants were healthy, good sleepers, and did not take any drugs or medication.

After reviewing their data, the scientists found during the time of the full moon, brain activity related to deep sleep dropped by 30 percent. People also took five minutes longer on average to fall asleep, and they slept for 20 minutes less overall on full-moon nights. The volunteers felt as though their sleep was poorer when the moon was full, and they showed diminished levels of melatonin, a hormone known to regulate sleep and wake cycles.

"It took me more than four years until I decided to publish the results, because I did not believe it myself," Cajochen told LiveScience. "I was really skeptical about the finding, and I would love to see a replication."

Scientists have long known the human body often bases key activities on regular cycles, such as circadian rhythms, which are roughly a day in length. Based on these findings, the researchers suggest that humans might also experience circalunar rhythms that drive cycles a month long, roughly matching the time between two full moons.

A number of patterns in animal behavior are linked with the lunar cycle, such as coral sex. Adult women also experience the menstrual cycle, which is usually a month or so long. This circalunar effect on sleep might be a relic from a past in which the moon synchronized human behaviors for sex or other purposes, much as it does in other animals.

Moonlight tugs on humans

Although the moon's gravitational pull clearly drives tides in the ocean, its tidal effects are much weaker on lakes and virtually nil on the human body. Rather than being driven by gravity's tug, any circalunar rhythms the body experiences may be set by moonlight.

The influence of electrical lighting and other aspects of modern life may mask the moon's hold on the human body. "It would be interesting to look at this in people still living outside without artificial light, but light from fireplaces," Cajochen said. "Another possibility would be to test different moonlight simulations and their repercussions on sleep in the lab."

As to whether disrupting circalunar rhythms might have ill effects on health, the effect of moonlight on any potential circalunar clock appears much weaker than that of daylight on the circadian clock, Cajochen said.

"I don't think that modern people constantly ruin their sleep when they don't see moonlight," Cajochen said. "However, exposure to artificial light at night — that is, a time when our body clock does not expect light — ruins our sleep-wake rhythm considerably."

Port Of Miami Hotels - Mobile Users Shunt Facebook To RECORD Earnings

Source - http://www.theregister.co.uk/
By -  Neil McAllister
Category - Port Of Miami Hotels
Posted By - Inn and Suites In West Miami

Port Of Miami Hotels

Facebook posted strong results for the second quarter of its fiscal 2013 on Wednesday, showing impressive growth in its advertising and payments businesses and earnings that soundly beat analysts' expectations.

Revenue for the quarter was $1.81bn, a 53 per cent increase over the year-ago quarter. Of that total, 88 per cent (or $1.6bn) came from advertising, up 61 per cent from Q2 2012, with Facebook surpassing one million active advertisers for the first time.

Ad revenue from the all-important mobile sector was up, too. In the third quarter of 2012, mobile ads accounted for just 14 per cent of the total revenue, but that figure has grown steadily with each successive quarter. In Q2 of 2013, mobile ads made up around 41 per cent of Facebook's total ad revenue.

Facebook's other revenue source, payments and fees, was up 11 per cent from the year-ago quarter, to a total of $214m.

Taken altogether, the social network's average revenue per user during the second quarter was $1.60, a 18.5 per cent increase from the previous quarter and a 25 per cent hike from the second quarter a year ago.

Even better for Zuck & Co., all of that money coming in translated into strong earnings. Net income for the quarter was $333m, compared to a net loss of $157m for 2012's second quarter. But those figures were both distorted by costs related to share-based compensation and tax adjustments; take those away and Facebook earned $488m in the second quarter, a 65 per cent hike from the $295m it earned during the same period a year ago.

Excluding those taxes and adjustments, earnings were $0.19 per share, up from $0.12 per share in the year-ago quarter and beating the expectations of even the most optimistic analysts. Of the 37 moneymen polled by Yahoo! Finance, the highest estimate came in at $0.18 per share.

The social network's usage figures for the quarter were also encouraging and point to continued growth. Daily active users were up to 699 million, a 27 per cent increase year-over-year. Monthly active users were up 21 per cent, to 1.15 billion.

Analysts often use the ratio of daily to monthly active users as a measure of user engagement, and hence, Facebook's overall health. The figure was 60.8 per cent for the three months ending on June 30, 2013, up 4.1 per cent from the previous quarter and up 5.2 per cent from Q2 of 2012.

Mobile monthly active users were up 51 per cent year-over year, to 819 million. And mobile daily active users numbered 469 million – a 60 per cent increase from the year-ago quarter – for a mobile daily-to-monthly ratio of 57.3 per cent.

Part of that growth was driven by Facebook for Every Phone, the social network's offering that lets users access Facebook from inexpensive, low-powered feature phones. That service has now surpassed 100 million users, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a call with financial analysts on Wednesday.

As a result, monthly active users who access Facebook solely using mobile devices were up to 219 million in Q2 of 2013, a 115 per cent increase from the same period a year ago.

In all, it was a solid quarter for the social network, and Wall Street was duly pleased. Facebook's shares were up 1.45 per cent by Wednesday's closing bell but rocketed up another 17 per cent in after-hours trading, to surpass $31 per share. ®

Budget Miami Hotels - Has Apple’s iPhone 5S Launch Been Delayed?

Source - http://wallstcheatsheet.com/
By - Nathanael Arnold
Category - Budget Miami Hotels
Posted By - Inn and Suites In West Miami

Budget Miami Hotels

Although the general consensus among Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) analysts is for a September iPhone 5S launch, a recent rumor out of Taiwan warns that the Cupertino, California-based company may have to delay the release by several months due to production challenges. According to a story from the Taiwan-based Commercial Times reported by Bloomberg, the iPhone 5S may not be introduced until the end of the year.

The Commercial Times cites unnamed semiconductor industry sources who believe the iPhone 5S will not be ready by September or October because of Apple’s decision to redesign the device with a larger 4.3-inch Retina display. According to the report, the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (NYSE:TSM) may be shipping chips for the iPhone 5S in August.

The Taiwan-based newspaper’s sources also state that the so-called iPhone Lite, or budget iPhone, will still be ready by the end of the third quarte, according to Bloomberg. The report does not offer any other specific information.

Many analysts are expecting Apple to unveil at least two different models of iPhones sometime this fall. Numerous supply chain rumors and multiple leaked images of plastic iPhone casings in different colors seem to confirm these expectations. And recently leaked document obtained by PhoneArena also suggests that Apple may be releasing two different models of the lower-cost iPhone.

Family Hotels In Miami - SIM Cards Have Finally Been Hacked, And The Flaw Could Affect Millions Of Phones

Source - http://www.forbes.com/
By - Parmy Olson
Category - Family Hotels In Miami
Posted By - Inn and Suites In West Miami

Family Hotels In Miami

Smartphones are susceptible to malware and carriers have enabled NSA snooping, but the prevailing wisdom has it there’s still one part of your mobile phone that remains safe and un-hackable: your SIM card.

Yet after three years of research, German cryptographer Karsten Nohl claims to have finally found encryption and software flaws that could affect millions of SIM cards, and open up another route on mobile phones for surveillance and fraud.

Nohl, who will be presenting his findings at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas on July 31, says his is the first hack of its kind in a decade, and comes after he and his team tested close to 1,000 SIM cards for vulnerabilities, exploited by simply sending a hidden SMS. The two-part flaw, based on an old security standard and badly configured code, could allow hackers to remotely infect a SIM with a virus that sends premium text messages (draining a mobile phone bill), surreptitiously re-direct and record calls, and — with the right combination of bugs — carry out payment system fraud.

Payment fraud could be a particular problem for mobile phone users in Africa, where SIM-card based payments are widespread. The deployment of so-called NFC payment technology, already slow to take off, could also be at risk, Nohl says, as well as the ability for carriers to track charges to each caller’s account.

There’s no obvious pattern to the flaw beyond the premise of an older encryption standard. “Different shipments of SIM cards either have [the bug] or not,” says Nohl, who is chief scientist at risk management firm Security Research Labs. “It’s very random.”

In his study, Nohl says just under a quarter of all the SIM cards he tested could be hacked, but given that encryption standards vary widely between countries, he estimates an eighth of the world’s SIM cards could be vulnerable, or about half a billion mobile devices.

Nohl, who was profiled by Forbes’ Andy Greenberg in 2011 for his work on breaking mobile encryption standards, believes it unlikely that cyber criminals have already found the bug. Now that word of the vulnerability is out, he expects it would take them at least six months to crack it, by which time the wireless industry will have implemented available fixes.

That effort may already be underway. Nohl says at least two large carriers have already tasked their staff with finding a patch for the SIM vulnerability, which they will share with other operators through the wireless trade body GSMA.

“Companies are surprisingly open to the idea of working cooperatively on security topics because the competition is somewhere else,” says Nohl. “The competition is organized crime, not AT&T versus T-Mobile.” (The situation in similarly in finance, where payment services like MasterCard, Visa, and American Express will work together under  industry association EMVco to improve security standards for smart cards.)

The market for SIMs is almost entirely fed by mobile carriers, and supplied by two leading global vendors, Gemalto and Oberthur Technologies. Both have profited heavily from the huge growth in mobile handsets: ten years ago there were 1 billion SIM cards worldwide, and today there are more than 5 billion, says ABI Research analyst John Devlin, though the market is slowly reaching a plateau. SIMs are thought to be one of the most secure parts of a phone, he added, and as the carrier’s property, are “key to their relationship between you and I, the subscriber.”

Vodafone would not answer questions about the level of encryption its SIM cards used, and referred all media questions to GSMA. Both Verizon and AT&T said they knew of Nohl’s research, but said their SIM profiles were not vulnerable to the flaw. AT&T added that it had used SIMs with triple Data Encryption Standards (3DES) for almost a decade; Verizon did not specify why its SIMs were not vulnerable.

The London-based GSMA said it had looked at Nohl’s analysis and concurred that “a minority of SIMs produced against older standards could be vulnerable.” It said it had already provided guidance to network operators and SIM vendors who could be impacted by the flaw. “There is no evidence to suggest that today’s more secure SIMs, which are used to support a range of advanced services, will be affected,” a spokesperson added.

Hotel Near Miami Beach - Apple Tests Larger Screens For iPhones, iPads

Source - http://online.wsj.com/
By - LORRAINE LUK
Category - Hotel Near Miami Beach
Posted By - Inn and Suites In West Miami

Hotel Near Miami Beach

TAIPEI—Apple Inc. AAPL -1.58% and its Asian suppliers are testing larger screens for iPhones and tablets, officials at the company's suppliers say. 

In recent months, Apple has asked for prototype smartphone screens larger than 4 inches and has also asked for screen designs for a new tablet device measuring slightly less than 13 inches diagonally, they said. The current iPhone 5 has a four-inch screen, while the iPad has a 9.7-inch screen. The iPad Mini, a stripped-down version of its tablet computer, has a 7.9-inch screen.

Whether either design will make their way to market is unclear. The Cupertino, Calif., company routinely tests different designs for its products as it refines them during development. The company also changed its offerings of the iPhone and iPod last year to include larger screens, while adding a variant of the iPad with a smaller display.

An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment. 

The tests with suppliers seems to suggest that Apple is exploring ways to capture diversifying customer needs at a time when many mobile device makers offer smartphones and tablets in various sizes. Its biggest rival in the tablet and smartphone markets, South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co., 005930.SE 0.00% has an "all things to all people" strategy, covering many different product sizes to capture as many customers as possible. The move has allowed Samsung to leapfrog Apple in the smartphone market even though Apple still leads in tablets. In the first quarter, Samsung was the leading smartphone maker with 33.1% of the market, while Apple trailed in second place with 17.9%, according to researcher Strategy Analytics. In tablets, Apple is still the dominant player but its market share fell to 39.6% in the three months ended March 31 from 58.1% a year earlier, according to IDC. Samsung, which uses Google Inc.'s GOOG -1.55% Android operating system, saw its tablet market share rise to 17.9% from 11.3% a year earlier. 

"In the long run, we will see touch screens in all sizes as the future vision of the technology industry is to offer the same user experience across all screens," said IDC analyst Helen Chiang. "The key is to bring down the cost and introduce compelling applications for large-screen devices."

Apple's move, if adopted, fits into a broader trend of mobile device makers offering many size options. Competitors including Samsung, Sony Corp. 6758.TO +1.42% and Huawei Technologies Co. have launched smartphones with displays larger than 5 inches. The category is called 'phablets' to refer to devices that cross over between a smartphone and tablet. 

The new tests come as Apple and its suppliers are also preparing to ramp up production of a new iPad later this month, according to officials at component suppliers. The new version is expected to be the same size and have the same resolution as the existing 9.7-inch model, but with a lighter and thinner display structure, they said. The new display structure integrates touch sensors with a thin film instead of glass which is used in existing iPads. 

Suppliers have also started mass producing components for the new iPhone last month, said officials at the suppliers. One person said Apple told its assembler, Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., 2317.TW +0.26% to get ready to ship the new iPhones in late August.

The Wall Street Journal reported in April that the refreshed iPhone that is likely to be launched in the second half of this year will be the same size and have the same resolution as the current iPhone 5. At the same time, Apple has also been working with its manufacturing partners in Asia on a less expensive iPhone that will likely use nonmetal casing, to differentiate itself from the aluminum casing of high-end iPhone 5. The shells of both iPhone models will come in multiple color options, officials at suppliers said earlier.

Attractions In West Miami - All The World's Gold Came From Collisions Of Dead Stars, Scientists Say

Source - http://edition.cnn.com/
By - Elizabeth Landau
Category - Attractions In West Miami
Posted By - Inn and Suites In West Miami

Attractions In West Miami

All that glitters is not gold, they say. But all the gold in the world may come from astronomical events that send a lot of high-energy light out in space.

Researchers have new evidence that gold comes from the collision of neutron stars.

"We can account for all the gold in the universe from these collisions," said Edo Berger, astronomer at the Harvard-Smithson Center for Astrophysics. Berger spoke about these results, submitted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, at a press conference Wednesday.

Neutron stars are the dead cores of stars; in the past, they had exploded as supernovae. The neutron stars responsible for the event that Berger and colleagues studied are each thought to be about the size of Boston, but with about 1.5 times the mass of the sun.

When these two neutron stars orbiting each other collided, at high speed, they gave birth to a black hole. Because the combination of the neutron stars is too heavy, the merged object collapses into the black hole.

Neutron stars collide because gravitational radiation steals the energy from their orbit, said Stan Woosley, astronomer at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who was not involved in the study. Each of these star cores is like gigantic atomic nucleus, he said in an e-mail.

"Smash two of them together at close to the speed of light and you can expect fireworks," Woosley said.

Berger and colleagues observed a short-duration gamma-ray burst, which they believe came from such a neutron star collision. The burst is a flash of high-energy light, and this particular one lasted for less than two-tenths of a second, which is why it's considered "short duration."

The burst was 3.9 billion light-years away from Earth -- that's pretty far, but it's still one of the closest gamma-ray bursts that scientists have spotted.

The gamma-ray burst left behind a glow that included a significant amount of infrared light. According to the scientists, the radioactive elements, produced when merging neutron stars spat out material, emitted this light when they underwent radioactive decay. That's because decay heats the matter that was ejected, Woosley said.

This infrared glow was a golden opportunity for scientists. It gave them evidence that short-duration gamma-ray bursts can come from neutron star collisions.

"This is our smoking gun connecting a short gamma-ray burst with the collision of two neutron stars," Berger said.

There is still the possibility that the particular infrared light that the scientists spotted was not the result of radioactive decay, but a different light that was produced along with the gamma-ray burst, Woosley said. But the story of how gold formed from the neutron star collisions, he says, "is almost certainly true."

Although the idea has been floated that gold comes from explosions of supernovae, simulations suggest that it's hard to produce gold that way, Berger said. Supernovae may contribute some fraction of gold to the universe, he said, but it appears that neutron star collisions are the dominant mechanism of producing gold in our universe.

Scientists believe that the material that the merging neutron stars flung out included gold -- a lot of gold.

Berger estimates that the equivalent of 10 moon masses of gold are created and ejected when two neutron stars merge. At today's market rate, that would go for about 10 octillion dollars, he said. That's a 1 followed by 28 zeros.

Platinum and uranium also come from this collision process, Woosley said. All of these elements swirl around between stars, as gases, and eventually become part of subsequent generations of stars, like our sun.

"The gold and platinum in our rings as well as the uranium in our bombs and reactors are little pieces of neutron stars that merged in our galaxy long before the sun was born," Woosley said.

This same gold from space became part of the formation of Earth and the rest of the solar system, including the sun.

Gold that was present in the Earth's formation sank to its core. But we have gold that can be mined closer to the planet's surface because meteorites brought it later, according to a 2011 study in the journal Nature. More than 200 million years after the planet was formed, a shower of meteorites hit and brought with them gold, which stayed in the planet's mantle.

Think about that the next time you wear a gold wedding band or other piece of jewelry. Now there's a fascinating thing about your bling.

Holiday In West Miami - Is Samsung Giving The Flip Phone Another Shot?

Source - http://asia.cnet.com/
By - Joan E. Solsman
Category - Holiday In West Miami
Posted By - Inn and Suites In West Miami

Holiday In West Miami

Coming soon: an Android OS handheld that resembles the phone you had before Google even existed.

Samsung is going retro with a new phone for the Galaxy family. According to a choppy language translation of the Korea-based Digital Daily, Samsung's new phone -- the "Galaxy folder" -- is set for an August release in Korea as a low-end model. It will run Google's Android operating system with LTE support. It's said to have a small touch screen, as well as a physical keypad.

Leaked photos show the clamshell design that harkens memories of taking four and a half minutes to punch out one line of text.

Why take the step backwards in time? Perhaps the design, with a smaller screen, is cheaper and could make for an inexpensive entry phone in emerging markets outside Korea too. Perhaps the Jitterbug senior handset is proving to be a secret runaway success that Samsung simply can't ignore. We'll know if we start seeing Samsung Folder ads next to those for Lipitor in Smithsonian Magazine.

Samsung has forged a different path design-wise than its top rival, Apple. Samsung has created multiple phones that appeal to niche markets, while its Cupertino competition designs phones that appeal to the broadest swath of consumers possible.

Port Of Miami Hotels - China Plays The Long Game In Latest Investment Quota Expansion

Source - http://www.cnbc.com/
By - Clement Tan
Category - Port Of Miami Hotels
Posted By - Inn and Suites In West Miami

Port Of Miami Hotels

China's surprise move to expand the size and reach of investment quotas represents the boldest reform yet this year in allowing foreign investors more access to its financial markets.

The measures unveiled by the top securities regulator on Friday are the latest in a series of steps Beijing has taken in recent months to fire up flagging investor interest, allowing foreign firms to move funds more freely into China and expanding another pilot programme to London, Singapore and elsewhere.

The China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) almost doubled the quota of the Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor (QFII) scheme to $150 billion. The plan, introduced in 2002, allows investors to bring foreign currency into China to buy domestic stocks, bonds and money market instruments.

"It was a banner announcement, a signal of intent by the new CSRC chief Xiao Gang that Beijing remains committed to opening up its markets," said Chris Powers, an analyst at Shanghai-based financial consultancy Z-Ben Advisors.

But the timing of the move was surprising, as it comes at a time when appetite for Chinese shares is at its weakest in years thanks to a slowing economy, causing once-popular funds earmarked under such investment schemes to suffer heavy outflows.

Existing quotas are already underutilised.

Before the latest expansion plan, only $43 billion of the current $80 billion quota had been used so far.

Its yuan counterpart, the Renminbi Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor (RQFII) has fared no better, with less than half of the 270 billion yuan ($44 billion) quota taken up so far.

RQFII allows investors to buy Chinese stocks and bonds using offshore yuan. It is currently available only through designated institutions in Hong Kong, but will be expanded to London, Singapore, Taiwan and other unidentified locations.

Nevertheless, bankers say these steps signal authorities are focused in expanding the yuan's global clout by allowing more foreign companies and banks to use the currency in both international trade and to buy Chinese assets. Currently, about 12 percent of China's trade is denominated in its own currency.

Timing-wise, China has followed a familiar script in the four-year history of its yuan internationalisation theme, always undertaking fresh reforms when it sensed investor interest was waning.

"After a long time, we are starting to see a lot of excitement from our clients and we are getting queries on what they can do under these quotas and the other reforms," said the head of yuan trade settlement at a U.S. bank in Hong Kong.

DEBT OVER EQUITIES

Despite the buzz around the quotas, fund managers do not expect a deluge of inflows to hit China's markets soon.

The China Enterprises Index of the top Chinese listings in Hong Kong and the CSI300, an index of the leading Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share, are down by 16 and 8 percent, respectively, since the start of the year.

Both are popular benchmarks for exchange traded funds (ETFs) under the two quota schemes.

Hong Kong-listed ETFs tracking mainland equity indexes have suffered net outflows since mid-January amounting to $4.9 billion, according to Thomson Reuters Lipper data.

For example, E-Fund's ETF, one of the oldest ETFs under the RQFII scheme, has lost 70 percent of the units outstanding so far this year due to investor redemptions.

"China's economy is losing some growth momentum and investors are not optimistic about the outlook for its stock market," said a fund manager with a Chinese asset management firm who has an RQFII quota.

But that may change in the longer term. Investment bank CICC says the expansion of the QFII scheme brings China's A-shares a step closer towards inclusion in the global MSCI emerging markets index, potentially signaling billions of dollars of inflows from benchmark funds.

Bonds may hold more promise for now. At nearly 5 trillion yuan, the mainland bond market is 40 times the size of the offshore yuan bond market, according to HSBC. It offers more variety to investors, though demand may be limited more to sovereign issues than often illiquid corporate bonds for now. ($1 = 6.1350 Chinese yuan)

Budget Miami Hotels - What Makes You So Tasty To Mosquitoes?

Source - http://www.usatoday.com/
By - Polly Davis Doig,
Category - Budget Miami Hotels
Posted By - Inn and Suites In West Miami

Budget Miami Hotels

Whether you're one of those people who gets eaten alive by mosquitoes depends on some pretty tangible factors, and Smithsonian Magazine runs down the reasons that make an estimated 20% of us especially delectable to those buzzing little bloodsuckers. 

Without ado: 

-- How much booze you drink: Turns out beer goggles aren't just for humans. According to one study, just one bottle of beer can increase your appeal in the insect world. The scientific reasons aren't exactly clear, so we're sticking with beer goggles. 

-- How pregnant you are: It's just one more discomfort for moms-to-be, but pregnant women get about twice as many bites as other people. That's probably because they're about a degree warmer, and exhale 21% more carbon dioxide. 

-- What blood type you are: Type O? You get bitten about twice as much as Type A, and Type B is somewhere in the middleground.

-- How much you exercise: Working out builds up lactic acid in your sweat and body heat, making you all the more tasty. 

-- What you're wearing: Skeeters are also looking for you, so wearing eye-catching colors such as black, navy, or red make you stand out, according to one entomologist.

Family Hotels In Miami - Can The Lumia 1020 Bring Nokia To The Fore Again?

Source - http://www.dnaindia.com/
By - Rajat Agrawal
Category - Family Hotels In Miami
Posted By - Inn and Suites In West Miami

Family Hotels In Miami

Nokia finally has something that would make buyers notice its product while they are deciding whether they should go for the latest iPhone or Galaxy smartphone

 “The back is the new front,” Stephen Elop exclaimed while announcing the Lumia 1020 at a launch event in NYC.

The statement not only points to the exaggerated camera lens assembly required for the smartphone’s massive 41-megapixel sensor but also takes me back, in some ways, to Nokia’s shift to Windows Phone away from Symbian.

Even after signing Symbian’s death penalty, Nokia launched the PureView 808 running on Symbian, acknowledging the fact that Windows Phone wasn’t ready for primetime. Two years later, Nokia has finally turned an entire circle.

The Lumia 1020 marks the beginning of the end of Nokia’s transition period. After almost two years of launching the Lumia range of smartphones, Nokia finally has something that would make buyers notice its product while they are deciding whether they should go for the latest iPhone or Galaxy smartphone. Despite the weakness of Windows Phone as a platform when compared to iOS and Android, over the past two years Nokia has managed to come up with a decent package of hardware, software and services to make up for the missing bits.

If the Lumia 1020′s camera does perform as claimed (it did during my brief experience with the smartphone), it would be a pretty compelling offering.

Think about it, the Lumia 1020 would have the best camera performance combined with a music store that offers unlimited tracks to download for free and it also has one of the best offline navigation software on any smartphone. While Nokia’s Lumia smartphones were already doing well in the entry and mid-level segments, the Lumia 1020 could be the key to success in the high-end segment, which was missing so far.

Having said that, it is too early to root for Nokia’s future success. The company still has a few obstacles to overcome. The first and foremost being its partnership with Microsoft and Windows Phone as a platform. Nokia has consistently got the hardware right but has always been let down by Windows Phone, which lacks apps and is not as polished or evolved as Android and iOS. Major app developers prefer to make apps for Android and iOS, while developing them for Windows Phone seems like an afterthought and often after being paid to developed for the platform. Heavy smartphone users prefer using the other two platforms as Microsoft has failed repeatedly to catch up with them in a quest to be perceived as being different. The lack of a proper centralized notification system, for instance, is hard to explain.

Secondly, Nokia is still struggling to roll out its smartphones at a faster pace. With limited marketing budgets and production capacity, it has to stagger its launches that take a couple of quarters to reach major markets while Samsung rolled its Galaxy S4 smartphone in over 110 countries in a fortnight. Even if Nokia has a great product like the Lumia 1020, people would consider to buy it only if it is available in their country. Think about it, the Lumia 925 is not available in most markets yet and Nokia had to announce the Lumia 1020. Even hardcore Nokia fans would now be compelled to not buy the Lumia 925 and instead wait for the Lumia 1020. And who knows, by the time the Lumia 1020 is available across markets, Nokia might have something else to offer.

During my interactions with senior Nokia executives it became clear that they are aware of the situation but it remains a challenge and they are making the best of what they have. Despite these challenges, it is refreshing to see how Nokia continues to innovate with the resources it has and is playing to its strengths. Rather than buying off the shelf image sensors for the 41-megapixel PureView camera, Nokia has designed the entire assembly including the optical image stabilization bit internally, which means its rivals won’t be able to easily replicate the main USP of the Lumia 1020.

Having its own music store, navigation software and acquiring Scalado, which makes the UI for most smart camera apps that you currently see on rival smartphones, will buy Nokia some time. But what Nokia needs the most at this time is a major hit at the top-end segment and it is hoping the Lumia 1020 will be that smartphone.

Hotel Near Miami Beach - Nokia Announces Lumia 1020 with 41-Megapixel PureView Camera

Source - http://asia.cnet.com
By - John Chan
Category - Hotel Near Miami Beach
Posted By - Inn and Suites In West Miami

Hotel Near Miami Beach

At an event in New York, Nokia announced its latest Windows Phone, the Nokia Lumia 1020. This new smartphone has the company's PureView camera technology, which includes the 41-megapixel sensor first seen in the Nokia 808 PureView Symbian smartphone.

The high number of pixels doesn't mean you get incredibly large images. What the phone does is to combine the pixels to give you a smaller image that has better quality. Other strengths of this camera compared with regular smartphone cameras are lossless zoom and optical image stabilization.

Camera aside, the Lumia 1020 is lighter than the bulky Lumia 920, and is slightly thinner. It comes in white, yellow and black. In addition, there are accessories including a snap-on wireless charging back cover and a camera grip (US$79) that makes the smartphone look even more like a compact digicam.

As a phone, you get everything you expect from a Windows Phone. Furthermore, CEO Stephen Elop announced new apps including one called Oggl Pro from Hipstamatic that will allow image uploads to Instagram.

Find out more about the new smartphone in our preview.

The Nokia Lumia 1020 will first be available in the US through AT&T on July 26 for US$300 with a mobile contract. It will then ship in China and in "key European markets" this quarter. We have contacted Nokia about availability in Asia Pacific and will update this article when we have more information.

Attractions In West Miami - What You Need To Know To Protect Your Vsion

Source - http://www.cbsnews.com/
By - Amanda Cochran
Category - Attractions In West Miami
Posted By - Inn and Suites In West Miami 

 

Attractions In West Miami

Do your eyes feel dry? You're not alone. Millions of Americans suffer from dry eyes, and experts say computers and smartphones are making the problem worse. 

That's because when staring at those devices, you may be blinking somewhere around 50 percent less often that you do when looking at other everyday things, says Dr. Christopher Starr, an associate professor of ophthalmology at Weill Cornell Medical College. He explained on "CBS This Morning," "Normally, we blink about 20 times per minute. It can drop to eight or 10 times a minute. And when you're not blinking, the tears that are on your ocular surface just evaporate. You're not distributing new, healthy, clean tears across the ocular surface."

Another thing that can contribute to the dry-eye feeling is the lack of oil being distributed to the eye via your eyelid. "When we blink, we push out a little bit of oil," Starr said. "It's critical for healthy tear film. ... When you blink, you put out a little oil with each blink. So if you're not blinking, you're not getting the oil, your tears are evaporating and over the hours of a long workday that leads to significant dry eye."

Symptoms of dry eye include grittiness, a sandy feeling, a foreign body sensation, burning, redness, and sometimes tearing, and blurry vision. Star added, "Vision can (also) fluctuate, so if you have clear vision in the morning, blurry vision at the end of the day, it's often in relation to this."

To reduce dry eye symptoms, Starr recommended the 20/20/20 rule: "Every 20 minutes you're on the computer, take a break, look away at a distant object that's 20 feet away or further for 20 seconds or more. You can put a little sticker on your computer or a bottle of artificial tears to remind you to do that periodically."