Category Archives: Other Stuff
This week we saw Air travel fly to greater heights as the first solar-powered aircraft readies for a take-off. Airports are getting trendier, with a new Ducati retail outlet in Rome Fiuminino while Dubai gets a brand new Lufthansa Senator lounge for their first-class passengers. Four Seasons is in the news with their new rooms & suites at the Four Seasons Hotel Amman while the Four Seasons Resort Hualalai is looking to welcome golfers with a fantastic new ProAm package. A few new hotels have opened doors, with the luxurious Kempinski Grand Hotel Gelendzhik on the Black Sea, while Mr Trump opens his new palatial Trump Ocean Club International Hotel and Tower also the title of Latin America’s tallest building, while the Marriott Hotels opens two properties; the JW Marriott Ankara and the Jaipur Marriott Hotel. Virtuoso’s latest ‘Travel Dreams’ survey has revealed that today’s rich travelers consider Cruising as the most desired travel experience – and almost taking cue, Anantara has launched the Anantara Cruises, a truly unique offering in their 100-year-old rice barges while the St. Regis Punta Mita Resort now offers a 70-foot luxury motor yacht for cruising across Puerto Vallarta’s lovely Banderas Bay.
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Driving through foggy highways at night can be risky indeed, and usually, drivers require a lot more assistance than just fog lamps to prevent pile-ups. Designer Da Wei Xing has come up with an innovative and sustainable way to prevent accidents on highways. Called the SafetyDistance, the system includes the use of solar powered signs to be located on highway side-railings. These cylinder-shaped signs use motion sensors that on detecting passing cars, set of warning lamps that inform the following car of the vehicle ahead’s presence and distance. A green glow from the lamps denote that the car ahead is at safe distance, while a red light means the car ahead’s too close.
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Contrary to your beliefs, the United States of America doesn’t really play home to a bunch of green hotels. In fact, the first hotel that produces as much energy as it uses, will swing its doors open in Delavan soon. And you would’ve thought that a country as big as the US of A would probably boast a few more eco-friendly environment-hugging vacationing spots; sadly it isn’t so. The first of its kind and probably the greenest in the nation, the 19-room Green Leaf hotel might not be as big as one of those biggies you just visited, though it sure as hell is a lot greener! A dream come true for Fritz Kreiss and his wife, Catherine McQueen, the Green Leaf hotel boasts a 30,000-gallon underground tank to store rainwater used for filling toilets and watering the landscape, wastewater treatment systems, a charging station for battery-powered cars and energy-efficient suites that cut off power supply when guests step out. And to generate all the energy it requires, the Green Leaf hooks on to a bunch of solar panels, wind turbines and a geo-thermal energy generating system too! A working inspiration for other hoteliers around, we wouldn’t mind laying back in a green hotel as such either!
[JSOnline]
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Singapore, unlike most urbanized areas dotting the surface of the earth, is making sure it has ample of greenery and shade, even if the two need to be created artificially. A city known for advancing quickly and boasting some of the best of designs around the globe, Singapore is now busy setting up giant trees made of concrete and metal rods stretching 50 meters high, providing enough shade to house a bunch load of people. Now these might not benefit the environment in a way our real green buddies do like pulling out carbon from the air and providing the earth with natural water-drainage systems. These humongous structures weighing a few hundred tons each however, will boast hanging gardens and rainwater collection systems, making them a cherry on the top of a cake for the city of Singapore.
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A while ago, we had got wind of Ricoh’s solar-powered billboard set up in Times Square, New York. Happy with the success of the billboard and all the coverage it received, the company has gone a step further and unveiled yet another solar-powered billboard, this time located in London, across the pond, shining down on drivers on the M4 motorway headed for the Heathrow Airport. Using 96 solar panels and five wind turbines, this billboard is greener than green and portrays the company’s initiatives to go green and turn sustainable, decreasing the carbon footprint being stamped out on our planet.
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The following policy outlines the types of information that we gather about you and the way that way we use and don’t use this information.
The information that we collect about our visitors falls into three general categories:
1. Information You Provide to Us. We may collect and store information, personal or otherwise, that you voluntarily supply to us either on the Greenlaunches site, via e-mail, or in any other way. Some examples of this type of information include the information you submit (such as your name or e-mail address) when you register for Greenlaunches membership, information that you post on blog entry comment, and information contained in search requests or questions you submit to the site. If you decline to supply or provide us with certain information, we may not be able to provide you with some services that are dependent on the collection of this information.
2. Information that is Automatically Collected. We also collect and store information that is generated automatically as you navigate through the Greenlaunches site. For example, to enhance your experience at Greenlaunches, we use a standard feature found in browser software called a “cookie.” Cookies are small files that your web browser places on your hard drive for record-keeping purposes. By showing how and when visitors use our site, cookies help us track user trends and patterns. They also prevent you from having to re-enter your preferences on certain areas of our site where you have entered preference information before. Another example of information that we automatically collect as you navigate our site is information about your computer’s connection to the Internet. This information allows us, among other things, to improve the delivery of our web pages to you and to measure traffic on our site.
3. Information from Other Sources. Greenlaunches may also obtain information about you from third parties or other sources and may combine the information that we receive from them with information we have already obtained about you.
Greenlaunches includes links to other websites, and provides access to products and services offered by third parties, whose privacy policies we do not control. When you access another website or purchase products or services or conduct other transactions through the Service, use of any information you provide is governed by the privacy policy of the operator of the site you are visiting or the provider of such products or services.
We use third-party advertising companies to serve ads when you visit our Web site. These companies may use aggregated information (not including your name, address, email address or telephone number) about your visits to this and other Web sites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you. If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this information used by these companies, click here.
Questions on Privacy
If you have questions or concerns about the children’s privacy statement, the privacy practices of the Greenlaunches site, or your dealings with Greenlaunches, please contact us.
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We take a look at the best travel brings us this week. Bespoke experiences are the order of the day -from gourmet experiences in Vietnam to all-inclusive offer at Parrots Cay, photography excursions, free nights at the Four Seasons Chicago or grape-picking at lush Provencal vineyards, our Rich Traveller is looking for personalized, one-of-a-kind unique experiences. And of course, just like everything else, we must do it in style: in our Valentino Resort Collection, our Hermès printed beach towel or on a 360-degree Outdoor Lounge bed. We also take a peek into what’s up and coming. While we’re thrilled about the brand new Mandarin Oriental Paris, Blakes Hotel’s newly refurbished rooms, or the new Trump Toronto that will open doors soon; we wait with awaited breath as Virgin Hotels plans their first space hotel! Train travel has come a long way, with China making a foray into luxury fast trains while the Greenbrier will revive the old-fashioned luxury trains in America.
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Inkjet printing has never had too much to do with solar energy until now. Engineers at Oregon State University have come up with a solution to creating CIGS solar devices using inkjet printing lately. This reduces the amount of raw materials used by about 90% and also pulls down the cost of creating solar energy cells too. Using inkjet technology, chemical compounds can now be deposited on substrates in a much more accurate method with little wastage, unlike the previous vapor phase deposition processes used while making solar energy cells earlier.
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Amsterdam’s Schipol airport has come up with a new way to keep its travelers in touch with nature, with its cutting-edge indoor garden that mixes realities to give an almost real-life-like park experience for those travelling through this airport. Complete with trees and a whole lot of lush green in it, the Airport Park also includes a cafe, a lounge and a retail shop for your comfort. Besides that, the park uses visual projections of butterflies and birds accompanied by sounds of the same, giving the park a greener touch. And the best part of it all is the stationary bikes that travelers can exercise on to charge their mobile phones!
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Are park benches a bit too boring for you? Well, here’s a way to spend your “parked” hours constructively, by burning a bit of that flab, and generating a bit of energy at the same time. We’ve seen exercise bikes that generate energy before. This one goes forward to hook up to a streetlight and juice it up too. Users are required to pedal away to glory as the bike-bench then stores all the energy in a battery. This can then be put to use later, to light up the streetlamp. Designed by Bharat Bhargava, a post-graduate design student at Central Saint Martin’s in London, this concept offspring of a bike, a bench, an exercise machine and a streetlamp is worth a second glance!
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