“Let e-books be your guide - Boston Globe” plus 1 more |
| Let e-books be your guide - Boston Globe Posted: 21 Nov 2010 11:58 PM PST All iPad users: Leave that hefty travel tome at home and download an interactive electronic guidebook for your next adventure. Lonely Planet has released e-books for three cities and a dozen countries, including Japan, Britain, Thailand, Italy, and New Zealand. Each e-book features thousands of hyperlinks that direct you to hotels, restaurants, and attraction websites and detailed maps with imbedded points of interest. You can bookmark pages, take notes on travel highlights, and search for specific information. The only catch: You need to be online to access all links. You can download the e-books through iTunes. Prices from $12.99 to $17.99. www.lonelyplanet.com/ebooks CheapCaribbean.com has launched its new Bazaarvoice Ratings and Reviews feature to benefit the beach-bound. Travelers looking for feedback on a resort can visit its main page at CheapCaribbean.com and find an overall "palm tree'' rating (from one to five), a detailed ratings summary, and a link to reviews by fellow travelers. People booking a CheapCaribbean.com vacation are asked to rate their trip when they return, offering feedback on value, service, beaches/pools, dining options, and room comfort. They can even share photos and videos. The reviews cover hotels and resorts only in Mexico and the Caribbean. To date, travelers have provided more than 10,000 posts. www.cheapcaribbean.com For a winter getaway, head to Camelback Inn in Arizona's Sonoran Desert, where the daily highs average 75 degrees. Located on 125 acres in Paradise Valley, the inn offers private hiking trails and meditation areas and 453 guest rooms and suites. The Scottsdale property, a JW Marriott Resort & Spa, also has six all-weather lighted tennis courts, two 18-hole golf courses designed by Arthur Hills, and a spa offering loofah treatments, an adobe clay purification wrap, or a traditional massage. Five restaurants serve everything from Southwestern fare with a Mexican twist to American steakhouse cuisine with a French influence. Children can hang out at the kids' pool or playground. Rates from $279. 800-242-2635, www.camelbackinn.com KARI BODNARCHUK © Copyright 2010 Globe Newspaper Company. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
| New guide to Silicon Valley goes way down memory lane - San Jose Mercury News Posted: 21 Nov 2010 03:37 PM PST Where, exactly, is Silicon Valley, that renowned part of the Bay Area where high-tech research and innovation have changed the world? Is it San Jose? Or Palo Alto? Is San Francisco included? The online reference Wikipedia says Silicon Valley is located in "the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area," encompassing Santa Clara Valley, the southern Peninsula and the southern East Bay. Vague boundaries, to be sure. Old-timers know the area often referred to as Silicon Valley as northern Santa Clara County, where bountiful orchards of cherry and peach trees stretched across miles of what are now freeways and business parks. As San Francisco kids on summer vacation in Sunnyvale, now home to 164 high-tech companies, my cousins picked cherries in those orchards. They walked barefoot on sleepy Mathilda Avenue to get ice cream cones. A trip to Mountain View, the next town south on El Camino Real, was an excursion. But starting in the 1960s, research and production of silicon chips thrived in the small companies that had sprung up in the area, many associated with graduates of Stanford University in Palo Alto. Think Hewlett-Packard and Google. Some say "Silicon Valley," named for the chips, became a state of mind. The newly minted name eventually extended to parts of the East Bay and north to San Mateo County, where high-tech research flourished. Eventually, the vast, fruity landscapes of Santa Clara County and environs slipped into memory.But, according to high-tech executive David Laws, who has worked in Silicon Valley for 40 years, the story of technological research in the Santa Clara Valley and environs originated long before the discovery of silicon chips. "There's a reason why Silicon Valley started where it did," he said in a telephone interview. "Research in technological advancement was going on in the area as early as 1910." Now, for anyone interested in the history -- including the whys and hows -- of Silicon Valley, with specific boundaries and local sites important to its development, Laws has created a new, appropriately techie, tool: an app called "Silicon Valley Roots & Shoots," available for the iPhone and the iPad. For the new history, he updated and revised his 2003 book, "Silicon Valley: Exploring the Communities behind the Digital Revolution." "There are few guides to the area," he said. For the app, he took new photos of about 125 places from San Carlos to San Jose that he believes have contributed to the development of Silicon Valley. "I'm interested in the people and the stories that made it happen. Every chip tells a story." For him, Silicon Valley's northern border ends at San Carlos, where research in communications and other forms of technology thrived in the 1930s, '40s and '50s. Among the sites included is the Museum of San Carlos History, which contains "artifacts and photographs recording the dense concentration of broadcast and communications equipment manufacturers who operated here," including Ampex, Dalmo Victor, Eitel-McCullough, Lenkurt, Litton and Varian Industries. Other sites include the Woodside property of Steve Jobs of Apple; Buck's Restaurant in Woodside, known as a gathering place for Silicon Valley entrepreneurs; mansions of current and early innovators; the humble sites where famous companies started; and locations of early laboratories, including Ampex. For each location, Laws has provided a page with description, a slide show, an interactive map that shows how to get from where you are to there and website links to more information with thoughtful and clear explanations. "Silicon Valley Roots and Shoots" can be purchased and downloaded from the Apple iTunes site at http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/silicon-valley-roots-shoots/id396249431? mt=8. For the techies among you, the app will speak for itself. For the nontechies, it may provide a needed education, not only for our children and grandchildren, but also for those of us who still wonder what happened to the orchards. In memory of JFK For those of us old enough to remember, this is the anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Nov. 22, 1963. I'm sure you all remember exactly where you were when you heard the news. For story ideas and comments, contact Joan Aragone at 650-348-4332. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
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