Plus Class

Basking stylishly within the grounds of a beautiful old farm, the ultra contemporary Jiva Hill Park Hotel, near Crozet, France enjoys 35 hectares of its own natural parkland with stunning vistas of both the Jura Mountains and Mont Blanc range. The hotel has taken full advantage of this space, equipping itself with a wide variety of facilities to suit all interests – especially the sporty types!

One of the most incredible features on offer is the EUROLAC water sports centre. This breathtaking 650 metre man-made lake has been created and designed especially for water sports fanatics. Try your hand at wakeboarding, water-skiing (slalom and jumps!), mono-skiing and even barefoot skiing! All equipment can be provided by the hotel, and instructors are on hand at all times.

For those who love to keep fit, not only is there a state-of-the-art fitness suite and large heated swimming pool indoors, the outdoor vicinity offers a 2.5km jogging circuit, a fitness trail, golf practice course, tennis courts and in the winter, skiers can take advantage of the nearby Jura mountains. Bikes are also available to hire and use in and around the grounds for those after more leisurely exercise!

To help encourage guests to keep fit, Jiva Hill Park Hotel is currently offering a two night sports package for just 571€ for two people. It includes two nights accommodation in a Deluxe room on a B&B basis, 1 hour private tennis coaching, 1 hour private golf coaching, and 1 ski pass per person (until 30th March 2009) or bike rental (remainder of the year).

And if just reading this is a little too exhausting – fear not – the choice to laze around at leisure is also available, whether it’s chilling out by the pool, indulging in spa treatments or relaxing in the beautiful sauna and hammam – the choice is yours!

The word is out….. Punta Cana is the New Memorial Day Hot Spot.

Top Promoters from around the country have joined forces to provide you with a NEW destination for the sexy,mature & professional.

You don’t want to miss it!

This Years Events Include:

• Bowling Party

• Pool Parties

• Wear What you Dare

• All White Extravaganza

• Bikini Contest

AND MUCH MORE!!!!!

Today I finally came to the end of my rope, or cord that is. My Apple MightyMouse failed to live up to its name - it’s nipple-like scroll ball no longer responds to upwards scrolls. You can scroll from left to right, or go down, but not up. It’s rather like driving a car that won’t go in reverse. This is the SECOND MightyMouse that exhibits this problem, which stems from a build-up of dust and gunk in its innards similar to what once happened with old school mice before optics and lasers replaced those dirty little balls.

So I went trodding off to my local Best Buy to find a suitable replacement. That’s when I came along this little fellow - the Rocketfish Bluetooth Wireless mouse. Upon first glance it almost looks like a MightyMouse, which is intentional as Rocketfish markets this mouse as an iMac accessory. But at just $48, it cost almost half the price of Apple’s own wireless mouse and seems to have better ergonomic design. How does it stack up? I’ll be writing about this mouse more in the days ahead as I get more play time with it, but so far it looks and feels really good. Stay tuned.

This is exactly what I want sitting on my desk next to a pile of oily rags soaked in gasoline, in an office filled with asbestos furniture.

The folks at Mozilla are working hard to port Firefox Mobile, known as Fennec, to Windows Mobile. Why, I don’t know. Unless of course it has something to do with the fact that Microsoft’s own Internet Explorer Mobile runs web pages through a fucking paper shredder, spitting out gobbly gook code with mangled page layouts on tiny cell phone screens.

Word is that even within the hallowed halls of Microsoft’s own campus, engineers in the Mobile Devices division prefer using third party browsers on their Windows smartphones to their own dog food. Who can blame them? Opera 9.5 makes IE Mobile look as obsolete as Iomega Zip drives.

Then again, a shitty browser is the just one symptom of a more serious illness - in today’s market, Windows Mobile is a horseless carriage among performance sedans. Up against the likes of iPhone OSX, Android, and now Palm’s homebrew WebOS, there is little reason why anyone will be buying phones wearing a Windows flag over the next 12 months.

Palm at last shows its hand, and it’s not holding a royal flush. There can be no doubt that today’s announcement FINALLY puts them back in the game and on the map, but based on what I’m seeing WebOS is simply Palm’s take on the iPhone - even utilizing the same browser. And I see lots of red flags that spell trouble for Palm, starting with software .

First - It’s a closed platform. Meaning you can say goodbye to any hope of seeing the same lavish apps that exist in the iPhone and Android ecosystems. Instead, WebOS relies on AJAX code enabling wed developers to build what amounts to Dashboard Widgets. Nice, but not NEARLY enough. I enjoy widgets as much as the next Mac user, but native applications they ain’t! You can only do so much under that type of limited framework before you hit a virtual brick wall and the wheels begin falling off.

Second - and this one’s a Duezie - Unless I missed a statement to the contrary WebOS apparently WON’T run Garnet era apps. That has little impact on me for I ditched this platform long ago, but the impact it will have on Palm users is staggering. Palm just pulled the rug out from under your platform, and its replacement will be every bit as alien to its users as that of competing platforms. This is NOT PalmOS, nor its successor. Unlike Apple who weened its userbase and developers off of the legacy MacOS to a new advanced platform (OSX), Palm is simply leaving everything behind. While that may be a great thing in the longrun, and in the fact the right move for Palm given the circumstances, the fact remains that WebOS is not the next version of PalmOS - just as Pre is NOT AN UPGRADE PATH for Centro and Treo users. You may just as well toss your current Palm in the trash and delete all those quaint little apps you’ve relied on over the years (and invested money in) by moving to another platform.

Third - There’s the handset. It’s nice, but not very inspiring. I’m willing to overlook that part - hell, it looks a lot nicer than the G1, I’ll give it that. But it’s not something that turn heads or lure people away from their current smartphone. Still, that’s a minor quibble for now. The real problem is that Palm chose to lock the phone away in Sprint’s walled garden. Choosing a CDMA network for the introduction of this ALL IMPORTANT new phone and platform was a bad move - an automatic loss in sales that would have come from a much larger GSM market with more carriers and an ever thriving market for unlocked SKUs.

So there you have it. I’m thrilled to see Palm once again back in the game, but WebOS doesn’t return them to a leadership position and it’s lacking in real innovation. It slowly closes the gap with Apple and Google, but not enough.

Following its global debut at the Geneva Motor Show, Audi has released the full specifications for its flagship TT RS coupe and cabriolet models.

On paper at least, the TT RS undoubtedly sheds its ‘hairdresser’ stereotype as a genuinely aggressive thoroughbred performance coupe.
The versatile turbocharged five-cylinder engine in the TT RS featuring direct fuel injection.

Having watched last night’s debate with breathless anticipation (ok, that’s I lie - I was bored to sleep), it’s becoming clear that both the Obama and McCain campaigns have devolved into a rhetoric of repeated talking points. The sound of suction is deafening. Obama was on top form, showing his usual college cool, but for the first time he is showing signs of retreading the tires on his platform. Nothing new fresh or substantial came out of the debate, other than the revelation that John McCain apparently thinks Obama is one of his Grandchildren - “That one”.

John McCain won on creep factor. The disturbing way he stalked the room, lumbering like an agitated grizzly bear inspired no one. But it was the condescending tone he took with his audience that made me most uncomfortable - painting middle-Americans as ignorant. “You’ve probably never heard of Fannie Mea before this crisis”. Never heard of one of the world’s largest financial entities? And his lame attempt at identifying with the digital world showed his own generational disconnect, in his unworldly observation that “some of you here may have even used eBay”. Some of you? That’s like saying some of you may have even used a telephone. Pathetic.

So I walked away from the debate with no real sense that either candidate has answers to our country’s greatest problems, other than the usual political weeble wobbling and rhetoric that defines Washington culture. That’s not change I can believe in.

For those who want to live the champagne lifestyle but are feeling the economic squeeze, the five star Don Carlos Leisure Resort & Spa in Marbella is launching a outrageously luxurious package tailored to a Cava budget.

On arrival guests will immediately experience the Champagne lifestyle by finding a chilled bottle of Möet Chandon Rose waiting for them in their room. The challenge will be then where to drink it: either on the balcony people-watching the glitterati of Marbella, overlooking the beautiful azure waters of the Mediterranean or in a deep bath enveloped in Molton Brown bubbles!

Guests will also be given the chance to mingle with the world’s jet set crowd at Nikki Beach Marbella. Renowned as one of the sexiest places on earth, sun worshipers and partygoers can glam it up on the beach and then party away the sultry night at this infamous spot. The package includes a two-day pass with exclusive use of Nikki Beach sun beds and a sumptuous lunch.

Guests can then enjoy complimentary access to the Casino Nueva Andalucía, in Marbella to have a flutter on the roulette table or try their hand at blackjack.

Also included in the package is three nights’ accommodation in a superior double room. Each room features chic Philippe Stark furniture pieces and comes equipped with air conditioning, state-of-the-art digital entertainment systems with a selection of the latest blockbuster movies, a flat screen TV, high speed Wi-Fi access and Molton Brown amenities.

The three-night package costs just €394pp and includes breakfast plus free entrance to the gym and steam room. The two-day entrance to Nikki Beach includes use of sun bed and one lunch up to the value of €50pp (excluding drinks). It is based on two people sharing and is subject to availability. The price is valid from 13th April to 4 October 2009 and excludes flights.

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