California Vacation Packages - Insurance Rates Climbing In Florida

Source - http://www.weartv.com/
By - Press Release
Category - California Vacation Packages
Posted By - Hampton Inn Santa Clarita

California Vacation Packages

It's been nearly eight years since a hurricane caused widespread damage in Florida, but rates for homeowners insurance have still been climbing. With hurricane season starting Saturday, authorities say there's a chance rates may finally stabilize. Some homeowners say they feel like they're being eaten alive by insurance premiums, and they want some relief. Florida's Office of Insurance Regulation has been approving more than 100 rate hike requests a year since 2009, including requests to hike rates by double-digits. "It's really high," said Chuck Taylor. Chuck Taylor and his neighbors in Garcon Point say they've had no choice but to keep shelling out big bucks for insurance. "If you live down here, you have to have your house up elevated when you rebuild and then you pay flood insurance. Flood insurance doesn't cover any of that, so you're paying insurance twice," Taylor said. This year's hurricane season could determine how much homeowners pay. Florida's Insurance Commissioner Kevin McCarty says there's a chance rates may finally even out, if no major storms come our way this year. Taylor is skeptical of that prediction. "I really don't see it going down that much," Taylor said. His neighbor, Judy Wagner, however, has a different perspective. "There are storms other places, too. And I mean, the insurance companies are paying for those. You know, you have to pay for where you live," said Judy Wagner. The state-run Citizens Property Insurance Corporation, meanwhile, is expected to ask for rate hikes for 2014.

Hotels In Northern California - EU Investigating Apple's iPhone Agreements With Mobile Operators

Source - http://www.pcworld.com/
By - John Ribeiro
Category - Hotels In Northern California
Posted By - Hampton Inn Santa Clarita

 

Hotels In Northern California

The European Commission has sent a questionnaire to a number of mobile operators in the European Union, focusing on whether its distribution terms with these providers may put Apple at an advantage over other smartphone makers, according to a newspaper report.

"The Commission has information indicating that Apple and Mobile Network Operators ("MNOs") have concluded distribution agreements which may potentially lead to the foreclosure of other smartphone manufacturers from the markets," the nine-page questionnaire states, The Financial Times reported Sunday.

The commission referred to the possibility that certain technical functions are disabled on certain Apple products in certain countries in the EU and the European Economic Area, which if confirmed could constitute an infringement of antitrust law. The questionnaire also probes operators on Apple's sales practices, including whether they are required to buy a minimum number of phones, and are required to always offer Apple no worse subsidies and sales terms than other smartphone vendors, according to the newspaper.

The European inquiry, based on private complaints from some mobile operators, is at a preliminary stage, and would require that Apple be found to be dominant in the EU smartphone market, the newspaper said.

Apple could not be immediately reached for comment. The company was questioned last week in the U.S. by a Senate subcommittee looking into charges that the company avoided tax by diverting profits to subsidiaries in Ireland. Apple said it did not break the laws.

Samsung Electronics became the top smartphone manufacturer in Europe in April last year, a position it has maintained through the rest of the year, Web and mobile usage tracking firm comScore said in February. The South Korean company had a 32.3 percent share of the market by December, followed by Apple with 20.5 and Nokia with 16.3 percent.

Hampton Hotels Santa Clarita - Galaxy S4 Fastest-Selling Android Phone Ever

Source - http://www.smh.com.au/
By - James W. Manning
Category - Hampton Hotels Santa Clarita
Posted By - Hampton Inn Santa Clarita

 

Hampton Hotels Santa Clarita

Samsung's Galaxy S4 smartphone has sold more than 10 million units around the world less than one month after being released, making it the fastest-selling Android phone in history.

The new flagship smartphone, launched globally on April 27, is estimated to have sold at a rate of four units per second, according to the company, and has sold at twice the rate its rival, the HTC One.

The S4's predecessor, the Galaxy S3, previously held the title for the fast-selling Android smartphone after reaching the 10 million mark after 50 days on sale in 2012. Before that, the Galaxy S2 and Galaxy S took five and seven months respectively to reach the same goal.

"On behalf of Samsung, I would like to thank the millions of customers around the world who have chosen the Samsung GALAXY S4," said J.K. Shin, chief executive and president of IT and mobile communications at Samsung. "At Samsung we'll continue to pursue innovation inspired by and for people."

An anonymous Samsung executive told South Korean newspaper The Chosun Ilbo last week that sales had surpassed six million in the first two weeks after launch.

Meanwhile, an unnamed HTC executive told The Wall Street Journal that the HTC One, seen by industry commentators as a rival to Samsung's S4, has sold five million units since its launch, which occurred about the same time as the S4, meaning Samsung has doubled the sales of its HTC rival.

Both Samsung and HTC have confirmed they will release a version of their new

smartphones running the default version of Google's Android mobile operating system, rather than the ones currently customised with Samsung or HTC apps built in.

Samsung also confirmed that the Galaxy S4 will be made available in four new colours later this year: red, blue, purple and brown. The smartphone was available in black and white at launch.
 

Vacations In Santa Clarita - Samsung Galaxy S4 Shipments Hit 10 Million One Month After Release

Source - http://techcrunch.com/
By - Catherine Shu
Category - Vacations In Santa Clarita
Posted By - Hampton Inn Santa Clarita

Vacations In Santa Clarita

Samsung’s Galaxy S4 has hit 10 million channel sales one month after its release. The company announced its latest milestone today just eight days after confirming that it had shipped over 6 million units of the S4 since its international launch on April 26. According to Samsung, this is the fastest ever sell rate for any of its smartphones.

The latest entry in the Galaxy series–meant as Samsung’s iPhone challenger–has sold much more quickly than its predecessors. The Galaxy S4′s milestone beats the record set by the Galaxy S3, which reached 10 million channel sales 50 days after its launch in 2012. The Galaxy S2 took five months and the Galaxy S seven months to reach the same number.

(Channel sales are to wireless operators and not direct to consumers. In other words, the numbers are for units shipped.)

The Galaxy S4 had to overcome inventory issues that disrupted its U.S. rollout and were attributed by the company to unexpectedly high demand for the phone. Though the Galaxy S4 is indeed selling swiftly, reinforcing Samsung’s dominance of the worldwide smartphone market, Jordan Crook noted after it hit 6 million units shipped that the iPhone is still technically a faster selling phone than any of Samsung’s Galaxy models.

When the iPhone 5 launched, Apple took over 2 million pre-orders in the first 24 hours available. Furthermore, iPhone 5 pre-orders were two times the number of pre-orders seen for the iPhone 4S. Despite Apple’s recent earnings woes, consumers still love their iPhones, and Samsung VS Apple: Battle Smartphone is not over quite yet, especially as the Cupertino company prepares to launch new products this fall.

Budget Hotels Santa Clarita - China's Bird Flu Outbreak Cost $6.5 Billion

Source - http://www.reuters.com/
By - Stephanie Nebehay
Category - Budget Hotels Santa Clarita
Posted By - Hampton Inn Santa Clarita

Budget Hotels Santa Clarita

Health authorities worldwide must be on the lookout to detect the virus, the experts said, which could still develop the ability to spread easily among humans and cause a deadly influenza pandemic.

The new bird flu virus is known to have infected 130 people in mainland China since emerging in March, including 36 who died, but no cases have been detected since early May, Health Minister Li Bin told a meeting of the World Health Organization. One case was found in Taiwan in April, making a total of 131.

"The immediate outbreak has been controlled, but it is also unlikely that virus has simply disappeared. We believe we need go another autumn/winter/spring season to know," said Keiji Fukuda, WHO assistant director-general for health security.

"We also have high concern over the potential, I stress the potential, to gain the ability to sustain transmissibility."

There was no evidence of sustained spread among people and "most cases probably resulted from infected poultry or perhaps contamination related to live poultry markets," Fukuda said.

Li said local Chinese authorities had shut down live poultry markets "temporarily or permanently as needed" to control the source of outbreaks in 10 provinces. It standardized methods of transporting poultry to reduce spread among birds.

China's government had spent 600 million RMB or $97 million to support healthy development of the poultry industry, Li said.

"In view of the present situation, H7N9 is preventable and controllable. There has been no qualitative change in the epidemic. Cases are sporadic and there has been no genetic mutation (of the virus)," she said.

H7N9 is highly pathogenic in humans, causing severe respiratory disease, but is not virulent among birds, making it nearly impossible for farmers to detect, experts said.

"There have been no (human) cases since May 8, that is a good indication and means measures are being taken seriously. Now when the virus is found at market, all birds are killed, that is important too," Bernard Vallat, head of the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE), told reporters.

Out of 60,000 samples taken from birds, 53 were found to carry the virus, Liang Wannian of China's health ministry said.

There is "no red flag" for H7N9 among poultry, unlike H1N1 which kills off flocks, said Juan Lubroth, chief veterinary officer at the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

"Economic impacts of H7N9 have been astounding," he said.

"Over $6.5 billion has been lost in the agriculture sector because of prices, consumer confidence and trade. So poultry industry losses in China have been high," Lubroth said, later making clear it was an estimate by China's agriculture ministry.

Family Hotels In Santa Clarita - Apple’s Web Of Tax Shelters Saved It Billions, Panel Finds

Source - http://www.nytimes.com/
By -  NELSON D. SCHWARTZ and CHARLES DUHIGG
Category - Family Hotels In Santa Clarita
Posted By - Hampton Inn Santa Clarita

Family Hotels In Santa Clarita

Even as Apple became the nation’s most profitable technology company, it avoided billions in taxes in the United States and around the world through a web of subsidiaries so complex it spanned continents and went beyond anything most experts had ever seen, Congressional investigators disclosed on Monday.

 The investigation is expected to set up a potentially explosive confrontation between a bipartisan group of lawmakers and Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s chief executive, at a public hearing on Tuesday.

Congressional investigators found that some of Apple’s subsidiaries had no employees and were largely run by top officials from the company’s headquarters in Cupertino, Calif. But by officially locating them in places like Ireland, Apple was able to, in effect, make them stateless — exempt from taxes, record-keeping laws and the need for the subsidiaries to even file tax returns anywhere in the world.

“Apple wasn’t satisfied with shifting its profits to a low-tax offshore tax haven,” said Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat who is chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations that is holding the public hearing Tuesday into Apple’s use of tax havens. “Apple successfully sought the holy grail of tax avoidance. It has created offshore entities holding tens of billions of dollars while claiming to be tax resident nowhere.”

Thanks to what lawmakers called “gimmicks” and “schemes,” Apple was able to largely sidestep taxes on tens of billions of dollars it earned outside the United States in recent years. Last year, international operations accounted for 61 percent of Apple’s total revenue.

Investigators have not accused Apple of breaking any laws and the company is hardly the only American multinational to face scrutiny for using complex corporate structures and tax havens to sidestep taxes. In recent months, revelations from European authorities about the tax avoidance strategies used by Google, Starbucks and Amazon have all stirred public anger and spurred several European governments, as well as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a Paris-based research organization for the world’s richest countries, to discuss measures to close the loopholes.

Still, the findings about Apple were remarkable both for the enormous amount of money involved and the audaciousness of the company’s assertion that its subsidiaries are beyond the reach of any taxing authority.

“There is a technical term economists like to use for behavior like this,” said Edward Kleinbard, a law professor at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles and a former staff director at the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation. “Unbelievable chutzpah.”

While Apple’s strategy is unusual in its scope and effectiveness, it underscores how riddled with loopholes the American corporate tax code has become, critics say. At the same time, it shows how difficult it will be for Washington to overhaul the tax system.

Over all, Apple’s tax avoidance efforts shifted at least $74 billion from the reach of the Internal Revenue Service between 2009 and 2012, the investigators said. That cash remains offshore, but Apple, which paid more than $6 billion in taxes in the United States last year on its American operations, could still have to pay federal taxes on it if the company were to return the money to its coffers in the United States.

John McCain of Arizona, who is the panel’s senior Republican, said: “Apple claims to be the largest U.S. corporate taxpayer, but by sheer size and scale, it is also among America’s largest tax avoiders.”

In prepared testimony expected to be delivered to the Senate committee by Mr. Cook and other Apple executives on Tuesday, the company said it “welcomes an objective examination of the U.S. corporate tax system, which has not kept pace with the advent of the digital age and the rapidly changing global economy.”

The executives plan to tell the lawmakers that Apple does not use tax gimmicks, according to the prepared testimony.

Mr. Cook is also expected to argue that some of Apple’s largest subsidiaries do not reduce Apple’s tax liability, and to press for a sweeping overhaul of the United States corporate tax code — in particular, by lowering rates on companies moving foreign overseas earnings back to the United States. Apple currently assigns more than $100 billion to offshore subsidiaries.

Atop Apple’s offshore network is a subsidiary named Apple Operations International, which is incorporated in Ireland — where Apple had negotiated a special corporate tax rate of 2 percent or less in recent years — but keeps its bank accounts and records in the United States and holds board meetings in California.

Because the United States bases residency on where companies are incorporated, while Ireland focuses on where they are managed and controlled, Apple Operations International was able to fall neatly between the cracks of the two countries’ jurisdictions.

Apple Operations International has not filed a tax return in Ireland, the United States or any other country over the last five years. It had income of $30 billion between 2009 and 2012. By shuttling revenue between international subsidiaries, Apple was able largely to sidestep paying taxes, Congressional investigators said.

In the prepared testimony, Apple executives disputed the characterization of Apple Operations International. “A.O.I. performs important business functions that facilitate and enhance Apple’s success in international markets,” the testimony states. “It is not a shell company.”

The Senate investigators also found evidence that the company turned over substantially less money to the government than its public filings indicated.

While the company cited an effective rate of 24 to 32 percent in its disclosures, its effective tax rate was 20.1 percent, based on the committee’s findings. And for a company of Apple’s size, the resulting difference was substantial — more than $8 billion in 2009, 2010 and 2011.

Because of these strategies, tax experts say, Washington is forced to rely more and heavily on payroll taxes and individual income taxes to finance the government’s operations. For example, in 2011, individual income taxes contributed $1.1 trillion to federal coffers, while corporate taxes added up to $181 billion.

As companies’ earnings have accumulated offshore, many executives have been pushing more aggressively for a tax holiday that would allow them to bring back funds at lower tax rates. Apple has recently announced that it will return $100 billion to shareholders over three years through a combination of dividends and purchases of its own shares. Though Apple has enough cash on hand to pay for those initiatives, the company recently announced it would take on $17 billion in debt, rather than bring overseas money back to the United States to avoid paying repatriation taxes on those returning funds.

Hotels In Northern California - Selling through social media

Source - http://www.charlotteobserver.com/
By - Charlotte Blogs
Category - Hotels In Northern California
Posted By - Hampton Inn Santa Clarita

Hotels In Northern California

Every business owner seems to be at a different point in their journey with social media.  If you’re just starting out, take a moment to read Glenn Burkins’s recent articles that describe the popular social media sites and give general guidance on building your social media brand.  They provide an excellent primer for the newcomer.

If you've already laid a basic foundation for your business, such as creating a Facebook business page or LinkedIn profile, then you might be wondering about specific strategies for turning your efforts into revenue.  Your next step depends on what kind of business you’re in.

Ecommerce

If you sell products or services online, social media is likely your key to customer loyalty, referrals, and repeat purchases.

The Adobe Digital Index showed social traffic to online retailers doubled from 2011 to 2012.  When measured by “last click” referrals, this amounts to 2% of total online shopping traffic, which may sound small --  until you consider the possibility of continued doubling, year after year

Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, applied Moore’s Law to sharing back in 2008, positing that “(N)ext year, people will share twice as much information as they share this year, and next year, they will be sharing twice as much as they did the year before.”  This idea has come to be known as Zuckerberg’s Law.

I predict that we’ll see a similar trend in the convergence of social media and ecommerce, with the percentage of ecommerce that is socially referred continuing to double every coming year -- to 4% in 2013, 8% in 2014, and 16% in 2015.  So what do you need to know to capitalize on this trend?

Mauria Finley, founder and CEO of Citrus Lane, is a master of leveraging social for selling, without ever asking for the sale.  Citrus Lane is a fast growing subscription company delivering monthly collections of curated baby products, and their Facebook strategy relies more on human psychology than hard-sell techniques for drawing in new converts into the fold.

Finley says, “We use our happy customers as our advocates and let the natural triggers of envy and scarcity do the selling for us.”  And indeed, the Citrus Lane Facebook page is full of pictures of subscriber babies clutching their latest sold-out toy of the moment, irresistible fodder for keeping up with the Joneses

Finley adds, “We don’t see ourselves as leading the conversation with our customers, but rather our job is to facilitate their interactions with each other.”  One recent post illustrates this principle by posting a question from “Patty,” who needs help with getting her 2-year-old to sleep in her own bed.  In less than 60 minutes, Patty’s question had 75 comments, a testament to their approach.

Traditional commerce

If you sell products or services through an offline model, social media can help you do everything from generate leads to increase foot traffic to advertise new offerings.  The key is to understand your customer’s habits and motivations.

Find out where your customers spend their time online and experiment to discover what content they’ll respond to.  What’s keeping them up at night, and conversely, what do they do to escape their worries for a while

Liz Guthridge, managing director and change management consultant at Connect, says she devotes time to participating in LinkedIn groups where her prospects hang out.  “The groups are an under-utilized feature of LinkedIn, and they’re a great way to see what your clients are discussing.  I’ll comment whenever I can add something of value, which builds my credibility as a trustworthy resource.”

In all of the hurry to get your message out, don’t forget to listen to your customers and act on what they say.  For example, use social media to poll your customers about what inventory you should be stocking.  When a customer sees that the cupcake flavor she voted for on Monday is on sale Tuesday, she’ll be that much more motivated to make a purchase.

You can also combine tracking your results from various social channels with incentivizing your customers by issuing different discount codes by channel.  For example, you might offer 10% off using code “ABC” on Facebook and using code “123” on Instagram.  These are sometimes called whisper codes and can generate useful insights as to whether Twitter is working better than Pinterest, or vice versa.

In summary, social is here to stay, and no matter if you sell online or offline, socially referred business is going to continue to grow as a driver of revenues.  So it behooves you to figure out where your customers are congregating, what content they want to see, and to create engagement in a way that builds loyalty to your business.