California Vacation Packages - Samsung Said To Introduce Watch-Like Phone Next Month

Source - http://www.bloomberg.com/
By - Jungah Lee
Category - California Vacation Packages
Posted By - Hampton Inn Santa Clarita

California Vacation Packages

Samsung Electronics Co. (005930) will introduce a wristwatch-like device named the Galaxy Gear next month that can make phone calls, surf the Web and handle e-mails, according to two people familiar with the matter. 

The Galaxy Gear will be powered by Google Inc. (GOOG)’s Android operating system and go on sale this year to beat a potentially competing product from Apple Inc. (AAPL), the people said. The device will be unveiled Sept. 4, two days before the IFA consumer electronics show begins in Berlin, one of the people said, asking not to be identified because the plans are private. 

Asia’s biggest technology company is racing other electronics makers, including Sony Corp. (6758), to create a new industry of wearable devices as the market for top-end handsets nears saturation. The global watch industry will generate more than $60 billion in sales this year, and the first companies to sell devices that multitask could lock customers into their platform, boosting sales of smartphones, tablets and TVs. 

“It will carve a niche for sure as this is an initial product in the market,” said Chung Chang Won, an analyst at Nomura Holdings Inc. in Seoul. “Wearable devices could be one of the trends in the smartphone market, but I’m not sure yet whether watches or glasses will set the trend.” 

The Galaxy Gear being released next month won’t have a flexible display, though the company is continuing to work on developing a bendable screen, one person said. It will be unveiled the same day as Samsung’s Galaxy Note 3, a combination smartphone and tablet computer.

Apple Watch

Apple had a team of about 100 designers working on watch-like device, two people familiar with the matter said in February. The Cupertino, California-based company is seeking to introduce its device this year, one of the people familiar said at the time. 

Samsung became the world’s largest smartphone maker last year, overtaking Apple. The Suwon, South Korea-based company had about 33 percent of the global smartphone market in the second quarter, while the iPhone maker fell to a three-year low as more consumers chose inexpensive handsets from Chinese makers, according to researcher Strategy Analytics. 

Samsung posted second-quarter earnings July 26 that missed analyst estimates as sales growth for the flagship Galaxy S4 was curbed by slowing demand for high-end handsets. Shares have fallen 15 percent this year in Seoul trading, compared with a 4 percent decline in the benchmark Kospi index. 

Samsung released the Galaxy S4 smartphone in April and plans at least two other high-end handsets this year, including a device using the Tizen operating system. 

Lee Young Hee, executive vice president of Samsung’s mobile business, said in a March interview the company was working on a watch device.

Hotels In Northern California - Heavy Coffee Consumption Linked To Higher Death Risk

Source              - http://www.usatoday.com/
By                     - Cathy Payne
Category          - Hotels In Northern California
Posted By        - Hampton Inn Santa Clarita

Hotels In Northern California

The debate over coffee's health risks continues to brew. A new study, out Thursday, finds that heavy coffee consumption is associated with a higher death risk in men and women younger than 55.

In the study published online in the journal Mayo Clinic Proceedings, men younger than 55 who drank more than 28 cups of coffee a week (four cups a day) were 56% more likely to have died from any cause. Women in that age range had a twofold greater risk of dying than other women. The study looked at 43,727 men and women ages 20-87 from 1971 to 2002.

"From our study, it seems safe to drink one to three cups of coffee a day," says the study's second co-author Xuemei Sui. "Drinking more than four cups of coffee a day may endanger health," says Sui, assistant professor of exercise science with the Arnold School of Public Health at the University of South Carolina in Columbia. She defines a cup of coffee as 6 to 8 ounces.

The study did not find a higher death risk for adults 55 and older. Sui says there may be a bias — the research may not include unhealthy older people because they might have already died.

The reasons for the higher death risk among younger adults are not clear since experts through the years have found both health benefits and problems associated with coffee.

Sui says the caffeine in coffee can elevate heart rate as well as raise blood pressure and blood sugar levels. However, coffee is a major source of antioxidants, she says.

Sui says the study didn't find a significant association between coffee consumption and heart disease death. Further research is needed to look at any connection between coffee and cancer, she says.

Gregg Fonarow, co-chief of clinical cardiology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, says, "Differences in other dietary factors, marital status and other socioeconomic factors that were not adjusted for in this study may account for some or all of these observations."

Fonarow, who was not involved in this research, says observational studies that survey people about their coffee intake and tie that to how many died from any cause have yielded mixed results.

Consider a 2012 study that found that coffee drinkers ages 50-71 had a lower risk of death than their peers who did not consume coffee. In that study, researchers from the National Cancer Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health, and AARP found that the more coffee consumed, the more a person's death risk declined.

Joseph DeRupo, a spokesman for the National Coffee Association of USA, says the new study "presents findings that are out of step with prevailing science as well as with widely accepted research methods."

Because coffee still stirs debate, Sui says more research is needed. In the meantime, people should watch their coffee intake, she says. "Avoid excessive coffee drinking."

Hampton Hotels Santa Clarita - Turning To Your Phone For a Better Night’s Sleep

Source            - http://www.nytimes.com/
By                   - KIT EATON
Category        - Hampton Hotels Santa Clarita
Posted By       - Hampton Inn Santa Clarita

Hampton Hotels Santa Clarita

I’m terrible at sleeping. Over the years, I have tried various remedies and tricks, and they haven’t helped. I figured there wasn’t much I could do about my problem until I discovered sleep-aid smartphone apps. 

My favorite is Sleep Cycle, a $2 iOS app. Although this app doesn’t help get you to sleep, it does help you learn about your sleep habits. It’s also designed to wake you at just the right point in your sleep cycle, when you’re sleeping lightly, so you won’t feel that familiar sinking sensation after your alarm clock jerks you awake. 

The app is meant to work with your phone set on your mattress. It uses the iPhone’s sensors to monitor movements, recording when you were in different phases of sleep — from light to deep. In the morning, you get a time graph showing how well you managed to stay in deep sleep. 

There’s a notes section for each night’s data, so you can track if drinking a cup of tea upsets your sleep or if your sleep patterns are related to stress. If you’re really interested in detailed analysis of your sleep habits you can export the data to an Excel spreadsheet. 

The app’s instructions are easy to follow, and the interface is easy to use. I’ve found it usually wakes me when I’m feeling well rested. It does take a while to get used to this, because it means you’re awakened in a window around your chosen alarm time instead of, say, at 7:30 a.m. sharp. Perhaps my only criticism is the app’s array of soothing alarm sounds can get tiresome, but you can also set it to use your downloaded music.

A very similar free app on Android is Sleepbot. It also uses your device’s motion sensors to track your sleep patterns, and can wake you gently when you’re in light sleep. Its interface isn’t quite as polished nor as easy to use as Sleep Cycle’s, but this app is more powerful. 

You can set target sleep times and see over several days if you have a sleep deficit, and you can set a reminder to go to bed. It also has a sound-monitoring function so you can see if there are noises that disturb your sleep, or how your sleep correlates to quiet environments. 

Another way apps can help you sleep is by playing soothing sounds for a time and then quietly shutting off.

One of my favorite sleep apps is Simply Rain, a $1 iOS app that plays soothing rain sounds. Its interface has a large slider to control the sound volume and a small slider to adjust the intensity of the rain. 

You can choose to have different intensities of thunder sounds in the mix, and set the app to oscillate the volume to simulate the variation in a real rain shower. There’s also a simple sleep timer. I find I fall asleep easily to this sort of white noise, but it may not suit you. 

For alternative sleep sounds try Sleep Pillow Sounds, a $2 iOS app with sounds like rain on water, crackling fires or lapping waves on the shore. You can even layer these sounds on top of one another. 

The app has a cute, graphic-heavy interface and a sleep timer, but the timer has a maximum setting of only 75 minutes. It’s also possible to notice patterns in the sounds, and that may bother you. 

On Android, Relax and Sleep is a similar app. It has an impressive array of sounds, like wolf cries and a rocking chair. 

You can layer multiple sounds, setting each sound at a desired intensity. The repetitive nature of some of the sounds seemed more irritating than relaxing, but your mileage may vary. 

Finally, I’ve learned listening to audiobooks can help me sleep — it’s like being read a bedtime story. Audiobooks from Audible (free on iOS, Android and Windows Phone) are my sleep weapon of choice because of the huge selection of titles and the sleep timer function. I also use it with a sleep-monitoring app. 

Audible’s one downside is that the price of some of the audiobooks may surprise you: The first Game of Thrones book is nearly $32, unless you sign up for one of the app’s monthly membership options. 

Quick Call

Microsoft has released a suite of Bing-related apps for Windows Phone 8 devices that bring real-time news alerts on finance, news, sports and weather. These apps are free.

Hotels In Northern California - Samsung Brings Dual View Feature To OLED TV

Source - http://www.usatoday.com/
By - Mike Snider
Category - Hotels In Northern California
Posted By - Hampton Inn Santa Clarita

Hotels In Northern California

The OLED TV competition is heating up.

Samsung has joined LG Electronics in offering the long-awaited organic light-emitting diode TVs. Samsung's new 55-inch curved display, priced at $9,000 (actually $8,999.99), is shipping to retailers and is also available to order on Samsung.com.

The TV and electronics maker, which, like LG, is based in South Korea, had originally priced the set to arrive in the U.S. at $15,000 — the same price as that of LG's curved OLED display that began arriving in stores last month. Samsung says it improved its manufacturing process enough to yield displays more efficiently and decided to drop the price, undercutting LG in the process.

While still pricey, the $9,000 price tag could help Samsung gain OLED market share, which, in turn, could lead to LG cutting its OLED price, says Richard Doherty of The Envisioneering Group. "It makes it easier to sell it to a spouse or put it on a credit card," he says. "I'm sure we'll see LG do something to bridge the gap or beat it."

Samsung's set has a unique MultiView feature that lets two people watch different programming simultaneously on the display while wearing 3-D glasses. "Some of us at Samsung call it 'the marriage saver' because my wife and I can be sitting on the couch watching two different programs on the same OLED TV," says David Das, vice president of home entertainment for Samsung Electronics America.

Each person has personal ear bud headphones built into the 3-D glasses (two pairs come with the set) that deliver individual audio streams to the viewer.

The half-inch thick display, like the new LG OLED TV, has a concave shape. "It actually mimics that of an arena or amphitheater," Das says.

Consumers have coveted OLED TVs since they first were shown more than five years ago, because the super-thin displays reproduce super-saturated colors, ultra-distinct blacks and whites and virtually no motion blur. But they have been hard to manufacture.

As few as 20,000 OLED displays may be shipped globally this year, estimates DisplaySearch analyst Ken Park. He expects that to grow to about 400,000 in 2014, before approaching 2 million in 2015. "Consumers may find it difficult to pay for hugely expensive OLED TVs, so volume will be limited until mass production is fully stabilized," Park says.

But OLED's promise remains because of the picture quality. "The images were very bright, well above what we've seen from any plasma TV, so you get an unparalleled contrast range that makes images pop off the screen," says Jim Willcox, senior electronics editor at Consumer Reports, who got to test the display.

Willcox calls the display "arguably the best all-around TV we've ever tested." He's looking forward to putting LG's competing curved display through its paces.

But because of the high price and difficulty of manufacturing, he says, "all OLED TV manufacturers face formidable challenges before these sets can become a mainstream choice for consumers."

Samsung also announced that retailers were now offering two new Ultra HD displays, a 55-inch model ($5,500) and 65-inch model ($7,500). Consumers could be overwhelmed by choice with new OLED and Ultra HD sets joining traditional big-screen flat-panel displays at retail, so Samsung will have detailed descriptions in stores.

"We feel that each of these technologies meets a certain consumer's needs," Das says. "Ultra HD offers the highest resolution, four times that of full HD; and in OLED, it is this amazing picture quality. It stops people in their tracks."

Vacations In Santa Clarita - Rich People Have Different Toxins In Their Bodies

Source - http://finance.yahoo.com/
By - Brandon Ballenger
Category - Vacations In Santa Clarita
Posted By - Hampton Inn Santa Clarita

Vacations In Santa Clarita

For some reason, British researchers were interested in which poisons Americans’ bodies contain. What they found surprised them.

A team from the University of Exeter found that being wealthy doesn’t mean you live in a nontoxic environment. Actually, it means you have a higher risk of exposure to certain chemicals, U.S. News & World Report says.

Using data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the researchers looked for associations between income level and 179 toxins found in the body. “The researchers found that, among 18 toxins that appeared to be associated with income, half were more likely to be present in richer Americans than those at the bottom of the socioeconomic spectrum,” U.S. News says. Here are some of the chemicals wealthier people had higher levels of:

• Mercury.
• Arsenic.
• Caesium.
• Thallium.
• Perfluorinated chemicals.

These likely come from sources like fish and shellfish consumption, dental fillings, and fresh or home-grown fruits and vegetables, U.S. News says. Wealthy people also have higher levels of BP3, a toxin from sunscreen that may actually increase the risk of skin cancer, Quartz says.

Here’s what poorer people are more likely to encounter:

• Lead.
• Cadmium.
• Antimony.
• Toxins in plastic.

These chemicals probably come from smoking, poor air and water quality, or jobs in construction, manufacturing and other industrial settings.

“In some ways, in moving up the economic ladder Americans are simply trading one set of environmental toxins for another,” Quartz says.

But despite the findings, the risks are far from equal, U.S. News says. For the wealthier class, many toxins are avoidable: More money can be spent on higher quality products with fewer chemicals, and they can live in less toxic neighborhoods. For the working class, many toxins are an inescapable fact of life.

Budget Hotels Santa Clarita - Cellphone Use While Driving May 'not' Be Hazardous

Source - http://www.dvice.com/
By - Adario Strange
Category - Budget Hotels Santa Clarita
Posted By - Hampton Inn Santa Clarita

Budget Hotels Santa Clarita

The perils of texting while driving have become so obvious to many nations with large driving populations that laws have sprouted up in recent years outlawing such behavior in a number of cities. In fact, the idea that driving while using gadgetry is dangerous is so widely accepted that even Google Glass, a product that isn't even widely available yet, is already facing scrutiny related to road safety in some parts. That said, a new study offers a surprising counter narrative that threatens to upend the notions surrounding safety concerns while using mobile devices in cars.

The study, conducted by Carnegie Mellon University and the London School of Economics, concludes that, contrary to popular belief, talking on a cellphone while driving does "not" increase the risk of automobile crashes. Using calling and crash data from approximately 8 million crashes across nine states from a period between 2002 to 2005, the study found no direct correlation between increased cellphone use after 9 p.m. (a time when a discount-related uptick in phone usage was detected) and actual crash rates.

Citing the results from the study, researcher Saurabh Bhargava said, "While our findings may strike many as counterintuitive, our results are precise enough to statistically call into question the effects typically found in the academic literature. Our study differs from most prior work in that it leverages a naturally occurring experiment in a real-world context."

These findings also fly in the face of recent research by AAA that indicated that even minimal distractions from mobile devices while driving can be dangerous. Nevertheless, it should be noted that this new study is only related to talking on a cellphone. It did not study the potential dangers of texting or surfing the Internet on your mobile device while driving.

Vacations In Santa Clarita - 5 Things: Why Does Your Dog Yawn So Much?

Source - http://nashua.patch.com/
By -  Carol Robidoux
Category - Vacations In Santa Clarita
Posted By - Hampton Inn Santa Clarita

Vacations In Santa Clarita

1. Someone Gets Paid to Study This:  In a study published Wednesday in the open access journal PLOS ONE, University of Tokyo researchers say dogs are more responsive to their owners' yawns than to a stranger's yawn -- a sign that dogs are more empathetic than previously understood. In the study, 25 dogs were observed in their owners' homes. Researchers recorded their responses to watching their owners yawn, then watching an unfamiliar researcher yawn. They yawned nearly fives times more often in response to their owners' yawns.

2. Christie v. Rubio in a NH Popularity Poll: Politico.com reports that Florida Sen. Marco Rubio lost favor with many New Hampshire voters in recent months while New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie saw a surge in support, according to a poll released Aug. 6. Rubio dropped 9 percentage points since April and fell from first to fifth among likely GOP contenders for the 2016 election, according to a Granite State Poll, sponsored by WMUR-TV, and conducted by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center. Rubio was the choice of 12 percent of voters in February and 15 percent in April, but just 6 percent in July.

3. Cocoa Boosts Memory: Drinking two cups of hot chocolate a day may help older people keep their brains sharp and improve their memory, U.S. researchers say. Study author Dr. Farzaneh A. Sorond of Harvard Medical School in Boston said the study involved 60 people with an average age of 73 who did not have dementia. Keeps the blood flowing, it seems.

4. George W. Gets Heart Healthier: President George W. Bush was hospitalized Tuesday morning after having a procedure to open a blocked heart artery. The procedure was successful, and according to Bush's office, the 67-year-old former president should be able to "resume his normal schedule on Thursday." including a statement issued by Bush's office.

5. Old Dogs Can Learn New Tricks: This letter to the Animal Doc Michael Fox in WaPo dispels the long-running adage that you can't teach a dog new tricks. I like it when that happens.