Airlines' plans for 2013 up in the air

Airfares will be on the rise in 2013, and those niggling airline fees will metamorphose into optional bundles of services.

Meanwhile, onboard amenities, such as Internet access, entertainment options and refreshed interiors, will abound among U.S. carriers, but tight seating in coach probably won't improve.

And 2013 might be the year you'll finally be able to keep your smartphone, iPad or Kindle turned on during takeoffs and landings.

Those are some of the predictions airline industry experts foresee in the new year. Here's the lowdown on fares, fees and flight experience for 2013.

Higher fares forecast

Airlines pushed through six fare increases in 2012. Expect a similar number in the new year, said Rick Seaney, co-founder of FareCompare.com.

"I wouldn't be surprised to see airfares rise like they did this year, between 3 and 6 percent domestically," Seaney said. That's because airlines will succeed in properly balancing supply and demand by trimming the number of seats they offer to match "decent, but bordering on tepid, demand."

Fares are typically driven by four main factors: competition, most of all, then supply, demand and oil prices. "If you look at those drivers, they are, for the most part, on the airlines' side, which gives them pricing power," Seaney said.

That doesn't mean there won't be good airfare deals on some flights on some routes. And consumers will still see lower prices during off-peak days, such as Tuesday, Wednesday and Saturday departures and off-peak seasons, such as late January and early February. Like this year, summertime fares probably will stay relatively high, he said.

Airline mergers can also affect fares, and a huge one could take place early in 2013. American Airlines and US Airways are in talks about combining.

The general consensus among consumer advocates is that airline mergers aren't good for passengers.

"Any time you have two big airlines merging, that means consumers have less choice and competition is reduced, which only translates to higher prices," said Charlie Leocha, director of the Consumer Travel Alliance.

However, a bit of new evidence bucks that conventional wisdom. Despite four mega-mergers in the U.S. airline industry during the past seven years, fares have not increased significantly, just 1.8 percent per year, according to a December report from professional services firm PwC. In fact, average domestic fares decreased 1 percent from 2004 to 2011 when inflation is factored in, the report found.

Fliers know full well, however, that the fare isn't all that counts nowadays. There are those fees.

Fees get a makeover

The most noticeable trend in recent years with airline fees is that there are more of them: fees for checked bags, aisle seats, onboard meals, among many others. 

"What we hear is that people pay their fare and get to the airport and feel they're constantly being nickeled-and-dimed to death for things that used to be included," said Kate Hanni, founder of FlyersRights.org. 

The top five U.S. carriers alone generated more than $12 billion in fees in 2011, with even more expected through 2012, according to the PwC report.

What consumers call fees, airlines call "unbundling" — making a la carte choices from services that used to be included in the fare.

A likely trend for 2013 might be called "rebundling," airlines packaging a few now-optional services and charging for a tier of service.

Read More..

Expectations low for White House 'fiscal cliff' meeting

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama and congressional leaders were to meet on Friday for the first time since November with no sign of progress in resolving their differences over the federal budget and low expectations for a "fiscal cliff" deal before January 1.

Instead, members of Congress are increasingly looking at the period immediately after the December 31 deadline to come up with a retroactive fix to avoid the steep tax hikes and sharp spending cuts that economists have said could plunge the country into another recession.

With taxes on all Americans set to rise when rates established under former President George W. Bush expire on December 31, lawmakers would be able to come back in January and take a more politically palatable vote to cut some of the tax rates.

U.S. stocks fell on Friday, with the Dow Jones industrial average dropping 0.48 percent as investors fretted about the lack of certainty.

But some in the market were resigned to Washington going beyond the New Year's Day deadline, as long as a serious agreement on deficit reduction comes out of the talks in early January.

"Regardless of whether the government resolves the issues now, any deal can easily be retroactive. We're not as concerned with January 1 as the market seems to be," said Richard Weiss, a Mountain View, California-based senior money manager at American Century Investments.

The new factor in the mix was involvement by Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who held conversations with Obama this week and said he expected a new proposal from the president that he would consider.

The White House spent much of Thursday stifling expectations for any new offer from Obama, beyond the limited fallback plan he outlined in vague terms on December 21, which would protect what he described as "middle class Americans" from the tax hikes, extend unemployment insurance and lay the "groundwork for further work" on deficit reduction and tax reform.

The major sticking point on taxes is Republican opposition to hikes on anyone, particularly in the absence of heavy cuts in spending for so-called entitlement programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, the government-run health programs for senior citizens and the poor.

Democrats in Congress want to keep lower tax rates for most Americans but raise them on those earning above $250,000 a year.

"The wealthy have got to kick in," Senator Debbie Stabenow, a Michigan Democrat, said Friday on CNN. "The tough part is in the House, where they have taken this very extreme position" of "protecting the wealthy at all costs," she said.

"It's feeling very much to me like an optical meeting than a substantive meeting," said Republican Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, noting that it was not a sign of urgency to set a meeting for mid-afternoon with a deadline just days away.

"Any time you announce a meeting publicly in Washington, it's usually for political theater purposes," Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, said on Thursday on Fox News.

"When the president calls congressional leaders to the White House, it's all political theater or they've got a deal. My bet is all political theater," said Graham, adding that he did not believe an agreement could be reached before the deadline.

(Editing by Alistair Bell and Vicki Allen)

Read More..

Apple still said to account for 87% of North American tablet traffic as Kindle Fire, Nexus 7 gain

Apple’s (AAPL) share of the global tablet market is in decline now that low-cost Android slates are proliferating, but the iPad still appears to be the most used tablet by a huge margin. Ad firm Chitika regularly monitors tablet traffic in the United States and Canada and in its latest report, Apple’s iPad was responsible for almost 90% of all tablet traffic across the company’s massive network.

[More from BGR: Samsung looks to address its biggest weakness in 2013]

Using a sample of tens of millions of impressions served to tablets between December 8th and December 14th this year, Chitika determined that various iPad models collectively accounted for 87% of tablet traffic in North America. That figure is down a point from the prior month but still represents a commanding lead in the space.

[More from BGR: New purported BlackBerry Z10 specs emerge: 1.5GHz processor, 2GB RAM, 8MP camera]

The next closest device line, Amazon’s (AMZN) Kindle Fire tablet family, had a 4.25% share of tablet traffic during that period, up from 3.57% in November. Samsung’s (005930) Galaxy tablets made up 2.65% of traffic, up from 2.36%, and Google’s (GOOG) Nexus 7 and Nexus 10 tablets combined to account for 1.06% of tablet traffic in early December.

“Despite these gains by some of the bigger players in the tablet marketplace, there has been a negligible impact to Apple’s dominant usage share,” Chitika wrote in a post on its blog.

This article was originally published by BGR

Gadgets News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: Apple still said to account for 87% of North American tablet traffic as Kindle Fire, Nexus 7 gain
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

Singer Travis pleads not guilty to assault

SAN ANTONIO (Reuters) – Country singer Randy Travis pleaded not guilty to misdemeanor assault in a municipal courtroom in the Dallas suburb of Plano on Friday, his lawyer said.

Lawyer Peter A. Schulte told Reuters his client is “absolutely not guilty of this crime.”

Police say Travis assaulted a man in a church parking lot in Plano in August while attempting to intervene in a disagreement between a woman he was with and the woman’s estranged husband.

“He was actually being a good Samaritan at the time, stepping in to save two women from being assaulted,” Schulte said. He said the woman Travis was with and his daughter were being harassed by two men.

The charge against Travis carries a maximum $ 500 fine and no jail time. The case is set for trial March 11.

The altercation occurred during a bad stretch for the 53-year-old Grammy winner. Earlier in August, Travis was arrested on suspicion of drunken driving after he was found lying naked near his wrecked car along a north Texas highway. He also was accused of threatening to shoot and kill the troopers investigating the case, according to a police report.

The North Carolina-born country singer, known for hits such as “Forever and Ever, Amen,” also was arrested in February for drunken driving while sitting in his car in the parking lot of another north Texas church.

Schulte said Travis has been doing well since the two August incidents. He said his client was upbeat as he left the courtroom Friday.

“He turned and wished everybody who was there a merry Christmas and a happy and healthy New Year,” he said.

(Editing by Corrie MacLaggan and Bill Trott)

Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: Singer Travis pleads not guilty to assault
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

Surgery Returns to NYU Langone Medical Center

Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

Senator Charles E. Schumer spoke at a news conference Thursday about the reopening of NYU Langone Medical Center.

NYU Langone Medical Center opened its doors to surgical patients on Thursday, almost two months after Hurricane Sandy overflowed the banks of the East River and forced the evacuation of hundreds of patients.

While the medical center had been treating many outpatients, it had farmed out surgery to other hospitals, which created scheduling problems that forced many patients to have their operations on nights and weekends, when staffing is traditionally low. Some patients and doctors had to postpone not just elective but also necessary operations for lack of space at other hospitals.

The medical center’s Tisch Hospital, its major hospital for inpatient services, between 30th and 34th Streets on First Avenue, had been closed since the hurricane knocked out power and forced the evacuation of more than 300 patients, some on sleds brought down darkened flights of stairs.

“I think it’s a little bit of a miracle on 34th Street that this happened so quickly,” Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York said Thursday.

Mr. Schumer credited the medical center’s leadership and esprit de corps, and also a tour of the damaged hospital on Nov. 9 by the administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, W. Craig Fugate, whom he and others escorted through watery basement hallways.

“Every time I talk to Fugate there are a lot of questions, but one is, ‘How are you doing at NYU?’ ” the senator said.

The reopening of Tisch to surgery patients and associated services, like intensive care, some types of radiology and recovery room anesthesia, was part of a phased restoration that will continue. Besides providing an essential service, surgery is among the more lucrative of hospital services.

The hospital’s emergency department is expected to delay its reopening for about 11 months, in part to accommodate an expansion in capacity to 65,000 patient visits a year, from 43,000, said Dr. Andrew W. Brotman, its senior vice president and vice dean for clinical affairs and strategy.

In the meantime, NYU Langone is setting up an urgent care center with 31 bays and an observation unit, which will be able to treat some emergency patients. It will initially not accept ambulances, but might be able to later, Dr. Brotman said. Nearby Bellevue Hospital Center, which was also evacuated, opened its emergency department to noncritical injuries on Monday.

Labor and delivery, the cancer floor, epilepsy treatment and pediatrics and neurology beyond surgery are expected to open in mid-January, Langone officials said. While some radiology equipment, which was in the basement, has been restored, other equipment — including a Gamma Knife, a device using radiation to treat brain tumors — is not back.

The flooded basement is still being worked on, and electrical gear has temporarily been moved upstairs. Mr. Schumer, a Democrat, said that a $60 billion bill to pay for hurricane losses and recovery in New York and New Jersey was nearing a vote, and that he was optimistic it would pass in the Senate with bipartisan support. But the measure’s fate in the Republican-controlled House is far less certain.

The bill includes $1.2 billion for damage and lost revenue at NYU Langone, including some money from the National Institutes of Health to restore research projects. It would also cover Long Beach Medical Center in Nassau County, Bellevue, Coney Island Hospital and the Veterans Affairs hospital in Manhattan.

Read More..

Wall Street heads for longest losing streak in three months

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks fell on Friday, putting the S&P 500 on track for a fifth straight decline, as President Barack Obama and top congressional leaders were set to make a last-ditch attempt to steer the country away from severe fiscal austerity next year.

Obama and lawmakers from both political parties will meet at the White House on Friday afternoon for talks in an effort to agree on a solution before a New Year's deadline to keep large tax hikes and spending cuts from taking effect. Economists say that combination of automatic higher taxes and lower government spending - known as the "fiscal cliff" - could push the U.S. economy into a recession.

Trading was volatile and stocks rebounded from their session lows after unconfirmed reports that President Obama was about to offer a new plan to Republicans.

But investors' pessimism about achieving anything more than a stop-gap deal by the deadline was reflected in the benchmark S&P 500's drop of 1.3 percent so far this week. The broad index was on pace for its worst weekly performance since mid-November.

A five-day decline would be the S&P 500's longest losing streak in three months.

"There's a pretty good chance that we won't have something in hand by year-end," said Jonathan Golub, chief U.S. equity strategist at UBS, in New York. "It should be pretty obvious that that is now the majority case."

Golub, however, said investors were still counting on a deal that would avoid most of the tax hikes and spending cuts next year even if it does come after the deadline.

"It is widely believed that we're going to get a deal," he said. "We are not going to go over the cliff to the extent that we have a huge economic contraction."

With time running short, members of Congress may attempt to pass a retroactive fix to neutralize tax increases and spending cuts soon after the automatic fiscal policies come into effect on January 1.

The Dow Jones industrial average fell 65.65 points, or 0.50 percent, to 13,030.66. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index dropped 6.03 points, or 0.43 percent, to 1,412.07. The Nasdaq Composite Index slipped 7.29 points, or 0.24 percent, to 2,978.62.

"It doesn't matter which side wins, but at this point, nobody wants to play a game where there aren't rules," said Joe Costigan, director of equity research at Bryn Mawr Trust, in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania.

"So everybody is talking about what the prospects are for changes in the rules. But at the end of the day, nothing is happening."

Highlighting Wall Street's sensitivity to developments in Washington, stocks tumbled slightly more than 1 percent on Thursday after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid warned that a deal was unlikely before the deadline. But late in the day, the three major U.S. stock indexes rebounded and ended down just 0.1 percent after the U.S. House of Representatives said it would hold an unusual Sunday session to work on a fiscal solution.

With many investors away for the holiday-shortened week, volume is expected to remain light and that could exacerbate the stock market's swings.

Positive economic data failed to alter the market's downtrend.

The National Association of Realtors said contracts to buy previously owned U.S. homes rose in November to their highest level in 2-1/2 years, while a report from the Institute for Supply Management-Chicago showed business activity in the U.S. Midwest expanded in December.

Barnes & Noble Inc shares rose 6.2 percent to $15.24 after the top U.S. bookstore chain said British publisher Pearson Plc had agreed to make a strategic investment in its Nook Media subsidiary. But Barnes & Noble also said its Nook business will not meet its previous projection for fiscal year 2013.

Shares of magicJack VocalTec Ltd jumped 8.5 percent to $17.67 after the company, which provides VoIP or voice over Internet protocol services, forecast more than $39 million in GAAP revenue and over 70 cents per share in operating income for the fourth quarter. The company also said it has appointed Gerald Vento as president and CEO, effective January 1.

The U.S.-listed shares of Canadian drugmaker Aeterna Zentaris Inc surged 16.1 percent to $2.52 after the company said it had reached an agreement with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on a special protocol assessment by the FDA for a Phase 3 registration trial in endometrial cancer with AEZS-108 treatment.

(Reporting by Edward Krudy; Editing by Jan Paschal)

Read More..

Senate Democratic leader warns U.S. poised to go over 'fiscal cliff'

Rana Foroohar, Time magazine's assistant managing editor for business news, talks to Rebecca Jarvis and Jeff Glor about what a drop off the "fiscal cliff" could mean to businesses and consumers.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The top Democrat in the Senate warned on Thursday that the United States looks to be headed over the "fiscal cliff" of tax hikes and spending cuts that will start next week if squabbling politicians do not reach a deal.

Majority Leader Harry Reid told the Senate in a speech that "it looks like that is where we're headed.

He called on the Republicans who control the House of Representatives to prevent the worst of the fiscal shock by getting behind a Senate bill to extend existing tax cuts for all except those households earning more than $250,000 a year.

With the House not in session and the clock ticking toward the scheduled January start of tax increases and deep, automatic government spending cuts, Reid offered little hope.

"I don't know time-wise how it can happen now," he said.

Referring to the House run by Speaker John Boehner - the top Republican in Congress - Reid said, "It's being operated with a dictatorship of the speaker, not allowing a vast majority of the House of Representatives to get what they want."

Boehner's failed effort last week to push his own "fiscal cliff" solution through the House was a "debacle," Reid added. He also accused Boehner of delaying "fiscal cliff" action until after he seeks re-election as House speaker on January 3.

"John Boehner seems to care more about keeping his speakership than about keeping the nation on firm financial footing," Reid added.

Reid's pessimistic remarks sent world stocks, the euro and U.S. shares lower.

But Reid's comments may have been more an attempt to spur Republican rivals into action than a definitive prediction that "fiscal cliff" talks will fail.

President Barack Obama arrived back at the White House from his brief vacation in Hawaii to try to restart stalled negotiations with Congress.

Obama made phone calls to congressional leaders from both parties on Wednesday from Hawaii to try to revive the stalled talks to prevent the "fiscal cliff" scenario, which would worry world financial markets and could push the United States back into recession.

In addition, consumer confidence fell to a four-month low in December as the budget crisis sapped what had been a growing sense of optimism about the economy, a report released on Thursday showed.

"People are hearing about (the cliff) and it negatively impacts confidence and investor sentiment and even holiday sales," said Todd Schoenberger, managing partner at Landcolt Capital in New York.

The chances of a last-minute deal - at least one that would prevent tax hikes - remained uncertain, with Republicans and Democrats each insisting the other side move first amid continuing partisan gridlock.

The Senate, controlled by Democrats, was scheduled to meet later on Thursday but on matters unrelated to the "fiscal cliff."

REPUBLICAN CONFERENCE CALL

Boehner and other House Republican leaders, who say they are willing to take up a "fiscal cliff" measure only after the Senate acts on one, were to hold a conference call with Republican House members on Thursday.

The expectation for the call was that lawmakers would be told to get back to Washington within 48 hours to consider anything the Senate might pass.

Weather permitting, that would bring them to Washington with perhaps three days left before the deadline for action. Storms affecting the Midwest, the South and the Northeast played havoc with airline schedules.

The House and Senate passed bills months ago reflecting their own sharply divergent positions on the expiring low tax rates, which went into effect during the administration of Republican former President George W. Bush.

Democrats want to allow the tax cuts to expire on the wealthiest Americans. Republicans want to extend the tax cuts for everyone.

"This isn't a one party or one house problem. This is (that) leaders in both parties in all branches of the government are not willing to make the deal that they know they have to make. Everybody wants their stuff but doesn't want to give up what they don't want to give up," Republican U.S. Representative Steven LaTourette told CNN.

Congress has proven that it can act swiftly once an agreement is reached. Hope persisted that Republicans and Democrats might come up with a resolution before New Year's Day that could at least postpone the impact of the tax hikes and spending cuts while further discussions take place.

Another battle is just over the horizon in late January or early February over raising the debt ceiling, which puts a limit on the amount of money the U.S. government can borrow to pay its debts and can be raised only with the approval of Congress.

Republican leaders have said they will insist on more budget cuts as a condition of raising the ceiling. Without any action, the U.S. Treasury said on Wednesday the government is set to reach its $16.4 trillion debt ceiling on December 31.

The Treasury Department is to begin "extraordinary measures" to buy time. Many analysts believe the government can stave the default date off into late February.

(Additional reporting by Doina Chiacu, Alina Selyukh and Richard Cowan)

Read More..

Police using Twitter to offer virtual ridealongs

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) — Riding side by side as a police officer answers a call for help or investigates a brutal crime during a ridealong gives citizens an up close look at the gritty and sometimes dangerous situations officers can experience on the job.

But a new approach to informing the public about what officers do is taking hold at police departments across the United States and Canada 7/8— one that is far less dangerous for citizens but, police say, just as informative.

With virtual ridealongs on Twitter, or tweetalongs, curious citizens just need a computer or smartphone for a glimpse into law enforcement officers‘ daily routines.

Tweetalongs typically are scheduled for a set number of hours, with an officer — or a designated tweeter like the department’s public information officer— posting regular updates to Twitter about what they are seeing as they perform their normal on-duty routine. The tweets, which also include photos and links to videos of the officers, can encompass an array of activities — everything from an officer responding to a homicide to a noise complaint.

Police departments say virtual ridealongs reach a wider range of people at once and help add transparency to the job.

“People spend hard-earned money on taxes to allow the government to provide services. That’s police, fire, water, streets, the whole works, and there should be a way for those government agencies to let the public know what they’re getting for their money,” said Steve Allender, chief of the Rapid City Police Department in South Dakota, which started offering tweetalongs several months ago after watching departments like those in Seattle, Kansas City, Mo., and Las Vegas do so.

On the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, Tarah Heupel, the public information officer for the Rapid City Police Department, rode alongside Street Crimes Officer Ron Terviel as he patrolled Rapid City. Heupel posted regular updates every few minutes about what Terviel was doing, including the officer citing a woman for public intoxication, responding to a call of three teenagers attempting to steal cough syrup and body spray from a store and locating a man who ran from the scene of an accident. Photos were included in some of the tweets.

Michael Taddesse, a 34-year-old university career specialist in Arlington, Texas, has done several ridealongs with police and regularly follows multiple departments that conduct tweetalongs.

“I think the only way to effectively combat crime is to have a community that is engaged and understands what’s going on,” he said.

Ridealongs where “you’re out in the elements” are very different than sitting behind a computer during a tweetalong and the level of danger is “dramatically decreased,” he said. But in both instances, the passenger gains new information about the call, what laws may or may not have been broken and what transpires, he added.

For police departments, tweetalongs are just one more way to connect directly with a community through social media.

More than 92 percent of police departments use social media, according to a survey of 600 agencies in 48 states conducted by the International Association of Chiefs of Police’s Center for Social Media. And Nancy Kolb, senior program manager for IACP, called tweetalongs a “growing trend” among departments of all sizes.

There is no set protocol and departments are free to conduct the tweetalong how they see fit, she said.

In Ontario, Canada, the Niagara Regional Police Service conducted their first virtual ridealong in August over a busy eight-hour Friday night shift. The police department‘s followers were able to see a tweet whenever the police unit was dispatched to one of the more than 140,000 calls received that night.

Richard Gadreau, the social media officer for the police department, said officers routinely take people out on real ridealongs, but there is a waiting list and preference is given to people interested in becoming an officer.

With tweetalongs, many calls also mean many tweets. Kolb said departments are cognizant of cluttering peoples’ Twitter feeds.

That’s why the Rapid City Police Department decided to create a separate account for the tweetalong, Allender said.

Kolb also said officers are careful not to tweet personal or sensitive information. Officers typically do not tweet child abuse or domestic abuse cases, and they usually only tweet about a call after they leave the scene to protect officers and callers.

But Allender, the chief of police in Rapid City, said tweetalongs also show some of the more outrageous calls police deal with on a regular basis — like the kid who breaks out the window of a police car while the officer is standing on the sidewalk.

“Real life is funnier than any comedy show out there and not to make fun of people, embarrass them or humiliate them, but people do funny things,” Allender said. “… I mean, that guy deserves a little bit of ridicule, and everyone who would be watching would agree. That’s just good clean fun to me.”

___

Follow Kristi Eaton on Twitter at http://twitter.com/kristieaton

Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: Police using Twitter to offer virtual ridealongs
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

Christmas box-office haul paces Hollywood for record year

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – A strong Christmas-day box office performance by musical “Les Miserables” and western “Django Unchained” put Hollywood on pace to set an all-time box office record with $ 10.8 billion in annual revenue, box-office tracker Hollywood.com said on Wednesday.

Universal Pictures‘ star-studded “Les Miserables” took in a weekday Christmas record of $ 18.2 million in the United States and Canada when it opened on Tuesday, according to studio estimates of weekday ticket sales.

Quentin Tarantino‘s spaghetti western “Django Unchained,” starring Jamie Foxx and Leonardo DiCaprio, hauled nearly $ 15 million for The Weinstein Co.

Studios “are definitely on the road to a record year with $ 10.8 billion expected (up 6 percent over last year and beating the previous record of $ 10.6 billion in 2009),” Hollywood.com analyst Paul Dergarabedian told Reuters in an email, adding that the number of tickets sold should climb 6 percent from 2011 to 1.36 billion.

Dergarabedian credits a successful marketing year for studios as a chief reason for the projected box-office record, as well as spring and summer smashes “The Hunger Games” and “The Avengers” helping boost revenue.

“It was not just the fact that most of the movies delivered, it was the timing of their release dates and the marketing was obviously effective as well with social media continuing to provide an outlet for the movie-going peer group to talk about their favorite flicks,” Dergarabedian said.

“The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey,” based on the J.R.R. Tolkein classic fantasy novel, brought in $ 11.4 million on Christmas day after ruling the box office with nearly $ 37 million in sales over the weekend.

Billy Crystal family film “Parental Guidance” debuted in fourth place with about $ 6.4 million in Christmas sales while Tom Cruise’s “Jack Reacher,” which featured author Lee Child’s character in an investigation into a sniper shooting, was fifth with some $ 5.3 million.

“The Hobbit” was distributed by Time Warner Inc’s Warner Bros. Studio. News Corp’s 20th Century Fox released “Parental Guidance” and Paramount Pictures, a unit of Viacom, released “Jack Reacher.” Universal Pictures is owned by Comcast Corp.

(Reporting by Eric Kelsey; Edited by Ronald Grover and Andrew Hay)

Movies News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: Christmas box-office haul paces Hollywood for record year
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

Home Tech: Devices to Monitor Physical Activity and Food Intake

STEP LIVELY Fitbit One pedometer clips onto your belt or pocket to record activity.

WHEN I received the results of a routine cholesterol test this summer, I was certain there had been some kind of mistake. I’m young, unstressed and healthy, or so I imagined. I work out, too, and most impartial observers — and some partial ones — would describe me as lean. Plus, I eat a nutritious diet, I swear. So why did my LDL levels surpass my I.Q. — or, for that matter, Einstein’s?

The facts were stark: My genes predisposed me to metabolic syndrome, my doctor told me. Like my forebears, I was on a fast path to heart disease and diabetes. My doctor ordered me to reduce my carbs and come up with a more stringent exercise plan. I’ve rarely monitored what I eat and how much exercise I get. I had no idea how to go about the logistics of it. How would I count my carbs? How would I track my fitness routine?

Of course, there are apps for that. I set out to scour the market for devices and programs to help me and any family member who wished to join me in my low-carb adventure improve our health. I found two kinds of technologies: fitness trackers to monitor physical activity, and P.C. and smartphone apps to track diet. I spent weeks testing several of them. And while I found a few to be quite helpful, they were all just short of fantastic.

I tried four high-end fitness gadgets: Nike’s FuelBand ($149), the Fitbit One ($99.95), Jawbone’s Up ($129.99) and the BodyMedia FIT wireless armband ($149). I also threw in a plain-Jane pedometer, the Omron HJ-720ITC, which I found for $31 at many stores online.

All of these devices work in a similar way. You attach them to your person (the FuelBand and Up fit around your wrist, the FIT goes around your upper arm, and the Fitbit and Omron pedometer can be placed in a pocket or clipped to your belt). Then, as you move, the devices measure your activity.

Unfortunately each device had major drawbacks. Even though I had gotten the proper size, I found that the Up and the FuelBand did not fit well around my wrist. They tapped against my desk while I typed, and they slid about uncomfortably when I washed the dishes. (They are both water-resistant.) BodyMedia’s FIT, meanwhile, is about the size of a man’s large wristwatch. Positioned directly against the skin around the upper arm, it is ungainly — I found it distracting when I was in a short-sleeve workout shirt, and strange-looking under a nice button-down shirt.

The pedometer and the Fitbit were easier to handle; I hardly noticed them crammed with my keys and phone in my pocket. On the other hand, because they are not wearable, I often forgot them on my bedside table, where they did no good.

Still, among these vast offerings, I found the Fitbit and the cheap Omron to be best. The Fitbit is an unobtrusive slab of plastic about the size of a U.S.B. thumb drive. Its software — which is available for Macs and Windows P.C.’s, as well as iOS and Android devices — is simple to learn and offers plenty of graphs and stats to track your progress. The most useful is a graph of your activity over the course of the day: you can see how many calories you burned while at work and alter your behavior accordingly. Maybe go for a brief walk after lunch?

(I was a big fan of Jawbone’s Up software, too, but I ultimately found it too limited: It works only on Apple’s iOS devices; the company has not yet made versions for P.C.’s or Android devices.)

The best thing about the Fitbit is its wireless syncing capability. It comes with a tiny receiver that plugs into your computer’s U.S.B. port; whenever your Fitbit is near your machine, it sends its data over the air, no physical docking required. It also syncs directly to your phone over Bluetooth. (You do have to plug your Fitbit in to charge it, but only rarely — you can go more than a week between charges.)

The Omron, by comparison, does not do wireless syncing, and its optional P.C. software is pretty basic. But paucity is its beauty. No setup is required. Just turn it on and leave it in your pocket. At the end of the day, peek at its screen — in large, readable type, it shows a single stat: how many steps you have walked that day. The Omron does not promise the world, but it delivers enough information to keep you healthy.

Read More..