Mediaboss Marketing

Domain Properties and the NYC hospitality sector are off to a profitable start in 2012. Recently, Domain Properties, a key player in New York City Hotel transactions, closed on the sale of the Avalon an upscale Midtown property. This transaction is just one of the latest deals involving prominent hotels in the Big Apple. Domain Properties continues to represent private investment entities, pension funds, REITs, hotel management companies, asset management firms, and sovereign funds in search of equity rich quality Hotel Properties in New York City including Developments, Acquisitions and Joint Ventures.

New York, NY (PRWEB) March 23, 2012

The recent deal involving the Avalon (unique building situated in a prime Midtown neighborhood) is the latest transaction in a vibrant NYC hotel sector. Domain Properties has just released its detailed "Beginning of the Year Report - Buying and Selling NYC Hotels in 2012" an overview of the current hospitality scene from January to March. Other notable deals include hotel sales such as Hampton Inn 35th St. Empire State Building, Novotel Hotel Times Square, Cassa Hotel & Residence, Knickerbocker Hotel, Ritz-Carlton Hotel, Hyatt Place New York Midtown South, and Wyndham Garden Hotel - Times Square, as well as Holiday Inn New York City Midtown - 31st Street (Chesapeake's Lodging Trust's first NYC hotel).

In addition, Dubai Investment Group, part of the larger Dubai Group, is selling the Jumeirah Essex House an art deco building near Central Park.

The hotel company explains that "Jumeirah remains confident in the value it brings as an internationally respected luxury hotel brand and expects that it will continue to manage the hotel after the sale of the property."

As well, InterContinental Hotels Group boss, Richard Solomons, plans to sell the landmark New York Barclay hotel. Simon French at Panmure Gordon notes, "Given the strength of the US hotel market we look for management to reaffirm its commitment to dispose of the InterContinental NY Barclay in 2012."

Indeed, this hotel sale could yield shareholders a $250 million cash return. Generally, investors around the globe have an eye on the robust demand for NYC Hotels as well as the Big Apple's record-breaking tourism statistics. Recently, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and NYC & Company (New York Citys official marketing and tourism organization) announced that the Big Apple had welcomed more visitors in 2011 than suggested by earlier projections.

In fact, last year's NYC tourism figures indicate a record-breaking 50.5 million visitors. Even between December 2011 and January-March 2012, travelers are coming to New York City the number one metropolitan U.S. tourist destination. Hotel occupancy rates increased to 85% by the end of last year. Even during the winter months, corporate groups and leisure guests choose New York City.

For complete OFF-MARKET listings of NYC hotels for sale or to have Domain Properties represent your hotel portfolio, visit http://www.Domain-Properties.com Contact Haim Yagen and get Domain Properties to work for you in one of the most exciting periods in the history of buying and selling hotels in New York City. During 2012, city hotels are expected to match or even exceed the popularity that the industry enjoyed during the previous year. That accomplishment would be an outstanding one for the Big Apple's lodging sector. NYC hotel sales demonstrated a five-year high in 2011 up 148% from 2010 and 524% over 2009.

About Domain Properties:

Read the rest here:
Manhattan Hotel Market Report 2012 - NYC Hotel Investments - Developments & Acquisitions by Domain Properties

For immediate release

23 March 2012

Top Level Domain Holdings Limited

("TLDH", the "Company" or "Group")

TLDH to apply for .music

The Directors of Top Level Domain Holdings Limited (AIM:TLDH.L), the only publicly traded company focused exclusively on acquiring and operating new generic top-level domains ("gTLDs"), are pleased to announce that it has signed a joint venture agreement with LHL TLD Investment Partners of Beverly Hills California ("LHL") to apply for the .music top level domain under the gTLD programme being run by the Internet's governing body, Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers ("ICANN"). ICANN has formally opened the application window under which organisations can apply for the right to own and operate a new generic top level domain.

LHL consists of a number of leading music industry figures including artists, managers, music producers and lawyers. TLDH's wholly owned registry services business, Minds + Machines, will provide back-end registry services and TLDH will co-invest alongside LHL in the joint venture.

Antony Van Couvering, CEO of TLDH, said:

"We're thrilled to be working with leading music artists and professionals. This partnership brings financial weight and industry expertise to the table and confirms the value which we see in .music."

On the 21 February 2012, the Company announced that it had already applied for 40 gTLD Application Slots on behalf of itself and its clients. The Company will be applying for a further batch of Application Slots before the Application Window closes on 12 April 2012.

See the original post here:
Top Level Domain Hdg - TLDH to apply for dot music

When Anton Marinovich turned 18, his grandmother gave him $1,000 with strict instructions to invest in the stock market. He chose Apple Inc.

Seventeen years later, his investment is worth more than $240,000 and will bring him over $1,000 a quarter through the company's new dividend plan.

"It's pretty bananas," Marinovich said. "I always hear about all these people here in Silicon Valley falling into huge luck, but I never thought it would happen to me," said Marinovich, who is the director of sales at Equilar, a Redwood City, California-based executive compensation consultant.

Watching Apple shares soar more than 77 percent over the past 12 months has been a wild ride for people like Marinovich, who are firmly planted in the cult of Apple. Between him and his fiancee they own two iPhones, two MacBooks an iPad and 400 shares of Apple.

Many loyalists bought stock years ago when shares languished at double-digit prices. They held on to it out of a love for the company and its products. Now, they are being richly rewarded by a share price of around $600 and a rich dividend payout from Apple's cash pile of nearly $100 billion.

Nearly two dozen individual Apple shareholders interviewed by Reuters say they are not going on crazy spending sprees or vacations to Fiji, despite the huge windfall they could get by cashing out. Practically none of them said they plan to sell, a loyalty that gives some of their financial planners heartburn.

That's not to say they aren't treating themselves - or breathing a little easier.

Marinovich said the comfort of his Apple investment cushion means more freedom in his spending habits. He recently bought himself a $2,000 Omega watch and is shopping for a new Audi to replace his Volkswagen Jetta.

Retiree Pat Harshbarger, 79, has seen her $13,800 investment in Apple rise to $46,000. That paper wealth has made the former nurse comfortable enough to consider taking a few more trips to Maine to visit family and one to Las Vegas, where she and her husband want to try their hand at the slot machines, she said.

Seventy-one years old Stan Merkin, a retired Dell and IBM programmer whose portfolio has gained about $100,000 just by buying Apple since late last year, said he will buy another 50 shares if the stock hits $650.

Visit link:
Apple's Shareholders Get Rich, and Hang On

In the age of endless sharing, super cookies, social search results, and that ever-present social graph, its comforting to know that there are some who are still prioritizing privacy. (And a few of them are former Googlers no less!) In October 2010, Google engineer Brian Kennish created Facebook Disconnect, a Chrome extension that disables all traffic from third-party sites to Facebook servers but still allows you to access Facebook itself. The extension was an immediate hit, racking up 50K active users in two weeks (it now has 200K+), prompting Kennish to leave his job at Google to focus full-time on helping the average web user take back control of their data.

Shortly thereafter the former Google engineer launched Disconnect, applying the same method behind Facebook Disconnect to other major third-party sites, like Digg, Google, Twitter, and Yahoo, enabling you to disable data tracking while you browse.

Now collectively attracting over 400K weekly active users, Kennish tells us his privacy-protection tools ended up being much more popular than he ever expected. As a result, he decided to turn the side project into a real company, co-founding Disconnect.me with another ex-Google engineer, Austin Chau and consumer rights advocate Casey Oppenheim.

The company, which officially launched late last year, is founded on a simple premise: Personal data should belong to people, not corporations. So, the team is building Disconnect.me into a full-fledged platform that allows users to control who does what with their data online, Kennish says. The first step is to help users stop the free flow of personal information to third-parties, he says, while step two will be giving users customized controls that allow them to share personal info when and how they deem fit. (To give you a sense of how big he thinks this problem is, watch this video here.)

To help them in their crusade, the team has raised $600K in seed funding, led by Highland Capital Partners with participation from Charles River Ventures, and angels investors like David Cancel, Mark Jacobstein, Ramesh Haridas, Vikas Taneja, Chris Hobbs, and Andy Toebben.

Both to celebrate their new raise and to provide users with a response to Google consolidating its privacy policy (which, in fact, rolled 70 different policies into one, allowing the company to combine all data it has on you into a single profile), the team is launching Google Disconnect and Twitter Disconnect for Chrome, Firefox, and Safari.

These extensions are similar to Facebook Disconnect and follow the recent addition of Facebook Disconnect to Firefox and Safari. And, of course, some may also be familiar with Kennish from Frictionless, which he built with Nik Cubrilovic to take having to download a Facebook app out of the process of reading news on the social network. (Read Johns coverage here.)

The app was an awesome solution to a grievance many have experienced when reading social news, and Kennish says he expected the extension to get some traction, but it only had about 3K active users at its peak, and with Facebook iterating on its UI, Kennish said they had trouble keeping up, and decided to put the app in hibernation. Although, with some pressure, we may be able to convince the guys to bring it back.

In the meantime, Disconnect.me is going to be focusing on protecting you from the thousands of companies that track, analyze, and auction off your browsing and search histories without so much as a peep to you or the millions of other web surfers out there. And, by the way, Disconnect.me doesnt collect your IP address or any personal info, unless you want to give them your email address, of course.

This also especially relevant given this post from Gizmodo today about nuking your search history and the case against Google.

Original post:
Disconnect: Ex-Googlers Raise Funding To Stop Google, Facebook & More From Tracking Your Data

By Jessica Toonkel

NEW YORK (Reuters) - When Anton Marinovich turned 18, his grandmother gave him $1,000 with strict instructions to invest in the stock market. He chose Apple Inc (AAPL.O).

Seventeen years later, his investment is worth more than $240,000 and will bring him over $1,000 a quarter through the company's new dividend plan.

"It's pretty bananas," Marinovich said. "I always hear about all these people here in Silicon Valley falling into huge luck, but I never thought it would happen to me," said Marinovich, who is the director of sales at Equilar, a Redwood City, California-based executive compensation consultant.

Watching Apple shares soar more than 77 percent over the past 12 months has been a wild ride for people like Marinovich, who are firmly planted in the cult of Apple. Between him and his fiancee they own two iPhones, two MacBooks an iPad and 400 shares of Apple.

Many loyalists bought stock years ago when shares languished at double-digit prices. The held on to it out of a love for the company and its products. Now, they are being richly rewarded by a share price of around $600 and a rich dividend payout from Apple's cash pile of nearly $100 billion.

Nearly two dozen individual Apple shareholders interviewed by Reuters say they are not going on crazy spending sprees or vacations to Fiji, de spite the huge windfall they could get by cashing out. Practically none of them said they plan to sell, a loyalty that gives some of their financial planners heartburn.

That's not to say they aren't treating themselves - or breathing a little easier.

Marinovich said the comfort of his Apple investment cushion means more freedom in his spending habits. He recently bought himself a $2,000 Omega watch and is shopping for a new Audi to replace his Volkswagen Jetta.

Retiree Pat Harshbarger, 79, has seen her $13,800 investment in Apple rise to $46,000. That paper wealth has made the former nurse comfortable enough to consider taking a few more trips to Maine to visit family and one to Las Vegas, where she and her husband want to try their hand at the slot machines, she said.

Read more:
Apple's devoted shareholders get rich, and hang on