Showing posts with label Amazon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Amazon. Show all posts
Friday, September 6, 2013
2014 BERLITZ CRUISE GUIDE CROWNS A NEW CHAMPION FOR THE FIRST TIME IN MORE THAN A DECADE
6:44 AM | 
Posted by
LEADERHUNTRESS |
Vacationers Get an Indispensable
Guide (and Cruise Operators Cross Their Fingers) as Renowned Expert Douglas
Ward Scores Winners and Losers among Major Cruise Ships
All Hail to the new Queen of the
High Seas!
The
seafaring equivalent of the Oscars, Emmys and Tonys—only considerably more
global—is revealed in Douglas Ward’s authoritative Berlitz Guide to Cruising
& Cruise Ships 2014, and his selection for the new No. 1
is—drum roll, please—Europa 2. It’s interesting, Ward says, that
long-standing champion Europa (which had earned the top score for a
remarkable 13 consecutive years) “has been knocked off its perch by her sister ship. It’s the first
time since 1989 that two ships belonging to the same company [Hapag-Lloyd
Cruises] have achieved a *****+ rating (the ships then were Royal Viking Sea
and Royal Viking Sky).”
Why does Europa
2 score the best? Because, Douglas Ward says, “it’s a beautiful ship with
an incredible amount of space per passenger passageways with high ceilings, the
choice and range of all the dining venues and
types of cuisine and the attentive, friendly unobtrusive personal service.”
That along with other features, he says, “all add up to the very best informal
cruise ship available today—unless you own a private motor yacht.”
In
addition to the bestselling book, the Berlitz Cruise Ships App for the
iPhone and iPad, allows cruise-goers to quickly search and “surf” through all
285 ships via touch screen, clicking on their specific categories, such as
family travel, cuisine, accommodation, size of ship and many other criteria.
Available for all Apple devices, the app is an ideal cruise planning tool with
search and filter capacity for information about 285 ships and tips to help
every cruiser, whether solo, senior, family or first time cruiser, to choose
the right ship.
With more than 45 years of
experience and continuing to log up to 200 days a year on cruises, Ward has
earned a
reputation as the pre-eminent (and totally impartial) authority on cruising,
inspecting and evaluating each ship— the
quality of facilities, as well as the standards of food, service, staff, safety
and hospitality—
like a maritime Sherlock. For
the 29th year, he based his
meticulous ratings on criteria that include virtually every aspect of the
cruise experience, and, he stresses, the "general value" for the
passenger. “But quite honestly, there really is no such thing as best,"
Ward says, "only what’s right for you.” His comprehensive ratings
system, compiled independently and in no way subsidized by advertising or
sponsorship, bases its Berlitz stars on points given in numerous categories.
They all add up to what remains an unbiased and unvarnished appraisal of what’s
best and worst in the world of cruising.
Berlitz’s
Cruising & Cruise Ships 2014, expanded to more than 750 pages from last
year's edition, has an array of new features, including a new chapter dedicated
to the latest news on theme cruising—from Big Band and Country & Western to
culinary and astronomy voyages; a new chapter on first-time cruising,
containing valuable information for beginners planning a successful first
voyage; more Q&A on what the brochures don’t tell you; expanded River
Cruising and North Atlantic crossings chapters; an enlarged cuisine chapter
with more about healthy eating and self-serve buffets; updated information on
new ships coming in 2014; and updated content on the major cruise lines,
including Carnival, Costa, Cunard, Holland America, MSC, Norwegian, Princess
and Royal Caribbean.
Ward has
also included the IMO (International Maritime Organization) number for each
ship where known. The industry, he says, is the most regulated business in the world
today and it continues to enact even more stringent measures to keep everyone
safe, passengers and crew alike, but still, in the aftermath of the Costa
Concordia disaster, “I thought it useful to include this information.”
For the full rankings list, contact Melissa Lande:
mlande@landepr.com.
Fully updated and revised
and now in its 29th year, the Berlitz Guide to Cruising & Cruise
Ships 2014 (752 pages, $24.99) as well as an eBook, will be available in the
U.S. on November 1, 2013 through Amazon and many bookstores. The app, which is $9.99, will be available worldwide on September 14,
2013, from Apple through the iTunes App store. For further
information or to purchase, visit http://www.insightguides.com/berlitz/berlitz-cruising.
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Monday, October 31, 2011
AMAZON KICKS NOOK’S BUTT WITH KINDLE, BUT WHAT ABOUT APPLE?
2:05 PM |
Posted by
LEADERHUNTRESS |
I found this article by David Magee on Linked In-Tools for Publishing, which appeared about a month ago. As the world morphs to digital books – and the smell of a delicious old article moves further and further away from my nose (out of sight, but never ever out of mind), the war wages between B & N with its Nook and Amazon with its Kindle. Here’s what David says:
Ouch, said Barnes & Noble, America's largest bookstore chain which relies heavily on sales of its Nook and Nook Color. Amazon's Fire tablet is $50 cheaper than the Nook Color. Amazon also announced it will slash prices on its.Kindle ereaders
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos spoke at a news conference during the launch of Amazon's new tablets in New York, September 28, 2011. Amazon.com Inc unveiled its long-awaited tablet computer on Wednesday with a $199 price tag, potentially cheap enough to give Apple Inc's iPad some serious competition for the first time.
Here are five reasons Amazon could drive a nail in Barnes & Noble's coffin:
1) The Nook has arguably saved Barnes & Noblehttp://www.barnesandnoble.com/nook/index.asp, positioning the company well in the digital realm as sales at brick and mortar chain bookstores shrivel. Borders went bankrupt, for instance, because it was too late and too weak with its digital entries. The Nook has sold been solid, and respectable, but it has also been a drag on BN's earnings. Now, BN is forced to slash prices on its Nook products based upon Amazon now having set the pricing bar -- low.
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1. BN can't afford to lose money on hardware sales like Amazon can.2) BN has reportedly been moving toward launching its own new tablet, reportedly called "Acclaim." Reports have suggested the product will be priced at $349. But since Amazon has more content, including streaming movies with its Prime subscriptions, it isn't likely that a higher priced tablet will have much of a chance competing against Amazon's lower-priced tablet. So not only will BN have to slash prices on its Nook products, including the Nook Color, but the company may have already lost on the Acclaim before the public has really even heard about the product.
The company can't afford to move backwards, because Chapter 11 is too close behind.
3) BN's online presence was better than what Borders ever had, since Borders was so late into that game. For years, Borders simply let Amazon run its online bookstore before the company launched its own site not long before filing bankruptcy and dissolving. But while bn.com has helped keep BN in business, the website is suddenly getting quite inferior to Amazon.com.
Simply, Amazon.com, and its Prime $79 annual subscription, gets stronger and stronger. The company is adding more content, including recently signed deals for movies and TV shows with CBS and Universal pictures. BN just doesn't have the money to get there. It's a case of the strong getting stronger and the weak getting left behind. As Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos suggested at today's Kindle Fire unveiling, it's about much more than the hardware.
That's true. Amazon has much more. And BN has less in comparison with each and every passing day.
4) BN's big advantage with the Nook is supposedly that it has brick-and-mortar stores throughout the country from which to sell the products. But that's more of a liability than an advantage. It's a costly way to sell digital products, since that real estate is not cheap. Because the company is laden with so much expensive retail real estate it doesn't have the nimbleness in e-products pricing that Amazon does.
5) Amazon's expected mass success with its Kindle Fire tablet -- most observers think Amazon will sell millions of the new product rather quickly -- will only further entrench the company's position as the ebooks leader. Sure, BN hasn't been too far behind, but that gap is likely to grow. And the farther Amazon pulls ahead, the less attractive BN becomes for investors when the company needs to raise capital.
In full disclosure, this isn't a wish that BN will die. The opposite is true. America's needs its largest bookstore chain. It's just that Amazon has just thrown down a competitive gauntlet that BN, already on shaky ground in a slowing book-sales world, simply can't afford. (end of David’s piece).
So, we’re watching all of this. As far as e-books, I was talking with another naysayer last week who tells me e-books are not credible; “they’re sleazy.” I informed him – not true anymore – many are credible, in fact, some top rated authors have benefitted. I will write about this in coming weeks.
As an Apple fan, I always wonder where “IT-The Great Apple” comes in. Obviously, the iPad can do anything better than anyone else.
But apparently, the late, great Steve Jobs said “no Apple e-book” and no one believed him. In an article in Venturebeat.com by Paul Bouton on September 11,
HE reported that IT was reported that Steve Jobs gave New York Times reporter David Pogue an interview. Asked if Apple was ready to debut an e-reader like Amazon’s Kindle — but much, much prettier, of course Jobs said he didn’t think e-readers made sense:
He said Apple doesn’t see e-books as a big market at this time, and also noted that Amazon never says how many Kindles is sells. “Usually, if they sell a lot of something, you want to tell everybody.”
Venturebeat then says, according to input, the Internet’s vote is in: Why believe him(Jobs)? Guardian correspondent Bobbie Johnson unearthed past quotes in which Jobs bluffed on video iPods:
“One of the things we say around Apple, and I paraphrase Bill Clinton from the 1992 presidential race, is ‘It’s about the music, stupid.’ … You can’t watch a video and drive a car. We’re focused on music.”
And in which Jobs’ vice president of iTunes, Eddie Cue, misled readers prior to the iPhone’s debut:
“What we’ve talked about is a something that is valuable for the mass market,” Cue said. “It has to be a phone in the middle-tier of the market, not a $500-tier phone. It has to be very seamless to use.”
VentureBeat says: “
Our guess: Apple will sell a device that reads books and then some. Jobs will explain how it all makes sense. I’ll write a post agreeing with him.”
Back to Melissa aka LeaderHuntress: Unfortunately, Jobs won’t be explaining THAT as predicted but someone else from Apple will; because I think Apple is the top contender. The question is – will people want more than one tablet? Why would someone get a Kindle and an iPad2? It’s a deliver device. I would go with the delivery device that provides the most items for delivery. Or am I missing something? Samsung? Are you there?
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