Wednesday 17 September 2014

Best Historic Sights in Buenos Aires

Here is a list of best historic destinations om Buenos Aires  covered by Dustin N Salzano .

Buenos Aires has always felt to me like a city whose greatest secrets are yet to be told, and whose myths might be unearthed if only we could peel away the layers of truth. Nonsense, of course; but it encourages me to keep walking and exploring, looking at old buildings, looking behind new buildings, finding strangeness and beauty wherever I can.

1) Plaza de Mayo

Named for Argentina’s independence revolution of May 1810, Plaza de Mayo continues to be a focal point for protest (the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo human rights group is as famous as the square itself) and celebration. Look for these landmarks: The presidential Pink House (yup, the one in Evita), the whitewashed Cabildo, and the sternly Neoclassical cathedral.


2) Avenida Corrientes

Lined with theaters, concert halls, secondhand bookstores, pizzerias and not a single damn tree, the half dozen blocks of Corrientes on either side of Avenida 9 de Julio show Buenos Aires at its most unremittingly urban. Its heyday was in the early to mid 20th century, when the “street that never sleeps” birthed and hosted a flourishing bohemia and tango scene. On the right kind of night, you can still catch echoes of this seedy glamor.


3)  Manzana de las Luces

The “Illuminated Block,” as it is commonly, and unpoetically, translated is a complex of historic buildings constructed by the Jesuits in the early 17th century. Dating from 1734, Iglesia de San Ignacio is the oldest extant church in the city. The earth beneath the block is honeycombed with tunnels, several of which have been excavated in recent decades and can be visited.


4) Cementerio de la Recoleta

Depending on your point of view (I hinted at mine in the Introduction), this world-famous graveyard is either a place of exquisite beauty and spirituality or a big-ticket monument to human vanity and delusions of immortality. A high number of visitors shrug off this dilemma and make a beeline for one of the plainest of the 4,691 vaults: Eva Perón’s. When they get there, many seem to forget why they came.


La Boca

Or “the Republic of La Boca,” as a famous sign proclaims, reflecting local pride, a sense of independence and not a little insularity on the part of the residents of this working-class barrio. The once-bustling docks are now a stinking morass, but waterfront projects like Fundación Proa hint at regeneration. Most visitors bus in for the pastel façades of Caminito and the soccer mecca that is La Bombonera.


Content Source:- Travel & Leisure


Tuesday 16 September 2014

Most Beautiful Travel Adventures to Take Around the World

Dustin N Salzano loves traveling and that is the reason he reblogged and shares articles related to traveling.
Although travel can get expensive, it definitely has its benefits. It’s a great educational and cultural experience for people and it helps people learn more about the world and think outside of the box. When you’re planning your next trip, consider one of these 10 most beautiful travel spots. You might want to add them to your bucket list!

Maldives

Famous for being the ultimate luxury-honeymoon getaway, the Maldives is made up of 1,192 islands (200 of which are inhabited) located in the Indian Ocean. It is the smallest Asian country and also the flattest country in the world. Known for its crystal-clear water and colorful and varied marine life, the Maldives is definitely a beautiful escape. 

 
Source: Shutterstock

African Safari

If you had to pick just one travel adventure, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a something more exciting than the wildebeest migration. Stay in a tent, lodge, or hotel in Kenya or another African country along the migration route and watch the large herd cross the plain or battle hungry crocodiles during a river crossing.

Sunday 14 September 2014

The Best International Honeymoon Locations

You can also look at the Top Honeymoon Destinations across the World by Dustin N Salzano
Originally posted on Earnest Foods For My Soul

A honeymoon is a great idea for couples that have recently been married. Celebrate your marriage together and relax, enjoying the sucess of your wedding. When you are selecting your honeymoon destination for you and your new spouse you will want it to be as perfect as your wedding so some planning is required.
1. Hawaii
Hawaii is the best and origional stop for honeymooners. If you want, you can lounge along the beach or enjoy the tropical scenery. You can take a tour to help you explore the island, its waterfalls, and other beautful natural resources. The ultimate experience is simply to watch the sunset, although in the morning you can experience one of the finest golf courses in the world, play tennis, or participate in a luau.
2. Italy
Italy offers both plenty of sandy beaches as well as snow covered mountains for skiing and snowboarding. There are…
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Friday 12 September 2014

Interested in visiting the Islands of Loreto? WestJet can take you there!

Do something each day to bring you a little closer to your dreams…….. Dustin N Salzano

Originally posted on Vancouver Bits and Bites Blog:

If you’re planing a romantic gateway for next year, WestJet, Canada’s most-prefered airline, will start launching non-stop weekly service between Calgary and the Villa del Palmar resort beginning on February 14, 2015. The airline may bring the service to Vancouver, depending on how successful the flights out of Calgary are.

WJ 700 winglet rght 4in 4c[1]

After the course of three short years, Villa del Palmar at the Islands of Loreto has been rapidly growing in popularity with adventure-seekers and connoisseurs of pure relaxation alike.

Considered a  luxury destination resort –  Villa del Palmar is located on the Sea of Cortez, off the eastern coast of the Baja peninsula overlooking Danzante Island. The resort’s many amenities include: three gourmet restaurants, five swimming pools,  spa and wellness centre and a private beachfront.

poolscuba

Guests have many adventures to choose from, such as SCUBA diving lessons, snorkelling, world-class fishing, paddle boarding and kayaking only to name a few.  With complimentary…

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PLITVICE LAKES

Everything has beauty but not everyone sees it…. Dustin N Salzano

Originally posted on Creative Mind

Plitvice Lakes is a national park in the eastern part of Croatia. With 16 lakes, countless waterfalls and an abundance of different forests and animals it is known for its natural beauty. These photos were taken summer of 2011 on my second visit to Croatia’s first and largest national park.




Why Social Media Marketing Represents the New Face of PR

Google’s approach towards updating its algorithms has become increasingly aggressive in recent times, as the brand have introduced a higher volume of radical changes that target spam-laden websites and farmed content. This has hit webmasters hard, while it has also courted controversy thanks to its stringent and unflinching nature.

There is method behind such madness, however, as Google remain committed to improving the online experience and driving higher levels of customer engagement. As a result of this, content marketing has now emerged as the single most effective method for promoting products, sharing information and driving brand recognition.

Blurring the Lines: Why Social Media represents the new Face of PR

Content marketing is a diverse and fluid entity, however, and one which continues to blur the previously distinguished lines between disciplines such as PR and social media. With Google taking an increasingly dim view of paid content or earned media such as PR, for example, social media is becoming a more viable medium for sharing material, engaging the interest of customers’ and driving traffic to a commercial website. With this in mind, let’s consider the benefits of owned media such as social media and the advantages that it offers content marketers: -
  1. Compliance with Google’s Current and Future Algorithms
While complying with Google’s current algorithms is important, it means little unless you can pre-empt future changes and tailor your strategy accordingly. Although this is not easy to do with any authority, it is clear that Google will continue to crack-down on paid content and article syndication, meaning that rehashing the same content across traditional PR distribution networks is unlikely to benefit your online brand. With this in mind, social media offers a clear advantage as it is entirely free to access and enables you to actively share and promote your content in a natural and organic manner. You can also reach a far larger audience through an integrated social media platform, while it also lets’ you tailor your message and generate real-time interaction with customers.

Related Resources from B2C

  1. Networking with Industry Contacts and Potential Customers with Real-time
Whenever you publish a piece of content on a PR or earned media site, you usually have the opportunity to share contact details including telephone number, email address, website URL and social media home pages. While it is possible to share comprehensive contact information, however, earned media sites do not have the capacity to host social conversations or build real-time business relationships. Social media does have this capacity; however, as industry contracts, clients and consumers can instantaneously share your content, add you to their network or send you’re a direct message. This is a huge boon for business owners, sole traders and creative entrepreneurs, who can build a productive network of followers and communicate with them in a convenient and real-time manner.
  1. Create and Maintain a Consistent Online Brand

The worlds of business and commerce are extremely fast paced, and brands are often pressed for time when competing in a busy marketplace. This can impact on the quality of their messaging, however, and create inconsistencies that undermine an entire campaign. The use of an integrated social media network makes it far easier to review your previous output, however, while also providing a real-time forum for customers’ to share their feedback on the quality of the brand and their perception of its positioning. This is in stark contrast to earned media sites and high-profile article directories, which would require you to locate and read every single piece of content in order to create a consistent message. These resources also fail to provide any form of direct link with your customers, meaning that it is almost impossible to measure the impact of your campaign and the exact perception of the brand.






Thursday 11 September 2014

The Castle on Everyone’s Bucket List – Neuschwanstein

This is really beautiful picture.  I , Dustin N Salzano  would love to go this place.

Neuschwanstein-Castle, Germany

When I was in my early 20s & backpacking around Europe, I had visions of what dreamy landscapes & majestic castles I would see. While Italy and Greece were at the top of my list for countries to explore, one image stood out in my mind as the best of Europe; it was Neuschwanstein Castle. I couldn’t imagine anything more beautiful. Pictures didn’t seem real. I needed to see it for myself. I never made it to Germany on that trip so Neuschwanstein remained on my bucket list for more than a decade… until yesterday! I finally made it to my fantastical castle & it was everything I imaged.

Sitting high above the village of Hohenschwangua near Fussen, Germany is Neuschwanstein Castle. This 1800s Romanesque revival was once the home of introverted King Ludwig II of Bavaria, but after his death it was opened for public tours. More than 60 million people have visited the castle and I’ve always 
wanted to be one of them. Yesterday my bucket list dream became a reality.

Standing on the bridge at  Neuschwanstein Castle

We took the bus to the foot of the castle and witnessed its grandeur from Queen Mary’s Bridge. It’s that vantage point that has produced the most famous photos of the castle. I stood in shock. It was massive and much more impressive than any picture could produce. Seven stories of sheer brilliance stood before me.

Neuschwanstein, Germany

I wanted to get closer.

Neuschwanstein,-Germany

During our tour inside, we saw the ornately decorated Singers’ Hall, the largest room in the palace, and the unusual grotto room, set in an artificial cave. (Sorry, no photos were allowed inside and for once I respected the policy.)
With flat lands on the north side of the castle and the Alps in the south, the vistas that surround the castle are equally as impressive as the castle itself. This is what dreams, and Disney movies, are made of.

Views from Neuschwanstein Castle

To complete the fantasy, we rode a horse drawn carriage down the mountain to our vehicle. I figured it was fitting in the magical surroundings, and to say Athena was excited about it would be a gross understatement.

Athena on the Horse Drawn Carriage


I now see Neuschwanstein Castle with new eyes – my own. Dream about the most amazing and unbelievable things in life because that’s what becomes your reality.

Originally posted on Bucket List Publications 





Wednesday 10 September 2014

Is Apple Finally Getting Over Its Allergy To Social Media?

After Apple AAPL -0.35% unveils the iPhone 6 today, you’ll hear about it just about everywhere — on TV, on news websites, and relentlessly on Twitter TWTR -2.67% and Facebook. Just about the only places you won’t hear about it are on Apple’s official corporate social media channels, because they basically don’t exist.

More than a decade after the creation of Facebook and more than eight years after the founding of Twitter, the world’s most valuable company and second-most valuable brand is an increasingly lonely social media holdout. Though it maintains accounts for iTunes and the App Store, Apple doesn’t have an official corporate Facebook page or Twitter profile. Nor does it have one on Instagram, Google GOOGL -1.59%+ or Pinterest. The CIA may feel like it can’t afford not to tweet, but Apple is a little more careful with its communications, thank you very much.

But that may be changing. Following the hiring of Burberry CEO Angela Ahrendts last October, the consumer electronics giant has been tentatively — very tentatively — moving toward having a more active social presence, according to a person familiarized with the company’s thinking. In recent months, Ahrendts has brought on several key people, including global digital strategy head John Agnew and digital marketing director Musa Tariq. Both came from Nike, where Tariq was head of social media and community.

According to this person, Apple sees itself as being in transition from its old communications model, where a “single narrator” — aka the late Steve Jobs — articulated a “singular narrative” at a time and place of his choosing, to a new model where the company speaks in multiple voices and participates in two-way discussions with its consumers and fans.

It’s a shift pretty much every other other big consumer-facing corporation on earth has already made, but it’s causing more than the usual amount of anxiety at Apple, not just because of the legacy of extreme message control, but because of its ethos of perfection in all things. If a year or two ago Apple was still ambivalent about whether it needed to be on social media at all, now it’s moved onto the question of how it can be as deft at Facebook and Twitter as it has long been at traditional advertising. And Apple doesn’t want to dive into those platforms headlong until it has figured out how to do that, even if that goes against the trial-and-error ethos of the medium.


But there have been experiments. In May, Apple debuted a new ad campaign for the iPhone 5c on Tumblr, although the campaign has since been taken down. And then there’s the “Your Verse” campaign for the iPad, the individual components of which were “ co-created” with users. Aside from LinkedIn, which the company uses primarily for recruiting, YouTube, where the “Your Verse” videos live, is the one big social platform Apple has embraced wholeheartedly at a corporate level. It has more than 2 million subscribers there. While a wholesale migration onto Facebook and Twitter may be months or years away, expect to see more experiments like “Your Verse” in the near future.








Tuesday 9 September 2014

7 Ways to Optimize Image Files for SEO

7 Ways to Optimize Image Files for SEO image 7 Ways To Optimize Image Files for SEO Blog 600x450

Have you ever puzzled over what image file types you should be using or if you really need to add file names and alt text to every image on your website for SEO’s sake? Don’t let these nitty-gritty details intimidate you from achieving the next level for your on-page SEO or showing up in image-based search engines like Google Images.


Let’s breakdown the basics on how you can optimize image files to be more SEO-friendly.

1. Use clear and descriptive file names

Aim to make your image file names easy for Google to comprehend. For instance, imagine you’re Google and you come across an image titled: Image01.jpeg. Would you know what that image stands for? It would be much better to name an image file more along the lines of Optimize-Images-SEO-2014.jpeg, especially if the content on the page is also about optimizing images for SEO. Essentially, the more clues that Google can use to figure out what a site is about, the better.

SmartBug tip: Careful not to be spammy by writing excessively long file names or keyword stuffing.

Related Resources from B2C


2. Use keyword-rich alt text

Alt text simply refers to a text alternative for images when a web browser can’t properly render them. How many times have you opened up an email on your desktop or mobile device and the image(s) didn’t load? Did you still decide to click on the image or call-to-action to visit the landing page? As marketers, we want to take advantage of writing a descriptive, keyword-rich alt text to increase the likelihood of click-through-rates even if our images can’t render properly for our users.

Additionally, if you decide to use an image as a link, make sure to include alt text that is relevant to the link’s destination to improve the user experience.

3. Context is key

Wherever possible, make sure that images are placed near the relevant text because you don’t want to confuse search engines. Search engines assess what page the image is on and the content around the image to dissect important information about the subject matter of your image. Basically, don’t feature an image about a cooking recipe if you’re content is about setting business goals. (A little farfetched example but you get the idea).

4. Monitor page load times

Use the “Site Speed” tool in Google Analytics to your advantage. By monitoring page load times, you can compare how each page is performing in comparison to the site average. This may help you uncover that you’re using too many or too large images. A general rule of thumb for page load time is between 3 and 5 seconds.
Remember, it’s all about the user experience and search engines recognize this important element in their ranking algorithm as well. If necessary, you can reduce the number of files that need to load on the page by combining images and code files, as well as removing any unnecessary images.

5. Reduce the files sizes of your images

Here’s are a few simple ways to reduce the files sizes of your images:
  • Crop your images to the correct size of your page width. So if your page is 970 px wide, resize the image to that width.

  • Show a smaller image and provide the option to view a larger image in a pop-up or to be displayed on a separate webpage.

  • Reduce the color depth to the lowest acceptable level.

6. Use commonly supported file types

It’s widely recommended to use JPEG as a first choice, and PNG as a second choice. It’s also a good idea to have the extension of your filename match with the file type (Ex: .jpeg or .png).

7. Supply an image sitemap file

Consider consolidating your images into a single directory rather than having image files spread out in numerous directories and subdirectories across your domain. An image sitemap file title such as smartbugblogposts/images/ would simplify the path to images for search engines. Furthermore, this helps webmasters stay organized behind the scenes.

Now that we have covered the basics of how you can optimize image files for SEO, it’s important to remember that the user experience should always come first. Great image content is an excellent way to build traffic to site, however, users need to be able to find it first! Following the best practices listed above will increase the likelihood that your images will be returned in those relevant search results.

If you haven’t considered optimizing image files for your overall SEO strategy yet, now is a great time to start.

What other best practices for optimizing image files can you think of? Please share below.