Michael Nassar

As if I’m not already drooling over the Ipad – or my lack of an Ipad, I should say – The Guardian’s new photography app, Eyewitness, is yet another astounding reason to shell out the bucks already and just commit to it.  The Guardian is one of the few print newspapers in the world with a serious commitment to photography as a journalistic as well as artistic enterprise.  Every day the paper publishes a single two-page photo to be viewed as both a striking work of art and a complex story to be deciphered by the viewer.  But it’s print after all: the resolution varies, the colors are sometime spotty, the newsprint is occasionally sheer.  On the Ipad, the viewing conditions are ideal:  crisp, clean, sharp, vivid, these photos are alive.  By way of example look at this photo here: the sea breaking on Orange Beach, Alabama, more than 90 miles from the BP oil spill.

Sometimes life surprises you, if you let it.

Like last Friday, as I was making my windy way across Boston Harbor I got a phone call telling me that a travel story I had written for the New York Daily News just won the prize as Best Feature Article in a Newspaper and could I come to the awards luncheon.

How fun.  How random.

Not that it means anything substantial ultimately. But it was nice to go to a sit-down lunch at the Helmsley yesterday afternoon and meet the Premier of Bermuda.  And the bonus was discovering that my itinerant ramblings get read by a lot more people than just the handful in my immediate circle.

Among the best beaches in America, as chosen by coastal expert Dr. Stephen P. Leatherman, aka Dr. Beach, the Director of Florida International University’s Laboratory for Coastal Research, the white quartz sands of Long Island’s Coopers Beach nabs top marks for its history and wide grass-covered dunes.  Competing against the likes of Florida, California, the Carolinas and Hawaii, it’s the first time a New York beach has claimed the number one spot in the annual list.  Here is the complete Top Ten, which are rated across fifty criteria, including views, pests, safety, natural environment, water color, currents, and sand softness.  Why, it’s almost enough to make me brave a Friday afternoon traffic meltdown on the LIE.

TOP 10 BEACHES 2010

1. Coopers Beach, Southampton, New York

2. Siesta Beach, Sarasota, Florida

3. Coronado Beach, San Diego, California

4. Cape Hatteras. Outer Banks of North Carolina

5. Main Beach, East Hampton, New York

6. Kahanamoku Beach, Waikiki, Oahu, Hawaii

7. Coast Guard Beach, Cape Cod, Massachusetts

8. Beachwalker Park, Kiawah Island, South Carolina

9. Hamoa Beach, Maui, Hawaii

10. Cape Florida State Park, Key Biscayne, Florida

Is the iPad really going to save the publishing world?  According to Wooden Horse, as of this week it hadn’t:

“While USA Today and New York Times claimed downloads in the three hundred thousands, and Wall Street Journal a hundred thousand less, it’ll be interesting to see what happens when readers have to pony up real money (WSJ is free to current subscribers and the other two totally free.)

Lucia Moses at mediaweek.com reports that magazine publishers Time Inc. and Rodale aren’t talking – but let’s hear it for the geeks: Bonnier’s Popular Science announced they had 22,000 downloads of its April issue.  At $4.99 a click, total sales would be nearly $110,000.

But the iPad wars are heating up.  There are a long string of tablet gadgets either already here or coming, including Hewlett-Packard’s Palm-based “Hurricane,” the Dell “Looking Glass” and a likely “companion” device from BlackBerry.

And Google seems to be out to break Apple’s stranglehold on download sales — Time Inc. and Sports Illustrated are already onboard.  According to Media Memo, SI Editor Terry McDonell showed off a digital version of the magazine at Google’s I/O developer conference this week.  Readers would purchase this one from a Google app store, not the Apple iTunes.  “It’s potentially a big deal,” writes Peter Kafka at Media Memo.  “It opens up a much wider audience for the company’s publications, since they should work on any device that supports Google’s Chrome browser.  Just as important, it gives Time Inc another vendor to work with, one that might be willing to grant it concessions Apple won’t – like control over subscriber information, perhaps.”

Online travel has become so boring and impersonal.  Not to mention exhausting.  I mean does anybody really believe all those half-cocked reviews on TripAdvisor? And if you’ve ever stayed in one of those crummy hotels Orbitz touts, well, the less said the better.  Which is why I’m excited about Jetsetter, a flash-sale website that hawks upscale vacations and travel experiences to the general public at up to 60% off the best available rates.

Jetsetter changes the game, acting like the well-traveled, highly opinionated friend we’d all like to have.  Their team of curators, includes seasoned travel writers and industry experts, who conduct a first-hand evaluation and perform on-site visits.  This primary research pretty much guarantees that each experience is worthy of the “Jetsetter-Verified” stamp of approval. Plus, the site also includes a range of first-person reviews, photography, travel tips, and destination-specific advice that brings each experience to life – combined with offers not available anywhere else.

A couple of recent properties featured on the site range from the exotic Banyan Tree resorts to iconic properties like The Bauer Hotel in Venice, Negresco in Nice, and boutique outposts such as The Cotton House on ultra-chic Mustique.  Weekly email alerts announce sales as they’re beginning, and each sale is available for a three to five day window.

The hitch:  Membership to Jetsetter is exclusive and only available via invitation from other members.

The cinch:  I’ve got your invitation right HERE.

Is there anything more annoying than having to leave your trusted face wash/moisturizer/body lotion at home because the bottle’s too big to get past the bloodhounds at airport security? (and you promised yourself you’d never ever ever check another bag only to see it get lost again.)

Well, actually I can think of one:  emptying out pilfered hotel toiletries and trying to refill them with hair gel or my new favorite shampoo.

That’s why I’m glad to learn of a pair of entrepreneurial road warriors named Alexi and Kate who were equally as frustrated as myself.  Only they chose to do something about it and created 3floz.com, a new website for those who travel, those who are curious, and those who just can’t seem commit. (I, on the other hand, did nothing.)

As you might have guessed, 3 ounces is the limit for bringing liquids onboard a flight.  But what you might not have guessed is just how good the pint-sized goods are on this website:  Ole Henriksen, Molton Brown, Nickel, Malin + Goetz,  Dr. Hauschka and Art of Shaving are just a few of the lines to choose from – so you can finally lay to rest the nightmare of suffering through that trial-size DEP hair gel from the Duane Reade.  Shop a la carte to mix & match out of different product lines.  Or go for one of the kits, which target everything from face to teeth to sun, as well as giving you the full immersion in one particular brand.

How ironic that I posted a video yesterday about the plane-choked skies right about the same time those skies were being shut down across Europe.  It seems that mother nature still has the power to put all of us in our place:  a volcanic eruption in Iceland sent plumes of ash into the air, creating a high-altitude cloud that’s now drifting towards Europe.  The ash, it turns out, contains silicates, which melt in the high heat of jet engines, causing them to flame out and stall.

If only this had happened next Thursday, April 22 – it would have made for a sardonic complement to Earth Day.

Check out video below of the erupting volcano, courtesy of ITN, as well as satellite imagery of the dark ash plume.

A cool little video courtesy of HuffPo that shows the crazy amount of air traffic criss-crossing the globe over the course of 24 hours.  I don’t know about you, but my carbon footprint suddenly feels massive.