Wednesday, 30 November 2016

German Carmakers Want To Use Drivers' Data To Take On Google Maps


BERLIN (AP) -- The consortium of German automakers that bought Nokia Corp.'s HERE map business says it wants to incorporate real-time data from its vehicles in the service.

Audi, BMW and Daimler say the data, which will be anonymized, would speed up the development of more powerful maps needed for automated driving and other applications.

Berlin-based HERE said in a statement Monday that it will explore the possibility of cooperating with other automakers in the coming months.

The three German car manufacturers announced in August they would buy HERE in a deal worth 2.8 billion euros ($3.1 billion).

The company provides navigable maps globally as an alternative to Google, Apple and TomTom.

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/12/07/german-carmakers-want-to-use-drivers-data-to-take-on-google ... and provided by entertainment-movie-news.com

Abandoned 'Wizard Of Oz' Theme Park Opens Its Doors Just For You

During the summer of 1970, North Carolina's Land of Oz theme park welcomed a whopping 400,000 visitors in a matter of months. For a time, it was the second most-visited amusement park in the eastern United States, playing runner-up to Disney World, according to a local magazine.  

So what happened, and why have you almost certainly NEVER heard of this place?


Land of Oz was constructed on North Carolina's Beech Mountain to keep local ski employees busy during summer months. In its heyday, visitors traveled far and wide to visit Dorothy's farm house, take hot air balloon rides and stroll the legendary Yellow Brick Road.

But after just 10 years of operation, the park fell on hard times, according to its website. Its emerald gates closed, and vandals and trespassers became its only visitors.

Now, Land of Oz is legally open to the public once per year for an "Autumn in Oz" party to celebrate the magic that once was -- and still lives on -- at this eerie spot. It's also available to rent for weddings, gatherings and private tours.

Most of the time, though, the park sits completely empty. Photographer Seph Lawless captured the haunting location for his new book, "Bizarro," which focuses on abandoned amusement parks around the world. 

Oz was an otherworldly place to visit, he told HuffPost.

"It sits hidden on top of one of the highest mountain peaks in the eastern U.S., so being there was almost like entering another planet," Lawless said. "It was surreal and completely beautiful."

We have to agree.


Also on HuffPost:




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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/12/07/abandoned-wizard-of-oz-theme-park_n_8739322.html?utm_hp_ref ... and provided by entertainment-movie-news.com

3 Smarter Ways You Should Be Packing Your Suitcase




Chances are you're going to be traveling somewhere in the next few weeks. Whether you're hopping on a flight, catching a train or driving somewhere for the holidays, there will be packing involved. 

If you're anything like us, you probably have a history of overpacking (we can't help it, we like options). But we've learned the hard way that nothing ruins a vacation like too much stuff. Thankfully, our friends at Refinery29 have put together a video outlining a few packing essentials. Watch the clip above to find out what to wear on the plane to maximize space in your carry-on, how to pack your toiletries and other amazing packing hacks. 

Also on HuffPost:

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.



Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/12/07/packing-tips-travel-carry-on_n_8739650.html?utm_hp_ref=trav ... and provided by entertainment-movie-news.com

Santa Claus, Indiana Has Christmas All Year-Round




Imagine a place where the Christmas magic never melts away, not even during the sweltering heat of summer.

This is Santa Claus, Indiana, where everything is festive from December through December. The street names are Christmas-y. The lights are up year-round. And Christmas music pretty much never stops playing. Even local businesses boast festive titles: Santa Claus Hardware, Holiday Foods, Kringle Place shopping center and Santa's Candy Castle are all staples. 

BRB, we're taking a visit... and never coming back. 


Also on HuffPost:

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/12/07/santa-claus-indiana_n_8739706.html?utm_hp_ref=travel&ir=Tra ... and provided by entertainment-movie-news.com

42 Gifts For Anyone With Wanderlust


Have you been bit by the travel bug? Is your sister, or best friend, a globe-trotting fairy person? Whether you're looking for stylish décor for yourself or practical travel gadgets for others, this is the ultimate gift list for explorers. May we just add, bon voyage!

 

Also on HuffPost:

You may also like: 



How is your family celebrating the holidays? Share with us on WhatsApp! 

To send us images and stories:

1. Download WhatsApp on your phone. 

2. Save this number, +1 646 522 3114, in your phone’s contacts. 

3. Send us photos of your celebrations with a short description via WhatsApp.

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/12/04/gifts-for-anyone-with-wanderlust_n_8739978.html?utm_hp_ref= ... and provided by entertainment-movie-news.com

Rare Photos Reveal Lost History Of Sunken Pearl Harbor Plane

HONOLULU -- Seventy-four years ago, minutes before their attack on Pearl Harbor, Japanese bombers strategically bombed a seaplane base at the nearby Kaneohe Naval Air Station at Kaneohe Bay, on the other side of the Hawaiian island of Oahu. 

Dozens of long-range patrol bombers that were on the ground or moored in the bay were damaged, sunken or destroyed.

Only three Catalina PBY “Flying Boats,” which were out on patrol during the attack, were fit for service by the end of the raid, according to the Naval History and Heritage Command.

“Nobody really knows what happened” during that particular attack, Hans Van Tilburg, a maritime archeologist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries, told The Huffington Post. "We know that some men lost their lives out on the bay that day, but we don’t even know how many planes were out there [in the water]."

For more than seven decades, the sunken planes have been largely undisturbed in their watery graves. Persistent murky waters have made it virtually impossible to photograph the wreckage -- until now.

A team of archeologists and student divers with NOAA’s Office of Marine Sanctuaries and University of Hawaii’s Marine Option Program conducted a detailed archeological survey of one wreck site in June during a rare pocket of clearer water.

The plane sits in 30 feet of water in a restricted area near Marine Corps Base Hawaii. The wreckage is broken into three large pieces and sits on the seafloor. 

NOAA released a series of rare images and video of the wreck site Thursday and, for the first time, the hidden story of this sunken plane is beginning to unravel.

 “The new images and site plan help tell the story of a largely forgotten casualty of the attack,” Van Tilburg said in a press release. 

One mysterious clue suggests that there may have been a pilot in the cockpit attempting to take off from the water when the plane was hit.

“The position of the throttles in the cockpit on this wreck suggest that one engine was being started, was running,” Van Tilburg explained to HuffPost, “which would have been what you would do to begin to taxi up and fly away from the bay.”

But there’s no way to know for sure based on the wreckage alone, Van Tilburg added. One possibility could be that someone pushed the throttle in that position after the plane sank.

That’s why NOAA is sharing the footage with other researchers -- in hopes that someone may be able to identify this specific aircraft and who, if anyone at all, went down with it.

Story continues after the slideshow:

“In general, we refer to the whole [day] as the attack on Pearl Harbor and that’s really important,” Van Tilburg said. “But in truth, it was an attack on multiple military facilities all over Oahu island. It was very coordinated and very planned out.”

Van Tilburg continues to work with a team at NOAA, archeologists with Marine Corps Base Hawaii and UH's student divers to unearth clues about what happened at the bay on that tragic day.

Below, rare images of a U.S. Navy seaplane that have been hidden from history for the last 74 years.

 

Also on HuffPost:



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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/12/04/pearl-harbor-sunken-plane-kaneohe_n_8740030.html?utm_hp_ref ... and provided by entertainment-movie-news.com

3 Smarter Ways You Should Be Packing Your Suitcase




Chances are you're going to be traveling somewhere in the next few weeks. Whether you're hopping on a flight, catching a train or driving somewhere for the holidays, there will be packing involved. 

If you're anything like us, you probably have a history of overpacking (we can't help it, we like options). But we've learned the hard way that nothing ruins a vacation like too much stuff. Thankfully, our friends at Refinery29 have put together a video outlining a few packing essentials. Watch the clip above to find out what to wear on the plane to maximize space in your carry-on, how to pack your toiletries and other amazing packing hacks. 

Also on HuffPost:

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.













Source: http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/c/35496/f/677550/s/4c0fac22/sc/28/l/0L0Shuffingtonpost0N0C20A150C120 ... and provided by entertainment-movie-news.com

Santa Claus, Indiana Has Christmas All Year-Round




Imagine a place where the Christmas magic never melts away, not even during the sweltering heat of summer.

This is Santa Claus, Indiana, where everything is festive from December through December. The street names are Christmas-y. The lights are up year-round. And Christmas music pretty much never stops playing. Even local businesses boast festive titles: Santa Claus Hardware, Holiday Foods, Kringle Place shopping center and Santa's Candy Castle are all staples. 

BRB, we're taking a visit... and never coming back. 




Also on HuffPost:

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.













Source: http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/c/35496/f/677550/s/4c0fac1e/sc/23/l/0L0Shuffingtonpost0N0C20A150C120 ... and provided by entertainment-movie-news.com

42 Gifts For Anyone With Wanderlust


Have you been bit by the travel bug? Is your sister, or best friend, a globe-trotting fairy person? Whether you're looking for stylish décor for yourself or practical travel gadgets for others, this is the ultimate gift list for explorers. May we just add, bon voyage!


 

Also on HuffPost:


You may also like: 



How is your family celebrating the holidays? Share with us on WhatsApp! 

To send us images and stories:

1. Download WhatsApp on your phone. 

2. Save this number, +1 646 522 3114, in your phone’s contacts. 

3. Send us photos of your celebrations with a short description via WhatsApp.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.













Source: http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/c/35496/f/677550/s/4c0ff91e/sc/28/l/0L0Shuffingtonpost0N0C20A150C120 ... and provided by entertainment-movie-news.com

Abandoned 'Wizard Of Oz' Theme Park Opens Its Doors Just For You

During the summer of 1970, North Carolina's Land of Oz theme park welcomed a whopping 400,000 visitors in a matter of months. For a time, it was the second most-visited amusement park in the eastern United States, playing runner-up to Disney World, according to a local magazine.  

So what happened, and why have you almost certainly NEVER heard of this place?




Land of Oz was constructed on North Carolina's Beech Mountain to keep local ski employees busy during summer months. In its heyday, visitors traveled far and wide to visit Dorothy's farm house, take hot air balloon rides and stroll the legendary Yellow Brick Road.

But after just 10 years of operation, the park fell on hard times, according to its website. Its emerald gates closed, and vandals and trespassers became its only visitors.

Now, Land of Oz is legally open to the public once per year for an "Autumn in Oz" party to celebrate the magic that once was -- and still lives on -- at this eerie spot. It's also available to rent for weddings, gatherings and private tours.

Most of the time, though, the park sits completely empty. Photographer Seph Lawless captured the haunting location for his new book, "Bizarro," which focuses on abandoned amusement parks around the world. 

Oz was an otherworldly place to visit, he told HuffPost.

"It sits hidden on top of one of the highest mountain peaks in the eastern U.S., so being there was almost like entering another planet," Lawless said. "It was surreal and completely beautiful."

We have to agree.




Also on HuffPost:




-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.













Source: http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/c/35496/f/677550/s/4c0f59ba/sc/10/l/0L0Shuffingtonpost0N0C20A150C120 ... and provided by entertainment-movie-news.com

California Now Shares A Rare Cross-Border Airport With Mexico




SAN DIEGO (AP) — The U.S.-Mexico border is one of the world's most fortified international divides. Starting Wednesday, it will also be one of the only that has an airport straddling two countries.

An investor group that includes Chicago billionaire Sam Zell built a sleek terminal in San Diego with a bridge that crosses a razor-wire border fence to Tijuana's decades-old airport. Passengers pay $18 to walk a 390-foot overpass to Tijuana International Airport, a springboard about 30 Mexican destinations.

Target customers are the estimated 60 percent of Tijuana airport passengers who come to the United States, about 2.6 million last year. Now they drive about 15 minutes to a congested land crossing, where they wait up to several hours to enter San Diego by car or on foot. The airport bridge is a five-minute walk to a U.S. border inspector.


"It seems so much easier, so liberating," said Daniela Calderon, who flies from Tijuana four times a year to visit family in the central Mexican city of Morelia and has a friend drive her across the border from Riverside, California.

The only other cross-border airport known to industry experts is in the European Union -- between Basel, Switzerland, and France's Upper Rhine region -- but it carries none of the political freight of San Diego and Tijuana. Mexicans who ran across the border illegally overwhelmed the Border Patrol until the mid-1990s, when new fences and additional agents heralded a massive surge in U.S. enforcement on the 1,954-mile line with Mexico.

Cross Border Xpress, one of the largest privately-operated U.S. air terminals, wouldn't have happened if Tijuana didn't build its airport a few steps from the international line in the 1950s or if it wasn't surrounded by undeveloped land in a barren, industrial part of San Diego.


"It's an amazing accident of geography," said Stanis Smith of Stantec Inc., the terminal's architect. "It could never happen again."

The terminal is one of the last works by the late Ricardo Legorreta, whose bold colors helped bring Mexican modernism to a world stage and attracted a strong following in the American Southwest. The stone exterior mixes purple stucco and red limestone that takes on a deep, inky hue when it rains. Stone gardens sprout agave and other desert plants.

Passengers enter a courtyard with a reflecting pool to an airy building with ticket counters and kiosks. High, white ceilings have large orange circles of recessed lighting. Sparse decorative touches are onyx, including high-hanging black slabs near ticket counters and white spheres atop the escalators.


Aesthetics are more dated in the Tijuana airport but passenger flow is the same. Ticketed passengers must carry luggage across a bridge with frosted glass windows to border inspectors in the receiving country and a wall in the middle to separate the two directions.

The idea isn't new -- San Diego leaders proposed an airport with a runway on each side of the border in the early 1990s to replace the city's constrained Lindbergh Field -- but it didn't gain traction until a Mexican couple invested in 2005 in a company that runs airports in Tijuana and 11 other Mexican cities.

Carlos Laviada, whose mother-in-law lived in San Diego, had experienced the hassles of crossing the border after flying to Tijuana for decades. The view of San Diego from Tijuana's control tower convinced him he had to act before the vacant land was developed. "Oh, my God, it's right here," he recalls saying.


Laviada said Grupo Aeroportuario del Pacifico SAB's board deemed it too risky but allowed him, his wife and another company director to invest privately. Zell and another Mexican investor joined them.

The privately-held consortium, Otay-Tijuana Venture LLC, doesn't release financial projections but expects to make money on a duty-free shop, rental car companies, restaurants and other concessions. The $120 million terminal occupies less than half their 55-acre parcel, and the city of San Diego has approved a 340-room hotel, shopping center and gas station.

Parking costs $10 a day, which is competitive with lots near land crossings and Tijuana's airport. The terminal fee will go largely to pay U.S. border inspector salaries, one of the nation's few privately-funded ports of entry.


Laviada, echoing views of airport officials on both sides of the border, doesn't consider Tijuana a threat to San Diego's airport because they share few routes. Both are primarily domestic airports, and Tijuana has shown no sign of expanding international destinations beyond Shanghai and Oakland, California.

Cross Border Xpress officials say they hope to capture half of Tijuana passengers bound for the U.S., which sounds realistic to nervous Tijuana airport taxi drivers who charge $13 for a ride to a land crossing. Nearly all cars in the Tijuana airport garage have California plates.

Passengers joke that they spend more time crossing the border than they do on the plane. "No more driving around so much," Maria de Jesus Gonzalez said after arriving in Tijuana from a family visit to Guadalajara and waiting for her son to drive from Southern California. "This will be much more direct."

Also on HuffPost:




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Source: http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/c/35496/f/677550/s/4c0d3cd3/sc/28/l/0L0Shuffingtonpost0N0C20A150C120 ... and provided by entertainment-movie-news.com

7 Facts You Didn't Know About Pearl Harbor

Sure, we all know the date and the famous quote (Dec. 7, 1941, "a date which will live in infamy") and, of course, the implications and significance (more than 2,000 Americans were killed in the attack, which launched the U.S. into World War II).

But below are seven facts that may not be so obvious about Pearl Harbor.

1. Most of the battleships sunk that day were resurrected.


Of the eight battleships targeted during the attacks, all but two were eventually repaired and returned to the U.S. Navy's fleet. The USS West Virginia and the USS California had both sunk completely, but the Navy raised them, repaired them and reused them.

Furthermore, bullet holes and damage from the attacks can be seen to this day at many of the active military installations on Oahu, including Schofield Barracks, Wheeler Army Airfield and Hickam Army Air Field. Rather than being repaired or covered up, the bullet holes serve as a reminder of the lives lost that day and as motivation for our military to stand strong still.


2. Veterans of the attack can be laid to rest at Pearl Harbor.


Survivors of the attack have the option to join their lost comrades and make Pearl Harbor their final resting place. Crew members who served on board the USS Arizona during the attack -- the ship that experienced the most devastating damage -- may choose to have their ashes deposited by divers beneath one of the sunken Arizona's gun turrets. Roughly 30 Arizona survivors have chosen this option and less than a dozen of the 355 survivors are still living. Other military survivors can choose to have their ashes scattered wherever their ship was located during the attacks.


3. The USS Arizona still leaks fuel.


The day before the attacks, the USS Arizona took on a full load of fuel, nearly 1.5 million gallons. Much of that fuel helped ignite the explosion and subsequent fires that destroyed the ship, but -- amazingly -- some fuel continues to seep out of the wreckage. According to the History Channel, the Arizona "continues to spill up to 9 quarts of oil into the harbor each day" and visitors often say it is as if the ship were still bleeding.


4. Service members stationed in Hawaii took care of the memorial during the 2013 government shutdown. 


Service members stationed in Hawaii treat Pearl Harbor as a living memorial and have been known to rally around it when times are tough. In October 2013, for instance, when the U.S. government shut down for more than two weeks, no one was around to take care of the memorial site. A group of service members and their families spontaneously gathered to tend to the abandoned site, raking, weeding and mowing the overgrown grass. Their message to all veterans, they said, was: "We haven't forgotten about you. We will not forget about you."


5. Many tourists from Japan come to visit the memorial:


While most people can tell you that the Japanese were responsible for the attacks on Pearl Harbor, not everyone realizes that the Japanese now visit the memorial in droves. Japan, now one of America's strongest allies, is the largest source of international tourists to the state of Hawaii. Japanese visitors pay their respects at Pearl Harbor just as Americans do; ironically, the state's economic vitality today depends largely on tourism from Japan.


6. A baby girl's remains still lie entombed within a sunken battleship.


A crew member of the USS Utah had been storing an urn containing his daughter's ashes in his locker onboard, planning to scatter them at sea, but the Dec. 7 attack prevented him from ever doing so. Sixty-four men died aboard the USS Utah that day, and many of their bodies remain entombed within its sunken hull. The baby girl, who had died at birth, was finally honored with a funeral at the USS Utah Memorial at Pearl Harbor in 2003.


7. There's a huge oil plume beneath the harbor.


An estimated 5 million gallons of spilled fuel -- or nearly half the volume of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska -- has been collecting in a large underground plume beneath Pearl Harbor for decades. Though the plume, which lies beneath the main gate of Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, is approximately 20 acres, or 15 football fields, in size, the Navy maintains that it is currently stable and not a threat to drinking water. 


version of this story was published two years ago on the anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack.

Also on HuffPost: 



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Source: http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/c/35496/f/677550/s/4c0dc370/sc/24/l/0L0Shuffingtonpost0N0C20A150C120 ... and provided by entertainment-movie-news.com

German Carmakers Want To Use Drivers' Data To Take On Google Maps


BERLIN (AP) -- The consortium of German automakers that bought Nokia Corp.'s HERE map business says it wants to incorporate real-time data from its vehicles in the service.

Audi, BMW and Daimler say the data, which will be anonymized, would speed up the development of more powerful maps needed for automated driving and other applications.

Berlin-based HERE said in a statement Monday that it will explore the possibility of cooperating with other automakers in the coming months.

The three German car manufacturers announced in August they would buy HERE in a deal worth 2.8 billion euros ($3.1 billion).

The company provides navigable maps globally as an alternative to Google, Apple and TomTom.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.













Source: http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/c/35496/f/677550/s/4c0efc07/sc/28/l/0L0Shuffingtonpost0N0C20A150C120 ... and provided by entertainment-movie-news.com