Travelers treat searching for hotel rates online like a game of roulette: try enough combinations (dates, locations, travel agencies), and you'll score the perfect one. But it's easy to forget that booking a room through an online travel agency means that if you need to change your travel dates or find a better deal, you may pay a penalty, often upward of $25. Add to this the fact that hotels don't reward loyalty points for stays reserved through discount booking sites, and that bargain-basement price doesn't look so appealing. Avoid pitfalls by following these approaches:
Try new search engines
Farecast.com, which started predicting the rise and fall of airfares last year, more recently launched a similar system for hotels. Instead of calculating the direction room rates will go, however, it analyzes whether the price is a "deal" or "not a deal" by combining historical data with current rates from three other sites -- Orbitz, CheapTickets, and Reserve Travel -- with prices from hotels themselves to come.
The problem: Users don't know why prices rise or fall (a wedding party or just unusually high occupancy), so holding out for a rate to go down could be a mistake. To be fair, the tool was still in beta testing at press time. Still, the site has invaluable services. It eliminates sold-out hotels from your search results, so you won't find a great rate that disappears when you try to book it (a problem that plagues many online travel agencies), and it maps results using Microsoft Virtual Earth. Other sites such as Hotels.com now have calendars that reveal the lowest room rates on each day for which information is available. Both Travelocity and Expedia have installed similar tools.
Check hotel calendars
A growing number of hotel Web sites are using booking systems with long-term day- by-day room rates. Four Seasons, for instance, lets you check prices up to nine months in advance. The Las Vegas Bellagio listed a rate of $799 on January 7; when we checked the cost of the same room on January 10, it was $199.
Look for a guarantee
Many hotels and online agencies promise to match any rate presented to them. Marriott hotels give you the lower price, plus a 25 percent discount. Starwood does the same but discounts you 10 percent, or hands over 2,000 Starpoints. Swissotel offers half off the first night's lower rate and matches the cost the following night. The catch: most guarantees require you to file a claim within 24 hours of booking your room.
Pick up the phone
Call the hotel directly (not the central toll-free number). Often, properties offer last-minute specials that they don't submit through reservations. Plus, agents are typically not authorized to negotiate (as we did, in the test case). Since hotels often allot only a certain number of rooms to the booking service, you may be told that it's sold out, which is not always the case. Finally, if you're seeking a top-notch hotel experience, phone a travel agent. Ours swung a better rate than I could find online, plus breakfast and an upgrade.
Sunday, March 9, 2008
Saturday, March 8, 2008
_blog2_Killer whales have been spoted
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) -- The white killer whale spotted in Alaska's Aleutian Islands sent researchers and the ship's crew scrambling for their cameras.
The nearly mythic creature was real after all.
"I had heard about this whale, but we had never been able to find it," said Holly Fearnbach, a research biologist with the National Marine Mammal Laboratory in Seattle who photographed the rarity. "It was quite neat to find it."
The whale was spotted last month while scientists aboard the Oscar Dyson, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration research ship, were conducting an acoustic survey of pollock near Steller sea lion haulout sites.
It had been spotted once in the Aleutians years ago but had eluded researchers since, even though they had seen many of the more classic black and white whales over the years.
Fearnbach said the white whale stood out.
"When you first looked at it, it was very white," she said Thursday.
Further observation showed that while the whale's saddle area was white, other parts of its body had a subtle yellowish or brownish color.
It likely is not a true albino given the coloration, said John Durban, a research biologist at NOAA's Alaska Fisheries Science Center in Seattle. That's probably a good thing -- true albinos usually don't live long and can have health problems.
Durban said white killer whales have been spotted elsewhere in the area twice before: in 1993 in the northern Bering Sea around St. Lawrence Island and in 2001 near Adak in the central Aleutians. There have also been sightings along the Russian coast.
While Alaska researchers have documented thousands of black and white killer whales in the Bering Sea and the Aleutians during summer surveys, this was something new and exciting, Durban said.
"This is the first time we came across a white killer whale," he said.
The scientists observed several pods over a two-week period. The white whale was in a family group of 12 on a day when the seas were fairly rough. It was spotted about 2 miles off Kanaga Volcano on February 23.
The ship stayed with the whale for about 30 minutes.
"Everybody actually came out and was taking pictures," Fearnbach said. "It was a neat sighting for everybody."
The whale appeared to be a healthy, adult male about 25 to 30 feet long and weighing upward of 10,000 pounds.
-Summaray-
The scientist in Alaska have spoted killer whales while conducting pollock survey. Whale had eluded researchers for years. Holly Fearnbach said that is was hard to find these white killer whales but she had hurd about them before. The scientist have spoted these white killer whales years ago in Aleutians, but they have seen the classic white and black whales over the years. This expirence was really exciting for them as scientist. This was the first time they have come across a white killer whale so thats why they were so amused.
The nearly mythic creature was real after all.
"I had heard about this whale, but we had never been able to find it," said Holly Fearnbach, a research biologist with the National Marine Mammal Laboratory in Seattle who photographed the rarity. "It was quite neat to find it."
The whale was spotted last month while scientists aboard the Oscar Dyson, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration research ship, were conducting an acoustic survey of pollock near Steller sea lion haulout sites.
It had been spotted once in the Aleutians years ago but had eluded researchers since, even though they had seen many of the more classic black and white whales over the years.
Fearnbach said the white whale stood out.
"When you first looked at it, it was very white," she said Thursday.
Further observation showed that while the whale's saddle area was white, other parts of its body had a subtle yellowish or brownish color.
It likely is not a true albino given the coloration, said John Durban, a research biologist at NOAA's Alaska Fisheries Science Center in Seattle. That's probably a good thing -- true albinos usually don't live long and can have health problems.
Durban said white killer whales have been spotted elsewhere in the area twice before: in 1993 in the northern Bering Sea around St. Lawrence Island and in 2001 near Adak in the central Aleutians. There have also been sightings along the Russian coast.
While Alaska researchers have documented thousands of black and white killer whales in the Bering Sea and the Aleutians during summer surveys, this was something new and exciting, Durban said.
"This is the first time we came across a white killer whale," he said.
The scientists observed several pods over a two-week period. The white whale was in a family group of 12 on a day when the seas were fairly rough. It was spotted about 2 miles off Kanaga Volcano on February 23.
The ship stayed with the whale for about 30 minutes.
"Everybody actually came out and was taking pictures," Fearnbach said. "It was a neat sighting for everybody."
The whale appeared to be a healthy, adult male about 25 to 30 feet long and weighing upward of 10,000 pounds.
-Summaray-
The scientist in Alaska have spoted killer whales while conducting pollock survey. Whale had eluded researchers for years. Holly Fearnbach said that is was hard to find these white killer whales but she had hurd about them before. The scientist have spoted these white killer whales years ago in Aleutians, but they have seen the classic white and black whales over the years. This expirence was really exciting for them as scientist. This was the first time they have come across a white killer whale so thats why they were so amused.
Monday, March 3, 2008
_blog3_Robots
TOKYO, Japan (AP) -- At a university lab in a Tokyo suburb, engineering students are wiring a rubbery robot face to simulate six basic expressions: anger, fear, sadness, happiness, surprise and disgust.
A "toddler robot" called "Child-Robot with a Biomimetic Body," or "CB2," looks around the room.
Hooked up to a database of words clustered by association, the robot -- dubbed Kansei, or "sensibility" -- responds to the word "war" by quivering in what looks like disgust and fear. It hears "love," and its pink lips smile.
"To live among people, robots need to handle complex social tasks," said project leader Junichi Takeno of Meiji University. "Robots will need to work with emotions, to understand and eventually feel them.
While robots are a long way from matching human emotional complexity, the country is perhaps the closest to a future -- once the stuff of science fiction -- where humans and intelligent robots routinely live side by side and interact socially.
Robots are already taken for granted in Japanese factories, so much so that they are sometimes welcomed on their first day at work with Shinto religious ceremonies. Robots make sushi. Robots plant rice and tend paddies.
There are robots serving as receptionists, vacuuming office corridors, spoon-feeding the elderly. They serve tea, greet company guests and chatter away at public technology displays. Now startups are marching out robotic home helpers.
They aren't all humanoid. The Paro is a furry robot seal fitted with sensors beneath its fur and whiskers, designed to comfort the lonely, opening and closing its eyes and moving its flippers.
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Disneyland goes back to the future
For Japan, the robotics revolution is an imperative. With more than a fifth of the population 65 or older, the country is banking on robots to replenish the work force and care for the elderly.
In the past several years, the government has funded a plethora of robotics-related efforts. They include some $42 million for the first phase of a humanoid robotics project, and $10 million a year between 2006 and 2010 to develop key robot technologies.
The government estimates the industry could surge from about $5.2 billion in 2006 to $26 billion in 2010 and nearly $70 billion by 2025.
Besides financial and technological power, the robot wave is favored by the Japanese mind-set as well.
Robots have long been portrayed as friendly helpers in Japanese popular culture, a far cry from the often rebellious and violent machines that often inhabit Western science fiction.
This is, after all, the country that invented Tamagotchi, the hand-held mechanical pets that captivated the children of the world.
Japanese are also more accepting of robots because the native Shinto religion often blurs boundaries between the animate and inanimate, experts say. To the Japanese psyche, the idea of a humanoid robot with feelings doesn't feel as creepy -- or as threatening -- as it might do in other cultures.
Still, Japan faces a vast challenge in making the leap -- commercially and culturally -- from toys, gimmicks and the experimental robots churned out by labs like Takeno's to full-blown human replacements that ordinary people can afford and use safely.
"People are still asking whether people really want robots running around their homes, and folding their clothes," said Damian Thong, senior technology analyst at Macquarie Bank in Tokyo.
"But then again, Japan's the only country in the world where everyone has an electric toilet," he said. "We could be looking at a robotics revolution."
That revolution has been going on quietly for some time.
Japan is already an industrial robot powerhouse. Over 370,000 robots worked at factories across Japan in 2005, about 40 percent of the global total and 32 robots for every 1,000 Japanese manufacturing employees, according to a recent report by Macquarie. It had no numbers from subsequent years.
And they won't be claiming overtime or drawing pensions when they're retired.
"The cost of machinery is going down, while labor costs are rising," said Eimei Onaga, CEO of Innovation Matrix Inc., a company that distributes Japanese robotics technology in the U.S. "Soon, robots could even replace low-cost workers at small firms, greatly boosting productivity."
That's just what the Japanese government has been counting on. A 2007 national technology roadmap by the Trade Ministry calls for 1 million industrial robots to be installed throughout the country by 2025.
A single robot can replace about 10 employees, the roadmap assumes -- meaning Japan's future million-robot army of workers could take the place of 10 million humans. That's about 15 percent of the current work force.
"Robots are the cornerstone of Japan's international competitiveness," Shunichi Uchiyama, the Trade Ministry's chief of manufacturing industry policy, said at a recent seminar. "We expect robotics technology to enter even more sectors going forward."
Meanwhile, localities looking to boost regional industry clusters have seized on robotics technology as a way to spur advances in other fields.
Robotic technology is used to build more complex cars, for instance, and surgical equipment.
The logical next step is robots in everyday life.
At a hospital in Aizu Wakamatsu, 190 miles north of Tokyo, a child-sized white and blue robot wheels across the floor, guiding patients to and from the outpatients' surgery area.
The robot, made by startup Tmsk, sports perky catlike ears, recites simple greetings, and uses sensors to detect and warn people in the way. It helpfully prints out maps of the hospital, and even checks the state of patients' arteries.
The Aizu Chuo Hospital spent about some $557,000 installing three of the robots in its waiting rooms to test patients' reactions. The response has been overwhelmingly positive, said spokesman Naoya Narita.
"We feel this is a good division of labor. Robots won't ever become doctors, but they can be guides and receptionists," Narita said.
Still, the wheeled machines hadn't won over all seniors crowding the hospital waiting room on a weekday morning.
"It just told us to get out of the way!" huffed wheelchair-bound Hiroshi Asami, 81. "It's a robot. It's the one who should get out my way."
"I prefer dealing with real people," he said.
Another roadblock is money.
For all its research, Japan has yet to come up with a commercially successful consumer robot. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. failed to sell even one of its pricey toddler-sized Wakamaru robots, launched in 2003 as domestic helpers.
Though initially popular, Sony Corp. pulled the plug on its robot dog, Aibo, in 2006, just seven years after its launch. With a price tag of a whopping $2,000, Aibo never managed to break into the mass market.
One of the only commercially successful consumer robots so far is made by an American company, iRobot Corp. The Roomba vacuum cleaner robot is self-propelled and can clean rooms without supervision.
For Hiroshi Ishiguro, also at Osaka University, the key is to make robots that look like human beings. His Geminoid robot looks uncannily like himself -- down to the black, wiry hair and slight tan.
"In the end, we don't want to interact with machines or computers. We want to interact with technology in a human way, so it's natural and valid to try to make robots look like us," he said.
"One day, they will live among us," Ishiguro said. "Then you'd have to ask me: 'Are you human? Or a robot?"
Who: Japan's government has already founded it.
What: Robots are already taken for granted in Japanese factories, Japan's government has funded a plethora of robotics-related efforts, Japan invented Tamagotchi, the hand-held mechanical pets, Japan faces a challenge in leaping from toys to full-blown human replacements.
Where: In Tokyo, Japan Robots are entering daily life.
When: Japan is an industrial robot powerhouse. Over 370,000 robots worked at factories through Japan in 2005, about 40% of the global total and 32 robots for every 1,000 Japanese manufacturing employees, according to a recent report by Macquarie. It had no numbers from subsequent years.
A "toddler robot" called "Child-Robot with a Biomimetic Body," or "CB2," looks around the room.
Hooked up to a database of words clustered by association, the robot -- dubbed Kansei, or "sensibility" -- responds to the word "war" by quivering in what looks like disgust and fear. It hears "love," and its pink lips smile.
"To live among people, robots need to handle complex social tasks," said project leader Junichi Takeno of Meiji University. "Robots will need to work with emotions, to understand and eventually feel them.
While robots are a long way from matching human emotional complexity, the country is perhaps the closest to a future -- once the stuff of science fiction -- where humans and intelligent robots routinely live side by side and interact socially.
Robots are already taken for granted in Japanese factories, so much so that they are sometimes welcomed on their first day at work with Shinto religious ceremonies. Robots make sushi. Robots plant rice and tend paddies.
There are robots serving as receptionists, vacuuming office corridors, spoon-feeding the elderly. They serve tea, greet company guests and chatter away at public technology displays. Now startups are marching out robotic home helpers.
They aren't all humanoid. The Paro is a furry robot seal fitted with sensors beneath its fur and whiskers, designed to comfort the lonely, opening and closing its eyes and moving its flippers.
Don't Miss
Get grandpa a dog -- or robot
Disneyland goes back to the future
For Japan, the robotics revolution is an imperative. With more than a fifth of the population 65 or older, the country is banking on robots to replenish the work force and care for the elderly.
In the past several years, the government has funded a plethora of robotics-related efforts. They include some $42 million for the first phase of a humanoid robotics project, and $10 million a year between 2006 and 2010 to develop key robot technologies.
The government estimates the industry could surge from about $5.2 billion in 2006 to $26 billion in 2010 and nearly $70 billion by 2025.
Besides financial and technological power, the robot wave is favored by the Japanese mind-set as well.
Robots have long been portrayed as friendly helpers in Japanese popular culture, a far cry from the often rebellious and violent machines that often inhabit Western science fiction.
This is, after all, the country that invented Tamagotchi, the hand-held mechanical pets that captivated the children of the world.
Japanese are also more accepting of robots because the native Shinto religion often blurs boundaries between the animate and inanimate, experts say. To the Japanese psyche, the idea of a humanoid robot with feelings doesn't feel as creepy -- or as threatening -- as it might do in other cultures.
Still, Japan faces a vast challenge in making the leap -- commercially and culturally -- from toys, gimmicks and the experimental robots churned out by labs like Takeno's to full-blown human replacements that ordinary people can afford and use safely.
"People are still asking whether people really want robots running around their homes, and folding their clothes," said Damian Thong, senior technology analyst at Macquarie Bank in Tokyo.
"But then again, Japan's the only country in the world where everyone has an electric toilet," he said. "We could be looking at a robotics revolution."
That revolution has been going on quietly for some time.
Japan is already an industrial robot powerhouse. Over 370,000 robots worked at factories across Japan in 2005, about 40 percent of the global total and 32 robots for every 1,000 Japanese manufacturing employees, according to a recent report by Macquarie. It had no numbers from subsequent years.
And they won't be claiming overtime or drawing pensions when they're retired.
"The cost of machinery is going down, while labor costs are rising," said Eimei Onaga, CEO of Innovation Matrix Inc., a company that distributes Japanese robotics technology in the U.S. "Soon, robots could even replace low-cost workers at small firms, greatly boosting productivity."
That's just what the Japanese government has been counting on. A 2007 national technology roadmap by the Trade Ministry calls for 1 million industrial robots to be installed throughout the country by 2025.
A single robot can replace about 10 employees, the roadmap assumes -- meaning Japan's future million-robot army of workers could take the place of 10 million humans. That's about 15 percent of the current work force.
"Robots are the cornerstone of Japan's international competitiveness," Shunichi Uchiyama, the Trade Ministry's chief of manufacturing industry policy, said at a recent seminar. "We expect robotics technology to enter even more sectors going forward."
Meanwhile, localities looking to boost regional industry clusters have seized on robotics technology as a way to spur advances in other fields.
Robotic technology is used to build more complex cars, for instance, and surgical equipment.
The logical next step is robots in everyday life.
At a hospital in Aizu Wakamatsu, 190 miles north of Tokyo, a child-sized white and blue robot wheels across the floor, guiding patients to and from the outpatients' surgery area.
The robot, made by startup Tmsk, sports perky catlike ears, recites simple greetings, and uses sensors to detect and warn people in the way. It helpfully prints out maps of the hospital, and even checks the state of patients' arteries.
The Aizu Chuo Hospital spent about some $557,000 installing three of the robots in its waiting rooms to test patients' reactions. The response has been overwhelmingly positive, said spokesman Naoya Narita.
"We feel this is a good division of labor. Robots won't ever become doctors, but they can be guides and receptionists," Narita said.
Still, the wheeled machines hadn't won over all seniors crowding the hospital waiting room on a weekday morning.
"It just told us to get out of the way!" huffed wheelchair-bound Hiroshi Asami, 81. "It's a robot. It's the one who should get out my way."
"I prefer dealing with real people," he said.
Another roadblock is money.
For all its research, Japan has yet to come up with a commercially successful consumer robot. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. failed to sell even one of its pricey toddler-sized Wakamaru robots, launched in 2003 as domestic helpers.
Though initially popular, Sony Corp. pulled the plug on its robot dog, Aibo, in 2006, just seven years after its launch. With a price tag of a whopping $2,000, Aibo never managed to break into the mass market.
One of the only commercially successful consumer robots so far is made by an American company, iRobot Corp. The Roomba vacuum cleaner robot is self-propelled and can clean rooms without supervision.
For Hiroshi Ishiguro, also at Osaka University, the key is to make robots that look like human beings. His Geminoid robot looks uncannily like himself -- down to the black, wiry hair and slight tan.
"In the end, we don't want to interact with machines or computers. We want to interact with technology in a human way, so it's natural and valid to try to make robots look like us," he said.
"One day, they will live among us," Ishiguro said. "Then you'd have to ask me: 'Are you human? Or a robot?"
Who: Japan's government has already founded it.
What: Robots are already taken for granted in Japanese factories, Japan's government has funded a plethora of robotics-related efforts, Japan invented Tamagotchi, the hand-held mechanical pets, Japan faces a challenge in leaping from toys to full-blown human replacements.
Where: In Tokyo, Japan Robots are entering daily life.
When: Japan is an industrial robot powerhouse. Over 370,000 robots worked at factories through Japan in 2005, about 40% of the global total and 32 robots for every 1,000 Japanese manufacturing employees, according to a recent report by Macquarie. It had no numbers from subsequent years.
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