The leading online wedding dress and bridal gown website, BridalOnlineStore.com sold this week for a reported 30 million dollars. New owners plan to expand to brick and mortar bridal shops as well as grow the online side of the business. The owners are bringing a number of new innovative features that will make shopping online for a wedding day dress much easier for brides to be.
Dayton OH (PRWEB) December 13, 2007 -- The Dot Boom seems to have been only a temporary set back for many online retailers. Online wedding dress and bridal gown retailer http://www.bridalonlinestore.com sold this week for a reported 30 million dollars. They are one of the largest online retailers of Bridal Apparel.
New Owner S. Wells said, "The wedding dress business is a big industry and more and more brides have gone to shopping online for their wedding day gowns." It seems most prefer the huge selection a online store can provide versus a bricks and mortar store. A local wedding shop can not stock as many styles and sizes as a online warehouse.
Women who are getting married also enjoy the fact the the dress they purchase has never been worn or even tried on by another bride. She will be the only woman who has ever worn the wedding dress and this seems to be an important fact.
Price may be the biggest factor when a bride to be decides to shop from her house for her dress. Online retailers tend to be about 30-40% cheaper than buying in a bridal shop. A women can get a designer wedding dress for $99. The online store carries all the accessories that needed for the big day all in one place. Many potential customers don't understand how it works. Don't all wedding dresses have to be fitted? The answer is yes. The online store matches you up with a size that is right for you and your body style. Then you can take it to your seamstress for the final sizing.
Bridal Online Store.com will be offering many new advances in the online industry. Brides To Be can now pay with PayPal, Checks, Credit Cards, Lay-A-Way, and Deferred Billing. With videos of brides in the actual dresses and views of the bridal gowns from 360 degrees, women will now be able to see the wedding dress form every angle before they make the purchase.
Bridal Online Store.com also carries plus sized wedding dresses as well as Mormon and Temple Ready gowns. Wells said, "You can basically buy everything you need in one place with a live customer rep to help you through it all."
http://www.emediawire.com/releases/2007/12/emw576303.htm
Saturday, December 29, 2007
me2you Wedding Accessories Launch New Website
on December 11th 2007 me2you wedding accessories has launched a brand new customer-focused, interactive website. The site, http://www.me2youweddings.com is designed to provide our customers with a unique range of handmade wedding stationery and wedding favours.
To help our customers achieve a stress free and enjoyable wedding our new website is easy to navigate and to order from. The website offers customers online wedding planning tips and cost cutting tips.
Donna Bellamy the director of me2you wedding accessories says, "As a newly wed myself, I know how stressful it can be to organise a wedding. When I was arranging my wedding I did not find a website that would meet all my individual requirements, this is the sole reason I decided to launch me2you wedding accessories. We understand that the finishing touches of a wedding makes first impressions count."
About me2you wedding accessories
me2you wedding accessories who are based in cardiff, wales offer a fast and friendly service. We can work to an idea, a theme, or a colour scheme and will endeavour to meet all your individual requirements. We specialise in the design and creation of contemporary handmade wedding stationery and favours including order of service, thank you cards, invitations, place cards and save the date cards.
http://www.emediawire.com/releases/2007/12/prweb576541.htm
To help our customers achieve a stress free and enjoyable wedding our new website is easy to navigate and to order from. The website offers customers online wedding planning tips and cost cutting tips.
Donna Bellamy the director of me2you wedding accessories says, "As a newly wed myself, I know how stressful it can be to organise a wedding. When I was arranging my wedding I did not find a website that would meet all my individual requirements, this is the sole reason I decided to launch me2you wedding accessories. We understand that the finishing touches of a wedding makes first impressions count."
About me2you wedding accessories
me2you wedding accessories who are based in cardiff, wales offer a fast and friendly service. We can work to an idea, a theme, or a colour scheme and will endeavour to meet all your individual requirements. We specialise in the design and creation of contemporary handmade wedding stationery and favours including order of service, thank you cards, invitations, place cards and save the date cards.
http://www.emediawire.com/releases/2007/12/prweb576541.htm
Sunday, December 23, 2007
Craigslist crime becoming common
In Tigard, a man allegedly invites women to his house and sexually assaults them.
In Portland, newlyweds discover that their minister stole their wedding gifts.
In Beaverton, police find a prostitution ring operating in a local motel.
And in Gresham, a couple steals and resells utility trailers for years.
All of these accused or convicted criminals have one thing in common – they committed their crimes with the help of Craigslist (www.craigslist.org), the wildly popular Web site for buying and selling property and services, as well as finding a job, a roommate or a date.
Portland police recently busted a theft ring using Craigslist to sell thousands of dollars worth of stolen property. Following up on a tip that a stolen laptop computer was sold on Craigslist, police served a search warrant on a house in the 9600 block of Southeast Holgate Boulevard and recovered an estimated $30,000 worth of stolen electronic goods, power tools, LCD TV screen, iPods, car stereos and other consumer products.
“The occupants of the house told us they were using Craigslist to sell the stolen property every day,” said Portland Police officer Jim DeFrain, who participated in the Nov. 15 raid. “It happens all the time.”
Craigslist CEO and programmer Jim Buckmaster says the vast majority of the transactions over his Web sites are legal, and that his organization works with law enforcement agencies to curtail any criminal activities.
“Misuse of Craigslist for the facilitation of illegal activity is absolutely unacceptable,” Buckmaster said in an e-mail response to questions from the Pamplin Media Group.
Local law enforcement officers say that crimes on Craigslist are a major problem, however.
“Craigslist, unfortunately, is about much more than just buying and selling things. There have also been issues with prostitution, child exploitation, stolen property, ID theft, any number of things,” said Multnomah County sheriff’s office spokesman Travis Gullberg, whose agency has arrested many people in recent years for Craigslist-related crimes.
Substantially reducing Craigslist-related crimes may not be possible, however. Federal courts have so far ruled that Web site operators are not liable for what people post on them. And local law enforcement officials say they do not have the resources to constantly monitor Craigslist.
Portland’s a big user
Founded in San Francisco in 1995, Craigslist claims to operate more than 300 sites in 50 states and more than 50 countries. According to organization statistics, Craigslist is now the seventh-most popular English language Web site in the world, hosting more than 12 million ads viewed by more than 15 million people a month.
Craigslist also says that 700,000 new classified ads are posted on the Portland Web site every month, generating 275 million page views – making Portland the organization’s No. 5 city in terms of overall use and No. 2 city in terms of per capita use, trailing only San Francisco.
Buckmaster insists that Craigslist reflects society at large.
“It was recently pointed out to us that with literally billions of positive human interactions facilitated by Craigslist, it is quite remarkable how little crime is associated with the site, given the much higher crime rates that exist in the world at large – which is a testament to the good intentions of the vast majority of Craigslist users,” he wrote in an e-mail.
That’s small consolation to Elizabeth Dorsch and her boyfriend, who were scammed out of $2,400 by a woman they met through Criagslist in September. Lynne Sisto, 33, offered to sell them a house on a lease-to-own basis. Sisto told the couple she needed the money to finishing buying the house. When the couple showed up to move in, they discovered the house was still for sale and Sisto had vanished.
Portland police arrested Sisto in October for scamming several people out of at least $20,000 through similar schemes.
“It was horrible feeling. You think you’ve got a place to live, and then you’re nearly homeless,” said Dorsch, who was forced to move into a low-rent apartment with her boyfriend in Vancouver.
Reports spawn a Web site
Craigslist-related crimes are becoming so well known that several Web sites and blogs have been established to track them.
One – www.craigscrimelist.org – is operated by a true-crime buff who uses the name Trench Reynolds to avoid retaliation, he says. After starting his first blog on school shootings in 2000, Reynolds said he began noticing news stories about crimes related to the Internet, including many connected to Craigslist and such social Web sites as MySpace.
After starting a Web site dedicated to such crimes, he soon realized that the majority were connected to just one site – Craigslist – and started the Web site dedicated to it.
“I’m probably posting 30 to 40 stories a month just on crimes connected to Craigslist,” Reynolds said.
Reynolds believes that a major reason why criminals are attracted to Craigslist is its anonymous nature. People posting ads do not have to report any identifying information to anyone.
“There’s no screening or regulation at all about who can use it. If you place a classified ad for something, you’ve got to give somebody your name and address. But on Craigslist, nobody knows who you are or where you live,” Reynolds said.
Locally, criminals not only are placing ads on Craigslist, they allegedly are responding to them, too.
On Nov. 15, Tigard police arrested Ronald Leistiko, 52, on charges that he used Craigslist and other Internet sites to invite women to his house and sexually assault them. According to police, some of the alleged victims were as young as 14. Leistiko is jailed on a long list of charges, including rape, kidnapping, prostitution, sex abuse, menacing, attempted rape, strangulation and unlawful sexual penetration.
According to Tigard police spokesman Jim Wolf, Leistiko found his victims by responding to personal ads posted on Craigslist and other sites.
“We’ve investigated some sex-related crimes associated with Craigslist before, but nothing of this magnitude,” Wolf said.
Some ads suggest sex for cash
According to Reynolds, over half the news stories he sees on Craigslist-related crimes involve prostitution. All Craigslist Web sites have an “erotic services” section where people openly advertise for sexual partners. Many clearly suggest sex is available for money.
The erotic services category easily draws the highest number of Craigslist visitors, according to an April 2007 study released by the Web site analysis firm Compete.com. The study, which looked at eight major American cities (though not Portland or San Francisco), found “erotic services consistently garners the highest number of individual visitors for February – almost always twice as many as the next ranking category, averaging 260,000 people per city.”
A nonprofit advocacy group against human sexual trafficking, called the Polaris Project, believes Craigslist is now the single largest source for prostitution, including child exploitation, in the country. The project surveyed all Craigslist pages for apparent prostitutes on Feb. 7 of this year. It identified thousands across the country, including 275 on the Portland site.
Perhaps the most disturbing Craigslist-related crimes are those involving sex with children.
Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin believes Craigslist is a significant source of child prostitution in her city. On Aug. 21 of this year, she wrote Craigslist to say the site could do more to prevent itself from being used “as a means of promoting and enabling child prostitution.”
Among other things, Franklin called on Craigslist to revise its warning on pages for erotic services and personal ads, and to remove postings that offer sexual services for sale.
Franklin based her request on Atlanta police studies that found that the vast majority of all child sexual predators in that city found their victims on Craigslist, said Stephanie Davis, the mayor’s policy adviser on women’s issues.
Buckmaster wrote Franklin back a week later to say he shared her concerns. In his letter, Buckmaster pointed out that various notices posted on the Web site say that illegally activity is not allowed. He also said Craigslist users routinely flag apparently illegal ads for removal.
Nevertheless, he told Franklin, “we are not content with the status quo and are open to new ideas for improving any and all aspects of the wide array of free services that Craigslist provides to the people of Atlanta.”
Police lack resources
Compared to many of the apparent prostitution ads, those selling stolen property are much harder to spot – and therefore to stop. Portland Police Detective Dave Anderson said he has personally sold property on Craigslist over the years.
But Anderson also knows that local criminals routinely use Craigslist to sell stolen property, including cars, computers, digital cameras and household appliances. In fact, Anderson said that so much stolen property is being sold on Craigslist, the police don’t have enough manpower to track it down.
“We get a lot of tips (about stolen property on Craigslist) that we just don’t have time to follow up on. If we had the staff, we could just surf Craigslist all day and recover stolen property,” Anderson said.
DeFrain agrees. He works for the Neighborhood Enhancement Team at Southeast Precinct, a unit dedicated to reducing street crimes. In that capacity, DeFrain said he routinely runs across criminals who are selling stolen property in Craigslist.
“If you spend any time on Craigslist, you see items that are obviously stolen,” DeFrain said last week while standing in a police storage room full of property recovered from the Southeast Holgate Boulevard house. “Brand-new laptops in their original boxes for $200, iPods without any of the cables or accessories. You need to ask yourself, Why is that?”
Housing, Internet laws clash
Efforts to hold Craigslist legally responsibility for the illegal activities occurring on it have so far been unsuccessful.
Perhaps the most significant attempt occurred in early 2006 when a group of civil rights attorneys sued Craigslist over housing ads it said violated federal anti-discrimination laws. In a federal lawsuit, the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law alleged a pattern of landlords posting ads that said people of a certain race, religion, gender or family status need not apply. The suit alleged Craigslist violated the federal Fair Housing Act by accepting the ads.
In its defense, Craigslist argued that as a “provider of interactive computer services (ICS),” it is immune from such suits under a portion of the federal Communications Decency Act. An amicus brief supporting that position was filed with the court by a number of large Internet-based companies and free speech advocates, including Amazon.com, AOL, eBay, Google, Yahoo and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
The suit was filed in the United States Northern District of Illinois assigned to Judge Amy J. St. Eve. She sided with Craigslist and dismissed the suit in late 2006. Citing more than a dozen cases, the she noted that “[n]ear-unanimous case law holds (the Communications Decency Act) affords immunity to ICSs against suits that seek to hold an ICS liable for third-party content.”
The Chicago lawyers committee recently appealed the dismissal to the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, arguing that St. Eve should have applied the federal housing laws to the case, not the Communications Decency Act.
The appeals court is not expected to act for months, at the soonest.
http://www.westlinntidings.com/news/story.php?story_id=119688465157959900
In Portland, newlyweds discover that their minister stole their wedding gifts.
In Beaverton, police find a prostitution ring operating in a local motel.
And in Gresham, a couple steals and resells utility trailers for years.
All of these accused or convicted criminals have one thing in common – they committed their crimes with the help of Craigslist (www.craigslist.org), the wildly popular Web site for buying and selling property and services, as well as finding a job, a roommate or a date.
Portland police recently busted a theft ring using Craigslist to sell thousands of dollars worth of stolen property. Following up on a tip that a stolen laptop computer was sold on Craigslist, police served a search warrant on a house in the 9600 block of Southeast Holgate Boulevard and recovered an estimated $30,000 worth of stolen electronic goods, power tools, LCD TV screen, iPods, car stereos and other consumer products.
“The occupants of the house told us they were using Craigslist to sell the stolen property every day,” said Portland Police officer Jim DeFrain, who participated in the Nov. 15 raid. “It happens all the time.”
Craigslist CEO and programmer Jim Buckmaster says the vast majority of the transactions over his Web sites are legal, and that his organization works with law enforcement agencies to curtail any criminal activities.
“Misuse of Craigslist for the facilitation of illegal activity is absolutely unacceptable,” Buckmaster said in an e-mail response to questions from the Pamplin Media Group.
Local law enforcement officers say that crimes on Craigslist are a major problem, however.
“Craigslist, unfortunately, is about much more than just buying and selling things. There have also been issues with prostitution, child exploitation, stolen property, ID theft, any number of things,” said Multnomah County sheriff’s office spokesman Travis Gullberg, whose agency has arrested many people in recent years for Craigslist-related crimes.
Substantially reducing Craigslist-related crimes may not be possible, however. Federal courts have so far ruled that Web site operators are not liable for what people post on them. And local law enforcement officials say they do not have the resources to constantly monitor Craigslist.
Portland’s a big user
Founded in San Francisco in 1995, Craigslist claims to operate more than 300 sites in 50 states and more than 50 countries. According to organization statistics, Craigslist is now the seventh-most popular English language Web site in the world, hosting more than 12 million ads viewed by more than 15 million people a month.
Craigslist also says that 700,000 new classified ads are posted on the Portland Web site every month, generating 275 million page views – making Portland the organization’s No. 5 city in terms of overall use and No. 2 city in terms of per capita use, trailing only San Francisco.
Buckmaster insists that Craigslist reflects society at large.
“It was recently pointed out to us that with literally billions of positive human interactions facilitated by Craigslist, it is quite remarkable how little crime is associated with the site, given the much higher crime rates that exist in the world at large – which is a testament to the good intentions of the vast majority of Craigslist users,” he wrote in an e-mail.
That’s small consolation to Elizabeth Dorsch and her boyfriend, who were scammed out of $2,400 by a woman they met through Criagslist in September. Lynne Sisto, 33, offered to sell them a house on a lease-to-own basis. Sisto told the couple she needed the money to finishing buying the house. When the couple showed up to move in, they discovered the house was still for sale and Sisto had vanished.
Portland police arrested Sisto in October for scamming several people out of at least $20,000 through similar schemes.
“It was horrible feeling. You think you’ve got a place to live, and then you’re nearly homeless,” said Dorsch, who was forced to move into a low-rent apartment with her boyfriend in Vancouver.
Reports spawn a Web site
Craigslist-related crimes are becoming so well known that several Web sites and blogs have been established to track them.
One – www.craigscrimelist.org – is operated by a true-crime buff who uses the name Trench Reynolds to avoid retaliation, he says. After starting his first blog on school shootings in 2000, Reynolds said he began noticing news stories about crimes related to the Internet, including many connected to Craigslist and such social Web sites as MySpace.
After starting a Web site dedicated to such crimes, he soon realized that the majority were connected to just one site – Craigslist – and started the Web site dedicated to it.
“I’m probably posting 30 to 40 stories a month just on crimes connected to Craigslist,” Reynolds said.
Reynolds believes that a major reason why criminals are attracted to Craigslist is its anonymous nature. People posting ads do not have to report any identifying information to anyone.
“There’s no screening or regulation at all about who can use it. If you place a classified ad for something, you’ve got to give somebody your name and address. But on Craigslist, nobody knows who you are or where you live,” Reynolds said.
Locally, criminals not only are placing ads on Craigslist, they allegedly are responding to them, too.
On Nov. 15, Tigard police arrested Ronald Leistiko, 52, on charges that he used Craigslist and other Internet sites to invite women to his house and sexually assault them. According to police, some of the alleged victims were as young as 14. Leistiko is jailed on a long list of charges, including rape, kidnapping, prostitution, sex abuse, menacing, attempted rape, strangulation and unlawful sexual penetration.
According to Tigard police spokesman Jim Wolf, Leistiko found his victims by responding to personal ads posted on Craigslist and other sites.
“We’ve investigated some sex-related crimes associated with Craigslist before, but nothing of this magnitude,” Wolf said.
Some ads suggest sex for cash
According to Reynolds, over half the news stories he sees on Craigslist-related crimes involve prostitution. All Craigslist Web sites have an “erotic services” section where people openly advertise for sexual partners. Many clearly suggest sex is available for money.
The erotic services category easily draws the highest number of Craigslist visitors, according to an April 2007 study released by the Web site analysis firm Compete.com. The study, which looked at eight major American cities (though not Portland or San Francisco), found “erotic services consistently garners the highest number of individual visitors for February – almost always twice as many as the next ranking category, averaging 260,000 people per city.”
A nonprofit advocacy group against human sexual trafficking, called the Polaris Project, believes Craigslist is now the single largest source for prostitution, including child exploitation, in the country. The project surveyed all Craigslist pages for apparent prostitutes on Feb. 7 of this year. It identified thousands across the country, including 275 on the Portland site.
Perhaps the most disturbing Craigslist-related crimes are those involving sex with children.
Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin believes Craigslist is a significant source of child prostitution in her city. On Aug. 21 of this year, she wrote Craigslist to say the site could do more to prevent itself from being used “as a means of promoting and enabling child prostitution.”
Among other things, Franklin called on Craigslist to revise its warning on pages for erotic services and personal ads, and to remove postings that offer sexual services for sale.
Franklin based her request on Atlanta police studies that found that the vast majority of all child sexual predators in that city found their victims on Craigslist, said Stephanie Davis, the mayor’s policy adviser on women’s issues.
Buckmaster wrote Franklin back a week later to say he shared her concerns. In his letter, Buckmaster pointed out that various notices posted on the Web site say that illegally activity is not allowed. He also said Craigslist users routinely flag apparently illegal ads for removal.
Nevertheless, he told Franklin, “we are not content with the status quo and are open to new ideas for improving any and all aspects of the wide array of free services that Craigslist provides to the people of Atlanta.”
Police lack resources
Compared to many of the apparent prostitution ads, those selling stolen property are much harder to spot – and therefore to stop. Portland Police Detective Dave Anderson said he has personally sold property on Craigslist over the years.
But Anderson also knows that local criminals routinely use Craigslist to sell stolen property, including cars, computers, digital cameras and household appliances. In fact, Anderson said that so much stolen property is being sold on Craigslist, the police don’t have enough manpower to track it down.
“We get a lot of tips (about stolen property on Craigslist) that we just don’t have time to follow up on. If we had the staff, we could just surf Craigslist all day and recover stolen property,” Anderson said.
DeFrain agrees. He works for the Neighborhood Enhancement Team at Southeast Precinct, a unit dedicated to reducing street crimes. In that capacity, DeFrain said he routinely runs across criminals who are selling stolen property in Craigslist.
“If you spend any time on Craigslist, you see items that are obviously stolen,” DeFrain said last week while standing in a police storage room full of property recovered from the Southeast Holgate Boulevard house. “Brand-new laptops in their original boxes for $200, iPods without any of the cables or accessories. You need to ask yourself, Why is that?”
Housing, Internet laws clash
Efforts to hold Craigslist legally responsibility for the illegal activities occurring on it have so far been unsuccessful.
Perhaps the most significant attempt occurred in early 2006 when a group of civil rights attorneys sued Craigslist over housing ads it said violated federal anti-discrimination laws. In a federal lawsuit, the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law alleged a pattern of landlords posting ads that said people of a certain race, religion, gender or family status need not apply. The suit alleged Craigslist violated the federal Fair Housing Act by accepting the ads.
In its defense, Craigslist argued that as a “provider of interactive computer services (ICS),” it is immune from such suits under a portion of the federal Communications Decency Act. An amicus brief supporting that position was filed with the court by a number of large Internet-based companies and free speech advocates, including Amazon.com, AOL, eBay, Google, Yahoo and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
The suit was filed in the United States Northern District of Illinois assigned to Judge Amy J. St. Eve. She sided with Craigslist and dismissed the suit in late 2006. Citing more than a dozen cases, the she noted that “[n]ear-unanimous case law holds (the Communications Decency Act) affords immunity to ICSs against suits that seek to hold an ICS liable for third-party content.”
The Chicago lawyers committee recently appealed the dismissal to the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, arguing that St. Eve should have applied the federal housing laws to the case, not the Communications Decency Act.
The appeals court is not expected to act for months, at the soonest.
http://www.westlinntidings.com/news/story.php?story_id=119688465157959900
Visitors find new shops on Dearborn
Visitors to Saturday Night Live on Dearborn Street found that a lot has changed since last holiday season. Actually, there have been big changes just since October.
While some shops have closed, new ones have opened and others have moved, if just across the street.
Lemon Tree Gallery had been closed for four months while it moved from the large front building to the smaller back building.
"We want people to get used to us being back here," said manager Jill Leah. While not all the art was up for the walk, there was plenty to see.
Meanwhile, the former Lemon Tree Gallery is now home to Vino Loco Wine & Tapas Bar, and things were busy on Saturday night as customers sampled wines and tapas such as bruschetta and Manchego cheese.
After moving out of the Emporium, Jeanne Cadman, artist and owner of Blind Images, has found a new home at, of all places, Englewood Hardware. Showing off puppets and other items, she says she is trying to get the word out about her new location.
Kimberly Berden, owner of Sunkissed Gifts, said business has been good since she opened on Nov. 1, especially for Florida-themed Christmas cards. The shop also offers souvenirs, gifts, shells and wedding accessories.
Tom Joralemon came especially to check out the marble collection at Antiques on Dearborn at its new location just across the street. He said he has thousands at home, but found some he liked in Ken Kocab's collection.
Over at Zigamzoo, home of the longstanding "opening soon" sign, things were buzzing. Partners Marie Laforge and Ricardo Roggero opened the Friday after Thanksgiving and are concentrating on unusual clothing, accessories and gifts, including Laforge's handmade silks and fabric designs, before they begin offering lunch.
One thing that has been a constant at Saturday Night Live is music. You could hear all kinds on the street, including country and western, and, of course, Christmas carols. But this was "Rock'n the Holidays" and The Jam Band was doing its best to get people dancing. Lead singer Irena Gifford said she was having fun singing outside. "The weather is beautiful and you're not in a smoky bar."
Arletta and Lee Wilbur have been visiting Dearborn Street for years. Relaxing after the walk with some wine at Vino Loco, Lee observed, "From one year to the next, it's gotten better and better."
http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20071216/COMMUNITY/712160543/-1/newssitemap
While some shops have closed, new ones have opened and others have moved, if just across the street.
Lemon Tree Gallery had been closed for four months while it moved from the large front building to the smaller back building.
"We want people to get used to us being back here," said manager Jill Leah. While not all the art was up for the walk, there was plenty to see.
Meanwhile, the former Lemon Tree Gallery is now home to Vino Loco Wine & Tapas Bar, and things were busy on Saturday night as customers sampled wines and tapas such as bruschetta and Manchego cheese.
After moving out of the Emporium, Jeanne Cadman, artist and owner of Blind Images, has found a new home at, of all places, Englewood Hardware. Showing off puppets and other items, she says she is trying to get the word out about her new location.
Kimberly Berden, owner of Sunkissed Gifts, said business has been good since she opened on Nov. 1, especially for Florida-themed Christmas cards. The shop also offers souvenirs, gifts, shells and wedding accessories.
Tom Joralemon came especially to check out the marble collection at Antiques on Dearborn at its new location just across the street. He said he has thousands at home, but found some he liked in Ken Kocab's collection.
Over at Zigamzoo, home of the longstanding "opening soon" sign, things were buzzing. Partners Marie Laforge and Ricardo Roggero opened the Friday after Thanksgiving and are concentrating on unusual clothing, accessories and gifts, including Laforge's handmade silks and fabric designs, before they begin offering lunch.
One thing that has been a constant at Saturday Night Live is music. You could hear all kinds on the street, including country and western, and, of course, Christmas carols. But this was "Rock'n the Holidays" and The Jam Band was doing its best to get people dancing. Lead singer Irena Gifford said she was having fun singing outside. "The weather is beautiful and you're not in a smoky bar."
Arletta and Lee Wilbur have been visiting Dearborn Street for years. Relaxing after the walk with some wine at Vino Loco, Lee observed, "From one year to the next, it's gotten better and better."
http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20071216/COMMUNITY/712160543/-1/newssitemap
Three risks of Christmas
If Christmas didn’t exist, would insurers invent it? I ask partly because someone may need to if my local paper’s survey of school nativity plays are anything to go by.
Of 35 schools surveyed, only a handful are putting on traditional Nativity plays; the rest vary from The Most Disgruntled Snowman to The Lucky Owl and The Hoity-Toity Angel. There’s even Hosanna Rock, featuring angels disguised as tax collectors.
At least even these have something to do with the traditional meaning of the festive period but the risks of Christmas have been growing in recent years.
Whether it’s a perceived fear of appearing politically incorrect or insufficiently ethnically diverse or a public liability worry about the town centre Christmas tree toppling over, the Christmas lights catching fire or unseemly behaviour at office Christmas parties, those 12 days carry more risk.
Or maybe they just seem riskier. After all, people have been taking risks at Christmas ever since the first one.
Did Mary and Joseph have travel insurance when they set out on that long road to Bethlehem?
What potential health and safety claims did that innkeeper let himself in for by renting out an unlicensed stable to a woman in the middle of labour?
And just how clever were those so-called wise men who ventured into the desert on unprotected camels carrying uninsured gold and valuable perfumes?
In comparison, our homely Christmas celebrations seem safe and secure but how many carol singers have personal liability cover when they venture onto expensive patios or fire risk cover when they carry lanterns or candles?
What about the risk of giving someone food poisoning by under-cooking the turkey or the danger of a sexual harassment lawsuit from giving someone a peck under the mistletoe?
At the domestic level, most householders will happily take on such risks but most do have cover for the occasion that the Christmas lights set the house on fire or the heartbreak of having their presents stolen in a burglary.
If your car is wrecked on the way home from a candlelit Christmas service; if flash floods or freak storms mean you have to be re-housed or if that Christmas holiday of a lifetime in Disneyland has to be cancelled because of illness, insurance cover ensures that it is a drama, not a crisis.
As Caroline Rowlands and Arnie Skelton of Cheadle, Cheshire, discovered a few years ago, even the Christmas rubbish carries risks.
In preparation for their forthcoming wedding, gifts for bridesmaids and others taking part, plus wedding clothing, accessories and the marital rings were mistakenly taken to the local authority tip, mistaken for discarded bags and boxes left over from Christmas.
Fortunately for them, a £45 premium paid for wedding insurance, underwritten appropriately enough by Ecclesiastical Insurance, put matters right and the couple received £1,020 for the lost rings, £965 for wedding attire, £375 for lost presents and an express courier charge of £211 to deliver replacement shoes in a hurry.
At the corporate level, insurance is again the ingredient that gives councils, communities, churches, hospitals and schools the reassurance and comfort levels needed to organise major Christmas events.
When something goes wrong, insurers form part of the social safety net that cleans up the mess and pays for it – something often ignored when premiums are rising or no-claims bonuses disappear after payouts.
Media attention will no doubt focus this Christmas on those families who are celebrating in caravans outside their still-inhabitable homes, wrecked in the summer floods. But in many cases insurers are footing the bills.
Insurance may also cover you if you have to fly home early from that Christmas holiday, order a complete recall of your company’s Christmas hampers because of a health and safety risk or cope with a risk in your supply chain at a time when there are few alternative suppliers, threatening your ability to continue trading.
It’s all business as normal for insurers, whose job is all about giving society the freedom of mind to continue operating as normal.
Whether it stretches to actually inventing a risky event that didn’t previously exist is another matter, however. No doubt, if insurance risks advisers had been around at most of the original occasions that have given rise to modern festivals, from Easter to Guy Fawkes Night, they would probably have advised against going ahead.
But, despite the grey image that insurance still struggles with, underwriters and brokers are innovators in protecting risks, pioneering everything from kidnap insurance (invented by a Lloyd’s insurer in 1932, shortly after Charles and Anne Lindbergh's baby was kidnapped) to specialist cover for lapdancers (don’t ask). I dare say that if one of the industry’s forebears had encountered the Wise Men 2,000 years ago, he or she might even have worked out a deal with them to cover for their return trip home.
Here’s to a happy insured Christmas.
http://www.lloyds.com/News_Centre/Features_from_Lloyds/Three_risks_of_Christmas181207.htm
Of 35 schools surveyed, only a handful are putting on traditional Nativity plays; the rest vary from The Most Disgruntled Snowman to The Lucky Owl and The Hoity-Toity Angel. There’s even Hosanna Rock, featuring angels disguised as tax collectors.
At least even these have something to do with the traditional meaning of the festive period but the risks of Christmas have been growing in recent years.
Whether it’s a perceived fear of appearing politically incorrect or insufficiently ethnically diverse or a public liability worry about the town centre Christmas tree toppling over, the Christmas lights catching fire or unseemly behaviour at office Christmas parties, those 12 days carry more risk.
Or maybe they just seem riskier. After all, people have been taking risks at Christmas ever since the first one.
Did Mary and Joseph have travel insurance when they set out on that long road to Bethlehem?
What potential health and safety claims did that innkeeper let himself in for by renting out an unlicensed stable to a woman in the middle of labour?
And just how clever were those so-called wise men who ventured into the desert on unprotected camels carrying uninsured gold and valuable perfumes?
In comparison, our homely Christmas celebrations seem safe and secure but how many carol singers have personal liability cover when they venture onto expensive patios or fire risk cover when they carry lanterns or candles?
What about the risk of giving someone food poisoning by under-cooking the turkey or the danger of a sexual harassment lawsuit from giving someone a peck under the mistletoe?
At the domestic level, most householders will happily take on such risks but most do have cover for the occasion that the Christmas lights set the house on fire or the heartbreak of having their presents stolen in a burglary.
If your car is wrecked on the way home from a candlelit Christmas service; if flash floods or freak storms mean you have to be re-housed or if that Christmas holiday of a lifetime in Disneyland has to be cancelled because of illness, insurance cover ensures that it is a drama, not a crisis.
As Caroline Rowlands and Arnie Skelton of Cheadle, Cheshire, discovered a few years ago, even the Christmas rubbish carries risks.
In preparation for their forthcoming wedding, gifts for bridesmaids and others taking part, plus wedding clothing, accessories and the marital rings were mistakenly taken to the local authority tip, mistaken for discarded bags and boxes left over from Christmas.
Fortunately for them, a £45 premium paid for wedding insurance, underwritten appropriately enough by Ecclesiastical Insurance, put matters right and the couple received £1,020 for the lost rings, £965 for wedding attire, £375 for lost presents and an express courier charge of £211 to deliver replacement shoes in a hurry.
At the corporate level, insurance is again the ingredient that gives councils, communities, churches, hospitals and schools the reassurance and comfort levels needed to organise major Christmas events.
When something goes wrong, insurers form part of the social safety net that cleans up the mess and pays for it – something often ignored when premiums are rising or no-claims bonuses disappear after payouts.
Media attention will no doubt focus this Christmas on those families who are celebrating in caravans outside their still-inhabitable homes, wrecked in the summer floods. But in many cases insurers are footing the bills.
Insurance may also cover you if you have to fly home early from that Christmas holiday, order a complete recall of your company’s Christmas hampers because of a health and safety risk or cope with a risk in your supply chain at a time when there are few alternative suppliers, threatening your ability to continue trading.
It’s all business as normal for insurers, whose job is all about giving society the freedom of mind to continue operating as normal.
Whether it stretches to actually inventing a risky event that didn’t previously exist is another matter, however. No doubt, if insurance risks advisers had been around at most of the original occasions that have given rise to modern festivals, from Easter to Guy Fawkes Night, they would probably have advised against going ahead.
But, despite the grey image that insurance still struggles with, underwriters and brokers are innovators in protecting risks, pioneering everything from kidnap insurance (invented by a Lloyd’s insurer in 1932, shortly after Charles and Anne Lindbergh's baby was kidnapped) to specialist cover for lapdancers (don’t ask). I dare say that if one of the industry’s forebears had encountered the Wise Men 2,000 years ago, he or she might even have worked out a deal with them to cover for their return trip home.
Here’s to a happy insured Christmas.
http://www.lloyds.com/News_Centre/Features_from_Lloyds/Three_risks_of_Christmas181207.htm
Bangladesh : 4th Bridal Festival & Jewelry Expo ends successfully
Dhaka Sheraton Hotel hosted the 4th Bridal Festival & Jewelry Exhibition of 2007. The event was organized by monthly fashion and lifestyle magazine Mirror. Besides, over 60 businessmen participated in this show.
The expo highlighted bridal clothing and accessories like jewelry, shoes, makeup kits and other related articles.
The Managing Director of the Mirror stated that it had been organizing the event for the past three years and that the festival essentially gave visitors an insight to marriage ideas.
For instance, the conventional colors associated with bridal wear were red and maroon but lately, the trend has undergone a sea of change. People today, do not mind experimenting with white, purple, golden and other colors to get that exceptionally unique bridal look.
The festival closed on November 29 with a grand fashion show at China-Bangladesh Friendship Conference Center.
http://www.fibre2fashion.com/news/textile-news/newsdetails.aspx?news_id=45213
The expo highlighted bridal clothing and accessories like jewelry, shoes, makeup kits and other related articles.
The Managing Director of the Mirror stated that it had been organizing the event for the past three years and that the festival essentially gave visitors an insight to marriage ideas.
For instance, the conventional colors associated with bridal wear were red and maroon but lately, the trend has undergone a sea of change. People today, do not mind experimenting with white, purple, golden and other colors to get that exceptionally unique bridal look.
The festival closed on November 29 with a grand fashion show at China-Bangladesh Friendship Conference Center.
http://www.fibre2fashion.com/news/textile-news/newsdetails.aspx?news_id=45213
Bringing merchandise and the store to online shoppers
When it comes to categories of products sold, apparel & accessories is the biggest kid on the Internet retailing block. E-retailers in this category account for 80 of the top 500 retail web sites, according to the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide.
The category, however, also has one of the biggest hurdles on the web: merchandise that shoppers really like to feel, hold and try on, actions impossible to achieve via an Internet connection.
But that`s not stopping the apparel & accessories e-retailers named to the Hot 100 from using web tools and technologies to come as close as possible to helping shoppers "feel" merchandise and have an online experience similar to one they would have in a store.
Coach.com, for example, has introduced Try It Online, a site feature designed to help dampen worries shoppers have when purchasing a handbag online. Shoppers can use the Try It Online feature to see where the bag falls on their body. They enter their height, and the web site displays a model of similar height wearing the handbag.
Compared with handbags, shoes present a much bigger challenge to e-retailers looking to reassure shoppers buying online. 6pm.com lets customers soothe each other`s concerns. The site offers a Fit Survey, where shoe buyers say such things as whether their shoes "felt true to size," "felt true to width" or provided "moderate arch support." Shoppers can review the survey results when considering a shoe purchase.
At Gap.com, a Quick Look web tool enables shoppers to magnify any part of a product image by mousing over it, giving shoppers as close a look as they could get in a store. "It lets people know what it would be like if they were actually holding it in their hands," says Scott Kincaid, a consultant at Usability Sciences Corp.
Other Internet retailers are not just focused on giving shoppers the feel of merchandise, they`re also making online shoppers feel more like they`re in a store.
JCrew.com, for instance, boasts a personal shopper program that brings shoppers and retail associates together online. And Swell.com encourages conversation about surfing via e-mail that unites customers and Swell staff.
http://www.internetretailer.com/article.asp?id=24593
The category, however, also has one of the biggest hurdles on the web: merchandise that shoppers really like to feel, hold and try on, actions impossible to achieve via an Internet connection.
But that`s not stopping the apparel & accessories e-retailers named to the Hot 100 from using web tools and technologies to come as close as possible to helping shoppers "feel" merchandise and have an online experience similar to one they would have in a store.
Coach.com, for example, has introduced Try It Online, a site feature designed to help dampen worries shoppers have when purchasing a handbag online. Shoppers can use the Try It Online feature to see where the bag falls on their body. They enter their height, and the web site displays a model of similar height wearing the handbag.
Compared with handbags, shoes present a much bigger challenge to e-retailers looking to reassure shoppers buying online. 6pm.com lets customers soothe each other`s concerns. The site offers a Fit Survey, where shoe buyers say such things as whether their shoes "felt true to size," "felt true to width" or provided "moderate arch support." Shoppers can review the survey results when considering a shoe purchase.
At Gap.com, a Quick Look web tool enables shoppers to magnify any part of a product image by mousing over it, giving shoppers as close a look as they could get in a store. "It lets people know what it would be like if they were actually holding it in their hands," says Scott Kincaid, a consultant at Usability Sciences Corp.
Other Internet retailers are not just focused on giving shoppers the feel of merchandise, they`re also making online shoppers feel more like they`re in a store.
JCrew.com, for instance, boasts a personal shopper program that brings shoppers and retail associates together online. And Swell.com encourages conversation about surfing via e-mail that unites customers and Swell staff.
http://www.internetretailer.com/article.asp?id=24593
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