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Watters adapts to Zurich
ZURICH Australia’s new chief information officer, Scott Watters, says adaptability is a key requirement of the job.
Read more on News.com.au

Carousel (Review)
Carnegie production features fantastic music and singing If it’s great singing and musical accompaniment that draws you to classic musicals, then you need to spend some time at the Carnegie Center in Covington where there’s currently a satisfying staging of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel at the Otto M. Budig Theatre.
Read more on Cincinnati CityBeat

Mirren sexes up Saturday Night Live
Oscar winner Dame Helen Mirren turned up the heat on US comedy show Saturday Night Live this weekend when she locked lips with a Marilyn Monroe impersonator for a passionate same-sex smooch.
Read more on world entertainment news via Yahoo! UK & Ireland News

Microsoft putting ERP in the Azure cloud
Microsoft is moving its Dynamics ERP (enterprise resource planning) applications to its Azure cloud platform, the company announced Monday at the Convergence conference in Atlanta. The belated move represents a major change for the way Microsoft sells Dynamics, which has traditionally been sold through partners in on-premises and hosted form.
Read more on CIO

Some cool south pacific images:

coral sands below

Image by naturemandala
shallow reef in Biak, Papua Indonesia.

Private Motu

Image by Steve Corey
This is the view from the Sofitel private motu. A boat ran every few minutes for hotel guests to visit the island, dine, swim or imbibe. The best reef in Bora Bora was adjacent to this motu.

shopping women

Image by drmvm5

Some cool south pacific images:

Coral Channel

Image by naturemandala
Owi Islans near Biak, Papua (indonesia)

Wisdom and dignity

Image by Light Knight
Almost two-thirds of the 112,422 inhabitants of the Kingdom of Tonga live on its main island, Tongatapu. Although an increasing number of Tongans have moved into the only urban and commercial centre, Nuku?alofa, where European and indigenous cultural and living patterns have blended, village life and kinship ties continue to be important throughout the country. Everyday life is heavily influenced by Polynesian traditions and especially by the Christian faith; for example, all commerce and entertainment activities cease from midnight Saturday until midnight Sunday, and the constitution declares the Sabbath to be sacred, forever. The majority of Tongans are Methodists with a significant Catholic minority. By their own church statistics, Mormons claim 32 percent of the population, thereby substantiating their claim that Tonga is the most Mormon nation in the world.
Tongans, Polynesian by ethnicity with a very small mixture of Melanesian, represent more than 98% of the inhabitants.

Calling the blow-hole gods

Image by Light Knight
Calling to the blow-holes of Houma..A couple of small spouts can be seen on the right

Some of the most spectacular blowholes in the South Pacific can be found along the terraced coastline of south west Tongatapu. Here you’ll find not one blowhole, but hundreds of them along a four mile stretch of wild windswept coastline, the largest spouts of sea water being thrown almost 30 metres into the air. Best viewed at high tide, the blowholes are accessible a km walk past the inland village of Houma. Buses to Houma from Nuku’alofa take about 30 minutes.

It is reputed that one of the ancient Chiefs of Tonga spend his hours meditating over the blowholes and listening to the whistling of the waves – hence their name – ‘Mapu’a ‘a Vaca’ meaning ‘Chief’s Whistles’.

Hacienda Matapalo Costa Rica Strikes Alliance with N5R and Costa Rica Estates for Marketing Costa Rica Real Estate to …
Officials at Hacienda Matapalo, a 665-acre master planned gated community on Costa Rica’s South Pacific Coast, today announced they have formed a strategic alliance with two premier Canadian marketing and advertising companies to provide Canadians with access to the best selling development in Costa Rica.
Read more on PRWeb via Yahoo! News

Local News
Aberdeen’s two fire stations soon will carry signs telling mothers that they should drop their newborn babies off inside the stations rather than dump the baby somewhere else to die.
Read more on The Daily World

Asia Stocks Gain, Yen Weakens as Oil Trades Above 0 a Barrel
Asian shares advanced, led by the Nikkei 225 Stock Average, and the yen weakened as a crippled nuclear plant at Fukushima escaped damage from the biggest earthquake to strike Japan since March 11. Commodities gained as oil traded above 0 a barrel in New York.
Read more on BusinessWeek

TURKS AND CAICOS RESERVATIONS TEMPTS SUN SEEKERS TO TRIPADVISORS WORLDS BEST BEACH
PROVIDENCIALES, Turks and Caicos Islands April 8, 2011 Turks and Caicos Reservations, the Turks and Caicos Islands only locally-based e-marketing and tourism reservation service, congratulates Providenciales on being named the worlds best beach by TripAdvisor in its inaugural 2011 Travelers Choice Beaches awards. To celebrate this accomplishment, the company is offering a range…
Read more on PitchEngine

NJ Beach Named 9th Best in the World
The beaches on Cape May, N.J., beat out paradises like Costa Rica and Bora Bora
Read more on NBC Philadelphia

The Terrace at Trump Expands, Season Begins May 18, 2011
CHICAGO, IL–(Marketwire – 04/07/11) – Trump International Hotel & Tower Chicago is pleased to announce that The Terrace at Trump, the downtown hotel ‘s sophisticated outdoor dining venue, will open Wednesday, May 18, at 2:30 p.m. The chic, 16th floor outdoor oasis — which has become one of the city’s most sought-after destinations since opening in 2009 — showcases a dramatic vista of the …
Read more on Marketwire via Yahoo! Finance

Waterloo WWII veteran story of Norbert Trainor
“I was just 17 the 5th of January and the 7th I joined,” said Norbert Trainor about the day he joined the armed services.
Read more on KWWL Iowa

Google reportedly to overhaul YouTube
Google’s YouTube site is in the midst of an overhaul, according to a Wall Street Journal report Wednesday.
Read more on CIO

Market briefs: ComOps, Transol, IntraPower
ComOps (ASX:COM) chooses CEO successor; Transol’s (ASX:TNC) Valleyarm signs digital distribution deal; Intrapower’s (ASX:IPX) cloud wins ATUG award
Read more on CIO

The Fight for 350 at the United Nations
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is a notoriously slow-moving body, riddled in diplomatic bureaucracy. But it’s also the dominant form of international negotiation and cooperation on climate change, and the world’s best hope for some global progress. All of the so-called “intersessional” meetings between the big hallmark COPs (Copenhagen, Cancun, etc) are pretty …
Read more on GOOD

Justin Francis: ‘I want to be a challenger’
Justin Francis launched Responsibletravel.com a decade ago to bring an ethical dimension to tourism. Simon Calder catches up with a man on a mission
Read more on Independent

Intel CEO’s pay package climbs 7% to .7 million
Intel CEO Paul Otellini received a seven per cent pay bump last year, as Intel more than doubled its profits and for the first time topped billion in revenue. His total compensation climbed to .7 million in 2010 from .6 million in 2009, according to documents filed yesterday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Read more on CIO

Check out these south pacific images:

Peacock Macro

Image by sheilaz413
When we were in Pambula (New South Wales, Australia), Simon and Michelle brought me to a local zoo. One of the zoo’s attractions were a flock of free roaming peacocks. I took advantage of the opportunity and took some macro-ish shot.

Where did the Lacrosse 2 radar-imaging satellite go?
The long-lived Lacrosse 2 spy satellite has done a disappearing act after 20 years in space, leading sky-watchers to believe the craft has been retired and deorbited into the Pacific.
Read more on Spaceflight Now

Novell’s Vibe enterprise social networking suite debuts
Novell has released to worldwide general availability its Web-hosted Vibe Cloud enterprise social collaboration suite, which adapts for workplace use a variety of social networking features made popular in consumer-oriented sites like Facebook and Twitter.
Read more on CIO

Local News
BY STEVEN FRIEDERICH The Daily World The Aberdeen City Council made an offer of 1,000 Wednesday night to acquire the old payday loan and pawn store located next to the Aberdeen Fire Hall on Market Street with the hopes of one day expanding the fire station. Aberdeen Mayor Bill Simpson had…
Read more on The Daily World

Local News
BY STEVEN FRIEDERICH The Daily World The Aberdeen City Council made an offer of 1,000 Wednesday night to acquire the old payday loan and pawn store located next to the Aberdeen Fire Hall on Market Street with the hopes of one day expanding the fire station. Aberdeen Mayor Bill Simpson had…
Read more on The Daily World