Once you have finally dropped your bags at your destination, the next 24 hours of any trip can be both thrilling and completely disorienting. Having a plan for getting things done and getting your trip truly underway upon arrival can set the tone for an entire vacation. Here are 10 tips for dispatching potential snags in the first 24 hours of your trip.

1. On the way in, plan your exit.
The best time to figure out the fastest and easiest way out of town is on your way in; waiting until you are trying to make a plane to do so can cause a lot of stress and lost time. After you get off a plane, for example, scope out the airport layout and amenities. Note how far it is from the car rental counter to the terminal as well as a good place to buy gas to fill up your tank before returning your vehicle. Look for street names and exit numbers to thread your way back to the rental counter or terminals. When you check in at your hotel, ask about check-out times and see if you can leave without stopping at the front desk.

2. Grab some nourishment.
One of the first things most travelers will need to do upon arriving in a new place is eat, and many end up grabbing whatever is available, whether it’s room service or fast food. But with Yelp, Urbanspoon, TripAdvisor, and many other listing sites and apps out there, you can get ahead of this one very easily.

Reader Tre Horoszewski offers a tip: “Do a little research ahead of time to find a decent, nearby restaurant for your first meal upon arrival. You’re often tired and hungry, so aren’t ready to go to that one really great place you want to try on your trip. But neither do you want to spend time looking for someplace and wind up settling for junk precisely because you’re tired and hungry and just want food.”

3. Reset your clock.
If you changed time zones while traveling, you will want to assume the daily rhythms of the new zone immediately, right down to the type of foods you eat. If it is morning, go have tea or coffee and breakfast foods (pancakes, pastries, etc.); if it is evening, have a proper dinner; if it is nighttime, maybe a cocktail and a snack. Don’t succumb to the urge to stay on your old schedule, especially for your most ingrained habits — which brings us to…

4. Get outside.
When you visit a new place, the light is different, the air is different and your entire sense of the world can be different. After spending hours in parking lots, airports, planes, shuttle buses and rental car garages, put down all your stuff and get out the door.

Ceci Flinn, an American working toward a Ph.D. at Oxford in the U.K., offers the following: “Take a walk, familiarize yourself with the surroundings and get fresh air/exercise. Okay, there are places like parts of L.A. where this doesn’t work so well, and ya gotta take a bus or drive, and then walk!”

Do this again the morning after you arrive; getting yourself out into the sunlight alerts your brain and body to what time of day it is, and lets them know that you’re done sitting on planes and ready to have some fun!

5. Have a plan to deal with your caffeine addiction.
Face it, a very large percentage of Americans have a caffeine addiction of some type; getting this under control and on track as quickly as possible is going to be critical in adjusting your biological clock to match your new surroundings. If you mess it up in the early going, it can take days to correct, and even exact a toll on your overall enjoyment of your trip.

Anyone with a coffee habit of any merit knows the consequences of having a strong cup of coffee at the wrong time of day. If it’s 7 a.m. in your home town but late in the day at your new destination, you know that giving your body the java fix it’s demanding will wreak havoc on your sleep that night and your energy the next day. But you also know you can’t go completely without.

I have found that substituting a sugarless cola often does the trick; with less than 50 milligrams of caffeine in most colas, it is enough to push back headaches and cravings, but not so much to ruin your sleep.

Then when you get up the next day, get out of your room into the morning sunlight and hit the caffeine hard; I have found that this combination can reset your internal clock almost in an instant. You may have a different approach — and an evening cup of coffee may have little effect on some people — but you want to put a strategy into play before you find yourself lying awake in the dark on a midnight caffeine jag.

A simpler version: Wait until your first morning to drink your first strong cup of coffee.

6. Take pictures.
A pro photographer I know always dedicates the first few hours of a trip to taking a lot of photos; he noticed some time ago that his eye was always “freshest” when he first arrived in a new place, and he would notice things in the first few hours that he might ignore after a few days. Flynn says simply, “Take a camera; you never know when you will see something magical.”

7. Charge your electronics.
When you arrive in your room, the first thing you want to do is whip out all your electronic devices, make sure you can plug them in if you are traveling internationally and put a full charge on them. If you need adapters, you will want to deal with this early in your trip; having your laptop or camera bail out on you right after you arrive can make the normal hassles of traveling overwhelm the first promising hours of your trip.

8. Secure your valuables.
The place you stow your most valuable items during a flight (in your carry-on, in your coat pocket) may not be the safest place for the duration of your trip. If you are traveling with any especially valuable items, secure them straight away upon arrival, whether in the safe in your room, or buried deep in your socks, or however you prefer to do so.

9. Let someone know you arrived, and where you are.
Especially if you are traveling alone, but even if not, it’s a good idea to let someone close to you know that you arrived safely, and tell him or her how to get in touch with you if needed (hotel phone and room number, your preferred traveling e-mail address, a local cell phone if you purchase one, etc.).

10. Check the weather.
It seems almost too simple, but countless travelers get ambushed by bad weather, and a thoughtful weather check can really assist your overall planning. Check the long-term forecast for your stay, which will help you decide when to schedule outdoor vs. indoor activities, whether you will need to pick up gear that you didn’t pack, and how to cope with any truly plan-wrecking weather events.

Amongst the measured topics most trending stories will appear in msnNOW section which will be constantly updating. The team of editors, in addition will create a certain write-ups for posts that manages to make up to the msnNOW section.

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The 0.38 inches thick Samsung Galaxy Note is without doubt is the biggest smartphone you have ever seen. If you are wondering why some one would need such a big smartphone. well, Samsung itself has come up with some interesting and realistic (may be) ideas or answer to the question.

The 5 inch screen has made the demarcation between phone and tablet much thinner. Any function that benefits from extra screen space effectively gets an upgrade on the Note, and there are a lot of them. It has a built-in data connection (4G LTE). It can make voice calls over wireless networks. mind you its a Phone. Being WAAAAIDE (wide) in size, it has enough room for 30 odd app icons. Some of you might not like it to have so many icons scattered, after all it should have a phone look huh..!! The best part is for those who often do readings in their phone, the wide screen helps in reading better than almost any phone.

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Google gets a green signal from both European Union and US Department of Justice for the proposed takeover of Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion

The Justice Department announcement, which came hours after European regulators approved the transaction, said it was ‘unlikely to substantially lessen competition’ or to ‘significantly change existing market dynamics.’ An investigation centred on whether Google might make it harder for big-selling handset manufacturers such as Samsung or HTC to use the operating system Google developed, Android.

In addition to approving the Google-Motorola Mobility deal, the department said it was closing its investigations into the purchase by Apple, Microsoft and Research In Motion of Nortel Networks patents and the acquisition by Apple of Novell patents.

‘After a thorough review of the proposed transactions, the Antitrust Division has determined that each acquisition is unlikely to substantially lessen competition and has closed these three investigations,’ it said.

Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger is confident and believes that their striker is all set to sign off in style in his final match from Arsenal against AC Milan.

Thierry Henry, 34 is returning to New York Red Bulls after completing his loan term in Arsenal after the wednesday Champion’s League Match. Arsene Wenger believes that Henry will be highly encouraged and motivated in his final match because he started off his career Italy.

Henry moved to Italian side Juventus in January 1999 from Monaco, but an indifferent eight-month spell came to an end with a move to Arsenal.

He went on to score a club record 226 goals in 370 appearances for the Gunners, before moving to Barcelona in 2007.

He has added another three goals in six substitute appearances to those tallies since returning to the Gunners in January during the Major League Soccer close season.

Wenger had hoped to extend Henry’s second stint at the Emirates by a fortnight and admits the forward’s performances have exceeded his expectations.

“We didn’t expect him to be so important for us when he signed,” he added.

“His talent on the pitch is still much sharper than I expected after being out in the States.

“I expected him to have more health problems because at the end of the day he left top, top European level football because he was a bit concerned about his knee problems, but he’s in good shape.”

Henry scored twice on his last visit to the San Siro in an Arsenal shirt as the Gunners thumped Inter Milan 5-1 in November 2003 while Arsenal beat AC Milan 2-0 at the same venue in 2008.

The decision to give Henry one of the 25 Champions League spots, for just one game, was one Wenger admits he agonised over.

“It was [a difficult decision], of course it was because I had to keep a player out and it was a dilemma but I thought it was worth it,” he added.

“Especially in a territory where he would be highly motivated because he started his international career in Italy and I believe if needed he can help us.”

The hosts regained their place at the top of the Italian league on Saturday with a 2-1 win over Udinese and, despite his side’s record of four wins in their last six visits to Italy, Wenger does not believe they are favourites.

“It is a game for me that is a real 50-50,” the French manager added.

“It is very important to not let them get on top of us, and to start strong will be very important for us.”

Another thing causing concern for Wenger is the state of the pitch at the San Siro stadium, which has recently been relaid.

“I’m a bit worried about the quality of the pitch, it doesn’t look exceptional but hopefully it will be better (on Wednesday),” said Wenger.

“They told me tomorrow it will be much better, it has been relaid on the flanks very recently.

“When you relay a pitch like that it takes time to settle and become flat and at the moment it isn’t.”

Dozens  of inmates were killed and many were injured as a fire swept through in Honduras prison. Unofficial reports say that 100 people had been killed in the jail in Comayagua in central Honduras though some of them were successful in escaping the blaze by breaking through the roof and jumping over the wall

Officials are investigating whether the fire was started by rioting inmates or was the result of a short-circuit.

The fire broke out late on Tuesday night and took more than an hour to be brought under control.

The prison in Comayagua was holding several hundred inmates and it is feared many of them fled in the chaos, officials said.

Local hospitals were treating dozens of people for burns and other injuries, a firefighters’ spokesman told the Spanish news agency Efe.

Some of the injured have been taken to the capital, Tegucigalpa, for treatment.

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4. Halo Screen Protector Film Clear (Invisible) for iPhone 4G 4S 4 (3 Pack + 3 Bonus Back Films)

Please note This product is PRECISELYcut. This is what people are referring to in the negative reviews. It gives the illusion of a “Screen Protector Free” phone. If this is your first time installing a protector, it may take a few tries to get it perfectly aligned. You may remove and reapply as many times as you would like. There is no need to waste another protector. You can simply peel it back and reapply. Having a smaller sized screen protector would not provide a sleek look and would leave parts unprotected. The final results are worth the small extra effort.

Halo Screen Protectors offers the highest quality and highest rated screen protectors available on the market today. Halo Screen Protectors consist of multi-layer Grade A Japanese Film which insures optimum protection and leaves your screen protected for a lifetime. Screen protectors are designed to offer zero to minimal bubbles during application, easy to install, and are reusable. Halo Screen Protectors come in a 3 pack to ensure you always have a spare just in case.

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You may do it without thinking. You select a warm filter from Instagram for that photo of you and your friends, or you hit the “retouch” button in iPhoto before uploading your headshot to your OkCupid profile. Glamour’s independent survey of 1,000 U.S. women found that almost 60 percent of women think it’s okay to alter personal photos – and 41 percent of women ages 18-24 do it (the number dips slighty for women between 25-29; only 23 percent of women in this age group fessed up to retouching photos).

Glamour‘s Shaun Dreisbach partly attributes the findings to how accessible personal photos are now, thanks to digital photosharing platforms: “Think about it: Photos no longer live in a dusty box on a shelf; they live online, for the public to judge,” writes Glamour’s Shaun Dreisbach. And judge they do; the comments on Jezebel’s “Photoshop of Horrors” section are filled with critiques of publications who retouch women — women whose looks, un-Photoshopped, are the envy of many other women. But if the Glamour survey results are accurate and so many women do retouch their own photos, is it fair to criticize magazines for doing the same?

source : huffingtonpost.com

Here are some fun facts related to valentines day. There have been number of research and studies as to how and what actually is the mindset of guys and girls when it comes to their valentine and the valentine’s day. These are the poll results out of facebook’s valentine day poll and its pretty intereting.

• 33 percent of respondents expected to end up in bed on Valentine’s Day — 38 percent of men, and 25 percent of women;
• 33 percent checked their ex’s Facebook status to see if they had plans for the holiday;
• 74 percent believe a first date on Valentine’s Day is a good idea;
• 58 percent believe the man should pay for dinner on Valentine’s Day; and
• 67 percent said they would end a shaky relationship before Valentine’s Day.

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