Facebook Video Ads are here

They’ve been planning it, floating the idea, testing the waters, and pushing the release date since January of last year. But now it seems to be happening. Facebook Video Ads are here.

Are you interested? Should you be? Will Facebook Video Ads be right for your business?

In this article I’ll take a look at the new Facebook Video Ads. I’ll break down what they’ll look like, how much they’ll cost, and give you my prediction for the future.

Let’s get started.

How they work

In what Facebook is calling a ‘richer storytelling format for advertisers’, they’re rolling out 15 second video ads. The videos will appear in the same format as Facebook Posts, with the video playing where the image has been traditionally. Think of it as a sponsored video post (though substantially more expensive)

They’re auto-play, which means that as Facebook users are scrolling down their News Feed, the video ad starts to play (without sound). The video ad will stop playing if they keep scrolling past it – and sound will only start if they click on the video ad or make it full-screen.

They’re currently available to a select number of brands, individuals and musical groups. The first one (which came out on the 17th of December) was a trailer ad for the upcoming blockbuster Divergence.

For mobile users, the videos that begin playing as they appear on the screen ‘will have been downloaded in advance when the device was connected to WiFi’. This means, basically, thatFacebook Video Ads will not consume data – even if the user isn’t connected to WiFi at the time of playback.

Once the 15 second-video is done, two more links pop up with videos from the same brand – similar to at the end of a YouTube ad or video.

At the moment, they’re only targetable by age and gender demographics. This is, of course, in comparison to traditional Facebook Ads which offer incredibly specific targeting.

Here’s what they’ll look like:

Wait, they cost how much?

Between 1 and 2.5 million dollars per day for a 15 second video ad. And, as yet, they’re only available in the US. This means that video ads will only be (possibly) seen by the roughly 140 million US Facebook users aged 18-54.

This number is surprisingly high – and most media buyers, advertisers, and social mediaexperts are somewhat thrown off by it. Here’s why: YouTube video Ads on the homepage cost around $400,000. The YouTube homepage receives about 60 million views from 23 million unique visitors per day.

YouTube’s video Ads are auto-play as well, both on the homepage and in the cheaper pre-video location. And they’re, if anything, harder to disengage with. With Facebook Video Ads you simply have to keep scrolling down whereas YouTube Ads have to be actively skipped or closed. So we’re talking about a very similar system, with a similar target market and, tops, a 100% increase in Reach for Facebook Video Ads over YouTube video Ads.

Yet we’re also talking about a 250% increase in price for Facebook Video Ads over YouTube Ads – if not 625%.

So what gives?

Well, it’s pretty clear we’re still in the testing stage of Facebook Video Ads. The prohibitive price, the limited market, not to mention limiting the advertisers to a few brands, individuals and musical groups makes that pretty clear.

But, for me, they’re definitely something to keep a close eye on. Video advertising is going to be big in 2014. The visual aspect of marketing (something I took a close look at before the Christmas break) is growing as marketers discover its huge potential.

My Predictions for Facebook Video Ads

1. Targeting:

Though at the moment no better than you get with a YouTube Ad, targeting will be – undeniably – better when Facebook Video Ads become more widely available. We know Facebook has all the targeting capabilities, so I’m sure they’ll start integrating it soon.

This will be as awesome for video ads as it is for side-bar and traditional News Feed ads. This means targeting a video ad for a new horror movie at people who have stated they love horror movies. This means targeting a video ad with a sneak peek at your upcoming webinar to people who have attended your webinars before or have stated they are interested in the subject matter.

2. Cost:

Cost will go down. A lot. In this testing stage they’ve priced it up so intensely so they can keep track of results and test formats, advertisers, and everything else.

While you’re not going to see a PPC Facebook Video Ad, you will see the price drop to be more competitive with YouTube’s video ads. I imagine the price will also change based on your chosen ad Reach (targeting by specific interest, for instance, will be cheaper than targeting by gender or continent).

Even so, we’re not going to see much below $500,000 for a long time, if ever. Remember, SuperBowl XLVIII is charging 10 times that price for their 30 second TV commercial slots – and the Reach for Facebook Video Ads is almost 20 times larger.

3. Reach:

728 million active users log in to Facebook every single day, and there are 1.19 billion monthly active users. Once Facebook Video Ads get over the growing pains we’re seeing at the moment, the Reach of a Facebook Video Ad will make the price (once it goes down a bit) far more sensible.

4. What the Time-Limitation will mean for Advertisers:

Video ads mean you have to get creative, and Facebook’s 15 second slot means you have to get creative fast.

Unlike YouTube videos (the mass-majority of which are over 30 seconds – and the most successful over three minutes), Facebook’s 15 second gap is reminiscent of their affiliate Instagram’s videos. It’s an interesting length, actually. I think we’ll see a lot of behind-the-scenes clips and sneak-previews.

Instagram videos offer video stabilization and editing (and I’m sure Instagram’s owner, Facebook, will do the same). This means Facebook Video Ads will be higher quality than Vine, for instance, and the short format means they’ll be glimpses into something exciting happening in your business.

Offering these video ads, initially, to movie-makers and bands makes sense. These industries work well with the whole idea of an intriguing 15 second clip.

5. Will they be Better than Traditional Facebook Ads?

Not for a while. The PPC pricing, the awesome targeting capabilities and the ease of creation with traditional Facebook Ads make them hard to beat.

Video Ads will, for a while, be used exclusively by the corporations and companies for whom a single $500,000 ad isn’t their ad budget for the next five years.

But this is okay. I’m not convinced that video ads will ever make a whole lot more sense than traditional ads for small business. There are so many awesome ways to reach your target market and generate leads with content marketing, traditional ads and social media that I’d focus on those avenues that work for your business, and will continue to work.

For small and mid-sized businesses, I’d steer clear from investing in Facebook Video Ads before they become more reasonably priced – especially when there’s so much more to learn and more to do in 2014 with existing online marketing avenues.

8 dangers of Buying Antique Jewelry at Auction by Brenda ginsberg ( Reblogged)

Buying antique jewelry at auction sounds like a lot of fun. It is, but the process is also fraught with pitfalls and traps and I will tell you about some of them today.

Today, auctioneers, especially the big famous auctioneers have set themselves as gods apart. Prices realised at their sales are astronomical – well over what I consider retail. This remains a mystery to me for the following reasons.

1. Most auction houses provide a single, postage-stamp sized ‘photo. It is taken by a professional photographer, trained to make the item look great. They do not show multiple angles; they do not show flaws; they do not show faults. What you see, is not what you will get.

2. While the professional staff at some of the well-known auction houses are incredibly arrogant about their level of knowledge, even they are apt to make mistakes. I have bought items that were described as 14k and which had clear 9ct hallmarks (not shown in the ‘photos of course); wrong measurements; peridot was called demantoid garnet – a huge difference in value. I’ve had one very arrogant lady ascribe a ring to the Deco period, but it proved to have been made a few weeks before and had the signature (not reported of course) in the shank to prove it. Attributions are made with nothing but the seller’s say-so to back them up. It is now common for many auction houses to refrain from identifying the metal. They can have all the excuses in the world, but when I buy something, I want to know whether it is 18k gold or goldplated. There is a difference. Faults are glossed over – never mentioned unless you go through the rigmarole of asking for a condition report.

3. When these mistakes are made, guess what: they do not stand behind their descriptions. The adage says: “buyer beware” and that is the case when you buy at auction. Their mistake: so what – it’s your responsibility. Some of them, while going all out to encourage long-distance purchasers, have the cheek to recommend that bidders first inspect the items in person. They know full well that this is not possible in most cases. But do they do anything to compensate? No, certainly not.

4. Now, this is not the auctioneer’s fault. It is to his credit and the credit of his merchandising team, that prices realised for interesting pieces at auction will be considerably higher than either the high estimate or what one would expect to pay for a comparable piece on the open market. It’s their job to get the highest possible price. Most buyers that I come across are interested in getting the lowest possible price. Somehow, at auction, people forget themselves in the competition to buy that one fabulous shmonze.

5. ok, so you are willing to chance the above. You bid, you buy. At auction, there is always a buyer’s premium. Today, in most cases it is a whopping 25%. Overseas, you are charged VAT as well and it’s your problem to prove that the item is shipped overseas before you can think of chasing that one down. Then, there are the auction houses overseas who will not allow you to pay with your credit card. Banks are now charging $75.- for a wire transfer and some auction houses actually expect you to pay the wire transfer fees from their bank as well. Some more generous auction houses will take credit cards, for an additional 2.5% and up. By now, you’re about 30-something percent above hammer price. And, it’s not the end.

6. Auction houses today do not provide shipping services. They are kind enough to provide you with a list of possible shippers. I bought a brooch overseas recently. Not an expensive brooch, but the shipping quote was approximately $150.- It is worth doing a little shopping around. One item that needed to be shipped from a nearby location was quoted as $60.- just to pick up and pack (shipping was to be on my account), while another institution quoted me $12.- for the exact same job.

7. It’s not over yet. Having found a shipper and come to an agreement, you need to fill out forms for the shipper to take to the auctioneer before the item will be released. Just one more little headache on the road of buying antique jewelry at today’s auctions.

8. So, finally, you have utterly overpaid, the item arrives and not only do you not like it, but it is not at all what was described. Guys, you just learned a very valuable lesson. There is nothing you can do. No returns, no refunds. Buying antique jewelry at auction is not so simple.

While not every auctioneer is guilty of every crime listed above, lots of them are. Expensive advertising campaigns have persuaded the public that their overpriced sales are a good deal. I suggest that you find a dealer you can trust, who stands behind their merchandise, who has done all of the legwork for you, who provides detailed descriptions and pictures (including flaws), who doesn’t nickel and dime you on every detail, who does their best to give you the fabulous service you deserve and who will always offer a refund if something is wrong.

Tags: buying antique jewelry

52 Places to Go in 2014

Witness a city in transformation, glimpse exotic animals, explore the past and enjoy that beach before the crowds.

Table Mountain and Cape Town. Samantha Reinders for The New York Times

1. Cape Town, South Africa

A place to meditate on freedom,
and the creative life that followed.

When Nelson Mandela was incarcerated at Robben Island prison, he found inspiration in Cape Town. “We often looked across Table Bay at the magnificent silhouette of Table Mountain,” he said in a speech. “To us on Robben Island, Table Mountain was a beacon of hope. It represented the mainland to which we knew we would one day return.”

Cape Town’s importance to Mandela, who made his first address there as a free man, will doubtless draw many visitors in the wake of his death. The country has transformed itself since Mandela’s imprisonment, but there’s still much to be done. Many in Cape Town have been grappling with that challenge, including its creative class, which has been examining whether inspired design can solve some of the issues stemming from years of inequality.

The city formally takes up that issue this year during its turn as World Design Capital. Cape Town is celebrating design in all its forms, putting on fashion shows by students and established designers alike, hosting architecture open houses, welcoming the public into artists’ studios and folding the annual visual arts spectacular Design Indaba conference in February into the design capital program. Also part of the lineup are locals seeking to rejuvenate impoverished black-majority townships:The Maboneng Lalela Project turns township homes into galleries and performance spaces; Foodpods constructs sustainable farms, giving residents access to healthy produce; and the Langa Quarter project seeks to make the precinct a cultural tourism destination.

Cape Town is again reinventing itself, and the world is invited to its renaissance.

Transitional church by the architect Shigeru Ban. Emma Smales/VIEW, via Newscom

2. Christchurch, New Zealand

The rebirth of a quake-ravaged city.

Three years after two large earthquakes devastated central Christchurch, the city is experiencing a rebirth with creativity and wit — thanks to the ingenuity of its hardy residents — and is welcoming tourists back again. Though much of the central city has yet to be rebuilt, entrepreneurs and volunteers are finding surprising ways to make temporary use of empty lots and bring life back to the downtown. The Gap Filler program, begun a couple of months after the first quake in September 2010 and expanded after a more destructive second quake in February 2011, has created an open-air performance space made of blue pallets, a dance floor with coin-operated music and lights, and even a nine-hole mini-golf course in vacant lots across the city. The Greening the Rubble campaign has since the 2010 quake been planting temporary gardens on the sites of demolished buildings. To replace the destroyed 19th-century ChristChurch Cathedral, a magnificent transitional church by the Japanese architect Shigeru Ban opened in August with sturdy cardboard tubes for the roof. Businesses are also trickling back downtown. One bar, built inside shipping containers, has a name that encapsulates the spirit of the entire city: Revival.— JUSTIN BERGMAN

A rocky coastal view from the Point Arena-Stornetta Public Lands. Jim Wilson/The New York Times

3. North Coast, California

A glorious new preserve for the public.

One hundred and thirty miles north of San Francisco, the moody bluffs of the Mendocino Coast have long been a spectacular place from which to observe marine life: passing humpback whales, sun-happy sea lions, foamy waves strewn with kelp. The incorporation of the Point Arena-Stornetta Public Lands — nearly 1,300 acres — gives hikers new access to a contiguous 12-mile stretch of coastline and fields of wildflowers, cypress forests and cliff areas (some overlooking dramatic blowholes, pinnacles and sea caves), much of it previously off-limits to the public. And Congressional proposals to include the north coast lands as part of the California Coastal National Monument have been introduced, which would mean better protection and more funds for maintenance; plans also exist to extend the California Coastal Trail through the new preserve.

Kayaking near Porto Palermo, Albania. Mustafah Abdulaziz

4. Albanian Coast

On a rugged shore, Europe at its best.

What if you could combine the rugged beauty you’d find on Croatia’s Dalmatian Coast with the ruins of an undiscovered Turkey or Greece, all wrapped in the easygoing nature characteristic of rural Italy — at a fraction of the cost? Turns out you can, on the coast of Albania. The roughly Maryland-size country, between Greece and Montenegro, sits about 45 miles east of Italy on the eastern shores of the Adriatic and has limestone-ringed beaches, ancient ruins like Butrint and waterfront inns where you can stay for less than $50 a night. Rampant development threatened to turn it all to concrete in the years after Communism, but a new government took office in September on promises of keeping the coast authentic. Head to villages like Qeparo, within sight of Corfu, where you can kayak past Cold War submarine tunnels, swim by abandoned forts and watch the tide rise during a dinner of fresh fish at an inn called the Riviera. This is Europe when it was fresh and cheap

Lunchtime diners at the Grand Central Market. Monica Almeida/The New York Times

5. Downtown Los Angeles

Downtown? Really? Yes, thanks
to a thriving food scene.

Gone is the musty, lifeless, only-open-for-Kings-hockey-games reputation of downtown Los Angeles. While the museums in this corner of the city are thriving (the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art is nearby), the growing dynamism of downtown is the food scene. Most notable is the Grand Central Market, an arcade of over 30 of the best food vendors in the city. Originally built in 1917, the market has been redone in the past year, attracting popular purveyors like G&B Coffee and, soon, Belcampo Meat Co. Just down the street is Alma, which was named the best new restaurant in the country by Bon Appétit magazine. And where there is good food there is good shopping. Stores will be adding cachet to the neighborhood soon; an outlet of the fashion label Acne Studios opened in December, with Aesop, a skin-care specialist, soon to follow. Diners and shoppers alike will soon have a hip place to stay: An Ace Hotel is scheduled to open nearby this month.— DANIELLE PERGAMENT

Desert Rhino Camp, run in part by Wilderness Safaris, in 2009. Olwen Evans/Wilderness Safaris

6. Namibia

Africa’s latest conservation success
story is a boon for travelers.

Namibia’s communal conservancy movement, which pairs sustainable tourism with rural community outreach, has been a much-heralded success: In 2013, the country’s 79 conservancies received the prestigious Gift to the Earth Awardfrom the World Wildlife Fund, and the stunning Namib Sand Sea Desert joined Unesco’s World Heritage list. Options abound for travelers who want to help the effort, including theDesert Rhino Camp, which Wilderness Safaris runs in partnership with the Save the Rhino Trust; the camp directly supports the conservancy, which has reversed dwindling rhino populations. In 2014, Wilderness Safaris also plans to open theHoanib Skeleton Coast Camp, on the Hoanib River in the north. And Namibia’s Tourism Board is introducing three self-drive routes in 2014 to point visitors toward less-visited parts of the country.

Cotopaxi Volcano rises above Cotopaxi National Park.

7. Ecuador

Epic biodiversity, and a newly
renovated railway to get you there.

Ecuador is famed as the home of the Galápagos, the beloved islands off the coast that feature mind-boggling wildlife — but the mainland is no slouch either. One of the most biodiverse countries in the world, Ecuador has over 1,600 species of birds, 4,000 kinds of orchids, one of the largest condor shelters on the planet — and one-fifth of the country (including the Galápagos) is protected. And there is a new way to see a good chunk of it: the recently refurbished Tren Crucero. The luxury vintage train starts in Quito (the first city ever to be declared a World Heritage site by Unesco) and travels through the Andes, over snow-capped mountains, past volcanoes, around a harrowing turn called the Devil’s Nose and through the countryside until arriving in the bustling city of Guayaquil. The four-day trip includes an excursion to Cotopaxi National Park — a place where you might see deer, wolves, bears or one of those condors.

Exploring Son Doong Cave. Carsten Peter/National Geographic, via Getty Images

8. Quang Binh, Vietnam

Now open: One of the world’s largest caves.

Son Doong Cave in the Quang Binh province of central Vietnam is one of the world’s largest caves and is now, for the first time, accessible to tourists, thanks to the tour operatorOxalis. Huge shafts of light penetrate its vast caverns, allowing forests of 100-foot-tall trees to thrive in spaces big enough to accommodate 40-story skyscrapers. Colossal 260-foot stalactites are also present. Monkeys, hornbills and flying foxes have all been spotted in this surreal habitat, first fully explored in 2009. While trips into Son Doong are limited in number (only 220 permits for the year) and to visitors with deep pockets (over $6,000 per trip), the nearby and more affordable Tu Lan Cave is also now open to adventurous travelers.

Playing in the “Water Labyrinth,” created by the artist Jeppe Hein, in Perth. David Dare Parker for The New York Times

9. Perth, Australia

For Australian panache, go west.

Perth, the capital of western Australia, has long been feted for its beaches, laid-back vibe and Aboriginal heritage, but lately Australia’s fourth-largest city is exhibiting the signs of a trendy transformation. Regional wine lists? Check. Modish new restaurants in repurposed spaces like stables (the Stables Bar), cottages (the Old Crow) or a printing press building (the Print Hall)? Check. International celebrity chefs including Jamie Oliver, whose Italian spot Jamie’s Italian recently opened? Up-and-coming neighborhoods like Mount Lawley and Northbridge, chockablock with cafes and vintage shops? Check and check. Transformation is evident on a larger scale, too: The Riverside project is infusing the eastern side of the city with parks, shops and housing plazas, while expansion of the new Crown Perth complex includes hotels — Crown Metropol and Crown Promenade — and posh restaurants likeNobu and La Vie Champagne Lounge. And with first- and business-class lounges opening at Los Angeles International Airport this year, the national airline Qantas makes it easy to get Down Under in style.

Looking across at the complex that houses the nhow hotel. Robin Van Lonkhuijsen/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

10. Rotterdam, the Netherlands

First-class architecture in
the Netherlands’ second city.

Post-World War II reconstruction has changed the face of one of Europe’s largest ports, where striking, cubed architecture gives shape to the most modern skyline in the country. But it’s not done yet. This is a banner year for ribbon cuttings to celebrate both new and reconfigured space: An overhaul of Rotterdam Centraal train station (scheduled for completion in March) has already unveiled a new shop-lined pedestrian passageway and the city’s first Starbucks. The renovatedKunsthal museum reopens in February. François Geurds, chef of the two-Michelin-starred restaurant FG, opens another restaurant this month. Come October, the massive arch of the Markthal, whose interior displays 3-D food photographs, becomes the country’s first indoor food hall. Need a launching pad? Check into a brand-new gem: the Rem Koolhaas-designed nhow hotel.

Street food in Taipei. David Hagerman

11. Taiwan

Urban and outdoor pursuits in
one (reasonably) compact package.

The traveler who wants to do it all should consider Taiwan. This island, roughly the size of the Netherlands, has an easy-to-navigate public transport network that links a cosmopolitan capital with a bounty of natural and man-made wonders. Taipei, whose robust art scene recently earned its selection as the World Design Capital for 2016, will soon have more places to lay your head: In the coming months the Mandarin Orientaland a boutique hotel from the homegrown bookstore chain Eslite will join the recent arrivals Le Meridien and W. All of these should be a convenient base from which to do some sightseeing on 17 bike trails along the shores of Taipei’s many rivers and inlets or to take a foray into the city’s vibrant street food scene with a nightcap at the reservations-only bespoke bar Alchemy, which opened in 2012 to much acclaim. Four hours south by high-speed rail and bus, 70-square-mile Kenting National Park is home to wetlands, white sands, fishing villages and, starting this year, a ferry point for the deep sea fishing and diving paradise of Orchid Island. Up north in Keelung, a new National Museum of Marine Science and Technology opens this month, part of a revitalization project at Badouzi Harbor, which is linked to nearby headlands by color-coded walking routes. And it all becomes cheaper to get to later this year, with the launch of budget carriers from China Airways and TransAsia Air.

Putting the finishing touches on a dish at Moriki. Djamila Grossman for The New York Times

12. Frankfurt, Germany

An infusion of hip night life wakes
up a humdrum city.

Frankfurt, long considered strictly a financial capital and major travel hub, used to land on the culturati map once a year, during its annual book fair. A recent boom of restaurants and clubs, though, makes the case for permanent placement. Leading the city’s transformation is its fast-evolving red light district, where spots like Maxie Eisen, a deli-style cafe by day and a speakeasy-inspired bar by night, offer a sexiness that isn’t unseemly. In the city center, a buzzy pan-Asian restaurant called Moriki was just opened by the Berlin-based chef Duc Ngo with a menu that includes envelope-pushing courses like sushi pizza; and the new sleek Lamoraga, a modern Spanish restaurant, is pulling in the shopping crowds for lunch. By the end of next year, the developer Ardi Goldman plans to reinvent and reopen the famed King Kamehameha Club, which had its original heyday in the 1990s and 2000s. And growth extends to the art world: The 32,000-square-foot underground extension at the Städel Museum earned accolades from around the globe when it opened last year.— GISELA WILLIAMS

The Zoma Contemporary Art Center. Michel Temteme for The New York Times

13. Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

An ambitious art scene heads
toward the international stage.

Building on a strong historical legacy (Addis boasts one of East Africa’s oldest art schools) are a host of events scheduled for 2014: a photography festival, two film festivals and a jazz and world music festival. Thanks to the city’s diverse art institutions and galleries, including the artist-in-residence village Zoma Contemporary Art Center and the Asni Gallery (really more an art collective than a gallery), there is an art opening at least once a week. Even the local Sheraton puts on“Art of Ethiopia,” an annual show of new talent. But it’s the National Museum that, in May and June, will host this year’s blockbuster exhibit, “Ras Tafari: The Majesty and the Movement,” devoted to Emperor Haile Selassie I and Rastafarianism.Underwater views in Fernando de Noronha. Kadu Pinheiro

14. Fernando de Noronha, Brazil

A world-class World Cup getaway.

The street parties, samba sessions and festive chaos surrounding the World Cup soccer tournament in Brazil this summer are bound to be exhausting for everyone. When the action’s over, escape to Fernando de Noronha, a 21-island archipelago about 330 miles off the coast of one of the host cities, Recife. Here you’ll find 250-foot-high black cliffs muscling against peach-sand beaches, Portuguese hilltop forts and blue coves where humpbacks and spinner dolphins linger. Only one of the islands, Noronha, is inhabited, and the entire chain is protected as a park with just 246 visitors allowed per day. Regulations have kept Noronha relaxed, with only small hotels and roads rough enough to make dune buggies the rental cars of choice. Hike along cliffs to gorgeous beaches like Sancho, dive with sea turtles or climb Morro do Pico, a 1,059-foot-high volcanic pinnacle.

Lights are tested before a concert at Ryman Auditorium. Nathan Morgan for The New York Times

15. Nashville, Tenn.

Leather jackets and skinny jeans
join cowboy boots.

Country music lovers have long made the pilgrimage to Nashville, but now the city has fast gained cachet among rock fans and foodies. The city’s vibrant scene is home to the Black Keys, Kings of Leon, Jeff the Brotherhood and Diarrhea Planet, who all play in town occasionally. And a youthquake is transforming scruffy neighborhoods like 12South and East Nashville into hipster hubs. New hangouts include Pinewood Social, a bar, restaurant, bowling alley and karaoke joint, and the 404, a restaurant and boutique hotel in a former auto garage. Add to that a thriving culinary scene, exemplified by the Music City Eats Festival, back for a second year in September. And Nashville’s old standbys — like the honky-tonk Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge and the venerable Ryman — are as fun as ever.Hikers pause in the Loch Lomond area. Paul Tomkins/Scottish Viewpoint

16. Scotland

New reasons to play, and watch
players, in Scotland’s yards.

Riddled with lochs and crested by moody Highlands, Scotland adds to its already considerable outdoorsy appeal this year. In April, the John Muir Way, named for the conservationist originally from Scotland, will expand to 134 miles from 45 miles, newly spanning the farmland and forests of the country’s midsection. Organizers estimate it will take eight to 12 days on foot or four to six by bike to complete the coast-to-coast route running from Muir’s boyhood hometown Dunbar west to the Loch Lomond area. The attractions extend beyond amateur workouts. This summer, Glasgow will stage the 2014 Commonwealth Games, Olympic-style competitions for England and the former British colonies, and in SeptemberGleneagles resort in the Highlands will host the Ryder Cup golf competition. Sports and hospitality will meet at Cromlix House Hotel, a 15-room resort that the tennis champion and local hero Andy Murray plans to open in April in a Victorian mansion in Dunblane.— ELAINE GLUSAC

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Calgary’s Peace Bridge. Chris Bolin

17. Calgary, Alberta

An oil boom town gets its cultural legs.

Flush with oil money, Calgary has morphed from ho-hum city on the prairie into a cultural hub, with offerings far beyond theStampede, the annual rodeo and festival. Locals stroll over the tubular Peace Bridge, designed by Santiago Calatrava, opened in 2012. Public art is part of life; in 2013 Jaume Plensa completed Wonderland, a 39-foot-tall steel mesh head installed in front of the new skyline-transforming Norman Foster-designed Bow Tower. They join beloved cultural institutions like the One Yellow Rabbit Performance Theater,whose dancer and choreographer Denise Clarke was in December named to the Order of Canada, one of the country’s highest honors.— ELISABETH EAVES

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A surfer checks the waves on Ishigaki. Ko Sasaki for The New York Times

18. Ishigaki, Japan

Sand and surf, now a (low-cost)
hop from Osaka.

The yen is the weakest it’s been against the dollar in years — down 25 percent from a year ago — putting Japan more within reach in 2014. For low prices coupled with laid-back attitudes, look way south to the island of Ishigaki, 250 miles south of Okinawa Island and far from the bustle of Tokyo. The 85-square-mile island, largely undiscovered, is home to sunburned surfers, sandy beaches and beautiful coral reefs. And it’s never been easier to reach: A new airport opened here in March 2013, and Japan’s new low-cost carrier, Peach, just began service from Osaka.— INGRID K. WILLIAMS

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Zebras on the Laikipia Plateau. Nichole Sobecki

19. Laikipia Plateau, Kenya

A pristine slice of biodiversity
is home to a new luxury eco-resort.

Set between Mount Kenya and the Great Rift Valley, the Laikipia Plateau teems with wildlife: elephants, leopards, endangered rhinos and one of the highest concentrations of zebras on the continent. Now the area has also become a conservation success story, sustained and protected through an unusual mix of public and private partnerships and a network of environmentally minded ranchers. With the 2013 opening of Segera, a resort owned by Jochen Zeitz, a German-born executive, there is also a new spot to admire its pristine landscapes. The 50,000-acre property includes an enviable collection of contemporary African art, an organic and solar-powered farm and a wine collection focusing on African labels. And more sustainable travel may be on the horizon: A new national park on the area’s southwestern border has been proposed by the government.— ONDINE COHANE

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Borobudur, a Buddhist temple. Justin Mott for The New York Times

20. Yogyakarta, Indonesia

A volcano, a temple, a shrine
and now a place to stay.

This central Javan sultanate draws crowds for its proximity to bewitching attractions: the monumental, wedding cake-esque Buddhist temple Borobudur, the soft-serve-ice-cream-shaped Hindu shrines of Prambanan, and pre-sunrise hikes to summit Indonesia’s friskiest volcano, Mount Merapi (which most recently erupted in 2013). But finding a decent room has never been easy, until now. Thanks to tax breaks for hotel development, 20 new starred hotels, to complement the city’s existing 30, will open through 2015. Among them are Zest Hotel (a Swiss-Belhotel brand) in 2014 and, according to a director of the Tourism Promotion Agency of Yogyakarta, three new properties from Accor, whose brands include Sofitel and ibis.— SANJAY SURANA

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Skiing at Squaw Valley. Max Whittaker

21. Tahoe, Calif.

A ski area spruces up with new terrain,
lodging and an entire base village.

For decades Northstar-at-Tahoe, on the north end of Lake Tahoe, was a mostly overlooked ski hill. Since 2004, however, more than $1 billion has poured into the resort. Thoughweather in the region has been fickle so far this season, the improvements are impressive. And they aren’t limited to the base village that has risen at the renamed Northstar, centered around a huge ice rink ringed by couches and fire pits. The Ritz-Carlton, Lake Tahoe opened a few years ago, and Vail Resorts, since buying the ski resort in late 2010, has built an on-mountain day lodge, added more terrain and installed the new Promised Land Express lift on the resort’s Backside.Tahoe is resurgent, as resorts from Squaw Valley toHomewood undertake improvements with an eye toward bidding for the 2026 Winter Olympics. In the next few years expect to see everything from the Cal Neva Resort, once owned by Frank Sinatra, open after a big renovation, to a South Lake Tahoe with new waterfront hotels.— CHRISTOPHER SOLOMON

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Strumming on the streets of York. Andrew Testa for The New York Times

22. Yorkshire, England

A photogenic (and historic) ale trail.

The sprawling northern county of Yorkshire is becoming a big destination for beer lovers, thanks to a recently published guidebook called “Great Yorkshire Beer” and a renewed interest in historic breweries like Samuel Smith (founded in 1758) and Timothy Taylor (from 1858). Spend an evening crawling through the Fat Cat, the Kelham Island Tavern and other award-winning pubs in Sheffield — recently called Britain’s best beer city by the connoisseur Adrian Tierney-Jones — then travel to Leeds, whose compact center is home to the Victoria Hotel, the Cross Keys and other public houses that pull pints on traditional hand pumps. A final stay in the photogenic city of York offers a Tudor-style pub at the end of every cobbled lane, as well as modern beer temples like York Tap, Pivni and the House of Trembling Madness.— EVAN RAIL

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A pool at the 77-story JW Marriott Marquis Dubai. JW Marriott Marquis Dubai

23. Dubai

Reborn, relentless and still over the top.

Five years ago, one of the planet’s most ambitious cities appeared to be dying. Crushed with debt, Dubai found its megaprojects and skyscrapers scuttled or scrapped. The city went from juggernaut to joke. But now, it’s back. Economically surging, Dubai has won its bid to host World Expo 2020 and has unveiled its Tourism Vision, also for 2020, a plan to attract 20 million tourists — double the current crowd. October witnessed the first passenger terminal at Dubai World Central Al Maktoum International Airport, and travelers will discover colossal new hotels like the 555-room Conrad Dubaiand the 77-story JW Marriott Marquis Dubai, which Guinness World Records recognizes as the tallest hotel in the world. This year, a new tram system will be inaugurated, along with some theme parks, including the first phase of Dubai Adventure Studios, the first phase of IMG Worlds of Adventure, and Holy Quran Park (devoted to the Islamic holy book).— SETH SHERWOOD

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The Via Triumphalis necropolis. Guido Montani/European Pressphoto Agency

24. The Vatican

New saints, a new(ish) pope
and newly restored treasures beckon.

Pope Francis, who has nearly 3.5 million followers on Twitter and routinely makes headlines for doing things like inviting atheists to join the cause for peace in his Christmas message, is widely viewed as reinvigorating the scandal-plagued, conservative-leaning Roman Catholic Church. (Just ask Time magazine, which last month named him the 2013 Person of the Year.) The first South American pope is so popular that the Vatican is anticipating record pilgrim attendance at its celebrations this year. Well over a million visitors are expected in April when Holy Week will be followed by the canonization of John XXIII and John Paul II. Services commemorating the new saints will continue throughout the year. In 2014, the faithful can also enjoy the fruits of restorations that have taken years, like that of Bernini’s colonnade in St. Peter’s Square and the reopening of the Via Triumphalis necropolis, a vast ancient Roman cemetery first uncovered in the 1950s. And pilgrims can stay up-to-date on news and events, including restorations and exhibitions, thanks to the Pope’s new mobile app.— KATIE PARLA

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Fishing boats on the beach in Punta del Diablo. Remy Scalza

25. Uruguayan Riviera

South American beach towns,
before they go upscale.

Around glamorous Punta del Este and boho-chic José Ignacio, there’s no deficiency of boutique hotels, expat art galleries and exclusive waterfront brasseries. But farther east along the Uruguayan Riviera, a relatively untrodden stretch of Atlantic coast tucked between Argentina and Brazil, sun, sand and simplicity remain the draw — for now. In the Rocha region, villages like Cabo Polonio, La Pedrera, San Antonio and Punta del Diablo are just starting to attract serious international attention, bringing a sprinkling of first-rate accommodation — like Brisas, a clifftop 14-room inn restored by an Argentine tech mogul — without compromising the area’s natural charms: miles of undeveloped beach, rolling pastures and a culture where gaucho cowboys and fishermen with wooden boats aren’t just props.— REMY SCALZA

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Kapaleeswarar Temple. Kuni Takahashi for The New York Times

26. Chennai, India

A cultural capital springs to life.

Chennai, in the state of Tamil Nadu (and formerly known as Madras), was long considered the gateway to popular South Indian tourist destinations like Kerala but was overlooked as an attraction itself. It is, however, a national cultural capital and home to several dance and music schools like Kalakshetrafor dance and the Music Academy for Carnatic South Indian music, which both regularly hold performances around town. There are also historic sites aplenty, including the Kapaleeswarar Temple, built in the name of the Hindu god Shiva. Fresh buzz makes this city especially enticing: Several major hotels including the Park Hyatt have recently opened, and there is a slew of new and trendy clubs, boutiques and restaurants, including Ottimo for excellent pizzas.— SHIVANI VORA

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An aerial view of North Island in the Seychelles. Michael Poliza/Wilderness Safaris

27. Seychelles

An African luxury hot spot that’s
become easier to get to.

This archipelago of 115 islands in the Indian Ocean now has one of the world’s most expensive hotels. The listed price for a villa at the North Island resort, on a private island where the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge stayed during their honeymoon, ranges from 2,582 to 4,079 euros (about $3,670 to $5,800) per night; the Doubletree by Hilton Seychelles, which opened last year is, thankfully, more affordable. The appeal goes beyond pampering and powdery beaches: The Seychelles is also home to some 100,000 giant Aldabra tortoises that live on a coral atoll that is a Unesco World Heritage site. Air Seychelles recently signed code-share agreements with Air Berlin, Cathay Pacific Airways and other airlines, making these islands about 1,000 miles off the east coast of Africa more accessible.— RACHEL B. DOYLE

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Close-up of an elephant being led by trainers at Phulay Bay, a Ritz-Carlton property. Adam Ferguson for The New York Times

28. Krabi, Thailand

A Phuket-like hideaway, but still unspoiled.

The southern Thailand town of Krabi lies just a 45-minute boat ride across the Andaman Sea from Phuket. But you can spare yourself the trip to Phuket — plenty of riches lie here, and you don’t have to fight the crowds to enjoy them. Krabi sits next to the Mu Koh Lanta National Park, a prime spot for hiking, rock climbing and elephant trekking. If you do get restless, there are about 130 pristine islands nearby that are ripe for exploration and virtually undeveloped save for a few ancient monasteries. And Krabi, which used to have few options for accommodations and was hard to get to, is now more tourist-friendly. A number of hotels have opened in recent years, including Phulay Bay, a Ritz-Carlton property. A marina, Port Takola, is in the works and will be home to restaurants, night life and shopping, and a new terminal that has opened at Krabi Airport means that there are more flights to and from this gem.— SHIVANI VORA

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Cycling in Aspen. Jeremy Swanson

29. Aspen, Colo.

Ditch those poles. Art and bike trails await.

This ski town has a big development off-piste: The long-awaited reinvented Aspen Art Museum will open its doors this summer. The 33,000-square-foot space, designed by the Japanese architect Shigeru Ban, is meant to reflect the mountain experience. Visitors first take a lift to the roof and take in the view from the sculpture garden before descending to tour the galleries. There is also plenty of news for outdoor types this year, too, with new mountain biking trails planned throughout Aspen and Snowmass, a new mountain skills center and expanded lift-serviced biking.— BONNIE TSUI

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The rugged scenery in Iceland’s Highlands. Dirk Bleyer/Imagebroker, via Newscom

30. Highlands, Iceland

Natural wonders are in danger.
Go see them before it’s too late.

The Icelandic government has spent decades protecting its glaciers, pools, ponds, lakes, marshes and permafrost mounds in the Thjorsarver Wetlands, which constitute 40 percent of the entire country, mostly in the interior. But last year, the government announced plans to revoke those protections, allowing for the construction of hydropower plants (instead of glaciers and free-flowing rivers, imagine man-made reservoirs, dams, paved roads and power lines). “If they get into this area, there will be no way to stop them from destroying the wetlands completely,” said Arni Finnsson, the chairman of the Iceland Nature Conservation Association. More bad news looms: A law intending to further repeal conservation efforts has been put forward, so if you ever want to see Iceland in all of its famously raw natural beauty, go now.— DANIELLE PERGAMENT

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“Parallel n°2 (Barcelona), 2008” by Stéphane Couturier at the Bildmuseet. Rob Schoenbaum for The New York Times, Courtesy Stéphane Couturier and Galerie Polaris, Paris

31. Umea, Sweden

Soundscapes and culture shine
in northern Sweden.

A hotbed of hardcore and heavy metal music through the 1990s, this northern city will welcome all genres during its tenure as a European Capital of Culture this year. Music will take center stage at outdoor opera performances, a crowdsourced music festival and an orchestral tribute to the local hardcore band Refused. Visual arts focused on the culture of indigenous Sami people will be exhibited atBildmuseet, the city’s contemporary arts museum that reopened in 2012 in a glass-and-wood building designed by Henning Larsen Architects. And it’s all easier to reach thanks to a new higher-speed rail connection from Stockholm.— INGRID K. WILLIAMS

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The Anantara Xishuangbanna Resort & Spa opened last February. Anantara Xishuangbanna Resort & Spa

32. Xishuangbanna, China

Skip smog-choked cities — and face masks — and head out to China’s wild frontier.

With pollution skyrocketing in China’s showcase cities, visitors to the country are increasingly seeking out greener pastures to explore. Set deep in the tropics of southern Yunnan province, Xishuangbanna is about as lush as you can get — the region boasts the richest biodiversity in China, including some of the country’s last wild elephants. Last February, the area went upscale with its first five-star hotel — the Anantara Xishuangbanna Resort & Spa, which organizes tea-leaf picking trips in mountainside plantations. More action-oriented experiences are possible, as well, such as the tour groupWildChina’s jungle biking trips or treks along the caravan route plied by tea traders centuries ago.— JUSTIN BERGMAN

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Walking across a pedestrian bridge above Andermatt. Martin Ruetschi/Keystone, via Corbis

33. Andermatt, Switzerland

A mountain makeover from
overlooked to opulent.

Andermatt has long been a quiet town of Alpine farmers and bargain-seeking skiers. But this winter, the former Swiss Army outpost began its transformation into a bona fide ski destination with the opening last month of the Chedi Andermatt. The 104-room resort, housed in a modernized chalet with a Japanese restaurant among several dining options, indoor and outdoor pools and a 10-treatment-room spa, is just the first phase of a big new development of apartment buildings, homes, five more hotels and a golf course in the coming year over 321 acres. The pedestrian village will offer skiers access by gondola to the nearly 9,800-foot Gemsstock Mountain, with future lifts to the larger nearby ski area of Sedrun planned to open in 2015.— ELAINE GLUSAC

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The Indiana State Museum, a site along the Cultural Trail. A J Mast for The New York Times

34. Indianapolis

In the land of cars, cycling
(and culture) get the limelight.

An urban cycling model has arrived in Indianapolis: the new $63 million, eight-mile bike-friendly Indy Cultural Trail. The path connects five downtown neighborhoods, including arty Fountain Square, to top downtown sites, including the Capitol Building, City Market and White River State Park, a 250-acre park that hosts the Indianapolis Zoo and six more major attractions. Bicycles can be rented along the paved and lighted pathway, allowing riders to cruise past public art, including a motion-activated fireflylike swarm of LED lights. City officials say that planners from Cologne, Germany, to Portland, Ore., have come to see how the city most famous for a 500-mile car race managed to swap auto for bike lanes and still keep everything rolling smoothly.— ELAINE GLUSAC

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The Mekong River near the border of Vietnam and Cambodia. Justin Mott

35. Mekong River

River cruising swells on the Danube of Asia.

Like the Danube in Europe, the Mekong River in Southeast Asia has become a vital river cruising course, with a variety of small-ship itineraries linking Vietnam and Cambodia. Late last year, Pandaw River Expeditions upgraded two of its ships, the Mekong Pandaw and Tonle Pandaw, enlarging public spaces, adding gyms and stocking cabins with iPads. In 2012, the company launched the 32-guest Angkor Pandaw, offering three- to seven-night itineraries, while Avalon Waterways set the 32-passenger Avalon Angkor sailing between Ho Chi Minh City and Siem Reap over seven nights. Next August, Aqua Expeditions will introduce the 20-suite Aqua Mekong, offering guide-led shore excursions to temples, villages and wildlife-rich areas via skiffs.— ELAINE GLUSAC

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A bar scene in the Monastiraki neighborhood. Eirini Vourloumis for The New York Times

36. Athens

Out of an economic crisis, a city surges back.

Vibrancy and innovation can bloom even in hard times. Exhibit A is Greece’s ancient capital, which was hit hard by the global economic crisis and yet is seeing change at sites old and new. First the old: At the Acropolis, the famous Caryatids statues continue to get a restoration in 2014; the process will be on view in the Acropolis Museum through the end of the year. And the new: The National Museum of Contemporary Art opens this spring in a former brewery complex. Neighborhoods have also seen a resurgence, including the quickly gentrifying Monastiraki and the still gritty Kerameikos-Metaxourgeio; the latter will get a cultural lift in 2015 from the biannual ReMap art event. Travelers will have a new lodging option by summer, when a revived Emporikon Hotel opens on Aiolou, a street that is also home to a host of new dining spots.— GISELA WILLIAMS

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Going for a ride at Casa Bonita. Dennis M. Rivera Pichardo for The New York Times

37. Barahona, Dominican Republic

A scenic, low-key destination
on the verge of discovery.

Most vacationers to La Republica hole up in the all-inclusives north and east, overlooking the rarely traveled southwest. The port town of Barahona is the gateway to the cactus-strewn region’s riches, like the hauntingly beautiful Bahia de las Aguilas beach and the eight climate zones at the geological depression Hoyo de Pelempito, both blissfully devoid of people. But there are signs of the government’s vision to develop the area. The abandoned former Barcelo Bahoruco Beach Resort will partly open in 2014, and two separate 300-room projects — near La Canoa and San Rafael Beach — are in the final stages of design approval. For now, you can experience the quiet life at the thatch-roofed Casa Bonita, or atRancho Platon, which has a tree house raised between the palms.— SANJAY SURANA

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A northern lights show in northern Norway. Tim Graham/Getty Images

38. Arctic Circle

Chasing the northern lights?
This might be the year.

There aren’t many reasons to visit the frigid region surrounding the North Pole, but the coming months offer the most stunning of them: Some are predicting a double peaking of maximum solar activity, which usually means especially dramatic northern lights, that colorful spectacle of solar particles entering our atmosphere. And there are some comfortable ways to see them, thanks to hotels offering northern lights safaris, including the newly opened Ion Luxury Adventure Hotel in Iceland and the Icehotel in Swedish Lapland (and actually within the Arctic Circle).— GISELA WILLIAMS

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Boats float across the harbor in Dar es Salaam. Nichole Sobecki for The New York Times

39. Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

On the African coast, music thrives
in a commercial capital.

Tanzania may be best known for the snow-capped peaks of Mount Kilimanjaro and the game-packed plains of the Serengeti, but the real pulse of the country is found in its largest city, Dar es Salaam. An eclectic mix of music echoes through the beach clubs, open-air bars and nightclubs of this Indian Ocean coastal city. Old-school dance music competes with Swahili hip-hop and traditional drumming, all drawing from the city’s African, Indian and Arab influences. Add in the street food, the beaches and the fact that the year-old African low-cost carrier Fastjet uses Dar as its hub, and it’s easy to see that this commercial capital is more than a stopover on the way to Tanzania’s natural splendor. It is an African metropolis coming into its own.— RACHEL B. DOYLE

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The home where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was born will be one of the sites linked by the new Atlanta Streetcar. Erik S. Lesser/European Pressphoto Agency

40. Downtown Atlanta

A revitalized city center welcomes
new museums and streetcars.

Atlanta plans several ribbon cuttings in 2014, but the main event is the National Center for Civil and Human Rights, scheduled to open in May next to the Centennial Olympic Park and the Georgia Aquarium downtown. The 42,000-square-foot, environmentally friendly museum will feature permanent galleries devoted to domestic and international rights struggles and will house the Martin Luther King Jr. papers owned by Morehouse College. By midyear, visitors will be able to take the new Atlanta Streetcar on a 2.7-mile loop that will link the park to the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site and other stops. Another parkside attraction, the 94,000-square-foot College Football Hall of Fame, is expected to open in time for fall kickoff of the N.C.A.A. season.— ELAINE GLUSAC

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A fire festival is held in the area every Jan. 15. Nozawa Onsen Tourism Association

41. Nozawa Onsen, Japan

Skiing, soba and snow monkeys.

For nearly a century, visitors have been lured to this ski destination, a 90-minute drive from Nagano, by affordability and a host of charms: fine powder, long slopes and charming cobblestone lanes lined with traditional ryokan inns, generations-old soba noodle shops and natural hot spring baths. But the recent arrival of stylish, foreigner-friendly restaurants, cafes and bars have infused the area with new energy, offering travelers just the right mix of old and new. Microbrews and excellent coffee are served at ski-in/ski-outCraft Room, while Tamon prepares innovative kaiseki cuisine using local ingredients. The lantern-hung rooms at Jon Nobi are popular among international skiers, as is its chic izakaya restaurant Himatsuri, inspired by the town’s fire festival, held annually on Jan. 15. The Asian operator Backyard Traveloffers 10-day itineraries to explore Nozawa and nearby sights like a seventh-century temple and a refuge for the area’s famed snow monkeys.— NAOMI LINDT

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A vineyard near Subotica. Marko Risovic for The New York Times

42. Subotica, Serbia

Serbian wine? Time to take a sip.

The Balkan Peninsula has a wine culture that dates back hundreds of years, but war and political unrest over the last century decimated Serbian vineyards. As recently as a decade ago, Serbia produced virtually no wine that met international standards. But progress has been swift. Recently, small producers have revived the Subotica-Horgos wine region near the northern border with Hungary. Here, the Palic Wine Route has been attracting domestic wine tourists who spend days sampling local cabernet sauvignon in wine cellars, sipping dry Trijumf white during dinner at Bosscaffe and unwinding in theHotel Galleria‘s high-tech spa.— INGRID K. WILLIAMS

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A map moves in the background at an exhibit inside Elsinore’s Maritime Museum of Denmark. Jakob Dall for The New York Times

43. Elsinore, Denmark

A museum’s entrance makes for something
new in the state of Denmark.

Even angst-ridden Prince Hamlet, literature’s most famous Dane, might be cheered by the new Maritime Museum of Denmark, which recently opened in his hometown Elsinore. Designed by the architectural firm Bjarke Ingels Group, the glassy structure is built into a U-shaped dry dock and filled with slanted floors and zigzag passageways that evoke ocean-rocked ships’ decks. Maritime relics — from torpedoes to Lego pirate ships — mix with electronic maps and films that explore the romance of the sea, shipboard existence and trade, both centuries ago and today. Interactive exhibits allow you to run your own trade company, navigate by the stars and ink a sailor’s tattoo. For additional watery wonders, head to Copenhagen’s new Blue Planet aquarium, billed as the largest in Northern Europe.— SETH SHERWOOD

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Cheeses at L’Enclume. Andrew Testa for The New York Times

44. Cartmel, England

Haute cuisine comes to the lush landscapes
of the Lake District.

The British dining scene is expanding beyond London, and the chef Simon Rogan deserves much of the credit, having helped elevate the Lake District village of Cartmel into one of England’s most unlikely culinary destinations. His three restaurants in the medieval village — the Michelin two-starred L’Enclume, Rogan & Company and his most recent addition, the Pig & Whistle — have menus featuring whatever’s fresh on his nearby farm. Cartmel is also home to a celebrated farmers’ market, Cartmel Cheeses and the Cartmel Village shop, renowned for its sticky toffee pudding. What’s more, the village is a cozy base from which to explore the Lake District, once an inspiration to William Wordsworth and Beatrix Potter.— DAVID SHAFTEL

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An expansive view from Mount Everest. Tshering Sherpa/Agence France-Presse–Getty Images

45. Nepal

New peaks open up for alpine adventurers.

This Himalayan kingdom is the mother lode of alpinism, home to eight of the world’s 10 highest summits (including Everest). So when a Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation subcommittee recommended last September that Nepal allow access to 165 new peaks in the Kanchenjunga massif this year — 13 of them above 23,000 feet — the world’s mountaineering community was aflutter. Some welcomed the announcement, while others dismissed it, saying the government had stretched the meaning of “peak” in a few cases to include subpeaks within mountains that were already accessible in order to rake in more in fees. Even so, the proposal is significant since it is the first such release in a decade. If the approval process progresses as expected, the territory will open for the spring season.— SANJAY SURANA

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Sigmund Freud’s hat, cap and cane at the museum that bears his name. Josef Polleross for The New York Times

46. Vienna

Feel like reminiscing? A city
is awash in anniversaries.

Vienna is home to some 450 balls each year, from traditional waltzes to the “seriously outlandish” Rosenball for the gay community, and this year is the 200th anniversary since the city’s ball culture took root. You could mark the occasion by attending one, but it wouldn’t be the only date to celebrate in the capital city this year. Visitors can pay homage at theSigmund Freud Museum since it has been 75 years since the psychoanalyst’s death. The city is also commemorating the 100th anniversary of World War I with special exhibits and the European Peace Walk, a permanent route from Vienna to Trieste through five countries. There are also new art spaces, a new transportation hub, more direct flights from the United States and offbeat places to stay, like Urbanauts’ former storefronts or Chez Cliché’s themed apartments, with décor inspired by fictional hosts, such as Marie Therese, who loves Baroque furnishings and classical music.— TANYA MOHN

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A statue in the jungle at Srah Damrei. Adam Ferguson for The New York Times

47. Siem Reap, Cambodia

Even a 1,200-year-old lost city
has some new draws.

If you’ve seen the temple complex of Angkor Wat in Cambodia, then the country’s lost city of Mahendraparvata, its majestic temples on Phnom Kulen and the stone animal carvings at the site of Srah Damrei (elephant pond) should be next on your list. About 30 miles from Siem Reap, Mahendraparvata predates Angkor Wat by about 350 years and was the birthplace of the Khmer Empire in A.D. 802. Although the city has been known about for several decades, researchers in June discovered new temples and a network of roads and dikes that had been concealed under thick mountain vegetation.— ROOKSANA HOSSENALLY

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Walking in front of town hall in Varazdin. Filip Horvat for The New York Times

48. Varazdin, Croatia

Croatia’s architectural and musical
gem lies inland.

Forget Croatia’s beloved coast: The inland city Varazdin is one of the country’s most picturesque and well-preserved areas. One hour north of Zagreb, this small metropolis of 50,000 has an immaculate cobblestoned town center and is stocked with Baroque churches and palaces like the Draskovic. The theme continues with an annual Baroque music festival, but that’s where it ends. Other music-themed festivals and concerts are decidedly modern and change from year to year: One, the Radar Festival, for contemporary stars, has drawn names such as Bob Dylan and Carlos Santana, and various other festivals throughout the year such as Spancir Fest, celebrated from the end of August to September, attract artists and musicians from around Europe.— SHIVANI VORA

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The Tap Room of the Hollander Hotel. Chris Zuppa/Tampa Bay Times/ZUMAPRESS.com, via Newscom

49. St. Petersburg, Fla.

Reinventing a Florida city’s reputation.

Once mocked for its thousands of green benches dotted with senior citizens, St. Petersburg is anything but stationary. With a redeveloped waterfront, a stunning Dali Museum, and sophisticated restaurants in place, the downtown energy is now heading up historic Central Avenue, thanks in part to the craft beer scene. Among the many recent arrivals, artsy Cycle Brewing features Fixie and Endo ales, while Green Bench Brewing Co., the name a nod to those erstwhile icons, invites winter escapees to its sunny taproom and beer garden. Refuel at the ambitious Rococo Steak, set in a renovated 1920s YWCA, then hit the Tap Room of the reinvented Hollander Hotel.— DIANE DANIEL

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The beach at El Secreto. El Secreto Resort

50. Belize

More flights and lodges in Central
America’s eco-frontier.

Twenty years ago, when Francis Ford Coppola openedBlancaneaux Lodge in western Belize, relatively few travelers had ventured into this small Central American country. Slowly they arrived, many of them curious to witness the scenery that had captivated the film director, which he described in an email as “completely remote, with a beautiful pristine river you could drink the water out of and the most star-studded night sky I had ever seen.” Since then, upscale rustic hotels have cropped up all over Belize — there’s the one-year-old El Secreto in Ambergris Caye, for example, and Belcampo, an eco-lodge and sustainable farm in the south that’s about to unveil a sophisticated redesign — adding to the lure of rain forests, Mayan ruins and coral reefs. It helps that Belize is easier to reach: Delta recently announced nonstop flights from Los Angeles to Belize City, and regional carriers like Tropic Airhave expanded their routes, connecting Belize to resorts like Cancún and making remote towns like San Ignacio more accessible.— PAOLA SINGER

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The Tjibaou Cultural Center. Blaine Harrington III

51. New Caledonia

What you’d expect (natural beauty) and
not (world-class museum).

This semisecret gem of the South Pacific, a three-hour flight from Sydney, is attracting visitors like never before. Thank infrastructural upgrades like a refurbished international airport, improved roads and bridges, and the arrival of high-profile properties like the new Hilton Noumea La Promenade Residences and the Sheraton New Caledonia Deva Resort & Spa, opening this summer. An island itinerary reads like a fantasy novel: snorkeling and diving in one of the world’s largest lagoons, an aquamarine stunner populated by thousands of coral and marine species and home to the world’s second largest reef (after the Great Barrier); horseback riding through verdant mountains and indigenous Kanak villages; kayaking by moonlight among the submerged forest of the Blue River Provincial Park. The cosmopolitan capital, Nouméa, has its own allures, like Le Roof, where you might spot dolphins diving in the distance while savoring the fresh oysters, and the Tjibaou Cultural Center, a Renzo Piano-designed museum housing one of the world’s largest collections of Pacific art.— NAOMI LINDT

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War of 1812 re-enactments, like this one, are scheduled for 2014 in the area. Brendan Bannon for The New York Times

52. Niagara Falls, N.Y.

Once a kitsch capital, now earning a
reputation for food and sports.

Known for its remarkable natural beauty and tourist kitsch, Niagara Falls is now evolving into a draw for those who love food as well as those who seek thrills. A year ago, the Niagara Falls Culinary Institute opened a high-end restaurant, deli, patisserie and gelateria steps from the American Falls, transforming the area’s dining scene overnight. A gastro pub called the Griffon Pub, which features 50 beers on tap and creative New American dishes like gnocchi poutine, opened a few miles east of the falls in August. On the Canadian side, oenophiles can get a taste of the region’s growing wine scene just a short bike ride from the falls along the Niagara River Recreation Trail. Nondining attractions are plentiful, too. This year, Canadians will host two major War of 1812 bicentennial re-enactments in the area, and, beginning this spring, visitors will be able to see the falls from a new luxury catamaran. Tourism officials on the Canadian side appear poised to allow daredevils to zip line across or rappel down the Niagara Gorge later this year.— DAVE SEMINARA

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Leslye Davis/The New York Times

53. Reader’s Choice

Each month we are featuring a reader-submitted destination as our 53rd place.

Now, it’s your turn. Using the form below, please tell us which destination tops your list of places to go in 2014. Your suggestion can be somewhere you have been longing to visit or somewhere you have already been. We will be publishing readers’ Places to Go throughout the year.

Submit

COMMENT

Here’s your chance to weigh in on our selections. Which destinations do you most want to visit? What did we miss?

F.A.Q.

Want to know how we put our list together? Here are some answers to frequently asked questions.

MORE IN 2014

This year, we’ve also collected a roundup of major events happening in 2014, from food to art to music.

PREVIOUS PLACES TO GO

27 LinkedIn Marketing Tips To Grow Your Personal Brand

With each passing New Year comes that overpowering feeling that we must kick everything in our business up a notch in a renewed effort to make this year the best ever. Yes, I am one of those people so I was naturally pleased to see the debut of the new LinkedIn 9 A Day, a section on the world’s largest professional network dedicated to building your personal brand in only 9 minutes a day.

I really like that they did this because it helps to dispel the myth that you need to spend hours every day to get anywhere online (although that certainly helps). There are, in fact, several tasks that can be done in under 10 minutes every day that will enhance and progress your personal brand. LinkedIn consulted experts from around the world to come up with the magic number 9 and included over 20 tasks that you do in under 10 minutes a day.

Although LinkedIn 9 a day seems more aimed at building careers, most of the tasks it suggests are transferable and beneficial for entrepreneurs. I took the time to put my own little entrepreneurial spin on it to focus strictly on business and added a few extra tasks for the superstars out there. Enjoy!

27 LinkedIn Marketing Tasks For Entrepreneurs In 2014

1. Speak Publicly

My business and credibility began to quickly skyrocket when I started speaking in public on various social media and LinkedIn topics. If you are at all comfortable with speaking, this should be your number one goal this year to enhance your position as an industry leader.

2. Research Clients With The LinkedIn Mobile App

Impress your new (and old) clients by doing your homework on them. I recently won a contract just because it was obvious to the prospect that I had done extensive research on them. They immediately stopped talking to the three other social media agencies they were considering. Research rocks!

3. Discover New Contacts

Do your best to connect with new people this year and when possible meet them in person. Whether it is people you work with or a new prospect, get out there and start sharing knowledge with others.

If this isn’t your specialty, I highly recommend checking out The Business Guide To Networking On LinkedIn.

4. Update Your Social Profiles With Your Wins

Did you win any awards or acquire any new distinctions in 2013? It’s time to start leveraging them in 2014 by telling the world about it. Displaying any and all social proof can give you the credibility you need to give new prospects the confidence to reach out to you on LinkedIn and get a conversation started.

5. Create Video Content

For the past few years in a row, video marketing has steadily increased in popularity and importance for entrepreneurs using content marketing. If you’re still just thinking about those videos you are going to create by 2015, I guarantee you’ll have already missed the boat.

6. Join A Professional Association

I’m a big supporter of professional associations and have even been guilty of committing to more that I should with my limited time constraints. Most professional associations these days also have LinkedIn groups that you can use to interact with other members, but never forget that offline networking is where the real magic happens.

7. Complete Your Profile

If you didn’t see our top social media blogs of 2013, my article on creating the perfect LinkedIn profile was the most popular blog on my website for the entire year. The importance of completing your LinkedIn profile is paramount because it gets you found in more searches as well as gives you an opportunity to impress potential prospects.

8. Grow Your LinkedIn Network On The Go

Got downtime when travelling? Use it to connect with your professional contacts that aren’t already 1st level connections on LinkedIn. This will increase your network and open you up to more 2nd level connections on LinkedIn.

9. Message Those In Your Network

How many people do you think you could reach out to with a message in 9 minutes? I would venture to guess somewhere between 3-5 people. Whether you are catching up with an old colleague or just keeping the lines of communication fresh with clients and strategic partners, it’s never a bad idea to stay fresh in peoples’ minds.

10. Showcase Your Work

LinkedIn did so many great updates to profiles in 2013, there is no reason you should not be proudly displaying some of your work by using the rich media feature. Be sure to add video and other multimedia to your profile.

11. Build Your Network

Commit to regularly building your LinkedIn network. Connect with new offline contacts, colleagues or take it to the next level by meeting someone new inside a relevant LinkedIn group.

12. Write A Recommendation

It’s important to give recommendations and endorsements, not just receive them. Taking the time to give credit where credit is due can also dramatically increase the odds of it being reciprocated for you.

13. Comment On Blogs

You should be following any relevant blogs in your industry and make a point of getting involved in discussions to maintain a presence. This is also really effective to do inside of LinkedIn groups and will get you in front of highly targeted groups, if you choose them well!

14. Browse LinkedIn Pulse

LinkedIn Pulse sources news stories and organizes it for you like an online newspaper. You can access it from the Menu under “Interests” and you can also download the Pulse app for iPad and iPhone.

15. Request LinkedIn Recommendations

Did you do an amazing job for a client recently? Don’t be shy…ask them for a recommendation! If you have truly done great work then it is highly unlikely that anyone would say no.

16. Update Your Profile Image

Make sure you have a professional headshot with a clean background! If the one you are using no longer looks like you then you will want to get a new one taken. Either hire a photographer or walk down to Walmart and get their in-house photographer to do it on the spot.

17. Perform Competitive Analysis

Your competition is online but do you know what they are doing? Stay in the loop by following competitor company pages, news and any other information you have public access to. Knowledge is power!

18. Participate In Or Start A Forum Discussion

I’m a HUGE proponent of LinkedIn groups and the power they have to propel your credibility within a highly targeted cluster of people. Start by leading discussions within groups, which can quickly get you noticed, especially with the brand new top contributors feature.

19. Share Great Content

Update your LinkedIn status daily with valuable content that is engaging to your target market. You’ll be surprised to eventually find out how many people actually pay attention to what you post.

20. Start A Blog

Blogging is a great way to have regular discussions with members of your community. Blogging is an excellent way to position yourself as an authority on your topic.

Creating quality blog posts is a powerful form of education-based marketing that will enhance your credibility and draw more people and opportunities to you.

BONUS SUPERSTAR GOALS

21. Start A LinkedIn Group

Now this takes a lot of work to get off the ground but once you’ve done it, the benefits are massive. I wrote an article a little while back on how to build your own LinkedIn group and make it work for your business. If this interests you, I would also recommend checking out an interview with the founder of LinkedIn’s biggest social media group and how he got it to include hundreds of thousands of members.

22. Create A More Compelling Headline

People won’t engage with your profile if your headline isn’t compelling enough to entice them to check it out. Learn my 4-step formula to creating a kick ass LinkedIn headline every time.

23. Start Using Social Selling

Whether you’re a sales leader, a sales professional or you are simply looking to attract more clients to your business, you can’t ignore the power of social selling. If you don’t know where to start, check out this article on the 5 Steps To Social Selling. Make 2014 the year you start successfully using LinkedIn for lead generation.

24. Brush Up Your LinkedIn Etiquette

Stop turning people off without even realizing it and get up to speed on The 20 Do’s & Don’ts of LinkedIn Etiquette. I see so many people making business killing mistakes that cost them money, shatter their credibility and turn off any potential leads. Don’t let that be you!

25. Run A Sponsored Update

Although expensive, LinkedIn sponsored updates for your LinkedIn Company Page give you an unparalleled opportunity to get in front of key decision makers. I will warn you…they are expensive but they are extremely effective. Give it a shot when the time is right!

26. Use LinkedIn Contacts

Hands down, LinkedIn contacts is the single greatest feature to ever hit LinkedIn. If you don’t know what it is, read this guide on 9 Steps To Getting Started With LinkedIn and prepare to have your mind blown, especially if you’re in sales or rely on getting new leads, prospects and clients into your business.

27. Consider LinkedIn Premium

Should you upgrade to LinkedIn premium? Many ask me about this and I can’t say that I have an answer that works for everyone. Check out these 3 reasons for upgrading to LinkedIn premium and find out if it’s right for you.

How Are You Going To Kick Ass In 2014?

Do you plan on using LinkedIn for business this year? Let us know in the comments what your plans are to kick things up a notch for your business in 2014.

Filed Under: LinkedInTagged With: creating the perfect LinkedIn profile, LinkedIn 9 A Day, Linkedin contacts,LinkedIn marketing, Linkedin premium, social media agencies, social selling, using LinkedIn for business

David brotsky and the JIDF are a Scam and Fraud .

Brotsky is fundraising for his own pocket

@StephenDarori please report @thejewess for #harassment. be sure to mention he #stalked you. Then block him, David #Brotsky is a lunatic.

David Brotsky goes by over 2 dozen alias . Lets close him done and take him out.

Here are all of Brotsky’s alias. If you know any more contact me.

The JIDF ( Jewish interenet Defense Force) is a SCAM asking for Donations for Private Use.i

How Spelling Mistakes and Bad E-mail Etiquette Can Help You Get Ahead

Imagine that you’re the 22-year-old co-founder of a small but growing tech start-up. One day, you get an unexpected e-mail from Mark Zuckerberg, the billionaire founder of Facebook. In a short e-mail sent to your personal address, Zuckerberg praises your company, calls himself a “big fan,” and says he’d love to meet with you one-on-one at Facebook’s headquarters.

How do you respond? Most experienced professionals would probably advise you to calm down, take a deep breath, and write a courteous e-mail back, perhaps one that starts “Dear Mr. Zuckerberg,” and praises the CEO (he is, after all, one of your heroes) before saying that yes, you’d absolutely love to meet with him at his earliest opportunity, and sure, you’ll hop the next flight to San Francisco if he wants to meet today.

But that’s not what Snapchat’s Evan Spiegel did when Zuckerberg e-mailed him in November of 2012. Instead of flattering the Facebook CEO or expressing his eagerness to meet, Spiegel (whose disappearing-photo app hadn’t yet become a household word) tapped out a shockingly casual e-mail on his iPhone:

“Thanks 🙂 would be happy to meet – I’ll let you know when I make it up to the Bay Area”

That’s it – no “Dear” or “Sincerely,” no effusive praise, just a smiley-face emoticon, a sentence fragment, and a vague, unpunctuated offer to meet at some indeterminate point in the future. It’s the kind of e-mail you’d write to an annoying high school classmate, not a billionaire tech mogul who could acquire your company and make you rich.

Spiegel’s e-mail, which he released earlier this week after a Forbes profile characterized the exchange in a way he didn’t appreciate, has been called cocky and arrogant. And it was. But it was also brilliant. By one-upping Zuckerberg’s breezy, informal style in his reply, Spiegel positioned himself as the CEO’s equal. Most people in Spiegel’s position would have conveyed shock and breathless excitement over being approached by someone like Zuckerberg. And I’d bet that Facebook’s subsequent pursuit of Snapchat – the social network offered $3 billion for the app last year, an offer Snapchat refused – is partially related to the fact that Spiegel played hard to get, and dialed down his enthusiasm from the start.

In most business situations, it’s helpful to abide by the time-tested rules of communication – proper spelling and grammar, courtesy and professionalism, and all of that. But, as Siegel’s e-mail shows, there’s another approach that can be even better when you’re trying to impress someone.

Call it “strategic sloppiness.” We’ve known for years that the higher you are on the food chain, the more license you’re allowed to take with the rules of professional communication. It’s why Michael Bloomberg can reply to e-mails with “tx” instead of spelling out “thanks,” and why many of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’s e-mails to his subordinates consist of only a single question mark, appended to the top of a customer’s e-mail. As the boss, you can make as many mistakes as you want. Cutting corners is a time-saving mechanism that doubles as a display of dominance.

But in certain, very rare instances, non-CEOs can also benefit from bending the rules.

For example: Like every blogger who writes about tech start-ups, I get barraged by press releases and pitches from PR firms touting the latest apps and gadgets. And 90 percent of the time, I delete these e-mails without looking. But the 10 percent I respond to are often the ones that depart from the formula. I can still remember the PR guy who introduced himself with an e-mail that read “what things can i send you that you’ll actually give a crap about.” It was direct, puzzlingly sparse, and shockingly informal. I loved it, and e-mailed him back.

For another example: Here’s a cover letter that got passed around Wall Street last year. In it, the writer, a kid applying for an internship at an investment bank, took a brutally honest turn halfway through: “I won’t waste your time inflating my credentials, throwing around exaggerated job titles, or feeding you a line of crapp [sic],” he wrote. “The truth is I have no unbelievably special skills or genius eccentricities, but I do have a near perfect GPA and will work hard for you.” The blunt, unpolished letter was a huge gamble, but it paid off – by breaking the rules, the kid stood out from every other applicant with a “To Whom It May Concern” form letter. He got several interviews.

Now, some caveats:

Strategic sloppiness isn’t right for every situation. In my experience, the ultra-casual approach works best when the person you’re e-mailing is already familiar with you and your work, and interested in you for a job or a new project. It’s risky with strangers, whose communication styles you don’t know, and riskier yet with bosses, who tend to be older and more conservative, and might take your casual tone as a sign of disrespect.
It’s probably best not to try sloppiness in formal job applications (especially if you’re applying to be a copy editor).
Don’t be sloppy in a way that will cast doubt on your intelligence and/or language skills. Typing “tx” instead of “thanks” is much different than mixing up “your” and “you’re.”
Strategic sloppiness doesn’t work at every organization. The brash, misspelled cover letter that might get you noticed on a Wall Street trading floor might get you laughed out of an arts non-profit or a law firm.
Don’t go overboard. The goal here is to appear important, not incompetent. One grammar mistake says “I’m too busy to proofread every e-mail I send.” Twelve grammar mistakes says “I did not pass remedial English.”

Professional communication is extremely dicey territory with high stakes. So if you don’t feel comfortable using strategic sloppiness at your job, forget it. (If you’re uncomfortable, your e-mails will come off as forced anyway, which kind of defeats the purpose.)

But if you, like Snapchat’s Evan Siegel, want to show a powerful person that you’re important enough to be feared and respected, you might want to try playing fast and loose with your communication from time to time. If pulled off correctly, strategic sloppiness can be a great playing-field leveler. Just, please, no winky emoticons.

***

Which Arab Regime will survive 2014?

Middle East

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

“The Middle East” redirects here. For other meanings, see Middle East (disambiguation).

Middle East
Map of the Middle east (green).
Countries	18
Languages	Arabic, Aramaic, Armenian,Azerbaijani, Balochi, French,Greek, Hebrew, Kurdish,Persian, Turkish
Time Zones	UTC +3:30 (Iran) to UTC +2:00 (Egypt)
Largest Cities	In rank order: Cairo, Tehran,Istanbul, Baghdad, Riyadh,Jeddah, Ankara

The Middle East[note 1] is a region that roughly encompasses a majority of Western Asia(excluding the Caucasus) and Egypt. The term is used as a synonym for Near East, in opposition to Far East. The corresponding adjective is Middle-Eastern and the derived noun is Middle-Easterner. The largest ethnic group in the Middle East are Arabs,[1] withTurks, Turkomans, Persians, Kurds, Azeris, Copts, Jews, Assyrians, Maronites,Circassians, Somalis, Armenians, Druze and numerous additional minor ethnic groups forming other significant populations.

The history of the Middle East dates back to ancient times, and throughout its history, the Middle East has been a major center of world affairs. When discussing its ancient history, however, the term Near East is more commonly used. The Middle East is also the historical origin of major religions including Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, as well as the less common Baha’i faith, Mandaeism, Druze faith and others. The Middle East generally has an arid and hot climate, with several major rivers providing for irrigation to support agriculture in limited areas, especially in Mesopotamia and the rest of the Fertile Crescent. Many countries located around the Persian Gulf have large quantities of crude oil, which has resulted in much wealth particularly for nations in the Arabian peninsula. In modern times the Middle East remains a strategically, economically, politically, culturally and religiously sensitive region.[clarification needed]

Terminology

The term “Middle East” may have originated in the 1850s in the British India Office.[2] However, it became more widely known whenAmerican naval strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan used the term in 1902[3] to “designate the area between Arabia and India”.[4][5] During this time the British and Russian Empires were vying for influence in Central Asia, a rivalry which would become known as The Great Game. Mahan realized not only the strategic importance of the region, but also of its center, the Persian Gulf.[6][7] He labeled the area surrounding the Persian Gulf as the Middle East, and said that after the Suez Canal, it was the most important passage for Britain to control in order to keep the Russians from advancing towards British India.[8] Mahan first used the term in his article “The Persian Gulf and International Relations”, published in September 1902 in the National Review, a British journal.

The Middle East, if I may adopt a term which I have not seen, will some day need its Malta, as well as its Gibraltar; it does not follow that either will be in the Persian Gulf. Naval force has the quality of mobility which carries with it the privilege of temporary absences; but it needs to find on every scene of operation established bases of refit, of supply, and in case of disaster, of security. The British Navy should have the facility to concentrate in force if occasion arise, about Aden, India, and the Persian Gulf.[9]

Mahan’s article was reprinted in The Times and followed in October by a 20-article series entitled “The Middle Eastern Question,” written by Sir Ignatius Valentine Chirol. During this series, Sir Ignatius expanded the definition of Middle East to include “those regions of Asia which extend to the borders of India or command the approaches to India.”[10] After the series ended in 1903, The Timesremoved quotation marks from subsequent uses of the term.[11]

Until World War II, it was customary to refer to areas centered around Turkey and the eastern shore of the Mediterranean as the “Near East“, while the “Far East” centered on China,[12] and the Middle East then meant the area from Mesopotamia to Burma, namely the area between the Near East and the Far East.[citation needed] In the late 1930s, the British established the Middle East Command, which was based in Cairo, for its military forces in the region. After that time, the term “Middle East” gained broader usage in Europe and the United States, with the Middle East Institute founded in Washington, D.C. in 1946, among other usage.[13]

Criticism and usage

1957 American film about the Middle East

The term Middle East has been criticized as implicitly Eurocentric.[14][15] In contemporary English-language academic and media venues, the term is used by both Europeans and non-Europeans.

The description Middle has also led to some confusion over changing definitions. Before theFirst World War, “Near East” was used in English to refer to the Balkans and the Ottoman Empire, while “Middle East” referred to Iran, Afghanistan, and Central Asia, Turkestan, and the Caucasus. In contrast, “Far East” referred to the countries of East Asia (e.g. China,Japan, Formosa, Korea, Hong Kong, etc.)

With the disappearance of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, “Near East” largely fell out of common use in English, while “Middle East” came to be applied to the re-emerging countries of the Islamic world. However, the usage “Near East” was retained by a variety of academic disciplines, including archaeology and ancient history, where it describes an area identical to the term Middle East, which is not used by these disciplines (see Ancient Near East).

The first official use of the term “Middle East” by the United States government was in the 1957 Eisenhower Doctrine, which pertained to the Suez Crisis. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles defined the Middle East as “the area lying between and including Libya on the west and Pakistan on the east, Syria and Iraq on the North and the Arabian peninsula to the south, plus the Sudan and Ethiopia.”[12] In 1958, the State Department explained that the terms “Near East” and “Middle East” were interchangeable, and defined the region as including only Egypt, Syria, Israel, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar.[16]

The Associated Press Stylebook says that Near East formerly referred to the farther west countries while Middle East referred to the eastern ones, but that now they are synonymous. It instructs:

Use Middle East unless Near East is used by a source in a story. Mideast is also acceptable, but Middle East is preferred.[17]

At the United Nations, the numerous documents and resolutions about the Middle East are in fact concerned with the Arab–Israeli conflict, in particular the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, and, therefore, with the four states of the Levant. The term Near East is occasionally heard at the UN when referring to this region.[citation needed]

Translations

There are terms similar to Near East and Middle East in other European languages, but since it is a relative description, the meanings depend on the country and are different from the English terms generally. In German the term Naher Osten (Near East) is still in common use (nowadays the term Mittlerer Osten is more and more common in press texts translated from English sources, albeit having a distinct meaning) and in Russian Ближний Восток or Blizhniy Vostok, Bulgarian Близкия Изток, Polish Bliski Wschód orCroatian Bliski istok (meaning Near East in all the four Slavic languages) remains as the only appropriate term for the region. However, some languages do have “Middle East” equivalents, such as the French Moyen-Orient, Swedish Mellanöstern, Spanish Oriente Medio or Medio Oriente, and the Italian Medio Oriente.[note 2]

Perhaps because of the influence of the Western press, the Arabic equivalent of Middle East (Arabic: الشرق الأوسط ash-Sharq al-Awsaṭ), has become standard usage in the mainstream Arabic press, comprehending the same meaning as the term “Middle East” in North American and Western European usage. The designation, Mashriq, also from the Arabic root for east, also denotes a variously defined region around the Levant, the eastern part of the Arabic-speaking world (as opposed to the Maghreb, the western part).[18] The Persianequivalent for Middle East is خاورمیانه (Khāvar-e miyāneh).

Territories and regions

Traditional definition of the Middle East

The following countries are included within the Middle East, which is corresponding to Western Asia, excluding the Caucasus:

Other definitions of the Middle East

Main articles: Near East and Greater Middle East

Various concepts are often being paralleled to Middle East, most notably Near East, Fertile Crescent and the Levant. Near East, Levant and Fertile Crescent are geographic concepts, which refer to large sections of the modern defined Middle East, with Near East being the closest to Middle East in its geographic meaning.

Greater Middle East is an additional Eurocentric concept, introduced in the West in the 1990s, and referring to the mostly-Islamic regions of North Africa, Western Asia and Central Asia; the use of “Greater Middle East” however was marginal and it has recently fell into disuse.

History

Main article: History of the Middle East

This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this articleby adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.(December 2011)

The Temple Mount in Jerusalem

The Kaaba, located in Mecca

The Middle East lies at the juncture of Eurasia and Africa and of the Mediterranean Sea and theIndian Ocean. It is the birthplace and spiritual center of religions such as Christianity, Islam,Judaism, Manichaeism, Yezidi, Druze, Yarsan and Mandeanism, and in Iran, Mithraism,Zoroastrianism, Manicheanism, and the Bahá’í Faith. Throughout its history the Middle East has been a major center of world affairs; a strategically, economically, politically, culturally, and religiously sensitive area.

The world’s earliest civilizations, Mesopotamia (Sumer, Akkad, Assyria and Babylonia) and ancient Egypt, originated in the Fertile Crescent and Nile Valley regions of the ancient Near East. These were followed by the Hittite, Greek and Urartian civilisations of Asia Minor, Elam in pre-Iranian Persia, as well as the civilizations of the Levant (such as Ebla, Ugarit, Canaan, Aramea, Phoenicia andIsrael), Persian and Median civilizations in Iran, North Africa (Carthage/Phoenicia) and the Arabian Peninsula (Magan, Sheba, Ubar). The Near East was first largely unified under the Neo Assyrian Empire, then the Achaemenid Empire followed later by the Macedonian Empire and after this to some degree by the Iranian empires (namely the Parthian and Sassanid Empires), the Roman Empire and Byzantine Empire. However, it would be the later Arab Caliphates of the Middle Ages, or Islamic Golden Age which began with the Arab conquest of the region in the 7th century AD, that would first unify the entire Middle East as a distinct region and create the dominant Islamic ethnic identity that largely (but not exclusively) persists today. TheMongols, the Turkish Seljuk and Ottoman empires, the Safavids and the British Empirewould also later dominate the region.

The modern Middle East began after World War I, when the Ottoman Empire, which was allied with the Central Powers, was defeated by the British Empire and their allies andpartitioned into a number of separate nations, initially under British and French Mandates. Other defining events in this transformation included the establishment of Israel in 1948 and the eventual departure of European powers, notably Britain and France by the end of the 1960s. They were supplanted in some part by the rising influence of the United States from the 1970s onwards.

In the 20th century, the region’s significant stocks of crude oil gave it new strategic and economic importance. Mass production of oil began around 1945, with Saudi Arabia, Iran, Kuwait, Iraq, and the United Arab Emirates having large quantities of oil.[20] Estimated oil reserves, especially in Saudi Arabia and Iran, are some of the highest in the world, and the international oil cartel OPEC is dominated by Middle Eastern countries.

During the Cold War, the Middle East was a theater of ideological struggle between the two superpowers and their allies: NATO and theUnited States on one side, and the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact on the other, as they competed to influence regional allies. Of course, besides the political reasons there was also the “ideological conflict” between the two systems. Moreover, as Louise Fawcettargues, among many important areas of contention, or perhaps more accurately of anxiety, were, first, the desires of the superpowers to gain strategic advantage in the region, second, the fact that the region contained some two thirds of the world’s oil reserves in a context where oil was becoming increasingly vital to the economy of the Western world […][21] Within this contextual framework, the United States sought to divert the Arab world from Soviet influence. Throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, the region has experienced both periods of relative peace and tolerance and periods of conflict and war.

Demographics

Ethnic groups

Main article: Ethnic groups in West Asia

Various ethnic and religious types present in the Middle East, 19th century

The Middle East is today home to numerous long established ethnic groups, including;Arabs, Turks, Persians, Jews, Kurds, Somalis, Assyrians, Egyptian Copts, Armenians,Azeris, Maltese, Circassians, Greeks, Turcomans, Shabaks, Yazidis, Mandeans,Georgians, Roma, Gagauz, Mhallami and Samaritans.

Migration

According to the International Organization for Migration, there are 13 million first-generation migrants from Arab nations in the world, of which 5.8 reside in other Arab countries. Expatriates from Arab countries contribute to the circulation of financial and human capital in the region and thus significantly promote regional development. In 2009 Arab countries received a total of 35.1 billion USD in remittance in-flows and remittances sent to Jordan, Egypt and Lebanon from other Arab countries are 40 to 190 per cent higher than trade revenues between these and other Arab countries.[22] In Somalia, the Somali Civil War has greatly increased the size of the Somali diaspora, as many of the best educated Somalis left for Europe, North America and other Middle Eastern countries.

Non-Arab Middle Eastern countries such as Turkey, Israel and Iran are also subject to important migration dynamics.

A fair proportion of those migrating from Arab nations are from ethnic and religious minorities facing racial and or religious persecution and are not necessarily ethnic Arabs, Iranians or Turks.[citation needed] Large numbers of Kurds, Jews, Assyrians, Greeks andArmenians as well as many Mandeans have left nations such as Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey for these reasons during the last century. In Iran, many religious minorities such as Christians, Baha’is and Zoroastrians have left since the Islamic Revolution of 1979.[citation needed]

Religions

Main article: Religion in the Middle East

Muslim men prostrating during prayer in a mosque.

41% of Lebanon, the Christians have represented the mosaic of the Middle East, and contribute heavily in the Media, Politics, Entertainment, Banking… sectors in Lebanon and the World.

The Middle East is very diverse when it comes to religions, many of which originated there.Islam in its many forms is by far the largest religion in the Middle East, but other faiths that originated there, such as Judaism and Christianity, are also well represented. Christians represent a proportionally, 41%, huge part of Lebanon, where the Lebanese President, Lebanese Army General and Central Bank Governor has to be Christian. There are also important minority religions like the Bahá’í Faith, Yazdânism, Zoroastrianism, Mandeanism,Druze, Yarsan, Yazidism and Shabakism, and in ancient times the region was home toMesopotamian Religion, Canaanite Religion, Manicheanism, Mithraism and variousMonotheist Gnostic sects.

Languages

The five top languages, in terms of numbers of speakers, are Arabic, Persian, Turkish,Berber, and Kurdish. Arabic and Berber represent the Afro-Asiatic language family. Persian and Kurdish belong to the Indo-European language family. And Turkish belongs to Turkiclanguage family. About 20 minority languages are also spoken in the Middle East.

Arabic (with all its dialects) is the most widely spoken and/or written language in the Middle East, being official in all North African and in most West Asian countries. It is also spoken in some adjacent areas in neighbouring Middle Eastern non-Arab countries. It is a member of the Semitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic languages.

Persian is the second most spoken language. While it is confined to Iran and some border areas in neighbouring countries, the country is one of the region’s largest and most populous. It belongs to the Indo-Iranian branch of the family of Indo-European languages.

The third-most widely spoken language, Turkish, is largely confined to Turkey, which is also one of the region’s largest and most populous countries, but it is present in areas in neighboring countries. It is a member of the Turkic languages, which have their origins in Central Asia.

Other languages spoken in the region include Semitic languages such as Hebrew and Mesopotamian Aramaic dialects spoken mainly by Assyrians and Mandeans. Also to be found are Armenian, Azerbaijani, Somali, Berber which is spoken across North Africa,Circassian, smaller Iranian languages, Kurdish, smaller Turkic languages (such as Gagauz), Shabaki, Yazidi, Roma, Georgian, Greek, and several Modern South Arabian languages such as Geez. Maltese is also linguistically and geographically a Middle Eastern language.

English is commonly taught and used as a second language, especially among the middle and upper classes, in countries such asEgypt, Jordan, Israel, Iran, Iraq, Qatar, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates and Kuwait.[23][24] It is also a main language in some of the Emirates of the United Arab Emirates.

French is taught and used in many government facilities and media in Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, and Lebanon. It is taught in some primary and secondary schools of Egypt, Israel and Syria.

Urdu and Hindi is widely spoken by migrant communities in many Middle Eastern countries, such as Saudi Arabia (where 20-25% of the population is South Asian), the United Arab Emirates (where 50-55% of the population is South Asian), and Qatar, which have large numbers of Pakistani and Indian immigrants.

The largest Romanian-speaking community in the Middle East is found in Israel, where as of 1995 Romanian is spoken by 5% of the population.[note 3][25][26] Russian is also spoken by a large portion of the Israeli population, because of emigration in the late 1990s.Amharic and other Ethiopian languages are spoken by Ethiopian minority.

Economy

Main articles: Economy of the Middle East and Middle East economic integration

Middle Eastern economies range from being very poor (such as Gaza and Yemen) to extremely wealthy nations (such as Qatar, UAE and Saudi Arabia). Overall, as of 2007, according to the CIA World Factbook, all nations in the Middle East are maintaining a positive rate of growth.

According to the World Bank‘s World Development Indicators database published on July 1, 2009, the three largest Middle Eastern economies in 2008 were Turkey ($ 794,228,000,000), Saudi Arabia ($ 467,601,000,000) and Iran ($ 385,143,000,000) in terms ofNominal GDP.[27] In regards to nominal GDP per capita, the highest ranking countries are Qatar ($93,204), the UAE ($55,028), Kuwait ($45,920) and Cyprus ($32,745).[28] Turkey ($ 1,028,897,000,000), Iran ($ 839,438,000,000) and Saudi Arabia ($ 589,531,000,000) had the largest economies in terms of GDP-PPP.[29] When it comes to per capita (PPP)-based income, the highest-ranking countries are Qatar ($86,008), Kuwait ($39,915), the UAE ($38,894), Bahrain ($34,662) and Cyprus ($29,853). The lowest-ranking country in the Middle East, in terms of per capita income (PPP), is the autonomous Palestinian Authority of Gaza and the West Bank ($1,100).

The economic structure of Middle Eastern nations are different in the sense that while some nations are heavily dependent on export of only oil and oil-related products (such as Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Kuwait), others have a highly diverse economic base (such as Cyprus, Israel, Turkey and Egypt). Industries of the Middle Eastern region include oil and oil-related products, agriculture, cotton, cattle, dairy, textiles, leather products, surgical instruments, defence equipment (guns, ammunition, tanks, submarines, fighter jets, UAVs, and missiles). Banking is also an important sector of the economies, especially in the case of UAE and Bahrain.

With the exception of Cyprus, Turkey, Egypt, Lebanon and Israel, tourism has been a relatively undeveloped area of the economy, in part because of the socially conservative nature of the region as well as political turmoil in certain regions of the Middle East. In recent years, however, countries such as the UAE, Bahrain, and Jordan have begun attracting greater number of tourists because of improving tourist facilities and the relaxing of tourism-related restrictive policies.

Unemployment is notably high in the Middle East and North Africa region, particularly among young people aged 15–29, a demographic representing 30% of the region’s total population. The total regional unemployment rate in 2005, according to the International Labor Organization, was 13.2%,[30] and among youth is as high as 25%,[31] up to 37% in Morocco and 73% in Syria.[32]

Amman – Jordan

Baghdad – Iraq

Beirut – Lebanon

Cairo – Egypt

Damascus – Syria

Dubai – U.A.E

Istanbul – Turkey

Kuwait City – Kuwait

Manama – Bahrain

Nicosia – Cyprus

Ramallah – Palestine

Riyadh – Saudi Arabia

Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

Sana’a – Yemen

Tehran – Iran

Tel Aviv – Israel

Gallery

This video over Central Africa and the Middle East was taken by the crew of Expedition 29 on board theInternational Space Station.

This video over the Sahara Desert and the Middle East was taken by the crew of Expedition 29 on board the International Space Station.

A pass beginning over Turkmenistan, east of theCaspian Sea to south-eastern China, just north-west of Hong Kong.

Notes

Jump up^ Arabic: الشرق الأوسط, Asharq Al-Awsṭ; Armenian: Միջին Արևելք, Merdzavor Arevelk’; Azerbaijani: Orta Şərq; French: Moyen-Orient;Georgian: ახლო აღმოსავლეთი, akhlo aghmosavleti; Greek: Μέση Ανατολή, Mési Anatolí; Hebrew: המזרח התיכון, Ha’Mizrah Ha’Tihon;Kurdish: Rojhilata Navîn; Persian: خاورمیانه, khevrmyenh; Somali: Bariga Dhexe; Soranî Kurdish: ڕۆژھەڵاتی ناوین, rrojhellatî nayn; Turkish:Orta Doğu; Urdu: مشرق وسطی, hashrq vsty
Jump up^ In Italian, the expression “Vicino Oriente” (Near East) was also widely used to refer to Turkey, and Estremo Oriente (Far East or Extreme East) to refer to all of Asia east of Middle East
Jump up^ According to the 1993 Statistical Abstract of Israel there were 250,000 Romanian speakers in Israel, at a population of 5,548,523 (census 1995).

References

General

Adelson, Roger (1995). London and the Invention of the Middle East: Money, Power, and War, 1902-1922. Yale University Press.ISBN 0-300-06094-7.
Anderson, R; Seibert, R; Wagner, J. (2006). Politics and Change in the Middle East (8th ed.). Prentice-Hall.
Barzilai, Gad; Aharon, Klieman; Gil, Shidlo (1993). The Gulf Crisis and its Global Aftermath. Routledge. ISBN 0-415-080029.
Barzilai, Gad (1996). Wars, Internal Conflicts and Political Order. State University of New York Press. ISBN 0-7914-2943-1.
Beaumont, Peter; Blake, Gerald H; Wagstaff, J. Malcolm (1988). The Middle East: A Geographical Study. David Fulton. ISBN 0-470-21040-0.
Goldschmidt, Arthur Jr (1999). A Concise History of the Middle East. Westview Press. ISBN 0-8133-0471-7.

Citations

Jump up^ Levinson, David (1998), Ethnic Groups Worldwide: A Ready Reference Handbook, p. 145.
Jump up^ Beaumont, Blake & Wagstaff 1988, p. 16.
Jump up^ Koppes, CR (1976). “Captain Mahan, General Gordon and the origin of the term “Middle East””. Middle East Studies 12: 95–98.doi:10.1080/00263207608700307.
Jump up^ Lewis, Bernard (1965). The Middle East and the West. p. 9.
Jump up^ Fromkin, David (1989). A Peace to end all Peace. p. 224.ISBN 0-8050-0857-8.
Jump up^ Melman, Billie, Companion to Travel Writing, Collections Online, 6 The Middle East/Arabia, Cambridge, retrieved January 8, 2006.
Jump up^ Palmer, Michael A. Guardians of the Persian Gulf: A History of America’s Expanding Role in the Persian Gulf, 1833–1992. New York: The Free Press, 1992. ISBN 0-02-923843-9 pp. 12–13.
Jump up^ Laciner, Dr. Sedat. “Is There a Place Called ‘the Middle East’?“, The Journal of Turkish Weekly]”, June 2, 2006. Retrieved January 10, 2007.
Jump up^ Adelson 1995, pp. 22–23.
Jump up^ Adelson 1995, p. 24.
Jump up^ Adelson 1995, p. 26.
^ Jump up to:a b Davison, Roderic H. (1960). “Where is the Middle East?”.Foreign Affairs 38 (4): 665–75. doi:10.2307/20029452.
Jump up^ Held, Colbert C. (2000). Middle East Patterns: Places, Peoples, and Politics. Westview Press. p. 7. ISBN 0-8133-8221-1.
Jump up^ Shohat, Ella. “Redrawing American Cartographies of Asia”. City University of New York. Retrieved 2007-01-12.
Jump up^ Hanafi, Hassan. “The Middle East, in whose world?”. Nordic Society for Middle Eastern Studies. Retrieved 2007-01-12.
Jump up^ “‘Near East’ is Mideast, Washington Explains”. The New York Times. August 14, 1958. Retrieved 2009-01-25.(subscription required)
Jump up^ Goldstein, Norm. The Associated Press Stylebook and Briefing on Media Law. New York: Basic Books, 2004. ISBN 0-465-00488-1 p. 156
Jump up^ Anderson, Ewan W., William Bayne Fisher (2000). The Middle East: Geography and Geopolitics. Routledge. pp. 12–13.
Jump up^ The World Factbook. Cia.gov. Retrieved on 2013-07-29.
Jump up^ Goldschmidt (1999), p. 8
Jump up^ Louise, Fawcett. International Relations of the Middle East. (Oxford University Press, New York, 2005)
Jump up^ “IOM Intra regional labour mobility in Arab region Facts and Figures (English)” (PDF). Retrieved 2012-10-31.
Jump up^ “World Factbook – Jordan”.
Jump up^ “World Factbook – Kuwait”.
Jump up^ “Reports of about 300,000 Jews that left the country after WW2”. Eurojewcong.org. Retrieved 2010-07-07.
Jump up^ “Evenimentul Zilei”. Evz.ro. Retrieved 2010-07-07.
Jump up^ The World Bank: World Economic Indicators Database. GDP (Nominal) 2008. Data for 2008. Last revised on July 1, 2009.
Jump up^ Data refer to 2008. World Economic Outlook Database-October 2009, International Monetary Fund. Retrieved October 1, 2009.
Jump up^ The World Bank: World Economic Indicators Database. GDP (PPP) 2008. Data for 2008. Last revised on July 1, 2009.
Jump up^ “Unemployment Rates Are Highest in the Middle East”. Progressive Policy Institute. August 30, 2006.
Jump up^ Navtej Dhillon, Tarek Yousef (2007). “Inclusion: Meeting the 100 Million Youth Challenge”. Shabab Inclusion.
Jump up^ Hilary Silver (December 12, 2007). “Social Exclusion: Comparative Analysis of Europe and Middle East Youth”.Middle East Youth Initiative Working Paper. Shabab Inclusion.

External links

Find more about Middle East at Wikipedia’ssister projects
	Definitions and translations from Wiktionary
	Media from Commons
	Quotations from Wikiquote
	Source texts from Wikisource
	Textbooks from Wikibooks
	Travel information from Wikivoyage
	Learning resources from Wikiversity

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Analysis: War between Islamic movements and Arab armies could be decided this year. Otherwise, countries like Syria, Iraq and Yemen may fall into Shiitanarchy or split between Sunni and Shite areas

The Arab Spring, which began in 2011, went by like a short transition season, and the Arab revolutions turned in the course of the past two years from a popular social protest against the Arab regimes’ tyranny into a wave of internal battles and civil wars.

One can assume that the Arab street expected completely different results and pinned many hopes on the wave of protests flooding the Middle East, after Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in Tunisia. I doubt whether the young people who took to the streets imagined that political Islam would “steal” the revolutions in 2012 and use them to build up strength and even rise to power in Egypt and Tunisia.

Islamists built up strength. Syrian rebels in Aleppo (Photo: Reuters)

The radical Islamist movements, led by the arms of al-Qaeda, took advantage of the crisis in the Arab world to gain momentum and undermine stability. After the disappointing results of the revolutions came the turn of reaction – an effort made by Arab armies, in Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and other countries, to restore the old order. The earthquake in the Arab world created rifts which widened immensely in 2013 and may lead to the dissolution of countries and change the Middle East map in the future.

Here is a summary and evaluation of what can be expected in the coming year in the countries where Arab revolutions are taking place.

Syria

The quiet popular protest in Syria disappeared in 2012, turning into a war between the rebels and the regime’s army.

In 2013, the Islamists built up strength at the expense of the Free Syrian Army. Al-Qaeda and the Salafi organizations’ takeover of the opposition turned President Bashar Assad into the least worst option in the world’s eyes and prevented external military intervention.

Syrian Spillover

Al-Qaeda’s Middle East revival, courtesy of Syria / News agencies

Al-Qaeda affiliated group active in Syria takes control of Iraqi city only week after detonating blast in Lebanon. ‘Governance vacuum in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon has helped al-Qaeda to gain strength in recent years’ analyst says

Full story

Ahead of the Geneva II conference, scheduled to take place in late January, all parties to the conflict are attempting to reach some last achievements. There is no doubt that Assad’s survival and success in scoring military victories with the help of Hezbollah serve as a serious blow to the Sunni axis, and especially to Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

Indeed, the American threat to strike in Syria led to the chemical weapons destruction agreement, but definitely not to the actual extermination of all the biological and chemical reservoirs of the regime’s army. Assad knew very well that the Americans would not help al-Qaeda rise to power in Syria due to the biological and chemical reservoirs of the regime’s army and especially those concerning Israel.

Brought old Arab patriotism back to life (Photo: Reuters)

There are zero chances of achieving peace in the upcoming Geneva conference, as there is not even a ceasefire in sight. Saudi Arabia has been trying in recent months to establish a new Sunni opposition force as an alternative to the jihadists and the Free Syrian Army. According to unverified rumors, this force will be organized in Jordan, but its chances of changing the course of the battle in Syria are questionable.

Syria is divided today into two regions: The west, which is mostly in the hands of the regime, and the north, which is controlled by Islamist rebels. Despite the achievements of the regime’s army, its progress on the ground is slow and the end of the crisis is nowhere in sight.

Egypt

The past year was marked by the collapse of political Islam. In the summer, the Egyptian army staged a coup which brought the Muslim Brotherhood’s failed one year in power to an end. Although the was against a government which was allegedly elected democratically, General Abdel Fattah al-Sis i prevented the Muslim Brotherhood’s gradual takeover of Egypt.

Continuing Mohamed Morsi’s rule would have cause Egypt to deteriorate economically and politically towards a dark Islamic religious state. The relations with Israel would have undoubtedly been undermined had the Muslim Brotherhood managed to rule the army with an iron hand.

General al-Sisi’s meteoric rise to power brought the old Arab Patriotism back to life and reminded the Arabs of the pan-Arab movements of the officers about 50 years ago: The Nasserism and the Ba’ath, but this time without incitement against Israel. These movements were always the most bitter rivals of the Islamic movements.

Arab war on terror? Nasrallah and Assad (Photos: EPA, AFP)

In Syria, Assad took advantage of the nationalist wave to describe his battle and the battle of the Egyptian government as “the Arab armies’ war on terror.” The Egyptian army’s propaganda is indeed increasingly reminiscent of its Syrian counterpart. As far as General al-Sisi is concerned, there is no popular opposition but “armed terror gangs” which threaten the country.

This week, Egypt completed the process of outlawing the Muslim Brotherhood movement, and it is now considered a terror organization. This change serves as a declaration of war against a movement created about 80 years ago, which is deeply rooted in society.

The year 2014, therefore, will be marked by a difficult and long battle against the Muslim Brotherhood. Declaring the movement a terror organization has managed to stress out Muslim Brotherhood movements in neighboring countries. In Jordan, the authorities rushed to declare that they have no intention of outlawing the movement and that it will remain a legal opposition as always. Hamas fears that the Gaza-ruling Palestinian organization will be added to the Egyptian terror list because of its affiliation with the Muslim Brotherhood movement.

There is no doubt that the President Morsi’s ousting and the Egyptian activity to block the tunnels to Gaza contributed significantly to the weakening of Hamas. This process, which is simultaneous to the rise in Mahmoud Abbas‘ status following the prisoner release, could help advance the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

Lebanon

The past year was a year of turbulence in the land of cedars: A wave of terror attacks, car bombs and assassinations characterizing the battle between Hezbollah and the Sunni jihad organizations. These phenomena are clear symptoms of the Syrian crisis’ spillover into Lebanon. Although the Lebanese army failed to prevent these incidents, it managed to score several significant achievements such as destroying the Sunni Salafi infrastructure in Sidon and assuming responsibility for the barriers in the Shiite areas.

Wave of terror attacks, car bombs and assassinations. Beirut’s Dahiya Quarter (Photo: AFP)

Hezbollah’s engagement in the Syrian arena allows the Lebanese army to strengthen its hold of the country despite still being an inferior force compared to Hezbollah. Saudi Arabia has spotted the strategic void created after Shiite fighters were dispatched to the Syrian arena, and it has been trying recently to tilt the balance in favor of the Lebanese army. In recent days the Saudi kingdom has granted the Lebanese army as much as $3 billion to purchase weapons from France.

The assassination of former Lebanese Finance Minister Mohamad Chatah took the Lebanese people back to the trauma of the murder of Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in 2005. At the time, Saudi Arabia and France had also led the support for the Sunni leaders against Hezbollah and Syria.

The Lebanese army’s antiaircraft fire at Syrian planes which invaded its airspace indicates a rise in the confidence of the army’s headquarters. The Saudi-French support is expected to build up the army’s strength at the expense of Hezbollah. But we must remember that although the Hezbollah organization has suffered quite a few losses, its fighters are gaining combat experience in the Syrian arena and will threaten Lebanon’s stability if and when they are required to return home.

Iraq

Ahead of 2013, the wave of Arab revolutions reached Iraq, where it burst strongly following the frustration of the Sunnis in the western part of the country by the Shiite majority’s rule led by Nouri al-Maliki. The Iraqi army invested a lot of energy in dispersing protests, using the famous claim of “a war on terror gangs,” but had limited success.

The circle of protests was joined by the Sunni tribes which set up a militia against the army forces. The riots contributed to the strengthening of al-Qaeda, which has been initiating terror attacks against the army and Shiite targets almost every day.

The long border between Iraq and Syria allows Sunni jihad organizations to transfer equipment and fighters between the two countries. Iran-backed Shiite militias in the east have offered to intervene and help the army oppress the Sunni riots, but have been turned down. Despite its huge dimensions, the Iraqi army does not have enough power to impose order in the split country. The government is concerned that ongoing riots will lead to a situation similar to Syria, in which the country is divided between two areas of control, or similar to Lebanon, where the Shiite militia has gained excess power.

Iraqi army doesn’t have enough power to impose order in the split country (Photo: AFP)

Both in Iraq and in Syria, the Kurds are taking advantage of the instability in order to create an autonomic enclave in the northern part of the country. Similar to the situation in Lebanon, Iraq is on the verge of a civil war between Sunnis and Shiites.

In addition, the conflict in Iraq has an economic aspect as well. The Sunnis claim that the government is robbing them of the oil in their area, especially in the Kirkuk province, and that the Shiites are smuggling most of the oil located in southern Iraq to Iran.

Yemen

Similar to Iraq, the Yemeni army which represents the Shiite government (the Zaydi faction) is busy fighting Sunni groups in the south which aspire to disconnect from the state and reestablish southern Yemen. If the army fails to oppress the rebels supported by al-Qaeda, Yemen could split into a Zaydi Sana state in the north and a Sunni Aden state in the south.

It’s possible that 2014 will be the year in which the war between the Islamic movements and Arab armies will be decided. If the balance isn’t tilted, many countries may deteriorate to anarchy or to a political split between Sunni and Shiite areas. Unfortunately, the Arab world has already given up on the dreams of the Arab Spring – social justice, democracy, minority rights and religious tolerance. The Arab revolutions have only led to fauda (anarchy) and to fitnah (conflict and factionalism between Muslims).

In countries where the revolution has been curbed – like Jordan, Algeria, Morocco and Saudi Arabia – the populations have maintained their standard of living. The revolutions in Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, Syria and Iraq did not put an end to the government corruption and tyranny and highly increased poverty.

According to a famous Islamic principle, an exploiting government is better than anarchy. The Koran warns that “fitnah is worse than murder,” as it leads to mass killing. The Arab society is tired of wars and is left exhausted and bleeding. Most citizens in Arab countries are hoping for only one thing now – to see peace and quiet return to the streets and to go back to a normal life.

Dr. Yaron Friedman, Ynet’s commentator on the Arab world, is a graduate of the Sorbonne. He teaches Arabic and lectures about Islam at the Technion, at Beit Hagefen and at the Galilee Academic College. His book, “The Nusayri Alawis: An Introduction to the Religion, History and Identity of the Leading Minority in Syria,” was published in 2010 by Brill-Leiden

xxx

Tags:a war on terror gangs,dispersing protestsRafik Hariri ,Mohamad Chatah,Syrian arena,strategic void,Sidon,Sunni Salafi infrastructure,Hezbollah , Sunni jihad Hezbollah and the Sunni jihad , Israeli-Palestinian peace process,Mahmoud Abbas,block the tunnels to Gaza ,Gaza-ruling Palestinian organization,Hamas ,Hamas ,stress out Muslim Brotherhood movements,terror organization,armed terror gangs,the Arab armies’ war on terror ,nationalist wave,EPA, AFP,Arab war on terror? ,Nasrallah ,AssadNasserism ,the Ba’ath,Arab Patriotism,pan-Arab movements,General al-Sisi,General al-Sisi,Islamic religious state,Mohamed Morsi,General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi,coup,Muslim Brotherhood, Islamist rebels,Israel, Israel,biological and chemical reservoirs of the regime’s army,biological and chemical reservoirs , regime’s army,chemical weapons destruction ,Turkey, Qatar,Sunni axis, Hezbollah,scoring military victoriesAssad’s survival,Geneva II conference,Governance vacuum,Al-Qaeda affiliated group ,Syrian Spillover,external military intervention,President Bashar Assad ,anarchy,internal battles Free Syrian Army,Al-Qaeda , the Salafi organizations’ takeover ,popular protest ,the rebels , the regime’s army,quiet popular protest ,dissolution of countries, Middle East map,Arab world,al-Qaeda, Mohamed Bouaziz, political Islam ,the revolutions in 2012,Tunisia, civil wars , Arab Spring,Arab revolutions,Shite,split ,Arab regimes’ tyranny ,Sunni .islamic movements , Arab armiesStephen Darori, Stephen Drus , stephendarori, stephendrus,Middle East, North Africa , Yemen, Iraq, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Aaudi Arabia

EdgeRank

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

EdgeRank is the name commonly given to the algorithm that Facebook uses to determine what articles should be displayed in a user’s News Feed.

An older definition of EdgeRank is as follows:

$\sum_{\mathrm{edges\,}e} u_e w_e d_e$

where:

$u_e$ is user affinity

$w_e$ is how the content is weighted

$d_e$ is a time-based decay parameter

According to Techcrunch, some of the methods that Facebook uses to adjust the parameters are proprietary and not available to the public.^[1]

According to Marketing Land, Facebook stopped referring to its feed prioritisation algorithm as EdgeRank internally in 2010/2011,^[2] and so the term may be considered obsolete now – other than as a useful shorthand for “Facebook’s feed prioritisation algorithm”.

References[edit]

Jump up^ “EdgeRank: The Secret Sauce That Makes Facebook’s News Feed Tick”. Techcrunch. 2010-04-22. Retrieved 2012-12-08.
Jump up^ http://marketingland.com/edgerank-is-dead-facebooks-news-feed-algorithm-now-has-close-to-100k-weight-factors-55908

External links[edit]

[hide]

Facebook

Website

Other products

People

Founders

Mark Zuckerberg (28% equity)
Dustin Moskovitz (7%)
Eduardo Saverin (5%, formerly)
Chris Hughes (1%, formerly)
Andrew McCollum

Board

Executive
officers

Current	Mark Zuckerberg (Chairman and CEO) Sheryl Sandberg (COO) David Ebersman (CFO) Mike Schroepfer (CTO)

Former	Sean Parker (4%, formerly) Owen Van Natta Gideon Yu Adam D’Angelo Chris Kelly Bret Taylor

Notable
employees

Current	Chris Cox (VP of Product) Elliot Schrage (VP of Global Communications, Marketing and Public Policy) Lars Rasmussen (Graph Search director) Andrei Alexandrescu (research scientist)

Former	Blake Ross (Director of Product) Ted Ullyot (VP, General Counsel, and Secretary) Matt Cohler Charlie Cheever Randi Zuckerberg Yishan Wong George Hotz Joe Lockhart

Open source

Mass media

Concepts

Why EdgeRank Can’t Edge Out Organic Reach (gigya.com)
Marketing Land’s Most-Shared Stories on Facebook of 2013: The Downfall of EdgeRank, Google Reader and QR Codes (halyardconsulting.com)
5 Tips To Increase Your Band’s Reach On Facebook Despite Recent EdgeRank Changes (hypebot.com)
Facebook Pages Experiencing Less Reach With Revised EdgeRank (hypebot.com)
Edgerank: Get rich or die hard trying (reemaazadpatel.wordpress.com)
Facebook Hashtags Aren’t Very Effective, Study Says (socialtimes.com)
8 scientific insights for creating better Facebook content (prdaily.com)
What your business needs to know about Facebook’s EdgeRank (venturebeat.com)

2013: THE YEAR IN CHARTS

Some of this year’s business stories are easier to convey in charts than in words. Consider the astounding rise of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which reached its highest level ever. An old-fashioned chart from Google Finance shows 2013 as a row of pastel-blue stalagmites, all lined up on a slope and threatening to bust through the roof of their cave.

Reading the headlines, you might assume that JPMorgan Chase, one member of the index, had an especially bad year: there was, after all, that unprecedented thirteen-billion-dollar settlementwith the Justice Department over mortgage bonds. Why, then, does the C.E.O., Jamie Dimon, seem so happy in his family’s holiday greeting card, in which he swings a racket in what looks like a massive indoor tennis game? Maybe it’s because, this year, JPMorgan’s stock price reached its highest level in more than a decade: investors, it turned out, actually appreciated the settlement, because it meant that the bank was close to resolving its lingering troubles.

But the stock price of JPMorgan and the other corporations that make up the Dow tell only a small part of this year’s story. The benefits of the economic recovery have, so far, been unevenly shared. “America’s jobs recovery is proceeding on two separate tracks—a pattern that is persisting far longer than after past economic rebounds and lately has been growing worse,” Ben Casselman wrote in November in the Wall Street Journal. While wages are slowly increasing, and people with assets, like homes and stocks, are seeing their net worths rise again, young, less educated, and unemployed people are falling behind. As the year progressed, fewer people were working in the U.S.; as of November, labor-force participation had fallen to sixty-three per cent, its lowest point since 1978, as baby boomers retired and younger people continued to struggle to find work.

The uneven recovery of U.S. families has translated into an uneven recovery for those trying to sell things to those families. People spent a little more, from January to November, in grocery stories and drugstores, places where people of all income levels shop; meanwhile, those who could afford to make big purchases sent up sales sharply at auto dealerships. (Non-store retailers, which includes online outlets, also saw a big jump.)

People who could afford big investments also sent up home prices—and by far more than many had predicted a year ago. This was a good thing for those with underwater mortgages who have been looking to sell, but not so much for renters looking to buy their first homes, especially as interest rates started to creep up from historic lows:

This is all a little depressing for the holiday season, so let’s end on a nicer note. Despite it all, retailers remain as eager as ever to sell us things. This year, they found another promising place to show us advertisements: our smartphones, on which many of us—employed or not, rich or broke—are reliably spending more time than ever.

KEYWORDS

2013 YEAR IN REVIEW;

BIZPAGES;

CHARTS;

CURRENCY

Proof Things Are Finally Starting to Unravel for Jamie Dimon (fool.com)
2013: The Year in Charts (newyorker.com)
Investments Charts and Implications from 2013 – “”Steady As She Goes”” (stephendarorionchartsanddiagrams.wordpress.com)
What Hurt JPMorgan in 2013 (fool.com)
Weill, Dimon, and the Cost of Big Banks (dailyfinance.com)
Dow Jones Industrial Average, S&P 500: Stocks Poised To Drift Higher (etfdailynews.com)
Dow Jones Industrial Average, S&P 500: The Most Underappreciated Bullish Evidence (etfdailynews.com)
JPMorgan in 2014: Why Shares Look Attractive (fool.com)
Blurred lines (firstclassmusik.wordpress.com)
Your Money in Pictures: The Top 5 Charts of 2013 (heritage.org)

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Buying antique jewelry at auction sounds like a lot of fun. It is, but the process is also fraught with pitfalls and traps and I will tell you about some of them today.

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1. Cape Town, South Africa

2. Christchurch, New Zealand

3. North Coast, California

4. Albanian Coast

5. Downtown Los Angeles

6. Namibia

7. Ecuador

8. Quang Binh, Vietnam

9. Perth, Australia

10. Rotterdam, the Netherlands

11. Taiwan

12. Frankfurt, Germany

13. Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

14. Fernando de Noronha, Brazil

15. Nashville, Tenn.

16. Scotland

17. Calgary, Alberta

18. Ishigaki, Japan

19. Laikipia Plateau, Kenya

20. Yogyakarta, Indonesia

21. Tahoe, Calif.

22. Yorkshire, England

23. Dubai

24. The Vatican

25. Uruguayan Riviera

26. Chennai, India

27. Seychelles

28. Krabi, Thailand

29. Aspen, Colo.

30. Highlands, Iceland

31. Umea, Sweden

32. Xishuangbanna, China

33. Andermatt, Switzerland

34. Indianapolis

35. Mekong River

36. Athens

37. Barahona, Dominican Republic

38. Arctic Circle

39. Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

40. Downtown Atlanta

41. Nozawa Onsen, Japan

42. Subotica, Serbia

43. Elsinore, Denmark

44. Cartmel, England

45. Nepal

46. Vienna

47. Siem Reap, Cambodia

48. Varazdin, Croatia

49. St. Petersburg, Fla.

50. Belize

51. New Caledonia

52. Niagara Falls, N.Y.

53. Reader’s Choice

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27 LinkedIn Marketing Tasks For Entrepreneurs In 2014

1. Speak Publicly

2. Research Clients With The LinkedIn Mobile App

3. Discover New Contacts

4. Update Your Social Profiles With Your Wins

5. Create Video Content

6. Join A Professional Association

7. Complete Your Profile

8. Grow Your LinkedIn Network On The Go

9. Message Those In Your Network

10. Showcase Your Work

11. Build Your Network

12. Write A Recommendation

13. Comment On Blogs

14. Browse LinkedIn Pulse