The New York Times recommends Beirut as the first place to visit in 2009 !!

The New York Times has named the Lebanese capital among its top "44 Places to Go in 2009.""The capital of Lebanon is poised to reclaim its title as the Paris of the Middle East," it said, carrying a photo of downtown Beirut's Mohammed al-Amin mosque.

The Times said that "two hotels scheduled to open later this year are raising the luxury quotient…. and a clutch of high-profile restaurants are transforming the city's culinary scene."

The feature was published in the Sunday January 11th, 2009 print and online versions of the newspaper.

The destinations were chosen based on their cultural and recreational attractions, their unique landscape and architecture, as well as for the food, festivals, family experience, and resorts they have to offer."From the Aegean Sea to Zambia, this year's most compelling destinations are awash in sublime landscapes, cutting-edge art, gala music festivals, and stylish new resorts," it said.

Before... After...

Well, this is something that really makes me proud of being Lebanese!!
If they just leave us to live in peace, we will really be the best country in the whole world!!

Full Story:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/01/11/travel/20090111_DESTINATIONS.html?8dpc

More on Beirut:
http://www.downtownbeirut.com/

Windows 7 Main Features

Windows 7 includes a number of new features, such as advances in touch, speech, and handwriting recognition, support for virtual hard disks, improved performance on multi-core processors, improved boot performance, and kernel improvements.

New features include Gadgets being integrated into Windows Explorer, a Gadget for Windows Media Center, the ability to visually pin and unpin items from the Start Menu and Taskbar, improved media features, the XPS Essentials Pack being integrated, Windows PowerShell Integrated Scripting Environment (ISE), and a multiline Calculator featuring Programmer and Statistics modes along with unit conversion.

Many new items have been added to the Control Panel including:

• Accelerators,
• ClearType Text Tuner,
• Display Color Calibration Wizard,
• Gadgets,
• Infrared,
• Recovery,
• Troubleshooting,
• Workspaces Center,
• Location and Other Sensors,
• Credential Manager,
• Biometric Devices,
• System Icons,
• Windows Solution Center

Windows Security Center has been renamed the Windows Solution Center (Windows Health Center in earlier builds) which encompass both security and maintenance of the computer.

The taskbar has seen the biggest visual changes, where the Quick Launch has been merged with the buttons to create an enhanced taskbar or what Microsoft internally refers to as the "Superbar". This enhanced taskbar also enables the Jump Lists feature to allow easy access to common tasks.

Windows 7 will also contain a new FireWire (IEEE 1394) stack that fully supports IEEE 1394b with S800, S1600 and S3200 data rates.

More :

http://www.windows7update.com/Windows7features.html

Microsoft to unveil test version of Windows 7

Microsoft says regular PC users can test a beta version of Windows 7 early next year.The operating system will let users avoid alerts and warnings from their computers.
Rampant security alerts and pop-up windows irked many users of Windows Vista. Its expected that Windows 7 will go on sale in early 2010.




More on Windows 7:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/
http://www.windows7update.com/Windows7features.html
http://www.windowsvienna.com/