Entertainment and Music

Throwing a company picnic involves more than just setting a date, hiring a caterer, and choosing a location. Yes, that's the list of basics if you just want a routinely boring event. Your company picnic offers the opportunity to do more than provide some food in a relaxing atmosphere. To get more from your picnic, there are a few things that must happen before the big event.
Goals of Your Company Picnic

First, let's decide what you want to accomplish with the company picnic... do you just want to say thanks to your employees, give employees the chance to get to know each other on a personal basis, to honor an employee, or to celebrate a company event. If you know what you want to accomplish, before you begin to plan your picnic you'll be much more likely to create the atmosphere required to get the desired actions.
Once you know what you want to accomplish choosing the theme for your company picnic becomes much easier. The theme of your company picnic can be centered on the season, a holiday, or it can be company related, such as a new acquisition, or increased performance, or whatever positive event has occurred within the company. Your imagination is the only limit when choosing themes.

Vodafone is the largest mobile telecommunications network company in the world, and is headquartered in Berkshire, England, UK. The company has equity interests in 27 countries and Partner Networks in 40 countries. For this Christmas season, Vodafone has announced its range of Christmas 2007 consumer handsets offering the choicest of mobiles to its loyalists the world over. The range being offered by the company includes some of the highest selling handsets from the premier manufacturers in UK.
The line-up being offered by Vodafone includes some of the best handsets in all mobile categories, including business, entertainment and music phones for consumers belonging to all budget categories. Nokia N95, well on its way to being the highest selling handset in the year 2007, is also part of the prestigious Christmas collection by Vodafone.

Charlotte's skyline can be seen for several miles as you travel on Interstate 77 in the Piedmont area. At night, the city glistens with beautiful skyscrapers and street lights. Since its beginnings, Charlotte has rapidly grown into a center for finance and banking. It is the second largest financial capital in the United States. "Queen City" is Charlotte's nickname.

As the county seat, Charlotte is located in Mecklenburg County in the Piedmont region of North Carolina and is just above the South Carolina border. Charlotte's population was estimated at approximately 584,658 in 2003 and is still growing. Nearby cities include Monroe (NC), Concord (NC), Rock Hill (SC), Pineville (NC), Statesville (NC), and Lancaster (SC).

The area attracts folks from all around for business, shopping, dining, recreation, and entertainment. Many people visit Charlotte from South Carolina for work or play. For those who live in the area, Charlotte is only a couple of hours away from the Appalachian Mountains and several hours from the Atlantic coast.

Charlotte, North Carolina Attractions and Events

Charlotte offers activities for all ages. The city's night life is always moving with live entertainment and music concerts, ball games, restaurants, comedy clubs, movie theaters, and more.

Shoppers can visit one of several malls including the Eastland Mall, South Park Mall and the Carolina Place Mall (Pineville, South Charlotte). The huge Concord Mills Mall in Concord, North Carolina is just a short drive from Charlotte. At Eastland Mall, an indoor ice skating rink has provided many years of enjoyment for families.

Charlotte Festivals

Charlotte is also host to several big festivals and events throughout the year. One is the Festival in the Park, which takes place in Freedom Park. This early fall event has been held in Charlotte since 1964. It is a family-oriented festival where all types of regional works of art and unique crafts are displayed. Entertainment and refreshments are provided.

Charlotte hosts the Great Grapes Wine & Music Festival, where more than 150 North Carolina wines are available for sampling. Live music and gourmet foods are also provided. Each holiday, Charlotte residents and visitors can enjoy a variety of events, from a grand fireworks display on the 4th of July to cheerful holiday parades.

Charlotte Museums

For the history buff, there are many fascinating museums to explore in Charlotte. Discovery Place in downtown Charlotte has always been a favorite for kids with many fun hands-on exhibits, an Omnimax theater, a space station, a rain forest, and more. Other Charlotte museums include the Levine Museum of the New South, the Mint Museum of Art, and the Charlotte Museum of History.

Family Fun in Charlotte

Face it, our world is musical, nearly everyone out there enjoys listening to music. From the president of the United States of America to the King and Queen of England everyone enjoys music. Music makes the world go round; music can turn that frown upside down. If you are in a bad mood, then music can put you in a good mood. What is all this talk about music, you ask? Haven't you heard about the Nokia 5800 Xpress music phone? It is coming out in the market of cell phones today and is a must have. All this talk about the Nokia 5800 Xpress music phone is really putting everyone in a musical mood. We believe the Nokia 5800 Xpress music phone is the best device to flaunt itself into the season.
The features of the Nokia 5800 Xpress music phones will defiantly make you gasp in amazement. The new Nokia 5800 really does have some eye popping features to it and that is what we will be discussing with you in the paragraphs below. Get ready to hear about the Nokia 5800 Xpress music cell phone.
Nokia has a display of 3.2 inches - sure, it is slightly smaller than the regular phones, but that is compensated by a 40 frame rate per second recording and playback. It also has the 360 x 640 pixel resolution.

Tired of using simple mobile phones? Do you want fun? Do you want entertainment and music pleasure? Now, with Nokia 5230, anyone can get that so easily! Nokia 5230 Xpress Music Nuron is a smart touch screen phone. It has a Wi-Fi support and provides Bluetooth connectivity.
5230 Xpress Music Nuron has vast number of Nokia made accessories. The phone also supports many other accessories previously developed for other phones.
Some of the most cheapest and helpful accessories available are:
SanDisk Micro SDHC 8GB Flash Memory Card
Those who want to increase the storage memory of their mobile phone can use SanDisk micro SD High Capacity (micro SDHC) 8GB flash card. This allows their phones to hold more amounts of data including pictures, music, and more. The card also includes a bonus of new Mobile Mate™ Micro Reader (SDHC compatibility), providing users with a complete and versatile solution for transferring music, video, photos and other files.

The Nokia 5800 is a Symbian S60 smartphone and a portable entertainment device. A phone in the XpressMusic series, the 5800 emphasizes multimedia and music playback. Although the phone does possess tactile feedback, it does not feature the upcoming Haptikos Nokia technology. The device does have a compatibility mode for those applications requiring the use of Java that are not touchscreen-capable. To run programs in this mode, part of the screen is used for displaying the buttons that are essential to running the program.
The specifications included with the 5800 include a resistive, 3.2-inch 16M touchscreen; use of the Symbian S60 fifth edition operating system, with touch input; accelerometer for auto-screen rotation; a 3.2 megapixel, auto focus Carl Zeiss lens with dual LED flash and geo-tagging support; Global Positioning (GPS) system with A-GPS function; FM radio (87.5 to 108 MHz) with RDS; 8 GB microSDHC card; a microSDHC card slot up to 16 GB; 360 x 640 pixels resolution at a 9:16 display ratio; and a 3.5 mm headphone/video-out jack.

Have you ever heard of a mobile phone capable of recording vivid videos in high definition, and at the same time is designed for office work? Don't think this is possible? With the new Sony Ericsson Vivaz Pro, this combination is now possible. Taking a closer look at this innovative mobile phone, you will notice its 3.2 inch wide touch screen and sleek design. This phone is both aesthetically pleasing and functional.

Vivaz Pro Digital Camera

Equipped with a video light, flash, and 4x digital zoom, this mobile phone's powerful 5megapixel digital camera can do more than just capture high quality images. With face detection, the faces on captured images are focused on. With Geo-tagging, get the location of where your images were taken. With an image stabilizer, say goodbye to blurred images, and take pictures like a pro. With smile detection, whenever a smile is detected the phone takes a shot.

If music festivals such as South by Southwest and the Austin City Limits festival are testament to the city's reputation as the Live Music Capitol of the World, the Texas Book Festival is proof positive that Austin is a hotbed of creativity in the literary world as well. Founded by Laura Bush in 1995, it has grown to become a nationally important event, featuring over two thousand authors, local, national and international, in twelve years of existence. Exciting, fun, musical and educational, this all-ages event is considered to be one of the premiere literary events in the country.
Located primarily in the State Capitol, the festival takes place every fall, drawing upwards of 40,000 spectators to delight in panels, concerts, demonstrations, and other activities in the House and Senate Chambers, as well as tents and stages erected on the sprawling green lawn of the Capitol grounds. Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and other high-profile politicos have given keynote addresses, and the late Governor Ann Richards was a regular as well. Kay Bailey Hutchison, Jim Lehrer, and Roy Blount Jr., and other such notables have made appearances as well.

MTV's hit celebrity television show "Cribs" has shown us that not all recording studios are created equal. With many artists in the music industry opting for recording studios being setup right in the comfort of their own home as opposed to a physical building, more and more individuals are following suit.
In fact, the Los Angeles county housing market is seeing a new type of amenity to add to the list of features a home boasts: recording studios. For instance, one such property, owned by Natalie Portman, featured a "celebrity-friendly" detached recording studio which she purchased for $3,199,000 -- $149,000 above the asking price.
Such homes provide a mix of audio, video, recording, and post-production media rooms for the music industry professional who would much rather enjoy the freedom that their own personally designed music studio provides. Contrary to popular belief, producing a recording from the comfort of your own home does not make the quality any less professional than had it been created in a traditional recording studio.
Another common misconception is that homes with recording studios are often sought after by industry professionals when this could be furthest from the truth. From the individual who dreams of recording his own music, to the person who is honing his craft as a freelance musical engineer or producer, homes with attached recording studios fit almost any demographic.

I don't know why but every so often, some one will try to promote their product by saying it's going to replace something. That the old is an obsolete tech and will go the way of the dinosaurs.

Podcasts are like that. In many ways they've grown out of radio broadcasting. And every once in a while someone will get on their high horse and claim that radio will be killed by podcasting.

Ain't gonna happen!

Claims like that really only show the lack of understanding of what a podcast is and where it fits. It ignores the audience. And it ignores the subject or topic of the broadcast. Now keep in mind I'm talking about podcasting here. Not just making recordings of earlier broadcasts available over the internet.

Modern radio is an entertainment media. Its focus -- no matter the format -- is on keeping the audience entertained. That's why it tends towards snappy, high energy DJ's and announcers. That's why it focuses on controversial talk radio. It is intended to keep people engaged on an emotional level. Not on an intellectual level.

Sirius is a leader in the world of subscription, satellite radio. The company is known as "The Best Radio on Radio" and with a good reason. Because the company provides excellent service, exclusive choices and delivers perhaps the best quality in satellite radio available, it has a large customer base. For those just considering this company's products, you will be happy to know that it offers over 100 channels to listen to. Many of those channels offer the most in demand information, talk shows and personalities in the industry.
Another title that Sirius owns is the "original and only home of 100 percent commercial free music channels on satellite radio". With satellite radio, you do not have to spend most of your time listening to commercials. Instead, you pay a low, base payment monthly or based on your contract terms, which will allow you access to those channels without commercials or without limitations on what someone can say on the air. Unlike many public radio channels, there are fewer restrictions, limitations and hindrances placed on subscribers of this service.

If you listen to only one band from Rhode Island, let Senior Discount be that band! Seriously, these guys made such an impression with us through their music and their hilarious (often ridiculous and even more often disturbing) DVD, we just had to ask them for an interview!
What is the music scene in Rhode Island like?
The music scene is RI is really varied. We (me and the band) were in high school when Monty's Fan Club (now Monty Are I) and Bad Larry were first starting out, and we loved them. They were two awesome ska bands and that was the local music we focused on. But we also liked M80, which was a punk band that was around at the time, as well as Slik Willy (now Arcadia Landing), which was more of like the newer stuff that could be considered pop-rock as much as it could be considered pop-punk. We also had Zox, which is like a jammy band, as well as tons of others. So we always had this really varied scene here. It's not like you have a big punk scene, or a big ska scene or anything like that, there's just a lot of different bands. We have specific friends in the scene now - Monty Are I, Someday Providence, Lemon Lime Tennis Shoes, Arcadia Landing, Mustache Ride, Penrose (and others who will be upset that I didn't name them) - and none of them really play music like ours, or like each others' (for the most part). We play shows that have all different types of acts all the time. It's more about enjoying the music in general, rather then going to a show and seeing two crappy punk bands, then two okay punk bands, then one good punk band. I'd rather see five good ANYTHING bands. Every time we organize a big home show we definitely reach into all the different types of music from the scene and just try to expose kids to more different types of music.

It is a proven fact that exposure to loud live music can result in hearing damage. And although most musicians and employees working at large entertainment venues and events are well aware of the loud noise levels and equipped with devices such as ear plugs to protect their hearing, audiences are often still subjected to dangerously high entertainment noise levels.
Music To Our Ears?
Many local government councils have taken to setting legal noise limits and noise curfews in order to better control over the noise levels of large events, particularly those held at outside venues.
This controversial issue however does not only extend to the larger venues but other general places of work too with over 1 million employees in Great Britain alone said to be exposed to potentially harmful noise levels every day.
As a result, a large number of businesses including those in the entertainment and music industry, such as pubs and clubs, are being urged to comply with the required 'legal limits' to protect those on the premises. The good news is that if you're in the entertainment industry and subject to noise limits or controls, there is an effective way to monitor noise exposure on your premises.
This involves managing the risk of hearing damage to their staff and audience through the use of special equipment. These measures will not affect the overall experience of the event and audience will still be able to enjoy the performance with the necessary noise controls in place.
Entertainment noise monitoring devices are available that are specially designed to be used at music venues such as pubs and nightclubs. These small pieces of equipment are lightweight and easy to use. They can be employed for temporary events as well as for permanent installation and regularly used venues.
Their versatile design works by activating when it's pre-set noise level is exceeded causing the device to respond with flashing lights with warning graphics and safety instructions. It will also indicate when hearing protection should be worn and automatically switch off once the noise level has fallen back down to below the triggered level.

TIME TO FOCUS ON THE BIGGEST PIRATES IN NIGERIAN MUSIC INDUSTRY
I think it is really ironic that when we talk about piracy in Nigeria, all we ever talk about are the marketers in markets like Alaba and elsewhere. To almost everybody in the Nigerian music industry, entertainment writers and even the government, music piracy seems to start and end with the local marketers in the retail markets who replicate people's songs without paying any royalties to the musicians. Nothing can be further from the truth!
As an ardent follower of the industry and a stakeholder who has invested millions in the careers of many artistes in the last 2 years, I am of the opinion that we have all allowed ourselves to feed into the red herring and misdirection on piracy that are probably borne out of ignorance, fear or plain deceit by our leaders in this fight.
As we can all testify to, radio stations are a very big part of our entertainment and music life in Nigeria. With over 300 radio stations blasting music 24-hours a day, I continue to be perplexed that we are worrying about royalties from Alaba when the real money should be chased at the radio and television stations. Afterall, the law is very clear that royalties MUST be paid to the different copyright owners every-time music is played on air.

The internet has been a useful tool in giving information, entertainment, tips and many more to people around the world. This technology has provided users the opportunity to explore the world, express themselves and bring entertainment to every individual who has an internet connection. One particular entertainment that has captured not only the music-lovers, but the whole world, is the popularity of listening to live radio on the internet. The reputation of the online radio has opened a lot of doors in the entertainment and music world in giving 24/7 live radio streaming all across the globe. Despite having its tangible counterpart the same features, people still flock and use the internet radio because of these main reasons.
Firstly, the range of the internet radio is worldwide. This means that people will be able to listen to various online radio stations available around the world. For instance, if you're an American, and would like to listen to your favorite radio stations in New York, Los Angeles, Miami and other 50 states, then, yes, you can. In some other cases, if you're an Indian living in a different place, you'll still be able to enjoy your country's top city radio stations wherever you may be. This is very convenient and entertaining to all users who would like to listen to other radio stations once in a while, or better yet, all the time.

Often I have been asked, "Jolita, How do I become a pop star or recording artist like you?"
After much thought, I have decided to do something new for my fans. So, I shall answer that question here with some guidance and suggestions. Be sure to check in, or better yet, subscribe to my blog if you wish to keep in contact with me and/or follow my career.
I shall covers topics of vital importance to anyone who wants to break into the music business and become a pop star or recording artist. Some people choose to pursue both sides of the aisle, while some choose to be either a pop star or a recording artist. I shall write this article for either.
Whether your specialization is pop, rock, R & B, alternative, metal, hip hop, rap, country, jazz, Christian, gospel, or classical music, the techniques can be applied in all genres, no matter what type of music you want to perform or record.
I can't guarantee that you will become an overnight success. It takes hard work and practice - lots and lots of it. What I can tell you is that I shall write about what you need to know to build a following, get a record deal, and eventually succeed in the music business.
When you become a pop star or recording artist, you will touch people's lives through your entertaining and music, while making money doing what you love to do.

Entertainment during a long car drive can be a great way to pass the time. It's good, then, that the designers behind the BMW's at BMW Chatsworth have created some of the best entertainment technology available for cars. A whole variety of entertainment features and packages are able to be chosen, designed to keep you and your backseat passengers happy on those long drives.
The technology available for vehicles at BMW Chatsworth isn't only focused on entertainment. One of their top priorities in terms of technology is the safety of you and your family, along with increased performance.
HD radio has been ultimately changing how people listen to their usual AM and FM radio. This special feature comes ready in your new BMW, and with this feature, you are automatically granted access to clearer, better sounding music from stations that have upgraded. HD radio really helps you to experience all that music and radio has to offer. When a song comes on, the name of the track and the artist pop up on the screen, letting you know just what you're hearing.