Feb 5

The future of lighting lies in light-emitting diodes, LED. LEDs present many advantages over incandescent light sources including lower energy consumption, longer lifetime, smaller size, faster switching, greater durability, and improved reliability.  A company that is a major player in the future of LED is OSRAM Opto Semiconductors.

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Recently, OSRAM unveiled a website that is dedicated to LED lighting, The LED Light Site. The LED Light site by OSRAM Opto Semiconductors is a leading source of LED information, resources,  tools, technology and LED lighting solutions for the solid state lighting, general illumination space. Here, OSRAM has news, tools, videos, applications, and a great amount of information on LED Light. OSRAM believes energy efficient LED lighting is the new generation of lighting so they are leading the way with solutions for outdoor, indoor and architectural LED lighting.

LED Lights have a many practical uses. They can be used for indoor lighting in down lights or even lamps, for outdoor lighting in street lights or large area lights, and for architectural or retail lighting.

As LED lighting becomes more cost efficient, LED Lights will continue to change the way our society views lighting and energy costs from lighting. OSRAM fully believes in LED lighting and they have provided consumers with a great resource about LED.

Feb 2

A few weeks ago, I was watching the movie “The Holiday” which stars Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet. In it they both have hardships that occur in their life and feel the need to get away for awhile. That’s when both of them go online and participate in a home exchange program that allows them to vacation at each others houses. I was watching this and I thought, “Wow that is a great idea.” I had no idea that there was an American company perfecting that very idea with homes all over the world. That company is 3rd Home.

A Third Home

3rd Home is a premier vacation property management and home exchange website where you can exchange your second home with other luxurious vacation houses and enjoy exclusive access to some of the most desirable resorts and private destinations in the world. The man behind 3rd Home is Wade Shealy.

Wade is recognized as one of the country’s leaders in resort real estate sales, marketing and development. Over the last 25 years, he has been responsible for projects including Sandestin, Florida and Hampton Island, Georgia and dozens of others totaling more than $3 billion in revenue.

The basic idea of 3rd Home is that instead of people trying to rent or lease out their second home when its not in use, they supply it to 3rd Home and in exchange they can vacation at one of the many properties available in the 3rd Home database. 3rd Home runs a “Key Program” that controls the home exchanges. A second home exchange “banking” system debits and credits “keys” to and from member accounts with each exchange. These keys become “currency” that is good anytime, anywhere. Members accumulate keys for hosting other members and then use those keys to vacation at other properties. Each premier property has a key ranking between 1 and 5 keys. There is every kind of property, from beachfront properties to luxury mountain resorts.

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St.John, USVI, UnitedStates

Whatever you want to call it, 3rd Home’s luxury home exchange program is the first of its kind. Their vacation homes are the some of the most luxurious in the world and 3rd Home far surpasses any other home exchange program I’ve seen. 3rd Home may not be a viable choice for every vacationer but for those who are able to participate in a program like this, they should definitely take a look at 3rd Home.