Foraging–the act of looking or searching for food–is what humans used to do to survive before agriculture was introduced. Foraging is the new organic in the culinary world. In fact, “searching the woods or parks or even cracks in the pavement for edible plants has become the latest culinary obsession,” according to an article in this week’s issue of Time magazine.

In San Francisco, forageSF hosts the monthly Underground Market, a venue for tasting and purchasing the food that is being produced in backyards and home kitchens in the Bay Area.

A restaurant in Los Angeles called Forage lets people bring in the stuff they find in exchange for credit toward dinner.

There’s even a company, Mikuni Wild Harvest, which is “committed to exploration of nature’s greatest bounty: food”–especially food found in the wild.

You can also check out Ava Chin’s blog posts about her urban foraging adventures in The New York Times.

And, two cookbooks on foraging are coming out this fall: Noma, by Rene Redzepi of Copenhagen’s restaurant Noma (first on the list for the 2010 S. Pelligrino World’s 50  Best Restaurant Awards); and The Wild Table  from Northern Californian forager, Connie Green.

If you’d like to give foraging a try, check out Foraging.com for resources to help you find edible plants where you live.

There’s a new home-swapping service on the block, aimed squarely at the upper echelon of homes. Luxe Home Swap allows people with high-end dwellings to swap accommodation with others all over the world. “Luxe” homes don’t necessarily have to be luxurious, UK-based Luxe Home Swap stresses; rather, they simply need an attractive location and home feel. Examples currently on the site include a 5-bedroom, 5-bath home in Sri Lanka, for example, as well as a 2-bedroom apartment in Gothenburg, Sweden.

To use the service, homeowners simply pay an annual membership fee and begin browsing the homes listed on the site. Once they find one they’d like to swap with, they contact the owner to discuss the details via secure messaging and sign a digital contract. Members can make as many swaps as they’d like over the course of a year.

What’s the appeal of hotel alternatives? Tuned-in travelers want authentic experiences, the chance to interact in local neighborhoods, by living, eating and paying local, non-tourist prices. “Localism” is the new moniker. Baby boomers, in particular, have the time, savings and desire for intercultural pursuits, such as shopping at local markets for groceries, having a coffee at the neighborhood café, or practicing their foreign language skills at the dry cleaner. They want neighborhoods with mom and pop stores, with nary a tourist around.

A recent Gallup poll ranked 155 countries on their inhabitants’ well-being, based on in-person and phone surveys. By and large, rich countries are happier — and that’s no coincidence. The Gallup researchers found evidence of what many have long suspected: money does buy happiness — at least a certain kind of it. In a related report, they studied the reasons why countries with high gross domestic products won out for well-being, and found an association between life satisfaction and income. The five happiest countries in the world — Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands — are all clustered in the same region, and all enjoy high levels of prosperity.

To read about the entire study, click here

Moreover, hotels have sold everything from beds and bathrobes to candles and a variety of home fragrances. Now the Dorchester Collection has taken this one step further by launching fashion accessories – their reasoning being that there is a Dorchester Collection hotel in every major fashion capital.

Celebrated UK milliner, Stephen Jones, became the ‘hotelier’s hatter’, with a collection of Royal Ascot hats inspired by the Dorchester Collection’s new country house estate and spa, Coworth Park (near Ascot, UK), opening in August. Jones created four couture hats which were showcased at Ladies’ Day, during Royal Ascot racing week in June. Each design represented a different aspect of the Coworth Park experience: The “Royal Ascot” hat, for example, is a modern interpretation of a ladies’ dressage hat, reflecting the hotel’s own polo fields and stabling for 40 horses. “The Park”, a peach blossom “branch” in satin and organza reflect the essence of the English countryside.

Taking this one step further the hotel group launched its Dorchester Collection Fashion Prize, becoming the first luxury hotel group to award a fashion honor.

The location of the inaugural Dorchester Collection Fashion Prize is London, where over the course of 2010, a panel of judges will award one exceptionally gifted designer, of ready-to-wear or premium accessories, with £25,000, to enable them to create their next collection. The winning designer will also receive accommodation and an event, tailored to their specific needs, at the Dorchester Collection hotel of their choice. The work of the Dorchester Fashion Prize winner must also evoke the spirit of the Dorchester Collection’s sense of “individuality, luxury, style and craftsmanship.”

Want to know more? Visit Jaunted’s Ultimate Guide to Fashion Designer Hotels Around the World

55 stories above ground the infinity pool on the roof of Singapore’s £4bn Marina Bay Sands resort spans the three towers of the hotel. The SkyPark platform itself is longer than the Eiffel tower laid down, the largest of its kind in the world.
 

 
Not content with having the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere, the owners of Willis Tower in Chicago have installed four glass box viewing platforms in its Sky Deck, which jut out of the building 103 floors up.

And any place that calls itself Vertigo has to be high – perched 61 floors above the city of Bangkok on the roof of the Banyan Tree Hotel, Vertigo and its Moon Bar are the highest open air bar and restaurant in all of Asia Pacific. 
 

Any others that you would like recommend, please let us know!

As reported in the New York Times, Yahoo!  is keeping with the times and officially launched its news service blog “Upshot” this week. What makes this so revolutionary is that its content is generated from search queries and online trending topics – or in other words, putting user generated searches ahead of editorial control.

The news blog will tie directly to consumers current interests, tap into trends quickly and will effectively steer news coverage via an SEO-based news service, driven by content compiled by six bloggers and two editors, from topics triggered by search data from across the Yahoo! network.

For years now, we here @ KWE have watched and discussed how businesses worldwide are filling niches across industries, and how companies can get ahead by curating information for niche interests (2010’s Upside-Down Pyramid: All Hail King Consumer)

As the publishing sector becomes increasingly fragmented, there is a growing need for specialist providers. And Yahoo!’s Upshot is doing just that - creating niche editorial from search engine data. Local news and niche publishing wrapped in hyper-local advertising are said to be the future of profitable media.

A survey developed by KWE group for  Casa Velas Hotel Boutique in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico indicated that 70% of their guests were interested in learning to put their best profile forward on Facebook, establish a Twitter account, upload videos and the like. Happy to oblige, the hotel is offering twice weekly workshops, free to guests.

And if you fancy yourself a “social media innovator, thought leader, marketing whiz,” or otherwise out-sized personality with social media cred, SocialFresh and CruiseSource.us are sponsoring a second Social Fresh Cruise. The four-night cruise aboard the Carnival Triumph departs New Orleans Dec. 2 for the Western Caribbean.

Meanwhile, to publicize a summer savings promotion, Country Inns & Suites by Carlson sent three families on a week-long, 1,800-mile jaunt, guided them from place to place via video text messages received on their smartphones.

And at the San Juan Marriott, a YouTube concierge takes free 30-second videos of guests to send back home.

Moreover, with the growing awareness of carbon emissions associated with the mass production and transportation of food, the number of individuals who are cultivating at least some percentage of their own produce is expected to increase.

We’ve already reported on the growing number of rooftop restaurant gardens, and urban centers such as New York City have seen more and more individuals looking to grow their own herbs, fruits and vegetables in whatever space they can find. Living, botanical facades aren’t artistic installations anymore (take a look at the work of award-winning artist and research scientist Patrick Blanc) they’re suitable for eating! With innovative concepts such as hydroponic edible wall gardens by Window Farms, Green Fortune and Jungle Walls in Miami, this isn’t such a far-fetched idea as it once was.

hydroponic herb wall garden

Paperless ticketing will become even more popular, not only from an ecological standpoint, but creates an ability to avoid long lines, eliminates printing and reduces distribution costs. The newest technology in paperless ticketing will be mobile ticketing, where consumer is given a barcode via email or SMS to be scanned at the venue with their mobile.

Tickets on mobile phones for rail, air and bus travel are set to explode over the next three years, according to Juniper Research, which predicts that by 2014, 15 billion tickets will be delivered via a mobile phone around the world. As well as transport tickets, this will also include cinema and sports tickets. Juniper predicts that around 2 billion mobile tickets will be issued this year.

The airlines lead mobile ticketing where paperless boarding using email or iPhone apps has experienced considerable growth in the past year. In December 2009, US airline Continental became the first carrier to implement paperless boarding on a transatlantic flight from Frankfurt airport. Air Canada and American Airlines also offer apps with similar technology for North American flights, whilst Air France and KLM expanded its mobile boarding service to most European destinations last autumn.

Now we’ve got wind of a pop-up community brunch and that also offers a whole day of eco-minded activities. Founded by Nadege Winter, (who, incidentally, is affiliated with Wool and the Gang, a Swiss venture that sells all-in-one kits complete with everything that’s needed to make a particular knit design)  BrunchBazar is a series of community get-togethers that take place on the first Sunday of every month at the Comptoir General in Paris.  The last one, for example, took place on May 2, running from noon to 7 p.m. Organic catering was provided by Cococook, as was a series of cooking workshops throughout the day. Creative workshops for kids were provided by PetitHOOD, while Wool and the Gang served up something similar for knitters.

Also on hand were a fashion swap sponsored by Good Storage, dance classes by I Could Never Be a Dancer, music from Big Festival, eco-minded education from Winter’s online magazine Greenkiss, and more. The price of admission was EUR 3, 50 cents of which went to the World Wildlife Fund—with small additional fees for some of the workshops.

Besides the obvious attraction for consumers and charity, BrunchBazar benefits local vendors and brands, namely, a way to get close to their neighborhood customers in a relaxed setting that’s focused on education and entertainment rather than making a sale.