I’m a greedy tourist. When I travel, I want to experience it all: the old and the new, the quaint and the cosmopolitan, the historic and the contemporary. So when I heard about a city that flows with the ease of a small town while boasting beaches, museums and architectural masterpieces on par with those of the world’s great cultural centers, I took notice.

Read the rest here

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/travel/valencia-spain-small-town-and-happening-city-all-in-one/2011/10/25/gIQATPCXmM_story.html?wprss=rss_travel

Sent from my iPhone

A must read for anyone thinking of buying a property in Spain. This is what you negotiate on.

The Seven Levers of Negotiation on Spanish Property Purchase

---

Original Page: http://www.houses-for-sale-in-spain.net/houses-for-sale-in-spain/the-seven-levers-of-negotiation-on-spanish-property-purchase

I’m hardly the most promiscuous social network user you’ll meet. I have my little outposts where I like to splash around, but I’m not one to go signing up for every new thing that pops up on the Internet. Get off my lawn or whatever.

The places I do frequent, though, all share one common thread: the transient nature of users’ data. If I post something to Twitter, I’ve got about a week before it disappears into the deep black abyss that is Twitter’s unsearchable archive. Sure, I could try Googling for a particular toot and maybe I’ll get lucky, but the chances of me finding it are slim.

Other networks like Facebook, Instagram and Foursquare don’t really have this problem, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t take precautions incase the same situation develops.

I’ve created and maintain an exhaustive (well, as of a few weeks ago) archive of all almost all of the crap I post on the Internet. You should, too. Here’s the skinny.

Not too long ago, an enterprising young developer created a tool called ifttt.com (short for “If this, then that”). The basic idea is that whenever something happens on one of many web applications that matches your predefined criteria, you can configure ifttt to perform some type of action. For example, whenever I star (or “favorite”) a toot on Twitter, the following action is taken by ifttt:

Yep, it adds a new note in Evernote containing the text of the toot and the URL where it can be accessed later.

Here’s the list of things that I currently use ifttt to archive for me:

• Toots (my own)
• Favorited Toots (by others)
• Foursquare check-ins
• Instagram photos
• Starred items in Google Reader
• Blog posts (both those on nerdgap.com and on my other blog)

And it all goes into a series of Evernote notebooks I’ve created especially for this little task, which all live in a notebook stack called “Social Archive”. It’s totally a “set it and forget it” way to save all of the useless drivel I vomit onto the Internet without any muss or even any fuss.

As an example, let’s do a quick how-to for archiving all of your toots.

• First, if you don’t already have one, create an account at ifttt.com. It’s easy and it’s free.
• Second, create an Evernote account (though, if you’re reading this, chances are you’ve already done this).
• Last, login to your ifttt account and buckle up.

Visit the ifttt tasks page and click the massive “Create task” button at the top right. Next, you’ll need to click the huge word “this”, which you should. From here, you’ll be asked to choose a channel (which is ifttt’s name for “Internet service”). Find the Twitter logo and click ’er:

If you’ve never used ifttt with Twitter before, you’ll be prompted to activate the channel. Do this.

Next, you’ll be asked to choose your trigger; this is ifttt parlance for “the thing that happens to which you’d like ifttt to react”. Or something. Look for the “New Tweet by You” trigger anc click it:

It’ll then ask if you’d like to include retweets or @replies to the trigger. Personally, I use both, but choose your own adventure here. After checking your preferred boxes, click “Create trigger.”

So far, we’ve told ifttt that we want something to happen whenever we post a new toot to Twitter. Now, we’re going to define exactly what that something is (ifttt calls it the “action channel”). Click the really big “that”.

Now, find the big green Evernote elephant and click it. You’ll then be given a set of options for which type of Evernote magic you want to happen when you post something to Twitter. Click “Create a note.”

This is where you get to spread your creative wings, young grasshopper. Using the four fields before you (Title, Body, Notebook and Tags), you can decide exactly how this data is going to look once it hits your Evernote account. Do this however you like, but mine looks like this:

Pretty straightforward; it allows me to search for a particular toot using the intitle: operator in Evernote search (if you have no idea what this means, have I got the thing for you, Peggy Sue). Using the {{foo}} embedding syntax described in the example, though, you can piece together exactly how the stuff will look in real life. Oh, and you can always come back and change these if you decide you hate it later.

Click the big blue button at the bottom and—that’s right—pour the gin because you’re done.

I’ve replicated this process for each of the services I mentioned earlier such that they all feed their content directly into Evernote. This way, I have access to everything I’ve posted online (with the source URL, so I can revisit the original later, if I so choose). It works like a well-fed Siberian Husky and I really, really wish I could give them some money for this.

You may have noticed the metric crapton of channels available to you (Facebook, RSS, Email, Instagram, Delicious, and others). This little ifttt.com thing is an incredibly powerful tool that can do way, way more than what I’ve described here. I encourage you to poke around and figure out your own cool uses for this, or browse the Recipes page for inspiration.

NB: If you’re new to Evernote and you want to start using it better, you might want to take a gander at this thing I wrote. It’s helped thousands of people become competent Evernote users in an afternoon.

http://www.houses-for-sale-in-spain.net/houses-for-sale-in-spain/property-for-sale-all-over-spain

One of my articles has been used in an academic study at Valencia University. (I found a pingback from the website set up for the project) it is all about the growth of the Black Economy in Spain.

To read the rest of the article go here “The Growth of the Black Economy in Spain”

On the sweltering Madrid streets back in May, there was a strong feeling that something very significant was happening. Tens of thousands were crammed into a makeshift encampment in the city’s Puerta del Sol square, unified by an acute sense of disillusionment with the political establishment. High unemployment, unaffordable housing and a feeling that politicians were not representing the people had resulted in the near spontaneous birth of a movement that would become known as the Indignados (the outraged), or 15-M (after 15 May, the date the protest began).

http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-staggers/2011/10/occupy-movement-madrid

Sent from my iPhone

La Mancha is the Spanish heartland. Sprawling over a high plateau between Madrid and the Mediterranean, it is the birthplace of Manchego cheese and Pedro Almodóvar, and the legendary stomping-ground of Don Quixote himself.

Life has a harsh edge here. The weather is more extreme than elsewhere in Spain, and the villages have a parched, roughened look. But there is gold in La Mancha’s fields—or rather, purple gold—in the form of a plant called Crocus sativus, the saffron crocus. If handled correctly, this humble plant, after surviving La Mancha’s icy winters and broiling summers, is responsible for what many believe is the very best example of saffron, the world’s most expensive, most elusive spice.

Read the rest of this article here

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204644504576650522717252178.html?mod=topix

Sent from my iPhone

A lesson for our times in real estate, quality and location always sell. Here is the example of Madrid but similar is true in Valencia, Barcelona, the higher level coastal areas and sought after residential districts around the country.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/21/greathomesanddestinations/21iht-remadrid21.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

Sent from my iPhone