This week Mastercard released its Global Destination Cities Index, which provides a ranking of the 132 most visited cities around the world.

Measured by the number of international overnight visitors, the study, now in its seventh year, predicts which countries will be the most visited in 2016.

From the AsiaPacific region to Europe to the Middle East and Africa, here are the 20 cities set to see the most visitors this year:

20) Prague, Czech Republic - 5.81 million international visitors

19) Shanghai, China - 6.12 million international visitors

18) Vienna, Austria - 6.69 million international visitors

Shake Shack founder and CEO of Union Square Hospitality Group, Danny Meyer, started his first restaurant at 27. He looks back at the biggest mistake he made in the early years of his career as a restaurateur.

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The New York Public Library announced they have completed its conveyor system for requested media. The $2.6 million system uses 24 carts to truck books through the library's 11 levels to the Rose Reading Room. Here's how it works, and what it's like to ride inside one.

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You don't need to go to a five-star restaurant to enjoy a quality brunch. With the right tools, you can make stellar morning meals in your own kitchen.

Sure, standard frying pans are fine for preparing basic eggs and bacon. But there are loads of awesome gadgets that can take your breakfast to the next level.

Check them out below.

SEE ALSO: I tried MealPal, the monthly lunch subscription service — here's what it was like

A breakfast sandwich maker.

The Hamilton Beach Breakfast Sandwich Maker can make a mean ham, egg, and cheese sandwich in just a few minutes. One Amazon user even describes it as "the best invention in the history of mankind."

Buy it:$24

A cooker that makes perfect hard-boiled and poached eggs.

The Egg Genie can cook up to seven hard, medium, or soft boiled eggs at once, and will automatically shut off when they reach your desired consistency. At the bottom, there's a tray for making poached eggs, too.

Buy it:$15.10

A oven that bakes bread and bagels.

The Oster 2-Pound Bread Machine automatically bakes fresh loaves — all you have to do is pour in the ingredients, and it will mix and knead the dough for you. The machine even has a setting for making bagels — after it kneads the bagel dough, you let it rise in the machine for two hours, then form the round bagel shapes and bake them a conventional oven.

Buy it:$59.99

Choosing what to order at a restaurant is oftentimes the most stressful part of the evening — especially at highly-rated places where everything looks so good.

Tasting menus, which typically range from five to nine courses, not only allow diners to taste a variety of flavors, but provide chefs with a venue to showcase the many culinary skills in their wheelhouses. 

Location intelligence company Foursquare combed through user ratings and comments from its city-guide app and its check-in app, Swarm, to compile a list of the best restaurants with tasting menus, where guests can experience the full range of dishes a spot offers all in one dinner. 

From modern American fare to Spanish tapas, here are the best places in the US to check out for a top-notch tasting menu. 

SEE ALSO: The 25 most popular places for late-night pizza in New York City

DON'T MISS: The 20 best bagel shops in New York City, according to Foursquare

25. Benu

Location: San Francisco

Foursquare rating:8.23

Benu earned its three Michelin stars through an innovative mix of American and Asian cuisine, as demonstrated in dishes like thousand-year-old quail egg, frog's leg velvet with shiga rice, and sesame leaf ice cream. The tasting menu includes nine courses and costs $268 per person.

24. Contra

Location: New York City

Foursquare rating:8.50

Simple, yet elegant, Contra's minimalist design lets its adventurous tasting menu speak for itself. "The level of cooking is high-level," Jon Ferrer noted on Foursquare. "The desserts are inventive and delicious. Definitely add the bread into your meal — future you will thank you."

23. Mercat a la Planxa

Location: Chicago

Foursquare rating:8.52

Mercat a la Planxa brings the flavors of Barcelona straight to Chicago through menu items like flash-fried padrón peppers, paella with fresh chorizo and grilled rabbit loin, and patatas bravas: spicy potatoes topped with smoked paprika aioli. Diners can choose between the regular chef's tasting menu for $65 a pop or the luxury version, which goes up to $85 per person.

If you want to live like a king, it just got a little easier. An enormous and opulent Upper East Side duplex once owned by the late "King of Wall Street" John Gutfreund (who died earlier this year), has just been discounted to $96 million, after listing for $120 million six months ago.

Even with the new price, it's still the most expensive listing in New York City, according to Curbed. One possible reason why it's still on the market is that the building's co-op board does not accept financing, and the $96 million is required up front, the New York Observer reported.

Gutfreund made a name for himself as CEO of Salomon Brothers, becoming an icon of Wall Street in the 1980s. He took Salomon from a private partnership to a public corporation, and in 1985 Businessweek named him the "King of Wall Street" — a title he later told The New York Times that he hated.

John Burger of Brown Harris Stevens has the listing, along with Richard Ziegelasch and Key Ventures' A. Laurance Kaiser IV and Craig Dix. 

SEE ALSO: Sarah Palin has sold her lavish Arizona compound for $2.275 million, slightly less than what she was looking for

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The penthouse is located at 834 Fifth Avenue, which has been called "the most pedigreed building on the snobbiest street in the country's most real estate obsessed city" by The New York Observer.

Source: New York Observer

As soon as you enter, it's immediately understood why the apartment has broken price records.

The duplex penthouse occupying the seventh and eighth floors is incredibly large, with 20 rooms covering a total 12,000 square feet.

Two years ago, Jen Glantz was a 26-year-old working as a copywriter for a tech startup in New York City.

A Florida native who graduated with a double major in journalism and English, Glantz spent her days writing video scripts for big companies like Disney, Target, Geico, and Comcast.

"I really loved the people I worked with and the work I was doing, but it was never enough for me," Glantz, now 28, told Business Insider. "I had this entrepreneurial bug inside of me that was always saying 'create your own opportunity.' Every night I'd come home and work on a project of my own — whether it was writing a book, working on my blog, or trying to start my own business."

It wasn't totally surprising that when Glantz's roommate called her "the professional bridesmaid" in the summer of 2014 — somewhere around her sixth stint as a bridesmaid — she had a light-bulb moment. She went to Craigslist, posted an ad, and went to bed. She woke up to over 250 emails, and by the end of the week thousands of messages had flooded her inbox.

Her ad read something like this:

When all my friends started getting engaged, I decided to make new friends, but then they got engaged too, and for what felt like the hundredth time, I was asked to be a bridesmaid. This year, I've been a bridesmaid four times. That's four chiffon dresses, four bachelorette parties filled with tequila shots and guys in thong underwear twerking way too close to my face. So let me be there for you this time if you don't have any other girlfriends except your third cousin, twice removed, who is often found sticking her tongue down an empty bottle of red wine.

Glantz said she saw a gap in the $300 billion wedding industry but had no idea what to expect after posting the ad.

"When I was behind the scenes at my friends' weddings, there was no one there for the bride. Sure, there was often a wedding planner, but she was focused on making sure the room was set up and the vendors arrived on time. If the bride had bridesmaids, they were often busy getting ready and posing for photos, leaving the bride to feel overwhelmed and stressed out over last-minute tasks and heavy emotions," Glantz said. "I decided to fill this gap. I figured I'd post the ad to see what happens, but I never thought I'd get that kind of response."

The overwhelming interest to her Craigslist ad confirmed her suspicions, and she ran with the idea. That same week, she and her brother cofounded Bridesmaid for Hire, a company that offers "undercover bridesmaid" and personal-assistant-type services to brides and their wedding parties.

"Essentially I'm there as the bride's personal assistant and on-call therapist. I help her manage and execute her personal to-do list of tasks, which can often be over 100 tasks long."

Glantz's services aren't for "sad brides without friends." There are a few reasons people hire her. Some brides have bridesmaids but are looking for a professional to step in and help with tasks and make sure their wedding party has everything they need. Others are women who don't have many close people in their lives and "want a bridesmaid by their side to make this adventure special for them."

She's not a rent-a-friend for the day, she said, though she does become friends with most brides she works with. "I'm just a professional who can help make the wedding experience more pleasant for everyone," she said.

Glantz booked her first client, a Minnesota bride named Ashley, in July 2014, a few weeks after her ad went up. "She hired me after her maid of honor 'stepped down,'" Glantz said. "This person was not there for Ashley and couldn't provide her with the support a bride deserves."

They spoke on the phone weekly, and when Ashley's big day came in September, Glantz was by her side. In the six months following Ashley's wedding, Glantz booked another five weddings as a hired bridesmaid.

At the time, her packages ranged from $300 to $2,000, and the average bride or bridesmaid paid her $1,000 per gig, but that wasn't enough to give up her day job just yet.

"I would wake up every morning at 6 and work on my side gig until 9, and then go to my full-time job and come home around 6 or 7 and work again until midnight," Glantz said. "I loved working two jobs. I loved spending half my day being my own boss and spending the other half in an environment working for someone else and learning how to be a boss from them.

"It was exhausting and I hardly saw my friends, and I spent 75% of my weekends doing work ... but I enjoyed it because I felt like I was working on building something for myself. I was creating an opportunity for myself that perhaps nobody in this world would ever give me."

Glantz imagined that she would eventually quit her full-time job and go off on her own but didn't know when. Before she ever got the chance to make that decision she was laid off.

"In October 2015 I was let go, and it was a complete shock," she said. "There had been whispers that my company was going to be laying people off but I didn't think I'd be on that list. I was very loyal to my job and the work that I did. Even though I was managing my own business on the side, I worked extra hard to make sure it never interfered with my responsibilities at my full-time job."

She told Business Insider that she would never forget the morning it happened.

"I stood outside of the building on my way out and said to myself, 'I will never ever work for anybody else.' I was a bit heartbroken. I called my mom and she told me that I was hanging off a cliff and I needed this push. I probably never would have left that job, and perhaps I wouldn't be where I am today with my own career and business if I didn't get laid off."

Glantz now had more time to focus on her business.

"At first I felt lost," she said. "I started having to structure every hour so that I knew what I had to do next and when I had to get it done by. If not, I'd find myself working on a task and procrastinating on that for hours.

"I was solely responsible for working my butt off to make my business successful and for earning enough money every month to pay my bills and health insurance — it was terrifying.

"You inherit a lot of pressure you didn't have before when you were getting a steady paycheck," Glantz added. "My life, at first, became the constant obsession of looking at my finances and counting every dollar I was bringing in every month."

Leaving a traditional office environment was tough too: "I miss working closely with other people. Starting your own business and working from your couch can be super lonely. When I first started working from home, I went entire days without seeing anyone. I loved interacting with my coworkers, grabbing lunch with them, or just chatting about what's up in the world."

But working for herself also has its perks. She doesn't miss having to ask off from work when she wants to go visit family in Florida or take a vacation — or having to ask permission to go outside for a 30-minute break. "I love that I can structure my days the way I want to," she said. "If I want to wake up at 6 and work till 3 so that I can take the rest of the afternoon off, I can do that without having to explain myself to anyone."

Glantz said her best advice for anyone trying to make it as an entrepreneur is to start right now:

"Don't wait for the perfect time to write a business plan or test your idea. There will never be a perfect time and you will never have every single thing you need to start your own business. Start with what you have now and start with who you are now — because truly, it's enough."

Teaching people how to start their own business became a passion, too, and Glantz now offers virtual workshops for people around the world to learn the ins and outs of starting a side gig while working full-time.

"You have to do and want and try things that give you nervous jitters, that make your heart race out of control," she added. "Because if not, what's the point? If you want to try a new career, take a class on that industry, have coffee with someone who does that job right now, get to know what it is you want to do and then find a way to break into that career path. Either way, just do it. It's always worth a try, and as my mom told me when I said I was moving to New York City, you can always go back if you don't like it."

In the year since she was laid off, Glantz released a second book, "Always a Bridesmaid (For Hire)," and worked with over 40 brides and maids-of-honor.

She says most wedding guests don't know she's a hired bridesmaid. But if and when guests do ask Glantz how she knows the bride, her response is simply, "We're friends." "Rarely do they question me beyond that," she previously told Business Insider.

Today her services— which range from speechwriting to being an "undercover bridesmaid" — start at $150 and can exceed $2,000. She'd like to expand and have teams in cities around the world. To date, she's had more than 10,000 women apply to work with her. She hopes to start franchising her business soon.

While she wouldn't comment on the specifics of her earnings, Glantz says her income comes from a combination of Bridesmaid for Hire, freelance writing, virtual classes, and consulting.

"At first, starting your own business feels terrifying and will give you an unnecessary amount of daily acid reflux," Glantz said. "But the more you get the hang of managing your time and figuring out how to jump on your goals, the more you can take a deep breath knowing that you own your career now and you own your life. It's the most empowering feeling a person can have."

SEE ALSO: A startup founder explains what it was like to leave her job at Goldman Sachs to launch her own business

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The late-19th-century Dakota building is one of Manhattan's most mysterious and exclusive residences.

Stories of ghost sightings have loomed around the building — located at 72nd Street and Central Park West — for years.

But even more intimidating than its rumors of hauntings is the Gothic-style building's picky co-op board, which has made a sport of rejecting rich and famous applicants.

Here are the 15 most fascinating facts about The Dakota, from past to present.

Brittany Fowler wrote an earlier version of this post.

SEE ALSO: We got a look inside One57, New York City's most expensive apartment building and the tower that started 'Billionaires' Row'

1. John Lennon was shot dead in front of The Dakota by a crazed fan.

On December 8, 1980, Lennon was assassinated by Mark David Chapman outside The Dakota. He died at Roosevelt Hospital at age 40 after releasing his album "Double Fantasy."

2. Yoko Ono still lives in The Dakota and says she saw Lennon's ghost there.

Ono and husband Lennon moved into The Dakota in 1973. Ono stayed in the building after Lennon's death and, according to the New York Post's Page Six, saw her husband's ghost sitting at his white piano. She says he told her, "Don't be afraid. I am still with you."

3. When he was alive, Lennon told Ono he saw a "crying lady ghost" in the building.

The Beatles musician told his wife he had seen the ghost roaming the halls.

.

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"I know this may seem chaotic to you," Melissa Elders tells me loudly over the sound of clanks, bangs, and screams. "But this is actually extremely relaxing for the parents here."

Elders, the mom of 2-year-old Serena, is sitting in midtown Manhattan's Betony, a Michelin-starred restaurant that earned a three-star review from The New York Times' notoriously tough food critic, Pete Wells, in 2013.

Elders is the creator of a lunch club, Nibble and Squeak, meant for like-minded parents who are interested in food but might not get the chance to dine out with regularity. Many of them hadn't gone out to eat much since the birth of their children, like the parents at Betony on the day I visited a Nibble and Squeak event.

"I was looking for activities to do with my daughter when I was on maternity leave, and there were loads of options for music, art, and movement, but I wanted to feel like I was doing something fun for myself, too," Elders said. "I found that we were always grabbing lunch on the run, but not sitting down to enjoy a daytime meal together very often."

From there, her idea for Nibble and Squeak blossomed — she's now hosting two or three events a month in New York, and branching out to other cities across the US and in London.

Ahead, see what happened at the two-hour Nibble and Squeak luncheon at Betony:

SEE ALSO: 10 genius products for parents, invented by parents

The Michelin Guide's review of Betony praises its 'grown-up restaurant' atmosphere, referencing its 'gilded features, wood paneling, and well-spaced tables.' Nibble and Squeak's lunch was hosted in the private room downstairs.

Source: Michelin Guide

'When choosing restaurants for Nibble and Squeak, hospitality is extremely important. The staff needs to be friendly,' Elders said. At Betony, the service was impeccable. 'I used to babysit kids,' a waiter told one of the mothers as he playfully made faces at her child. 'Any chance you'd return to the business?' the mom said jokingly.

Although the atmosphere was noisy, the parents seemed relaxed. Some came with friends, and others with just their child. 'It's a relief for parents to enter a nice space like an upscale restaurant and know that they are expected and welcomed and prepared for,' Elders said.

One of the world's richest self-made billionaires has reinvented the hair dryer, and it's a sight to see. 

Sir James Dyson, the famed industrial designer, tells New York Magazine's The Cut that he and 103 engineers worked on the project. Dyson's company filed over 100 patents and sunk $67 million into transforming the hairdryer to what you see here.

There's just one catch: The Dyson Supersonic will set you back almost $400.

The Dyson Supersonic looks nothing like your run-of-the-mill hair dryer. A hot pink base, reminiscent of a sprinkled doughnut, sits on top of the cylindrical handle. Unlike traditional dryers, Dyson's device stores the motor in the handle. The fan blades spin, sending a jetstream of air up through the handle and out of the front of the dryer, Mashable explains.

Dyson's legacy lies in making everyday products, like the vacuum and hand dryer, less annoying to use. The British technology company makes some of the best vacuums you can buy, according to Consumer Reports.

The Dyson Supersonic carries on that tradition. It's lightweight and quiet enough that users don't need to shout to hold a conversation while drying their hair. As Dyson explained to The Cut, the motor runs at ultrasonic frequencies, which are outside the human hearing range. That alone might (might!) be worth the $399 price tag.

But the Dyson Supersonic's greatest feat of engineering is the speed with which it dries hair.

When air funnels out the drier, the circle design pulls almost as much air back in. This system generates twice as much air force as a similarly sized hair dryer, making for quicker styling.

In spite of its cost, the Dyson Supersonic has garnered plenty of admirers.

"The Supersonic, true to its name, dried my hair faster than my traditional machine," The Cut's Linda Wells writes. "My hair didn't feel scorched, since the heat never climbs above 300 degrees."

"My wife was not only impressed with how the Dyson Supersonic works, but how it felt," Mashable's Lance Ulanoff says. "She told me she was surprised that the unusual design didn't feel awkward. It felt light, easy to hold ...."

The product is also beautifully packaged.

"The way it is presented almost reminds me of an Apple product with its simple packaging," hair and makeup artist Lauren Ross tells CNN Money.

Is it worth the price? Reporters who have reviewed the device say maybe.

While it offer plenty of perks, the hair dryer is a luxury more than a necessity.

The Dyson Supersonic is available at Sephora, Best Buy, Ulta, and Dyson.com.

SEE ALSO: You should be washing your coffee mug way more than you think

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Despite changing dress codes and a move to a more casual workplace, the suit isn't dying. 

Instead, suits are morphing into something completely different, the CEO of Italian fashion company Ermenegildo Zegna recently told GQ.

"It's not that the suit is back. What we are selling right now is either more sports jackets or casual jackets," Gildo Zegna said to the magazine. "He wants to wear the jacket in a more casual way, as a piece of sportswear."

There is a trend with men who are striving to look nice but dress neither formally nor casually. Instead, they look at the suit jacket or blazer as a complement to dress up an outfit, Zegna says.

"Today the jacket has become a part of luxury sportswear, like an accessory," Zegna told GQ. "In the old days, you used to have a sweater and today you want to wear a jacket and have it feel like a sweater."

A full suit looks too formal for most occasions in many men's eyes these days. Wearing a jacket as an accessory to kick your look up a notch seems to be the perfect antidote. It allows you to stay between the lines of casual and formal, while still appearing loosely appropriate in both settings.

Retailers will need to adapt to this new appetite for less formal suiting and more casual, laid-back tailoring. The jacket — and the suit — will never completely go away, however.

The lines between formal and casual are increasingly being blurred in men's dress codes, and this is just one more example of it.

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NOW WATCH: This suit color works for any occasion

The start of a new school year elicits a lot of feelings, and not just from parents and students.

For the average American, just thinking about returning from a mere two-day break from work often brings out a phenomenon known as "the Sunday night blues" — a whopping 76% of American workers say they worry on Sunday nights about the stresses awaiting them on Monday morning.

So, even though we know that teachers spend more time than you think working over the summer, you could imagine their return to the classroom after months away would amplify this phenomenon.

To find out just how teachers feel at the start of a new school year, we asked them to weigh in, and more than 50 teachers responded.

We've anonymously included some of their answers here:

"At the start of a new school year, I feel ...

• "Excited. I can't wait to figure out what classes I get to teach."
• "Anxious. I am always nervous to meet my new students and see the new class dynamics. I can't really prepare until I know my students and how they interact together."
• "Excited! It's sort of like Christmas — it's fun to start unwrapping each child's personality and figuring out how to help them learn and grow."
• "Like there are a million ways to be better than I was last year. It's a little overwhelming."
• "Hopeful.
• "Excited and refreshed, yet completely overwhelmed."
• "As nervous as I did as a kid on the first day of school, but ready to fill little brains with knowledge."
• "Both excited and that there is a long road ahead."
• "Enthusiastic."
• "Excited yet nervous, even though I've been doing this for years!"
• "Uncertain."
• "Excited but bummed summer is over!"
• "Ecstatic. The first day is my favorite day of the year as it is ripe with possibilities."
• "Anxious and excited. It's basically the same feeling the kids feel about going back to school. You worry if your kids will like you and if you have prepared enough fun and not too cheesy, ice breaker activities for the first week back. I also always make sure I have new first day of school outfit; I basically feel like it's my first day of school all over again."
• "Excited and overwhelmed with stress."
• "Rested and ready to take on the year."
• "Excited for a brand new school year yet nervous about the upcoming and unknown challenges--kids and parents I've heard stories about; working with a new team of teachers and leaders
• "A little rushed and apprehensive."
• "Anxious about all of the unknowns the upcoming school year will bring, but excited to get to know the students and implement new ideas that the previous year birthed."
• "Nervous and sad to leave my own child at home, but excited to meet my new children at school."
• "Overwhelmed with the amount of preparation that is involved."
• "Anxious yet hopeful."
• "Ready for battle, but in a good way."

Responses have been edited for clarity.

SEE ALSO: Teachers share the 12 biggest misconceptions people have about their job

DON'T MISS: Teachers share 19 things they'd love to tell their students but can't

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New York City is known around the world for its diversity in food, culture, shopping, and recreation. But what truly makes it a standout city are the small businesses that bring its innovative and entrepreneurial spirit to life.

We've scoured the city to spotlight some of the coolest small businesses founded within the last three years.

From a pencil collector's paradise to a hip coworking community space to a chromotherapy spa, here are 25 of New York's coolest new businesses:

DON'T MISS: The 50 coolest new businesses in America

App of Joe

Select locations around Manhattan

What it is: An app for scoring $1 coffee around the city.

Why it's cool: Frequent visits to your local coffee shop for a $2 or $3 coffee can add up — especially if you're ditching the commercial chains for indie spots. The folks behind App of Joe, an iOS and Android app that launched in June, offer a membership-free solution: You can order tea and drip coffee for a flat fee of $1 and "fancy drinks" like a latte, macchiato, or cappuccino for $2 from indie coffee shops — currently about 20 — around Manhattan.

Archestratus

160 Huron St., Greenpoint, Brooklyn

What it is: A combination cafe and bookstore that only sells books about food.

Why it's cool: Inspired by her Sicilian grandparents, Paige Lipari, a former rare-books seller, wanted to open a shop that combined her love of books and food. In fall 2013, she opened Archestratus.

The book selection at Archestratus — named after an ancient Sicilian poet — includes cookbooks as well as fiction and nonfiction books inspired by food. Its cafe offers Sicilian-inspired pastries and dishes like rice balls. Archestratus also holds a number of workshops, cooking classes, and other weekly events.

Common

Williamsburg and Crown Heights, Brooklyn

What it is: A co-living community with full amenities.

Why it's cool: Common opened its first shared living space — dorm-style living for working adults — in Crown Heights last fall and has since opened two more locations in Brooklyn as well as one in San Francisco. In the past year, the company has received over 5,000 applicants looking for a room in one of its community-minded residencies.

Rent commonly runs upward of $1,500, though that includes all fees and utilities. The houses also come fully furnished and fit anywhere from 19 to 50 people.

But it's not just about finding a living space — Common encourages its members to build a strong community and get to know their roommates. Each household has member-led events like potlucks, wellness events, and book clubs.

As any homeowner who has made a big move knows, setting up shop in a new city isn't easy as putting your things in boxes and driving a few hours.

Selling a home often creates a big financial burden since you're at the mercy of the housing market. Plus, the costs of broker fees, real estate taxes, and title insurance can add up to tens of thousands of dollars.

A new service called Restate hopes to help homeowners by connecting them in home exchanges across the US. The startup is building a nationwide housing community where people list their houses and apartments online and swap homes without selling them.

"Long-term home exchanges could be a better alternative to selling or renting out your home, especially if you want to come back in a few years," co-founder Petr Novikov tells Business Insider.

Homeowners can join the community for free, and if they want to move into another home listed on the site, they pay a monthly fee of $99. They can stay there for as little as month or as long as a few years (there's no maximum stay). 

Novikov, who has moved over 15 times in the past four years, launched Restate's beta on September 19. He wouldn't disclose the number of users on Restate so far, but he says there are enough to start making matches.

Signing up for Restate is similar to listing a place on Airbnb. Homeowners fill out an application, which includes information about their home and where they'd like to move. The New York City-based startup then reviews the paperwork — making sure they actually own their home — and then users are free to browse through the available homes.

The site matches multiple people in a chain, since it's unlikely that two homeowners would want to swap homes for the exact same time period. For example, if someone wants to move from San Francisco to NYC, and another person wants to move from NYC to LA, the startup will find someone from LA who wants to move to NYC and do a three-way exchange. If someone's stay is shorter than the other persons', it'll find another person to sublet the home.

The site also automatically recommends homes that are close to the same value, Novikov says. If you move from a Manhattan apartment to a house in Iowa, for example, Restate will pay you a stipend for downgrading to a cheaper home. On the flip side, you can pay to upgrade to a more expensive home.

After the startup confirms the match, members move into their new homes near the beginning of the month. Guests are liable for any damages they make to they places they stay in, Novikov says.

The idea behind Restate makes sense, especially for millennials who feel unsure about diving in and buying a home. As The Atlantic notes, the number of millennials (18 to 34-year-olds) who own a home has dipped to a 30-year low, and for the first time in more than a century, young people are now more likely to live with their parents than with a spouse.

For those who do own or plan to buy a house, joining Restate could mean they don't need to be tied down in one spot. Or at the really least, buying a home might seem a little less daunting with the knowledge that it could be swapped at any time.

SEE ALSO: The house in 'Ex Machina' is actually a stunning hotel in Norway — take a look inside

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Once you've booked a flight, you probably forget about your reservation until it's time to check-in.

Frequent flier and points expert Gilbert Ott — who offers people advice on flying for cheap, and sometimes for free, on the air miles site God Save the Points— thinks you're making a huge mistake by not paying attention to your booking.

"People generally book then they tuck [their itinerary] away, then the day they fly they pull it out again," the 29-year-old told Business Insider. "I say, look out for those emails [from the airline], actually read the things that they send to you, and, if you see anything you can use to your advantage, do it."

Airlines frequently make changes to flights in the lead-up to their departure, from the time and date they take off to the aircraft used for the flight. Passengers who ignore these changes are missing an opportunity to customise their flight schedule for free, and possibly to even get a complimentary seat upgrade, according to Ott.

"People are really bad at what I call 'gardening the reservation,' which is to look for changes that they can use to their advantage," he told Business Insider. "When an airline changes the schedule, which they do very often, you are generally entitled to some leeway."

Ott said there are a couple of ways that travelers "can turn a schedule change into something positive."

For example, if there’s space on another flight, airlines will often allow passengers who say they are inconvenienced by the change to switch to an earlier or later flight for free, he said.

Clever fliers could also get a free upgrade this way, by looking to see if there’s an earlier or later flight with empty seats in business or first class available.

Ott recommends doing this after you’ve booked even if you don’t have a schedule change, to see if there are any vacant seats on your existing flight — though your chances of getting bumped up to the class above will be considerably higher if you have air miles to bargain with.

Travelers often believe they're at the mercy of the airline they are flying with, and while that's true to some extent — after all, they rely on the carrier to transport them from A to B — Ott says that passengers can reclaim some control over their booking when unexpected changes are made.

Even a change of aircraft can be enough to give passengers more pull with an airline.

On a recent trip, Ott said he used a change of aircraft to adapt the destination of his flight connection for free.

"I wanted to fly the [Airbus] A380 so I booked the A380 going both ways then [the airline] change[d] it so they didn’t have the A380," he said.

When he called the airline, Ott complained that the change of aircraft was "unacceptable" and was able to switch his flight connection to go through Munich — on an Airbus A380 — rather than Pisa, the original destination which required flying on a different plane.

"Anybody can do this — you might have to argue a little bit but they’ll give it to you eventually," he said. "Some people say, 'If it’s not Boeing, I’m not going.'"

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When life gets unbearably stressful, most of us opt for a vacation that relieves us of the worries of day-to-day life.

Thomas Thwaites, a UK-based designer, decided to take that a step further and take a break from being a human entirely. He became a goat — or at least he tried to, through some pretty extreme measures.

And now he has an Ig Nobel Award to show for it. The Ig Nobels, not to be confused with the actual Nobel Prizes, are designed to recognize achievements and studiesthat "first make people laugh then make them think." Thwaites won the biology award alongside Charles Foster, who also lived as a number of different animals. 

With the help of a team of researchers and the financial support of London-based biomedical research group Wellcome Trust, Thwaites built himself a suit to achieve goat status and cross the Alps, all of which he chronicled in his book, "GoatMan: How I Took a Holiday from Being a Human."

For Thwaites, the project wasn't just a physical adventure. It was a psychological one, too.

"I started thinking of the project as kind of this investigation into what present-day science and technology could do to help me achieve what I think is this ancient human desire of becoming more like an animal," Thwaites told Business Insider.

Here's what the experiment was like:

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This is Thomas Thwaites. He's a designer. You might know him from his TED Talk about building a toaster from scratch. Last year, he decided that he wanted to take a break from being a human.

Watch that TED talk here.

At first, Thwaites wanted to try being an elephant. Its size, he thought, would make it easier to transition from a two-legged person to a four-legged animal. But he changed his plan after speaking with a shaman who said that he'd connect better to his environment if he chose to become a goat.

Next, Thwaites went about discovering how to be a goat. He spoke to goat behavioral experts to find out how and what goats think. After finding out that activity in several parts of his brain distinguish him from a goat, he met with a neuroscientist at University College London to try and hack a system for temporarily shutting those parts off, particularly the Broca's area, which is related to speech. To Thwaites' dismay, the technology to turn off a person's ability to understand language isn't there yet. So, Thwaites decided to focus on the physical aspects of becoming a goat.

Real estate is a competitive business. In some markets, if you don't jump on a property you like right away, you risk losing it within days — or even hours.

A new study by Realtor.com found the hottest housing markets in country by zip code, measuring the time it takes properties to sell and how frequently homes are viewed. 

Homes in the hottest zip codes go fast, selling in an average of 25 days — a full 53 days faster on average than the rest of the country, according to Realtor.com. These places also have a few crucial similarities: They tout strong job markets and are home to a large population of millennials, one of the largest generations in US history. 

Notably, the top three places — Watauga, Texas; Pleasant Hill, California; and Northglenn, Colorado — are all located along the perimeter of major metro areas: Fort Worth, San Francisco, and Denver, respectively. These peripheral locations allow buyers to purchase relatively affordable homes within expensive metro areas, according to the report. 

Read on to check out the 20 hottest housing markets in America by zip code.

SEE ALSO: The 25 most expensive housing markets in the US

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20. 58103 — Fargo, North Dakota

Population: 118,523

Median household income: $46,311

Median home listing price: $193,000

Job growth in the past year: 2%

Jobs added in the past year: 4,700

19. 49508 — Kentwood, Michigan

Population: 51,357

Median household income: $49,201

Median home listing price: $148,000

Job growth in the past year: 3%

Jobs added in the past year: 8,600

18. 14625 — Rochester, New York

Population: 209,802

Median household income: $30,784

Median home listing price: $203,000

Job growth in the past year: 1%

Jobs added in the past year: 3,600

Once you've booked a flight, you probably forget about your reservation until it's time to check-in.

Frequent flier and points expert Gilbert Ott — who offers people advice on flying for cheap, and sometimes for free, on the air miles site God Save the Points— thinks you're making a huge mistake by not paying attention to your booking.

"People generally book then they tuck [their itinerary] away, then the day they fly they pull it out again," the 29-year-old told Business Insider. "I say, look out for those emails [from the airline], actually read the things that they send to you, and, if you see anything you can use to your advantage, do it."

Airlines frequently make changes to flights in the lead-up to their departure, from the time and date they take off to the aircraft used for the flight. Passengers who ignore these changes are missing an opportunity to customise their flight schedule for free, and possibly to even get a complimentary seat upgrade, according to Ott.

"People are really bad at what I call 'gardening the reservation,' which is to look for changes that they can use to their advantage," he told Business Insider. "When an airline changes the schedule, which they do very often, you are generally entitled to some leeway."

Ott said there are a couple of ways that travelers "can turn a schedule change into something positive."

For example, if there’s space on another flight, airlines will often allow passengers who say they are inconvenienced by the change to switch to an earlier or later flight for free, he said.

Clever fliers could also get a free upgrade this way, by looking to see if there’s an earlier or later flight with empty seats in business or first class available.

Ott recommends doing this after you’ve booked even if you don’t have a schedule change, to see if there are any vacant seats on your existing flight — though your chances of getting bumped up to the class above will be considerably higher if you have air miles to bargain with.

Travelers often believe they're at the mercy of the airline they are flying with, and while that's true to some extent — after all, they rely on the carrier to transport them from A to B — Ott says that passengers can reclaim some control over their booking when unexpected changes are made.

Even a change of aircraft can be enough to give passengers more pull with an airline.

On a recent trip, Ott said he used a change of aircraft to adapt the destination of his flight connection for free.

"I wanted to fly the [Airbus] A380 so I booked the A380 going both ways then [the airline] change[d] it so they didn’t have the A380," he said.

When he called the airline, Ott complained that the change of aircraft was "unacceptable" and was able to switch his flight connection to go through Munich — on an Airbus A380 — rather than Pisa, the original destination which required flying on a different plane.

"Anybody can do this — you might have to argue a little bit but they’ll give it to you eventually," he said. "Some people say, 'If it’s not Boeing, I’m not going.'"

Join the conversation about this story »

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The dangers of regular excessive drinking go way beyond the morning hangover. Those who drink heavily run the risk of damaged brain tissue, an array of liver disease, and a variety of cancers. Keep these risks in mind when asking if you're good for one more.

Produced by Rob Ludacer. Original Reporting by Kevin Loria and Will Wei.

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