Business Insider is hiring a reporter to work on our growing lifestyle vertical.

This vertical is focused on leisure — how Business Insider's audience of leaders in tech and business should spend their time and money when they're not at work.

The ideal candidate is familiar with the luxury market, and feels comfortable covering a range of topics, from fashion to wine, society parties to motorcycles.

From advising on workwear to rating restaurants, this job offers a unique platform for someone with great taste and strong opinions.

We're looking for the following: 

• Excellent writing skills
• Familiarity with a range of subjects that fall under lifestyle and luxury
• Big ideas and strong opinions about leisure and style
• Demonstrated presence on social media
• Ability to be creative and package stories in a exciting ways, and work at a fast pace
• A journalism background

Apply here with a résumé and cover letter if this sounds like your dream job, and specify why you're interested in working on our lifestyle section. 

This job is full-time and based in our New York City headquarters. Business Insider offers competitive compensation packages complete with benefits. 

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NOW WATCH: This is the best route to take for an epic road trip across the US

On a delayed train journey from Manchester to King's Cross station in London, the characters Harry Potter, Ronald Weasley, and Hermione Granger came "fully formed" to the mind of a young temp named Joanne Rowling.

In the six tumultuous years following, she would imagine an entire magical world of witches and wizards, assume the pen name J.K. Rowling, and publish "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone," the first novel in the now beloved "Harry Potter" series.

Rowling has since become the UK's best-selling living author and one of the wealthiest women in the world, but not before overcoming the hardships of being a single mother living on welfare.

Born in the southwest of England, Rowling grew up along the border of England and Wales with her mother, father, and sister.

On her website she wrote that she had always known she would be a book author. "As soon as I knew what writers were, I wanted to be one. I've got the perfect temperament for a writer; perfectly happy alone in a room, making things up."

She wrote her first book (about a rabbit named Rabbit) at age six, and when her mother praised her work, she says she "stood there and thought, 'Well, get it published then.'"

Rowling's teenage years weren't particularly happy, she told The New Yorker, claiming she came from a difficult family and saying her mother's 10-year battle with multiple sclerosis took a toll on her and the family.

She describes the most traumatizing moment in her life as the day her mother died — it was New Year's Day in 1991 when Rowling was 25. This was six months after she began writing "Harry Potter," and she lamented that her mother never knew she was writing it. The loss of her own mother would eventually lead Rowling to make Harry Potter suffer the death of his parents.

"My books are largely about death," she told the Telegraph in 2006, referencing not only the death of Harry's parents, but also the villain Voldemort's obsession with immortality. "I so understand why Voldemort wants to conquer death. We're all frightened of it."

After her mother's death, Rowling moved to northern Portugal for a fresh start and taught English as a foreign language. She started dating a man named Jorge Arantes, became pregnant, and moved into a small two-bedroom apartment with Arantes' mother.

The couple miscarried, but they married in October 1992. Rowling later gave birth to a daughter, Jessica, in July 1993.

The rocky marriage lasted a mere 13 months, and Rowling and Jessica returned to the UK to live in Edinburgh, Scotland, not long after. She carried three chapters of "Harry Potter" in her suitcase with her.

Living in a cramped apartment with her daughter, jobless and penniless, Rowling fell into a deep depression and admits she even considered suicide. She was forced to rely on state benefits and spent much of her time writing "Harry Potter" in cafés with Jessica sleeping in the pram next to her.

"An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless ... By every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew," Rowling said during a 2008 Harvard University commencement speech.

After receiving "loads" of rejections from book publishers when she first sent out the manuscript, Bloomsbury, a publishing house in London, gave "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" the green light in 1997. She added the "K" to her pen name (for Kathleen, her paternal grandmother) at the publisher's request, since women's names were found to be less appealing to the target audience of young boys.

According to the book "Who the Hell Is Pansy O'Hara?: The Fascinating Stories Behind 50 of the World's Best-Loved Books," three days after the Harry Potter book was published in the UK, Scholastic bid $100,000 for the American publishing rights, an unprecedented amount for a children's book at the time.

Her series of seven books has since sold more than 450 million copies, won innumerable awards, been made into movies, and transformed Rowling's life.

In 2011, Forbes estimated Rowling to be worth about $1 billion, but she has since fallen from the publication's list of the world's billionaires after reportedly giving some of her wealth to charity. She remains on its lists of the most powerful celebrities and the world's top-earning authors.

The very best thing her wealth has given her, she wrote on her website, is the absence of worry. "I have not forgotten what it feels like to worry whether you'll have enough money to pay the bills. Not to have to think about that anymore is the biggest luxury in the world."

SEE ALSO: From dirt poor to a $7 billion fortune — the incredible rags-to-riches story of Ralph Lauren

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NOW WATCH: Richard Branson Describes The Early Moment That Changed His Career Forever

If you're in the mood for French food, you don't have to travel to Paris for an outstanding meal. 

In fact, several French restaurants appeared on our recent list of the best restaurants in America, so we decided to pull out the top ones serving delicious French cuisine. 

We compiled the list of the best restaurants using a combination of five noteworthy lists from food critics, experts, and diners. You can read the full methodology here.

14. Bouley — New York, New York

Chef: David Bouley
Bouley

13. Chez Panisse — Berkeley, California

Chef: Alice Waters
Chez Panisse

12. La Belle Vie — Minneapolis, Minnesota

Chef: Tim McKee
La Belle Vie

A new app has capitalized on recent advances in low-cost sensors and wireless networks to provide top-notch care for seniors while respecting their independence at home. 

Lively tracks activities onto a computer or smartphone to make sure a person's routine follows normal patterns and can alert children or family members to sudden changes that could be dangerous. 

Produced by Jason Gaines. Video courtesy of Associated Press.

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Before coming to the US in 2007, Marie was an accountant living in France.

Today she's living a middle-class American lifestyle in New York City — on only $5,000 a year.

The poverty line in the US is $11,700 a year for a single person.

In a profile published by the Guardian, Marie (who uses only her first name, since her residence in the US is technically illegal) discusses her life in France, living on a traditional income:

I had buried my head in the sand, convincing myself that was life. But that just wasn't what I wanted, counting others' money. I'm still not sure what I want.

Since then, she's cobbled together a life in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, keeping a home and garden for a friend in exchange for a rent-free place to stay. She receives money — it's unclear how much, and she says she doesn't use it — from the home she owns and rents out in France, but otherwise doesn't have a standard salary or source of income. 

The Guardian's Pauline Marie Bock writes:

She lives on cash from baby- and dog-sitting. The $1,000 she recently was paid for painting a house "can go a long way." Her clothes are finds and she travels by bike, even from Crown Heights to Manhattan.

Sometimes she books cheap opera tickets: she saw Don Giovanni at the Met in March. For $15 a month, she's on Greg's family cellphone plan. When she dumpster-dives, she can bring $60 worth of food home in a night. "Marie's the most earth-friendly person I know," said her landlord Greg. "She doesn't own a car, wears only used clothes, fixes broken things. She fills holes in the system and leaves zero footprint."

She is methodical about her dumpster diving. Bock writes:

Three or four times a week in warmer months, Marie bicycles through Park Slope. She knows supermarkets put out trash between 8-9pm. Food Train, at 7th Avenue and 11th Street, is "good for fresh fruits," and Union Market throws away unexpired, sealed Tuscan bean soups, fresh cheese raviolis and raw kale salads every day — they clean the shelves for newer ones, she explains.

Marie's friend Janet Kalish lives a similar lifestyle, subsisting on $10,000 a year. She says that while she used to try and donate some of the food she scavenges, she no longer does so after a homeless woman "screamed at her" after finding out where she got the food. "We receive plenty of criticism — that we take advantage of the society, that we are elitist even," she tells the Guardian. "But we're trying to be sustainable."

In June, Marie will buy a plane ticket home and choose to be deported, barred from returning to the US for 10 years. As of now, she doesn't know what she'll do back in France, "only that she won't stop dumpster diving."

We first saw this story at Jezebel.

SEE ALSO: This Professor Lives In A 6x6-Foot Dumpster, The World's Smallest House

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NOW WATCH: JAMES ALTUCHER: Why investing in a 401(k) is a complete waste of money

Being with someone for a long time changes the way you see the world. It also changes you. Everything from how you act to the way you think shifts in ever-so-slight ways.

And according to Joshua Wolf Shenk, the author of "Powers of Two," these tiny shifts are also the catalyst for a different kind of thought process — a shared mind, so to speak — that allows couples (romantic or not) to come up with more creative solutions to problems than they'd ever think up on their own.

Here are some of the signs psychologists have observed that they say characterize such a shared mind.

1. You and your partner develop your own private language.

Ever get a text from your significant other that means absolutely nothing on its own but carries a certain significance that you can't quite explain? 

This "insider" language is one of the first signs that the two of you are operating in sync, writes Shenk. According to a study from University of Texas professor of communication Robert Hopper, secret communication accomplishes two things: First, it helps deepen your bond — romantic or platonic. Second, it establishes a unique, shared identity. 

Private language can include everything from inside jokes to nicknames, writes Ohio State University psychologist Carol Bruess in a study of romantic couples. Bruess' research suggests a link between how often partners use these private words and how satisfied they are with their relationship. Bruess found that the more often couples used secret words and phrases, the happier they tended to say they were. 

2. You stop self-censoring.

The way most of us speak with strangers, acquaintances and even close friends is markedly different from how we talk when we're alone with our partner.

When we're with others, most of us "self-monitor." That is, we try to please the people around us by adapting our behavior to suit theirs.

But when we're with an inmate partner, we let go of this pattern of behavior and instead "talk fluidly and naturally," Shenk writes. In other words, we stop having to constantly check ourselves before we speak. We're more candid and more open. 

Many of the pairs Shenk talks to in his book have such a relationship. University of California Berkeley psychologist Daniel Kahneman, for example, tells Shenk: "Like most people, I am somewhat cautious about exposing tentative thoughts to others." But after he'd spent a few years working with his research partner, cognitive psychologist Amos Tverksy, "this caution was completely absent."

3. You start to sound alike.

In addition to having their own private vocabulary, long term couples eventually "start to match each other in the basic rhythms and syntactical structures of their speech," writes Shenk.

Part of that is a result of a phenomenon that psychologists call "emotional contagion." Basically, when two people spend enough time together, they begin to match each other's speech patterns. We mimic everything from the other person's accent to the amount and length of pauses he or she puts between words and sentences.

There's some evidence to suggest that these changing speech patterns can even serve as one indicator of how long a couple might stay together.

Part of a 2010 study of language use among couples that looked at couples' text messages, for example, found that when two people "sounded" more alike (in terms of the words and language structure they used in their messages) they were also more likely to still be dating three months later.

4. You start to look alike.

In his influential 1987 study, psychologist Robert Zajonc found that there's a very obvious reason that married couples start to look alike: They use the same muscles so often that, over time, they start to mirror each other. 

This coordination of movement isn't accidental, says Shenk. Instead, it "reflects what psychologists call a 'shared coordinative structure' which includes how we harmonize our gaze, body sway, and the little mannerisms and idiosyncrasies of how we speak.

5. You have a bunch of inside jokes that no one else thinks are funny.

Research suggests that couples are more likely to mirror each other's body language — which in turn makes them look alike — because they're drawing from a wealth of knowledge that only they share. This "insider info" — all of your shared experiences and memories — informs your gestures, posture, and the words and phrases you use with each other. 

A 2007 study, for example, found that people were more likely to copy each other's eye gaze when they'd both heard the same background information before their conversation. 

SEE ALSO: Scientists say one behavior is the 'kiss of death' for a relationship

DON'T MISS: The secret to a healthy, happy marriage is ridiculously simple

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NOW WATCH: The 6 basic elements of a thriving relationship

More than 300 drivers have joined the Classic Car Club, a private, luxury club in New York that offers the chance to drive an amazing stable of more than 40 classic cruisers and modern supercars.

Business Insider spent some time behind the wheel of rides that are used by the likes of Robert Downey, Jr., Tumblr CEO David Karp, and more.

There's no better way to get your driving fix than becoming a member — if you can afford it.

[An earlier version of this story was written by Alex Davies.]

The sign on the front door lays out what the club is all about.

The club has 40 to 45 cars at any given point. They regularly buy and sell vehicles to keep the selection fresh.

When a member comes to pick up a car, it's lined up at the entrance by a staff member.

Admit it: Your dad is Superman. He may be the family handyman, chef, chauffeur, and unofficial bug-killer.

He does a lot for you, so why not tell him how much you appreciate it?

Father's Day falls on June 21st this year, and it's never too early or too late to start planning for dad's special day. Whether he's into beer, golf, traveling, or movies, we've got you covered.

For the golfer: A pair of ball-finding sunglasses

The worst part about golfing is locating a lost ball. Hammacher Schlemmer makes a stylish pair of glasses that use a blue pigment to filter light as it passes through, making white golf balls easier to see against dark backgrounds like shadows and roughage. Dad will thank you for the glasses and for improving his game.

Price: $39.95

For the beer lover: An easy-to-make homebrew kit

The only thing better than enjoying a beer is enjoying a beer that you made. Get started homebrewing with Brooklyn Brew Shop's Beer Making Kit, which contains everything you need to make a gallon of beer. All you need are the bottles.

Kits vary by style, and run the gamut from Everyday IPA to Bruxelles Blonde, Chocolate Maple Porter, Jalapeño Saison, and the limited edition Brewdog Punk IPA.

Price: $40

For the speed demon: A cool and protective motorcycle jacket

You want him to enjoy his favorite hobby — whether that's cars, motorcycles, or dirt bike racing — but you also want him to be safe while doing it. The Milano Sport Gamma motorcycle jacket is padded to protect the wearer, but is also waterproof and comes with a thermal lining for comfort in all kinds of weather.

The reflective stripes will also keep dad visible on the road.

Price:$139.99

Now 23, Hefner's youngest son, Cooper, recounts his childhood spent in what many consider to be a sort of adult fantasyland. For Cooper, it was quite the opposite: a child's wonderland fueled by Indiana Jones-inspired adventures in the Grotto, a zoo full of exotic animals, and epic games of hide-and-seek played in the mansion's private forest of redwood trees.

Cooper shared his experiences growing up inside the mansion, and invited Business Insider along on a private tour of the grounds.

Produced by Graham Flanagan. Additional Camera by Ryan Larkin.

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Are you obsessed with real estate listings, the housing market, and home design trends? Then we may have the perfect job for you.

Business Insider is hiring a real estate editor to cover the global real estate market, with an emphasis on high-end locations and properties.

Coverage areas would include:

• Trends in the global real estate market, with a focus on major US and international cities
• Notable properties coming on and off market (including our House of the Day series)  
• Practical advice for home buyers, sellers, and renters
• The latest trends in home design and construction
• Cool spaces (tiny houses, micro units, green homes, before- and after- renovations)

The ideal candidate has:

• Excellent writing skills
• Familiarity with a broad range of real estate-related subjects
• Demonstrated presence on social media
• Ability to be creative and package stories in a exciting ways
• A journalism background

Apply here with a résumé and cover letter if this sounds like your dream job.

This job is full-time and based in our New York City headquarters. Business Insider offers competitive compensation packages complete with benefits. 

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Take a fly-over tour of the $110 million Hamptons mansion that's at the center of a huge lawsuit

Oaktree Capital chairman Howard Marks has listed his 8-bedroom, 4,536-square-foot Central Park South apartment for $50 million.

It's the second time he's listed the full-floor unit, located at 50 Central Park South and designed by Michael Smith, who also designed the 2010 Oval Office makeover.

Marks, who reportedly paid close to $19 million for the apartment back in 2007, originally listed it in July 2012 and asked for $50 million at that time too.

The luxury condo, dubbed "Versailles in the Sky," has a 92-foot expanse – spanning 5 separate rooms – overlooking the park, according to the listing.

It's one of only 12 large condos located above the Ritz-Carlton, and includes a private residential lobby and an on-site gym and spa.

The apartment is listed with Roberta Golubock at Sotheby's International Reality.

First, here's the floor plan.

The living room has "stucco veneziano" walls and "parquet de Versailles-patterned" German silver floors.

Each room boasts 10-foot ceilings.

Tipping can be confusing and awkward if you don't know how much you should leave. 

Based off data from Condé Nast Traveler‎, Jody Sieradzki of Dadaviz created this great infographic that shows how much you should tip in different countries around the world. The map gives an overview of the standard percentage that is expected at restaurants, so you'll never have to worry about leaving too much or too little again. 

Check it out below. 

SEE ALSO: 13 maps that define America

DON'T FORGET: Follow Business Insider's Lifestyle page on Facebook!

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NOW WATCH: 9 animated maps that will change the way you see the world

A home that has been the most expensive listing in San Francisco for the last seven months has finally sold for $31 million, Curbed SF reports.

The home belongs to chef Roxanne Klein and serial entrepreneur Michael Klein, who founded and sold three telecommunications companies before starting a guitar manufacturer called Modulus Guitars.

The home had previously been listed for $39 million, but the $31 million sale is still the biggest in the city thus far.

The Kleins' mansion may be pricey, but it is very chic. There's beautiful molding, lots of antique fireplaces, and plenty of space situated over five floors. 

The home is located on Broadway, in San Francisco's ritzy Pacific Heights neighborhood.

Enter the home through a door in an ivy-covered wall.

Built in 1910, the home was restored in 2002 and has lots of beautiful, traditional places to sit.

New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer had a very noble, if naive, question in mind for his audit of the MTA's New York City Transportation Authority: Is the agency meeting its goals with subway cleanliness and hygiene?

Put simply: no, it's not.

For the examination, Stringer's office took a look at 33 subway stations over a year-long period. He called the terrible physical appearance of stations "a daily, stomach-turning insult to millions of straphangers ... unworthy of a world-class city."

The report enumerated two big problems with the subway: peeling paint and trash as far as the eye can see.

The reasons Stringer found as to why the stations are so dirty are a bit more complex than it just not being cleaned enough — though that is part of it. Frequent equipment breakdowns and not enough hands on deck are the chief causes.

First, the issue with trash in the system. Trash attracts pests and causes track fires, which can lead to delays. He's why there's so much of it, according to Stringer and his team:

• Cleaning crews are supposed to visit every single station once every three weeks to clean up the garbage lining the tracks. However, that doesn't typically happen. The comptroller's report found that 97% of stations receive fewer cleanings than they're supposed to and 88% of stations received half or fewer than the number of recommended cleanings.
• When the cleaners do visit the station, the report found that the cleaners frequently don't clean the entire track.
• The vacuum trains the MTA uses to suck up trash, which they bought in 1997 and 2000, frequently don't run when they're supposed to because they are broken down so often. One of the trains was out of service for nearly the entire year studied.
• These vacuum trains can only suck up garbage from one-third of the track. In fact, the report found that a recently vacuumed track is nearly indistinguishable from one that hasn't been vacuumed.

• The vacuum trains can't pass over the same section of track more than once without interrupting revenue service, so the most a single portion of track can be cleaned at a time is one-third of it.
• The vacuum trains area always run on their lowest setting for fear of causing track damage. That means they can't pick up large items like cans, cups, bottles, bags, and other larger items.
• Twelve percent of the stations evaluated didn't receive a single vacuuming in the year-long period.

But trash isn't the only problem. The stations also have a large-scale, peeling-paint problem. Back in the 90s, the MTA abandoned the goal of repainting stations every seven years, as it was no longer feasible.

Now, apart from during major renovations, stations are rarely repainted. 

That's a deviation from official MTA policy, which says stations are to be repainted when they're closed for Fastrack overnight maintenance. But because the painting equipment and personnel can often interfere with necessary maintenance projects in tight underground spaces, repainting is often nixed in favor of critical track work.

So stations end up looking like this.

How does the comptroller recommend the situation be improved? There's not a whole lot the MTA can do without a bigger budget or more people assigned to the tackle the dirty work. In the meantime, the agency is planning on purchasing new vacuum trains to replace the unreliable ones and sorting out its problems with manual track trash cleanup.

SEE ALSO: 11 of the world's best subway systems

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NOW WATCH: Hilarious Video Shows What To Do And What Not To Do On The NYC Subway

Buying a suit can be painful, as any man who's ever searched for something to wear to a new job or wedding can attest.

There's nothing like wasting a perfectly good Saturday running in and out of dressing rooms in search of a suit that looks great, fits the unique proportions of your body, and costs less than a two-week vacation.

If you avoid the stores and shop for a suit online, it can be even worse: You'll find questionable quality and style, and then you'll have to spend time going to the tailor for alterations.

"A suit is what men wear when they need to look their very best, but a suit that fits well is nearly impossible to find,” says Matthew Mueller, cofounder of menswear company Knot Standard. “For something as personal as a great suit, you shouldn’t be forced to buy it from a warehouse."

Almost every other consumer vertical has moved to mass customization, but the lagging fashion industry operates on essentially the same model it has for the past 100 years. You can build your own laptop, customize your car’s color and interior, or design your own running shoes. But instead of personalizing our clothing, most of us buy more than we can keep and send back what doesn't fit. With the fashion ecommerce market expected to grow to $73 billion by 2016, it's staggering that one-third of all online clothes purchases are returned.

For many professionals, this process makes it difficult to get the high-quality clothing they need to look and feel their best. But that's finally changing. Thanks to advances in technology and manufacturing, you can have a luxury suit custom-made to your specifications, quickly and from scratch — for the same price as a garment made in a standard size.

Custom suits and free stylists

Enter Knot Standard, a New York-based luxury menswear retailer that's pioneering these technological breakthroughs. The entire process of measuring and designing a new suit takes just minutes with the help of one of their online stylists. After that first appointment, Knot Standard imports your fabric, digitally cuts and assembles your suit, and delivers it to you a few weeks later.

Founded in 2010, the company allows any online customer to upload his existing wardrobe, measurements, and personal preferences to create a unique pattern for himself. With all of that data, Knot Standard can make a perfect-fitting pair of pants, shirt, or full suit at a moment’s notice. Customers can toggle between Knot Standard’s design settings to create a unique digital pattern that's automatically cut out from high-end fabric by an army of laser cutters.

For those unsure of what will look best on them or what their measurements are, Knot Standard offers free 60-minute consultations with a personal stylist at its six brick-and-mortar showrooms. The showrooms, which offer an even wider scope of premium fabric options, can be found in cities like New York (its flagship), Dubai, Dallas, Austin, Houston, Washington, DC, and soon Chicago.

With every piece of clothing created just for them, it's no wonder customers return just 2.3% of Knot Standard’s products. “We have become a brand where every customer knows that our products will fit them well," says cofounder John Ballay. "They are always asking us to expand into the rest of their closet with custom polos, casual shirts, and even sweaters — all of which we are starting to offer."

Since 2010, the custom-menswear market has doubled in the US, indicating a growing desire among men to own clothes designed and fitted for them, rather than for a mannequin. And it makes sense. By all indications, this streamlined, unobtrusive shopping process is the future of online fashion retailing.

Learn more about how to develop your personal style. 

This post is sponsored by Knot Standard.

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Getting a helicopter can be a pain. You call an operator, get the tail number, then have to email or call the operator back and forth until you get ushered on your flight. Often, you'd be better off driving. And chopper services certainly don't work like Uber, picking you up at convenient locations whenever you want.

Two years ago, Warner Music COO Rob Wiesenthal set out to change that. He had been at Sony Entertainment for 13 years when he got the idea to bring a mobile app like Uber's to the chopper industry. He partnered with Steve Martocci, the cofounder of the Skype-owned GroupMe and the music service Splice, to launch Blade last Memorial Day weekend. Like Uber, Blade is an operator and logistics manager; it doesn't own any aircraft. Instead, Martocci and Wiesenthal partnered with Liberty Helicopter and offered flights for New Yorkers to and from the Hamptons. Uber even partnered with Blade for a Fourth of July weekend promotion.

Blade was an instant hit among the 1% last summer; it powered 800 trips to the Hamptons in just 16 weeks.

"Blade was launched with $50,000 and it was immediately profitable," a Blade representative tells Business Insider.

The app has since been downloaded more than 20,000 times. Bookers can either select a future flight that has already been scheduled (it's $575 per seat one way to the Hamptons or Fire Island from New York City) or create a flight for anytime they want. But those who book a whole new flight must pay to fill the entire aircraft up front. Blade will then try to fill extra seats with other Blade members who will offset the cost. A trip to the Hamptons, which normally takes a few hours, takes just under 45 minutes with Blade.

After its success last summer, Blade set out to launch new services and destinations, and it has raised $6 million at a $25 million valuation from some big names in business. Investors include Google chairman Eric Schmidt, Discover Communications CEO David Zaslav, IAC's Barry Diller, Alex von Furstenberg, Raine Ventures, and iHeart Media chairman Bob Pittman. Both Pittman and Schmidt have licenses to fly helicopters and jets.

Blade's service now extends beyond the Hamptons and Mohegan Sun. Its members can fly to Fire Island via a new seaplane service, Blade Aqua. Melissa Tomkiel, who was president of Fly the Whale — an aviation company Aqua partners with — is Aqua's new CEO. Wiesenthal and Martocci are advisers.

Users can also book flights for about $650 a seat to Martha's Vineyard or Cape Cod from Manhattan.

And, if you have a flight taking off from or landing at any New York City airport, Blade's Bounce service can get you from your jet to the city in just five minutes. Blade Bounce will pick you up at JFK, Newark, Teterboro, Westchester, or LaGuardia and have the chopper waiting to bring you home within 20 minutes of booking for $800 to $900.

The price point may sound steep considering you can take a cab from the airport into New York City for just $50. But for Blade's affluent audience (the company advertises about 17 times a day on CNBC's local network, aiming its services as business executives), it could be considered a small price for convenience.

"For $895 we position it so the helicopter can land 40 feet from your jet," a Blade representative says. "It's a 45-min drive to JFK. If you're spending $100,000 on a jet, the extra $895 really isn't going to count."

Blade also prides itself on its luxury lounges and amenities onboard the choppers. It has lounges in Manhattan on West 30th Street, East 34th Street, and 23rd Street. It offers passengers rosé in sippy cups, and the company says customers will arrive early just to hang out in the boarding area. But Blade insists that just because customers are wealthy, that doesn't mean they're arrogant jerks.

"These people aren't assholes saying, 'I'm some banker flying above traffic and screw you,'" Blade says. "They're people who view it as a fun luxury to them. Seventy percent of people had never flown in a chopper before. We're making it really easy to do, and it's completely done from your app."

Blade says it is much different from BlackJet or Surf Air, which allows customers to fly as much as they want locally for a set monthly fee. Instead, Blade wants to own all flights for distances under 200 miles.

"Unlike things that have failed like BlackJet, you really don't want to have a swinging bathroom door hitting you; that's a little too intimate," Blade tells Business Insider. "The alternative is, 'Let's just fly first class and no one bothers me.' Blade can take a 3-1/2-hour trip and make it 30 minutes, and that could be worth $575 to somebody."

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NOW WATCH: Here's Richard Branson's Vision For The Future Of Virgin Galactic

Paul Allen's annual yacht party continues to be one of the most sought-after invitations of the Cannes International Film Festival.

Monday night, the Microsoft cofounder invited scores of movie stars, musicians, and supermodels aboard his 414-foot yacht, "Octopus," for a Bollywood-themed bash.

Actors John C. Reilly, Jessica Lowndes, and Kelly Rutherford, as well as models Karlie Kloss and Melissa Bolona were all in attendance. 

Here's what you missed if your invitation got lost in the mail.

A massive elephant sculpture signaled the entrance to the party.

As guests arrived to the yacht by tender, purple lighting set the mood.

There were lots of Bollywood decorations set up on the deck.

It made for a dramatic scene.

There was even a performance by Bollywood dancers.

Not to be outdone, Allen himself got up to play some songs on his electric guitar.

Some guests donned henna tattoos.

Others got the full tour of the yacht, including the submarine a crew used to discover a sunken World War II battleship in March. 

Here's what it looks like inside that submersible. 

And here's what one of the helicopter landing pads looks like — the yacht has two.

It seems like a good time was had by all.

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Whether you're looking for a small apartment or an entire island, vacation rentals are a great alternative to staying in hotels when traveling.

But with so many places to book a rental, it can be tough knowing where to look.

To make things easier, we've put together a list of some of the top vacation rental websites and broken down what you'll find in each one.

Airbnb

HomeAway.com

For a traditional private vacation home, head to HomeAway.com, where you’ll find close to a million listings internationally. A large majority of the listings are in the United States and in Europe, particularly in France and Spain.

Listings include everything from top tourist spots like Paris to more secluded destinations like Vicenza, Italy.

You can filter your search results by price range, date, or any amenities you’d like such as a pool or pet-friendly choices.

You can also save properties you like and post reviews to rate the accuracy of listings on a five-star scale. 

KidandCoe.com

This website caters to travelers with children, offering around 500 global listings that describe how many rooms there are that are suited for kids and whether the accommodation has items like toys, cribs, or strollers.

The website was created by mothers and fathers who have gone through the difficulty of traveling with children. So, every listing is hand-picked and reviewed by the staff to ensure it's a great choice for children. 

Amenities also typically include highchairs, nurseries, and even babysitter recommendations in the area. 

The one drawback is that their listings are quite limited, so you won’t always find a wide selection to choose from. 

OneFineStay

This website provides upscale home rentals across Paris, London, New York, and Los Angeles. Each home includes complimentary Wi-Fi, an iPhone for data and local calls, a welcome by a staff member to the home when you arrive, toiletries, towels, linens, cleaning service, and a 24/7 phone support in case of any emergencies. A staff member will also provide recommendations on local activities.

Each home is hand-selected and reviewed by members of the staff, and listings state what amenities you'll find in the property, whether children and pets are allowed, what you'll find in the local neighborhood, and homes that are similar to your current listing. 

The website also includes helpful tabs like its "Last Minute London" section where you can find homes that are available for short-notice, or their weekly picks for New York properties. 

SEE ALSO: 8 specialty websites that let you book a luxury hotel room for cheap

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Consisting simply of a surface and legs, the table is one piece of furniture that has remained largely the same for thousands of years.

But now, a French design duo has come up with a way to turn the humble table into a means of climate control that doesn't use any electricity.

Paris-based industrial designer Jean-Sébastien Lagrange teamed up with French engineer Raphaël Ménard to create the Zero Energy Furniture table, also known as the ZEF Climatic Table.

The ZEF table looks like any other with a sleek design of a solid plank oak top and angled legs — but it could hold the secret to cutting energy costs by as much as 60%.

“We wanted to see if it was possible to address climate and energy issues on a furniture scale,” Lagrange told WIRED. 

Beneath the oak table are a series of phase-changing materials (PCMs) placed between the wood and anodized aluminum bottom. The materials soften when the surrounding room reaches around 71 degrees, absorbing the excess heat, and then harden once the temperature dips back below 71 degrees, releasing the trapped heat with the help of the aluminum and causing a noticeable change in the room’s temperature.

That means the table is essentially working like a “thermal sponge,” as Lagrange and Ménard put it, sucking up excess heat and then releasing it once the room becomes cool enough.

According to the inventors, the table has the potential to reduce heating needs by as much as 60% and cooling demands by as much as 30%, which could save a lot of money as well as energy.

It’s a feat of engineering that makes the most sense in homes that don't have climate control.

In climates where the temperature can drastically swing from hot to cold in short spans of time, the ZEF Climatic Table is most useful. For example, if a room heats up on a sunny day and then the temperature drops at night, the ZEF table would make the climate in that room more consistent.

The ZEF table works best in rooms that undergo significant temperature changes frequently. 

It would also be best in parts of the world where air conditioning is either undesirable — like in parts of Europe where it’s thought to cause illnesses— or unattainable. If your thermostat or air conditioning unit is constantly turned on, it would be fighting the ZEF table and using more energy instead of less.

Lagrange and Ménard are planning more Zero Energy Furniture in the future, and told WIRED that they are looking into home goods as well as lighting designs in their next project. 

Find out more about the ZEF table here.

SEE ALSO: An Austrian artist has completely reinvented the door

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Graduating from high school is one of life's great milestones.

So why not show the new grad in your life how proud you are of them with a gift that tells them so? We rounded up the best gifts for this momentous occasion.

After four years of hard work (we hope), they deserve it.

Give them a place to keep their cards.

The Kate Spade Cedar Street Marietta card case is perfect for any kind of card, whether that's business, credit, or student ID. It's slim and doesn't take up a lot of space, meaning it's perfect for when your grad goes out and doesn't want to be bogged down.

Price:$68

A good, classic watch never goes out of style.

A decent watch is the classic graduation gift, and the Helvetica No1 Light by Mondaine is a perfect just-starting-out watch for the recent high school graduate. Sleek and stylish, the Swiss-made watch comes in a variety of unisex designs and is water-resistant up to 30 meters.

Price:$395

Help them make a good impression with professional, personalized note cards.

Even in the age of technology, there's no replacement for a good, old-fashioned hand-written note. Give your grad a great way to make a mark with a personalized set of note cards from Crane. The styles range from funky and fun to simple and professional.

It's also a great way to ensure you get a thank-you note for the gift!

Price:Varies by style