Turns out that Positively Cleveland's popular "Flee to the Cleve" Twitter posts are more than good-natured bits of information -- they are award-winning nuggets.

Positively Cleveland, the Convention and Visitors Bureau office for our fair city, recently snagged three RUBY Awards from the Ohio Travel Association. Shorthand for Recognizing Uncommon Brilliance in the Travel and Tourism Industry, the RUBYs recognize outstanding advertising, marketing and public relations efforts.

This year's competition took place during the Ohio Conference on Tourism, with nearly 130 entries submitted by 40 businesses and organizations.

Positively Cleveland won three RUBY Awards for its work in the categories of Website Design, Electronic Media, and Social Networking Campaign.

Check out the complete list of winners here.

Cleveland's progressive stance on urban farming continues to draw positive national attention, proving that even this crisis boasts a silver lining.

In her article titled "Faded glory: Suffering cities take aim at urban blight," MSN Real Estate reporter Melinda Fulmer shines a bright light on Cleveland's attempt to reinvent its future be reimagining its vacant property.

Of the ground-breaking Ohio City Farm she writes: "In years past, this industrial city probably wouldn't have embraced such a back-to-basics business as beets and beans. But after decades of heavy job and population losses -- and a particularly rough ride in the foreclosure crisis -- this six-acre urban farm on a former public housing tract has become symbolic of the many imaginative ways a shrinking city can reinvent itself when heavy industry leaves."

The article quotes OCNW executive director Eric Wobser as saying, "I think urban farms like this one will reposition the way people think about Cleveland. The local food movement has really caught on fire here."

Fulmer credits Cleveland as the first large shrinking city to adopt a master plan that acknowledges its reduced footprint and attempts to redesign a more vibrant and sustainable future around it.

And what's more, that progressive and sustainable policy, including the city's recent ordinance allowing chicks and bees, is precisely the type of efforts that attract new residents. She quotes Neighborhood Progress' Bobbi Reichtell in the following paragraph.

"This encouragement of a greener future — through 56 urban-farming and green-space grants on city-owned vacant property — is catching the eye of younger eco-friendly entrepreneurs, who have big dreams for more sustainable livelihoods in the city. The city has been very progressive. They recognize the scale of the challenge they face."

Dig into the entire story here.

The avant-garde mash-up of two radically different Cleveland legends -- the Happy Dog Saloon and the Cleveland Orchestra -- has been garnering big props, both locally and nationally.

In addition to a widely aired shout-out on NPR's Weekend Edition, the Happy Dog's recent classical music experiments, where chamber music pros take to the very small stage, caught the attention of the New York Times.

In an article titled, "The Key Was B Flat; the Beer Wasn't," the Old Gray Lady praises the Cleveland Orchestra's unconventional method of winning new fans.

"Anyone popping in for a quick beer at the Happy Dog bar in Cleveland on Wednesday night and expecting the usual fare -- polka, country or indie rock -- would have been surprised," the reporter writes.

Read the liner notes here.

To listen to David C. Barnett's NPR piece, click here.

While Jonathon Sawyer and Greenhouse Tavern failed to come away with the top Burger Bash prize at this year's Wine & Food Festival in New York, he did manage to make a meaty impression on Wall Street Journal reporter Charles Passy.

In his post following the well-attended burger bonanza, Passy wrote,

"To us, a great burger can be a creative affair, but it still has to retain its essential burger identity -- namely, 'a big warm bun and a huge hunk of meat,' to quote Jimmy Buffett's "Cheeseburger in Paradise." And that's exactly what the aforementioned lamb burger from chef Jonathon Sawyer of Cleveland's The Greenhouse Tavern accomplished. Lamb is a mighty flavorful meat, so it's hard to top -- literally -- in burger form. But that's why Sawyer's selection of the super-stinky French cheese proved such a smart idea. "If it smells like your foot, you know it works," Sawyer told us.

Read the whole stinky post here.

At a recent gala held at the Toledo Museum of Art, the American Institute of Architects Ohio Convention announced its 2010 AIA Ohio Honor Awards to honor outstanding work in the field. Nearly four dozen Ohio firms submitted twice that amount of design work in hopes of snagging top honors.

Cleveland-based firm Westlake Reed Leskosky was a big winner, securing two out of three available Honor Awards for work both in and out of state. Claiming a Merit award for its design of Gordon Square bus shelters in Detroit Shoreway was Cleveland firm Robert Maschke Architects. Other Cleveland winners include Vocon, Kordalski Architects, and Richard Fleischman + Partners.

See the entire list of winners here.

In last week's issue of Pop City (yes, it's a sister IMG publication), writer Deb Smit reported on our dear publication.

"Fresh Water launches this month with the goods on Cleveland, news as it pertains to innovation, jobs, healthcare, lifestyle, design and arts and culture," she writes." The bubbly, blue homepage comes to life each Thursday with a fresh issue featuring vibrant photography and stories on the people shaking things up and the great places to visit."

Smit even encourages smitten Pittsburghers to subscribe. Thanks, Pop City!

Read all the news that's fit to pop here.

While foodies were busy scarfing down burgers in Brooklyn, judges like David Lynch, Roman Coppola and Morgan Spurlock were in downtown Manhattan picking the winners of the very first Vimeo Awards ceremony at the SVA Visual Arts Theater in Chelsea. Just nine short films were selected out of 6,500 entries submitted from around the globe.

Snagging one of those nine prizes was local artist and Cleveland Institute of Art professor, Kasumi. Her short, "Breakdown the Video," which combines old footage from the 1940s and 1950s, snagged top honors in the Remix category.

Read about the other winners in the New York Times here.

Grab a small popcorn and check out Kasumi's short film here.

Designed by local graphic design studio Rini Uva Lee, and published in partnership with the Cleveland Public Library and Cleveland Public Art, Plain Dealer writer Steven Litt's "Designing a Better Cleveland" is a pocket-sized guide to urban design and how public spaces are created in the city.

"Designing a Better Cleveland" is an outgrowth of a program called Civic Design & Inspired Infrastructure, which was held last year at the Cleveland Public Library through the annual series Spectrum: The Lockwood Thompson Dialogues.

"With so many major civic investments that have the potential to reshape the city's landscape taking place over the next several years, we believe that a book like this provides an easy to read, but still thought-provoking tool for Clevelanders who want to be engaged in these public processes," explains says Greg Peckham, executive director of Cleveland Public Art. "Designing a Better Cleveland is for everyone -- from neighborhood residents and elected officials to corporate leaders, design professionals and civic institutions."

A book release party will take place on Thursday, October 14, at 5:30 pm at Cleveland Public Art, located at 1951 West 26th Street.

Designed to recognize and share creative government initiatives around the country, Bright Ideas recently selected its first crop of notable programs. Created by The Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, the program recognized Neighborhood Progress' Strategic Investment Initiative as a Bright Idea.

This year's crop of Bright Ideas was chosen by a team of expert evaluators made up of academics, practitioners, and former public servants. Selected from a pool of nearly 600 applicants including smaller-scale pilots, 2010 Bright Ideas address a range of pressing issues including poverty reduction, environmental conservation, and emergency management.

"For over 20 years we have been honoring the country's most creative public sector initiatives through our Innovations in American Government Awards Program," said Anthony Saich, director of the Ash Center. "The creation of Bright Ideas was a natural next step to shed light on an even greater number of noteworthy programs and practices across our nation and to encourage practitioners to make these ideas work in their own backyards."

Read all about Bright Ideas here.

In the world of road food, Jane and Michael Stern are widely regarded as the First Couple. Through their decades of work for magazines like Gourmet, radio programs like The Splendid Table, and their own catalogue of food travelogues, the Sterns report on all that is delicious and important.

This month, reporting for Saveur magazine, the Sterns turn their tasteful gaze to Northeast Ohio.

In the article titled "The Best Places to Eat in Northeast Ohio," the hired tasters praise the region's "local traditions and ethnic enclaves," which, they lament, are fading away all too fast elsewhere in the country.

Special attention is bestowed upon Shaker Square's Balaton Restaurant, Parma's Little Polish Diner, and Cleveland's West Side Market, about which the Sterns say, "It's a feat to get out of Cleveland with any appetite at all if you spend time grazing around the city's sprawling, century-old West Side Market."

Read the entire mouthwatering article here.

Described by the Wall Street Journal as the centerpiece of an "ecosystem to encourage innovation and entrepreneurship," Cleveland's JumpStart Inc. is praised for its ability to help early-stage start-ups attract crucial venture funding.

With economic assistance from Ohio's Third Frontier program, JumpStart provides entrepreneurs in the fields of technology, health-care and clean-technology with much-needed financing and professional mentoring.

In the WSJ article, JumpStart Ventures president Rebecca Braun explains the organization's metrics for success. Unlike most conventional VC firms, JumpStart does not invest for financial returns, she says. "Follow-on funding is our key metric that we look at."

Proof of success is in the numbers: Since launching in 2004 JumpStart has invested $16.5 million into nearly 50 companies. Those companies in turn have raised about $120 million in follow-on funding.

Read the entire article here.

Bloomberg Businessweek really, really likes what local medical device whiz kids Rick Arlow and Zach Bloom are up to. First came inclusion for Arlow in the pub's "25 most impressive young entrepreneurs under the age of 25." Next up for the dynamic duo was a slot as dual finalist in "America's Best Young Entrepreneurs."

Arlow and Bloom are recent grads of Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa., and Arlow currently is a medical student at Case Western Reserve University. The pair's medical device company LifeServe Innovations developed a tool that provides emergency medical technicians (EMTs) with a better, faster way to establish emergency airway access than the conventional cut-and-tube method.

The pair's Bloomberg entry reads: "Their device, based on the design of a viper's fang, is intended to open airways via minimally invasive procedures that can be performed in 60 seconds or less, compared to 10 to 15 minutes for a comparably effective surgical procedure."

Read the rest right here.

In a recent "Impulsive Traveler" article in the Washington Post, reporter Maryann Haggerty makes the short seven-hour drive to Cleveland, where she discovers that the city is no longer strangled by its "rust belt."

Using the Ohio City B&B J. Palen House as her home base, she beholds the glory that is Great Lakes Brewing Co., Flying Fig and the West Side Market. "It's huge," she notes, "vastly outsizing Capitol Hill's beloved Eastern Market. It's sparkling clean, putting Baltimore's Lexington Market to shame. And the variety! Pasta, sausage, cheese, pastry, pierogies, tamales, meat, meat, meat."

Other stops on the C-Land Express included the Bruce Springsteen exhibit at the Rock Hall and sloppy Polish Boy sandwiches at Freddie's Southern Style Rib House.

Breaking News: Haggerty enjoyed her visit so much that she rerouted her return trip to include another stop on the North Coast.

Read all the juicy details here.

In this paper by Brookings Think Tank fellows Vey, Austin and Bradley, the Great Lakes region is described as being uniquely suited for growth in the New Economy.

"As the American economy works its way slowly out of the Great Recession, a consensus is developing among public and private-sector stakeholders that simply re-constructing our old economy, one based on highly-leveraged domestic consumption, would be a serious mistake," the report argues. "The nation must instead focus on building the next economy, one that is oriented towards greater exporting, powered by a low-carbon energy strategy, driven by innovation, and that creates opportunities for all. The Great Lakes region... could show the rest of the country the way forward to the next economy."

Citing the following factors, the report finds that the Great Lakes region, particularly its metropolitan areas, has significant resources essential to creating the next economy.

- Michigan, Ohio, and Illinois are among the top states in terms of green tech patenting, focused on new technologies in battery power, hybrid systems, and fuel cells.

- The 21 largest Great Lakes metros are home to 32 major public and private research universities, which attract substantial federal research investment. The region produces approximately 36 percent of America's science and engineering degrees each year.

- The region is rich with community colleges, which help the region's workers develop skills and credentials necessary to secure jobs in the region's industries, and in so doing maintain a pool of skilled employees to attract and support them.

Read the report here.

There's more to feast on in Cleveland than Iron Chef fare, says Pittsburgh Post-Gazette writer China Millman. In fact, there's enough great chow to plan an entire culinary vacation around.

Sip on this, Lakewood. Travel + Leisure tapped your fair city as one of the "Coolest Suburbs Worth a Visit." Nice company, too, as share space with tony Montclair, NJ, beachy La Jolla, CA, and thirst-quenching Golden, CO.

The Associated Press outlines a new collaboration between the Cleveland Clinic and helmet-maker Rawlings to conduct research on concussions and other sports-related head and neck injuries that could include measuring the impact on the brain.

Doctors and scientists from the clinic's Neurological Institute and its Spine Research Laboratory will use equipment manufactured and donated by Rawlings to do research on helmets and other protective accessories used in both baseball and football. They will measure the equipment's ability to minimize impacts and will seek ways to assess the amount of injury to the brain, both initially and over time.

The Cleveland Clinic research team is led by Spine Research Laboratory director Lars Gilbertson, who says "concussion has become a signature injury of sports in this new millennium." The studies will try to determine the effects of single and multiple impacts to the heads of athletes and how to reduce those injuries through protective equipment.

Read the entire article here.

Issue Media Group, publisher of Fresh Water and 17 other regional e-zines, has earned a spot on Inc. magazine's "List of America's Fastest Growing Private Companies" – the Inc. 5000. Thanks to an impressive 3-year sales growth of 170%, IMG clocked in at No. 1672 out of 5000.

"The leaders of the companies on this year's Inc. 5000 have figured out how to grow their businesses during the longest recession since the Great Depression," said Inc. president Bob LaPointe. "The 2010 Inc. 5000 showcases a particularly hardy group of entrepreneurs."

Read the rest of the rankings here.

Cleveland's agreement with United Airlines and Continental to keep at least 90 percent of their Hopkins flights for two years after the merger will help city avoid Cincy's plight, a recent Bloomberg article states.That city's airport lost 140 flights after Delta's purchase of Northwest.

Chuckle all you want at Cleveland's weather, but when the snowballs start flying in Progressive Field, it will be Cleveland families having the last laugh.

MLB.com reports on the Indians' announcement of "Snow Days," which will bring ice skating and snow tubing to the downtown ballpark.

Beginning with "Snowpening Day" on Friday, Nov. 26, and running through the new year, Snow Days will feature a 10-lane snow tubing hill dubbed the Batterhorn, a quarter-mile ice skating track around the outfield, and other family friendly attractions.

"We are uniquely positioned and staffed to put on special events," the article quotes Bob DiBiasio, the club's vice president of public relations. "We decided to take advantage of some silent time during the wintertime."

Read the full article here.