Tabloid Edition

Auto Insurance

OK, so we all know that we need to have auto insurance, yes? It's not so much that you want to make sure that you've got your own car covered if you have a crash: it's so that everybody elses' cars and bodies are covered if you have a crash. A few thousand dollars to repair your won car if you didn't have insurance would be a hassle, for sure, but having to pay millions to somone you injured would be impossible without insurance.

OK, well, now that we agree that you've got to have it, how do you find the best deal? Rather than schlpeeing around loads of different websites, the easiest way is to go here and look at car insurance quotes. They're free, there's no obligation to take one or another of them, but it does give you an excellent idea of what is available on the market out there.

One other thing about the site. If you're not sure about the various different types of insurance on offer (like, say, 100-300 auto insurance) then there's an interesting series of articles which will explain it all to you.

Local.com

Now this is an interesting variation upon search. Instead of going for the Google approach, garnering every possible mention of something from around the world, why not try  something in local search? After all, there are indeed times when we're looking for every last piece of information (say, looking up the uses of some metal in my case) from around the globe but it's a little different if we're looking for a good local steak restaurant.

At that point we want to have search results which are geographically restricted. You know, which are the local restaurants, rather than a list of all steak houses in the world.

Luckily we've now got that, sort of a local yellowpages. Add together Yelp.com, Citysearch.com, Yellowpages.com and Superages.com, all avaliable through just one portal, and that's just what you'll get by clicking through any of the links.

Or as my favourite British imported TV program would have it, local searches for local people.

Alzheimer's Association Memory Walk

This is something you really might want to sign up for. The Alzheimer's Memory Walk is a great way of both working with your community and of raising money to help to defeat Alzheimer's. The basic idea is very simple, in over 600 communities across American in the fall there are 2 and 3 mile walks. Walkers work together to both raise the knowledge about this terrible disease and also to raise money to help defeat it.

One of the major ways that you can help is by agreeing to become a team captain. This means that you will help organise other walkers: if you've got any organisational skills this will be both a fun and extremely useful way to help deal with the problem of Alzheimer's....something that afflicts a staggeringly large number of us in our Golden Years.

Go on, help to move a nation.

$ 8 Glasses

There's no such thing as coincidence, correct? Everything happens for a reason? Or is sychronicity the way to explain it?

Yesterday I went online and bought a series of prescription glasses from this company. I bought a number of pairs, for both my wife and me.

Umm, why? Well, because at $8 a pair for eyeglasses there's really no reason not to. Yes, really, $8 a pair for proper prescription glasses. OK, I also added a couple of pairs with tints (an extra $4.95) and so on, but really, at these sorts of prices it seems ridiculus not to just get a handful of pairs and see which you like the most.

Now the synchronicity part: the company seems to be being covered in the news, see this piece on them. Looks good for them that the word is getting out because the way they get these incredibly low prices is that they hardly have an advertising budget and they only deal direct.

I'm going to have to spread the word a little too: there's friends of mine around here who pay $300 and more for their glasses (complicated prescriptions and so on) and they simply cannot affford to have more than one pair. What happens when they break?

I took the prescription of one such friend (really, blind as a bat and needing bifocals) and checked up on the price for them. $30 tops, to get what in a store down the road would cost her $300.

It just doesn't make any sense not to buy at least a spare pair at those prices, does it?

Although, be warned....you can get carried away. I've umm, spent $140 yesterday saving money!

This is what one of the pairs I bought looks like.

No, OK, that's not going to get Sienna Miller mooning over me but for $8 all told, frames and lenses? Who cares about blond actresses anyway?

Looking at ShopWiki

One of the great things about the internet and the web is the way in which we can now all go shopping without actually having to tramp around the stores. However, that in itself has its own problems: how, out of the billions of pages of the web, do we find the places which actually sell what we want? Further, how to we find the places that give us a good (or the best!) deal on what we do want?

Well, there's a number of comparison engines out there but most of them suffer from a certain problem. The people they recommend are the people who have paid them to recommend them....that's not quite the same thing as pointing to the people who are offering the very best bargain now, is it?

And then there's ShopWiki: they operate with a series of spiders and bots (very much like Google) going out over the web to see what everyone has to offer. They then present the results in an easily understandable form: so you do get to see who has the best deals.

The information is also easily sorted through: for example, here's their babies and toddlers section. Drilling down from that we get the car seats buying guide, or the health and hygeine buying guide, or the babyproofing and home safety buying guide.....and then underneath those you get to the actual product selections.

Guides to what you need to know plus the widest possible product selection.

Pretty good, hunh?

Great Father's Day Contest

Well now, lookee here, what do we have? Would you believe a competition for you to win, for your father, the largest HDTV possible? I think you should in fact believe such a thing for that is exactly what it is.

However, there's a couple of little special requirements here. Firstly, your father must in fact live in an area covered by Charter's services. Yes, that is necessary for you to enter the Father's Day in HD contest.

OK, opnce you've worked out whether you meet that condition then all you have to do is go here and do the two things they ask of you. The first is to give your emaill address and that of your father and a little more personal information. Right, once you done that you need to tell them in a short essay why it should be your father who gets the HDTV. And that's pretty much it! Not a bad way of sroting out that Father's Day gift now, is it?

If you want the full rules and regulations you can find them here.

Of course, the lucky father who gets the TV will also receive free Charter HD service and the Charter bundle for life. And there's also runner up prizes, like free Charter HD service for a year as well.

Not bad, when you think about it, eh?

Business Printing

It's important if you're in business to make sure that you give people the right impression. And don't just think that this applies only in one way, that you have to make everyone think you're hugely successful. There are businesses where you'd really rather people think you weren't all that successful...scrap metal is one that comes to mind. As people are selling to you if you've got too fine a car or too grand an office they'll think that the prices you're offering are too low: your great profits are what allow such luxuries.

But for most of us we are indeed selling to other people and that's when you do need to put your best face forward. And one of the simplest ways of doing this is to make sure that your business printing is only the very best. A few dollars spent on good note cards and other business stationery is a very wise investment indeed. It's a cheap and simple way of showing that you are indeed serious, together and organised.

With that in mind why not check out Vistaprint? They can handle all of your printing needs, from those note cards throuogh business checks to notepaer, letter stationery and all the rest. Great prices and good service are of course on offer as well.

Getting Police Gear

Want to know where you can get all of your police gear from? Are you looking for the finest products, deliberately and specifically made and designed for the men in blue?

Excellent, then there's good news for you. Everything from a tactical belt to a baseball cap, via stab vests and t-shirts is available to you simply by clicking through that link.

If it's police gear you're looking for, that's the place to find it.

Shopping Comparisons

I love this new technology stuff, I really do. In the old days (back when I bought my first house) the process of furnishing it was horrible. Schlepping around as many furniture stores as one could find: and there wasn't really any way of knowing whether you'd been to them all.

It's also true that a bricks and mortar store can't hold even a fraction of all of the different styles and types of furniture available: which is another pain.

Now of course with hte online stores it's easier in one sense: you can sit aat home and do the browsing. Plus, of course, virtual stores can hold unlimited stocks. However, you've still then got the problem of working out how to find each store and then to compare the various different offers and prices.

This is where Shopping.com comes in: their price comparison engine can tell you who is selling what furniture for how much, making sure that you don't miss any of the deals available out there.

Click through any of those links to see what they can do for you.

Travel Necessities

One of those things which is really rather necessary when travelling is getting the car rental sorted out. Yes, it's easy enough to fly into just about anywhere, but unless it's Manhattan you're going to a car is really a vital necessity.

So, of all the different options for you to rent a car, which one should  you take? Well, there seem to be a number of good reasons why you might want to use Advantage (click through either link for more details).

Perhaps the most obvious is that the prices seem to be very good indeed. The latest SUVs can be had for as little as $34.99 a day, while regular compacts can cost as little as $19.99 a day in selected markets.

But more than that, we all know that driving is one of the major contributors to climate change, and Advantage is the first of the major car rental companies to commit itself to being 100% green. So you'll be able to dirve with a clear conscience, something that adds greatly to the value, don't you think?