Flea Market

The term "flea market" originated in the open-air "le marche aux puces of Paris". The word 'flea' got assiciated with such markets possibly from the merchants who had to "flee" the gentrification of the Emperor Napoleon III. Some also say that the word came from those old furnitures infested with the bloodsucking pests that were sold in such markets.

Open-air markets always had a presence in American life. Those enormous tent-city flea markets of today have simply taken shape out of the city vendors and crossroad stands that filled up a broad spectrum of our lives. In addition to providing a livelihood for new immigrants and others on the lower economic groups, flea markets served as a low-overhead incubator for new micro-enterprises. Starbucks Coffee Corp. began as a vendor in Seattle's Pike Place Market. The Cabbage Patch dolls were born in Southern craft fairs.

According to the National Flea Market Association, America has more than 5,000 flea markets (also called swap meets, farmer's markets and public markets) that employ more than 80,000 workers. The association estimates that more than 500,000 vendors sell in excess of $5 billion annually at flea markets. The association classifies flea markets into 3 categories: large (5,000 to 10,000 vendors) medium (500 to 5,000) and small (fewer than 500). The Association is having its 9th Annual convention in Las Vegas from September 26th to 28th.

The nation's largest flea market is an annual affair called the Highway 127 Corridor. It happens in August along a 450 miles long way starting from Covington, KY, and goes all the way through Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama.

The Association has a useful flea market finder that you can use to find one in your neighborhood.

Plan Your Wedding

With wedding ceremonies of celebrities like Nicole Kidman hitting the headline, are you also feeling like stepping into a married life this summer? Well, you certainly need to do some planning before you decide to do so.

Love is blind but wedding can not be arranged having your eyes blindfolded. Planning a wedding, like creating a loving and trustworthy relationship, takes time. Selecting a location and having the prudence of reserving that a year in advance, arranging bands, caterers, photographers, rooms, flowers, dresses and the multitude of other things -- Oh God, it takes time.

That's the reason many couples nowadays are knocking the doors of wedding coordinators. A decade ago, hiring a wedding coordinator was a luxury that could be afforded by only the wealthy. These days, there are a variety of coordinators, charging either a flat fee, a percentage of the total cost of the wedding or by the hour. According to the "American Weddings" study conducted by The Fairchild Bridal Group, the current average cost of a wedding is $26,327. It's possible to hire a coordinator within that level of budget to have your ceremony well-managed. A wedding coordinator is almost like a financial planner. A professional coordinator can save you money by securing discounted rates that you couldn't have gotten on your own. They also take the hassle of checking and hiring people who are really professional and are not just claiming to be so.

You'll be surprised to know that the Association of Bridal Consultants has almost 4,000 members in 26 countries. You must hire a coordinator who lives in your city simply because that person has contacts with local vendors. You can get a list of wedding coordinators in your area by visiting BridalAssn.com .

Caution: MySpace

Coming under a storm of complaints and protests from parents, MySpace, the popular social networking website, announced today new restrictions on how adults may contact its younger users. The site already prohibits kids 13 and under from setting up accounts and displays only partial profiles for those registered as 14 or 15 years old unless the person viewing the profile is already on the teen's list of friends. Under the changes, expected to take effect next week, MySpace users who are 18 or over could no longer request to be on a 14- or 15-year-old's friends' list unless they already know either the youth's e-mail address or full name.

Kids in schools are spending more and more time in internet. With growing number of kids on the internet, it's more important than ever to make sure that our kids are safe online. Even though sites like MySpace could bring forth some positive attributes, including development of communications skills and enhancing self-esteem, these may expose your child's private information to the widely open internet and your kid may not even know the danger of that.

You may find out if your child has a membership to MySpace with a profile and a blog. If so, take a few minutes to do the following:
(i) Make sure that they have not posted their real name, school name, contact information, photo of themselves (especially sexually suggestive photos) or any other information which someone could use to find them. Check if they are lying about their age pretending to be adult.
(ii) Remind your child why it's important not to post sensitive or private information about themselves and have them edit their profile.
(iii) Establish rules against emailing and contacting strangers.
(iv) MySpace allows members to link to each other's sites. Check up these linked sites too, if your child has any. Check if those sites have any private information of your child.
(v) Continue to monitor your child's site regularly. This is not a violation of privacy. This is a safeguarding measure to protect your child from someone trying to exploit his/her innocence.

Rising Healthcare Costs

According to a Kaiser Family Foundation survey, premiums for employer -provided health insurance in the U.S. rose 9.2% in 2005. This is after 4 successive years of double-digit increases but this slower rate is certainly not a good news. Even this slower rate of increase still has health insurance premiums rising more than twice as fast as overall inflation (3.5%), and more than three times faster than workers' wages (2.7%). Since 2000, premiums for coverage for a family have increased by 73%, compared with inflation growth of 14% and wage growth of 15%.

In dollar terms, average annual premiums for employer-sponsored coverage rose to $4,024 for single coverage and $10,880 for family coverage, according to the report. The family coverage of about $11000 is about equal to the full-time earnings of a minimum-wage worker. That is why more companies that offer health benefits are offering high- deductible plans (defined as $1,000 deductible for single coverage, $2,000 for family coverage).

In 2005, 20% of firms offered such plans, up from 10% last year and 5% the year before. About 56% of workers with coverage are in a health plan that requires that a deductible be met. In PPOs (preferred provider organizations), the average deductible for in-network services is $323 for single coverage and $679 for family coverage. Enrollment in PPOs grew over the last year while HMO (health maintenance organization) enrollment declined. PPOS enrolled 61% of employees with health coverage, up from 55% in 2004 and remain the most common type of plan. In 2005, one-third of firms with 200 or more workers are offering retiree coverage, about the same as last year but down from 66% in 1988.

Free Directory Assistance

When you dial 411 for directory assistance, you need to pay an average of $1.25 per call. That is what prompted the creation of a news crop of 800 services offering free directory assistance. Here are 3 of those: 1-800-411-SAVE launched this month and 1-800-FREE-411 and 1-800-411-METRO which were rolled out last fall.

If you call these numbers, you will find the same service as 411, but instead of you paying for it, the cost is covered by businesses who have offers you may be interested in. You first have to listen to a commercial for up to 15 seconds. So, it's like Google or Yahoo offering you advertisements depending on the business phone number that you are trying to find out. If you are interested in an offer, they will connect you free of charge. If not you'll just receive the information you've asked for.

Computer Security Alert!

Windows and Word:
Yesterday Microsoft released 12 individual security patches addressing several critical problems in Windows along with other less serious issues. The "critical" designation remains the highest maximum severity rating for Windows bulletins issued by Microsoft. The software maker also distributed a fix for the so-called zero-day flaw present in Microsoft Word and a critical glitch in Internet Explorer that relates to the manner in which the Web browser handles ActiveX controls. The vulnerability in Word has already been exploited in targeted attacks launched from China and Taiwan. So, get your updates now and install as soon as possible.

Yahoo Mail:
A new worm, dubbed the "Yamanner worm" has exploited a Javascript vulnerability in Yahoo! Mail. According to a statement from Yahoo a very small fraction of its base of over 200 million accounts (which ranks as the world's highest) is infected by the worm. While security firms such as Trend Micro and McAfee rated the virus as having a low threat level, Symantec called it an "elevated threat". According to Symantec the Yamanner worm targets all versions of Yahoo email accounts except the latest beta version and users might be able to protect themselves by upgrading to the latest test version of Yahoo! Mail. Yesterday, in another statement, Yahoo Inc. said it could contain the malicious program and no further threat exists for the time being.

Online Storage of Data

Web-based storage option is certainly getting popular day by day. You may need it if you have too much of data to handle in your business. There are several service providers for that and this list includes big names too.

Amazon introduced its newest service, Amazon S3, several weeks ago. Internet users can store gigabytes of data here on the cheap -- $0.15 per gigabyte of storage used per month, plus $0.20 per gigabyte of data transferred.

Other online storage providers charge higher: New providers like Box.net ($1 per GB per month) and XDrive ($2 per GB per month) and older providers like Novastor ($12.95 per GB per month) and Quicken Online Backup ($24.95 per month for up to 10 GB).

One important point about S3: While anyone can use S3, Amazon built it mainly for Web developers -- which means there's no simple interface for uploading data to the service. In fact, there's no Web-based interface at all.

So, there appears a new breed of third-party service-providers who are offering easy access to S3 for a small (or non-existent) fee. Most of these services use a downloadable client program that runs on your local PC. This software can often be programmed to begin backups at specified times, and to compress and encrypt data for upload. Here are a few of them:
Altexa -- $1 per GB per month up to 10 GB, if you pay for 12 months' service up front.
ElephantDrive -- Free during the company's beta-testing period.
Filicio.us -- Free, but you must sign up for an Amazon S3 account and pay the usual $0.15 per GB for storage and $0.20 per GB for transfers.
Jungle Disk -- Free aside from Amazon S3's charges, as with Filicio.us.

Rumor is that Google -- which practically invented low-cost online storage in April, 2004, with its free 1-GB Gmail accounts (now 2GB or more) -- may roll out its long-rumored "GDrive" service. Also, Microsoft may offer a low-cost backup storage service as an optional part of Vista (the new upcoming operating system).

Earthquake

Earthquakes cannot be predicted with any degree of precision and are most frequent in the West. While a few deadly ones have been recorded in the eastern and central parts of the country, there have been no major ones there since the 1800s. It is widely considered a matter of time before another major quake hits the seismically active West, home to considerable volcanic activity and geologic fault lines. The country's most severe quake in modern times had a magnitude of 9.2 in Alaska in 1964. One believed to be almost as large hit the Pacific Northwest coast in 1700, permanently changing the coastline.

Earthquake insurance costs vary widely by region and amount of the deductible. Aside from quake-prone California, the Insurance Information Institute lists Seattle, Portland, Ore., New York City and Salt Lake City as among cities with high loss potential. The costliest loss from earthquake was the 1994 Northridge quake in California, which caused an estimated $20 billion in damage, $12.5 billion of it insured.

On last Friday Allstate Insurance announced it would drop covering earthquake insurance to most of its 407,000 quake customers nationwide as a part of a larger move to reduce exposure to catastrophic losses. The company has not written new earthquake insurance since March 6 and announced Friday that existing earthquake policies will not be renewed. According to the company four states (Kentucky, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Florida) require it by law to offer earthquake coverage, but the company is in various stages of talks with regulators there.
The company has also declined storm renewals in some parts of Florida and New York and has taken a hard look at coastal coverage from Texas to Florida beginning with Hurricane Andrew in 1995.

No other major companies have yet expressed any plan to take similar action. In California, the most earthquake-prone state, the coverage is not affected by the Allstate decision. It is covered by the California Earthquake Authority, which has about 750,000 policies in force covering about 13.5% of the state's homeowners. The authority, founded by the Legislature in 1996, has approved a 22% rate cut effective July 1 last year to encourage more people to buy coverage.

For keeping track of recent earthquake activities, you may regularly visit the eathquake page of U.S. Geological Survey.

Modern Home

An estimated 15% of the homes built in 2005 had, as a standard feature or add-on, cable that transmits audio, video and data throughout the house. More and more new gadgets are coming up to transform our homes into an world of automation and to keep it connected to the world of information and entertainment all the time. So, if you are just arriving home from work, as you get into the driveway, you can roll up the garage door, turn on the inside lights, TV and laptop, instruct the furnace to notch up the heat a few degrees and open the curtains, all from inside your car.

In the next few months, a new wave of products that can be managed and operated by remote control, from inside or outside the house will be arriving on the market. These include garage doors, light switches, thermostats, alarms, appliances and home entertainment centers. These new wave of gadgets will work under the Z-Wave open standard, a radio frequency-based technology that allows users to create a 2-way wireless, mesh network within a house.

So, it'll be lot easier to transform your old house into a modern place without digging into the walls or scattering wires everywhere. Up to 232 devices can be installed in a single network, and a single home can have multiple networks. So, the system is feasible for any home, regardless of size.

For more information on this, visit Z-Wave Alliance, a consortium of some hitherto-competing manufacturers that includes Intermatic (security alarms and electric timers), Leviton (lighting), Wayne-Dalton (garage doors) and Techniku (window coverings).

Auto Insurance Tips

If you go to the street and ask people what they understand by the terms 'comprehensive' or 'collision' coverage, you will be surprised to find out that lot of them do not really know what these terms really mean, even though they go on paying their auto insurance premiums year after year. So, our today's topic is auto insurance:

Collision coverage: your insurer will pay for repairs to your car after a smashup if it was your fault or you can't collect from the driver who caused the accident.
Comprehensive coverage: protects you against other losses -- for example, if your car is stolen or vandalized, is hit by falling objects, catches fire or is damaged in a flood. In addition, the comprehensive covers loss of items installed in your car, such as a radio, but usually not anything that you are transporting in it (such losses are covered by your homeowner or tenant policy, as long as your car was locked when the theft occurred).

These two types of optional coverages may cause significant differences in premiums for various makes and models of cars. Their premiums are cheaper on cars that are harder to damage and easier to repair. Cars that are easily damaged in accidents or are popular for joy riders or are a valuable source of spare parts have more expensive premiums.

You may remember the following 3 tips while buying your auto insurance:
(i) Three Year Rule: In case of any mishaps, your insurer will reimburse you only upto your car's current retail value. This is very important and that's why you may consider buying both coverages when your car is less than three years old.
(ii) Largest deductible Rule: 'Deductible' is the amount you must pay before the insurer starts reimbursing you. Car owners typically accept deductibles of $250 but $500 might be better because that may reduce your premium by as much as 10%.
(iii) Too Old Car: If your car is more than 5 to 7 years old, or is worth less than $1,500, you may drop your collision and comprehensive insurance altogether and save money.