Foreign Travel websites

TIP OF THE DAY

Foreign Travel websites

http://www.travlang.com/languages/ will help you learn basic words in the language of the country you are visiting.  has audio files that will teach you pronunciation.
For a map of any location you will be visiting go to http://www.multimap.com/map/places.cgi
The State Department posts important information which you should check before you travel: http://travel.state.gov/travel_warnings.html
If you are travelling to another country to conduct business, visit http://www.executiveplanet.com/ for helpful etiquette tips.

Phonebook Meta-Search Tool: Argali

TIP OF THE DAY

Phonebook Meta-Search Tool

http://www.argali.com

Argali White & Yellow aggregates telephone, zip code, weather and other information from sources like AnyWho, InfoSpace, MelissaData, Verizon Superpages, Weather Underground, and more. Download the application for free.  Although it's supported by advertising, the advertising does not distract from your research. The software also appears not to contain spyware.  Use it to find public telephone numbers for people or companies, toll-free numbers, area codes, zip codes, email addresses and weather. You can also conduct reverse telephone and reverse address look-ups.

Dialup at DSL speed?

TIP OF THE DAY

Dialup at DSL speed?

Several Internet Service Providers are marketing dial-up service that they claim rivals DSL in speed.  This article from the Washington Post discusses the reality.

Nice but No Substitute for 'Always On' Broadband
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A38193-2003Sep20?language=printer

By Rob Pegoraro

Sunday, September 21, 2003; Page F07

It's possible to download Web pages as fast over a dial-up connection as over broadband. Really.

No violation of the laws of physics is involved, just some clever optimization of old-fashioned modem connections. This "dial-up acceleration" or "Web acceleration" builds some shortcuts into the path data travel on the Internet, allowing the Web to wend its way to your screen faster than usual.

In the past year, dial-up acceleration moved from an extra-cost add-on to a bonus component of America Online's and EarthLink's latest software, as well as that of other companies. Both America Online and EarthLink tout it as a reason to choose them over competitors.

After timing each service's Web speed-up features, I can attest that the technology works. Pages snapped onto the screen as fast -- sometimes faster -- than they do over my digital-subscriber-line connection.

For example, The Post's online front page took about 20 seconds to appear over EarthLink and AOL's standard dial-up, but just 10 seconds or so with acceleration enabled -- only a second more than it required over DSL. The District's washingtondc.gov home page required roughly eight seconds over regular dial-up, but on average only four seconds with acceleration, the same as with DSL. The pattern prevailed with each of the eight sites I clocked, which ranged from almost all-text pages to graphics- and animation-rich constructions.

Dial-up acceleration, with some differences among vendors, works by trying to bring the Web closer to the user. Instead of making you download all of a page from a remote Web server (except for whatever graphics files your own browser has already cached on your hard drive), dial-up acceleration systems use an intermediate server to store copies of popular pages.

It can send these copies down to your computer in compressed form over proprietary channels that run faster than the standard Internet protocols. It also copies frequently-viewed parts of the Web to a part of your computer's hard drive, beyond your browser's usual cache.

If only part of a page has been updated, the intermediate server can send only the new material, with the software on your computer stitching everything back together. (As a result, you'll see only a tiny speed boost the first time you hit a Web page; these systems work best with pages you visit every day.)

All this allows Web pages to fly onto the screen at an impressive rate. To claim this reward, I didn't have to do anything more complicated than sit through a software installation. In EarthLink's case, it came as a separate download for its Total Access 2004 software, while AOL 9.0 includes the feature by default; both, however, worked about as well in my experience.

But nothing comes free online.

The obvious trade-off in dial-up acceleration is picture quality. Accelerators compress pictures, sometimes dramatically -- EarthLink's version, provided by San Jose-based Propel Software Corp., condensed a photo file on The Post's site by a factor of four.

As a result, images look anywhere from slightly off to terrible under acceleration, depending on what settings you enable. EarthLink's Propel software offers six levels of compression and allows you to reload an image at full quality, while AOL's is only on or off, with no ability to see a photo in its original condition.

Plain graphics, like the headers and navigation toolbars on many Web pages, generally look fine under acceleration. But photos can resemble watercolor renditions of the original files, with blurred colors and shapes.

Because dial-up accelerators apply the same degree of compression to every picture online, those images that have already been prepared for quick downloads will look the worst afterward. "If the image has already been optimized for Web display and there isn't a lot to remove out, you're more likely to notice what we do," said David Murray, Propel's executive vice president.

Outside of Web browsing, dial-up acceleration can't do much. Downloads get no dramatic boost; e-mail transfers and streaming audio or video run just as slow as before.

The greatest shortfall of dial-up acceleration, however, is connection time, not download time. It does nothing to shorten the wait for your modem to squawk and screech its way online. Only improvements in modem technology can address that, and Internet providers are still (slowly) absorbing the most recent update.

By contrast, the speed my DSL connection provides is never unappreciated -- it makes downloading even Microsoft's and Apple's most bloated system updates manageable, and the high-quality webcasts it brings in have made my computer a much better radio than my stereo.

But the more important thing about DSL is the fact that it's always on, barring a rare service interruption.

"Always on" means that I can look up things when I want, not 45 seconds later. All I need to do is wake the computer from sleep and click on my e-mail program, instant-message software or Web browser.

"Always on" is the norm with electricity, TV and the phone; nobody would dream of requiring people to log into Pepco, Comcast or Verizon before using their services. Someday, that will be true with the Internet as well.

In the meantime, acceleration software can make dial-up much more palatable for those who can't get broadband or can't afford it.

But it can't substitute for the real thing, even factoring in the money it saves compared to DSL or cable. If you want a faster Internet connection, it's going to be a lot easier to find $15 or $20 in savings elsewhere in your monthly budget than it will be to convince yourself that "accelerated" dial-up is a replacement for always-on broadband.

Here's some additional information:
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/33366
Accelerated Dialup
An after-thought
Written by Justin Beech
The Washington Post ran an OK article that compared some of 56k dialup acceleration products. Our past stories on accelerated dial-up can be seen here.

As we read the article, fair as it was, we realized there were a few things that perhaps should have been mentioned in addition to the negatives that were detailed (when comparing these products to broadband).

1. Dial-up acceleration, if it provides meaningful speed increases, is a fairly complex bit of software that attempts to cache pages closer to the user, and minimise the amount of connection setup and tear-down and multiple server contacts that normally occur when browsing the web. It also re-compresses images at low quality. This added complexity means that inevitably, there will be more things to go wrong. Is a site down, or slow, or corrupt? or is the dial-up acceleration mucking it up? how would one know?

2. Accelerator products may cache popular sites. But what about sites YOU use? benchmarks may compare the time to load the CNN home page, or yahoo, because they are so well known. But drill down on these sites, or move to others, and it would become unlikely that a convenient cache would be at hand for spectacular speed gains.

3. Accelerator products may be only good when newly launched. Early adopters always find fast relatively un-used infrastructure (the caching servers). How about later, when the number of subscribers rise?

4. Dynamic websites. Some of the most interesting websites are constructed on the fly or custom for the user. They are extremely unfriendly to caches, and will not work correctly if a cache attempts to get in the way. Removal of the ability to cache a page near the user will hobble the effectiveness of any web cache.

5. Secure connections. If you spend a fair amount of time signed on using banking or brokerage sites, you will be using the web over a secure, uncacheable connection. No product will speed this up.

If you have no broadband options, or no affordable ones, then by all means look into "accelerators", but be careful the product you are purchasing is not hype without substance, and steer clear of contracts without being absolutely sure any claimed speed gains are real, and apply to much of your online time.

Personal Folders Backup

TIP OF THE DAY

Microsoft Outlook 2000, 2002 & 2003 "Personal Folders Backup" Add-in

There is a program available from Microsoft to backup your Microsoft Outlook information quicker and easier -- Personal Folders Backup.  Personal Folders Backup creates backup copies of your .PST files at regular intervals, in Outlook 2000 and later versions, making it easy to keep all of your Outlook folders safely backed up.

With Personal Folders Backup, you can choose which of your .PST files you wish to back up, and how often you wish to back them up.

Each .PST file contains all of your Outlook folders, including the Inbox, Calendar, and Contacts. You can have a single .PST file (usually called "Internet Folders" or "Personal Folders" in your Folder List), but you might also have an additional .PST file that you use for archiving ("Archiving Folders"). Personal Folders Backup lets you back up any or all of these .PST files.

Note Personal Folders Backup only backs up .PST files. If you have a Microsoft Exchange Server mailbox, your server mailbox folders are likely backed up regularly by your server administrator.

Download Here
Visit the site here

Renter's Insurance

TIP OF THE DAY

Renter's Insurance

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/business/personal_finance/6816419.htm
BUSINESS
Posted on Sun, Sep. 21, 2003.


Renters insurance worth the cost

Michelle Singletary/The Color of Money

If you're renting, you should have renters insurance.

But alas, a recent survey has found that almost two-thirds of the 81 million people living in rental units do not.

This is not smart.

And don't even fix your mouth to say, ''I can't afford it.'' This is perhaps the cheapest insurance you can get. Skip just one movie a month (including the popcorn and soda) and you can afford renters insurance.

The average cost of renters insurance is $12 per month for about $30,000 of property coverage and $100,000 of liability coverage, according to a survey sponsored by the Independent Insurance Agents & Brokers of America.

Now, of course that's the average, which means the cost could be higher depending on where you live.

For example, if you lived in the following cities and bought renters insurance for $20,000 in content-replacement coverage, $100,000 liability, $1,000 medical (for accidental injuries to others) with a $500 deductible, you would roughly pay these yearly premiums, according to State Farm Insurance:

? $148 in Washington, D.C.

? $253 in Los Angeles.

? $208 in Chicago.

(Note: State Farm is no longer writing new renters' policies in Florida. Other companies are.)

Unless you can self-insure your property, meaning you have enough money saved to replace your clothes, jewelry, computer, DVD player and DVD movies, big-screen television, stereo equipment, microwave, video camera -- you get the picture -- you need renters insurance.

Now, if you're thinking you're covered under your landlord's insurance policy, think again. You're not.

''One of the top reasons why people don't have renters insurance is that they think because they don't own the unit, the landlord will be responsible if they have a loss,'' said Robert Rusbuldt, CEO for the Independent Insurance Agents & Brokers of America. ``But if the building burns down it's your responsibility to replace your property. If the building burns down and it's your landlord's fault, he's not responsible for one dime of the contents you own in your apartment.''

Your landlord's insurance covers only the building and the infrastructure of that building, such as the elevators, the air-conditioning system and the hallway, Rusbuldt said.

And what do you think might happen if the pizza delivery guy trips over your bicycle in your apartment and breaks his leg? He might sue you. But if you have renters insurance, you will likely be protected (up to a limit) from personal liability.

If your roommate has insurance and you think you're covered, think again. Each person in the rental property typically needs his or her own policy. Although you may be able to get a joint renters insurance policy, it's probably best to have separate coverage in case your roommate moves out.

Here's some good news for parents who have sent their children off to college. If a student is living in a campus dorm, his or her belongings may be covered under your homeowner's or renters insurance policy. But students living in off-campus housing need to double-check to see whether they are covered (typically they are not).

So how much renters insurance coverage do you need?

This depends on how much stuff you have. You'll need to estimate the value of your personal possessions. If you've kept receipts, that's even better. The idea is to buy enough insurance to replace everything if it's stolen, damaged or destroyed.

Since many insurance companies place limits on what they will pay for specific items, you may need to pay for additional coverage to make sure those items are completely insured. For example, you may have a family heirloom or expensive jewelry, furs or electronic equipment that could surpass the normal limits. You may also need to buy additional coverage for flood damage.

And don't forget to make sure your policy includes coverage of your pooch. Renters insurance policies usually cover dog bites, yet some companies may charge more if your dog has a tendency through its breeding to be aggressive.

When purchasing a renters policy, you'll need to decide what kind of coverage you want -- actual cash value or replacement cost.

Actual cash value is the less expensive of the two. Under this type of coverage your belongings are replaced after depreciation. This means the insurance company will take into consideration the age and condition of the stolen or damaged property.

A replacement-cost policy will pay you to replace your property with the same or a similar item at the current market price. Just know that premiums are usually higher for replacement-cost insurance policies.

Start looking for insurance by calling any insurance company you may already be doing business with. You can find an independent insurance agent by going to wwwTrustedChoice.com.

Just so you know, the average cost to replace all the personal property in a two-bedroom apartment is about $25,000, according to State Farm.

Do you have $25,000 saved to replace your property if it's all lost in a fire? Do you even have enough saved to replace the $4,200 in electronic equipment the average person has?

If the answer is ''no,'' then go get some insurance.

Michelle Singletary is a financial writer for The Washington Post. Listen to her discuss personal finance noon to 1 p.m. Tuesdays on WLRN-91.3 FM's ``Day to Day''.