New Cartoosh Widgets

Widgets have been gaining lots of fans in the last couple of years. The small widgets that originate from their ancestors - portlets in the portal about ten years ago have evolved significantly thanks to technology innovations, such as, RSS and Web 2.0.

The widgets have come out their enterprise habitats, sprouted in the consumer-oriented portals like MyYahoo and iGoogle, and now blossomed on many blogs, websites, and social networks. Along that move, the purpose of widgets has shifted from personalization (of, say, your iGoogle home page) to Internet marketing and beyond. Many widgets are used on social networks as an extension of socialization. For example, one may make new friends via a "virtual pet" that lives in a pet widget rather than simply say hello to a total stranger.

Widgets are even spouting a new industry. There are several start-ups riding on the rise of widgets by easing the learning curve in creating widgets, lowering the entrance barrier in distribution of widgets (like market penetration), or providing such intelligence as who's installed your widgets (similar to market analysis).

If you're a blogger or a website owner, take a look at the four new Cartoosh widgets at Cartoosh.com. By embedding these widgets in your blog or website, your readers automatically get up-to-date cartoons without leaving your site.

I'll have more coverage on widgets, since they are important stepping stones in the next phase of my Internet adventure.

Fishtarian.com Launched

I'm glad to announce that the whole new Fishtarian.com website is officially launched. With the goal to become your trusted partner in pursuing your heart healthy diet and living, we've designed Fishtarian.com featuring both blog posts and a variety of personal care products. Our editors will continue to bring you the latest medical information about your health as well as share with your their personal experience. We look forward to your continuous support and working more closely with you to satisfy your needs in the Fishtarian living.

Cartoosh.com Officially Launched

I'm glad to announce that Cartoosh.com is now up and running. As we continue to provide you the best blog, the whole new Cartoosh.com is designed to offer easy access to our merchandises. Our goal of Cartoosh.com is to make it a fun-filled cartoon-centric mall where you would enjoy reading our cartoon posts, touring our gallery and bookstore, and much more. Come visit Cartoosh.com today and give us your feedback.

Register Domain Names

I spent last couple of days registering a couple of domain names I plan to use for Project BKO. Luckily, I got all I wanted without paying hefty premium. That sounds incredibly impossible in the post-doc-com era in which every domain name one can reasonably think of is already taken.

"How could that be?", you ask. Simple. Everyone can think of a domain name and immediately register it via authorized registrars for less than $10 a year. GoDaddy.com founded in 1997 was credited as the first registrar that made domain names affordable commodities. It claims that it has registered about 70% of the domain names.

Having registered the domain names, domain name investors will be sitting on them and waiting for big fishes who would offer to buy them. To get rid of unwanted domains, the investors can list their domains for auction and sell them to the highest bidder.

There are even domain parking garages for unused domains to park and collect money. How? The parked domains are set up as a one-page website decorated with advertisement links. The links work exactly like Goggle Adsense that shares advertising revenue with the domain parkers. The parked domains can also be used for affiliate sales. So, a well picked domain names upon which many surfers stumble may produce some decent revenue, while waiting for the big fish to arrive. Not bad.

I was totally amazed by how a simple matter like domain name registration has grown into such a viable industry. I'm not sure the birth of the domain name industry was by design, by accident, or by mistake. Obviously, the primary use of a domain name is to direct the Internet suffer to a website. Other than that, domain names are nothing tangible. Even stock shares represent a portion of corporate assets. The only industry I can think of that share some common aspects would be the casino industry in Las Vegas. A lot of people would disagree with me here, because apparently there are many making their living buying, selling, and trading domain names.

Save Money With Your Home and Auto Insurances

As the economy downturn deepens, consumers and businesses are looking for ways to cut expenses to save enough to ride out the economic storm. The general principle I've been telling people is:

Spend on what you need instead of what you want, and invest for your future growth.

If you are an individual, use these savings to pay off your credit card or other debts. If you are a business owner, use these savings to invest in your business assets. The multiplexed effect of either action goes way beyond the face values of the dollars you save today.. If you are an individual, use these savings to pay off your credit card or other debts. If you are a business owner, use these savings to invest in your business assets. The effect of either action would go way beyond the face values of the dollars you save.

In this post, I'll discuss how to apply this principle to and save lot of money out of your homeowner and auto insurance policies.

Homeowner Insurance
Let's first talk about homeowner insurance. The rates of homeowner insurance policies depend on a number of factors: age and size of the house, dwelling cost, loss of use, personal property coverage, personal liability, deductible, and etc. You're not able to change the facts of your house, such as, age and size, unless you're making a move. There is lot of room for the rest of the factors. You have to decide what is reasonable and practical for those factors. Even with the same understanding of how your house is built and your location, each insurance carrier has different guidelines to calculate the cost to rebuild your house. The results can vary significantly, so do the rates you pay for.

Auto Insurance
The auto insurance depends on the age, the make, and the model of your cars, safety/anti-theft features, coverages for bodily injury and property damage caused at your fault and by uninsured motorists, comprehensive coverages, towing, your annual mileage, driving records, and so on. Again, you should decide on what's reasonable and practical for your condition.

Your New Insurance Mentality
Many people think insurances are supposed to cover all possible unexpected damages of their homes and cars. That mentality has to change, because the insurance carriers have changed their ways of operating business. If you ever file a claim, you're almost guaranteed to see your insurance rate rising, when the policy is due for renewal. For a serious accident or incident, you don't have a choice. That's what the insurance is for. You should avoid filing small claims, if at all possible. Your insurance policies are to protect you from unexpected disasters not bad lucks.

Once you change your mentality, you should consider removal of the comprehensive coverage and raising your deductibles to as high as you can. These adjustments can save you lot of money.

Comparing Quotes
These days, it's so easy to get quotes from multiple insurance agencies representing various insurance carriers by filling out a form on some websites. You can easily find those websites from popular search engines with keywords, such as, "insurance quote", "home insurance quote", or "auto insurance quote". You'll get a few quotes in your email and phone calls within minutes. You should also contact some carries that have operations in your state but not among those who reply. You can get the list of the insurance carriers from FreeAdvice. FreeAdvice also offers statistics of customer satisfaction about the insurance carriers.

I highly recommend that you make a simple spreadsheet to record all the quotes you've received for an easy overview and comparison. You should review your policies at annual basis, and the spreadsheet will become very handy during that process.

Keep in mind that these are just initial quotes. It's quite common that the actual rates become higher. In that case, you should immediately go back to your spreadsheet and decide whether you want to continue purchasing that policy.

Ask For Available Discounts
Ask your insurance agents for any potential discounts available. Almost of the insurance carriers offer multi-policy discount, if you purchase your home and auto policies or policies for more than one car. Even so, you should consider purchasing policies from different carriers, if the total premium turns out to be lower. Other discounts include, but not limited to, your profession and education degrees.

Carrier Ratings
Although our goal is to find the policies at the lowest cost, you may want to avoid carriers that suffer financial problems or receive lots of complaints. You can get the ratings from companies, such as, A.M. Best and FreeAdvice.

[picture source: http://www.targetwoman.com/image/money-saving-tips.jpg]