Want A Good iPhone Insurance? Don't Listen To Your Friends!

I remember when I first bought my iPhone. A few friends came with me to help me chose the best one. They also made me get an iPhone insurance because I managed to break every phone I had until now. Over all, it was a good day. A few weeks later though, I realized that I made a very big mistake.

I am not talking about buying the iPhone, that was right. The phone is very nice and I could do a lot with it without needing a computer all the time. It made my life a lot easier because I could do many more things at the same time with it. I am talking about making that insurance for the iPhone.

When I was in the process of getting the phone, my friends were all enthusiastic around me, telling me which options to get and which to not get. When the insurance came up, I started thinking about how I got my car and house insurance in the past.

I used to look over the web and see which company offers the best rates for the most coverage. But when I was there getting the iPhone, my friends kept pushing me to get whatever insurance they offer me so we could go. So I did that.

Once I got home, I didn't look online to see if there were better policies because I already made one, and I guess I didn't want to see that there were better. But a few weeks later, my friends made sure that I would regret making that iPhone insurance.

One of them got an iPhone as well. He didn't buy it brand new, he got it off someone, so he needed to make his own contract and so on. He too thought about insuring the phone and he did. But he did the smart thing and went online to look for a good one.

He found an awesome iPhone insurance compare website that showed him all the companies that were insuring gadgets, their coverage and their rates. And of course, he got a really good one, even though his phone wasn't even close to new.

Did they feel bad about making me chose a random insurance? No. They went ahead and made fun of me because I was paying almost double what my friend was paying for his policy and we had the same coverage. There was no point in blaming them though. It was my own fault for not playing it smooth in the first place.

If you want to insure your phone, you should definitely look up the best ones on an iPhone insurance compare site. If you listen to enthusiastic friends who won't pay your fee for you, then you can end up like me. Feeling sorry that you bought a new smart phone because of a silly mistake like this. As soon as I can, I will change this iPhone insurance!

Important!

Father's Day 2009 - Trips to Take With Dad This Year

This year, instead of buying Dad that book that will collect dust or the shirt he may or may not ever wear, give him a memory he can cherish for years to come - a vacation with one of his closest loved ones...YOU! Finding that perfect destination to visit with Dad can be a challenge, but it is a lot easier if you know exactly where to look.

Something involving physical activity is a pretty safe bet and should be considered whenever possible. With that in mind, the following are a few ideas to kick around, some of which you may have considered and others that you might not have otherwise thought of:

· Goose Hunting in Seymour, Texas - Located less than three hours from Dallas, you and Dad can get away for a bit and enjoy the outdoors without straying too far off the beaten path.  Remember to bring your own equipment and get suited up in your camo gear, so you can be ready to blend in with your surroundings. This idea works best if you are both early risers, since hunts typically start between 4:30 and 8:30 am.            

· Rafting on the Colorado River - Float down the Colorado River at the base of the Grand Canyon for a four hour scenic look at area rock formations and wildlife. The trip covers 15 miles of river and a float through Glen Canyon. You can even take a short hike out to see some Indian petroglyphs while you are there.

· Fishing Excursion in Eagle River, Alaska - Spend a few days taking advantage of top notch spinning and fly fishing for rainbow trout, salmon, lake trout, and arctic grayling. King salmon, which weigh between 30 and 40 pounds, are found in unusually large quantities on these trips. Make sure to have your fishing license in hand, and you and Dad are in for a real treat.

· Round of Golf in Orlando, Florida - Florida is known as the land of golf courses, and the Hunter's Creek Golf Club is one of the best. Golf Digest has rated this course in their top 75, and it is also one of the longest courses in Florida. You can book a package that includes a bucket of balls, clubs, lunch, cart use, and 18 holes of golf.

If what you are planning to do is not on this list and you need some more ideas for how to spend Father's Day, visit www.Reserve123.com. 

How to Promote Your Website Yourself

Promoting your website yourself is not as difficult as it seems. Learning and mastering the process of doing it yourself and following the basic rules will surely eliminate mistakes. If you know the basic rules, you may not bother about those costly website submissions service provided by SEO professionals as you can do it better by yourself by following the correct procedures.

Never be in rush, it can take you years to develop a website to top ranking but you can get indexed by the search engines within months, weeks, or even days. It will take your patience, thoughtfulness and a little bit of concentrated effort to promote your site profitably.

Web promotion is a long-term effort, and you stand to enjoy the benefits by taking the following steps:-

1. Pick The Right Niche: Create a website on what you are knowledgeable about; choose a niche or hobby of interest that you are comfortable with.

2. Sell The Right Product: If you are selling, sell the right thing, since the internet is the most popular selling tool in the planet today, a lot of people will be selling your type of product.

Take for example, if the competition is high for a niche like 'Football Boot', just pick a sub-niche like "Football Boot For Retired Footballers'. You can easily dominate such a niche and get easily noticed by the search engines.

3. Let your Website Work Properly: It does not matter how attractive your website is since the beauty of your site cannot attract traffic to it, neither can a badly put up site fair better. Set up a simple and straightforward website optimized with relevant and unique keywords and watch hordes of traffic flood to your site.

4. Optimize your Page For Search Engines: Choose relevant keywords and adjust your titles, tags and meta tags showcasing your keywords in them. Also, input your keywords in the first paragraph of your post, show your keywords between three to five times in your posts. Do not over flood your posts with keywords as Google will consider it as spam and punish you accordingly.

Study and make use of the new search engine technique called Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI). Latent semantic indexing adds an important step to the document indexing process. In respect to the keywords a document contains.

5. Submit your Site To Major Search Engines: Submit your site manually to the major search engines since more than 90% of traffic comes from less than 10 popular search engines. Never use automated software for search engine submissions as it will lead to misplaced submissions and lots of spam mails both on your e-mail and Blog comments.

Search engine submission may take time to get your site indexed, but it is a long-term process of improving your ranking, if you have little patience.

6. Submitting To Directories: Directory submissions are one of the best ways to get top ranking for your site. The secret to succeed here is to make sure you only submit your site manually, follow the rules by submitting to the right categories, using the right titles and tags.

Since most of the directories are human edited, automated submissions will not place the categories, titles and tags properly and will ultimate lead to rejections.

The most important thing about directory submissions is that search engines crawl them always, and since most of them are already indexed by Google and others; it will take the search engines few weeks or months to take back links of your site from them and index your site.

Women's Ski Jackets - Searching For Practically Gorgeous

As we approach ski season it is time to turn our eye to how we can find the perfect women's ski jackets to look simply perfect on the slopes or around the ski lodge. Now due to the harsh weather conditions you have to make some sacrifices, but that doesn't stop you from finding a protective yet glamorous jacket to keep you warm and looking great.

Now, in the perfect world, the short, sexy ski jacket would keep us just the perfect temperature, but unfortunately a skin tight number is only going to leave you wet and freezing. Of course if you aren't much more skiing but want to just hang around the ski lodge, then some protective sacrifices can be made for something much sexier. The problem appears when you actually go out on the slopes and are assaulted by the wind and the snow, especially falling and landing into the snow, which can be cold.

You need to keep functionality in mind and make sure that the drop dead sexy outfit you are putting together will allow you to survive long enough in the snow that you can make it back to the warm drink by the fire. The main function of the ski outfit is to keep you dry, warm, and safe as you make your way down the mountain. A jacket that easily rips or isn't waterproof will be destroyed by the wind and snow in no time. Making sure your jacket's hood can be incorporated with your helmet is another important consideration.

Now that we know what protective measures we need from our outerwear, we need to make it stylish and sexy. Thankfully, many high end designers have already done this for us. They have created tailored ski jackets that still create a pleasing look to them, even if they aren't skin tight. Many of them can transform for when you are just hanging out. The hood tucking into a compartment or opening it a little to reveal a very cute blouse, are both ways to go from protective to glamorous.

Nothing stops you from having your warm protective shell of ski wear making you look sexy as well. Just be sure to make sure it handles all the necessary protective measures so you won't require the need to be thawed out - the "ice block" look isn't really an eye catcher!

Prosperity Tip - For Working Mothers Who Struggle With Guilt

All I wanted was to be "Mom." So when circumstances forced me into the workplace, I was devastated and determined to find a way to develop an income that would allow me to stay at home with the kids. With this objective in mind, I spent many, many hours "working" toward my dream while the neighbor moms baked cookies. In truth, that's what I wished I could be doing instead, but I had to build a future for our family so that I could look forward to a day when Mom AND Dad could enjoy family time and money freedom together. Eventually, my husband moved into a career that made a respectable income that provided for us well, but there was never enough time on the side for him to build a future outside of the J-O-B. I had to do something.

Did I ever feel guilty about doing more than Beverly Cleaver used to do? Yeah, sometimes. I grew up with traditional values and a desire to pass them along. I wanted to be the domestic goddess with a perfectly clean home and perfectly behaved children, nourished three times daily with perfectly balanced meals. But something inside me drove me to do other things, too. I felt guilty about that, until I stumbled onto a certain Proverb that helped me feel better. It is the definition of a "virtuous woman" and goes like this:

"Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies. She seeketh wool, and flax, and worketh willingly with her hands. She is like the merchants' ships; she bringeth her food from afar. She ariseth also while it is yet night, and giveth meat to her household, and a portion to her maidens. She considereth a field, and buyeth it: with the fruit of her hands she planteth a vineyard. . . She perceiveth that her merchandise is good: her candle goeth not out by night. She layeth her hands to the spindle . . . She maketh herself coverings of tapestry . . . She maketh fine linen, and selleth it; and delivereth girdles unto the merchant... She openeth her mouth with wisdom; and in her tongue is the law of kindness. She looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness. Give her of the fruit of her hands; and let her own works praise her . . ."

A virtuous woman sounds busy doing many, many things, including working for financial gain. This verse helped me feel better about burning the midnight oil now and then to make my own contribution to our family.

Still, even now, every monetary goal I set is always for the primary purpose of being free to focus on raising my children the way I want, which is for the purpose of helping them enjoy fulfilling, happy lives as adults, which is for the purpose of me coming to the end of my life pleased with the contribution I made while I was here.

Every goal I set will fit into the big picture of true prosperity somehow. If it doesn't, then I know that I will NOT be passionate enough about it to make it happen. To achieve lofty goals requires passion, and my family is my driving purpose for all I do.

Setting a goal to own a Rolls Royce will have no power for me, because it makes no contribution to the driving purpose for my life. Is a Rolls bad? No, it's beautiful! But I know myself well enough to know that it isn't something I'd go through the refiner's fire for.

Family time and money freedom, on the other hand, is something worth fighting for.

What Is "Best Practice" Public Relations?

Why, public relations that stays true to its fundamental premise, of course.

In a nutshell, "People act on their own perception of the facts before them, which leads to predictable behaviors about which something can be done. When we create, change or reinforce that opinion by reaching, persuading and moving-to-desired- action those people whose behaviors affect the organization, the public relations mission is accomplished."

Adhere to that, and you can't go wrong!

Even those who believe public relations is just a bunch of communications tactics, can improve their performance because the premise and its strategy will keep those tactics on the straight and narrow.

How? The premise requires that tactics be selected on the basis of (1) knowing how a target audience perceives the organization, (2) precisely who the tactics should be aimed at, and (3) and most important, what changes in perception, and thus behaviors, are desired so that you can set a goal, then tell if you achieved it or not.

That way, the tactics have a fair chance of doing some good by visibly helping you achieve your business objectives.

Happily, even when "practiced best," this isn't rocket science. All it takes is a brief but logical plan.

Decide which external audience of yours has the most serious impact on your organization. That becomes your key target audience, and off we go!

Can't do much if we don't know how they perceive you and your organization. So, you've got to get out there among members of that key target audience and ask some questions.

What do they think of you and your operation? Notice any negatives? Are misconceptions, inaccuracies or rumors becoming evident? Any undercurrents surfacing? Is there a problem coming down the pike?

When this monitoring phase is complete, you can set a public relations goal that corrects the problem you turned up. For example, your goal might try for a positive impact on individual perception by explaining your pricing policies, or replacing a damaging rumor with the truth.

Now you need to know how you're going to reach that goal. And that's where strategy comes in. You have three choices. You can create opinion (perception) where none exists, or you can change existing opinion, or simply reinforce it. Your choice will respond to what you turned up during your monitoring phase.

If there is a tough part in our brief and logical plan, this is it. You need a really good, corrective message for delivery to your key target audience. It must be clear as spring water, VERY persuasive and, of course, the unvarnished truth. Prepare a draft, then try it out on two or three members of your external audience, then adjust as needed.

Now we come to those "beasts of burden" we discussed up front, the communications tactics themselves. These foot soldiers, to mix a metaphor, will carry your corrective message to the eyes and ears of members of the target audience. A pretty important step, so choose well.

Luckily, you have a ton at your disposal. Emails, personal meetings, news releases, radio interviews and special events. Or, letters-to-the-editor, face-to-face meetings, speeches and open houses. A long list.

Your work is not quite over. How do you know whether your brief and logical plan is working?

The answer is, you will not know for certain until you and your colleagues get back into the field and talk to members of that all-important key audience population all over again.

I know, I know, that's time consuming and a powerful lot of work. But it's worth it! What you want to question those folks about, of course, is the same topics you raised the first time around. Only now, you're looking for altered perceptions.

For example, does the second set of responses indicate that you were successful in clarifying the misconception? Or that the inaccurate belief is morphing into your version? Or, that the irritating (and potentially dangerous) rumor has been laid to rest?

If, however, feedback shows more work is needed, it's back to the drawing board for a better mix and frequency of higher-impact communications tactics. Plus, another look at your message - was it clear enough? Were the best "hot buttons" pressed? Did you include the right facts and figures to support your case?

Fact is, the Pot 'o Gold at the end of this rainbow is consistency. When you gather responses showing a consistently positive pattern, that brief and logical plan of yours is beginning to produce the success promised by the fundamental premise of public relations.

Please feel free to publish this article and resource box in your ezine, newsletter, offline publication or website. A copy would be appreciated at bobkelly@TNI.net.

Robert A. Kelly © 2003