How to Build and Operate Websites and Online Stores

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Photo Neville Deegan

Neville Deegan - Website Builder

I was looking for a way to earn extra money when I retired. I thought I might enjoy setting up and operating an online
store. I was computer literate. I could type easily. I owned a recent desk model computer, a high-speed Internet connection, and a printer. And I enjoy
learning new skills. Well, I finally did it and I enjoy it immensely. You may enjoy operating your own store too.

Unless you have already decided what you want to sell,
choose a generic name for your online store. Later you can change to a name that
reflects what you are selling. A name that suggests what you sell is not essential but it will help to get your store into the first pages of Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. searches. You’ll need to check with your State government to confirm that the
name you choose is not already taken. In Florida where I live, the State web site to check is
SUNBIZ.ORG. There will be an equivalent one in your home State.

It’s a simple matter to register a company name online, and
to apply for a sales tax number. You don’t not need a lawyer. You can register the name simply as a DBA
(doing business as), LLC (Limited Liability Company), or you can incorporate. Both the corporation and LLC protect your
personal assets from liability lawsuits, but you have the burden of extra paperwork every year. One of those chores is that you must submit an annual
report to the State and pay an annual fee. It’s easy to do but it is one more Read Full Article →

No-Fault Vehicle Insurance

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A lot of people I meet during my workday litlle understanding of their Michigan auto insurance, or the automobile insurance of their home states. Particularly is this so with the abstraction of no-fault automobile insurance. This phrase is foggy and incomprehensible to normal beings. It must have been dreamed up by a government worker. As a teenager, I certainly didn’t comprehend no-fault auto insurance until my first van was rear-ended and extremely damaged. What an an unpleasant surprise to find I had to repair my car when I didn’t cause the crash. I was covered only by “basic insurance no-fault”. For the benefit of new drivers, especially teenagers, I decided to pen the simple bare boness of auto insurance. If you desire more comprehensive information, Google or Bing your home state’s vehicle insurance regulations website and read the mass of pages of insurance rules.

State of Michigan Vehicle Insurance Coverage Choices
Michigan car insurance is one of the most complete no-fault insurance systems in the United States. You do not have a choice to ‘buy’ or ‘not to buy’ at least the basic Michigan motor car coverage. You can, however pick which elements of insurance policy you get. Therefore, you will decide how much you are going to pay for coverage. Also you can choose your insurance company.

If you are harmed in a car accident in Michigan, you and your family will be provided with medical and rehabilitation assistance. Also you will be provided with some salary loss benefits, and $20 per day for finding a new job for up to three years. But only if you have Michigan car basic no-fault insurance.

The Elements of Michigan Vehicle No-Fault Insurance are:
(A) No fault coverage that must, by law be carried by every vehicle owner and every registered vehicle. If you do not have this basic no-fault insurance, you will be liable for damages to property, and injuries to people. You could also be sued, fined heavily by the state and even jailed. You do not have to be the driver during an accident. As an owner of an uninsured vehicle that causes damage, you are liable for all claims. Don’t leave yourself open to the risk. basic insurance now.

(B) Personal injury protection (PIP) will pay all necessary medical costs if you are hurt in a vehicle pileup.

(C) Up to $1 million will be paid through PPI for breakage to other people’s property caused by your car in Michigan. This coverage includes buildings and static structures. Residual Bodily Injury and Property Damage Liability Insurance (BI/PD) will pay your legal expenses up to the limits of the policy should you have a smashup. Minimum limits of coverage that everyone must purchase applied.

Limits are $20,000 for a person injured or loss of life, $40,000 for each smashup if several persons are injured or killed and a maximum of $10,000 for property damage in another state. These minimum limits are often referred to as 20/40/10.

Not Covered By The Basic No-Fault Policy?
It will not bear the expense to repair or replacement cost of your car or any other vehicle if it is damaged or stolen. Should you want your vehicle covered for repairs or replacement, you need to acquire Collision and Comprehensive insurance.

Insurance with collision coverage will bear the expense to repair or replace your vehicle.

Comprehensive coverage will pay if your automobile is stolen, runs into an animal or is damaged by falling objects, fire, flood, and vandalism.

Both Collision and Comprehensive insurance coverage can be purchased from any of the insurance firms registered by the state. To moderate the cost of coverage, the insurance companies sell optional insurance with deductibles. Deductibles are amounts in dollars that you must pay towards repairing your vehicle. A deductible of $500 per collision is fairly common but you have an option of paying more than the $500.00 deductible, thereby lowering your yearly insurance premium.

Insurance Is Regulated By The State
Michigan vehicle insurance and insurance firms are regulated by the government to be competitive. If there is competition among the insurance companies, it is assumed that premiums would be kept lower. The insurance companies are allowed to make a reasonable profit and annual premiums paid by customers will be low. About 65 insurance companies in Michigan sell insurance for cars, trucks, motorcycle and any other vehicle. They compete with one another for customers by offering a variety of rates and services. To ensure a competitive market, Michigan vehicle insurance companies are prohibited from communicating with other insurers about the rates they offer.

Neville (Johnatana) Deegan is a creator/designer of WordPress websites for independent insurance agents. The WordPress software platform makes it easy for insurance agencies to add to/update and maintain their own websites with minimum input from professionals. For examples of Neville’s websites, please visit Your Michigan Auto Insurance and Your Michigan Home Insurance. You can contact him through this website.

Free 5GB iPad File Storage at Last with Google Drive

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iPad File Storage diagram

 

 

 

 

Free iPad File Storage

Google will soon provide iPad File Storage of your home computer files. You’ll be able to access these files from your iPad.  This free service will be provided through Google Drive. They already provide file storage to PC, Mac and Android. This is wonderful news for iPadders to have iPad File Storage. Incidentially, your files on Google Drive will provide you with free backup of those files. And you can purchase additional storage space at a reasonable cost ,  25GB for $2.50 a month. This may put some data storage vendors out of business or at least cut into their profits.

Wouldn’t you love to have access to your home or office files when you’re working with your iPad?  But iPad has no storage space for files.
Wouldn’t you love to able to share your files with family and friends? But how.

With Google Drive you’ll have iPad file storage that can be accessed from anywhere.

Sign on with Google Drive and you’ll be able store files from your home computer in the “cloud”  (network of servers) provided by Google .  Once your files are in the cloud, you can access  them from anywhere in the world.   You can share your files with family, friends and colleagues.

Here is how you get access to Google Drive and get your iPad file storage.  Using your main PC or Mac,  sign in to your Google account.   (Don’t have one? Go to Google New Account and create an account.  Google has hundreds of other free goodies for their registered customers)

Now you’ve got your Google account, go to Google Drive Signup Up and Sign in or click on Notify. Google knows who you are.  They’ll tell you when your Google Drive account is available for your use.  You’ll get 5 GB of storage free and you can buy more at a reasonable price.   Wait patiently until Google has integrated the iPad File Storage into Google Drive.  I can’t wait to get it.

 

Michigan Auto Insurance

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I had the good luck to find a great insurance agent in Michigan. With the complications of Michigan Auto insurance no-fault insurance, I was glad to get good advice. I got great service and complete coverage for my home and cars. Thank you to my Michigan insurance agent John G Parr of Allstate Insurance for insuring my cars with Michigan auto insurance and my home with Michigan home insurance for a very reasonable price.

Control your Automobile Like An iPhone

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Carmakers are working on entirely new control systems for the cars of the future that will work like smartphones or tablet computers. Some of the designs were on show at the recent Detroit Motor Show and the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
Conventional knobs, levers and switches might soon be a thing of the past and even the touch-sensitive screens found in the dashboards of many cars of today will be replaced as carmakers rapidly try to find clever solutions to the array of operating systems.

“With such a lot of data coming to the driver today and so many new possibilities, Read Full Article →

No Remote, Just Point or Gesture

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Systems that enable consumers to control TVs, smartphones, tablets and home appliances by waving a hand or saying a word are eliminating the need for clunky pointing devices.

 

The remote control has never been much beloved.

If it’s not getting lost or running out of batteries, the device — and its inscrutable buttons — is confusing some family member or acting as a totem in an argument about what to watch.

Wouldn’t it be nice to wave your hand, say a magic word and make the clicker disappear for good? Read Full Article →

Charge Your Cell Phone Battery with Water

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POWERTREKK charges cell phones, GPS Devices, small digital cameras, and any other similar USB-connected devices using Fuel Cell technology that extracts hydrogen from a few spoonfuls of common water – even from seawater. When it comes on the US market in early 2012 it’s expected to cost about $300.00 plus replaceable chemical containers $3.50 each. That’s expensive charging, but for a trekker who likes to travel deep into uninhabited places away from electricity sources, it provides additional safety. The POWERTREKK Fuel Cell Charger will deliver power to small electronic equipment when all other energy sources are depleted.

Powertrekk Fuel Cell charging

Almost all devices with a USB port of the usual Output voltage : 5V
Output power: 5 W from battery, 2.5 W from battery and fuel cell combined

Powertreckk water charges cell phone

Replaceable Power Puck

PowerPukk replacement chemical is contained in sealed hockey puck shaped containers that cost about $3.50/puck and provides 4 watt-hours of energy. Larger pucks are scheduled to be sold in the near future. Read Full Article →

Canada’s Robot “Pumpkin”

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Professor Emil Petriu and his graduate student Jamieson McCausland, of the University of Ottawa have designed a robot that can mimic a human’s movements. Most gestures made by a human can be replicated by the robot named Pumpkin. More importantly, Pumpkin can feel pressure through his fingertip sensors.

Pumpkin the robot

Prof. Petriu and grad student McCausland

Photograph by: Wayne Cuddington, Ottawa Citizen

His face moves like a human face. His cameras can see like human eyes and he sees human movement and copies the movement.

His feeling sensors are embedded in his flexible membrane skin. They feel heat, movement, bumps and textures. He has been designed with a gentle touch with the objective of being a helping hand to elderly seniors and children.

Most of the technology was created by the space programs and the gaming industry. Credit goes to Professor Petriu for his creative use of these technologies, gained through his long association with the Canadian Space Department..

Pumpkin is not yet perambulating but it is in his near future.

iRobot Named Ava

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Ava was built by the company that makes the Roomba robot? A ground-level laser-based rangefinder detects walls and large obstacles about 75 feet distant by sweeping back and forth at a 270-degree angle. Downward and forward-facing 3D scanners provide more precise data on impending collisions. And its omni-directional wheels allow Ava to move diagonally or sideways.

But along with an impressive level of autonomy, Ava is also built to be agreeable. By touching a soft, rubber ring that encircles its upper portion, you can suggest a new path. Less politely, you could simply kick its base. The nearest of three running lights will switch from blue to purple in a silent protest, but Ava will scoot. Ava responds to other nudges, too: It telescopes when you lightly pull it upwards, and collapses when you press down. Combined with its navigation algorithms and overlapping sensors, Ava is built to do one thing: peacefully co-exist with humans. Asimov would be flattered.

Cleaning models like the Roomba and Mint have the luxury of banging into—or at least touching—furniture or feet that cross their paths. They are tiny janitors, meant to operate in relative isolation. But for the Ava platform, iRobot has partnered with Santa Barbara-based telemedicine firm InTouch Health, and the first application of this robot is likely to be in the medical world. A robot that steers itself through a hospital corridor shouldn’t make contact with passing patients, staff, and gurneys. Along with being unnerving, it might not be entirely safe (Ava is heavier than a child, and rolls along at a brisk two-meters-per-second clip).

While iRobot won’t discuss when Ava might be deployed to an actual hospital, COO Joe Dyer sees retail as the next logical application. The robot could serve as a greeter at a big-box hardware store, for example. With the right app installed in its tablet head (the open API works with both iOS and Android platforms), the bot could ask what the customer is looking for, display the product on its face, and lead them to it. On the way, it could scan the products it passes, updating the store’s on-shelf inventory. If that’s the customer’s sole purchase, Ava could potentially ring them up, using the same tablet-connected payment apps and hardware that are already commonly used in retail.

All of this is within the realm of technical possibility, Dyer says. The only obstacle is price. He wouldn’t specify how much Ava would likely cost, except to say that it’s somewhere between the sub-$1000 Roomba, and $100,000 Packbots that iRobot sells to the Pentagon. Ava uses a combination of the consumer-grade iAdapt navigation software, and the battlefield-worthy AWARE system. But software, once developed, is cheap to deploy. It’s the durable construction and sensor suite that should keep Ava in the tens of thousands of dollars. For hospital administrators and retail executives, that’s a tough sell, but not an impossible one. Provided InTouch can show quantifiable benefits from using Ava, this robot, or a very similar model, could start showing up in hospitals and big-box stores in the coming years.

But iRobot’s ultimate goal, Dyer claims, is a social good. He wants Ava in the home, providing elder care. “If it detects that your mother is horizontal, not vertical, that she’s in the pantry, and not the bedroom or living room, it could give you a call. It could even display what it’s seeing,” says Dyer. “Millions of people could live independently, for longer.

IRobot

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Roomba and Scooba maker iRobot was on hand at Monday night’s The Digital Experience party with its latest creation, a linux-based robotics platform that utilizes tablet devices to issue commands to a wheeled robot. Using an easy to understand GUI interface, the operator draws a line with their finger. The robot will then follow the path set by the operator. The bot itself has a camera on its ‘head’ to allow the operator to see through its “eyes”; it is also able to sense obstacles and react to them with a high degree of accuracy thanks to laser sensors on the “head” and on the front of the base just above the wheels, and a ring of sonar sensors around the base.

Currently, the new bot is a concept in need of a purpose, but iRobot representatives stated they envision it being most useful in health care and home caretaking scenarios. They confirmed that they’re partnering with Google and a medical technology firm to explore these possibilities further. They were gracious enough to let us get our hands on it, immortalized in the following video.

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