How to Source Affordable Car Insurance in 3 Easy Steps - Auto Candy

Posted by Rob on March 28, 2013

While experts continue to suggest that the UK economy is experiencing turbulence, the countries automotive trade is continuing to boom. As a result of this, it remains a vital part of wider economic growth, with an estimated ?50 billion generated in turnover every single year.

While the automotive trade may be booming, however, the task of sourcing affordable car insurance remains extremely challenging. This is especially true if you are purchasing your first car, as you will be faced with the prospect of high premiums and significant annual outgoings.

Obtaining Affordable Car Insurance: 3 Steps to Success

?With this in mind, what practical steps can you take to minimise the cost of first time car insurance? Consider the following: -

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• Choose a Viable and Affordable Model of Car: Before you even begin to compare insurance prices, you can strive to minimize potential costs by finding a suitable and affordable model of car. While this may mean striking a compromise between your desired vehicle and something that is more practical, it still affords you the opportunity to take control of your financial situation. Less costly and powerful cars often incur higher insurance premiums, especially if you are purchasing one as a newly qualified driver.

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• Think Outside of Price Comparison Sites: While price comparison websites are often marketed as the ideal medium through which to find cheap insurance providers, this is not necessarily the case. In fact, a growing number of the market?s leading firms now choose not to advertise their rates on comparison sites, as this ensures that they are able to gain a critical advantage. As a result, you must commit to searching both price comparison resources and independent websites, as this will help you to target the best possible deal.

• Add an Experienced Driver to your Claim: When you process your claim, there are innovative and thoughtful ways through which you can lower your annual liability. If you are keen on a time effective solution, however, then you should consider adding an experienced driver to your insurance claim. So long as they are qualified to drive within the UK and a clean points history, then their addition as a second driver could trim the cost of your monthly repayments. While this may save you pence rather than pounds each month, it certainly adds up over a period of two to three years.

?The Bottom Line

Purchasing your first car can be a difficult challenge, especially if you are hoping to keep your insurance premiums to a minimum. With this in mind, you will need to access a host of online resources and visit sites such as www.carshop.co.uk in order help minimise your overall cost.

Source: http://www.auto-candy.com/how-to-source-affordable-car-insurance-in-3-easy-steps/

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GOP moves to catch up with Democrats on technology

WASHINGTON (AP) ? Republicans are moving aggressively to repair their technological shortcomings from the 2012 election, opening a new tech race to counter a glaring weakness against President Barack Obama.

With the blessing of party leaders, a new crop of Republican-backed outside groups is developing tools to improve communication with voters, predict their behavior and track Democratic opponents. After watching Obama win re-election with the aid of an unprecedented technological machine, GOP officials concede an urgent need for major changes in the way they reach voters. They are turning to a younger generation of tech experts expected to play a bigger role in the 2014 midterm elections and beyond.

"I think everybody realized that the party is really far behind at the moment and they're doing everything within their realistic sphere of influence to catch up," said Bret Jacobson, a partner with Red Edge, a Virginia-based digital advocacy firm that represents the Republican Governors Association, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Heritage Foundation.

Alex Skatell, former digital director for the GOP's gubernatorial and Senate campaign operations, leads a new group that has been quietly testing a system that would allow Republicans to share details about millions of voters ? their personal interests, group affiliations and even where they went to school. Democrats began using related technology years ago, giving Obama a significant advantage last fall in personalizing communication with prospective supporters.

With no primary opponent last year, Obama's re-election team used the extra time to build a large campaign operation melding a grass-roots army of 2.2 million volunteers with groundbreaking technology to target voters. They tapped about 17 million email subscribers to raise nearly $700 million online.

Data-driven analytics enabled the campaign to run daily simulations to handicap battleground states, analyze demographic trends and test alternatives for reaching voters online.

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, in contrast, had only a few months after a lengthy primary fight to try to match Obama's tech advantage. He couldn't make up the difference. Romney's technology operation was overwhelmed by the intense flow of data and temporarily crashed on Election Day.

A 100-page report on how to rebound from the 2012 election, released last week by Republican Party Chairman Reince Priebus, includes several technology recommendations.

"The president's campaign significantly changed the makeup of the national electorate and identified, persuaded and turned out low-propensity voters by unleashing a barrage of human and technological resources previously unseen in a presidential contest," the report said. "Marrying grass-roots politics with technology and analytics, they successfully contacted, persuaded and turned out their margin of victory. There are many lessons to be learned from their efforts, particularly with respect to voter contact."

Skatell, 26, is leading one new effort by Republican allies to fill the void. His team of designers, software developers and veteran Republican strategists is now testing what he calls an "almost an eHarmony for matching volunteers with persuadable voters" that would let campaigns across the country share details in real time on voter preferences, harnessing social media like Facebook and Twitter.

Other groups are working to improve the GOP's data and digital performance.

The major Republican ally, American Crossroads, which spent a combined $175 million on the last election with its sister organization, hosted private meetings last month focused on data and technology. Drawing from technology experts in Silicon Valley, the organization helped craft a series of recommendations expected to be rolled out later this year.

"A good action plan that fixes our deficiencies and identifies new opportunities can help us regain our advantage within a cycle or two," said Crossroads spokesman Jonathan Collegio.

A prominent group of Republican aides has also formed America Rising, a company that will have a companion "super" political action committee that can raise unlimited contributions without having to disclose its donors. Its purpose is to counter Democratic opposition research groups, which generated negative coverage of Romney and GOP candidates last year.

America Rising will provide video tracking, opposition research and rapid response for campaign committees, super PACs and individual candidates' campaigns but does not plan to get involved in GOP primaries. It will be led by Matt Rhoades, who served as Romney's campaign manager, and Joe Pounder, the research director for the Republican National Committee. Running its super PAC will be Tim Miller, a former RNC aide and spokesman for former GOP presidential candidate Jon Huntsman.

Romney and several Republican candidates were monitored closely by camera-toting Democratic aides during the campaign, a gap that Miller said American Rising hopes to fill on behalf of Republicans.

Brad Woodhouse, a spokesman for the Democratic National Committee, said his party has "a several years' lead on data and analytics infrastructure and we're not standing still."

Of the GOP effort, Woodhouse said, "We don't see them closing the gap anytime soon."

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Peoples reported from Boston.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/gop-moves-catch-democrats-technology-065816379--election.html

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D-Link ships its AC1200 802.11ac WiFi router / thermos doppelganger

True, D-Link's AC1200 may better resemble the container keeping your coffee hot at work than a traditional WiFi router, but it remains a rare take on networking design that's frankly appreciated. We're glad to report, then, that it's shipping to stores. The device (seen in the middle) is the more affordable of D-Link's two 2013-era 802.11ac routers at its $130 street price, keeping costs in check by peaking at at more modest 867Mbps speed with the new standard and 300Mbps on old-fashioned 802.11n. It still dishes out wireless on either the 2.4GHz or 5GHz bands, offers wired connections to four gigabit Ethernet devices and shares content from drives attached to its lone USB 3.0 port. When devices like the HTC One and Galaxy S 4 are arriving with 802.11ac built-in, we'd say the AC1200 is a timely solution -- just don't pack it with your office lunch.

Filed under: Peripherals, Networking

Comments

Source: Newegg

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/03/28/d-link-ships-its-ac1200-802-11ac-wifi-router/

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Nuclear-capable stealth bombers sent to South Korea amid Kim Jong Un's threats

Two B-2 Spirit stealth bombers, capable of carrying nuclear weapons, drop inert munitions during a "long-duration, round-trip" training missing from Missouri.

By Jason Cumming and Matthew DeLuca, NBC News

Two American B-2 Spirit stealth bombers practiced an attack on the Korean Peninsula Thursday as part of a military exercise that has sparked angry threats from North Korea.

The U.S. military said the planes involved in the firing drill left Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri on a "long-duration, round-trip training mission."

Inert munitions were dropped on a range facility on the Jikdo islands off the western coast of South Korea before the jets returned to the continental U.S. in a single continuous flight.

B-2 Spirit bombers are capable of carrying either conventional or nuclear weapons.

In a statement, the United States Forces Korea?said the mission "demonstrates the United States? ability to conduct long-range, precision strikes quickly and at will."

Dubbed "Foal Eagle," the training exercise involves about?200,000 South Korean troops and 10,000 U.S. forces and is due to continue until the end of April.

Sin Young-Keun / Yonhap via Reuters

A U.S. Air Force B-2 Spirit stealth bomber (left) flies over Pyeongtaek, South Korea, on Thursday.

The Korean Central News Agency, the official state news agency, did not immediately have a response to the stealth bomber mission on Thursday. Previously, KCNA hit out at flights made by U.S. B-52 bombers.

The mission comes at a time of raised tensions between North Korea, its neighbors and the U.S.

A propaganda video posted on the country?s Uriminzokkiri website in February showed New York City under attack from North Korean rockets ? a scenario thought to be far outside the reach of the poverty-stricken nation.

The video, which was set to a version of the song "We Are the World," was widely lampooned in the U.S.

Another video posted in March showed an image of the U.S. Capitol building being hit by an explosion.

The U.S. military announced on March 15 that it was bolstering missile defenses in response to threats from the North, including a threat to conduct a "preemptive nuclear strike."

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said on March 20 that he would order military forces to attack American military installations in the Pacific and South Korea?if its "enemies ? make even the slightest move,? according to KCNA.

?When the drills turn into a battle, the enemies will be made to drink a bitter cup, unable to raise their heads, in the face of retaliatory blows of the strong revolutionary Paektusan army, he [Kim] said,? the same KCNA article stated in language characteristic of the state?s military-first government.

Tensions rose on the Korean Peninsula in December when the North launched a rocket test, and then again in February with the test of a nuclear bomb. The United Nations Security Council moved to impose further sanctions on the already isolated nation by a unanimous vote early in March.

On Wednesday,?North Korea said it was cutting the last channel of communications with the South because war could break out at "any moment."

Reuters contributed to this report.

Related:

North Korea puts rocket units on 'highest alert,' issues new threats to US

Kim Jong Un threatens attack on US bases in Pacific

Full North Korea coverage from NBC News

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This story was originally published on Thu Mar 28, 2013 5:41 AM EDT

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Springpad update brings redesign, better search and performance

A much needed update makes Springpad feel fresh again

A large update brings Springpad up to version 4.0 today, with some notable improvements. The once cumbersome left toolbar has been simplified, and many of its previous controls are now intuitively integrated into the foreground of the app.

There are now three main screens: home, notebooks, and search. The home screen displays individual springs (notes). A slider can be moved to show only your springs, your springs and those of collaborators, or your springs and springs you follow. The notebooks screen is relatively unchanged, with the addition of notebooks being followed at the bottom. The search screen lets you search through your own springs, or find other people's springs and notebooks. Homemade Cadbury Creme Egg recipe anyone? Best of all, adding new springs is a breeze with the new static add button on the bottom right of each screen.

It seems Springpad has taken a few notes (no pun intended) from Google Keep. This leaner, meaner design makes Springpad much more enjoyable to use. Hit the Google Play link at the top to give it a spin for yourself.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/vtDV0c2hOvE/story01.htm

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Hacker Challenge: Hack Your Home Theater

Welcome, Lifehackers, to our next Hacker Challenge! Each week, we issue a new challenge. You get until Sunday to prepare your submission and send it to us. That gives you a few days to think about it and a whole weekend to work it up. Our editors pick the best submissions and our favorite will win a copy of the Lifehacker book!

Let's get started!

This Week's Hacker Challenge: Hack Your Home Theater

For this week's challenge, we'd like to see your best home theater hack?anything clever or out of the ordinary you've done do to make your home theater better. We've shown you how to put a movie theater in your home on the cheap and for those that already have a home theater, we've shown you how to get more out of it without spending a dime. On the hack front, we've talked about the top 10 cheap or free home theater upgradres you can make and even how to build a hidden home theater PC inside your entertainment center.

Now, it's your turn. We want to see your best home theater hack.

How to Submit Your Entry

Make sure to follow these instructions when you submit your entry:

• Post your entry below or send it to challenge@lifehacker.com with the subject Hacker Challenge: Home Theater. If you post your entry below and need to include more than one image, just reply to your own comment or host your extra pics on a free, quick image-hosting site like imgur and link out to your gallery.
• We will accept entries up through Sunday night, March 31 at 11:59pm Pacific Standard Time
• We will showcase the best submissions and announce our favorite Tuesday, April 2.

So get to work! And don't forget to check back for new challenges every week.

Standard Gawker contest rules apply, so be sure to check them out before submitting your entry.

Images by Brian A Jackson (Shutterstock).

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/ILs-LI_FwBU/hacker-challenge-hack-your-home-theater

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Microsoft adding more content to Xbox Live this week, including Toys R Us movies and a refreshed MLB.tv app

Mo apps, mo couch entertainment, right? Well, in order to boost the attributes of its mature gaming console and Xbox Live, Microsoft today announced it's bringing some additional content to the ever-evolving platform. To go along with the recent inclusion of Redbox Instant, Redmond this week -- and just in time for the new season, shall we say -- will welcome an MLB.tv app with a redesigned interface and other undisclosed features that, according to the company, should "make watching baseball on Xbox better than ever." What's more, Microsoft didn't just have MLB lovers in mind, and is also giving film buffs, both young and old, something to look forward to with a few new applications, such as IndieFlix, PopcornFlix and Toys R Us movies -- oh, and for those who fancy internet-based TV shows, there's a Revision3 app, to boot. As is often the case, the countries in which they can each be enjoyed will depend on where you live (and a Gold subscription, of course), so now may be a good time to peruse the PR after the break to find out which of these you can expect to see on your Dasboard.

Filed under: Gaming, Home Entertainment, HD, Microsoft

Comments

Source: Xbox

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/hG14o6CWEPw/

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