Helpful Travel Tips

Just a few helpful travel tips .

BOOK AIRLINE TRAVEL from 12:01AM WEDNESDAY MORNING (Eastern Standard Time) on; all new fares are announced/posted at midnight Tuesday evening for the next week

SIGN-UP FOR ALL E-MAIL NOTICES of special prices from low cost airlines that serve your city or target destination (or are near-by).   Examples include: Kayak's FareAlert, Southwest Ding! Fares, Southwest Click 'n Save fares, AirTran, Frontier, JetBlue, Spirit Airline Red Light fares.  The low cost airlines' special fares are much less restrictive than the high cost carriers' week-end specials.  You can get a weekly summary of many of the airlines weekend specials at SmarterTravel.com. 

LAST MINUTE TRAVEL – Are you retired, a student off for the summer or can take time off from your job on short notice – then register with various “last minute travel sites” who offer incredible deals for short 3 or 4 days vacations to even longer 14-21 vacation land and or cruise packages – Why??  Arrangements are made & once that ship sails or hotel night passes the revenues can’t be made up, so they’d rather sell the package cheap, knowing you’ll spend money on liquor, side trips, gambling & other amenities…  Some incredible deals if you can leave on a few days notice

CONFIRM ARRANGEMENTS. If transportation and hotel are included in the travel package, ask how to contact those companies and confirm with them directly that the reservations have been made.  Always be sure to print off confirmations and keep a print copy with your folder or send yourself an email with the info..(with being able to sync phones & emails & claendars today it's easier than ever to access this info)

EMAIL YOURSELF ALL PERTINENT INFO: Send yourself an email including all airline info; hotel & car rental info & confirmation #'s an rates quoted; list of credit cards you are taking and their pertinent info - #'s, type, exp date, sc code, bank tele #'s; list of all your medications & dosages; doctors names etc... Today no matter where you go you will find a computer so that you can access this data in a pinch..

If you have a suggestion that might be helpful to others when they are travelling, we'd love to hear it...

Email & Online Safety Tips:

Most of us have been using email and shopping online for quite some time, so we know how to use it safely – right?? Wrong… we all get comfortable and too often when we aren’t paying attention, we leave ourselves open to scams without even realizing it… so just a few basic reminders to stay safe online…

BE SURE IT SAYS HTTPS - Before you ever type in any personal information whatsoever on a website (shopping, medical facilities, registering on a company site for info, travel websites, etc) – always be the one who went to that website by typing the website into you browser address bar..  Don’t go there by using a link in an email you received..  Once there, you always want to see https in the Internet browser address bar before you ever type any personal information.  For example when I got to walgreens.com to see what’s on sale – the address in the browser bar will read:

http://www.walgreens.com/default.jsp

But when I left click on the “shopping cart” the data in the internet browser toolbar changes and now reads:

https://www.walgreens.com/store/checkout/cart.jsp

reputable companies never ask for info via email - Your bank, favorite online store, mortgage or credit card companies will NEVER – NEVER – NEVER - send you an email requesting sensitive information such as your username, password, account number, etc. If you ever receive an email asking for you for this information – print it off and delete it.. Once you print it off, notify the company directly of what has happened.  When you type information into any website, you want to be sure you generated the access to that specific website… never click on a link from an email to visit the site.

BE WARY OF EMAILS FROM GENERIC NAMES – Spammers, Scammers and others who are phishing often send emails using a single name “Jean” or other common names, such as “Uncle Dave” or a common company name – Wells Fargo, Bank of America, or political affiliation these days…  But that doesn’t mean that it is who you think it is.. Most of our friend or families emails come in showing both their first and last name - Pay attention to the email and any attachments they may include – go with your gut, if it looks funny or unusual delete it…

IF IT SOUNDS TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE, IT’S PROBABLY A HOAX!

When we receive emails offering easy money, free or cheap products and services, requests for money because our friend is stuck in another country or an offer for a foreign lotteries – remember they are almost always a hoax…  delete them and never, never forward them to anyone on your email contact list/address book

Protect your friends & families privacy - Always be sure you type friend & families email addresses in the “BCC” line of all emails (not the To line), so they receive the email but don’t see each other’s addresses – this way if and when they forward the joke or information to others, email addresses won’t be shared unknowingly..  
If and when you receive an email with lots of other addresses, as soon as you choose to forward it on, be sure to eliminate any of the addresses that are listed before your forward it…  Together we can protect each others privacy and reduce the amount of junk mail we get..

Who is PayPal and why would you use them?

Wikipedia's description of PayPal: PayPal is an e-commerce business allowing payments and money transfers to be made through the Internet..

But to me: PayPal is simply an easy and safe way to pay for things that I buy online…

Many say that PayPal is:

• the fastest, safest easiest way to pay and get paid
• the most popular online payment source in the world today
• lets us send money to anyone with email
• free for consumers
• works very easily with our existing credit cards and checking accounts
• easy to join-it takes just a few minute to set-up your free online account

Personally, I like the fact that I can shop online and not share my financial information with the company I am buying from (credit or debit card or checking account information with anyone other than paypal). Everyone seems to agree that PayPal uses the newest and best anti-fraud technology to help protect us and our financial information… so that if a companies information is compromised my account information isn’t…

With PayPal it’s also easy to transfer money to anyone, anytime, anywhere in the world from whatever computer you may be at.

You can pay most retailers on the internet with PayPal and in some cases that is the only payment form they accept.

If it’s free than how does Pay Pal make it’s money. Easy, they charge the sellers for each transaction. So for “sellers” the rumblings are that PayPal’s fees are increasing much too high and much too quickly!!

Visit their website for more information: www.paypal.com

50 Best Websites 2010

Every year, TIME (Time magazine) publishes a list of what they feel are the top 50 websites – according to their promo, the list ranges from the helpful to the distracting, the big hitters to the unknowns..

So when you have some time to relax and explore, check out their website which makes it easy by sorting their list into ten (10) primary categories…

• Music & Video
• Sports
• News & Info
• Financial & Productivity
• Shopping & Travel
• Health & Fitness
• Social Media
• Games
• Education
• Family & Kids

Hope you enjoy… here's the link:

www.time.com/time/specials/packages/completelist/0,29569,2012721,00.html

Great gift idea websites..

These are 2 of fastest growing & most popular websites today for “special deals” – I use both quite often, because they offer great deals and help save money. And as most of you know shopping in malls is one of my least favorite things to do.
So shopping online, especially for the holidays, is my way to shop and I’ve been very pleased with both of these companies… Cherie Houston

www.restaurant.com
A great websites where you purchase discounted gift cards either directly from the one of more than 15,000 restaurants nationwide or buy a "restaurant.com gift card" at their discounted price and then it is redeemable at any of their affiliated restaurants nationwide. As with anything we buy on line – read the specific guidelines of each restaurant when you buy their card or if you aren’t sure – call them. When you put in a zip code, you can then choose the mile radius that you want to check from that point for participating restaurants and you will see the specific restaurants address, tele # and webpage if they have one…

www.groupon.com
Groupon is based in Chicago but has offices all over the US – you’ve seen them in the news lately because they were just purchased by “Google”… I really like this website and use it often for gift ideas here in New England and in Arizona… They offer unbeatable deals every day on the best stuff to do, see, eat, and buy in cities through-put the US and now that Google has bought them I have no doubt they will continue to grow in leaps & bounds… Because Group promises the participating businesses a minimum number of customers, those of us who buy from them get discounts we can’t any other way – it’s called "collective buying power!" And your credit card is very safe-they never save our CC info on their servers..

SHOP SAFELY ONLINE

Top Ten Cyber Monday Tips for Staying Safe When Shopping Online
From Better Business Bureau

Before you begin your cyber Monday holiday shopping spree – take a few moments to check out the Better Business Bureau’s tip to be safe – Shopping on line is the usually the only way that I shop, but you have to be proactive and be careful…

Hopefully you’ll find the tips on the BBB website very helpful…

www.bbb.org/us/article/top-ten-cyber-monday-tips-for-staying-safe-when-shopping-online-23416

Black Friday & Cyber Monday Ads & Info

Now that the political ad campaigns have stopped, the holidays are fast approaching and the onslaught of holiday ads will begin!!

And no doubt so will the discussions about what the retailers and media refer to as the largest shopping days of the year:

Black Friday (Friday after Thanksgiving-November 26th for brick & mortar stores)

And

Cyber Monday (Monday after Thanksgiving-November 29th for online/internet shopping)..

So, thought you might want to check out these 3 popular websites to stay informed of what and where the best deals are… you can also sign up for daily email alerts if you’d like… Enjoy & happy shopping

http://www.blackfriday.info/

http://www.bfads.net/

http://www.cybermondaycentral.com/

How to convert slides to digital

Many of us have old photos in slide formats needing a slide projector. That technology is pretty much obsolete. To preserve slides and display them on other formats, you must convert them. A slide converter converts slides to digital file you can store on your computer on a CD or DVD. Slide converter prices vary with how much they speed up the process of converting. You could scan each slide individually without a converter; but this is a long process if you have a large number of slides. Prices vary - at Amazon.com prices ranged from $49.99 to $249.00.

Most converters work the same way. They are separate machines from the computer, where you put your slides in a holder that generally holds about 5-9 slides, slide the holder through the machine and take a picture of each slide. Companies such as Ritz Camera & others provide this and other conversion services (slide conversion charges usually range from 19-.39 per slide).
Hope this list of websites will help with your “tech shopping”:

• www.amazon.com
• www.bestbuy.com
• www.buy.com
• www.cnet.com
• www.ebay.com
• www.Hammacher.com
• www.newegg.com
• www.officemax.com
• www.overstock.com
• www.pricegrabber.com
• www.ritzcamera.com
• www.shopping.yahoo.com
• www.staples.com

Shopping On-line Ad Resource

Do you like to shop on line - especially this time of year when waiting in line to get both in and out of stores is the norm.. Well you might want to check out this website "Black Friday 2009" mentioned on many of the talk shows this week, designed to help you find who is offering the best sale prices for the largest shopping day of the year, now known as BLACK FRIDAY... so check it out...

www.bfads.net