Not that long ago, the average UK wedding cost a staggering £21,000. Recent research shows that as a result of the recession this figure has fallen £5,000 in the last year to £15,000. This is still a lot of money and a worry to many couples who want the perfect day.
Most Brides and Grooms-to-be put a great deal of effort into planning their wedding, ensuring every detail from the napkins to the flowers are just right. Whilst it’s true to say that there will always be a little hiccup at most events, this is usually on minor and generally something so small that it’s probably only noticed by the Bride and Groom. However, sometimes bigger things do go wrong and wedding insurance is something that could help to put it right.
Wedding insurance provides cover for things like damaged clothing (particularly if hired), lost rings, stolen or damaged gifts and, perhaps crucially in the current economic climate, protection should a supplier go bankrupt.
A recent Yahoo Finance article suggests that wedding insurance is unnecessary and that similar cover can be found elsewhere for free. It’s certainly true that your home insurance may cover you for some things and that deposits paid for by credit card might provide some protection under section 75 of the consumer credit act. However, can you be certain that everything is actually covered? For a small premium, wedding insurance provides peace of mind that should something go wrong on your big day you’ll not be left out of pocket.
So is wedding insurance worth it? Given how low premiums have dropped, it’s probably worth taking out wedding insurance for even the smallest wedding. It’s certainly worth it for the peace of mind and if the Best Man rips his trousers on the dance floor, you know you’ll be covered!
Wednesday, 15 July 2009
Wednesday, 8 July 2009
Outsourcing Your Article Writing
Writing and publishing articles is a great way to promote your website. Well written, informative articles relevant to your particular niche not only attract real visitors to your site, but are also great for the purposes of search engine optimisation (SEO). Google loves content, it’s that simple. Actually, Google loves relevant content and consequently writing articles related to your site is a great way of improving your position in the search engine listings.
But what if you don’t have time to write lots of articles or what if writing doesn’t come that naturally to you? The simple answer is to hire someone else to do it for you. I’m currently in the middle of a dedicated period of optimisation for my wedding insurance comparison and wedding seating plan websites and don’t really have the time to write lots of articles myself. So I thought I’d try hiring someone else to write them for me.
Googling “article writing service” returns lots of results with a variety of prices too – from as low as $5 per article up to around $50. Firstly I tried someone towards the top end of the scale at $40 for a 500 word article. A week after I’d sent the initial spec (this one was actually for a topic other than wedding insurance) an email dropped in with my article attached. I was very pleased with the results – it was a well written and well researched article. However, at $40 a go, I wasn’t going to be able to afford to get many articles written for me!
Next I tried the lower end of the scale - $5 an article. A few days later I received the articles. As expected, they weren’t quite the same quality as the $40 one. Far from it actually. I’d anticipated that for this price the writers would probably be non-native English speakers and that I’d probably need to make a few grammatical corrections but this would be much quicker than writing the articles from scratch. However, whilst the author had clearly researched the topic well, the language used was pretty dreadful. I’ve since read on forums that it is possible to find authors who can write fantastic articles for just $5 a go but it appears they are possibly few and far between.
Finally I discovered UK based Justin Arnold’s website The Mightier Pen. It seemed to offer exactly what I was looking for, well written articles at a reasonable price. I ordered a 10 article package on wedding insurance and a few days later the articles arrived. The quality was superb – highly relevant to the topic and extremely well written. At $15 per article it’s certainly great value. I’ve since placed another order and as soon as budget allows I’ll be asking Justin to write some more for me.
If you decide to go down the route of outsourcing your article writing there are a few things you should watch out for, irrespective of who you get to write your articles.
But what if you don’t have time to write lots of articles or what if writing doesn’t come that naturally to you? The simple answer is to hire someone else to do it for you. I’m currently in the middle of a dedicated period of optimisation for my wedding insurance comparison and wedding seating plan websites and don’t really have the time to write lots of articles myself. So I thought I’d try hiring someone else to write them for me.
Googling “article writing service” returns lots of results with a variety of prices too – from as low as $5 per article up to around $50. Firstly I tried someone towards the top end of the scale at $40 for a 500 word article. A week after I’d sent the initial spec (this one was actually for a topic other than wedding insurance) an email dropped in with my article attached. I was very pleased with the results – it was a well written and well researched article. However, at $40 a go, I wasn’t going to be able to afford to get many articles written for me!
Next I tried the lower end of the scale - $5 an article. A few days later I received the articles. As expected, they weren’t quite the same quality as the $40 one. Far from it actually. I’d anticipated that for this price the writers would probably be non-native English speakers and that I’d probably need to make a few grammatical corrections but this would be much quicker than writing the articles from scratch. However, whilst the author had clearly researched the topic well, the language used was pretty dreadful. I’ve since read on forums that it is possible to find authors who can write fantastic articles for just $5 a go but it appears they are possibly few and far between.
Finally I discovered UK based Justin Arnold’s website The Mightier Pen. It seemed to offer exactly what I was looking for, well written articles at a reasonable price. I ordered a 10 article package on wedding insurance and a few days later the articles arrived. The quality was superb – highly relevant to the topic and extremely well written. At $15 per article it’s certainly great value. I’ve since placed another order and as soon as budget allows I’ll be asking Justin to write some more for me.
If you decide to go down the route of outsourcing your article writing there are a few things you should watch out for, irrespective of who you get to write your articles.
- Once you’ve made payment you should own the copyright to the article.
- They must pass a Copyscape test – you don’t want to be publishing content that’s not original.
- Articles should be manually written and not automatically produced using software.
- Articles should be written to include plenty of relevant keywords. That said, you don’t want your article completely stuffed with keywords either.
Thursday, 2 July 2009
Setting up Linux on the Acer Aspire One
A few months ago I bought an Acer Aspire One netbook. I run the online wedding seating planner, Toptableplanner, and needed something ultra-portable to handle email and support issues when not at my desk. I'd been thinking about buying one for a while and on a random trip to Comet there were some on offer. So I did the unthinkable and actually purchased a gadget from a physical shop! I decided to go for the ZG5 model with 1GB RAM, Windows XP and a 16GB SSD drive. At first I was quite pleased with it but then it started to get annoying. Windows XP was just not setup to run off a solid state disk. Most of the time it would be alright but then as soon as the OS needed to write anything to disk the whole machine would grind to a halt. A few days ago I decided to do something about it - splat the whole machine and install Linux.
Installing Linux
Actually getting the operating system on was fairly easy. I bought a cheap DVD drive off eBay and connected it to the Aspire One using an IDE-USB lead. I booted from DVD using an Aspire One Linux Recovery disk and followed the prompts. The whole process was completed in about 25 minutes.
Configuration
Now I needed to get all the applications and connectivity I require setup. This includes Skype, network shares, 3G modem and Bluetooth. I'm not exactly a Linux novice but I did need some help. There's a lot of information already out there, particularly on the Aspire One User forum, but some of it didn't work or I needed to use snippets from different sites. I've tried here to summarise the process and bring together much of the information in one place.
1. Run Live Update
The first thing I did was to run the Live Update. This is found in the Settings menu on the desktop.
2. Enable the Advanced Menu
This is really useful for launching applications that don't have icons in the main four desktop groups. I used Tony Smith's "Ten Tweaks" guide to do this.
- Bring up a terminal.
- Type in xfce-setting-show.
- Click on the Desktop icon and then the Behaviour tab.
- Tick the 'Show Desktop on Right Click' option.
3. Setup an E160 3G USB Modem
Initially I thought this was going to be really tricky but in the end was actually quite simple.
- Firstly download and install huawei081126.sh from the Acer Support site.
- Once it's installed, reboot and you'll find a new Mobile Partner application in the Connect menu.
- Plug in the dongle and run the application.
- You'll need to setup a profile first from the Tools->Options menu.
- My dongle is an O2 one. I tried using the settings from http://www.filesaveas.com/gprs.html but these didn't work. Rob Tucker fortunately posted the correct settings on his blog.
APN: m-bb.o2.co.uk
Access Number: *99#
Username: o2bb
Password: password
4. Setup Bluetooth
I also wanted to be able to connect my N95 the Aspire One using Bluetooth for occasional internet access. This was actually quite tricky and at one point I resorted to wiping the machine using the recovery disk again and things had got a bit messy! Eventually I found this process to work well. This thread provided most of the answers in one way or another.
- Follow the simpler instructions in bjc's post here.
- Then use these instructions to setup rfcomm and test using wvdial.
I couldn't get gnome-ppp to work so am still having to connect using wvdial from a terminal.
5. Install a few more applications
Finally I just need to install a few more applications.
- Firefox 3 from the Acer Support site.
- I didn't install Skype from here as it didn't seem to work properly. Instead I downloaded the Fedora7 version from the main skype.com site.
- Thanks to the iDoctor forum I was able to get SSH working too.
Conclusions
It's been a made day or so getting the Aspire One all setup and working to my liking but it has definitely been worth it. The machine is so much more responsive than it was with Windows XP and is therefore all the more usable. Now when I'm using it I'm no longer looking at the little 'SSD active' light waiting for it to go out so I can actually do something!
Installing Linux
Actually getting the operating system on was fairly easy. I bought a cheap DVD drive off eBay and connected it to the Aspire One using an IDE-USB lead. I booted from DVD using an Aspire One Linux Recovery disk and followed the prompts. The whole process was completed in about 25 minutes.
Configuration
Now I needed to get all the applications and connectivity I require setup. This includes Skype, network shares, 3G modem and Bluetooth. I'm not exactly a Linux novice but I did need some help. There's a lot of information already out there, particularly on the Aspire One User forum, but some of it didn't work or I needed to use snippets from different sites. I've tried here to summarise the process and bring together much of the information in one place.
1. Run Live Update
The first thing I did was to run the Live Update. This is found in the Settings menu on the desktop.
2. Enable the Advanced Menu
This is really useful for launching applications that don't have icons in the main four desktop groups. I used Tony Smith's "Ten Tweaks" guide to do this.
- Bring up a terminal.
- Type in xfce-setting-show.
- Click on the Desktop icon and then the Behaviour tab.
- Tick the 'Show Desktop on Right Click' option.
3. Setup an E160 3G USB Modem
Initially I thought this was going to be really tricky but in the end was actually quite simple.
- Firstly download and install huawei081126.sh from the Acer Support site.
- Once it's installed, reboot and you'll find a new Mobile Partner application in the Connect menu.
- Plug in the dongle and run the application.
- You'll need to setup a profile first from the Tools->Options menu.
- My dongle is an O2 one. I tried using the settings from http://www.filesaveas.com/gprs.html but these didn't work. Rob Tucker fortunately posted the correct settings on his blog.
APN: m-bb.o2.co.uk
Access Number: *99#
Username: o2bb
Password: password
4. Setup Bluetooth
I also wanted to be able to connect my N95 the Aspire One using Bluetooth for occasional internet access. This was actually quite tricky and at one point I resorted to wiping the machine using the recovery disk again and things had got a bit messy! Eventually I found this process to work well. This thread provided most of the answers in one way or another.
- Follow the simpler instructions in bjc's post here.
- Then use these instructions to setup rfcomm and test using wvdial.
I couldn't get gnome-ppp to work so am still having to connect using wvdial from a terminal.
5. Install a few more applications
Finally I just need to install a few more applications.
- Firefox 3 from the Acer Support site.
- I didn't install Skype from here as it didn't seem to work properly. Instead I downloaded the Fedora7 version from the main skype.com site.
- Thanks to the iDoctor forum I was able to get SSH working too.
Conclusions
It's been a made day or so getting the Aspire One all setup and working to my liking but it has definitely been worth it. The machine is so much more responsive than it was with Windows XP and is therefore all the more usable. Now when I'm using it I'm no longer looking at the little 'SSD active' light waiting for it to go out so I can actually do something!
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