Asheville gets props from financial website Mint.com for being the best place in America to work…
…if you’re a claims adjuster.
The Mint Blog rates Asheville as tops in the Claims Adjuster salary category of Business and Financial Operations — at $87,410 annually. Anybody know of any claims adjuster job openings?
Not happy with your present salary? Wondering what city holds the gold at the end of the rainbow? We’ve done the research for you.
High-speed police pursuits often end in collisions, which sometimes end tragically with the deaths or injuries of innocent victims. But GPS satellite and cellular technologies are now being combined to stop the bad guys in their fast tracks.
GM’s OnStar service was used most recently to stop a carjacker in California. On command, OnStar — based in Michigan — disabled the gas pedal of the stolen vehicle in California and enabled police to nab the suspect after the chase.
“Considering the violent crime that this suspect was wanted for, I was just amazed,” Visalia Police Chief Colleen Mestas said. via Associated Press
New car options are featuring more and more sophisticated technology — including safety features such as GM’s Stolen Vehicle Slowdown service with OnStar. The services are able to link both the driver and the vehicle to receive remote help.
This item sounds a little creepy, given the Halloween season. But it’s interesting nonetheless.
“Funeral planning is much like planning a wedding,” says Funeralwise co-founder Larry Anspach. “It has many of the same elements, only it is a celebration of a life past instead of two lives going forward.”
If you can get over the discomfort of the comparison, consider clicking over to the funeral planning calculator at Funeralwise.com. It provides instant funeral price estimates that are illuminating. The site is consumer-oriented and lifts the veil on a subject that is often kept in the shadows. It also offers other services including a do-it-yourself funeral planner and an e-commerce store.
Funeral issues are on the minds of Iwanna classified users every week. Iwanna.com gets hundreds of searches of Cemetery Lots.
The Float House, which debuts this week in New Orleans, marks a fascinating innovation in manufactured housing in the wake of a natural disaster such as Hurricane Katrina. It is designed to survive up to 12-foot floodwaters and be mass produced.
This innovative base, or “chassis,” integrates all mechanical, electrical, plumbing and sustainable systems, and securely floats in case of flooding. Inspired by GM’s skateboard chassis, which is engineered to support several car body types, the FLOAT House’s chassis is designed to support a variety of customizable house configurations.
Although the Float House doesn’t have much use in the mountains of Western North Carolina, it does make you wonder if someone could design and produce a “slide” house — one that might survive a tumble down the ridge line.
Greensboro shows the largest percentage price reductions in North Carolina at an average of 5.3%. Over a quarter of the homes in that market had recent list-price reductions. Greensboro’s home value index is 4.4% lower than a year ago.
Charleston leads South Carolina in declining home prices, according to the data. Spartanburg and Greenville rank in the middle of the list of 144 metro areas, with average price reductions in the 3.5% range.
Average days on the market are over 100 days in each of the metro areas mentioned above – sometimes well over 100 days. Zillow reports Asheville’s days-on-market in August as 110.
The biggest house price declines are in Florida. Zillow reported that 14 of the top 20 metro areas had the biggest discounts in list prices.
The good news for sellers is that the first-time buyers credit is helping stretch the traditionally strong summer home-selling season this year. Video from Trulia.com is below:
Thanks to a morning television show segment, the subject of furniture has become volcanic in Google Trends today. Especially on the radar is Boyle’s Furniture Outlet in Charlotte, which was specifically mentioned in the program for its rock-bottom clearance pricing on its website — for instance, getting a $500 chair for $99.
The Today Show segment also singled out consignment and estate sales as good ways to find extreme furniture deals. In the Carolinas, however, furniture has always been a hot item in Iwanna’s free classifieds. Readers can find hundreds of furniture deals every day in Asheville and Greenville by searching Iwanna.com.
Be especially attentive from sunset to midnight and during the hours shortly before or after sunrise. These are the highest risk times for deer-vehicle collisions.
Brake firmly when you notice a deer in or near your path, but stay in your lane. Many serious crashes occur when drivers swerve to avoid a deer and hit another vehicle or lose control of their cars.
Do not rely on devices such as deer whistles, deer fences and reflectors to deter deer. These devices have not proven effective.
North Carolina didn’t make the list of states with the highest incidence of deer-vehicle collisions, but West Virginia did. And its mountainous areas closely resemble the terrain of Asheville and Western North Carolina, where deer ramble in abundance every fall.
For those who are more interested in encountering deer, the North Carolina deer-hunting season in Western has been in full swing for several weeks. Hunting-related searches are picking up on Iwanna.com including searches for deer camps, guns and bows. North Carolina’s archery deer hunting season runs through tomorrow (Oct. 2). Muzzle-loading season for deer is the week of Oct. 10-16, and rifle season begins Oct. 17 and runs through the end of year.
An exciting venture launched at this year’s TechCrunch50 in San Francisco was toybots.com by SGN, which demonstrated how the internet and wireless technology can make a toy animal come alive. Imagine a traveling parent or a grandparent in a city far away being able to interact with a youngster through one of his or her favorite toys. That’s basically the concept of Toybots.
TechCrunch50 — whose goal is to find the best Internet start-ups and launch them in front of the industry’s most influential venture capitalists, companies and press — has an impressive track record. Mint.com, which was a two-person company when it won the grand prize at TechCrunch50 just two years ago, was bought this week by powerhouse personal finance company Intuit (Quicken, QuickBooks, TurboTax, etc.) for $170 million. Earlier this year, the Wall Street Journal suggested that the innovative financial start-up had Intuit quaking in its boots.
The Toybots prototype came under some criticism at this week’s TechCrunch50, and RedBeacon.com ended up winning this year’s grand prize. But it you’ve ever watched Shark Tank on television, you know the brutal nature of entrepreneurial evaluation. And the Toybots technology is certainly worth watching. SGN is betting that the platform will disrupt the gaming, entertainment and toy industries for years to come. Don’t be surprised to see this innovative toy flying off retail shelves in the very near future.
In the meantime, the CEO of the Toybots made a visit to TechCrunch after the conference to show its “improved prototype” (video below). It’s all in good fun, but there’s no better place than Iwanna to find the real things — whether they’re toys or puppies.
The latest Zogby interactive poll says that Americans continue to shed their material past, and are giving a lot of it away for free.
Even during economic hard times, we find Americans more likely to give things away. I don’t believe that most are doing so in order to make room for new material objects. Instead, people are moving toward a simpler, less materialistic lifestyle. I call them Secular Spiritualists because they are looking for more meaning in their lives, and will seek it through family, friends, volunteering and leisure activities that fulfill their needs.”
One of the most popular search terms on Iwanna.com is “free” and it returns hundreds of items. You can see what people are giving away on Iwanna just by clicking here.
