When people become more passionate about trimming monthly expenses, they may start by looking into cheap auto insurance quotes from competing companies. This is certainly a great first step in saving money on car insurance. A more affordable policy is certainly a step in the right direction. Even drivers who are deemed high risk auto insurance policy holders will find that there are dozens of companies out there willing to cater to their needs and offer them a more affordable policy than they already have.

Whether a customer is willing to switch insurance companies to save money or not, there are additional ways to save on car insurance. Each car insurance company offers multiple discounts. Most agents will go ahead and add a few of these discounts to your premium automatically, but it is always a good idea to ask what discounts the company offers so you can be certain you are getting all the discounts you qualify for. Here is a list of possible discounts an auto insurance company would offer and how to quality for the discount.

Combined Coverage – Combining together your different auto insurance policies is the best way to save money on your coverage. Not only is there a multiple car discount for insurance more than one car with the same company, but car insurance companies want their customers to purchase more than one type of policy. So, if a driver also needs home insurance, life insurance, liability insurance or even renter’s insurance, they can expect to receive a decent discount on their car insurance policy.

Renewal – Any decent car insurance company is going to want to offer incentives to customers who have a history of clean driving and continue to stay on as loyal clients. If a driver is not already receiving a renewal discount, they should contact their insurance agent and ask about one right away. The insurance company should be smart enough to realize that they don’t want to lose a loyal, responsible policy holder and give you a discount for it.

Clean Driving Record – Drivers pay insurance each month to cover the damages incurred in a potential accident at some point in the future. This means that drivers who rarely, or even never, get into an accident or receive a traffic violation are big money makers for a car insurance company. This directly translates back to the customers as a discount for being a great driver.

Safety Features – Most insurance companies will offer a discount to drivers that have certain safety features installed in their vehicles. These safety features actually save the company money in the long run so they can afford to give you a discount for using them. Antilock brakes, airbags and even car theft deterrent equipment tend to quality for a discount so be sure to speak up and ask your agent if your safety equipment counts.

Low Risk Jobs – Depending on your occupation, you might be eligible for a discount. Statistics have shown that certain fields of work, like engineering, tend to employ drivers who have fewer accidents. If you work in public service, for the government, or as a teacher – there might be a discount for that too.

Assume Additional Risk – Since drivers tend to go for the best possible auto quotes, that means they are probably only getting the minimum coverage required by local insurance laws. Car insurance companies want their customers to assume more risk by purchasing additional coverage. Not only does this bring in more income for the company, but it also means that customers are better prepared to cover any potential damages. Therefore, many companies offer a discount to customers willing to pay for more coverage.

There are dozens of other discounts available. The best way to save money on insurance is to 1) find out exactly how much car insurance you are going to need, 2) shop around for the best price, and 3) go into detail over the discounts to get each and every one you actually qualify for.

Facebook’s Developer Wiki says that applications should only launch the prompt after a user clicks on a link, but it’s likely that those guidelines will be abused.

Here’s what the prompt looks like for the “Spay Day Online Pet Photo Contest” application that Factor 360 developed for the Humane Society of the United States:

:

Here’s how to load the prompt on an Facebook Application (Iframe) using XFBML:

First, you’ll want to make sure that you have the prerequisites ready so that you can use XFBML.

Then, make a hyperlink that calls an “AddBookmark” function that we’ll write. You could also do a submit button or anything else that would call a JavaScript function.

Remember to <a href=”#” onclick=”AddBookmark(); return false;”>Bookmark this Application!</a>

Then, use the following JavaScript to define the AddBookmark function.

<script type=”text/javascript”>
function AddBookmark() {
FB_RequireFeatures(["Connect"], function() {
FB.Facebook.init(‘APIKEY’, ‘xd_receiver.htm’);
FB.ensureInit(function() {
FB.Connect.showBookmarkDialog(callback);
});
});
}
function callback(post_id, exception) {
alert(‘bookmarked’);
}
</script>

Make sure to replace “API Key” with your application’s API Key. The “FB.ensureinit” function makes sure that the library has fully loaded before trying to execute it. The reference to “FB.Connect.showBookmarkDialog(callback);” is where the magic happens. the callback function occurs after the user has closed the dialog box. You could put just about anything you want in here. For this demonstration, I’ve just included a basic JavaScript alert.

In the next couple of months, Facebook will be launching a number of additional API changes, including the removal of classic application invites and the addition of sending messages Facebook’s Inbox from within Applications. Developers will also soon be able to get access to their user’s email address if they give permission. You can see other changes coming on Facebook’s Developer Roadmap.

If you plan on doing any Code Igniter work, you’re going to need some form of development environment for it. On the Net Tuts tutorial, the author uses Text Mate, which works pretty well as a Mac product, but I’ve found that PHP Eclipse is a bit better of a solution as a development environment on the windows side. You’ll also need to get a copy of WAMP setup, get the CodeIgniter files and configure CodeIgniter to look at the right path on your web-server as well as the correct database.

Here’s how to setup the ultimate development and test environment for Code Igniter in Windows

Step 1: Installing Wamp

The first thing you’ll need to do is get a copy of WAMP. This stands for “Windows Apache MySQL and PHP”. It essentially provides a set of web-development framework that combines all of the tools that you need for creating a PHP test-bed in a Windows environment. Since Joomla is based on PHP, WAMP is a perfect solution to run Joomla on top of. You can download the installation files from WampServer.com

You will also be asked about SMTP information. Unless you have a specific need to do anything that involves sending emails from your web-server, it’s safe to leave those blank. If you are developing contact forms or somethign that would require credentials, you can get those from your internet service provider.

Step 2: Testing WAMP

After getting WAMP installed, you’ll be given the option of letting it start up automatically or you can simply launch WAMP from the start menu. Once you have the WAMP client running, you can enable the web-server and database by right clicking on the icon and clicking “Start All Services”. To make sure that the environment is working properly, right click the icon and select “Local Host.”  If all is well, you’ll see a page that says “WAMPServer” that has a white-background.

Step 3: Getting Code Igniter

Once you have WAMP running, you’ll want to grab a copy of the Code Ingiter files from the Code Igniter Website. They typically come in the form of a ZIP file. Take the files in the Zip File and extract them to a sub directory of your WAMP installation’s WWW directory. Typically WAMP’s WWW directory is located at “c:\wamp\www\”, so a good directory to put your files in might be c:\wamp\www\ci\”.

Step 4: Testing Code Igniter

The next thing that you want to do is to test out your copy of Code Igniter on WAMP and make sure that it’s running properly. You can do this by opening up your web-browser and navigating to “http://localhost/ci/” (assuming that you named your Code Igniter file “ci”). If it’s working, it should look like this:

Step 5: Configuring Code Igniter

Once you have code igniter working, you’ll want to make a few modifications to Code Igniter’s config file so that Code Igniter is properly configured and can access your database.

The first file  you want to modify is “config.php”, this is located in “/system/application/config/” relative to your root directory of code igniter, for us, that would be “C:\wamp\www\ci\system\application\config.”

On line 14, you’ll notice:

$config['base_url']    = “http://example.com/”;

We’ll want to change that URL to the URL of our code igniter install, so it should be:

$config['base_url']    = “http://localhost/ci”;

Step 6: Database Configuration

Finally, we’ll want to point Code Igniter at a database if we want to use one. Code Igniter by it self does not require a database, but if you want to do a project that requires database access, WAMP comes with MySQL Server, which will work just fine for a development environment.

To connect Code Igniter to a database, you’ll want to look at lines 40-43 of “database.php”, which is also located in Code Igniter’s config directory. We need to setup a username and password and choose which database we want to make use of. WAMP’s default MySQL username and password is “root” and nothing, so enter those in for your local environment. You’ll also want to make sure that your host name is set to localhost and that your database name is set to the database that you create.

$db['default']['hostname'] = “localhost”;
$db['default']['username'] = “root”;
$db['default']['password'] = “”;
$db['default']['database'] = “DATABASENAMEHERE”;

Step 7: Choosing an Editor

Right now, you have everything you need to start developing in Code Igniter, but you’re probably going to want some form of editor that will make your life a lot easier. The one I like to use is PHP Eclipse, which can be download from eclipse.org. Other editors you might want to try include TextPad, and TextMate.

Step 8: Making Your First Program

Now that your development and hosting environment is ready to go, you can start writing some code. To write your first “Hello World” program, head on over to Net Tuts and watch “CodeIgniter From Scratch: Day 1“.