Auto insurance companies DO NOT LOOK at demerit points, they look at convictions!  Even if you do not get any demerit points as the paralegal tirelessly worked to get you a deal from the crown, it will still likely AFFECT your insurance premiums.

• Always fight your traffic tickets! More often than not, the police offer who issued the ticket will not show up for the court date (several months after the initial offence), meaning your ticket will get thrown out.
• Unless it’s a major offense, where you face suspension of your license, you do not need a paralegal or lawyer. You can speak to the crown and plead down to a lesser offence, or provide evidence if you go to trial.
• If you’re facing criminal charges, consult a lawyer – not a paralegal.

Here’s a post I found on a online forum I read daily from an insurance industry professional on the subject.

Ok, I’m just annoyed of the myths and misconceptions out there regarding Demerit Points.

Demerit Points DO NOT AFFECT INSURANCE. They only affect your ability to have a license, and come off your record after 2 yrs. So for you to get enough points to lose your license, must mean you’re a pretty crappy driver. After 2-3 tickets in a 2 year period, I would just drive cautiously until my points fall off.

http://www.mto.gov.on.ca/english/dan…/demerit.shtml

This is another reason why I would not hire one of those ticket fighting companies, just because they can reduce your points. you can reduce your points yourself by showing up to court. I’d only hire them if I got involved in a major collision that involved numerous convictions.

Convictions on the other hand do impact your insurance. So if you plead guilty to a reduced fine and 0 points, guess what?!? That will still affect your insurance, as long as you plead guilty, you will have a conviction on your record. This isn’t even a deal, because the likelihood of losing your license due to demerit points is so far fetched in my mind, unless you enjoy drinking and driving and get 3 tickets a year I dont know how you can lose your license.

You can read the entire thread by going to the forum directly, by clicking on this link http://forums.redflagdeals.com/demerit-points-do-not-affect-insurance-791274/#post9445591

Currently Dropbox offers its subscribers 2GB of space free, with the option of getting upto 2GB of additional space for successful referals. Simply download the Dropbox app from the Android Market, signup for your free account to take advantage of the 5GB of free space.

Currently, this is only available to those who have devices running Sense 3.5.

The feature is $20 for every 30 days and includes:  Unlimited Facebook®, Twitter®, MySpace®, BlackBerry® Messenger and Windows Live Messenger™

Among the Big 3 (Telus, Rogers and Bell), this is the cheapest BBM option available to pay as you go customers.  Wind and Mobilicity offer cheaper plans, but their coverage is limited to ZONES (a few major cities). Telus’s option is available across Canada without any additional fees.

You can add this feature by logging into your telusmobility.com account selecting add-on.

Wind Mobile is offering new subscribers unlimited incoming calling (in their home zone) for free if you activate a “Pay Your Way” account before October 31st, 2011.

Wind has a $5/month option for unlimited texting to any Canadian and US number from their home zone. This is option is cheaper than any option currently offered by any of the other wireless carriers. This plan is great for texters ans parents with teenagers who love to text.

Pay Your Way is Wind’s prepaid or “pay & talk” solution, where you add funds / credits to your account in advance to use the service, unlike “post-paid” where you recieve a monthly bill after you’ve used the services.

More details here

RIM held a 10:00AM conference call with investors and media, and in the conference call CO-CEOs Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis said all services are back up and running. Currently backlog of messages are being “flushed” for some North American users.

The outage was caused by core-routing hardware in their network operation centres. When the initial problem occurred, it caused a snow ball effect resulting in the three day outage.

Balsille said RIM will work with carriers to compensate users, but have not come up with any difitive plans as their focus has been solely to get service back up and running.

Some of the highlights include

• Improvements to the camera app
• iMessage (native Instant Messaging platform rivaling Blackebery Messenger)
• Integrated Twitter

How to perform update

1. Update your iTunes to the latest version 10.5
2. Plug your iphone into your computer and BACK UP THE the device.
3. Perform the software update.
4. Enjoy iOS 5.

For the third day in a row, Blackberry users are in the midst of a major Blackberry data outage rendering their Blackberry smartphones virtually useless. Sure you can still make calls and use text messaging feature on the Blackberry, but who buys a Blackberry merely for calling and texting? The bread and butter of a Blackberry, its messaging service, from e-mail to Blackberry Messenger are all unavailable due to the RIM data outage.

Blackberry users cannot access their internet browsers, use third party applications like Windows Live Messenger, Google Talk, Yahoo Instant Messenger, AOL Instant Messenger, WhatsApp and etc…

After a decade of a near perfect track record for stability and reliabiliity without outages, RIM users have experienced nearly 10 outages in the last 2 years.

With the Apple iPhone coming out later this week, the Samsung Nexus Prime is rumoured to be released in a couple of weeks, and dozens of Android devices being released every year, it does not look good for RIM shares.

The models subject to the recall in Japan are the Bravia KDL-40X5000, KDL-40X5050, KDL-40W5000, KDL-40V5000 and KDL-40V3000.

The defective part — an inverter transformer used for LCD backlights — is also used in models sold overseas. But Sony says it has not received reports of similar problems.

Rogers, like they’ve done in past years has released the “Check My Eligibility for iPhone Upgrade” tool.

You can access it here.