In the past, such damage has been strictly considered a warranty-breaking offense. Now Intel is changing its tune for customers willing to part ways with a little extra cash. The company now offers a Performance Tuning Protection Plan that covers you if you push your processor beyond its limits.

While you do have to pay for the plan, the pricing is reasonable. The Core i5-2500K can be covered for $20, the Core i7-2600K/2700K can be covered for $25, and the Core i7-3930K/3960X can be covered for $35. Coverage is considered an addition to the standard 3 year warranty. Plans aren’t available for other processors.

Intel’s decision to open this program is a sign of the confidence the company has in its products. The low prices on these plans indicate that the company believes there’s a very small chance that users will be able to destroy their processors accidently by overclocking them.

Ironically, that makes buying a protection plan unnecessary. But if you’ve always wanted to overclock – and decided not to for fear of roasting your processor – this warranty should give you the confidence you need.

Source: Slashgear
Image Credit: News Poland

It’s sort of a morbid thought to think of, but what would happen to your “social profile” if you were to become unable to communicate or worse, died?  Many of these types of websites have no or very little ways to allow the immediate family or beneficiaries the ability to “re-claim” these profiles on behalf of the person who created them.

Now there’s a new web app on the block that aims to fix this hole in social networking. Legacy Locker aims to protect your online assets the same way you would with your physical ones like your savings account, retirement account, etc. Having a will, estate or even a trust protects all of your things including your house, accounts, and all other assets. Legacy Locker comes in to protect all of your “internet assets” the same way.

Think about it for a moment, do you have accounts like email, eBay, Amazon, Paypal, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, iTunes, etc? Normally, all of these would be lost upon your passing, but Legacy Locker takes them, protects them for you and ultimately puts them in the hands of those you’ll list as your beneficiary.

If we were to think about how much time and effort we put into our online profiles and identities these days, it makes sense to protect that and have them safeguarded in the event that something was to happen to you.

Ease your Mind

Using this service obviously isn’t the only method to save and store your online information. You could write everything down on a piece of paper and secure it in your desk drawer at home/work or even write it to a file on your computer. You could also just always use the same login/password for every site you’re a part of. These scenarios often happen, but we know that these are not good ideas to protect your identity.

This service is easy, safe and convenient when it comes to storing, tracking, and updating your account information and they promise to only provide the data to the right people at the right time. Of course you can easily update, change, or modify not only your accounts but the beneficiaries at your whim. You can also have Legacy Locker send you reminders to update old passwords, or to add new assets occasionally.

Ease of Use

This app is simple to setup; they boast that setup takes less than 60 seconds! As soon as you’re logged in, you can begin inserting your “assets”.

For each account, you can assign a beneficiary to that account who will have access when the time is right. Plus, since this is a web app, all data can be added/edited from anywhere in the world. Think about it as life insurance for your online identities.

Legacy Locker is easy to use and understand. First things first, you must create an account and fill out your profile with your basic information. Then you start the simple step-by-step process.

Security Questions

Security questions here are just the same as in any other online web application.  Just things that you have knowledge of and those close to you do as well. Here are some of the available security questions:

Verifiers

Then you should enter what they call “verifiers” or the people whom you have complete confidence in to handle this information in the unfortunate event of your passing. For most of us, its our spouse or other family member that quite frankly you think might just outlive you.

Legacy Locker likes two verifiers, but will allow you to continue using only one. After you enter these verifiers, Legacy Locker will email them to verify once again that you are who you say you are and they are indeed your “verifiers.”

Online Assets

Thirdly, you need to identify all your online assets, entering the Website, username, and password for each of them. On each one you enter, you’ll assign one beneficiary to whom will have this sensitive information.

Think of your Legacy Locker as being similar to a safety deposit box – it’s a secure place to store important assets – only online.

Upon your Demise

Mortality isn’t fun to talk about, but its real for all of us and to truly give this app justice, you have to mention what happens next (with Legacy Locker, not death).

Basically, its very straightforward. When a Legacy Locker customer passes away, one of their verifiers must report the death. Then the service uses something called “human oversight with secure technology” to ensure the user’s assets are passed off correctly and to the right people. Emails are then sent to the beneficiaries with secure links to the site that contains the secure assets.

Pricing Options

It wouldn’t be on MakeUseOf if there wasn’t a free option. The free option gives you one beneficiary and three online assets to protect. This is free for life. If you need more, they have a very reasonable price for two more tiers of pricing. $29.99 annually, or the one-time fee of $299.99 and with both of those you have unlimited assets, beneficiaries and legacy letters.

Are there any other services like this out there?  Do you use a service like this yourself? Let us know in the comments…

So, when something gets stolen or damaged and you’d like to report a claim to your insurance company, pulling out a record of the purchase isn’t likely going to happen. It is going to end up being your word against theirs.

In order to help remedy keeping track of your multitude of assets, I am here today to talk about online home inventory tracking tools, one online and one off. They are designed specifically for situations like I described. To track your entire home inventory, including photos of receipts, credit cards, tax documents and much more.

StuffSafe – Online

StuffSafe is a completely free home inventory tracking site that lets you track every asset in every room of your home or workplace. You can separate all of these items by room, track many different items of your purchase, along with attaching photos of receipts, or the actual product.

Once you have all of your items entered, there are also advanced reporting options, to Excel, HTML or PDF.

Here is a look at my empty inventory database on StuffSafe.

Here I am entering the first of many assets into my StuffSafe database. These items can include many details, and also photographs, which you cannot see on this screen.

StuffSafe includes advanced export options for you to display to your insurance provider, or just for safe keeping of a hard copy report.

KnowYourStuff – Offline

KnowYourStuff has many of the same features as StuffSafe, but is offline. In other words, it’s home inventory software which keeps it away from possible snoops in the cloud. It includes a room-by-room inventory as well, with item descriptions, photos and cost.

It does not however include any reporting option like StuffSafe.

KnowYourStuff also includes a nice search tool, for sifting through the dozens of items in your database.

One of the bonus options that it has is an online ‘vault’ to store your database for safekeeping. (Vault 24 is not free though, but comes at a nominal fee)

Below is what you’ll see at first glance in KnowYourStuff. Here you will create your new location, your rooms, and item additions.

Here is a look at an addition of a new item to the KnowYourStuff database. I’m adding the same TV that I added in StuffSafe. Here you can see that you have many of the same options, including photos for receipts.

Trying to keep track of all of the thousands of purchases you’ve made during your lifetime can be a daunting task. And you don’t really know how important it is, until you have something damaged or stolen. Without evidence, such as a receipt or photograph of your product, most insurance companies aren’t going to help you out. Free asset tracking tools like these keeps all of your things in a nice and organized fashion and makes life easier when you need to get it replaced in an emergency.

Try both of these out and let us know what you think. How do you keep track of your proof of purchases? Do you have your own methods? Please let us know, we’d love to hear about them.