As floodwaters subside in Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas, I want to take this opportunity to express our compassion for all the people who have been affected by this devastation to property, loss of livelihood, and most tragically, loss of lives.

If you’ve never been through a flood, it can be hard to imagine the destructive power of the moving water, how quickly it can rise, and how filthy flood waters really are. A raging current of water ceases to be rain water or even river water, and becomes a moving torrent of sewage, carrying with it garbage and wastes of all kinds, animals that have drowned, dangerous floating or submerged debris, and in most cases, snakes, rats, and a host of vermin.

When the waters finally go down, what is left is nasty and bloated beyond comprehension. My heart breaks for everyone who is facing this tragedy. Even sadder, because flood insurance is only required of properties in certain areas, the vast majority of the people affected by the flooding will have no insurance coverage to fall back on.

Lest we think that our problems in the US are singular, a brief search of the news reminds us that, in recent weeks, thousands of farmers in the Orissa district of India have lost their crops due to flooding. Over all, more than 1.5 million residents along or near the Bay of Bengal have been impacted by flash flooding, including the collapse of thousand of mud homes. In Norway, floodwaters have polluted drinking waters for hundreds of residents. Seasonal flooding in the Sudan of Africa has been much worse than usual this year, and thousands are homeless as both the Nile and the Al-Gash rivers have overflowed their banks.

Residents near Victoria, Australia, have recently faced some of the worst flooding in that area’s history, as trees are down and roads are closed by the high waters. In the North Cornwall area of England, flash flooding has collapsed buildings and forced the evacuation of approximately 1000 residents. In Japan, Typhoon Man-Yi has created massive flooding, loss of homes, and again, loss of life. And in China, with its burgeoning population, millions have been affected by flooding this summer, including the deaths, according to some resources, of nearly 400 people.

Sadly, in my accounts of this summer’s flooding, I may have omitted areas I should have mentioned, and I apologize. We’ve had our own experiences with floodwaters here in Dover, NH at our Sell My Timeshare NOW offices and our hearts go out to everyone around the globe who is now dealing with flooding or its aftermath. If you can do anything to help someone whose life has been forever changed by floodwaters, please do. If you don’t know where to start, remember there is always the Disaster Relief Fund of the American Red Cross.

1-800-RED CROSS

For an interesting take on the flooding problems in Great Britian, read Peter Black’s blog.

To learn more about the National Flood Insurance Program visit their website at http://www.floodsmart.gov/floodsmart/pages/index.jsp

And if you have any updates on timeshares in the areas affected by the flooding, please share it with us by leaving your comments.

Did you know that at least one company offers vacation insurance specifically designed for timeshare owners?

VacationGuard ®, is an insurance product provided through the Nationwide® company. According to their marketing materials, VacationGuard ® is, “the first plan designed to cover the real needs of the timeshare owner. It’s based on the amount of time you own or will vacation and covers maintenance dues, unit damage, and exchange fees all in one easy plan.”

The policy provides annual coverage to timeshare owners and vacation club members, not protection on a “per trip basis”. It does not distinguish whether you vacation a day at a time, or week by week. In addition to travel interruption and delay, like other more traditional types of travel insurance cover, this special timeshare owner’s policy covers property damage to your timeshare unit and annual expenses that can include maintenance dues and fees, in the event you cannot use your timeshare because of a reason or reasons covered by your policy.

There are also some other valuable benefits including towing and car breakdown coverage, loss of job coverage and exchange coverage. There’s even a “snow guarantee” for skiers and coverage of your greens fees if your round of golf gets rained out.

If you are interested in purchasing vacation insurance designed for timeshare owners, be sure you also check into what may also be available through your exchange company as well as looking into other types of traditional travel insurance.

There’s a rumor going around that Lindsay Lohan has bought a California timeshare. To make the story even more titillating, Lindsay Lohan’s purchase is described as a “rehab time share” in an online article by the entertainment industry spoof website Dateline Hollywood.

It is true that there are timeshare resorts to suit a wide variety of needs and interests. In the past, I have written about urban timeshare, timeshare houseboats, and even timeshares for nudists, but to the very best of my knowledge, there is currently no such thing as a rehab time share. This story is a scam—an industry spoof of the daily headlines.

The Lindsay Lohan timeshare story quoted her as saying, “I realized that I was pouring money down the drain by renting a room every time I go into rehab.” While Lindsay Lohan probably did not say that, or anything close to that, the theory behind the statement is dead-on. Any time your vacation, business, or personal travel takes you back to the same location, time after time, it is usually a wise move to buy timeshare or a timeshare resale. And if a California timeshare interests you, there are great deals available in timeshare resales and timeshare rentals.

Dateline Hollywood is all about making the entertainment industry even more entertaining with articles that parody the activities of news making celebrities like Lindsay Lohan. And when you think about it, it must be a challenge to come up with spoofs that are more outrageous than what some celebrities and so-called celebrities are actually doing that makes the headlines.

Here’s a great short interview with Lindsay Lohan, filmed in 1997, just after she made Disney’s The Parent Trap. The interview, about her experience during the filming is credited to Entertainment Tonight and ETOnline.

Mashable is a social networking blog and one I read as often as I can. The blog is written by Pete Cashmore, and I have a great deal of appreciation for his knowledge of internet marketing in this age of Web 2.0.

Last week, he ran a blog post called, Tech Startup USA: 27 Web Companies in the Northeast. He looked at some of the more notable web based companies, or the type of online based businesses that are sometimes referred to as a “dotcom”.

I won’t go into all the online companies that made the list, but here are a few, and Cashmore’s description of them, including names you will know and a few you may not:

• Del.icio.us – Popular social bookmarking site that centers around posting links and promoting and sharing them via tags.
• Xanga – Popular social networking community, currently ranked #92 on Alexa.
• Library Thing – Service lets you organize your book collection, find books and authors of interest, and connect with people based upon literary tastes.
• MyBlogLog – Simple social networking for bloggers, featuring a highly useful widget that tracks and displays blog visitors.
• FeedBurner – Leading RSS Feed service, FeedBurner creates and manages RSS feeds for site content and offers any array of related services—such as detailed statistics and reporting – at fee and paid subscription levels.

If you are interested, I hope you will go to the Mashable blog and read about all 27 companies. They really fascinated me, especially since these are online companies that have put down roots so close to where we, at Sell My Timeshare NOW, are here in Dover, NH. As Cashmore says, “…it’s sometimes easy to forget that web companies are real entities tethered to Earth-bound locales.”

Sell My Timeshare NOW is both a bricks and mortar business and an online global web company. Besides our Dover, NH office, we have an office in Altamonte Springs, (Orlando) Florida. And while clients, customers, and anyone who wants a very average cup of office coffee are always welcome to drop by, our business is primarily as an Internet based company or dotcom.

Sell My Timeshare NOW may not have made Mashable’s list this year, but we are seeing some pretty amazing growing. Our website traffic is up 53 percent over 2006, and the number of offers to rent or buy timeshare is up 55 percent for this same period. Across the board, we will exceed all performance predictions—in all categories—for 2007. And you can read more about our own personal success story by clicking on this Sell My Timeshare NOW press release.