Travel The Web

Free Organic Recipes-Information and Site Review

2008-11-07T21:56:00.001-05:00

Information - What is Organic Food?

Seems that many people are going for organic food these days and rightfully so. There are so many ingredients in food that are not good for us that the only way to go is organic. All the pesticides that are used when growing foods and food additives that we consume are harmful to our health.

Some may ask, what exactly does organic mean? This may help;

¹Organic foods are produced according to certain production standards, meaning they are grown without the use of conventional pesticides, artificial fertilizers, human waste, or sewage sludge, and that they were processed without ionizing radiation or food additives. Livestock are reared without the routine use of antibiotics and without the use of growth hormones. In most countries, organic produce must not be genetically modified.

Organic food production is legally regulated. Currently, the United States, the European Union, Japan and many other countries require producers to obtain organic certification in order to market food as organic.

When shopping for organic food, you should look for the USDA seal that certifies the food is organic. If you see food that says it is organic without this seal, it has not been certified organic by the USDA and may not really be organic. With the higher price that we pay for organic food, we need to be sure that it is really organic. According to ²Consumer Reports, we pay anywhere from 50% to 100% more for organic food.

On the other hand, even the USDA seal does not mean that the food is 100% organic. According to ³Consumer Reports, a product with the USDA seal that says "USDA Organic" can mean that 5% of the product is not organic.

Unless the product has "100% Organic" on it, then chances are that some of the product is not organic.

all-organic-recipes.com Review

If you are wanting to cook organic and have no idea how to make organic food, I would suggest this very simple recipe site. Their page is a very simple looking one that just has a search for organic recipes. You get no other results like you would with other searches.

I did a search for hamburgers which yielded 17 recipes, a search for casserole which gave me 92 results, a search for soup which produced 141 recipes, a search for spaghetti which showed 71 recipes and a search for pizza which showed me 59 results.

I tried to think of the most popular food and see if they had organic results for them and, as you can see, they did.

Please see the link below if you would like to try the site.

I hope this hub has been helpful for those wishing to choose a healthier way of eating.

Sources and Link

Sources:

¹http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_food

²My words, their information http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/food/diet-nutrition/organic-products/organic-products-206/overview/

³My words, their information http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/food/diet-nutrition/organic-products/organic-products-206/food-labels-can-be-misleading/index.htm

Link:http://www.all-organic-recipes.com/

Free Photo and Graphics Software Programs

2008-10-23T07:24:00.004-04:00

15 of the Best Free Photo and Graphics Software Programs

The Free Photo and Graphics Programs listed here are in no particular order. You be the judge on what one works best for you, as some users prefer to use one as opposed to another. This list is meant to inform you of what programs are available for free and is not a recommendation for you to use any particular product. I have listed only the ones that have gotten good reviews in the groups that I have been visiting when researching this topic and this, in no way, discredits other free photo and graphics software programs.

1. Serif Draw Plus 4 - I have used this free program software to create graphics for quite some time. It was very easy to learn as a beginner and over time I have learned to do much more with it than I thought possible from a free grahics program. You can also import photos and things to them such as text. There is another version of this software that costs only costs $9.99, but I have never really seen a need to get this version because the free one does everything that I need it to do. They also have Photoplus6 for free on their site for editing photos.

2. Gimp - Gimp stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a free program for photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. To be honest, I have not used this one very much. The only time that I have used it is when I want to break apart an animation and save it in separate frames. I am sure that there is more that you can do with it, but I have not taken the time to find out.

3. Paint.NET - This one is a free photo and image editing software. It started out as a free replacement for Microsoft Paint, but has turned in to a great program with layers, unlimited undo, special effects and more. If you love to use MS Paint, you will really enjoy this alternative that adds to the things that MS Paint can do.

4. FotoSketcher - Do you want to turn your photo in to a painting, sketch or drawing? The this free photo program is for you. It is very easy to use and can change your picture in seconds. I just used this the other day and I ended up with what appeared to be a really good sketch.

5. Pixia - Free bitmap graphic editor program that was originally designed for anime. This program has multiple layers, transparency effects, standard file formats and a number of RGB file formats including .PSD. The main file extension used by this program is .PXA.

6. CutePDFwriter - I came across this program when I needed to send a flyer to a print shop in PDF format. I did not have a program capable of making a pdf file. The clerk at the print shop recommending getting CutePDFwriter and told me to make sure that I added Ghostscript which I could get on the same download page. She told me that both programs were free. I got the programs and I was able to send them the pdf file to create my flyer. Print shops say that working with a pdf file is much easier for them than a jpg or gif because there is less distortion when they try to print the file. When you need to convert a jpg or gif to pdf, this is the program that you need.

7. Infanview - I have not personally used this program, however I found some rave reviews for it when researching this topic. There are people saying that they use it as their main graphics program for editing graphics before they are inserted into Word and for editing pictures before they go on the web.

8. Products by Vicman Software - They appear to have many photo and graphics programs that are listed to download for free. I found that some people recommend their products and others do not, so it seems that it depends on what features the user is looking for. I would say that their programs are worth giving a try to see if they suit your personal needs. It seems that the VCW VicMan's Photo Editor 8.1 is the most recommended.

9. PhotoMeister - With this free program, you can convert your photos into web pages, emails or screensavers, create photo albums to print or export as PDF files, create VCDs for your DVD player to show your photos on your tv, and more. Looks like a keeper.

10. Rotoscope - You can take an image and make it look like a cartoon with this free software. It looks very interesting and has received high rating among users in discussion groups and they also say that it is very easy to use.

11. Photoscape - This program seems to be very popular. It can do resizing, brightness and color adjustment, white balance, backlight correction, frames, balloons, mosaic mode, adding text, drawing pictures, cropping, filters, red eye removal, blooming. You can even make one animation photo with multiple photos. There seem to be numerous benefits to this program that make it worth checking out since it is a free program.

12. ImageComposer - If you need something that makes it easy to combine images, this is the one that you are looking for. Combining images is the main focus of this free software. You will need to scroll down near the bottom of this page to download the program.

13. Split Image - If you need to split up an image for a web page, this is what you need. It's only focus is to split images for you to use on your webpage. I see no bells and whistles, just a straight forward image splitter.

14. 2 Pic - This is another program that you can merge two photos with. It merges images with each other, makes images fade into each other, spout s images into each other with an aerosol, gives images frames, applies cool effects to images, insert texts with several layers, and inserts gradient very easily. There are examples for you to see what it can do.

15. Frame Fun - This is a simple program to add frames to bitmap, jpg or png images. You can select an outer frame, a border around the image and a drop shadow for a 3D effect. You can modify the color and width of each Frame, Border and Shadow. You can also modify the direction of the drop shadow. A batch conversion option allows you to "frame" several pictures at one time.

Blog Submit

2008-09-04T11:41:00.000-04:00

Everyone is looking for places that they can submit their blogs for more exposure. I have compiled a list of places that you can submit you blogs to. Some of these places have a fee or require a reciprocal link, but not many. Most of these sites are free to submit your blog to. As always, I will add more as I come across them.

2RSS
5starblogs
Addyourblog
Allblogs.net Fee or Reciprocal Link Required
Answers
Aviva Fee Required
Blawg
Blloggs
Blogarama
Blogbib Fee or Reciprocal Link Required
Blogbunch
Blogcatalog
Blogcode
Blog-Collector
Blogdigger
Blogdir
Blog Directory
Bloggernow
Blogexplosion
Blogflux
Bloggapedia
Bloggernity
Bloghop
Bloghub
Blogintro
Bloglines
BlogPulse
Blogs.com
Blog-Search
Blogs-Collection
Blogscholar
Blogville
Blogz
BoingBoing
BOTW Blog Directory Fee Required
Bulletize Fee Required
Chordata
ContentsMatter
Crayon
Diarist
EatonWeb
Feedage
Feedboy
Feednuts
FeedsFarm
Feedza
FindingBlog
FyberSearch
GlobeOfBlogs
GobigNetwork
iBlog Business Directory Fee Required
IceRocket
LSBlogs
NewsGator
Plazoo
Postami Fee Required
PressRadar
Rateitall
ReadABlog
RedTram
Regator
SciencePort
Search4rss
Small Business Blog Directory Fee Required
Smallbusiness.com
StrategicBoard
Syndic8
TailRank
Technorati
TheVital
Today
Topix
TruthLaidBear
Wilsdomain Reciprocal Link Required
Wingee
Yahoo

Submit your site for Free!

2008-09-03T12:50:00.001-04:00

There are many free submission services on the web and for most of them, you have to supply your e-mail address and end up receiving a lot of unwanted e-mails. You can submit to the directories yourself for free. I am going to provide you with the links here. These are all absolutely free to submit your site.

Google
Yahoo
MSN Live Search
Scrubtheweb
Jayde
ExactSeek (registration Required)
Official Search
BSD Search
DinoSearch This is a search engine designed specifically for children and all sites are reviewed manually. Only use this if your content is child friendly.
CivilWarSearch If your content is about the civil war, this is the place for you to submit your site.
CarribeanSearch Just as the name suggests, if your content is about the Carribean's, you will want to submit here.
MoneyWebSearch
Search-O-Rama

Yahoo provides search results for many search engines such as;

AltaVista
GoodSearch
AllTheWeb

Please be aware of where you are submitting your sites because when you submit to them more than once in a two week to one month period, they consider the site to be spam.

I will add more of these as I come across them, as long as they are free.

Free Software Downloads

2008-05-18T17:32:00.010-04:00

Free Giveaways and Free Software Downloads

A friend of mine had pointed me towards this site telling me that they had gotten a lot of free programs from there. I, being the skeptical one, went to take a look.

What I found was a great site that gives away free complete programs on a daily basis. All of which, are programs that you would normally have to pay for. It seems that they make deal with the originator of the program to give it away free for 24 hours.

I thought that the programs would be demos or something of that nature that required you to upgrade to use all of the features. I can tell you first hand that this is not the case! These are complete programs with no upgrade required.

This is a great site and I highly recommend it. There is even a user rating system for the free software downloads, which can help you decide if you want to download it for yourself.

I recommend checking this site every day for the latest program that you can snag for FREE!

It is called Give Away of the Day

They also have another site that gives away games every day so if you are in to games, you need to check it out and snag yourself some games.

You can catch the games at Games Give Away of the Day

Donate your old cell phone to soldiers

2008-05-13T09:49:00.004-04:00

I stumbled across this website today that takes old cell phones. The cell phones are sold to a company that recycles them. The money that they get for the phones is used to purchase calling cards that they send to the soldiers serving.

It was started by a 13 year old girl and her brother. This tells me that todays youth really is our future!

This is a great way to support the troops and give them ways to keep in touch with home.

Please visit their page and donate an old phone if you have one.
www.cellphonesforsoldiers.com

A Family Friendly Social Network

2008-03-27T10:33:00.006-04:00

I have been a member of this social network since June 2007 when it first launched. It is a great site with the friendliest people you would ever want to meet on the internet.

They allow NO SPAM on their site although you are allowed a one line signature link when you leave others comments. They supply you with areas that you can advertise such as your own group, classifieds, on your page and in your blogs. This way people who want to see what you are advertising can easily visit your page or blog and find out.

They have a full staff that is visible and easily reachable unlike many other sites. You can always find at least one of them online, but usually more than that.

This is more like you are joining an online family with so many to help you if you can not find your way.

The reason that I titled this "A Family Friendly Social Network" is that they do not allow nudity in any way. They do not allow vulgarity either. They want everyone to enjoy their time and not have to put up with these sorts of things that you find too often on other social networks.

The link that I am providing will send you to their sign up page. I hope that you will join and give it a try.

Join the best Social Network by clicking here.

A Wonderful Graphics Forum

2008-03-26T10:00:00.009-04:00

I have come across a graphics forum which has a ton of graphics for use on social sites or anywhere else that you want to use them, even your myspace page.

The owner(CatHead) of the forum is very generous and allows users to display their own work in the forum. The graphics need to link back to the forum, but you can put a single link to your website in the post with your graphics. No links to porn sites or anything like that are allowed.

You do not have to be a registered user to see the comments or to get the code for them. I do, however, suggest that you sign up for the forum because you can post to the forum that way. It is definitely a fun place to be and has lots of friendly users.

If you are having trouble creating graphics, CatHead will even help you out and let me tell you that he knows a lot about creating graphics because he has helped me along and I started out knowing nothing!

This is all free, courtesy of Cathead!

Go and check out the Great Graphics!