As the Garden Grows

What's blooming today?


You are here: Home / Archives for Sites and products / Great Sites

A site to find or submit great gardening articles

by

I just visited a website called Thoof for the first time. Thoof is a site that offers personalized news. By this I mean that it contains news articles, videos, websites and photographs from sources all over the world.

You can search through the site as a visitor for any topic that interests you, but once you become a registered member of the site Thoof keeps track of what you’ve been reading or searching for on the site and provides a personalized page for you that contains all of the stories that suit your personal taste.

I wanted to tell you about Thoof today because I used it to search for gardening articles and it returned three fantastic articles that I can use to get ideas for my own garden, or perhaps even write about in my own way on this site. Now I’m sure that the next time I log into Thoof it will show me any new gardening articles that have been added to the site since my last visit.

The article that I found most interesting was called “Beyond the Garden” and it discusses landscape architecture, particularly in the form of the green roof. This is something that has interested me for quite a while. I can’t create a green roof on my current home, but if I ever purchase a house where I might be able to do this you can bet I’ll be creating a green roof. Yet another area to garden in and it will help keep my home cool in the summer!

Since registered members of Thoof can actually submit articles either by filling out a short form on the site or by using a bookmarking tool in their browser I might submit my own gardening articles and those of any other gardening blogs that I find interesting and helpful.

In this way I can use Thoof to promote our gardening hobby and the authors who have written fantastic gardening related articles too. Would you be interested in doing something like that as well?

Of course you can go to the site and read any of the top stories or submit articles about pretty much any topic. Articles about Sicko – Michael Moores latest movie, seems to be the hottest topic on Thoof today. I just chose to focus on gardening because it can be hard to find excellent gardening articles – particularly on current news related sites.

Visit the site for yourself and see if you can find some articles of interest. Remember, you can always submit articles that you enjoy as well.






Moving? Visit Relocation.com first

by

I’ve only moved a couple of times in my life, but after our last move from our apartment to our house I decided that if we ever sell our house we’ll hire professionals to help us with our move.

Let’s face it – moving is stressful. Sometimes a move is just a move from one home to another, but many times it also includes other life changes such as being newly married, starting a new job or a position in a new location, or the purchase of your first house. Why not hire professionals to assist you with every step of your move? You’d be able to deal with whatever other changes might be happening in your life that much better.

If you will be moving sometime in the near future or perhaps might be relocating from your present location because of work you might want to visit Relocation.com.

Relocation.com has everything to assist you with your move. The site doesn’t just list moving companies, no, they also have several sections that will help you with all aspects of relocating from purchasing real estate to securing a mortgage or getting a loan to help you finance your move.

In the moving section you’ll be able to find companies that will assist you with a move within your state, to another state or even your move from one country to another. There’s listings for self service moving, moving companies, auto transport, a moving guide that will help you be sure that your move goes well from start to finish, and listings for international shipping and storage companies.

The people who’ve created Relocation.com have really gone a long way towards making the site a one stop relocating resource. Not only will you find listings for everything that I’ve already mentioned, but you’ll find apartment hunting listings, be able to get quotes for home and auto insurance, find an handyman or renovation company for your home improvement, and you’ll even find a Career section where you can search for a job in your new location.

Do you see what I mean? Once you begin exploring the site you could use it for all of your relocation needs. They’ve thought of everything that has to do with moving and relocating from one area to another to make it that much easier for you.

I also noticed that there are a number of great articles in each section. For example if you are moving there’s the moving guide and a number of other great moving related articles. If you are looking for a mortgage there’s articles about home equity and home mortgage loans, a mortgage calculator and many other informative articles.

The site is quite impressive once you realize how many resources are at your fingertips. If you will be relocating in the near future do take a moment and visit relocation.com.

Get a warranty from SquareTrade

by

Have you ever purchased something online from eBay or even a retail store and then later wished that you’d purchased a warranty for the item? Or perhaps you are like my husband and I and you purchased an item but the extra warranty offered by the store was just so expensive that you balked at paying such a high price for coverage that you might not ever use?

That’s right. Chris and I purchased an HD video camera and a Digital SLR camera from Best Buy this past Sunday. The two items and accessories cost us well over $3000. We were offered extended warranties for both items, but do you know how much those extended warranties would have cost us if we’d purchased them? Close to $800! That’s almost a quarter of the price that we paid in total for the two electronic items! Geez! We could get a new washer, dryer or even a desktop computer for that price!

This is where Square Trade comes in. SquareTrade offers warranties on electronics and appliances at 30 to 50% below retail. It doesn’t matter if you purchased your electronic item or appliance online or in a retail store you can get a warranty for the item.

Now if Best Buy had offered their extended warranty at half the price that I just told you about we might have purchased it. It’s there loss I suppose. Now that I know about SquareTrade I’ve looked into the warranties that they offer for the two items that we purchased and the warranty prices really are about half the price of what we were offered at the retail store on Sunday.

The website states that warranty claims are served within five days and that they do not charge for deductibles. You can also cancel or trade your warranty at any time.

The site looks pretty easy to use. Go to the main page of the site and click on the “Get a Care Plan” button, or the “Get a warranty” button at the top of the page.

There are two columns on the page that you are brought. One if for an item purchased from a retail store and the other is for an item purchased from eBay. Pick the correct button and begin filling out information as to what product you purchased as well as the purchase price and date if you bought from a retail store, or simply fill in the eBay product number if you bought from eBay.

Once you fill out your information you’ll be offered a warranty for the item. Once you’ve read the information on what you are being offered you can purchase the warranty.

If you do purchase warranties through SquareTrade you’ll be able to manage your warranties and any claims you make towards those warranties online via the SquareTrade system.

SquareTrade covers items purchased from online and offline stores such as Amazon, Dell, Sears, BestBuy, Circuit City and many more. Plus, you can buy warranties for any times that you purchased in 2007. It doesn’t have to be a recent purchase as far as I can tell.

Warranties are only available to buyers in the USA at this time. Being in Canada I won’t get to try out the SquareTrade service, but if you are a US resident you might want to take a look at what they have to offer and decide if purchasing a warranty via SquareTrade is right for you.

Meta