Hirst

It's important to start healthy eating early. If you leave the mission of getting your kids to eat healthy food too late, it will be more difficult to change the habits they've learned. On the other hand, if you've always insisted that you have healthy eating kids in your household, then you'll find the task of keeping your children on the straight and narrow path of eating healthily a much easier task.

Start with making sure that you have healthy food in your fridge and larder. You can't teach your kids to eat a healthy diet if they're surrounded by candy, chocolate and fizzy drinks. Remember that children are a perceptive bunch and they will quickly pick up on any discrepancy between what you say and what you do.

Get your children to help you choose the fruit and vegetables at the supermarket or grocery store. The sense of involvement is important. After all, if your kids have helped to choose the food they're eating, they will feel more included and are more likely to want to eat it. Also if there's something they simply won't eat, no matter what, then getting them involved in the purchase decision will at least save you having to waste food at a later stage.

Encourage your children to drink plenty of water. Low fat milk is also good. And fruit juice is healthy but can mount up in the calorie stakes if they take to drinking too much of it. If your children do develop a taste for freshly squeezed orange juice, buy one of the inexpensive hand squeezers and let them squeeze their own juice. This will start a healthy eating habit for your kids and will also slow down the pace they drink the juice squeezing a liter of juice by hand will take a long time!

Eating together as a family more regularly is a good way to bring up healthy-eating kids. The fact that you are all sitting down together for a meal rather than picking a quick snack on the way to somewhere else will make meal times more of an occasion. This will almost certainly cause you to plan what your family is eating more carefully. And as soon as you start thinking about the food that you're eating, you'll find that the whole family starts to eat more healthily.

For healthy eating kids check out the recipes on offer at http://healthy-eating-for-kids.com/

Goodbye Big Brother; Hello Peer-to-Peer... a forerunner of whats to come...

We all know that big business dictates to musicians what music they should be writing and performing. Ask Tony Bennet, Angus Young, and Fergie. Unless musicians cooperate with the big label companies, who control the purse strings, they have little chance of enduring in the mainstream of commercial music. An upstart has little chance to go to the top of the charts without an infusion of promotional dollars from big business. The overall result is the production of mediocre music that the gurus at the big label companies believe appeals to the masses, the common denominator.

Too bad for the creative, inspired music that never sees the light of day. With very rare exceptions, stifled musicians either bow out of the game, or make compromises to at least part of the time toe the line set by music company executives.

THE BYPASS

Move over, executives. Hard drive to hard drive is here. Downloading MP3 files, through todays technology, is easier than ever. No corporate executive is at the toll-gate dictating the content and style of the product.

Whats so important about all this for stock photographers?

This distribution process paves the way for the possibility of an entirely new delivery method for photographers, artists, game makers, musicians, and writers, who have historically been at the mercy of middle-men to promote and distribute their work. Its called peer-to-peer. Your hard drive to my hard drive, without going through the Web.

Heres how it would work. As a buyer, to get the creative work you are looking for, you circumvent the usual distributor (label company in this case) and download the music file youre looking for from the supplier's hard drive. In our case, as stock photographers and photobuyers, it would be an image to download.

At first glance, you might think that Napster-sparked free trading of music files would cause a serious reduction in retail sales. On the contrary, it turns out to be a catalyst. Studies show that music sales have never been better. After Napster was reduced to a common sense Internet company by the courts, it evolved to a company that promotes new artists.

Could this work in our industry? The marketing part already has. Stock photo agencies such as iStock and Shutterstock, that practically give pictures away through royalty-free distribution, have found that the system both encourages on-line purchasing plus educates buyers in image utilization and graduating to higher-ticket image purchasing. Usage, the saying goes, begets more usage.

THE SALES ANGLE

But wait, if we give our photos away practically free, wont that discourage photographers from making images in the future? This is a natural reaction. Every time a new technology has come along, the purveyors of the former technology get up in arms, trying to prevent the new from destroying the old. Whether radio (it was going to destroy newspapers), TV (it was going to destroy radio), cable TV (it was going to destroy network TV), or DVDs (they were going to destroy movie theaters). These media have learned to live harmoniously side by side, and everyone has benefited.

The Internet has opened the window for us to cease viewing business strategies through traditional, old-think lenses, and instead see all kinds of new possibilities. The Internets peer-to-peer possibilities open new distribution doors for creators of all products.

For stock photography freelancers, the system could work like this. Software known as digital rights management systems will soon become available that will allow a photobuyer to enter your computers hard drive, search for specific pictures, download them, and purchase them. The fee may be low (like with RF photography) but the volume will be high (several visitors a day). The bottom line will be that pictures that otherwise would languish in your files gathering dust, will generate activity and sales for you. The peer-to-peer system probably wont do away with the big boys (agencies). They themselves could evolve into a pay-per-use or subscription-based model. They would share the revenue from sales with their photographers.

Both models could survive. The conglomerates could enter into general vertical markets themselves. The peer-to-peer system would open a new door where the conglomerates would continue to produce and sell their generic images. The vertical (specialized) market where most individual freelance photographers would reside, would be too spare for the big conglomerates, and not as lucrative for them as the commercial stock photo market. This would open new possibilities in specialized markets for freelancers who have deep files of keyworded content in their image databases. Internet technology today is too powerful, too ambitious, for lawmakers to regulate freedom of exchange of music, images, and graphic files. The istock phenomenon has proven this. Eventually the dust will settle, and individual freelance stock photographers are bound to come out in an even better position than was available for them in the last century.

Rohn Engh, veteran stock photographer and best-selling author of Sell & ReSell Your Photos and sellphotos.com, has helped scores of photographers launch their careers. For access to great information on making money from pictures you like to take, and to receive this free report: 8 Steps to Becoming a Published Photographer, visit http://www.sellphotos.com

But a new chapter has opened up in the field of employment for writers since the coming of the Computer Age. At the click of the mouse the employer can locate anyone anywhere in the world transcending barriers of locale, gender and age. Hidden talent is tapped. This has opened up new avenues in the field of employment for writers.

Topping the list in the employment for writers area is the cyber journalist. The person will be responsible for news presentation, web content writing, production and creation of new methods to increase the broadcast potential of the concerned company on the Internet. Employment for writers holds untold promises for the pen that glides.

Employment for writers will include the post of editorial assistant in the publishing zone. The person will be responsible for daily editorial work like taking phone calls, going through the mail, arranging meetings, keeping editorial calendars, finding out the position of stories and making note of absentee staff. Thus employment for writers is not just about writing but takes into account the all round acumen and skill of the applicant.

There is the post of freelance editor whose main work deals with writing headlines and attractive catchy blurbs leading to an uninterrupted flow of high quality stories in the news. Thus the employment for writers calls for flexibility in the approach of the candidate. The person has to be conversant with up to date trends, profiles of companies, latest technology and products as well as career opportunities and diversions that will engage the interest of the engineering, technical and scientific fraternity.

Writers jobs offers area covers a vast region. There is the post of the freelance interactive mid or senior level copywriter who has experience with online work on the Internet. In this particular employment for writers, the qualifications of the candidate require that he should be able to smoothly go through all forms of web content and marketing challenges.

The proofreader is very much in demand in the scheme of employment for writers, who should be able to deal with work related to proofreading of many types of texts. An eye for details is essential. Employment for writers is not only about the writers point of view. Those seeking candidates get a good opportunity to contact the best candidate.

The post of a web editor will also be on the list for employment for writers. Being a web editor involves writing skills par excellence. It comes top on the agenda of employment for writers, as the person must be creative in approach towards generating and writing news as well as feature contents. He or she will have to deal with posting of catchy photographs and see that there is coordination in all the activities of the company related to the web.

Dave Modie is a HR expert on freelance writing opportunities and freelance jobs He knows how to find good writer freelance job and get the best freelance writing opportunities

If you own real estate or are thinking of buying real estate then you better pay attention, because this could be the most important message you receive this year regarding real estate and your financial future.

The last five years have seen explosive growth in the real estate market and as a result many people believe that real estate is the safest investment you can make. Well, that is no longer true. Rapidly increasing real estate prices have caused the real estate market to be at price levels never before seen in history when adjusted for inflation! The growing number of people concerned about the real estate bubble means there are less available real estate buyers. Fewer buyers mean that prices are coming down.

On May 4, 2006, Federal Reserve Board Governor Susan Blies stated that "Housing has really sort of peaked". This follows on the heels of the new Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke saying that he was concerned that the "softening" of the real estate market would hurt the economy. And former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan previously described the real estate market as frothy. All of these top financial experts agree that there is already a viable downturn in the market, so clearly there is a need to know the reasons behind this change.

3 of the top 9 reasons that the real estate bubble will burst include:

1. Interest rates are rising - foreclosures are up 72%!
2. First time homebuyers are priced out of the market - the real estate market is a pyramid and the base is crumbling
3. The psychology of the market has changed so that now people are afraid of the bubble bursting - the mania over real estate is over!

The first reason that the real estate bubble is bursting is rising interest rates. Under Alan Greenspan, interest rates were at historic lows from June 2003 to June 2004. These low interest rates allowed people to buy homes that were more expensive then what they could normally afford but at the same monthly cost, essentially creating "free money". However, the time of low interest rates has ended as interest rates have been rising and will continue to rise further. Interest rates must rise to combat inflation, partly due to high gasoline and food costs. Higher interest rates make owning a home more expensive, thus driving existing home values down.

Higher interest rates are also affecting people who bought adjustable mortgages (ARMs). Adjustable mortgages have very low interest rates and low monthly payments for the first two to three years but afterwards the low interest rate disappears and the monthly mortgage payment jumps dramatically. As a result of adjustable mortgage rate resets, home foreclosures for the 1st quarter of 2006 are up 72% over the 1st quarter of 2005.

The foreclosure situation will only worsen as interest rates continue to rise and more adjustable mortgage payments are adjusted to a higher interest rate and higher mortgage payment. Moody's stated that 25% of all outstanding mortgages are coming up for interest rate resets during 2006 and 2007. That is $2 trillion of U.S. mortgage debt! When the payments increase, it will be quite a hit to the pocketbook. A study done by one of the country's largest title insurers concluded that 1.4 million households will face a payment jump of 50% or more once the introductory payment period is over.

The second reason that the real estate bubble is bursting is that new homebuyers are no longer able to buy homes due to high prices and higher interest rates. The real estate market is basically a pyramid scheme and as long as the number of buyers is growing everything is fine. As homes are bought by first time home buyers at the bottom of the pyramid, the new money for that $100,000.00 home goes all the way up the pyramid to the seller and buyer of a $1,000,000.00 home as people sell one home and buy a more expensive home. This double-edged sword of high real estate prices and higher interest rates has priced many new buyers out of the market, and now we are starting to feel the effects on the overall real estate market. Sales are slowing and inventories of homes available for sale are rising quickly. The latest report on the housing market showed new home sales fell 10.5% for February 2006. This is the largest one-month drop in nine years.

The third reason that the real estate bubble is bursting is that the psychology of the real estate market has changed. For the last five years the real estate market has risen dramatically and if you bought real estate you more than likely made money. This positive return for so many investors fueled the market higher as more people saw this and decided to also invest in real estate before they 'missed out'.

The psychology of any bubble market, whether we are talking about the stock market or the real estate market is known as 'herd mentality', where everyone follows the herd. This herd mentality is at the heart of any bubble and it has happened numerous times in the past including during the US stock market bubble of the late 1990's, the Japanese real estate bubble of the 1980's, and even as far back as the US railroad bubble of the 1870's. The herd mentality had completely taken over the real estate market until recently.

The bubble continues to rise as long as there is a "greater fool" to buy at a higher price. As there are less and less "greater fools" available or willing to buy homes, the mania disappears. When the hysteria passes, the excessive inventory that was built during the boom time causes prices to plummet. This is true for all three of the historical bubbles mentioned above and many other historical examples. Also of importance to note is that when all three of these historical bubbles burst the US was thrown into recession.

With the changing in mindset related to the real estate market, investors and speculators are getting scared that they will be left holding real estate that will lose money. As a result, not only are they buying less real estate, but they are simultaneously selling their investment properties as well. This is producing huge numbers of homes available for sale on the market at the same time that record new home construction floods the market. These two increasing supply forces, the increasing supply of existing homes for sale coupled with the increasing supply of new homes for sale will further exacerbate the problem and drive all real estate values down.

A recent survey showed that 7 out of 10 people think the real estate bubble will burst before April 2007. This change in the market psychology from 'must own real estate at any cost' to a healthy concern that real estate is overpriced is causing the end of the real estate market boom.

The aftershock of the bubble bursting will be enormous and it will affect the global economy tremendously. Billionaire investor George Soros has said that in 2007 the US will be in recession and I agree with him. I think we will be in a recession because as the real estate bubble bursts, jobs will be lost, Americans will no longer be able to cash out money from their homes, and the entire economy will slow down dramatically thus leading to recession.

In conclusion, the three reasons the real estate bubble is bursting are higher interest rates; first-time buyers being priced out of the market; and the psychology about the real estate market is changing. The recently published eBook "How To Prosper In The Changing Real Estate Market. Protect Yourself From The Bubble Now!" discusses these items in more detail.

Louis Hill, MBA received his Masters In Business Administration from the Chapman School at Florida International University, specializing in Finance. He was one of the top graduates in his class and was one of the few graduates inducted into the Beta Gamma Business Honor Society.

Mr. Hill received his undergraduate degree from the University of Florida with a double major in Finance and Risk Management.

For the past several years he has been working in a South Florida commercial real estate lender that specializes in financing real estate developers. Mr. Hill has seen firsthand the challenges and pitfalls that real estate developers are experiencing, and how the real estate market has been deteriorating rapidly. He is also a professional consultant to professional real estate developers and investors.

Previously, he was in management consulting. Additionally, he was a professional trader in the stock market and witnessed the stock market bubble bursting in 2001 and now is concerned about the real estate bubble.

Mr. Hill is very active in many civic groups and charities.