The Blast Alliance

Computer accessible gambling world wide web sites are currently regulated through 3 councils. These are designated OSGA (the Offshore Gaming Association), IGC (Interactive Gaming Council) and the Fidelity Trust Gaming Association FTGA.

The OSGA is in fact an autonomous bureau which currently keeps tabs on the current overseas betting industry with a commission to also offer sports gaming fanatics access to swiftly select honorable websites to play games on, without unease. It tries to look after consumer’s rights, and they don’t impose any society dues. The OSGA is an expert not to mention non-biased third party agency which manifests objective conclusions, based around your assessments, nonpartisan study, phone discussions, inside information and additionally to impart inside communication.

The IGC are a non commercially driven administration. The agency was created to allow a forum for worried individuals to address points not to mention to improve shared interests in the world-wide online gaming business, to ensure equitable not to mention sound commercial instructions and practises which endeavor to raise consumer confidence in world wide web based gaming products and utilities, and in addition to assist as the trade’s generic policy representative and it also functions as an info center.

The Interactive Gaming Council have developed a regard for trustworthiness, consistency also solidity thanks to the exacting principles it establishes, and in addition its allure to business concerns of exemplary practise. The Interactive Gaming Council regularises overseas betting by means of utilizing a characteristic ten step acceptable policy rules and in addition charges betting businesses license fees for publishing the council’s logo. Malcontent clients can, should they want to, state their problems to the Interactive Gaming Council.

Rangers hold off Devils, win series in 5

The Fidelity Trust Gaming Association was formed in an attempt to compose a standard to upgrade the transactions of live gaming business enterprises. The agency understand that by conducting trade exclusively with honorable businesses, they can forge a federation of the most ethical and most professional cyberspace gambling companies all over the globe. So, in concise terms these are agencies who oversee the practises of machine-accessible gaming and which should assist to relieve a lot of the trepidation held by cynics. Internet based gaming internet sites are absolutely dependable, in as much as individual details are no longer submitted and the payments not to mention the odds are as a rule exactly as balanced and fair as in a typical Vegas-type wager. These internet sites lessen travel expenditure, but nevertheless retain the basic character, however nowadays you are enabled to game in your own home.

At present, as various firms & entrepreneurs are looking at online video websites as a terrific place to upload content to draw their customers, it’s vital to be familiar with the basic principles of utilising internet video promotion sites.

Here are a few fundamental things you have to be familiar with previous to you starting to distribute videos on web video channels.

At all times make an effort to use promotional videos that give useful info to your viewers – Many business people erroneously presume you can basically add any advertisement on a video channel, but nothing could be closer from reality. Every video must offer some useful info to the desired market, or otherwise start topic of discussion.

Carry out some degree of market research on the video channels previous to you adding your very first video – it is an exceptional suggestion to allocate some extra time putting your market’s essential keywords into the search engine on the site, in an attempt to realise what other videos are currently on the market. Then make sure you have jotted down the profile names of the most successful firms in your market. Perhaps afterwards you can make a joint venture or even have some kind of relationship with these businesses.

It is important to keep in mind that every video website has a society built into it – Because of this you are suggested to respect the other members and it is advised that you add positive notes to your competitors’ videos. Essentially you must be a member of the society, contributing opinion, ideas etc. And only then should you deem yourself as being a video marketer & start to broadcast your own videos and services.

Commit yourself to creating quite a lot of promotional videos – You should have an obvious strategy for producing & posting quite a lot of professional videos. Or else, your profile page on the video portals will look bare if it simply has one solitary video to look at. Thus, make time preparing the creation of a number of short format videos, instead of one considerably lengthy video.

Web video marketing is one of the most efficient and fastest methods of advertising today. Enhance your businesses online Return of Investment with professional video production offered by Vidify.

At online poker games, a lot of, um, altercations arise from a simple misunderstanding.

I almost got into a fistfight with someone (actually, several someones) playing casino games like poker because the buy-in amount was increased from the time I got the invite to the time I arrived at the game. It turns out that the food cost more than the host expected, and he was demanding extra compensation. Eventually, it was agreed that he shouldn’t have gone so crazy with the food, and that we’d stick to the original buy-in.

Another notable shouting match occurred when the last three players in a home tournament discovered that no one had figured out how the pot would be split. The top two were fighting over what the split for first and second place should be, and the low stack was fighting to get his buy-in back for coming in third. Eventually, the host calmed things down and the game finished without any further incident.

If your hosting a home game and you want to avoid similar situations, all you have to do is establish your house rules to everyone before the game starts. By keeping everyone informed of the buy-in, the winner’s splits, and any other rules that you want kept, you’ll avoid any misunderstandings as the evening wears on. This is not the case for poker online though, where every table has rules already established.

If you ever find yourself stumped for a fiction idea, try one of these suggestions.

Listen to music. Listen to the story. It’s okay to picture what the singer and songwriter have put out there for you, but let your imagination go further. For a country song about a great horse that died, imagine what other kinds of pets people might get attached to. What kind of cowboy would keep a ground hog in his pocket as a pet? How many tattoos would a girl have, if she really loved her pet lizard? What about working animals? I’d love to read a story about an adventurous blind woman mistakenly paired with a very prim Seeing Eye dog.

Play with headlines. Don’t read the article, just see what kind of story your mind wants to create based on the title. “Shop Owner Slain by Bandit.” Would you care more about the bandit, the shop owner, or the owner’s new Mongolian mail order bride? What if the bandit and the shop owner were brothers? Who would care if the paper got almost everything wrong? What if you changed one word? “Shop Owner Slain by WHEELCHAIR Bandit.” Suddenly the tragedy becomes a black comedy or a comedy of errors. Newspapers, journals and magazines are great sources for inspiring titles you can warp to meet your needs.

So, listen to music, play with titles and let your imagination run wild. Just remember to keep a notepad handy as a safety valve, or your head might actually explode!

About the Author
Rodney Robbins is a quirky author and cartoonist who enjoys life’s paradoxes. You can visit his store and blog at http://www.lulu.com/rodneyrobbins for more information.

When Arabella Magazine notified me they were buying “Popcorn Murders” I was ecstatic. After all, everyone was vying to be published in that magazine.

Then they told me to “look out for the contract soon”. My elation soon turned to terror. I knew nothing about contracts! And I sure wasn’t going to hire a solicitor to look the contract over – particularly for a short story contract – so I learned to read the contract myself.

Not a good thing I’m told, but how many writers have the money to rush out and hire a solicitor every time they receive a contract? (The majority of publishers issue contracts for each and every piece they buy these days.) I’ve now got a bulging file with all my contracts, and if I’d hired a professional each time, I’d be down a lot of money, believe me.

The information in this article is not intended to replace your solicitor or legal representative; it is meant only as a guide. (Some writer’s organisations will help you with this as part of your annual fee.)

Things that should be included in your contract:

Scheduled date of publication

Word count of ms

Title of Story

Author’s name

Rights Sold

Fee (either per word, or for complete works)

Legal obligations of each party

Kill Fee (if any)

Ownership of Copyright

Mediation and Arbitration (if dispute arises)

Some of the above are self-explanatory, so I won’t go into those at all. Others can be quite confusing, so we’ll look at each one individually.

Rights sold:

This can vary from publication to publication, and must be checked thoroughly. Never agree to sell ‘All Rights’ as this means you can NEVER sell the work again. Ever.

With Arabella, I sold first rights, with a clause that I would not allow the story to be re-published anywhere within thirty days of publication. That meant I was free to resell it any time I wanted after the thirty days.

So let’s look at rights:

First rights means it’s the first time the story has been published.
Second rights means it’s the second time it’s been published, and so on.

However, there can be a variation to this. You can sell (for instance) first Australian Rights, or First US Rights, First World Rights, etc. The same applies for second and/or subsequent sales.

Be absolutely sure what rights you are selling when you check your contract.

All Rights:

As mentioned above, selling ‘all rights’ is not a good thing. Basically, you can never sell your story again – not in any shape or form. There is only one way I would do that, and that’s if I was paid mega bucks.

But, there’s a catch. (Isn’t there always?)

If you sell ‘all rights’ in a book contract – for instance – you can lose a lot of money by doing so.

Let me tell you a story: a friend sold her novel to a new publisher in the UK. Her contract stated she was selling them ‘all rights’. This was her first sale, and she accepted that. Around a year down the track, the publication went bust; her novel went down the gurgler with the publisher.

That was two years ago.

She recently found out that her book has been released in large print. That’s good, right? Well, no. Because she sold ‘all rights’ so got absolutely nothing for the subsequent sale.

And if anyone ever decides to make her book into a movie, the same will apply. Never sell ‘all rights’ if you can help it, unless, as I said before, you are being paid mega bucks.

Kill Fee:

A ‘kill fee’ is literally the fee you get if the publication ‘kills’ the story. That is, they decide not to use it after all.

A ‘kill fee’ may also apply if an editor of the publications asks you to do rewrites that you feel misrepresent your own opinions, or in the case of a piece of fiction, distorts the story.

I know someone who had the latter happen, and as he didn’t have the kill fee clause, asked the publication to use a pen name instead of his own.

Copyright:

It is extremely important that writers understand copyright laws. If you don’t, then please, go out and do some research.

In the case of your contract, it should always state that ownership remains with the author. If it doesn’t, you probably have a problem.

If you’ve sold ‘all rights’ then ownership is no longer yours.

Publication Date:

Many contracts will state the date that the publication expects to run your story. They may even give an end date. In my contract with Arabella, it stated that if the story was not run (published) within twelve months, the rights reverted back to me, and I still got to keep the payment.

Strange as it may sound, it actually does happen. I have another friend who sold a story to a major women’s magazine in Australia, and two years after she sold it, the story still hadn’t run. She called them, and was told they’d ‘lost’ the story.

They sent her a letter of confirmation that the rights had reverted back to her. And yes, she sold it again – as ‘first rights’ again, since it was never published.

Other things to look out for:

For book contracts, make sure there’s a clause in case the publisher goes bust. In my contract it states that if the publisher closes its doors, or goes into liquidation (or similar) the rights refer back to me.

This is a very important clause to check. A number of writers have had to wait for seven years for their books to revert back to them after a publisher has gone bust. Some writers have gone to court over the clause, but still had to wait for the period to expire.

Please, for your own peace of mind, ensure your contract includes the liquidation clause. (Remember the writer whose book was sold in large print? She had that seven year clause too. She can’t resell that book, and she’s still got another five years to wait before she can shop it around.)

I also have a clause stating my publisher only has the rights to my book for two years. That means I can shop the book around after two years if I’m not happy with my publisher. Or, if I’m happy, I can renew my contract with the same publisher, and they can continue to sell the book.

Also check that the contract has a ‘release’ clause. If, for example, your book is due for release in February 2005, but still hasn’t been released in December 2005, if it’s covered in your contract, you can pull out from that publisher without penalty. If there is no mention of it, then you’ve got no come-back whatsoever; you’ll just have to wear it. And if that’s the case, and they decide to release it three years down the track instead, there’s not a thing you can do about it.

One more clause that you may wish to consider is in regard to royalties. You need to have the right to have the publisher’s accounts reviewed if you feel your royalties have been paid incorrectly, whether erroneously or intentionally. In most cases, if it is found that the royalties have been withheld, costs are the responsibility of the publisher. If they are found to be correct, costs are paid by the author. (And this should be stated in the contract)

Summary:

Ensure you understand the aspects of your contract. It is desirable that it’s in layman’s terms, and not legal jargon – which will make it impossible for you to understand without legal representation.

* Check over your contract at least three times.

* Highlight anything you don’t understand or are unhappy about.

* Discuss them with your publisher.

* Keep all correspondence to and from your publisher for future use.

* Always keep a ‘paper trail’ that can be followed. (Even if it’s on the computer!)

* If you don’t feel comfortable with something, there’s probably a reason.

Cheryl Wright is an award-winning Australian author and freelance journalist. In addition to an array of other projects, she is the owner of the Writer2Writer.com website and the Writer to Writer monthly ezine for writers. She is also the author of a series of ebooks for writers. Her romantic suspense novel “Saving Emma” was released January 2005 by Whiskey Creek Press. Check out Cheryl’s website: http://www.cheryl-wright.com

One of the best writing talks I’ve ever heard was delivered by romance novelist Jennifer Cruisie at the Spring 2003 Writers Retreat Workshop. She gave the same talk again at the Romance Writers of America National Conference later that summer, and it was just as inspiring the second time around. She talked about going all-out in your writing. Digging deep. Living in your story. Bringing your characters to life. And she talked about something I’d never thought about before: going to the dark places.

“You have to go to the dark places,” she said, “to bring the story back to your people.”

What does this mean: go to the dark places?

As a novelist, every story you write, every character you create is part of you. That doesn’t mean your characters are just like you, or vice versa. No one wants to be like their “bad guys.” Half the time we don’t even want to be like our good guys. They’re crazy, going off on all these adventures, getting themselves into conflict at every turn. Who wants that!

Even though your characters are unique individuals and they aren’t exactly like you, there’s a part of you in them. You draw on parts of yourself to create them… even the bad guys. Part of what contributes to their conflict comes from something in your experience, or in your thoughts and feelings.

That’s the icky part of novel writing. Not many of us enjoy dredging up these emotions. Sometimes we don’t even know where they come from, they’re buried so deeply. You’d pay a psychologist good money to walk you through this process, and at least there, you’d be in a safe space! With novel writing, you’re on your own.

To access the proverbial dark places, you need to quiet your mind. You need to reflect on who your characters really are. Draw from deep within yourself to bring them to life. Sometimes writing in a journal, asking one of your characters some tough questions and writing the answers in your character’s point of view is helpful. Talking into a tape recorder, asking questions and answering in your character’s voice can also help you access the dark places.

When you stop liking the answers, when they start to make you feel uncomfortable, that’s exactly the time to keep going. You’re onto something. Resist the urge to protect your characters — and yourself — as the messiness of real life intrudes into your calm fictional world. By allowing your characters to be themselves — their icky selves — you are bringing them to life. You are making them real for your readers. You’re creating a foundation for a novel your readers won’t be able to put down. The characters will live on after the last page is read. Your readers will be back for more.

It’s a scary journey sometimes. If you can bear it, your work will reflect the risk you took in going to the dark places. You’ll reach a level of honesty and vibrancy that will jump off the page. You’ll touch your readers in a very real way. They might not know how or why your work speaks to them so strongly, but they’ll thank you for it. You’ll never know how they might grow from the experience of reading what you brought back from the dark places. That’s what it means “to bring the story back to your people.”

As a novelist, when you succeed once in going to the dark places, you’ll never be afraid to go there again.

Janet Helin is a novelist, writing coach and Christian inspirational publisher. She offers free e-workshops on novel writing, life story writing and Christian inspirational writing and offers free advice to new writers. She can be reached at http://www.lifestoriesinspire.com

Surfing around and doing searches under “submit your article” or free content to republish” you will find hundreds of sites that you can submit your articles These sites are willing to help you grow your web traffic.

You benefit by receiving incoming links to your website. They benefit, as their website grows with good content in a variety of different categories. It is a win-win situation.

Why would you want to take the time though, to submit your articles to a site that is just starting out or has very few articles posted yet.

Here are several reasons:

1. If you have several to submit you can become a toppublishing author at their site quickly.

New sites, having limited numbers make it easy to climb to the top of the list fast.

2. New article database owners are going to be promoting heavily to get their sites growing.

They are ambitious, full of enthusiasm and excitement to watch their numbers grow, you can benefit from this fresh promotion.

3. Google and other search engines are always looking for
fresh, new content.
The older sites, yes, get lots of traffic and have high page ranking. But the search engines like to find fresh new material and a link from another source will had one more inbound link in Google eyes to your sites hyperlink in your article.

4. You may be able to get the new article submission site owners to help you get several of your articles posted. (see resource box below)

Ambitious article directory owners are willing to go beyond and above the call of duty to help make there content grow. At least the author of this article is, she is currently offering a totally insane offer.

5. If you submit regularly, they are likely to consider
special joint venture promotions for you.

They are most likely to want to reward frequent publishers and show gratitude to the authors that help their directories grow. This means, approaching you with joint venture ideas for e-books, conference calls and many other promotion ideas that may be planned in their promotional plans.

6. You may even be able to suggest a specific category and
have it created for your particular subject.

As a new growing directory, they will be more willing and helpful to tailor their category choices to work with your specific article. This would be especially true, if you had already posted previous articles before approaching them with a category request.

7. Your article is more likely to be read, because of less competition from other articles.

While the article directory submission site is growing, granted yes, they may not get as much traffic as the big guys. But that means that the visitors that they do get, are more likely to see and READ your article. This means your article can find its way to ezines that want unique and fresh new content.

It is a well known fact with successful online internet marketers
that writing articles to promote traffic to your website is a very successful avenue to pursue. It is however, an ongoing and sometimes tedious task.

There are several pieces of software that automate the process, and
there are also places that will do this service for you, but there are pros and cons to these approaches. However that is the topic of another article.

The best way is to submit each article is to do it yourself. By hand
submitting your articles, you have complete control over the submission process, choice of categories and the ability to modify and code your resource links to each specific submission.

So why consider doing this time consuming task to a brand new article directory? When you help others, they help you. It is sometimes called Karma, In the spiritual communities, it is known as the law of attraction. What you put out comes back to you in ways you can’t even imagine. With this article’s author there is a more important reason.

Read on….

RSS feed for this article is:
http://articles411.com/rss/Writing-Articles/87

Laurie Meade is a Writer, Online Researcher and a single WAHM. She has an Associate of Arts Degree, majored in journalism in college. 3 years experience writing and promoting online websites with article writing tactics. The Administrator of articles411.com

Visit http://articles411.com/specialoffer.html for details on how to get 10-15 of your articles hand submitted at no cost to you!*

*No Cost service is available for a limited time only 9/16/2005

A great advantage of Chamonix Mont Blanc France is its distance to Geneva airport. One can easily depart England in the late morning and be snowboarding by the p.m.. The achievement of BMI Baby and reasonably priced carriers has led to much cheaper fares and with merely a 1 hour taxi ride duration between the airport and Chamonix a ski weekend is now within the price range of all skiers; moreover all the luxury catered chalets are available from Wednesday through to Sun which allows you to take full advantage of reasonably priced travel costs and uncrowded slopes. Immediately on arrival at the airport unitl receiving the group’s snowboarding passes waiting for the group arrive in the chalet; everything is arranged to ensure that the group spends the least amount of time traveling and the maximum of the trip snowboarding.

A ski break in Chamonix town can be an exciting vacation only if the group get the details correct so that you can revel in your valuable holiday. Of course that entails arranging the travel transfer and accommodation just right and taking you to the pistes as swiftly as possible. The goal is to provide the largest period of mountain time and the least amount of hassle along with the usual impeccable levels of relaxation meals and personal service. With this in mind we offer express airport transfers excellent luxury ski chalets excellent meals and we can advise and arrange guides and snowboarding instructors.

The battle is heating up for market share, home movie theatre, X-Box, Playstations and virtual reality take on the big screen and theme parks. You might be surprised to learn that the war is just beginning. You won’t believe how high the stakes are now and what lengths they are willing to go to get your dollar.

With High Definition TV on large screen plasma TV it will be so real, you will literally feel as if you are there. As price comes down due to overseas manufacturing and supply and demand, we will see more and more families charging the remaining balance on their credit cards for these systems, they will connect them to DVDs and it will literally be like virtual reality in your own living room. Recently video gaming companies took a stock price hit waiting for the hardware such as the X-Box II and newest Playstation to catch up enabling them to run the latest versions of the most popular games.

As these technologies continue to enter our home as we know they will, is there still going to be a place in our lives for our present day big screen Movie Theatres with $12.00 per person costs with the inclusion the impulse purchase of soda and popcorn value pack? The movie theatres will have to come up with a greater and greater entertainment value to get people to continue to patronize them and that is exactly what is on the minds of the boardmembers of Hollywoods biggest studios.

Sure people will be more than interested in a Friday or Saturday evening at the Movies, but what about during the week competing against the comforts of our own homes, coupled with the price of gasoline to drive there and the inflation Greenspan has warned us of? Will movie theatres need to upgrade to 3D movies or IMAX type movies? Will they have to for survival? After all movie theatres are a business, buildings and property are expensive and ROI is the goal and it must be achieved. We have seen in the last two decades the closing of thousands and thousands family and locally owned theatres for the larger Multiplex Corporate theatres.

One way for movie go’ers to feel a greater entertainment value and enhanced experience is in the adding of brain wave enhancement. That’s right and the plans on the table now are absolutely cutting edge technologies. For instance brain wave manipulation inside the theatre for the viewers will send out frequency impulses of Delta, Alpha, Beta, and Theta Brain wave frequency. In large multiplex Theatres certain rooms will contain such a system, which would have sound devices in the walls, which were broadcasts into the theatre. Imagine a seen where the actors were tired after fighting a storm all night in a boat. You would feel tired, then as a big wave crashed over the bow, you would feel anxiety. In a love seen you would feel very peaceful and content, even somewhat aroused? Imagine the enhanced experience you would feel? The studios are and they are betting on it.

Since the technology is now available it could be deployed anytime now. Of course for scary movies where your heart would race wildly out of control, perhaps grandma might not wish to attend. Movies would have to be not only labeled; “G”, “PG-13″, “R” there might also be intensity ratings on 1-5. Meaning you would have to sign a waiver to see the movie and also submit that you are in good physical shape similar to that form they have when you enter a 10K running race.

Even as the movie industry plots the future successes and legal ramifications and potential lawsuits of these technologies, the home entertainment living room virtual reality will surely follow along with the holographic projections and surround a sound ambience.

The entertainment industry is about ready to face off as this technology is deployed. Which one will you choose?

“Lance Winslow” – Online Think Tank forum board. If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; www.WorldThinkTank.net/wttbbs/

These days no companies are worth their salt if they aren’t at the very least showing evidence of being concerned about the environment. Man and Vans is an example of a company with the right attitudes for the consumer of today. Customers don’t just want an excellent service – although this is certainly vital- they also want to know that the company they’re dealing with has the environment’s interests in mind too. Our earth is a second customer if you will. So, how can businesses like Man and Vans take steps to become more environmentally friendly? The answer is, The Carbon Trust. This organisation works in league with Man and Vans to help reduce their carbon emissions. Obviously a removals company is not exactly going to be nature’s biggest ally, but at least it is possible to drastically reduce the impact of its carbon footprint. And that’s always a good thing isn’t it? It’s down to their collaboration with The Carbon Trust you see. This organisation is built round the sole purpose of helping other companies to recognise where and how they can take steps towards making themselves ‘greener’- environmentally speaking of course. No one wants a office full of actual green people.