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To Enter or Not to Enter Writing Contests (writing contests) If you are a freelance writer, it is because you love to write. Why not put those abilities to use and enter a writing contest? You have nothing to loose and a lot to gain. You can find writing contests by simply searching the Internet. Writing groups and message boards may also have listing for these contests. No matter what you writing genre maybe poetry, fiction, non fiction, there is a contest out there for you. Read about them and choose which ones are right for you. It is not necessarily about winning or loosing but about the experience and knowledge that you gain to get there. Whether you win or not there are still valuable things that can be learned or gained by entering into contests. Entering writing contests will help you hone the skills that you have. Try something new, you may choose to write in a niche that you normally wouldn’t. You get constructive criticism from someone new. Someone that doesn’t have to worry about hurting your feelings and that is unbiased can be a wonderful asset to your career. The feedback you receive can be invaluable to you. It will get your name out there and give you a place to showcase your work. Depending on how good your story, if you make it to the next round your writings could be in front of editors and agents. This feedback and criticism is even more important than the first. Do not your eggs all in one basket. Enter a couple contests to get multiple feedback sources. Not every editor or agent is going to agree. By entering multiple contests and find common points about your writing that need perfecting you will be able to concentrate on a general consensus about your abilities. There are some downsides to entering writing contests, too. Chances are that a simple contest is not going to launch your career into star status. Do your research just as if you were going to write an article about contests. For many contests you give up your rights to your entry whether it wins or not. You need to decide whether or not you are willing to give up all rights to your story. If you win it is not a big deal, but if you loose your giving your work away. Are you willing to do this? Research the contest. You can search the Internet for reports or opinions on contests run by the company. You can find valuable information on if the contest is legitimate, if entering has had any effect of previous entrant’s careers, and if it is really worth it in the long run. The bigger and well-established companies will give credibility to your work if you win. But the bigger and more well know the companies are will also bring in tougher competition with well know authors. Some companies offer contests as a disguise. Yes they will give away prizes and declare winners but their main goal with the contest is advertising. It can be in the form of offering you to buy obscure book featuring your contest submission. Sometimes it is an editing company that offers a discount for its services or a company that will offer you discounts on writing classes. A writing contest is just a possible stepping stone. Whether it helps you or not is the unknown, but it definitely won’t hurt you. It may help you reach the next level of your career. You and only you will be able to make the decision on whether or not writing contests are a good move for your career.

Free Baby Stuff Requires a Visit to Babies Online Babies online is the page on the Internet when it comes to free stuff for the baby and new parent. The page offers any parent resources about the growing baby. Anything from personalized weekly calendars, over calculators to articles and information can be found on this web page. All the information offered on the page is freely available to anybody who signs up for their free membership. Under the top pages offered by babies online are pages that contain links to other free baby web sites, fun birthday facts, a weekly pregnancy calendar, due date calculator, baby’s first year, baby photo contest, baby names and meanings, baby freebies and a baby’s online blog. These pages are visited by the most users and are also most frequently used by members of the page. All these pages offer information around pregnancy and the infancy. Some of the pages offer advice on many of the questions that parents have in their first year of parent hood or before during pregnancy. The baby pages section of the website offers anybody to have an online birth announcement for the newborn, to read other peoples birth announcement and even to create or read other women’s pregnancy journals. Anyone can create his or her own and then sent links to all their friends to show off their little one over cyberspace. Not only does this save the writing and buying of all those birth announcement cards, it also saves the stamps and printed pictures that generally are included in birth announcements. The freebies page offers users links to free baby websites, links to free baby product samples, free pregnancy wristbands, free photo prints, free baby coupons and even freebie alerts. The free baby’s web site section lets parents create a web page that is completely centered on their new addition and give the new parents a chance to share their precious with all their friends and family. In the free baby product sample section a parent can find anything from free magazine subscriptions to those famous parenting magazines, to formula samples and children’s books. Due to the ten year anniversary of the page the web site offers pregnant mothers a free pregnancy bracelet. It is not only sleek and fancy, but is also there to alert any doctors or other personnel of the mother’s pregnancy status in any kind of situation, such as fainting, unconsciousness or an accident. A link to a related photo-processing place offers free photos for parents. Shipping as well as the prints is free to anyone that signs up to receive this offer. The online photo page offers any of the services a local photo store or photo lab might offer. Cards, picture prints, enlargements, photo gifts, calendars and more can be bought from this online site additionally to the free prints. On the online babies coupons and sample page users can find links to good deals, links to coupons and links to free samples. This part of the page is sure worth checking out. Some of the deals are for baby gear and baby food, while others also have links to places that offer deals on toddler’s and younger children’s clothing items. Even if it is just the beginning of pregnancy, checking out what is available online; especially on babies online can have great advantages. Some of the links offer new parents and parents to be many samples of different formulas, if this is going to be the choices to feed the baby, parents have a chance to try the different formulas and additionally get coupons for their favorite one. Not just the coupons, but also the free tools and journals on the web page make it worth to check it out. So go ahead and surf the web page to get up to date with newest baby information.

Movie Copyright Law College Students Are Being Targeted For Breaking Movie Copyright Law Many people have taken up the hobby of downloading movies and songs on the Internet and sharing them with their friends and family online. However, this is direct violation of the movie copyright law. Not surprisingly, the biggest violators of the movie copyright law are students. It is not surprising that the movie industry sector is sending out copyright infringements claims to college universities around the country. One reason that college students may be the hardest hit when it comes to violations brought against them for infringing on movie copyright law is that they are not aware of how serious a crime it truly it. Many college students who have suits brought against them are shocked, to say the least. They question why they were not warned about the perils of downloading movies and songs online and passing them along to friends. However, with the rise of claims that are being handed down, no one can claim ignorance for much longer. Word is being spread near and far that if you are engaging in illegal downloading and/or sharing then you can be brought to court. College students are learning the hard way that it is against the law and in violation of the movie copyright law to share or download copyrighted material. Many colleges and universities are now stating in their handbooks that it is against the law and the university rules to illegally download movies, music and other forms of media online using a school computer. In addition to illegal downloading and sharing software, the files take up space on the computer systems and use a considerable amount of bandwidth. While most universities and colleges will not look at the content an individual has -- they can isolate and identify the individuals who are hogging up the bandwidth by using illegal file sharing software. The movie and music industries have stepped in and are demanding restitution for illegally downloaded movies, music and other forms of copyrighted media. They have detection agencies that have the technology to identify and trace copyright infringements straight to their source. Once the computer is located they can notify the university or the college that they are in violation. The university will be told that they have a copyright infringement claim against them. Based on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act once the computer is isolated Internet access is terminated to that computer and court proceedings can begin. Does this sound far fetched? Well, it is not. You should know that in April of 2003 four students were sued by Recording Industry Association of America. These students attended Princeton, Michigan Technical University and Rensselear Polytechnic Institute. One student alone had an estimated liability of $150 billion. When you consider that you can be charged $750 per song that is illegally downloaded, the total can add up fast! The good thing is the lawsuits against the college students were settled for amounts less than $20,000. That is not pocket change for college students – or anyone for that matter! Movies and music are meant to be enjoyed. However, illegally downloading movies and music is not much different than walking into a video store and sticking DVDs and CDs in your pocket. Be careful. You do not want to be caught violating the movie copyright law.