Welcome to spokanevalleymarketing.com

Web Hosting - How To Select A Web Host As with many purchases, our first impulse when selecting a web hosting company is to go with the cheapest. Hey, they're all alike, why pay more? Au contraire. There are a number of objective criteria that separates one web hosting company from another and money is only one of them. And not the most important one. Selecting a company based on price alone is equivalent to selecting an auto mechanic on price alone. Sure, he may maintain or fix your car cheaper. But will the car spend all the time in the shop and none on the road? The first consideration is 'horsepower'. Do they have the capacity to carry your load and deliver decent performance? Most hosting companies will advertise that they have huge bandwidth and hundreds of servers. They're usually telling the truth. But there's a difference between existing capacity and usable capacity. If they also have thousands of sites with millions of visitors per day the available or free capacity will be much lower. A big pickup truck may be able to tow 5,000 lbs. But not if it's already carrying 4,999. Be sure to ask about available capacity, and have the prospective company back it up with reliable numbers. If you can't interpret the information they provide, find someone to help you do so. Next, and a very close second, is reliability. A lot of power is worthless if it's cut often. Outages are a normal part of business. Even Google and Microsoft go down from time to time. The difference is, it happens rarely and they have failover plans. That means, if their site/system does go down it's either up again in a flash, or you never see the outage because a backup system kicks in automatically and seamlessly. Be sure to grill the company closely about their up time. They'll often tout 99.6%, or some such figure. But, like the on-time figures of the airlines, those numbers can be shaded by adjusting the definition of 'up time'. What matters to you is whether your visitors will be able to reach your site at any time of the day or night they might want to. Find out what systems, both technical and human, they have in place to deal with failures of all sorts. Servers can go down, networks can fail, hard disks can become defective and lose data even when the other components continue to work fine. The result is YOUR site is unavailable, which is all that matters to you. The web hosting company should be able to deal with all of that and have you up again very quickly. Last, but not least, is security. With the continuing prevalence of viruses and spam, you need to know that the web hosting company you select has an array of methods for dealing with them. That means a good technical plan and staff who are knowledgeable in dealing with those issues. The old saying: 'an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure' is more true here than anywhere else. All these issues are central to finding a web hosting company that can deliver the services you need. After those criteria are satisfied by a number of candidates, then you can start narrowing them down by price.

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.

The Options For Online Creative Writing Courses (online creative writing courses) Online courses are ever growing in popularity. Many consumers don’t have the patience, money, or time to attend regular college classes, so many of them has turned to the Internet as their means of education. The online course phenomenon is especially helpful for many writers, as more and more writers find it both convenient and helpful to take online creative writing courses. Online courses are also known as distance learning courses, because of course the student is not in the classroom, or even the school when the course is taken. These distance courses have been seen as one of the best ways for a busy writer to brush up on their skills or learn new ones. Taking creative writing courses gives writers many options, such as working at their own pace. Many writers are too busy to attend class and enjoy the freedom giving by online courses. The distance courses give students the freedom to work at their own pace while learning everything that is needed. Students also don’t have a set time for the courses, so they may choose when they want to learn. An online course gives the writer time to fulfil all of their other duties. Online creative writing courses are easy to find, and there are plenty of programs offered by online writing schools. Writers Weekly University is one online school that offers creative writing courses for the busy writer. The university offers e-mail courses for freelance writers and aspiring novelists. They offer courses such as The Art of the Press Release, Finish Your Novel in eight Weeks, and How to Write a Cookbook and Sell It. Published writers and editors usually teach the online courses offered by Writers Weekly University. The courses may be inexpensive, and typically range from $25 to $745, but the price is based on the length and complexity of the course. Writers’ Village University is also a school that offers online creative writing courses. Writers’ Village University is one of the most popular sources for online writing courses, and offers more than 250 courses. The courses offered by this university are paid for in a non-traditional way. There is no payment required for the actual courses taken, but instead a membership fee, which gives writers unlimited access to hundreds of online creative writing courses. The Writers’ Village University is also one of the most inexpensive with a membership fee of $69 per year or $10.99 per month, which for many is less than the cost for Internet access. The university offers courses in fiction writing, comedy writing, literature, business writing, and poetry. However, the schools for writers don’t stop with the Writers’ Village. There are many more online schools that offer writing courses to consumers. Writers Online Workshops is also an online writing university that offers writers the creative courses they want and need. This university is facilitated by Writer’s Digest, and the courses are said to be taught by the best writers. The creative writing courses at this university range from fiction writing to business writing to poetry to composition. The Writers Online Workshops are far more expensive than other online creative writing courses, and typically start at $200. The courses provided by this university also require textbooks, so students will feel as if they are attending a regular university. Online creative writing courses may not be for every writer, but they can help a writer improve their skills while obtaining some education in the field they love. The courses may not be foolproof, but they may be a great benefit to every writer who wants to take them and wants to learn more about writing.