Knoware House

The Internet is an ideal resource for travel planning. It lets shoppers compare and research the easy way, and ensure all arrangements are secure. From popular travel resources such as Travelocity to direct airline and hospitality websites, customers find ideal flight and hotel information, and have the ability to book everything online. Whether an avid traveler or someone who wants that freedom, TravelWize by Gullivers Travels has introduced the ideal discount program.

Gloria, a Texas native, wishes she’d found TravelWize years ago. “I’ve flown 18 flight segments and was upgraded to first class 12 times at no cost to me,” she states. “When I rented a mid-sized car, I was offered a Lincoln Town Car for just $28.00 a day. I have stayed in many different hotels including the Le Meridian in Beverly Hills to the Marriott in San Antonio, and with my Travel Credentials, I always get 50 percent off the regular rate. “

Gulliver’s Travels Expands

Before you understand TravelWize, you need to know its background. Gulliver’s Travels is an ARC-appointed (Airline Reporting Corporations), full-service travel agency located in Sarasota Florida. It has serviced the Sarasota community since 1969 fulfilling reservations for leisure, corporate, cruises, groups and tours.

Gulliver’s Travel recently expanded business to include independent, outside travel agents working from home, referring business to their GRTA website booking engine or to Gulliver’s reservation specialists at their hi-tech call center. Each Gulliver’s reservation specialist has an average of 15 years experience in the travel industry to assure superior service and offer excellent travel advice.

Based on exceptional service and outstanding customer service satisfaction Gulliver’s Travels has received several awards including Sarasota Herald-Tribune “Readers Choice Award” and Sarasota Magazine’s “Best Travel Agency” for the last seven years.

The company is a member of industry associations including ASTA (American Society of Travel Agents), CLIA (Cruise Line International Association), IATAN (International Airlines Travel Agency Network) and Ensemble Travel. With growing purchasing power, they’re expanding their preferred status with many vendors to develop higher commission to outside agents and special pricing for customers.

TravelWize - Sell and Earn

To assist travelers even more, Gulliver’s Travels introduced the TravelWize program, making it possible to enjoy air travel, resorts, cruises, hotels and car rentals for the lowest possible price. When you become a Gulliver’s Independent Referring Travel Agent (GRTA), you earn full or part-time income in the travel industry and real travel savings. You’re able to book travel through a personal website any time. It’s a business that you can own and operate right out of your own home. Did you know:

–The travel industry is $3.7 trillion strong.

–The travel industry grows 23 percent each year.

–Tourism accounts for 10.9 percent of all consumer spending.

Robert in North Carolina uses his benefits to take the family vacations they could never afford: “In my first month with TravelWize I saved over $320 dollars in Travel and Theme Park tickets! This is something every family should be doing.”

Extensive Travel Resources

In addition to offering competitive travel booking services, TravelWize is a comprehensive travel resource.

Flight Tracker - Track a flight by airline name and flight number, or by city and arrival/departure times

Map Address - Maps are great for getting around, but online maps could be a lot better

Travel Warnings - Travel Warnings are issued when the State Department recommends that Americans avoid a certain country

State Dept Travel - Travel and Living Abroad

What to Pack - An educational site that teaches ordinary people how to travel lightly

State Tourism - Contact numbers for tourist organizations

Intl ATM Locator - Provides an online search platform to locate an ATM anywhere in the world

World Weather - The world’s leading and most respected commercial weather service company

Currency Converter - You can perform interactive foreign exchange rate calculations, using live, up-to-the-minute currency rates

Traveler’s Health - Travel health warnings and precautions for international travel

US Customs - The US Customs and Border Protection website

Time Zones - Current local times around the world

Become an Agent: Make Money - Save Money

Being a full or part-time travel agent has its rewards. For some, it means a broader, more expansive world to discover. For others, it makes their existing travel much less expensive. TravelWize.com, Your personalized Internet web site will enable your clients, friends, and family to book travel whenever they like 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

As a referring travel agent you can now travel for even less with major airline, car rental and hotel companies at TravelWize.com. In addition, when you book travel online you earn commissions on every booking.

Sandy in Minnesota considers TravelWize the best kept secret in the industry: “I joined TravelWize.com because of my passion for travel. I love to travel, and I also love to help people save and make money. We’ve already saved well over $7,000 in seven months with our Travel Agent credentials, and I’ve made over $7,000 just by sharing with others how they can save and make money. I am living my dreams and you can too.”

To learn more, join the program or just save money on your next travel adventure, visit TravelWize.com.

Gary W. Griffin, Ph.D. is a researcher and an entrepreneur. He is also an authorized travel agent, and he loves to travel. This article is brought to you by e-Travel FAQs. For all your travel information needs, visit us at http://www.e-TravelFAQs.com

“Did God say…?” (Genesis 3:1).

The serpent engaged Eve in a conversation that was a confrontation. He didn’t ask Eve about the Garden and what she was allowed to do there; instead, he homed in on the one tree God had forbidden to Adam and Eve.

Human nature hasn’t changed much through the ages since. We still question God about our restrictions and overlook our liberties. The moment we question God about His right and our rights, we engage in a controversy with Satan. When Jesus was led into the wilderness, He refused to enter into a controversy with Satan. His reply was “It is written” to every suggestion made by the great machinator of mankind.

When Satan slips up on us and makes us discontent because of what we don’t have, let us show him the beauty that lines our garden and that is available to us for the praying. When we give it much thought, the restrictions of life are few and basic and necessary to our salvation, and they touch the core of our being for our own good, if we but allow God the wisdom to know what is best for us.

Satan’s goal during our life is to make us question God’s goodness; indeed, His very character. Augustine is reported to have said, “Love, and do what you like.” Augustine understood that, when we love what is good, we understand the character of the person we love and we want to do what is right because we love. We have the liberty to do what we like because we love, and we won’t betray who we love.

Eve momentarily “forgot the God who gave [her] birth” (Deuteronomy 32:18) and thus began the controversy of the ages. It began with a question that laid an ax at the very root of humanity. God’s Word answers Satan’s questions. When doubts assail and we find ourselves listening to these doubts, our cure begins in God’s Word.

It’s one thing to have to beat the odds; it’s another to have to beat the book. Betting
sports online is a fun and entertaining activity, but danger looms around the corner.
Most sports bettors constantly seek out new sports books to play at and to use for
line comparisons. However, not all sports books are legitimateas you can imagine.
How does one protect against being ripped off? That’s the focus of this article. You
are about to learn some quick and important signs that will help you escape the
potentially fraudulent sports book.

Sports Books Bonuses

The sports book bonus is one of the most used tools for fraudulent sports books.
Many legitimate sports books will offer deposit and re-load bonuses of 5-15% and
usual cap the amount you can get. If you find a sports book, especially a newer one,
offering insane bonuses of 30,40,50, or even 100%, it’s time to leave and visit
another sports book. It’s also possible that a newer sports book is not looking to rip
people off when offering bonuses like thisthey are just inexperienced. In the end,
they will realize their mistake and close downyou will be left out in the cold.

Who Are They?

In the real world, you can physically walk into a sports book and see who the people
are. For example, when you walk into a Las Vegas sports book, you know who owns
the place and can physically see them. In the online world, this just is not possible.
Take the time to do your research before spending money with anyone. Do they
have a phone number to call? Have you emailed them and received a timely
response? Does the company have other business websites? These are all questions
you need to find answers to before you even begin to think of playing at an
unfamiliar sports book. Another tip is to visit the three major search engines
(Google,Yahoo and MSN) and type in the property name to see what comes up. Do
the same for the company name and so forth. You may find info from current or
former players that shed light on the establishment.

The Big Deposit and Depositing Methods

One quick way to eliminate potentially bad sports books is to look at how they take
deposits. All solid sports books take deposits from a wide range of methods. Stay
away from any sports book that only takes deposits via cash, check, money order,
bank wire and Western Union. This could be a sign of fraudulent activity. Also, if
they are not organized (and large) enough to have many depositing methods, they
don’t deserve your business.

Another tip is to avoid sports books that force you to make a large initial deposit.
Any sports book worth playing at will gladly take a small deposit. Bet on sports on
your terms not theirs. If the sports book won’t take a small deposit (sub-$100),
then they don’t deserve any businesseven if you are a larger player. Fraudulent
sports books need larger scores, because their life cycle is very limited.

In the End

While there are fraudulent sports books online, just like there are crooks in the real
world, that should not stop you from enjoying the entertaining activity of sports
betting. Follow these steps to help you weed out potentially harmful situations. The
Internet is loaded with secure and honest sports books that will gladly do business
with you and earn your trust and respect. Good luck with your sports betting
adventures.

Sebastien Veilleux is the founder and players manager of
AdvantageSportsBetting.com and one of the top experts in the
sports betting industry
today.

Advantage Sports Betting is a world leader in online sports betting,

horse wagering, casino, poker and a proud member of the Betcorp family of
gaming sites. Betcorp is publicly listed on the Australian & London Stock
Exchange.

For over ten years, my family and I have had several cats
sharing our home with us. Our first kittens, Tiger and White
Sox, came to us from a friend whose own two cats had produced a
litter simultaneously and she was in desperate need to find good
homes for them. Next to arrive was Bonnie, whom I brought home
after seeing some young kids tormenting her. Then Brat Cat
joined us; her mother was a stray who decided our backyard was a
good birthing place.

And then there was Morgana. She was rescued from the Animal
Shelter when she was still quite young.

By the time Morgana moved in, a little over a year ago, my
husband and I thought ourselves “old hands” regarding litter box
training. With all our previous felines, we’d had little or no
trouble adjusting them to the litter box. At that time, White
Sox and Brat Cat were the only two living in the house. Bonnie
had passed on and Tiger refused to be a house cat, preferring to
live outdoors.

Morgana was a challenge.

When she first came to us, she was about six weeks old,
newly-weaned. We kept her in our bedroom the majority of the
time for the first month for two reasons. First, since that is
where my husband and I spent most of our time, it was easier to
train her to use the litter box which was kept in our bathroom.
Second, we wanted to give White Sox time to adjust to the new
kitten, as she is rather old and doesn’t like changes.

We had a large covered litter box in our living room which our
other cats shared. For Morgana, we placed a smaller, uncovered
box in our bathroom. It took about three weeks before Morgana
was consistently using the litter box, which was longer than it
had taken our other cats but we weren’t overly-concerned.

The trouble began once we moved Morgana into the other parts of
our home. Since she was still too little to climb into the
larger litter box, we put the smaller one in the living room
also. But after she became large enough, we put the smaller one
away. And then Morgana rebelled. She began leaving little
“surprises” for us all over our living room furniture.

We thought she just needed to be re-adjusted to the larger box,
so we began our training over again. But none of our tried and
true techniques worked this time. Whenever we’d put her in the
litter box, she would jump right back out. And if we tried to
keep her there, we would get several scratches for our trouble.

My husband and I didn’t know what else to do; we talked to other
cat owners we knew to see if they might know a reason for her
strange behavior. One friend mentioned that cats sometimes act
out when their environment undergoes a change, but I couldn’t
see how anything had changed - other than her being around the
other cats more often and she seemed to enjoy that. White Sox
didn’t much care for the frisky kitten and did her best to stay
far away from Morgana. But Brat, being younger, loved to play
with Morgana.

Another friend suggested Morgana’s behavior might be caused by
not keeping the litter box clean enough to suit her. Of course,
we knew that cats would often not use a dirty litter box, and so
we would scoop it out every couple of hours. But now we began to
clean the litter box more often; every time we saw White Sox or
Brat occupy it, in fact.

But still Morgana refused. I looked around on the internet,
trying to find some advice on this problem, and discovered it’s
recommended to have one litter box for each cat and a spare.
Sharing had never bothered our other four cats, but we went out
and bought three more large, covered litter boxes anyway.

Morgana was not impressed by our consideration for her
cleaniness. Her “surprises” continued. Then it occurred to us
that, perhaps, she was adverse to sharing a litter box with any
other cat. So we removed the large, covered litter box into our
bathroom where only she would have access to it. That didn’t
work either.

My husband and I were just about at our wits’ end. We had no
idea what else we could do, short of making her an outside cat.
We’d tried every suggestion from friends and the internet we
came across and nothing helped.

And then our son gave us the clue we needed. He was playing with
the cats one day, and he tossed a blanket on top of Morgana. She
went wild; hissing and clawing until she got out from underneath
the blanket. We realized our little Morgana had a fear of being
enclosed, as she was inside the covered litter box. I suppose
this derived from her time spent in a cage at the shelter with
so many other kittens.

However it began, we now knew what to do. We took off the cover
of the litter box for Morgana and it took no time at all before
she was happily visiting it all the time.

I’ve come across this advice in quite a few places over the years, and while it sounds good, it’s somewhat limited (and occasionally even just plain wrong). I know it’s usually meant well - spoken by a friend just before a terrified speaker goes up on stage to make their business presentation in a last minute attempt to reassure them that all will be well: sadly the truth is that being a good presenter requires more than that. You need to “be yourself” and you need to “perform” at the same time. Tricky? Of course; if it wasn’t tricky we’d all be doing it!

Think of the techniques to help you ‘perform’ as being like walking. Once you’re passed the toddler stage, you don’t really think about the mechanics of walking, you just use them - without thinking about it - to do the important stuff of getting from A to B. When the techniques are mastered you can concentrate on the business in hand - making your presentation.

What is certainly true is that all the great performers and presenters are themselves when they’re delivering their material: with a master, you never get the feeling that you’re on the receiving end of ‘material’. It always seems to be ‘just them talking’. Therein lies their expertise, of course. Billy Connelly, for example appears to be just standing their and saying the first thing that comes to mind.

With this in mind, I’ve jotted down a few bits and bobs of advice which might help anyone who’s got to ‘get out there’ and make their presentation….. (By the way, number three is the hard one!)

1. Know your material inside out, back to front and sideways. That way it really comes from you and you’re not “delivering” it. Comedians can’t tell each others jokes because they somehow “don’t fit” and a presenter can’t deliver someone else’s material (or material they’re not comfortable with). If you try you’ll unfortunately come across as confused, insincere (or both!). You won’t have time to think once you’re in mid-presentation. (Well, some people do, but not anyone who needs enough help to be reading an introductory article like this! ) Make sure that you’ve thought about all the different directions you could go from any point in your business presentation.

2. Forgive yourself a mistake. They happen. Your audience will almost always forgive you (and may not even notice!). What they won’t forgive is you allowing something trivial to put yourself off. It’s not the end of the world. A bad presentation is not a disaster. It’s not likely that there were many deaths involved and precious few people will have lost their homes just because of one bad presentation. Think of it as a kind of arrogance to be so upset by mistakes: you’re not that important to the people you’re talking to, 99.9% of the time.

3. Learn the right techniques for making presentations. It’s all well and good being comfortable on stage, being yourself, having good material and so on, but if you can’t deliver it you might as well just stay in your room. Learn to use your voice correctly, to carry to the back of the room. Project, don’t shout. Making your voice louder is counter-productive: you’ll sound like you’re trying too hard and your credibility will plummet. To make matters worse, you’ll alienate the people at the front and you’ll finish absolutely knackered - assuming you don’t do permanent damage to your voice, of course!

Techniques should be so integrated to you, your presentation and your style that they stop becoming “techniques” at all, and just become a part of you. You should never let the people you’re talking to see the techniques, either. Last year I toured with a dance company and I can distinctly remember hearing a member of the audience enthusing to one of the dancers about how amazing it was to be able to work that hard and for that long: they amount of physical effort involved as “utterly amazing”. The dancer was gutted, despite it being intended as a complement by a fan who was absolutely blown away. Why? Because it shouldn’t have looked like it was a physical effort at all. Remember this one motto…

If it looks like you’re working hard, you’re not working hard enough.

4. Don’t try and fake it. Stay with who you are. The last thing the audience wants to see is an impression of some else. If they’d wanted to see someone super-confident, ultra-swarve and free from fault, they’d have gone to see someone super-confident, ultra-swarve and free from fault! They’ve come to see and hear you for a reason.

That’s it: four simple suggestions - but I’ll say it again… Number three is the hard one: that’s the key to all the others. If you can get the right method and techniques so far into you that you don’t think about them, you can both be yourself and perform at the same time while you make your presentation.

Remember that this isn’t the whole story - and the details of how you do Number Three is something I’ve drawn a sheet over here……. but never the less, I hope it helps someone.

Dr Simon Raybould is a trainer and author in presentation skills. His business presentations ebook is available online and his presentation skill training courses are available for people living in the UK.

Christmas Recipes: Delicious Christmas Puddings

Pudding Recipes given here are easy to cook and absolutely delicious. Properly made Christmas puddings will be extremely tasty and make your Christmas celebrations a memorable experience. Enjoy these Puddings with your loved ones during this Christmas.

Christmas Pudding (1).

Ingredients of Christmas Pudding:-

1 lb. raisins (stoned), 1 lb. chopped apples, 1 lb. currants, 1 lb. breadcrumbs, 1/2 lb. mixed peel, chopped fine, 1 lb. shelled and ground Brazil nuts, 1/2 lb. chopped sweet almonds, 1 oz. bitter almonds (ground), 1 lb. sugar, 1/2 lb. butter, 1/2 oz. mixed spice and 6 eggs.

Instructions:-

Wash, pick, and dry the fruit, rub the butter into the breadcrumbs, beat up the eggs, and mix all the ingredients together; if the mixture is too dry, add a little milk. Fill some greased basins with the mixture, and boil the puddings from 3 to 4 hours.

Christmas Pudding (2).

Ingredients:-

12 oz. breadcrumbs, 1/2 lb. currants, 1/2 lb. raisins, 1/2 lb. sweet almonds, 1 doz. bitter almonds, 3/4 lb. moist sugar, 3 oz. of butter, 2 oz. candied peel, 8 eggs, 1 teaspoonful of spice and 1 teacupful of apple sauce.

Instructions:-

Rub the butter into the breadcrumbs, wash, pick, and dry the fruit, stone the raisins, chop or grind the almonds, beat up the eggs, mixing all well together, at the last stir in the apple sauce. Boil the pudding in a buttered mould for 4 hours, and serve with white sauce.

Christmas Pudding (3).

Ingredients:-

1 lb. each of raisins, currants, sultanas, chopped apples, and Brazil nut kernels; 1/2 lb. each of moist sugar, wholemeal breadcrumbs, wheatmeal, and sweet almonds and butter; 1/4 lb. of mixed peel, 1/2 oz. of mixed spice, 6 eggs, and some milk.

Instructions:-

Wash and pick the currants and sultanas; wash and stone the raisins; chop fine the nut kernels, blanch and chop fine the almonds, and cut up fine the mixed peel. Rub the butter into the meal and breadcrumbs. First mix all the dry ingredients, then beat well the eggs and add them. Pour as much milk as is necessary to moisten the mixture sufficiently to work
it with a wooden spoon. Have ready buttered pudding basins, nearly fill them with the mixture, cover with pieces of buttered paper, tie pudding cloths over the basins, and boil for 4 hours.

Christmas Plum Pudding (1)

Ingredients of Christmas Plum Pudding:-

One cupful of finely-chopped beef suet, two cupfuls of fine bread crumbs, one heaping cupful of sugar, one cupful of seeded raisins, one cupful of well-washed currants, one cupful of chopped blanched almonds, half a cupful of citron, sliced thin, a teaspoonful of salt,
one of cloves, two of cinnamon, half a grated nutmeg and four well-beaten eggs.

Making of Christmas Plum Pudding:-

Dissolve a level teaspoonful of soda in a tablespoonful of warm water. Flour the fruit thoroughly from a pint of flour; then mix the remainder as follows: In a large bowl put the
well-beaten eggs, sugar, spices and salt in one cupful of milk. Stir in the fruit, chopped nuts, bread crumbs and suet, one after the other, until all are used, putting in the dissolved soda last and adding enough flour to make the fruit stick together, which will take all the pint. Boil or steam three to four hours. Serve with wine or any well-flavored sauce.

Christmas Plum Pudding (2)

Ingredients:-

2 cups ground suet, 2 cups bread crumbs, 2 cups flour, 2 teaspoons Baking Powder, 2 cups sugar. 2 cups seeded raisins. 2 cups currants, 1 cup finely cut citron, 1 cup finely cut figs, 1 tablespoon finely cut orange peel, 1 tablespoon finely cut lemon peel, 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon, 1 teaspoon ground ginger, 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves, 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg, 1/4 teaspoon ground mace, 1 tablespoon salt, 1 cup water or prune juice and 1 cup grape or other fruit juice

Instructions:-

Mix thoroughly all dry ingredients and add fruit; stir in water and fruit juice and mix thoroughly. Add more water if necessary to make stiff dough. Fill greased molds 2/3 full, and steam two or three hours. This pudding should be prepared and cooked a week or more before used. Before serving steam one hour and serve with hard, lemon or foamy sauce.

Amy Tylor is recently appointed as the webmaster of Christmas Directory
www.ecommercedealers.com/christmas/

They publish informative articles on unique christmas gift ideas.
You have permission to publish this article as long as this section is included.

Sterling Holds Gains

Sterling rose to within a whisker of last week’s seven-month high versus the dollar on Monday after stronger than expected British retail sales and upbeat mortgage lending numbers dampened talk of a rate cut.

The dollar weakened against most major currencies after the Group of Seven industrialised nations on Friday stepped up rhetoric to say that China must let its currency rise to help cut its growing trade surpluses with the rest of the world.

But sterling extended its gains versus the greenback and also rose versus the euro on news that retail sales rose by a monthly 0.7 percent in March, more than double forecasts.

Separately, data also showed that underlying mortgage lending growth jumped in March to its highest level in nearly two years, according to the British Bankers’ Association.

“They (data) came in a bit stronger than expected — that would take away some of the arguments for a cut in UK interest rates,” said Geraldine Concagh, economist at AIB Group Treasury.

After the data, sterling rose as high as $1.7931 , just short of last week’s seven-month high of $1.7935. But it found resistance at those levels and pared gains. By 1026 GMT it was changing hands at $1.7909, up half a percent on the day.

The euro was down 0.17 percent versus sterling at 69.14 pence, off a post-data session low of 69.04 pence.

Some economists expect that slowing growth will prompt the Bank of England to cut interest rates from the current 4.50 percent in coming months. However upbeat economic data supports those who argue that rates will stay on hold.

But Gavin Friend at Commerzbank said sterling was likely to remain under pressure versus the euro as the European Central Bank is expected to tighten its monetary policy steadily.

“There is no reason why sterling shouldn’t continue to lose ground steadily versus the euro because although the market is looking less for UK rate cuts, the point is that the rate differential between the UK and the euro zone is going to continue to narrow this year,” he said.

Interbank rates
GBP/EURO - 1.4420
EUR/GBP - 1.4469
EUR/USD - 1.2342
GBP/USD - 1.7812
USD/GBP - 1.7822
GBP/AUD - 2.3940
GBP/NZD - 2.8100
GBP/CAD - 2.0200
GBP/CYP - 0.8300
GBP/AED - 6.5350
GBP/ZAR - 10.71
GBP/CHF - 2.2620
GBP/PLN - 5.5740
GBP/CZK - 40.65
GBP/THB - 66.170

Toby is a senior FX manager who writes daily articles concerning the
Euro Pound currency exchange markets and how this affects the Spanish property market.

Dave, I just got a contract for a book from a publisher
that I haven’t worked with
before. These long, tedious legal documents just befuddle me, however! Would you
mind spinning through this and seeing what you think about the terms and clauses
herein?

Here are my thoughts on this contract. Note up front that I’m not a lawyer and
haven’t received any particular training in contract interpretation. I do have an MBA
and have spent lots of time with lawyers reading and rewriting contracts, however,
so I think my advice will be helpful. Also, as a note to my faithful readers, I cannot
review contracts for you without charging for my time, and frankly you’d be much
better off asking a lawyer to help you out anyway.

Rather than reproduce the entire contract, I’m going to just excerpt the highlights
and follow them with my comments or thoughts. I am deliberately not talking about
royalty percentage, advances, and other specific numbers because those aren’t
really appropriate to publish in a public forum of this nature.

.. there shall be no royalty payment on copies of the Book sold at less
than Publisher’s cost…

Determined by? Audited by? Actual number? These vague and hard-to-enforce
clauses always make me anxious because it’s built on trust without any ability for
you to audit the books (with most publishers, at least). What if the book has a retail
price of $19.99 and the publisher decides that $10 is their cost? Then any book
sold at any sort of discount are ‘less than the publisher’s cost’ and you don’t see a
dime.

NET RECEIPTS - For purposes
of this Agreement, the Publisher’s “Net Receipts” from sales shall
mean net profit received by the Publisher from sales of the Book,
less credits, returns and funds required for reprints.

Funds required for reprints is a printing / publisher cost of business, assuming that
I’m understanding what’s being referenced, and that cost
shouldn’t affect the author. This clause is bogus and should be eliminated.

All monies received for direct sales
will be held for a period of 12 months to allow for credits and
returns.

That’s ridiculous. All my MBA “future value of money” instincts cry
out on this one. If there’s a ‘hold on reserves’ that floats from
payment to payment, then que sera, sera, but having a 12 month lag is exploiting
the system without any benefit
to the author. I’d reject this.

TAXES - All payments made
under the terms of this Agreement will be subject to USA Federal
income tax withholding, as required by the United States Internal
Revenue Code.

No, these are royalty payments and I’m pretty darn sure that the
publisher doesn’t have to worry about taxes, just report them as
royalty income for the author to the IRS. If you read the 1099MISC filing
instructions on the IRS site, it explicitly says “include in this box gross
royalties (before reduction for fees, commissions, or expenses) paid by a publisher
directly to an author or literary agent or paid by a literary agent to an author.”

The only instance where this 1099MISC might not be relevant is if the author is
overseas, in which case the publisher needs to pay taxes on the amount that’s being
paid to the author. Not sure exactly how that’d be structured, but any halfway
decent accountant should be able to shed some light on this topic.

ACCOUNT - All royalties and
other income accruing to the Author under this Agreement shall be
credited to an account maintained on the records of the Publisher
(the “Royalty Account”), which Royalty Account will be charged for
all amounts paid or payable to Author, including any advance payments,
and for all amounts Author is charged, or obligated to pay, pursuant
to this Agreement.

This smells of some sort of cross-accounting trick, somehow. I’d kick this out. Each
book should have its own account or it should be explicitly stated that the account
will not interweave credits and debits from different projects.

OVERPAYMENT - If any person
comprising the Author has received an overpayment of money from the
Publisher or has an outstanding monetary obligation to the Publisher,
whether arising out of this Agreement or any other agreement with
the Publisher, the Publisher may deduct the amount of such overpayment
or outstanding obligation from the Royalty Account or any sums due
to such person under this Agreement.

And there’s the cross-accounting clause. Debt with one book should not affect
credit (royalties) with another book. Absolutely reject this. Each book project should
stand on its own two feet.

AUTHOR DISCOUNT - The Author
shall also be entitled to purchase additional copies of the Book
for the Author’s personal use (self-promotion) at a discount of
twenty-five percent (25%) off the suggested retail price of the
Book, plus the cost of shipping and handling, while the Book remains in print. p>

That’s ridiculous. The book should be available to the author at
cost plus shipping, not at a discount rate that’s less than the
discount a typical bookstore sees! At least 45% off, if not 60% off the cover price.
The publisher
shouldn’t try to exploit the author in this fashion. Theoretically, the author and
publisher are partners on this publication, after all.

AUTHOR’S CORRECTIONS - Author alteration
costs in excess of ten percent (10%) of the cost of the original
composition, and any expenses incurred by the Publisher in the
making of Illustrations replacing those originally submitted with
the Book, shall be charged to the Royalty Account.

I think it’s important to specify that it depending on why these changes are
required. If there’s a new version of the program and the screenshots need to be
replaced, or if there’s a major corporate reorganization or change in the laws or
economy, that’s not a cost the author should incur. It’s just part of the risk of trying
to capture in print an element of our fluid, ever-changing world.

COPYRIGHT - The Author hereby expressly grants,
transfers, and assigns to the Publisher full and exclusive rights to the Book,
including, without limitation, the copyright in the Book, all revisions thereof, and
the right to prepare translations and other derivative works based upon the Book in
all forms and languages…

And what payment does the author see if the publisher prepares a
translation or derivative work? Curiously that isn’t specified in the contract as far as I
can see…

The Publisher will register copyright
in the Book in the name of the Publisher in compliance with the
United States Copyright Law. If the Publisher supplies artwork
(including artwork for the cover of the Book), it may register
copyright separately therein in a manner satisfactory to the
Publisher.

Note that there are publishers who let the author retain copyright
of the material while the publisher copyrights the overall work. A
much nicer approach, in my opinion, much more respectful of the
author.

Tip to new publishers: the author can retain copyright without infringing on
your rights of publication or compilation copyright.

The Author represents and
warrants that, except as previously disclosed to the Publisher in
writing, the Author has not aided in the preparation of and is not
under any obligation to any other publisher or person to prepare
any publication directly competitive with the Book, or which could
interfere with his or her performance of this Agreement or interfere
with or impair the sale of the Book.

And here’s the first glimmer of the non-compete clause. This is a
no-go. You need to have it either MUCH more specific (like “author
is under no obligation and shall not produce any other work that
is specifically addressed at the introductory Bash shell script
programming audience, to be marketed online through Amazon marketplace
and other ebook venues”) or strike this entirely.

The publisher
doesn’t own you, the author, they’re just buying your words.

NON-COMPETITION - The Author agrees that so long
as the Book remains in print, the Author will not participate in the preparation or
publication of, or allow his or her name to be used in connection with, any work
which might compete with the Book or the exercise of any rights granted Publisher
hereunder. The Author may, however, draw on and refer to material contained in the
Book in preparing articles for publication in professional journals, for teaching
purposes, and for delivery at professional meetings and symposia, provided
appropriate credit is given to the Publisher and the Book.

Which, of course, is unacceptable. If I write a book for this
publisher called, say, Fifty Ways to Hack your Shell (Hey! That’s
a good title!) I would be prohibited from ever writing about shell
programming or, ostensibly, any Unix topic that included discussion
of shells because it *might* compete with the book.

This needs to either be much, much more tightly defined or removed
entirely.

Actually, I hate all these non-compete clauses because they’re where you can really
see how most publishers stack the deck against the author, even though it should
be a fair, equitable and professionally respectful relationship.

OUT-OF-PRINT PROVISIONS - If at any time, the
Publisher determines that the demand for the Book is insufficient to warrant its
continued publication, the Publisher may declare the Book out of print. In such
event, the Author shall have the right to purchase the Publisher’s stock of
the Book, if any, at one-quarter (1/4) of the Publisher’s established list price, but
not below cost.

That’s just daft on the part of the publisher. If it’s out of print,
then they have a warehouse problem and they should just liquidate
the remaining books to the author even at just shipping costs. It’d
be cheaper than having to pay for them to be destroyed…

If the Publisher declares the Book
out of print, then upon the Author’s written demand, the rights
granted by the Author under this Agreement will revert to the
Author…

I’m not sure that’s consistent with copyright law. This is really
why it’s better to have the author retain copyright because then
once the book goes out of print the material naturally falls back
to the author anyway, without remembering to notify the publisher
in writing.

I hope that this review has been helpful and informative. What you’re willing to
accept in a publishing contract is directly affected by why you are writing the book
in the first place, so think through your motivations, the big picture, and your career
before you decide exactly what you’ll accept and what you’ll insist must be removed.
For the record, I have rejected contracts and lost writing gigs because of
unacceptable clauses. I think it’s worth it, but you, in my position, may not think so.

Again, just to reiterate, this is not offered as legal advice and I disclaim any
responsibility for your acting upon anything I’ve said herein!

Dave Taylor is author of sixteen technical books including the award winning, best
selling Wicked Cool Shell Scripts
and the popular titles Learning Unix
for Mac OS X Panther and Creating Cool Web Sites. He also runs the popular and lively Ask Dave Taylor! Q&A Web site
where he fields business and technical questions every day, including questions
specifically about The Writing Business.

Creating a Windows Explorer clone with complete shell browsing GUI in your Visual C++ MFC application with Shell MegaPack ActiveX

Original article at http://www.ssware.com/articles/creating-explorer-clone-in-visualc++-mfc.htm
Link : Original Article

Introduction

Any developer who has ever wanted to provide file/folder browsing or file-selection functionality in his own application knows the utter lack of simple, extensible and customizable MFC components for this purpose.

Even as simple a task such as letting the user select a folder has to be accomplished by using complex shell programming APIs like SHBrowseForFolder. And all you get after all this is exactly the ability to let a user select a folder. The disadvantages of this approach, apart from the fact that it is very inflexible and non-customizable, is that this approach shows a modal dialog to the user, meaning the user has to deal with the dialog before moving on - either select the folder or cancel the operation.

Another option is to use the ‘common dialogs’ - the MFC CFileDialog class - which is almost as inflexible and narrow-minded in its goals and features. Sure it can be extended to add more controls, but only after you have spent 20 hours wrestling with subclassing and hooks and WindowProc.

To do away with the modal madness, you can a listbox and combobox in your own own dialog and use an API like the DlgDirList to list all drives, directories or files. All you get with these APIis is a textual list of filenames. Compare this to Windows Explorer which shows the entire shell’s namespace including filesystem items and virtual items like Control Panel, Network Neighborhood etc in all their glory - with pretty icons, a hierarchical display of folders, Thumbnail or Details or Group Views, infotips, dragdrop, context menus, etc.

And with Shell MegaPack, you can get all this in your application. If you want drop-in Windows Explorer shell browsing functionality in your own application, with all features of Windows Explorer’s features, along with the advanced behavior control and customization, and you want all of this with minimal time and effort, then Shell MegaPack is the way to go.

Inserting the controls in your dialog.

To insert the ActiveX controls in your MFC project, right click on the dialog at design time and select ‘Insert ActiveX Control..’. In the dialog box that comes up, select ‘Sky Software FolderView ActiveX Control” and click ‘OK’. Repeat this procedure for FileView and ShComboBox. Now that all three controls are on your dialog, position and size the controls as per your needs and give them the desired IDs.

Next, we will add variables for all the three controls. To do so, right-click on the FileView control at design-time and select ‘ClassWizard..’. Select the ‘Member Variables’ tab, select the ID for the FileView control in the ‘Control IDs’ listbox and click ‘Add Variable..’. At this stage, Visual C++ will ask whether it should generate wrapper classes for the control. Click ‘OK’ and give the control the desired variable name and click ‘OK again’. Repeat this step for the other two controls as well.

Setting properties

All three controls can be fully customized at design-time. To set properties, right click on the controls at design time and select ‘Sky Software FolderView ActiveX Control Object’ –> ‘Properties..’. This will bring up the property pages from where you can customize the controls as per your needs. You can change the appearance and colors, set filtering modes (hide virtual items, hide hidden items, show folders), set the starting folder, set whether context menus, infotips, etc are shown and whether dragdrop is allowed. Almost every aspect of the controls can be customized at design time in this way.

Linking the controls together

Linking the three controls with each other enables them to synchronize automatically with each other. For example, if a new folder is selected in FolderView, FileView will automatically update itself to show the contents of that folder. Linking can be done in just 2 lines of code :

m_shCmbBox.SetFolderView((LPDISPATCH)m_fldrVw.GetControlUnknown());
m_fldrVw.SetFileView((LPDISPATCH)m_fileVw.GetControlUnknown());

Event Handling and behavior control

The controls come with a large number events which are fired when certain things occur, such as when the current folder has changed or an item has been clicked or double-clicked or selected or checked. The other use of events is to give you the opportunity to do advanced customization. For example, you might want to allow the display of context menus for one item but not another, or allow dropping of files on some particular folders or disallow execution of some files. Simply setting Cancel = True in the proper event allows you to accomplish this.

To handle an event, right click on the control at design time and select the ‘Events..’ menu item. In the dialog that comes up, select the appropriate event and click ‘Add and Edit’. For example, to prevent display of context menus for folders, handle the OnItemRightClick event of FileView and use the following code :

CListItem i;
i.AttachDispatch(Item,FALSE);
if(i.GetAttributes(FOLDER) & FOLDER)
*Cancel=TRUE;

Advanced customization

The controls allow you to replace or extend the default attributes of items. You can change the display names (text) of files and folders ( for example, prefix an asterisk(*) before all files ), change the default icons shown for files and folders, add, remove or modify items from the context menu of files and folders, add custom columns in Details View. You can even add your own custom items to the controls. With this feature, you can recreate an entire shell namespace extension within your own application with minimal effort.

Conclusion

A Windows Explorer like shell browsing UI is required in many applications, yet there is no simple way to add such functionality in your application without spending countless hours for the most basic functionality. If you desire even a little semblance to the explorer UI and a little customization, then the corresponding time required grows exponentially. Shell MegaPack brings a drop-in shell browsing UI to your app within minutes and shields you from all the complexities and pains and the modal madness discussed above. Just the gains in terms of the time saved is more than worth it.

About the Author

Atul Godbole is the President of Sky Software, a leading developer of user interface components based on ActiveX and .Net technologies. To contact him or to find more information about Sky Software and its products, please visit http://www.ssware.com.

Obtaining a lawyer is a funny thing. Everybody has a lawyer, but
no one admits to needing a lawyer. Attorneys for any type of
case you, or your friend, might need, are not hard to find. A
simple search on the internet will show a wide variety of
criminal and civil lawyers. The key is to find a good attorney
who will put your case first and handle it aggressively for an
acceptable outcome. And you need to obtain one in your state
because if a crime has been committed, the lawyer needs to be
current on the individual state laws and statutes concerning it.
A lawyer from another state would not be familiar with another
states’ laws. And, keep in mind, you cannot be convicted of a
crime that has not been identified and/or is not in the
statutes, so the attorney must be up on those.

Though it is not against the law for you to try your own cases,
in most cases, it is necessary to obtain a lawyer. Your attorney
must be up-to-date on your charges and any changes that the
courts present. To find legal services that are aggressive,
informative and knowledgeable for your case, here are some main
points to consider:

1) Find out how long they have been practicing law. This will
give you an idea as to their familiarity with state laws,
courthouses, and the judges. Very Important. 2) See if they are
Board Certified by the Bar in their state of practice. 3) Do
they routinely handle cases in this system, so they are familiar
with procedures, etc.? 4) Check to find out if they have a good
reputation among the other attorneys or the general public. 5)
Look to see if he/she carries malpractice insurance, just as a
safe guard. 6) Take advantage of a free consultation in order to
meet and discuss the charges. Determine their “specialty” areas.
They are called “specialties” for a reason. 7) Most importantly,
make clear the total fee expected, how much do they want up
front, and what would the payments be. You certainly do not want
to have discrepancies with your lawyer on fees.