Monday, October 22, 2007

The Smiling Coast is in for A Treat

Of all acclaimed music impresarios in Senegambia, DJ Lamin Cham must be one of the highest rated. With a career spanning more than 17 years, DJ Lamin Cham has successfully organised series of concerts in the UK, The Gambia, and other parts of Africa. This has no doubt earned him both local and international recognition. In fact on account of his sterling contribution to the promotion of music in the country, he was given two awards – one during the Kanilai International Cultural Festival, and the other during the last July 22nd celebration.

To celebrate the two lion awards bestowed on him by the Gambian leader HE Dr Alhaji Yahya A.J.J Jammeh early this year, DJ Lamin Cham, Proprietor and Chief Executive Officer of Champion Sounds, has concluded all protocols to stage a groundbreaking concert with Senegalese Mega star Thione Seck and the Raam Daan Band from 19 to 21 October 2007.

The event which is geared towards providing entertainment to music lovers in a bigger, better package during the Koriteh feast as well as to drum up funds to support the women empowerment programme and orphans in the country, will also feature a plethora of topflight Gambian artistes including the Gambia's kora king Jaliba Kuyateh, Pa Omar Jack alias 'Fish n Chips', Jah Lex and Battyai cultural group.

Speaking to this paper DJ Lamin Cham said that he is all-out to organise what he described as the heaviest concert ever to be staged on Gambian soil. He said the concert is conceived to say 'thank you' to Mr President for honouring him twice with awards.

"I'm inviting President Jammeh, the Cabinet and the entire nation to this all-important concert," he said.

According to the internationally renowned DJ, Thione Seck and Raam Daan band are set to thrill their Gambian fans to the maximum adding that everyone should take favourable advantage of the golden opportunity accorded them by attending the three-day concert.

Meanwhile, if you are a real mbalax fan or you love the lyrics of Thione Seck, please join the crowd at Joko Brikama on Friday 19 October, entrance fee is just D200 or Jama Hall, Kairaba Hotel on Saturday 20 October for the grand ambiance, entrance fee D300 for single and D600 for patron or on Sunday 21 October at Jokor Westfield entrance fee D250.

Friday, October 19, 2007

Tragic sibling rivalry claims life - Geo

Jawo Jallow, the younger brother, allegedly chopped off his brother’s neck in a deadly assault, following a heated brawl, which was sparked by the younger brother’s suspicion that the elder brother was in love with his wife.

read more | digg story

Thursday, October 11, 2007

Sea Shell

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Friday, October 5, 2007

Kitchen Items and food










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Red Hot Chili Peppers

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Glow

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Chop Sticks

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5 Tips When Choosing Multiple Domain Hosting

If you have or are planning to have several domains running on the web, then you should consider getting a multiple domain hosting. Multiple domain hosting allows you to host several domains under a single hosting plan. Most web hosting companies call it shared hosting.

The main advantage of multiple domain hosting is it helps to consolidate all your domains under one hosting plan. It makes domain management a breeze. It also makes it easier to modify any settings since you are doing it from the same control panel.

Here are a few tips you might want to bear in mind when looking a shared hosting service.

Hard Disk Space

Nowadays most shared web hosting plans provide more than enough disk space to satisfy your needs. It is important you know before hand how much disk space your web site will be using not just currently but projected 6 months, 1 year and 2 years down the road.

Some web applications requires more disk space than others. One example are file hosting sites. Also remember to check the cost of upgrading your disk space in case you need one. Most web hosting providers charge on a per GB basis.

Bandwidth

Most web hosting providers cap a limit on each hosting plan’s bandwidth. Check to make sure it provides sufficient bandwidth for your current websites and also room for growth. Most web hosting providers will charge you on a per GB basis for exceeded bandwidth.

The speed is also important for websites. No one wants to visit a website that loads slowly. File hosting and video sites for example requires an acceptable speed in order to deliver file download or streaming video.

Number of Domains Allowed

Some web hosting limit the number of domains for each hosting plan. It is best to get one with unlimited domains so you have to worry about the limit.

Emails/FTP accounts

You probably will need separate email accounts for each domain you have. Most web hosting services provide webbased or as well outlook based email accounts. Preferably try to get one that has unlimited email/ftp accounts.

Ease of control panel

With many domains, emails, ftp accounts etc to manage, it is important that the control panel is easy to use and all information can be accessed easily. Most web hosting services provide cpanel. Some web hosting services do use their own customised control panel. A good example is godaddy.

Whichever control panel you are using, familiarize yourself with the interface and get used to it as fast as possible.

Content Management System CMS

Most of the organizations have global visions these days and these aspirations have their ramifications. One of which is creation and management of huge amounts of data. This activity is a time consuming process and requires a huge team of professionals to do so. Content management system, CMS is a system that allows you to organize your data and lets your organization to share, use, retrieve or search the data.

Content management system, CMS is a software that helps in organizing and facilitating creation of documents and content. This is also referred as a web application that is used to manage web content as well as websites. Generally, the system requires client software for creating and editing the article.

Content management system consists of two parts - the content management application (CMA) and content delivery application (CDA) the function of CMA is to allow the content writer or the manager without the knowledge of HTML to manage, create, remove or modify the content from a website without involving the webmaster. This information is used by the CDA to update the website. Most of the CMS systems have Web based publishing, revision control, format management along with search, indexing and retrieval of content.

The web based publishing allows the user to use templates, wizards and other tools while the format management feature allows formatting of different documents like the scanned documents and legacy electronic documents in PDF or HTML documents. The revision control helps in updating the content to a new or an old version along with tracking changes made by others in the files. CMS system also helps in indexing, retrieval and search of content. The user can search the data available with the help of keywords, the CMS system helps in retrieving the data.

If you want to use the system for the effective management of your websites, Mosaic services provides you with an effective CMS development & Content management system PHP . The competitive rates and services provided by the company will surely benefit your organization. Mosaic services, is a prestigious SEO company with a list of satisfied national & international clientele who vouch for the SEO, Web design & development services provided by the company.

How to Make a Free Web Site

In the present time the internet craze has swept the nation and these days everything and everyone is online. Everyone having fun on internet and get knowledge from the web site.

If you want to know how to make a free web site, the good news is that you've set an easy goal for yourself. Learning how to make a free web site is about more than just getting your web domain for free - you need to know how to put information on that site as well. Many domains offering free web sites also feature free online tutorials that will help you write your web pages. Some sites are so user-friendly; you don't have to write any of your own web code at all! You can select colors and font sizes from the domain's own page editing service. When the domain is willing to write your pages for you, it's very easy to learn how to make a free web site.

Once you have decided on the topic of your website, it is time to start writing. The text should flow naturally and be divided into easily read paragraphs. Your first objective is to make sure your visitors can easily navigate your website and quickly access your content. According to the web designer point of view If you try hard enough, you can probably come up with some funky style for a page with for example, a new wacky navigational menu. The problem is that everybody expects to see a web page layout follow certain basic rules; navigation sections have to be arranged in a certain way, links have to look a certain way ... being consistent makes the web site easier for the visitor to use. Your site should have content that changes frequently, encouraging return visitors.

And once you know how to make a free web site, you'll have your own space on the Internet that others can visit. It's free, it's easy, and it's your own piece of the world wide web. After all, everyone else is on the Internet - why should you be left behind?

An Overview Of Open Source Content Management Systems

Publishing documents on the World Wide Web can seem daunting for the self proclaimed ludites out there. Let's face it HTML, XML, CSS, JavaScript to name just a few of the technologies that you would need to be familiar with in order to develop a truly professional looking website for yourself or your business. Fortunately there is a solution to the problem, it is called a content management system and it is an easier way for just about anyone willing to learn to publish to the Internet.

Some of these content management systems have stemmed from the need of publishing data to the web. CNet for example created one of their own in house content management systems which they later spun off into a separate company called Vignette. Since publishing to the web began to take off in 1995 the development of these systems has really begun to progress. However my focus will be only on open source versions of the web content management systems.

The first open source system that I want to mention is called DotNetNuke (http://www.dotnetnuke.com) which is a AsP.Net based system. By far one of the more popular open source projects out there today DotNetNuke has an avid following of hundreds of thousands of users. The benefits of using this system is the rapid updates to the platform and the intense support you will receive from it community. These are two very important factors when considering an open source system, the level of updates and the support you will receive from its creators or users of the platform. Further the innovations that are built into this system make it one powerful application by any measure. For instance the skinning mechanism is by far one of the easiest to modify and customize and the scheduling processor reduces some of the more mundane tasks of maintaining any website.

However DotNetNuke does not come without any drawbacks. Since this system was developed in ASP.Net this means that you will need at least Visual Studio 2003 Professional or greater in order to truly modify the source and customize the system as you see fit. This can be a serious drawback as the cost of this development platform can run into the hundreds of dollars.

The second open source system that I have some experience in using is called AXCMS.Net (http://www.axcms.net) which is again built upon the .Net platform. This system is as feature rich as other open source systems such as DotNetNuke. However, this system has some definite drawbacks. First is its somewhat difficult setup and deployment problems that can seriously hinder any project. Also, there does not seem to be as an avid user base as DotNetNuke. However the system is as "solid" as they get and you will definitely be rewarded by your efforts once you have the system fully setup and ready to use. Also since this system is really a neat way to get introduced to the development team any updates or customizations you may need will be for a fee from the creators of the system. This really hinders the community support of the system and makes adoption that much harder.

There are many other open source systems out there with some more being developed as I write this article. The main factors when adopting any open source content management systems you should consider are: how well is this system supported by the community and how often is this system updated by its core development team. Even an open source system can have some hidden cost that must be considered before adoption into any business or enterprise.

Bill Gates no longer the richest man in the world

After 13 years as the world's richest person, Bill Gates appears to have been dethroned. But there will probably be no sobbing inside his Medina estate.

In fact, based on his past remarks, the Microsoft Corp. chairman might welcome the news.

Mexican telecommunications tycoon Carlos Slim has taken the crown with a net worth of $67.8 billion, according to estimates by a respected financial news site in Mexico, as reported by multiple news services.

The main reason: a 27 percent surge in the stock price of Slim's wireless company, America Movil, in the second quarter.

At a Microsoft conference in Redmond last year, advertising executive and TV host Donny Deutsch asked Gates if he would be upset if someday he were no longer the world's richest man.

"I wish I wasn't," Gates replied. "There's nothing good that comes out of that."

"It's better than being second," Deutsch said.

"No," Gates replied. "You get more visibility as a result of it."

Slim's new standing might not be considered official until the next publication of Forbes' ranking of the world's richest people.

On this spring's Forbes list, Slim was just behind investor Warren Buffett, the chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway, who had been second on the list for years.

In April, after the publication of the official 2007 list, Forbes reported that Slim had surpassed Buffett to become the world's second-richest man. At the time, Forbes reported that Slim was "breathtakingly close" to passing Gates for the No. 1 spot. Gates' estimated worth was $56 billion at the time.

For the latest estimate of Slim's worth, Reuters quoted financial tracker Eduardo Garcia, from Sentido Comun, an online financial publication in Mexico. Garcia estimates that Gates is currently worth $59.2 billion.

According to an Associated Press report from Mexico City, Garcia's estimate of Gates' wealth was based on a 5.7 percent increase in Microsoft shares in the second quarter, and doesn't include Gates' sizable holdings apart from Microsoft shares.

"But a 26 percent growth rate for a world company like America Movil, that's hard to top for one quarter," Garcia said, according to the AP report.

Gates has put a total of more than $30 billion into the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, reducing his personal net worth. Slim recently told The New York Times that he plans to boost the endowments of his companies' foundations to $10 billion in the next four years, from the current total of $4 billion.

Slim, meanwhile, seems just about as interested in holding the "world's richest" title as Gates was. The AP quoted Slim's spokesman as saying, "As he has said many times himself, he is not in any competition."

The Unimaginable Beauty Of African Deserts

Africa - the second largest continent in the world is also home to the largest desert in the world—the Sahara. In fact there are three deserts on the continent—The Sahara, the Namib and the Kalahari. Together these three amazingly vast and diverse land masses cover a large portion of Africa. Beautiful, yet treacherous, these areas of the continent provide a rich geological and cultural history that dates back millions of years.

The Sahara Desert - As inconceivable as it seems, this desert is ever changing, shrinking and growing in size. Satellite photos studied from the early 1980s show that the Sahara's southern edge is expanding into the Sahel, a dry band that separates the desert from the Savanna. But the mid-1980s saw this area grow green and wet again. A common trade route for many centuries, caravans traveled through the Sahara spending days and weeks traversing the immense landscape. Several desert oases here made trade possible between the ports of North African and the southern Savannah markets.

There are around 4 million people or so that dwell in the Sahara, mostly in Mauritania, Western Sahara, Algeria, Libya and Egypt. Additionally there is a fascinating and impressive array of animal life, include gerbil, jerboa, cape hare, desert hedgehog, barbary sheep, oryx, gazelle, deer, wild ass, baboon, hyena, jackal, sand fox, weasel and mongoose. The bird life includes more than 300 species. This vast life and diverse culture comes all in one desert.

The Namib Desert - The sand dunes of the Namib Desert are the highest dunes on Earth. While the Sahara is the largest desert in the world, the Namib is considered the oldest desert, having endured arid or semi-arid conditions for at least 80 million years. In the Nama language, Namib means “vast”, and this is no exaggeration. At 50,000 kilometers, the Namib-Naukluft Park is the largest conservation area in Namibia and one of the largest in the world. Wind blows the thirsty Namib Desert sand into sharp ridges. Amazingly there are animals, insects and plants that reside in this beautiful, yet mostly inhospitable region of the world. One of its most unusual inhabitants, the Welwitschia, is a shrub-like plant that grows just two long, strap-shaped leaves continuously throughout its lifetime. It is believed that they are very long-lived, possibly living 1000 years or more. Some individuals may be more than 2000 years old.

The Kalahari Desert - A geological wonder, the Kalahari Desert is part of the huge sand basin that reaches from the Orange River up to Angola, in the west to Namibia and in the east to Zimbabwe. The sand masses of wind-shaped sand that are so common in the Kalahari landscape were created by the erosion of soft stone formations. Thanks to vegetation in the area, the dunes were stabilized 10,000 to 20,000 years ago. Strangely enough, the grasses, thorny shrubs and Acacia trees can survive long drought periods of more than 10 months a year. Some scientists don’t consider the Kalahari a true desert because some parts of the Kalahari receive more than 10 inches of rain in a year. Animals that live in the region include brown hyena, lion, meerkat, several species of antelope, and many types of birds and reptiles.

The Smiling Coast in for A Treat

Of all acclaimed music impresarios in Senegambia, DJ Lamin Cham must be one of the highest rated. With a career spanning more than 17 years, DJ Lamin Cham has successfully organised series of concerts in the UK, The Gambia, and other parts of Africa. This has no doubt earned him both local and international recognition. In fact on account of his sterling contribution to the promotion of music in the country, he was given two awards – one during the Kanilai International Cultural Festival, and the other during the last July 22nd celebration.

To celebrate the two lion awards bestowed on him by the Gambian leader HE Dr Alhaji Yahya A.J.J Jammeh early this year, DJ Lamin Cham, Proprietor and Chief Executive Officer of Champion Sounds, has concluded all protocols to stage a groundbreaking concert with Senegalese Mega star Thione Seck and the Raam Daan Band from 19 to 21 October 2007.

The event which is geared towards providing entertainment to music lovers in a bigger, better package during the Koriteh feast as well as to drum up funds to support the women empowerment programme and orphans in the country, will also feature a plethora of topflight Gambian artistes including the Gambia’s kora king Jaliba Kuyateh, Pa Omar Jack alias ‘Fish n Chips’, Jah Lex and Battyai cultural group.

Speaking to this paper DJ Lamin Cham said that he is all-out to organise what he described as the heaviest concert ever to be staged on Gambian soil. He said the concert is conceived to say ‘thank you’ to Mr President for honouring him twice with awards.

“I’m inviting President Jammeh, the Cabinet and the entire nation to this all-important concert,” he said.

According to the internationally renowned DJ, Thione Seck and Raam Daan band are set to thrill their Gambian fans to the maximum adding that everyone should take favourable advantage of the golden opportunity accorded them by attending the three-day concert.

Meanwhile, if you are a real mbalax fan or you love the lyrics of Thione Seck, please join the crowd at Joko Brikama on Friday 19 October, entrance fee is just D200 or Jama Hall, Kairaba Hotel on Saturday 20 October for the grand ambiance, entrance fee D300 for single and D600 for patron or on Sunday 21 October at Jokor Westfield entrance fee D250.

Thursday, October 4, 2007

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Tech grads get higher salary offers, but existing workers may face job perils

(Computerworld) Computer science graduates and other students leaving college with IT skills appear to be in demand: Starting salary offers are up, according to a recent report, and university officials say that IT recruiters are crowding campuses.

But if you're a high-tech worker in the middle of your career, the job outlook may be less certain, as cutbacks continue at some of the top IT vendors.

Recruiters "are on college campuses constantly looking for people," said Emanuel Contomanolis, associate vice president of co-op and career services at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) in New York. And it isn't just vendors doing the recruiting, he said, pointing to increasing interest in tech grads among companies in certain vertical industries.

For instance, Contomanolis said that financial services firms, which typically had been focusing their college hiring efforts on students with financial-related degrees, are now aggressively hiring graduates with IT skills. That's because the companies have realized that technology capabilities "are going to be critical to how they differentiate themselves in the market," he added.

The heightened interest is borne out by survey data collected by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), which last month said that computer science graduates have been offered an average salary of $53,051 this year, up 4.5% from last year's level. Contomanolis is present-elect of Bethlehem, Pa.-based NACE, which also said that this year's graduates with management information systems degrees have received an average starting salary offer of $47,407, up 4.7% year to year.

The salaries being offered to computer science graduates from the class of 2007 are the highest reported to NACE in the past seven years. The next-highest salary level was recorded in 2001, when graduates were offered an average of $52,473. The low point was in 2003, when the average salary offer dropped to $47,109, according to NACE.

The fact that recruiters now have a smaller pool of computer science students to choose from may be contributing to the increased salary offers. For instance, according to the Computing Research Association (CRA), the 170 institutions in North America that grant computer science degrees up to the Ph.D. level reported a total of 10,206 bachelor's-degree graduates for the academic year that ended in the spring of 2006 -- the most recent one for which data is available. That was down by nearly one-third from the level at the start of this decade, when there were more than 14,000 graduates annually.

"The drop isn't over yet," said Jay Vegso, a CRA staff member who authored a report on the number of graduates for the Washington-based group. Vegso also looks at enrollment trend data, and he said he expects the decline in computer science graduates to continue for another two years -- or perhaps stabilize at best.

The most-cited reason for the decline is the dot-com bust; the students who graduated last spring would have enrolled when the high-tech downturn was at about its worst point. But the movement of tech jobs to lower-wage countries, is also seen as a factor.

At Michigan State University, a career day this week was filled with IT recruiters, said Kelly Bishop, executive director of career services at the East Lansing-based school. The interest being shown by recruiters is higher than it was in previous years, he said. Companies that had been holding off from hiring new employees are now moving to do so, according to Bishop.

He said he thinks that a major reason for the increased interest is the looming retirements of baby boomers. But although Bishop sees more urgency on the part of employers to find new workers, he said that companies "are going to a lot of lengths to identify a relatively short list of people they consider are going to make a difference in their organization."

Prospective employers "are all eager to talk to you, but it's still going to be tough to get a job," Bishop said. "They are being incredibly selective."

For many established workers, the picture is less pretty than it is for new graduates. For instance, Electronic Data Systems Corp. said in a filing to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission last month that it was offering an early retirement program to about 12,000 of its 50,000 U.S. workers (download PDF).

Sun Microsystems Inc. said this week that it plans to cut 1,500 employees as part of a workforce reduction program announced in early August. And Intel Corp. recently confirmed that its IT staff is being cut by as much as 10% after an anonymous blogger described the layoff process in detail.

Those actions indicate that "midcareer workers better beware," said Ron Hira, an assistant professor of public policy at RIT and author of the book Outsourcing America (American Management Association, 2005).

"The same firms that are laying off thousands are clamoring that they need more foreign workers," Hira said. "One interpretation of this phenomenon is that companies have no interest in retraining or retaining incumbent workers to fill those positions."

On Monday, the U.S. government began issuing about 85,000 H-1B visas for its new fiscal year -- a total that is well short of what the high-tech industry says it needs for workers from overseas. Industry efforts to raise the annual H-1B cap have faltered as part of broader immigration-reform legislation, but proponents are still pushing Congress for an increase.

"Until we are emphatically told 'No' by the House and Senate leadership, we continue to make the case," said Robert Hoffman, vice president of government and public affairs at Oracle Corp. and co-chair of Compete America, a Washington-based lobbying group.

Patrick Thibodeau