As part of activities marking the official visit of the high powered delegation of the National Youth Service Corps of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, led by Brigadier General Yusuf Bomoi, the National Youth Service Scheme officially launched its website recently. Delivering his launch statement at an event held at the Joint Officers Mess, Kotu, NYSC Director General, Brig-General Bomoi, expressed satisfaction with the progress made by the NYSS in the recent past. He noted that the occasion was yet another mile stone in the annals of the NYSS and that it speaks volumes of the efforts of the scheme geared towards empowering the youth.

Brig-Gen Yusuf Bomoi, who spoke at length about the relevance of NYSS, also seized the opportunity to talk about the importance of the website to the scheme, noting that it will help to strengthen the ideals of the scheme. While commending staff of NYSS for what he called an indelible achievement, he promised to support NYSS in all its endeavours.

For his part, Marchel Mendy, NYSS Public Relations Officer said the website that can be browsed on www.nyssgam.org and contains some vital information about the programmes and activities which the scheme and its corps members are involved in.

Further still, he noted that the launch of the website is in line with NYSS’ ardent desire to change the mindset of the people about the scheme and also make known some critical issues of the scheme. “There is no denying that the importance of NYSS is immeasurable. However, a rather small percentage of the Gambian populace know about the existence and its programmes. This among other things prompted the launch of a website for the scheme”, he noted.

While urging people to visit the website, he expressed confidence that all browsers of the website will be adequately informed about what happens within the NYSS by the time they finish browsing.

The embassy of the United States of America in The Gambia recently launched a new website geared towards standardizing US embassies around the world.

The new site, http.banjul.usembassy.gov, is designed to increase customer services and standardize the United States embassy websites around the world.

Having been created to give a detailed and up-to-date information to the general public and    

to the US citizens on wide ranging issues, the new format is more user-friendly, has shorter load-times for those with slow internet connections, and contains information about American citizen services and visa application procedures and US policy.

Importantly, the site is also, among other things, expected to highlight the latest headlines from Washington, embassy news including offices and departments, American citizen services and general information about visas to the United States.

Also to be highlighted in the website is the issue of Non-Immigrant visas for students wishing to attend a university or other academic institution in the United States.

Briefing journalists about the new website on Wednesday, Ms Wendy A. Kennedy, Consular Officer at the US embassy, said the change was considered an important step in improving customer service and standardising US embassy websites around the world.

She added that the old website will be discontinued. She demonstrated the filing of the visa application form to journalists gatherted. "The US Embassy website is most visited by people seeking information about visa applications".

She revealed that the embassy has a special section called the "Visa to the US" that contains all the relavant informations needed to apply for a visa. "More importantly, this  section contains links to the necessary application forms.

For his part, Papa Njie US Embassy Public Diplomacy and Cultural Affairs Assistance,  believed that the informations posted at the site would better the communication between the embassy and the general public. He is of the view that the site would also be useful to journalists.

Rhythm is happy and proud to announce the release of a new product: .geographical media which revolutionizes the world of website design.

.geographical media is a new tool with the highest technological standard to build and manage modern, highly efficient and unique websites. It enables individuals and businesses, IT-experts as well as people with basic computer skills to build individual standout websites, tie them into a growing network and manage content and design changes independently. Forget the days when you had to contact your webmaster to make a small design change or change a link. Everything is easily managed and accessible by the site owner – you.

Uploading blog posts, photos, news articles, real estate properties, business listings or sending newsletter to your own community are only a few of the features .geographical media offers.

Easy to use drag-and-drop tools and clicking through the big library of colors, features and photos with instantly viewable design changes make web designing fun and enjoyable, even if you are not experienced. The motto is: If you can send an email then you can build a website with .geographical media! You can choose one of the designs in the library or completely start from scratch. The system is self-explanatory with additional help support if needed.

All .geographical media sites are integrated into one big and steadily growing network, allowing the content to flow between sites according to relevance. This guarantees maximum exposure to your uploaded content and an interesting and dynamic experience for the users.

All content on .geographical media is searchable by geographical location so users get information from different categories (photos, news, properties etc.) for the spot (region/city/village etc.) they are most interested in. Just imagine you read an article about your home town and then find additional photos, real estate properties and blog posts right there!

Getting a new and stand-alone website findable on the net takes time and patience. That’s true. But with .geographical media you will start receiving traffic through the cross links as soon as you put your new site onto the network. Your blog posts and photos (with links to your site) will show up on other .geographical media sites in related and relevant sections so the more content you upload the more findable you are. Your content will work for you together with intelligent URLs that are search engine optimised.

Designing your .geographical media site is free and fast. Just go to http://wow.gm/wizard , choose your domain name (e.g. http://babyface.wow.gm ) and get your site registered.

Get your Gambian website now! Try it out and be amazed how fast and how much fun web designing can be!

See you online.

Mr Mustapha Batchilly, the Chief Executive Officer of Banjul City Council (BCC), has described as unfounded a report by the online newspaper Senegambianews.com that Babou Cisse was arrested by the National Intelligence Agency (NIA).

In a press statement sent to this paper, Mr Batchilly stated that Babou Cisse was recruited to carry out an audit exercise of the revenue administration and devise a system of proper revenue collection in order to avoid discrepancies and fraud.

He emphasised: “Babou Cisse was never arrested or detained by the NIA. He was asked to throw light on the method of revenue collection which he ably explained, supported by the actual revenue receipts in the months of November and December [2007], when he was in charge of the market.”

According to the BCC Chief Executive Officer, revenue reached a record level of D1 million in one single month, the highest ever recorded in the history of BCC.

He stressed that Babou was never responsible for the increase in stall rates, pointing out that it was “a decision of the Council.” “The closure of stalls is also a decision of Council,” he added.

Tenants who are affected by this exercise have been responsible for either letting stalls without the consent of BCC or sold their leases at exorbitant rates of about D15,000.00 annually,” he said.

He added that such an act was not only “a breach of contract with BCC but it was also a fraudulent act.”

Podcasting is a great way to build an audience for your thoughts and ideas, not dissimilar to blogging. And another similarity between those two is that the vast majority of them are garbage. Indeed, the percentage of podcast or blogs that are actually worth following is miniscule.

There are two primary reasons for this overwhelming failure. First, the people behind these efforts just don’t have very good communication skills. You can read people’s blogs or listen to their podcasts and be disgusted by the amateur level of communication skills being displayed. Whether it’s poor grammar or nonexistent concept development, most podcasters and bloggers are better off watching TV.

The second problem is that these people don’t take the time at the beginning to lay the foundation for a successful platform. As a result, the focus changes regularly and the content doesn’t follow any sort of chronology. This article will offer a series of basic steps all podcasters should go through to garner some focus and direction to their efforts.

First things first. You have to decide what information you’ll be providing. We’re all experts at something and you need articulate that to yourself and identify an area of information you’ll be distributing. Podcasting is more than just mindless chatter. The ones that succeed are the ones that provide real value. Think about who would benefit from the knowledge you already have and structure your series around that.

Once you know your topic, you’re well advised to develop an outline for your first 10 or 20 chapters. This may seem premature but the process yields plenty of peripheral benefits. It forces you to think of the topics in chronological order; which one comes first, second and so on. It’s also a great brainstorming exercise and will pull lots of ideas out that you may not have thought of otherwise.

Think about the information through the eyes of a student who knows nothing. You are the teacher and they are the helpless student, relying on you to guide them through. This perspective makes it a lot easier to structure your content in a logical progression. Assume the role of a teacher and present your content with that in mind.

One of the biggest downfalls of podcasting is that there’s no easy way of accumulating the email addresses or other contact information of your listeners. Any experienced internet marketing will tell you the value of having an email list for your audience but that’s no easy task for podcasters. The best approach is to offer additional resources that are only available on your website. You can then use an autoresponder to manage the process.

Having said that, you should decide on your revenue model before you begin. Knowing what you’re selling plays a major role in the presentation of content including the formatting of appropriate bumpers and resource offerings. One of the most popular revenue models for podcasters is to offer beginner and intermediate information for free on your podcast and offer the advanced information for sale on your website.

Your revenue model will determine how much of your information you’ll be including in the free podcast and how much you’ll be holding back. Always think of your content in terms of beginner, intermediate and advanced. It will change the way you structure your content and fuel your revenue model going forward.

Podcasting is one of the best ways to find an audience online. And it’s also extremely easy to do. But don’t get caught in the allure of Really Simple Syndication before you’ve mapped out exactly what you plan to do and how. Having the foundation in place will save you plenty of time down the road.

A domain name is the web address to your website. When a person writes website.com, he is telling the browser to go to an IP address. Everything on the net is searched via domain names.

Your website.com will become recognition of your business in the coming times. It is important that you choose this name carefully. Here are few things that you should take into consideration when choosing a domain name.

Your domain name should be as relevant to your business as it can be. It is important to remember that the domain can be of any length up to 67 characters. This name may include the 26 letters of the English alphabet, numbers 0-9, and hyphens (-).

The domain name cannot begin or end with a hyphen but can contain one or more hyphens. Think a list of possible combinations that you might wish to use. This can be achieved by listing words related to your preferred domain name or related to the content of your website.

Suppose you are planning a website on online business tutorials. You would list all the synonyms and acronyms you can think about this business and then produce a combination using letters, numbers and hyphen only. Try to produce combinations which are preferably short, memorable, not easily confused, hard to misspell, relate to your business and convey a message about your business of your business. You can also use long combinations which are easier to remember as in howtwateryourgarden.com. Let us take few examples

onlinebusinesstutorial
onlinebusinesstutorial2007
internetbusinesstutorial
ibiztutorial
ebusinesstutorial
ibusinesstutorial
ebusinesslesons
ebusinessclassroom
online-business-tutorial

And so on. Create a list of as many words as you can.

Now go to a domain name registrar and check whether your chosen domain name is available. If it is not then you would need to alter and adjust a bit.

It is worthwhile here to mention about extension or top level domains ( TLDs). Thers are many available now and you can choose any of them if you wish. Common TLDs and the type of organizations the names are associated with are listed below

.com commercial business domain .net commercial network .org nonprofit organizations .edu educational institution .gov government agency .mil military

.info,.tv and.fm are other types which have surfaced lately. While .info is associated with information, .tv and .fm are actually country specific codes but are popularly used for tv and radio organizations. Without any doubt .com rules the business world. Most of the business persons prefer to use .com as TLDs rather than settling for .net or .org.

There are reasons for this.

.com domains have an international appeal. They look more credible and are easily remembered. Everybody who uses internet knows and understands .com extensions. All you need to stress upon is first part. I can afford to write Home for Profits instead of homeforprofits.com every time which would not have been possible if the site was .org or.net. You need to stress on the extension as well in that case. But disadvantage is that most of the good .com domain names have already been taken. You might have to adjust your name against the availability.

If a .com name is available go for it. Otherwise you can settle for other extensions.

If you plan to sell intangible products, do not go for country code extensions. They are more used for services contained in the country itself.

While use of hyphen can help you to find a good domain name and may be advantageous for search engine ranking but your visitors would have difficulty in remembering that hyphen. They often would type the domain name without the hyphen and would go to other site. If you wish to choose, do not hyphenate more than once.

Avoid using 0(zero) until it is a part of some other number like 500 or 1000.

0 ( zero) is often confused with vowel o.

Until and unless you are pressed do not use '2′ or '4′ in place of 'to' or 'four'. People will have difficulty in remembering that.

All said and done, whatever you choose can be made popular and pushed into people's minds by aggressive marketing. But if you stay within the directions proposed, you can use your aggression for building other parts of your business.

About the Author
Arun Pal Singh is an internet marketer,web author who runs website http://www.homeforprofits.com to help budding online entrepreneurs with information and ready made products. Visit http://www.homeforprofits.com to find how his products and tips can boost your business tremendously.
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