Mashed Articles

Writen by Martin Smith

Lexmark printer cartridges are among the most well-known manufacturers of printers. Lexmark utilizes a two cartridge printing system. The color cartridge is a CMY-cayan, magenta, and yellow cartridge. The black cartridge is simply black. How long they last will depend on the volume of printing you will be doing.

There is a wide variety of things you can do with your PC with appropriate applications and your Lexmark printer and ink cartridges. You can create very professional business presentations including but not limited to graphs, charts, spreadsheets and databases. You can create your own business cards as well.

You can create a scrapbook. You can get inspiration from almost anywhere such as sports, birthdays, weddings, and births. Templates are available from the internet. Clip art is a great way to add to the decoration of scrapbook pages. You can make frames, backgrounds, borders, and/or journaling.

Photo albums can be created as well using your Lexmark cartridges. To get the highest quality photos use photo print paper which is specially designed to print photos. You will need your Lexmark printer and its cartridges. Take your own pictures, develop them and you can document your pictures with built in text options. You will need to have a digital camera with a memory card. Take your pictures and save them to a memory card. The memory card is then inserted into the photo printer to print out your photos. To get the best quality photos you should use photo paper- the output will be enhanced.

Are you a writer? You can self-publish your own book. You will need your PC and as mentioned the appropriate applications and your printer. You should use high quality paper in standard and/or specialty larger sizes depending on the size of the book. If you are going to design your own cover you need high-quality card stock paper. You will need a hot glue gun for binding your book.

Another fun project to do with your Lexmark cartridges and your PC is creating your own family cookbook. You will want to get various colors of printer paper, for example if it’s a Thanksgiving cookbook, you might choose Autumn colors. Gather your favorite family recipes together and giving credit to the person who submitted them print them up on recipe cards you create with your pc and printer. You can also print them up on quality paper and put them in a decorated binder. You will need the following your pc and printer, assorted colored paper, laminating paper, a three-hole punch, adhesive reinforcements, and a glue stick. The paper should be acid free because it will reduce the yellowing and aging of the paper. You will also need a one inch hard covered binder. A digital camera is optional but if you want to take pictures of the dishes you have received it would certainly help. The greater the pixels the greater the capacity of the camera. One with a memory card is best.

The projects are numerous that can be created with Lexmark cartridges and your pc. As mentioned before any paper you buy should be acid free as should the glue stick. Experiment and have fun with it.

So we’re on the shortlist now for an Irish Blog Award. Absolutely delighted that our blog’s got this far…and I’m keeping my fingers crossed for Saturday. Just wish that the people behind putting it together could be there – I imagine following the event via Twitter won’t have *quite* the same buzz!

Effective ICT policy education will overcome challenges in public project rollouts.

In October 2008, Microsoft and the Eastern and Southern African Management Institute (ESAMI) signed a memorandum of understanding to develop and deliver a programme aimed at providing ICT policy training to government officials.

Delivering on this agreement, Microsoft and ESAMI are today launching the first session of the ‘Schools of Government’ initiative in Arusha, Tanzania. The first session will run for five days starting on Monday, 19th January.

Twenty-four trainers will undergo an ICT policy training programme that is based on a curriculum that was piloted in conjunction with the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR), USC School of Public Policy in California and the Dubai School of Government in the United Arab Emirates.

“Microsoft Corporation has, for the past two years, worked to develop a programme that can be used worldwide to train government officials in IT-related policy and planning issues. We are pleased to announce that this programme has been officially launched in East Africa,” said Dr. Cheick Modibo Diarra, Microsoft’s chairman for Africa.

“Microsoft pioneered this program in Africa from 2007 with the intention to build the capability of African educational institutions by providing them with the tools to equip current and future government leaders, officials and policy makers with a modern education on technology policy trends and policies that enable the success of ICT projects and programs,” he says.

Technology is a key element that can help accelerate Africa’s growth and industrialisation – whether it is technology being used by government agencies to assist with the delivery of better civil services, or technology being used to transform education to benefit the people themselves.

However, World Bank data suggests that 50% of ICT projects in Africa fail and that this is typically due to a combination of poor initial design along with insufficient execution and maintenance capabilities.

“Good policy lays the foundation to overcome such problems – and considers critical factors that underline all infrastructure needs, in order to not only create successful and sustainable individual projects, but also projects which complement each other as part of a broader governmental system,” adds Dr. Diarra.

“The program curriculum is developed in English and the possibility of developing content in Portuguese for subsequent training in Lusophone countries, such as Mozambique and Angola, is being considered,” adds Professor Bonard Mwape, director general for ESAMI.

“The goal of this program is to put the building blocks in place for a sustainable, multi-year government training program on ICT policy for the whole of Africa.”

“This cannot be achieved by providing a limited number of workshops to government officials,” he adds. “Only by creating a structure and capacity within existing training institutions to conduct ongoing programs will this initiative bear the expected positive outcomes.”

The ESAMI programme follows on from a similar, highly-successful memorandum of understanding that was concluded between Microsoft and the Centre Africain d’Etudes Supérieures en Gestion (CESAG) earlier in 2008.

CESAG is an institution specialising in the delivery of government-related training and leadership capacity building across French-speaking Africa.

Along with a number of other citizenship programmes that are operated across Africa, Microsoft believes that this initiative addresses a huge challenge with regard to the reasons that ICT projects very rarely work in Africa.

“The steps to economic prosperity in Africa could almost be considered pieces of a grand puzzle, and effective ICT policy implementation training is one piece of this entire puzzle,” Dr. Diarra says.

“It cannot work on its own. Instead, it requires a number of other pieces in order to complete Microsoft’s vision of how it would like to help the people of Africa meet the economic and social demands of the 21st century.

“Other pieces of the puzzle will fall into place over time as initiatives like the Microsoft Leadership Lecture Series and the ICT Best Practices Forum gain momentum and begin attracting more interest from other African countries.”