Isaac Amankwaah's Blog

Two score, a decade and half ago, Dr Kwame Nkrumah declared our independence as a nation with a shared mission to achieve a vision yet to be fully unveiled gradually. That day of the declaration was a dream lived with opened eyes by those who fought for it and the rest who gave it the deserving celebratory honour. It was the sixth day of March in the year 1957.

Through my childhood days to this day of informed awareness, the day of declaration have been marked with marching ceremonies by schools, security services and public servants witnessed by political leaders and diplomatic corps. However, the relevance of our independence is slowly paling into insignificance. It has been reduced to a memorial ceremony instead of a moment of reflection and rethinking.

How independent are we to still accord this day its essence? We must rethink our understanding of an independence day as a nation, society, family, leaders and individual citizens of Ghana. Until that is done, we cannot come close to achieving the ultimate essence of the day of declaration. We must examine our minds and appreciate the reasons why we celebrate this august day.

As a nation, we have traded enough of our values and principles for present selfish gains and pride. Nothing holds us together strong enough anymore than the names we bear as citizens born within this geographical space called Ghana. We, most often, brandish our tribal differences to spite each other at the detriment of finding our national identity, which Dr Kwame Nkrumah declared and initiated. We don’t seem to have a clearly defined Ghanaian personality with uncompromising set of values, principles and honour worth transferring to the next generation.

We have locked ourselves within the enticing comforts of the present and neglect to pay the price for a better common future for our children’s children to emulate. Ghana is being spoon-fed on self-interested party manifestoes which serve the interests of the party in power. Everything progress and better-life are hijacked and shared by the party in government leaving the masses to nurse their poverty with fading optimisms. The poor are left with only two options: to die or remain slaves of poverty. The country is terminally subjected to these political experiments every four years.

How can we be endowed with so much natural resources and growing human resource base but still battle poverty like old warriors? From what we eat, breath in, walk on, drink, farm, fish, rear, mine to what we wear are in abundance yet we do not know how to live above poverty. This is the time we deliberate on what God has given us freely and how we can transform them to make our lives better and more comfortable. Unfortunately, we have become aid-junkies, government-in-government-out. We trade our resources for peanuts and forget about posterity.

As a society, we tend to care for all that are us and ours. We have become more individualistic and materialistic. Our communal social structure which provided that ecosystem of support to grow each individual member to build the whole society has crumbled. We have walled ourselves out of touch of what used to be social and common in our society. Nobody cares for another enough. Families raise their children, as best and independently as they can, but forget that their children will not marry themselves. A better future for their children should therefore be conditioned on ensuring a better one for the neighbour’s children too.

I am very sure that crime and vices will be well-managed to their harmless minimums if we revive and rekindle that spirit of communal interest and social interdependence. As the saying goes, “it takes a village to raise a child”, we must enforce our independence by creating a society which caters for each member as life-support element of the whole. The rich should help the poor while the poor also serve the rich. Society must be a deliberate mix of varying social classes and characters which must revolve and evolve to create better living conditions and experiences.

Leadership has become a rare commodity we need to achieve a holistic development agenda which will be of immense benefit to all; not just a select few. The absence of leadership is obvious in the grave indiscipline, lawlessness and apathy in Ghana. We have over-managed our conditions because we under-led them. More money is spent correcting the consequences of our negligence, indiscipline and lawlessness every year instead of channelling that resource into building something beneficial.

Wrong leadership most often have very wrong following. It is picture perfect in our daily discourses and interactions. We have believed the myth of thinking only political heads are leaders. Very few people have to come to terms with the fact that we are to lead everywhere we are given the opportunity to serve. Sadly, most of us ride on the false belief of always blaming political leaders every time and forget to find our path to also lead. Individual leadership leads to group leadership. Until we can personally lead our lives and whatever has been assigned to us, we cannot effectively lead others. Many citizens have become unconcerned about whatever is happening. Leadership is accorded little or no faith at all because of repeated failed promises.

Nonetheless, we can change our motherland one patriotic act by a good citizen at a time. We must bring back the days of community and social engagement. We must esteem the interest of our country above our personal ones. We must not live for the comforts of the present and meet the future with gnashing of teeth. Our educational system must churn out better leaders than just best-grade graduates. We must arise and uphold the good name of Ghana.

It’s time to rethink our independence.

Maximus Ametorgoh

Twitter: @maxihere

This is just a quick nerd-tastic video for your Friday. It’s a short clip featuring Steve Jobs, the creator of the microprocessor Ted Hoff and John Warnock of adobe, among others.

They’re talking about the birth of Silicon Valley and the advent of the microprocessor. Many acknowledge the Apple I’s ‘all on one board’ construction, dreamed up by Steve Wozniak, as a forbearer of the ‘computer on a chip’ that dominates modern electronics.

The money quote from Jobs on starting Apple? “We had nothing to lose, and we had everything to gain. And we figured even if we crash and burn, and lose everything, the experience will have been worth ten time the cost.”

While not all of us have the luxury of starting a business without the fear of losing our way of life or not being able to provide for our families, the mentality is important to recognize. Sometimes creating something great means living without fear of failure. If you truly believe in what you’re doing, sometimes the possibility of ‘crashing and burning’ is worth the risk.

This clip is from a documentary called Silicon Valley: a 100 Year Renaissance, which is the same film that this 46 second clip of Steve Jobs’ thoughts on life comes from.

Once upon a time, the iPhone was a simple thing. You flipped it on, slid the unlock switch, and what you saw was what you got.

Since then, things have gotten a bit more… layered. That’s not to say they’ve gotten any harder to use; iOS just has a ridiculous number of hidden bonus features now that are in no way immediately obvious to the untrained eye. Given that yesterday was Christmas, I’d wager that the number of untrained eyes out there is at an all-time high.

If you consider yourself something of an iOS expert, this list isn’t for you. If the terms “jailbreak” and “rooting” have any sort of secondary, technical connotation to you, you can almost certainly skip right over this. This one’s for the curious newbie; the moms, pops, and younger siblings of the world; the Android converts who may be feeling a bit out of place. It’s a collection of things I’m regularly surprised to find that other iOS device owners don’t know. If it’s not for you, you almost certainly know someone who it is for.

The App Switcher:

You’re blasting around in Jetpack Joyride when your better half asks you to find a proper eggnog recipe. What’s the quickest way to get to Safari? You could head back to the homescreen like a chump — but if you’ve had Safari open recently, there’s a waaaay speedier route: Double tap the home button. Tada! Meet the App Switcher.

The first page of the app switcher shows your most recently opened apps. Scrolling to the right will take you back even further in your app history.

As one of the most requested features leading up to its introduction in iOS 4, it blows my mind how often I meet long-time iOS owners who have absolutely no idea the App Switcher exists.

Closing Broken Apps:

Apps break. It happens. Alas, due to the way iOS freezes/unfreezes apps rather than actually closing them (thus allowing quick-switching between running apps), you’ll occasionally find yourself with an app that you just can’t seem to un-break. What should you do? You’ll need to reset your device, right? Naaaah.

Go to the homescreen. Double tap the home button (to bring up the App Switcher). Find the icon for the app you need to close and hold your finger on it for a second or two. Tap the - that shows up next to it. Relaunch the app from the homescreen, and it’ll be just like opening it up on a freshly reset device.

(Note: With very few exceptions (and unlike what you may be used to with your ol’ laptop) you never need to manually close iOS apps to make your device “run better”. Thanks to the aforementioned freezing/unfreezing process, any app that you’re not actively using has very little effect on your device’s performance.)

The Hidden App Switcher Buttons:

The App Switcher is something of a swiss army knife. It switches! It closes! It slices! It dices!

Beyond the aforementioned, the App Switcher has one more neat trick: a sort-of-hidden bonus page with myriad one-click shortcuts. On the iPhone, it’ll let you lock your screen orientation, pause/play/go back/skip tracks in whatever app is currently playing music (or immediately jump right into that application, instead.) On the iPad, it’ll do all of the aforementioned as well as let you adjust the volume and display brightness.

To find it: double tap the home button to bring up the App Switcher — but rather than swiping to the left to see more apps, swipe to the right from the first page.

The Notifications Center:

This is another one that Apple doesn’t seem to be explaining well enough, as I’ve met more than my fair share of long-time iPhone owners who go wide-eyed when they first see it used. For anyone coming from Android, the mechanism is pretty much second nature (Apple essentially cloned the feature wholesale.)

Beginning with iOS 5, iOS keeps a running list of your recent notifications so that you can easily jump to any app that needs your attention.

To bring down the notifications drawer, simply swipe down from the very top of the display. Waiting there will be all of your recent (unread) texts, any messages that your applications have queued up, and a few configurable widgets (weather, stocks, etc.) You can adjust what shows up in this drawer in Settings > Notifications.

The Camera Shortcut:

We’ve all been there: that once in a lifetime moment is happening right before your eyes, and your only means of capturing it is with your phone’s camera. By the time you get it out of your pocket, unlock it, get to the homescreen, launch the camera app, and wait for the camera to boot up, the moment is gone. Opportunity lost, and now everyone is mad at you.

As of iOS 5, you can access the camera right from the lockscreen (you don’t even have to unlock it! Don’t worry, though: you can’t access your older photos this way. Your booty pics are safe.)

To quick-jump to the camera: from the lock screen (the screen with the “Slide to unlock” bar), double tap the home button. You’ll see music controls pop up on top, while a camera icon appears directly beside the unlock bar. Tap that, and you’re immediately inside the camera. (Note: this only seems to work on the iPhone and camera-enabled iPod Touches. It’s a no go on iPad.)

Got any more easy, kinda-hidden tricks that new iOS device owners should know? Drop it in a comment below.

Bonus Tricks:

• To take a screenshot in any app, press the home and lock button simultaneously for just a second. The photo will be stored in your camera roll. Holding the buttons too long will reset your device, so stop once the display flashes.
• In nearly all applications, you can scroll to the top of long pages (such as long websites, or long emails) by tapping the status bar (read: the bar with the clock.)
• Use iCloud. Seriously. It takes a second or two to set up (2/3 people I’ve watched setup iPhones recently skipped it), but it’s absolutely worth it if only for the photo/contact backup.

sources : Techcrunch.com

BEFORE dawn, when most New Yorkers are fast asleep, Isaac and Elizabeth Osei have

Story by : Christine Haughney/www.nytimes.com

BEFORE dawn, when most New Yorkers are fast asleep, Isaac and Elizabeth Osei have already been working for hours. On a recent morning, Mr. Osei drove his wife from New Jersey to the half-abandoned outer blocks of Midtown Manhattan to oversee the 4:30 a.m. transfer of their fleet of 50 taxis. With Ms. Osei leading the way and a sliver of moon still hanging in the sky, they scouted three square blocks to make sure all of their taxis had been picked up by drivers. Then, over the screeches emanating from auto-body shops and the smell of gasoline wafting from a Hess station crammed with cabs, they surveyed their troubled taxis just as sunlight faintly appeared over Manhattan.

At 6 a.m., they drove to the Upper West Side, reconfigured the spare tires they keep in their trunk and picked up clothing, a mirror and a table, which a friend was donating to a charity drive organized by the Oseis. The couple, who are immigrants from Ghana, struggled to tie the mirror to the roof of their car, then drove back to their Chelsea office lined with worn-out wood paneling and faded carpeting.

By 7:30, Ms. Osei had taken her place in her thronelike office chair — she is the president of Napasei Taxi Management Corporation, after all — while Mr. Osei, who is vice president, took a more modest seat nearby. Then they prepared for the next 12 hours of fighting parking tickets, getting taxis inspected and helping drivers who came in to pick up their cash.

But the Oseis call this grueling schedule a vacation compared with the real holiday they have ahead. On Wednesday, when they board a flight to Ghana, their roles will suddenly and drastically shift. As they cross the Atlantic Ocean, Mr. Osei will become Nana Gyensare V, a chief of the Akwamu people, who oversees the residents of five towns across the Eastern Region.

After arriving in Accra, the capital of Ghana, he will don a delicate gold crown, take a seat on his throne or stool and work 20-hour days out of his 10-room palace. Rather than focus on taxi tune-ups and inspections, Mr. Osei will assume judicial and other powers, like mediating family disputes. Ms. Osei, who is happiest talking about chassis and alternators, will have to fulfill the responsibilities of a chief’s wife by running women’s groups in each town and helping with preparations for a 1,000-person banquet in September, at which Mr. Osei will bless the yam harvest. Residents are waiting to eat the yams until after Nana Gyensare’s arrival.

“Here we are very busy — but at least I don’t have my people around me here, because I am more free,” Mr. Osei, a stout and succinct man more prone to chuckles than words, said of his life in New York. He nodded at his wife and added, “At times, she gets angry because she can’t even see me.”

Many immigrants in New York lead double lives: restaurant dishwasher in Queens and family patriarch in Mexico, or manicurist in Midtown and financial provider back in China. But Mr. Osei’s story is far more extreme. It’s as if he spends summer vacation with the hybrid responsibilities of a mayor and a royal, said Richard Rathbone, a professor at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies who has done research near the towns Mr. Osei oversees.

As Ghana has grown more stable in recent years, Professor Rathbone said, emigrants are returning and accepting these chiefly roles. They have many of the social responsibilities of politicians, but they also carry the historical gravitas of a royal title.

“He’s connected with the past and he symbolizes the past,” Professor Rathbone said of Mr. Osei.

Mr. Osei, one of 19 children, never expected to be a chief. The title, which passed through his mother’s family, had been given to an older brother, and Mr. Osei moved to New York three decades ago to carve out his own life. He started driving a taxi and bought a medallion in 1982. Within a few years, he had gotten married, had two daughters and had opened a restaurant in Harlem. But he soon divorced and found himself wiped out financially.

Mr. Osei saw Elizabeth Otolizz for the first time when she stopped to eat in his restaurant in the late 1980s and he pointed out that she had spilled okra on her blouse. She moved to New York in 1986 and worked as a home health nurse, a newspaper deliverywoman and a taxi driver. She spilled out stories about the celebrities she had met, like Snoop Dogg, and the times she had been beaten up by customers. She carried in her purse masses of wires that she used to make emergency taxi repairs.

When Mr. Osei went back to driving a taxi, he would occasionally spot Elizabeth at airport taxi stands and chat. Then, when he saw her driving her taxi, he would ask her for her phone number at stop lights. But Elizabeth, who was getting over a previous relationship, demurred.

In 1991, Mr. Osei’s taxi medallion was about to fall into foreclosure, and Elizabeth offered to go into business with him. She borrowed $1,500 from an African grocery store owner and alternated with Mr. Osei driving his Chevy Caprice in 12-hour shifts to help pay off the loan. Soon, Elizabeth decided she was ready to take their friendship beyond a trade-off of taxi keys. In 1995, they wed in New Jersey, had two sons and slowly and steadily built a small taxi empire.

But in 2006, after his brother died of complications related to diabetes, Mr. Osei was called back to Ghana to assume the title of chief. Suddenly, Mr. Osei was being carried on a palanquin, conducting judicial hearings and officiating at festivals. Ms. Osei still laughs when she describes the expression on her husband’s face when he returned from that first trip back to Ghana.

“They spoil you,” Ms. Osei said of her husband’s staff members in Ghana. “When you get to J.F.K., they don’t pick up your suitcases.”

But Ms. Osei seems to have embraced her husband’s responsibilities. At 8 a.m. on a recent day, after a long morning of checking on their taxi fleet, the Oseis sat down in a diner in Midtown and ordered breakfast. Just as Mr. Osei began to eat, his cellphone started to peal with calls from Ghana. While Mr. Osei finished eating, Ms. Osei answered the calls and started relaying the details of work that lay ahead, like funerals, charitable walks and social projects. (The Oseis are especially proud of having installed toilets in some Ghanaian towns.) She seemed to have made peace with the coming journey.

“When I get to Africa, I have to worship him,” she said with a hint of frustration in her voice and a broad, mischievous smile. “When I get back, he has to worship me.”

Recently i chance upon this on twitter and i decided that it will be good for you guys to read,Rwandan president paul kagame using twitter to debate a season u,k journalist. African leaders are growing and learning.

Ian Birrell vs Paul Kagame on Twitter

Recently, after years of trying to do everything, control everything, handle everything and be everything to everybody – I received a revelation. I am NOT Superwoman … so I gathered up all my “capes” and returned them. However, there is one power that I’ve kept and plan to activate at all times…the power of praise.

It doesn’t matter what it looks like in the natural. It doesn’t matter what obstacles I may be facing. It doesn’t matter who or what may be trying to come against me. It doesn’t matter if relationships are failing. It doesn’t matter if I have been hurt. I will continue to praise God faithfully.

On the flip side, it doesn’t matter how incredible things are in my life. It doesn’t matter if I received that promotion I wanted. It doesn’t matter if my family is prospering. It doesn’t matter how many breakthroughs I am experiencing … I will still continue to praise God faithfully. (I had to add that part in because often we save God for when we are going through dark times and not when the sun is shining in our lives).

Praise is one of our most powerful tools that we sometimes forget we have. I know sometimes you just don’t feel like praising but it’s in those times that you probably really need to praise Him. Your praise will help you push through whatever has you bound.

“I will praise You, O Lord, with my whole heart; I will tell of all Your marvelous works. I will be glad and rejoice in You; I will sing praise to Your name, O Most High.” Psalm 9:1-2

You know how it’s hard to stay angry if you are purposely smiling. Or how it’s hard to stay in a negative funk, if you purposely look for the positive in all situations. Praise works the same way. It allows you to break through and rise above the situations, conflicts, stress, etc.

So don’t wait another moment … activate your power … the power to PRAISE!

Scripture Of The Day: “I will be glad and rejoice in You; I will sing praise to Your name, O Most High.” - Psalm 9:2 (NKJV)

WHATEVER may be said in praise of poverty, the fact remains that it is not possible to live a really complete or successful life unless one is rich. No man can rise to his greatest possible height in talent or soul development unless he has plenty of money; for to unfold the soul and to develop talent he must have many things to use, and he cannot have these things unless he has money to buy them with.

A man develops in mind, soul, and body by making use of things, and society is so organized that man must have money in order to become the possessor of things; therefore, the basis of all advancement for man must be the science of getting rich.

The object of all life is development; and everything that lives has an inalienable right to all the development it is capable of attaining.

Man’s right to life means his right to have the free and unrestricted use of all the things which may be necessary to his fullest mental, spiritual, and physical unfoldment; or, in other words, his right to be rich.

In this book, I shall not speak of riches in a figurative way; to be really rich does not mean to be satisfied or contented with a little. No man ought to be satisfied with a little if he is capable of using and enjoying more. The purpose of Nature is the advancement and unfoldment of life; and every man should have all that can contribute to the power; elegance, beauty, and richness of life; to be content with less is sinful.

The man who owns all he wants for the living of all the life he is capable of living is rich; and no man who has not plenty of money can have all he wants. Life has advanced so far, and become so complex, that even the most ordinary man or woman requires a great amount of wealth in order to live in a manner that even approaches completeness. Every person naturally wants to become all that they are capable of becoming; this desire to realize innate possibilities is inherent in human nature; we cannot help wanting to be all that we can be.

sources : The sciences of getting rich

forgive me if you see spelling mistakes,grammar errors and more. i am sorry because this was done in a rush and it was not edited. thanks

i have renege on my promise i made to you guys when i put up this blog,about making sure i write and put up an article every week. i want to apologise profusely to you guys that i have not been able to fulfilled that promise. in the same vein i will want you guys to know i have been extremely busy putting together an office we just aquire at osu’ down papaye at the same time expanding the frontiers of media empire as we have also setup a new office in sunyani and tamale and plans are far advances for the takoradi office (i am not a politician lol). so i want you guys to know i am trying my best.

media empire's new office at osu down papaye

Get a pip into Media Empire’s office (bear in mind we haven’t finish), guys i will be putting up my next article on this wednesday and the topic is THE TRICKS AND TRACKS OF SOCIAL MEDIA;IS GHANAIANS TAKING ADVANTAGE…. which will be fellow by TECHNOLOGICAL EVOLUTION;THOUSANDS OF GHANAIAN’S INCLUDING JOURNALIST TO LOOSE JOBS.
WATCH OUT.

Do you know that Ghana has attained  middle income status and par that, all of Ghanaians have become more richer.

it’s refreshing to hear that now our beloved country has move on after 50 years of under development and been a third world country.

To me what the middle income status means is hard worK’ our leaders have to work harder than before,they have to sacrifice harder than before, they have to gavalnized the people to reach to their vision and help them achieve it.

If there is a time  you have to be proud as a Ghanaian and also be optimistic, then it is now, because this great nation is headed for greatness.