International Youth Day, 12 August 2012: ProPakistanis

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s message for the International Youth Day English

International Youth Day 2012 Google+Hangouts!

Join us in celebrating International Youth Day 2012 “Building a Better World: Partnering with Youth’ by watching and contributing to our series of six Google+ Hangouts taking place on 8,9 and 10 August 2012! 

What?

As a means to celebrating International Youth Day 2012, which officially falls on Sunday 12 August, UN DESA will hold a series of six Google +Hangouts leading up to the Day on 8, 9 and 10^th August on themes related to the priority areas of the Secretary-General’s Five-year Action Agenda and the development of a UN System Wide Action Plan on Youth, namely:

Employment; Entrepreneurship; Education, including on sexual and reproductive health; Political Inclusion; Citizenship; and Protection of rights.

To learn more about the themes, check out the interviews we conducted for International Youth Day with UN experts on how to better partner with and for youth in these areas – click  here

For more information on the Secretary-General’s Five Year Agenda, why not read the July edition of Youth Flash.

Why?

As contributions continue to come in for our Survey on the development of a System Wide Action Plan on Youth we are holding a series of discussions on the thematic areas guiding the development of the Plan. These Hangouts will not only draw attention to the issues at hand, but will also delve into the many ways the United Nations and civil society can partner with and for young people.

Who?

Using the interactive forum of Google+Hangout each Hangout will host 5-6 participants ranging from United Nations experts, Member States, the private sector, academia and of course young people themselves. Watch this space as we update you in the coming days about who our participants will be!

Click here to read the Biographies of our Google+ Hangout Speakers: 

When?

Hangout	Date
Political Inclusion	8 August 11:00, EST
Citizenship	8 August 14:00, EST
Employment	9 August 11:00, EST
Entrepreneurship	9 August 14:00, EST
Education	10 August 11:00, EST
Education on Sexual and Reproductive health	10 August 14:00, EST

 

Get involved, have your say!

Follow the Hangouts!

You can follow the Google+Hangouts here gplus.to/unitednations and contribute your questions to our panellists via Twitter and Facebook:

Twitter – @un4youth  #IYD2012

Facebook -   https://www.facebook.com/UNyouthyear

Celebrate the Day

We also want to know what you’re planning on doing to celebrate International Youth Day! Tell us about your efforts to partner with and for youth for a better world! We want to hear from you about how you think the United Nations should partner with young people, especially in the areas of employment, entrepreneurship, political inclusion, citizenship and protection of rights, and education, including on sexual and reproductive health. Do you have a successful partnership that you want to tell us about, or a concrete recommendation you would like to share?

Email us your success stories and recommendations to: youth@un.org 

Contribute to the Survey

Finally, why not contribute to our Survey on the development of a System Wide Action Plan on Youth Survey now available in English, French, Spanish, Russian, Chinese and Arabic.

For even more tips and information on how to celebrate International Youth Day, read the ‘background’ section to the right of this page.

Get involved, have your say, partner with and for youth!

Writing an Impactful E-mail by ProPakistanis

Whether you like it or not, writing and sending emails has emerge as the leading tool on the internet for communications in the business world. Besides being speedy, well-organized and best of all its free, emails are also highly adaptable in placing work reminders, meetings and official correspondence at  your finger tips. This have surely allowed people to reach anybody in the world easily in mere seconds if they have a portable blackberry or iPhone in hand that immediately download the emails into their handsets from their email inboxes. Though, even with such diverse applications, emails may lose their intended impact if the message is not communicated properly with proper email etiquette. In order to ensure that your emails get the attention they deserve, here are tips that will assist you in writing an impactful email.

Here are some steps for a good and impactful E-mail.

Steps:

•  First impression counts (Subject)
•  Proper greetings please
•  Your tone matters
•  Write in proper English and grammar
•  Proper paragraphing of your content
•  Scan your files before sending them out as file attachments
•  Be considerate with your file attachments
•  Send the email only to the people involved or have a need to know.
•  Signing off properly

• First impression counts.(Subject)

The subject line will be the determinant factor whether your emails are read or not. As with any physical encounter, first looks determine if something is worth their attention or not. If your email subject line is having an important effect and relevant to them, chances are it will be priorities for reading instead of being dismiss as spam. For this avoid generic and informal subjects such as “HI”, “urgent” or the worse, a complete blank subject field. These emails normally end up being deleted or black listed as spam.

• Proper greetings please.

Avoid casual and generic openings in your emails. Address the person with proper salutation and greet the person by their first name (in Asia like Pakistan, Bangladesh, and India) people use their first name and rest of these people use their last name. This not only shows that you are serious and respectful for the stranger you are communicating with. It also projects a professional reflection of you and your organization to the other party. If the addressee’s name or title is unknown, simply use “Sir” or “madam” instead.

• Your tone matters.

E-mailing is tough to communicate the intended message as it doesn’t allow tones and therefore emotions to be satisfactorily transmitted. However, you can still communicate the state of your emotion by emphasizing certain words, using capital letters and punctuation marks. But if you are not careful, you will appear as aggressive and rude, sometimes even to the extent of being insulting.

Avoid typing your email all in capital letters with exclamation marks strewn all over. This will suggest that you are angry and shouting and will make you a very bad-mannered person.

• Write in proper English and grammar.

Be sure to check for grammatical mistakes and avoid writing in broken language. Avoid being pretentious and misusing words with meanings distorted. A prime example is “revert” which means to return to doing, using, being or referring to something usually bad or less suitable. Simply use “reply” instead.

• Proper paragraphing of your content.

Imagine reading one whole long portion of text that is cumbersome to read and digest. Whenever possible be direct and straightforward using simple English to communicate your message. Separate your sentences and organize your points accordingly into neater paragraphs. This makes it easier to read and digest the content.

• Scan your files before sending them out as file attachments.

One of the easiest ways to turn your potential client away is by sending them a virus directly. Always make it a routine to scan your files before attached and sent to your client.

• Be considerate with your file attachments.

Be aware when sending emails with huge file attachments. It can be very frustrating for the receiver when the inbox is taking forever to download a message and hence resulting in the email client crashing.

• Send the email only to the people involved or have a need to know.

It can be irritating when you keep receiving emails that do not involve you in any way. Email allows you to vary the way addressees receive their messages. CC and BCC stand for “Carbon Copy” and “Bind Carbon Copy” respectively. Use the former for discussions between you and the person you are liaising with and also to keep your boss updated regarding the progress. The latter is best used to email different recipients who do not know each other and to prevent email addresses from being disclosed and harvested unnecessarily.

• Signing off properly.

Remember when you are go to end your email, you have to politely by signing off with the proper closing such as “Thanks or with regards”…etc

Twitter SMS Now Available For Warid Telecom Pakistan Customers: PRoPakistanis

Twitter SMS services are now available for Warid Pakistan customers. Warid customers can update their Twitter status via SMS. Can receive SMS notifications from their favourite Twitter users.

Charges:

• SMS notifications receiving is free
• Sending SMS to Twitter number 40404 charges are Rs.1 Per SMS
• No hidden or other rental charges

How to start:

• Send "Start" to 40404 or go to twitter.com/settings/devices
• You can start using Twitter from SMS even if you don't already have an Twitter account
• SMS commands available at help.twitter.com

Warid is always late in bringing this kinda services. Warid was last network in Pakistan to launch Facebook SMS notifications and Twitter SMS notifications after several months when other networks already launched these services for their customers.

Send SMS "Follow ProPakistanis" to 40404 to get our Blog Updates

Android Gets its Official Blog and Google Plus Page: PRoPakistanis

In order to give Android more exposure and to keep people aware of all its advancements, developments and releases, Google has launched an official blog and a Google Plus page specially for the operating system to keep the people updated.

This is yet another effort from Google to bring Android more to the public after it made an official account of Android on twitter just months ago with the name of @Android.

Before the Android blog, Google Mobile blog was used to announce most of the things related to Android but it was used for announcements of app releases for other websites too and several other things but this Android blog is the first one to have been created only for the operating system.

The announcement for the Android blog was itself done through the Google Mobile blog. It said in the announcement:

A few months ago, we asked what content you wanted to see more of on the Google Mobile Blog, and the answer was quite clear: more Android!

We launched +Android on Google+ and now we’ve launched the Official Android Blog, a new place for you to find all the latest news from the Android team.

The first major announcement by the blog was of Google Wallet. And although it has just been launched, it already has a lot of content.

As of now, the Android blog has an Alexa rank of 23 million but you should expect it to grow fast over the next few weeks.

Get Verification Tick for Your Google Plus Business Page: ProPakistanis

Google now allows manual verification for Google+ pages. Let your page members know that page is real with a verification tick. Google will send you mail with a pin code at your business address for verification.

Follow these steps for verification:
Create your page by going to google.com/+/business

After you’ve created your page, you can verify it:

1. Hover over Unverified at the top of your Google+ page. Click the Verify nowbutton when it appears. Or, click Verify now in the Is this your business? section below the map.
2. Confirm your address and click Request postcard. Your postcard should arrive within a week or so.
3. Once it’s arrived, go to the website listed on the postcard, google.com/local/verify
4. Enter the PIN listed on the postcard and click Submit.
5. If you've requested a postcard for multiple Google+ pages, make sure to click on the name of the business that the postcard is for.

Note:

• Any page manager can request page verification.
• Don't forget to fill in the address of your business in your page.

Manual verification on Twitter is also coming in future.