Now, where would we be without writers! I don’t even know where to start…

First, there would have been no Bible. For it is written that in the beginning was the word, right? Yeah…

And so on and so forth. Needless to say a writer’s importance can never be overestimated. So it is good when you meet an organisation which specialises in nurturing writers talent, especially Black writers.

Step up Black Inc. an active, north west London based arts organisation that is delivering the business offline and also online with their website!

When you’ve got depth you dont’ really need to shout a lot and the website, which is sharply designed with good navigation and links, does not try to be anything else other than efficient, professional and slick!

There’s stuff there to interest the new writer, the experienced and the general user.

These are just the kind of things which makes Black Inc. our site of the week, this week.

It is something of a misnomer to lavish heaps of praise on and call BET a Black company. It’s management ownership is certainly not Black although its content is ostentiously aimed at Black people.

Closer inspection, however, shows that same content as being accessible enough for anyone. It tries not to raise too many embarassing issues or sink any unsunkable ships.

BET, a subsidiary of Viacom, is America’s leading television network providing quality entertainment, music, news and public affairs programming for the African-American audience.

The BET Network reaches more than 79 million households according to Nielsen media research, and can be seen in the United States, Canada and the Caribbean. BET is a dominant consumer brand in the urban marketplace with a diverse group of branded businesses:-

• BET.com, the Number 1 Internet portal for African Americans.
• BET Digital Networks – BET Jazz, BET Gospel and BET Hip Hop, attractive alternatives for cutting-edge entertainment tastes.
• BET Event Productions, specializing in a full range of event production services, including event management, venue selection, talent recruitment, sound, lighting and stage production.
• BET Books, the nation’s leading publisher of African-American themed romance novels under the Arabesque imprint which also publishes compelling fiction under the Sepia imprint and inspirational fiction and nonfiction under the New Spirit imprint.

The above is what the PR department at BET say about themselves and they obviously would! It is all glossy stuff and it makes no bones about its commercial and “stock market” intentions. As such don’t expect much questioning, boat-rocking articles on Africentricity that has not been ‘cleansed’ with an editorial iron hand. And the focus tends to be gorious entertainment (yes, I did mean gorious!) which big focus on sex, of course.

If you are not in the least bit really concerned about having Black culture in your face long enough to be distracted by high gloss commercial sites, then BET is a great place to hang out.

“This site is dedicated to West African drumming rhythms and percussion music from Senegal, Gambia, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Mali, Guinea and particularly rhythms associated with Djembe, Sabar, and Kpanlogo drums. The aim is to be mainly educational and mostly informative.”

Exactly what it says on the site, is exactly what you get when you visit http://www.african-drumbeat.co.uk. Filled with lots of valuable information, knowledge and culture, in a multi-lingual setting within aesthetically pleasing, easy-loading graphics and html pages.

Obviously, there’s plenty of drum and sound samples for you to download and even the opportunity for webmasters to become affiliates with the site.

Well worth a visit but make sure you’ve got plenty of time cos there’s so much to see!

Do you ever wonder where you can get facts about some Black historical, social, political or even entertainment event or happening from? Well, I found this site Black Facts very useful in providing this (and much more) info!

While proudly displaying the fact that 13319 visitors had already visited the site this month (after 10 days into the New Year!) it seems like quite a few other people also agreed that Black Facts is a very useful resource!

Several things stand out immediately about this site. First, is proud to announce that it is 100% BOCC (Black Owned, Conceived and Controlled). Secondly, it is a clean, uncluttered design which allows you look up facts according to Month and Day throughout history.

Clicking the “Go” button to the dynamically generated today’s date box, for instance, quickly brings up the headlines they have listed for that month. And the search was fast too!

Want a free Black fact sent to you each day? No problem! Just fill in the simple form and consider it done!

Black Facts.com does exactly as its domain suggests: it presents Black Facts but it does it with great style without any fuss. It is a site you will return to daily or if you are smart you will sign up for daily updates, bookmark it or tell your friends about it.

It could actually become an essential part of the reason why you go online!

It is fitting that we should choose the Talking Drum as this week’s BlackMag Website Of The Week. Well, to begin with it is the first week into a brand new year.

And, as we usher out Kwanzaa and prepare for the new year it seems fitting that we should start it with a site that focuses on things African!

Talking Drum is certainly that. It is a very colourful site with masses and masses of information, links and passionate details that is guaranteed to keep the bonafide African information lover occupied for hours. And it will keep you coming back too.

The most important thing is that it is a family conceptualised, developed and maintained site and you can almost feel the love in the site as you click on each link!

Said site founder Jacuma Kambui: “What started out as a school project for one of my children during African Heritage Month In 1998, turned into a personal family web site, with each family member having his/her slice of the pie.”

And what a massive pie it is too! Every single thing you could possibly think of is lovingly jam packed into it.

For criticism I can only point to navigating around the site. It’s not as consistent as it should be, but then again you are never more than two mouse clicks away from where you were before. And it really helps that the site page loads really quickly so even if you tke a wrong turn it is easy to recover.

We will be coming back again. And again! We suggest you do the same also! Marks out of 10 we’d give it a good 7 overall but our 7 is the next man’s 9!

Either way just make sure you bookmark and then watch yourself get hooked!

If you are looking to buy any particular kind of African craft then this site is worth a good look in! It is comprehensive in its range of items, yet simple and to use, pleasantly designed and is awfully quick-loading too!

This is due to the fact that the site make use of bandwidth hugging multi-media elements like Flash, preferring instead to use plain jpegs and interactive php scripts for the heart of its scripts and images.

The one complaint, but call it more an observation, is the fact that the online shops link is only accessible from the home page. Maybe this should be available throughtout the site, regardless of where one is within its pages. After all, one of its key aims is to sell the crafts on display to the site should help you to buy quickly without you having to hunt and peck to find how to close the transaction!

Another odd omission, or at least it’s not immediately clear, is a means of contacting the site owners. There is no “Contat Us” or “Feedback” link website. Aw, just found it, but you have to click on the copright (c) terms link to get to a page which has Contact as a link on it.

These are only minor things, considering the myriad of information, goodness, convenience and security the site offers. Check it out and see!

The introductory blurb on the site says it all:-

“In OUR future thinking & practices: No racism allowed! No idiotic male chauvinism nor bigoted discrimination allowed! No ideological nor religious motivated terroristic stupidity allowed! No xenophobic isolationism, dumb criminality, abusive exploitation or violence against women and children, nor avaricious global exploitation of humanity…allowed!”

Could this be the voice of a founding member of the real Black Panther party? Anyone who knew of their exploits would be forgiven for thinking this panther had become a pussy cat!

In its heyday the Panthers commanded and received respect. Even the FBI, CIA and others were keen to pay them such respect they infiltrated the group.

This website is like a history lesson, a testimony of those glory years. It is also a hint in the direction of the current panthers. Definitely worth your visit.