In the past years the Pakistani blogosphere has seen a tremendous boom specially with the increase in the number of bloggers popping out, the initial start of bloggers comes mostly in the form of a quick set up of blog on sites like blogger,wordpress etc but with the passage of time the ones who take it seriously and love the passion of blogging just for the fun of it shift to there personal domain and hosted blogs that run mostly on platforms like movabletype and wordpress. Wordpress happens to be the most popularly used interface just because of its great features, enhancements and that it is open source. But you have to have a good catchy domain (doesn’t really matters IMO if its a personal blog) and off course a reliable webhosting solution.

I speak for reliable hosting since am personally hosted on a server based in Pakistan, but truly speaking am never satisfied with its performance, there have always been problems with it one way or the other, even currently i have to use a proxy to log on into my admin panel since the entire server and sites hosted with it won’t open on the ISP am using. Not only me but in the past many of my friends from other parts of the country would end up saying my blog won’t load, so if you want your blog to be accessible to all the readers make sure you make the right choice for a webhost, after which you can hire a blog designer for a unique blog design,necessary adjustments and than continue on adding plug-ins and tools to be updated, but the first priority in the start should always be a good webhost, quality content is than the other step.
I know its a heck of a job at choosing a good host but there are plenty of review sites on the web that’ll give you reviews from the users, other than that there are regional hosting directories with many links to hosting websites, i personally recommend web hosting choice ( a website that will help you find the correct if not the best host for your site based on your requirements such as setup fee, disk space, monthly cost and bandwidth etc ), using this you will have economical price to pay.

In,Pakistan due to the very rare number of credit card users and the less know how of getting domains and hosting many good bloggers remain stuck with free blog hosts like blogger, but than again when the political issues arise, specially the last year blockage of Blogger and its sub domains in Pakistan many bloggers faced problems, so its always good to have your own domain and a reliable hosting.

And yeah, don’t host your sites on the server my blog is on, am going to move it sooner to a new hosting;) *secret*.

I have a hell lot of tool bars and add-ons installed onto my web browser Firefox making it too complicated to look on the first impression but when i give it a detailed look it has all that i need. So we were talking about stumbling, how often do you stumble? or in short do use Stumbleupon?

First lets get to what stumbling is, in a normal definition we can say that just randomly visiting a website through some way, but in the context i am speaking stumbling is stumbling across a wordpress blog, youtube video, a flash website, an Onion news,a wiki article or a MySpace band’s page etc using Stumbleupon. If you are not aware of it try stumbleupon’s website and install the toolbar and put in the settings, i am sure that it is very helpful to kill time when you are up and there’s nothing to do over the internet.I have found thousands of good sites and resources using the stumble tool bar and it helps me alot.Just like for instance if i showed interest in electronics when filling out my profile at StumbleUpon and with the tool bar installed i press stumble a page, it brought me into a website say for instance Testfreaks.com a website that contains electronic gadgets from iPods,Phones,MP3 players to receivers, TVs and cameras nearly everything, so it means StumbleUpon was intelligent enough to bring me to a site with my interests. So will you stumble?:P

Oh and if you think i referred you to stumbling, please stumble this article to help your friend’s stumble too:)

Recently our university management finally gave us our basic need as a hostellite and that is a high-speed internet. Its amazing at the browsing and downloads as its the same internet that Higher Education Commission gave to our campus labs with speed at 2 Mbps, the speed though is amazing and downloads are as fast as one can imagine but at the same time it has several issues. My Blog website won’t open on this,including many other millions of websites are not accessible, not only this but it doesn’t even lets me connect to the FTP of my website causing a delay in my website development that i started a few weeks back prior when i was using the VPTCL. This is really getting annoying since i have to use a proxy website to access my site and am using the proxy at the moment to write this post as well, using a proxy makes it too difficult to post images and other stuff to the posts so its really weird for me.

I tried to ask the Network Admin in my lab to contact the ISP as to what might be the issue, but they are not even sure which isp is it, according to SpeedTest.net it says my ISP is Cyber House, while some of the guys in University say its PERN from HEC with Internet Services provided by PTCL, i called PTCL but they were of no help since they thought i am a PTCL Broadband user… Not sure where to go to and even tried calling the PERN Network Administrator on the phone which he never picked up. I am not sure what to do now but i guess I’ll have to stick to it till i come with an alternative.

Other than that, the overall surfing experience is awesome and downloading is ace… I just downloaded the Season 3 of Prison Break (5 Episodes) easily and really quickly *duh.. don’t think i am mis using it, we have tons of presentations and assignments to prepare since the end of semester is approaching*

Fasi Zaka came to our university on Friday to give an interactive presentation on the Marketing Strategies of the various Mobile Companies in Pakistan, Marketing freak as he is and lover as i am of the way marketing is done i thought i won’t miss this lecture by any chance but unfortunately attended only the last half-hour of the presentation as i was in the class while it started but anyways it was still loads of fun and learning even in the last half-hour.

Before i start, Fasi Zaka had been a Senior Faculty member in IM|Sciences Peshawar in the past teaching Strategic Management and similar subjects to the Masters students and left for Telenor a year ago, though a small chat in Gtalk with him he did tell me he has plans on coming back to IM|Sciences by the end of this year or next year, he has constantly been a man in media for a good time now having shows on Indus Music and AAJ TV (News,Views and Confused) and worked as a anchor host in various awards shows as well as a part of the production and cast in various commercials as well as music videos, in short a man with skills and great humor skills yet a Marketing Freak that many people infact most of the people in Pakistan know of.

When i joined he was talking about how Warid telecom is the most profit making company according to the number of market share that they have in the country and targeting only the important parts of the country and a particular segment of people in class term,Warid as he said has no plans to expand there network further since they are getting the maximum output from the minimum input they are feeding on the other hand Telenor he said was doing well in terms of the brand and products promotion, Ufone too in a similar situation but the worst situation he said is Mobilink in because it holds the maximum market share with over 50% subscribers in the country with there main strength being the coverage but the weakness they have is there high rates but than there was a reason behind why Mobilink won’t cut the rates less and that is because if Warid or other companies reduce there tariff rates they have a less market share in the country and that means a less loss (although the reduction increases business but…) but if similarly Mobilink reduces the tariff rates, with over 50% market share in the country there loss reaches over billions of rupees a month that are not so easily going to be covered up. Further i came to know about how much pain do these companies have to go through in there marketing, TV ads production with no good and cheap facilities and locations for shooting within the country for which they choose countries like Srilanka and Thailand, the future service quality in the mobile communication which he said is more likely to be bad as the companies expand there network more and more and in the end and the best of all that a stage will come when nearly all the companies will have equal rates for calls and other things just different packages.:) Oh~ i learned a lot, and more as well but just a few things i thought i’d share with all of you and yes people did asked questions mostly silly and some were good and i had no question at that time cos half hour was too less a time to get something~but here are a few queries i have now that i want all of you to answer as well as Fasi if he sees this post(i’ll ping him about it though).

Q#1:You said Ufone has website that has tons of stuff, if you think its something catchy(which am really sure is) why won’t Telenor apply it for its funky customers, maybe you can stick to Corporate Look on the homepage but how about a funky portal within the corporate website with downloads and apps for the (below ) who i think are your maximum market.
Q#2:You said the quality of service within the country is likely to get bad with other companies expanding there network, i.e. installing towers etc, if it really is going to effect the service, what do you think is the solution? Will PTA stop giving other companies licenses?What the …?:P
Q#3:Is it true that companies like Airtel, Vodafone and Hutch are coming to Pakistan?
Q#4:You work for Telenor, but do you really use it yourself ?What is the best mobile company in Pakistan in your opinion in terms of service and tariff? ;);)lolz~
Thanks, and answers expected from all the freaks~!

If some of you have happened to used PeeTCL’s vfone , that is a wireless phone nearly as good as a fixed land line that also helps the subscribers to use internet. From the past 15 - 16 days i’ve been using this service(since our hostel internet will take atleast a month after the approval of HEC and Director), i’ve even used it alot before my vacations but anyways let me tell you about this scam company that has never even changed after completely reviving their corporate identity and even getting partially privatized.

Vfone charges a line rent of 7/Rs daily from the balance of your prepaid card with internet charges being 10 Rs from 8 am - 8 pm and 5 Rs from 8 pm - 8 am, fine and affordable but the hidden charges (those who use it know about it) can’t be calculated. When i loaded my 2nd scratch card in the same week and was not able to connect to the internet i called there helpline which on a mere 32nd attempt connected to the operator who said there servers are down, other than that he made me really happy about the new so called tarriff that VPeeTCL introduced, the line rent was completely removed he said , with reduction in call rates and the internet charges made flat at Rs 5/hour, the news was kinda really great for a very excessive internet user like me, he said i’ll have to activate the package before i can use the package and for the cause he noted down my number and said please call after two days to confirm if the package is activated or not, which in either case will be since i am personally going to handle it. Glad that i was i even forgot that this is a promise from a Pakistani individual working in a Pakistani company that is not fully privatized yet, holy cow why did i believed him…. and till today 5th day or 6th i think i am trying to call there help line but the computer on phone only has to say “Ham Muazrat Khwa Hain , Kay Operator is waqt masroof hay, mazeed intizar kay liye 1 dabaeeyayy” and i keep on pressing 1 and 1 and 1… i wonder what the operator is upto. Other than that it takes my lovely VPeeTCL phone only 4 days to gobble up a card , even when i mostly use the internet in the late hours not more than 6 hours daily.

Other than that if you even go and check out the PTCL’s website they have given the new rates which are not even implemented at all to old subscribers like me,to my surprise the VPTCL Wireless own website is no longer functioning giving a few links to other sites in the bottom page,wow this is called a Pakistani based company.

I am not even sure if they’ll ever pick up the phone or get my new package activated, just forget that but why do you even have to activate that package i mean??? can’t they do it automatically??? Other than that if they still had to use the same rates why lie and brag about the new tariff rates when its not implemented. Anyways regardless of the fact that it is a bit expensive than a dial-up, and is a perfect alternative to it and has a good browsing speed atleast in areas with no buildings , like Phase-7 Peshawar where i live at hostel BUT can’t be trusted cos you never know when there weird servers go down.

P.S: I am still using the same VPeeTCL Wireless writing this post, hope PTA and PTCL never gets there hand on me:~

Are you a gamer? You can better be the judge as to who won this battle…. Personally i’ll favour WASD:P

Ok i was just trying to be a bit funny but since i’ve never heard the committee saying we’ve successfully sighted a moon for Shawwal or Ramadan so i prefer to call it Anti-Hilal or Hilal-Free committee. Since they announced the moon was not sighted so the 1st of Ramadan-ul-Mubarak will be on Friday,14th September 2007.

According to Moonsighting.com the Moon has been sighted at Mauritius and South Africa where its 1st Ramadan tomorrow, but in other parts of the world like Australia,UK etc the report is negative. According to a detail graphical report posted here it is nearly impossible to sight the Moon in Pakistan, but it could be in the Middle-Eastern states. So the report of the Hilal-committee Pakistan is hence Correct. No moon sighted and the curve is to appear in Pakistan’s longitude and latitude either by tomorrow to prove the 1st Ramadan the day after,hope i am correct as well.
The history of various people having different dates for the Eid and Ramadan in Pakistan is a very old story and mostly people in the tribal areas of the country or NWFP (not sure about other parts) are included in that. Since i belong to NWFP and i’ve lived in 2-3 different places so we have to go with our village for Eid and the government for Ramadan. Tomorrow there is no Fasting in Peshawar so i won’t be Fasting but i am not sure whether i’ll be able to complete the 30 or not or if it would go on to 31 like last time:P. Ok issue not solved but we’re ok with it , but there’s still one thing i am concerned about and that is if we and the Government can have the same dates for Shab-e-Mairaj,Muharram and other religious months, than why can’t for Ramadan… maybe we don’t have much trust over the government although as a Muslim and educated individual we should follow the government since they have technology and resources for the cause and that in Akhirat they can be held responsible.

Do you know how pissed you are when you want to play the Youtube videos and they wont buffer in hours, you want a song downloaded and it takes hours again to download, you want to have a software but your poor dial-up is too slow to get it to your system?Do you ever wanted to play online games but because your Internet unlike iScsi was too slow to handle the cause? These were a few problems that i’ve always had.To handle the matters there is always DSL or Broadband (High Speed Internet unlike Dial-up) but since my location was not stable, since being a hostel student i am not allowed to own a private Broadband connection (although its too expensive) and at home in vacations i spend most of my time in Hill Stations and away from home so couldn’t really get time to solve the issue. Now that we are going back to Hostels in September,we’ve heard that a Broadband connection will be provided to every hostel student and that is what makes me happy. It will be fun since Broadband is really fun as i’ve used it oftenly in the campus and in my brother’s place.

Now since most of the students in my Hostel are i would call A** Holes with no knowledge of internet other than downloading songs and copy/pasting notes from Google search results, i hope they won’t use it just for downloading songs or streaming hi-fi videos because that is what eats all the bandwidth, lets hope things go well and the university adapts a strict downloading policy, bans porn sites, put on filters on servers and regularly check-up system’s for viruses only than it will be an effective tool for all of us, though i am being more selfish than ever lolz!

Few minutes back i was logged in into my Digg account just to digg an article that i had one of the writers write for my other blogs, when i was done and landed on the main page a story caught my attention saying “Drunk guy kills Internet” at that time it was only dugged 69 times, so i went to the URL of the story and before i could even read it saw the digg button there showing 94 diggs, thinking it must be a Digg error i went again to the digg homepage and saw it was 102 diggs now, DAMN that was strange as i never saw so quick movement before so i started playing with the page, refreshed it and the digg count showing 124, again refreshed 141, again refreshed 156 and then 172 and 190 and 212 and so on! I stopped. When i saw the time it showed within 12 minutes that story was made popular and had 256 diggs by the time i decided to blog this live action in the digg arena that i experienced. I was wondering how crazy the diggers go when they start digging articles or maybe its just a passion for them.

Now lets come to the Digg effect, its probably said by Shawn Hogan of Digital Point forums that it cost him over $100K for 1 digg that got dugged by over 500 people and his famous Digital Point forums server crashed due to the digg users following the URL, he immediately had to arrange a server donation fund raiser and got the money within a quick span of time and replaced his servers with new blades of servers with RAMs in Gigabytes. That was probably one of the most expensive digg effect i heard of but now lets get back to this gentleman who posted this story on his blog saying a “Drunk guy kills the internet” as to where he will survive this digg effect or not since when i am about to push the Publish button for this post the digg count it shows is 755, best of luck and hope you survive it!

Ever since the new Apple iPhone is released the endless marketing campaign has started all over the Television Media now and every Channel from BBC,CNN,Business Plus,CNBC and all the channels my cable network could grab are showing free reviews, reports and comments and sales for the new Apple iPhone. Means how good it is to be a Technology giant once you are up and running and there you go, you get free reviews and marketing from the Channels that are shown in nearly 90% of the Countries worldwide.The new Apple iPhone on the other hand is really a gem to watch,an extraordinary phone,with a built in iPod or mp3 players , an extraordinary camera with great video capturing features and internet through high speed EDGE technology, etcetera so much and lot more all into this one peace of production from Apple.

Coming back to the marketing of the phone, it all started last year when it was in the news that Apple is going to launch a revolutionary phone with extraordinary features, just than people and Apple brand loyal customers badly started waiting for the release, blogs blogging madly about the new phone and how is it going to be,new websites being created, and nearly all over the blogosphere and webosphere was nothing else but the Apple iPhone, and now the TV channels are doing the rest.

I am not sure of the number but it was around 5 million units have been sold just with the release,the price set for the 4 Gb unit is $499 and that of 8 Gb is $599. Thats probably low as compared to Nokia’s N95 phones but its still comparatively high though Apple brand loyal customers are ready to pay even double the price of this cos Apple inc is what they trust in. I am not sure when is it going to be available in Pakistan but i am really looking forward for its arrival in Pakistan and see if my budget lets me have this one since i really need to have a new and more than just a Phone now;).