There were many unconfirmed news on the web that Google no longer consider “keywords” meta tag. Most of the people still do beleive that Google does consider “Keywords” meta tag so it should be accurate.

Google Officially announce this.

Google doesn’t use the “keywords” meta tag in our web search ranking …. Because the keywords meta tag was so often abused, many years ago Google began disregarding the keywords meta tag ….. It’s possible that Google could use this information in the future, but it’s unlikely. Google has ignored the keywords meta tag for years and currently we see no need to change that policy.

Official Blogpost here

September 8 was proclaimed International Literacy Day by UNESCO in 1965 with an aim to highlight the importance of literacy among individuals, communities and societies. According to UNESCO reports, despite varied efforts, literacy remains an elusive target across the world. About 776 million adults lack minimum literacy skills which means that one in five adults is still not literate in the world.

This year, International Literacy Day will put the spotlight on empowering the role of literacy and its importance for participation, citizenship and social development. Literacy and Empowerment is the theme for the 2009-2010 biennial of the United Nations Literacy Decade (UNLD) 2003-2012. The Decade aims to increase literacy levels and to empower people everywhere.

The International Day of Literacy today would hardly make any difference for Pakistan as here education has always been low on government’s priority.

Public expenditure on education as a percentage to GDP is lowest Not more than 2.4% of total GDP. The trend of investment in education in terms of GDP has been 2.50 per cent and 2.47 per cent in 2006-07 and 2007-08 respectively and it is 2.10 per cent during 2008-09.

According to Pakistan Social and Living Measurement (PSLM) Survey for 2007-08, the overall literacy rate (age 10 years and above) is 56 per cent (69 per cent for male and 44 per cent for female). When analyzed provincially, literacy rate in Punjab stood at 59 per cent followed by Sindh, 56 per cent, NWFP 49 per cent and Balochistan at 46 per cent.

Also, the pupil-teacher ratio has increased at primary level but decreased at secondary level during the last five years.

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There was a time when there was just one shopping mall in Lahore that was Pace then HKB and other malls hit Lahore but none of them were on idea of true shopping experience.

Makro, Metro and Hyperstar are “IN” these days, so its time to discuss and time to see which one of them is going to become history and which one gona take market share.

Start with Metro:

- Two Metros in Lahore and strangely both are outside Lahore. One at Thokar and other Near Airport. Always.
- Most of Checkout Counters are always closed.
- Confused Price tags on Shelves, Usually Prices are different than on tags.
- Lifters will always irritate you while shopping.
- Minimum shopping of Rs 2000.  Bad Idea if you want to buy few things for yourself.
- Membership Required – You cannot shop or even enter Metro without piece of plastic.
- Whatever you need buy in bulk (in most cases)
- Poorly managed shelves, if any product is out of stock another product is placed “without” changing Tags and prices on shelves.

Makro:

- Within People’s Access, Branches are within cities and at prime locations like Link Road Modal Town.
- Minimum Shopping of Rs 500 and can get a membership card easily and can even shop without card.
- Lowest prices of parishable, eatables and other goods as compared to others. I personally found it cheaper.

Carrefour’s Hyperstar:

- Backed by world’s greatest stores chain Carrefour. Operating in every continent of world with Carrefour, Hypermart and Hyperstar brands.
- Pakistan’s Largest Shopping Place soon to be open in Karachi. You will get everything.
- No Shopping Limit No Membership Required. Buy Even a Candy.
- Prices are higher than Makro but cheaper than Metro (In most cases)
- Located at Fortress, an easy access to it as compared to Metro
- You can find lots of imported items there, i expect soon they will introduce their in-house Carrefour products.
- Fastest Checkout counters as compared to Makro and Metro.
- You will find a huge crowd of people at Hypermart on weekends and less people out of them will be there actually for shopping.
- No Minimum Quantity limits on most of the items
- Large number of promotions running than Makro and Metro.
- Just one price for every product, no before and after tax confusion
- Properly managed shelves unlike others Out of Stock Items are mentioned.

Review Based on my own experiences, price comparisons and observations. If you have a different shopping experience with them do share with us.

July 31, 2009 10th Annual System Administrator Appreciation Day

A system administrator is a professional, who plans, worries, hacks, fixes, pushes, advocates, protects and creates good computer networks, to get you your data, to help you do work — to bring the potential of computing ever closer to reality.

On the Web, importance of Administrator remains same but in true sense its more difficult (unpaid) job, imagine you have to manage something that is continents far away from you. Also its not just ordinary 9-5 Job. Administrator have to watch 24 hours a Day, 7 Days a Week and 365 Days a week. Thousands of people can suffer because of little trouble on server and administrators usually have to sit till morning until everything works smoothly.

Administrator is always worried about server and website’s security, Keeps regular backups in case anything went wrong, Most of the tasks on server are done late night (After 3 AM) when there is low traffic on server. Its not easy to ensure the server is working healthy all the way. Every time have to face something new.

Last but not least, Web Administrator is not getting paid for 24 hours of monitoring or getting any kind of monetary benefit but spending a noticeable amount every month out of his pocket for a good cause.

So if you can read this, thank your admin — and know he is only one of dozens or possibly thousands whose work and “Dedication” brings you the Good Entertainment, Connection with Friends and what else you come for.

Friday, July 31, 2009, is the 10th annual System Administrator Appreciation Day. On this special international day, give your Administrator something that shows that you truly appreciate their hard work and dedication.

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UK-based civil aviation consultant Skytrax just released a 10-month survey of airline passengers who voted in the world’s best airports in 2009.

A total of 8.6 million passengers at 190 airports were invited to rate the facilities based on their experiences at check-in, arrival, departures and transfers.

Six Asian airports make the top 10, along with Zurich, Munich, Amsterdam and Auckland.

The top 10 airports, according to the survey, are:

1. Incheon International Airport in Seoul, South Korea
2. Hong Kong International Airport
3. Singapore Changi Airport
4. Zurich Airport, Switzerland
5. Munich Airport, Germany
6. Kansai International Airport, Japan
7. Kuala Lumpur International Airport, Malaysia
8. Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, the Netherlands
9. Central Japan International Airport Centrair Nagoya, Japan
10. Auckland Airport, New Zealand

Dubai International Airport in the United Arab Emirates is voted the best duty-free shops.

Hong Kong is voted for serving the best food.

Helsinki-Vantaa in Finland is least likely to lose passengers’ bags.

Japan’s Kansai International has the cleanest restrooms.

Malaysia retains its 2008 rating at the 7th spot.

Following list is based on observations I commonly see on a day to day basis. If you notice your website with any of these change it immediately to enjoy better search engine rankings!
1. Multiple keywords in Title tag – Do not SPAM your website by having the same keyword listed in your heading 3 times or more. It will in fact reduce the relevance and strength of those keywords. Most important factor is that it’s readable to the user and is an accurate description of your page.
2. High keyword densities – Including your targeted keyword is obviously important but don’t think for one minute putting the keyword in every link on the page and in every paragraph will make your page more relevant – it won’t.
3. Flash & Image-Based Content  – In addition to navigation, the content that’s most critical to search engines is frustratingly hidden in files that spiders can’t see. Search engines cannot read Flash content and image based websites. So avoid using Flash.
4. URL’s not containing any keywords – Yes, I’m still seeing utterly useless URL structures. Just remember to include an accurate description of the page content in the URL.
5. Using <H1> tags more than once on a single page – There should only be one <h1> tag per page.
6. Duplicate Meta data – should be relevant to each page’s content and unique – you will see benefits in doing this – trust me! Now Google Wemasters Tools also report duplicate meta tags.
7. Using the same anchor text in all links – Unless you have been around for years, just don’t bother using the same anchor texts in your links. Make them as varied as possible, you will see see an increase in your targeted keywords if your site is optimized properly.
8. Putting analytics code at the beginning of your body content – Doing this will slow down the page content load which will effect usability. The amount of time is not large but noticeable to search engines, always put it at the end of the </body> tag.
9. Not using accurate image descriptions – Stuffing keywords in image descriptions will do nothing for you and may even harm your rankings if used excessively.
10. Not having a 301 redirect setup – It’s not hard to do and it will help with your indexing like you wouldn’t believe!

Beggars of modern era are also not behind. Now they are using modern “business” techniques.

I was about u sleep but i got following sms so couldn’t stop myself to come online and write something about these new techniques.

App jo koi bhi ho plz mere is num. 03366717^^^ pe 20 rps send kr do main hospital main musibt man hun plz Allah, rasol k waste mera yakin kro bad main wapis kr don he

Well you might also be familiar with such sms’s and im getting same sms from different numbers since years. Well the shameful part is they (if they are Muslims) are selling their faith for just Rs 20. There are many other tricks of begging through sms like “Today is Warid/Ufone Anniversary Fwd this sms to 828 / 7171 to get free balance of Rs 100″ but mostly people don’t notice the date or the start of sms which is usually the balance transfer code. Balance is gone when you fwd such sms’s.

Other tricks are calling people and saying “Your number just won Rs 500,000 in a draw call me back after five minutes for details” since everyone dreams to become rich so people give easily scratch card numbers without confirming anything.

In either case report to call center and they will get their number blocked.

Email is old tool for beggars, they usually trick you using Phishing and now these days begging for charity for Swat victims. Today i got email from a Pakistani named person who was asking for charity and he needed it to be sent to his Paypal (well that was new for me, beggars got Paypal)

Another Advise do not Forward SMS without confirming anything such as false and baseless rumors about Multinational companies (KFC, Lays, Mentos etc).

Joomla uses following “generator” meta tag in HEAD for identification. You might be interested in removing it for security reasons.

 <meta name=”generator” content=”Joomla! 1.5 – Open Source Content Management” />

In this article you will learn two methods (easy and difficult) so you will be able to change it or simply remove it.

Method One:

Put following code in your template before or after the <head> tag start

<?php $this->setGenerator(’Anything you want to set’); ?>

Method Two:

The file you want to edit is called head.php and is found here:
/libraries/joomla/document/html/renderer/head.php

you will want to find the following code (~line 167):
$strHtml .= $tab.’<meta name=”generator” content=”‘.$document->getGenerator().’” />’.$lnEnd;

you can turn it off by simply commenting the line with // at the beginning:
//$strHtml .= $tab.’<meta name=”generator” content=”‘.$document->getGenerator().’” />’.$lnEnd;

 Recommended Method:

Method One is recommended. Because if you use method two then your changes will be gone, each time you upgrade your Joomla to newer version.

Have fun with Joomla!

You might heard companies claiming

“Get into Google within 7 Days”
“Get Your Site Listed in Google in Just 7 Days, Guaranteed”
“Advanced listing Process” lol

Most of the people get trapped by such websites and companies and waste their money. In fact there is no reality behind such claims and promises. No one can force your website to be listed on Google earlier than usual time. However websites are always listed automatically in Google before any other search engine so why you pay to get listed?

After reading this article you will be able to speed up the listing process.

You can speed up the process by submitting website & sitemap to Google. Submitting sitemap to Google is also recommended for old websites because it helps Google to list pages which might be skipped in crawling process (Usually happens for large forums). Also Google uses your Sitemap to learn about the structure of your site and to increase our coverage of your webpages.

1) When your website is ready, submit it to Google at http://www.google.com/addurl.html

2) Create a sitemap using any software, online sitemap generator (xml-sitemaps.com) or through sitemap add-on for your CMS. To submit sitemap to Google simply login to https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools
Add your website, verify your website ownership and submit your sitemap.

You will notice after few minutes that your sitemap is downloaded by Google (check sitemap status in webmaster tools) after that Google will crawl your website and index your pages within few days time.

You can also use “Google Webmasters Tools” to track your website traffic from Google, Content Analysis etc

Have Fun with your website!

Somebody please help Google resolving their “Technical Issues”. Google is having troubles since week. Last week Gmail was down for half day and today Google Docs is not working.

Im getting funny messages like:

Bad news is your page was not loaded.
Good news is you have helped google finding this issue.

Update: Today (Thursday, May 14, 2009 ) Google Analytics was down for hours, Google admit that during this downtime they were not able to collect website statistics. (Read for more info at http://analytics.blogspot.com/2009/05/temporary-system-error-this-morning-now.html)

Update May 15, 2009. Message from Google “On May 14, some users experienced a network issue that affected multiple Google services for about an hour. We’re sorry for the inconvenience, and we appreciate your patience as we resolved this issue”