How to Make New Nepal

Here are a few suggestions on how to make new Nepal.

1) If you are in front of computer right now, find and replace all the words "Nepal" with "New Nepal" (or "NewNepal" or "New-Nepal" or "nu Nepal" or even "knew Nepal"). For best results, it is recommended to use an open source software such as OpenOffice. As always, backup previous data.

2) If you are into design and arts, use your favorite image editor such as Photoshop or Gimp to select Nepal from the world map. Nepal is small, so be careful, especially at the borders when selecting. Now you can paste it anywhere in the world map. Or even better, open a new file and paste Nepal there. Save it as "New Nepal" and there you have it.

3) If you are into science and chemistry stuff, you should have no problem with the next one. Initially we had Ne-P-Al. These are nothing but atomic symbols of Neon (Ne), Phosphorus (P), and Aluminum (Al) respectively. Now we will slowly add "N-E-W" to our "Ne-P-Al". Again the "N-E-W" are the atomic symbols of Nitrogen (N), Einsteinium (E), and Tungsten (W). Some of these elements are hyperactive or even radioactive. Adult supervision is needed for children. Also these experiments tend to be unpredictable and hence not advisable for very senior citizens either. Stories of successful experiments have been reported to produce new Nepal this way.

4) If you are into programming, let's say Java or C++ programming, the "new" function already exists. Just like you can create new instance of current date with the function new Date(); you can try to create new instance of current Nepal with the function new Nepal(); this methood is recommended for programming gurus only since the new Nepal thus created is known to have serious memory allocation issues.

5) Literally, new also means fresh. So we will learn the recipe on how to make a fresh Nepal. First take a slice of Nepal. Rinse thoroughly in clean water several times till it is free from all the dirts. Add some fresh garnishes or toppings onto the Nepal according to your flavor. Fresh Nepal is ready. Serve chilled.

6) Well if you want more, hopefully you can find them online. Use your favorite search engine such as Google or Yahoo to search for how to make new Nepal.

P.S (Not to be taken too seriously!)

Labels: humour, nepal, new nepal

Website Review - FM stations in Nepal

The theme for this month is

"24/7 FM stations in Kathmandu, Nepal"

Hits FM is one of the oldest FM stations of Nepal. It is especially recognized for pioneering in music awards in Nepal with the Annual Hits FM Awards. The station is accessible 24/7 online over the Internet as well. The website has quite a busy forum too at www.hitsfm.com.np/forum. Currently, the station is broadcasted in the capital Kathmandu only.

Kantipur FM is another very popular FM station of Nepal. The station is broadcasted to a wide range of audience all over Nepal. With its sister associates as Kantipur Publications, Kantipur Online and Kantipur TV, obviously Kantipur is a powerful brand in Nepal.

Image FM is also one of the older FM station in Nepal. It is part of the Image Group of Companies and broadcasted to any corners of the country, along with the TV Image Channel. So Image FM has a very large audience from all over Nepal. Image FM also runs its annual music awards in Nepal.

BBC Radio is a part of the BBC World Service in Nepal. Along with the normal BBC programs, BBC Radio in Nepal also features 45 minutes of Nepali programs starting from 8:45 PM NST or Nepal Standard Time (NST = GMT + 05:45). These programs include news, talk shows to drama shows which are produced here in Nepal and broadcasted from within the capital, Kathmandu.

Nepal FM is the latest in the list to be broadcasted 24 hours a day.

Headlines and Music FM is also a relatively new FM station in Nepal. Currently as the name suggests, the FM plays just continuous music followed by brief news every hour.

Some other FM stations broadcasted in Kathmandu (that I am aware of) that are not yet 24/7 are Radio Upatyaka 87.6 MHz ("Radio Valley"), Radio Mirmire 89.4 MHz ("Radio Dawn"), FM Ujyalo 90 MHz ("FM Light"), Times FM 90.6 MHz, Capital FM 92.4 MHz, Gorkha FM 93 MHz, HBC FM 94 MHz (Himalayan Broadcasting Corporation), Metro FM 94.6 MHz, Star FM 95.2 MHz, Voice of Youth FM 96.8 MHz, Keeps FM 98.3 MHz, Radio City 98.8 MHz, Maitri FM 99.4 MHz ("Friendship FM"), Radio Nepal 100 MHz, ABC Radio FM 100.6 MHz, Classic FM 101.2 MHz, Radio Filmi FM 101.8 MHz, Radio Sagarmatha FM 102.4 MHz ("Radio Everest"), FM Paryawaran Chakra 104.2 MHz ("FM Conservation Circle"), FM Adhyatma Jyoti 104.8 MHz ("FM Meditation Light"), Good News FM Radio 105.1 MHz, CJMC F.M 106 MHZ, Radio Audio 106.3 MHz

Quite a long list there! The number of registered FM stations are still increasing in Nepal, so the list will only get longer.

Want to feature your website or blog here too? Drop a mail at nepalsites@gmail.com with some description about your website with the subject line "Website Review".

Labels: nepal, website review

Web Plagiarism

I was going through this website copyscape, which shows the duplicate contents of a website. When I searched for my blog http://nepalsites.blogspot.com I was surprised to see results from other websites with duplicate contents.

It may be alright if you use someone else's content and credit the original author for it, or express your views on that content, but to use someone else's content and take credits for it yourself - is just web plagiarism or cheating. I don't see how duplicating someone else's work can be acceptable in any part of the world. You don't need laws to tell you that piracy is illegal. Web piracy is unacceptable. Simple as that.

No web plagiarism please!

Labels: internet, nepal, Society

The Rain Song

And the rains descended last night
some through the open windows
others through the closed doors
one by one
came those intruders of heart

and the rains danced
while the thunders cheered along
in perfect harmony at times
and patiently I listened
each of those chimes

asked I -
oh dear,
where have you been?
please come near.
smiled the rains -
come with us
and let's dance together

and the rains grew bigger
one by one
and sang their song
and i felt smaller
small as the raindrop
and so we danced
and danced all night long

Labels: Society

Website Review - Extreme Adventures

The theme for this month is

"Extreme Adventures in Nepal"

As scheduled on October 2008, there will be Mount Everest tandem skydiving for the very first time. Which means that a group of extreme adventure lovers will have a free fall around Everest and land on to the highest drop zone ever. They will be jumping from an altitude of about 29035 ft. to about 12350 ft. That's about 16683 ft. of free fall in the air past the highest peaks of the world! And they even plan to film it. Incredible Indeed!

For details Visit Incredible Adventures website.

They say "If you don't succeed at the first attempt, then skydiving probably isn't for you". I haven't heard such thing for Bungy Jumping though. Bungy Jumping is considered one of the top things you must do do before you die. The Bungy Jump in Nepal is considered one of the best, if not the best in the world. The 160 meters jump in the gorge of "Bhote Koshi" river is one of the longest free fall in the world. Even I jumped there few years back and was quite out of the world experience, I must say.

For Bungy Jumping and other extreme adventures in Nepal visit website of The Last Resort

Want to feature your website or blog here too? Drop a mail at nepalsites@gmail.com with some description about your website with the subject line "Website Review".

Labels: website review

Google PageRank - some myths and truths

PageRank (PR) is a trademark of the search engine Google. Basically, PageRank is an algorithm or formula that calculates the importance of a webpage based on the number of links linking to the page, and the PageRank of the linking pages themselves. The Google PageRank is based on a scale of 0 to 10. It is based on logarithmic scale - which means that getting higher PageRank needs significantly large number of backlinks (that is, pages linking to your page). Assuming 10 as the base of the logarithmic scale, you can get PageRank of 1 from 1 backlink, PageRank of 2 from 10 backlinks, PageRank of 3 from 100 backlinks and so on. So you will need 1,000,000,000 backlinks to get a PageRank 10. In practice however, the base is less than 10, and there are other factors too, so you won't need that many links. Some sites with PageRank perfect 10 are such as the home page of Google.com and Adobe.com

Mathematically, PageRank is an iterative or repeated process which determines the final PageRank. Also PageRank is updated continuously by Google so your PageRank of your webpage will change over time.

Let's look at some myths and truths about PageRank.

My website has PageRank 0, I will never get high rank in Google or Yahoo!

That is so wrong. PageRank is NOT the same as search ranking. Your website can rank on the top in search ranking for a search term but still have a PageRank 0. Getting a high PageRank does mean that your site has many backlinks, or that your site is considered important, but it doesn't mean your site will rank well for your target keyword. Sites with good content will have good results in search engines irrespective of the PageRank.

In fact the PageRank doesn't take in account of the keywords at all - it just makes calculation based on the number of backlinks and the PageRank of the backlinks. While PageRank is one of the factors used to determine the search results in Google, it is not the only one. You should be worried if your site is not listed at all, not if you don't have high PageRank.

Also, except Google, other search engines don't understand PageRank at all.

But it says page rank! isn't it the same as website rank?

Not really. Like said, it is a process of calculating importance of a page based on the number of backlinks or so called the "votes" for a page. Whereas ranking on the website is about being seen in search engines when someone searches for search terms (known as keywords). If you have a website related to selling coins, you want your site to appear on top when someone searches for "old coins", or "buy coins". As long as that happens, getting higher PageRank is a secondary subject.

It would be worth noting that PageRank was so termed because it was initiated by one of the founders of the Google - Larry Page. It could so easily have been termed LarryRank!

Isn't PageRank same for all pages in my site?

No. PageRank is based on calculation of value of each page in the world wide web. It is perfectly normal to have different PageRank for different page within the same site. In fact that is how PageRank works.

It is the part of the webmaster or the SEO analyst to organize the pages in the website to get the best results.

My Google toolbar shows a different PageRank!

Google toolbar shows an old value of PageRank rather than the live value. You might want to check PageRank in sites such as www.prchecker.info or http://livepr.ezer.com/ to find your current PageRank.

Also it should be noted that Google shows PageRank from the closest datacenter (server). So if you are checking PageRank from Germany, it may not be same as that from USA or Nepal. You can have different PageRank from different datacenter.

Can I increase my PageRank? How?

Of course you can! Since PageRank depends upon backlinks, the only way is to increase number of backlinks.

For that all you need to do is write good/useful content or articles and promote them. Organize your website. Get good traffic into your site. Submit to search engines and directories. Use social networking sites to spread words about your articles. As other site find your site useful and link to your site, you will get better PageRank. You can use link exchange with other related sites. But never use link reciprocals to get cheap or spam links to your site.

Will my PageRank decrease when I link to other site?

Your site's PageRank will not decrease directly by linking to other site. PageRank depends on backlinks and their PageRank. The outgoing links in your site don't affect PageRank of your site. It is the incoming links or the links to your site that contribute to your PageRank, not the outgoing.

As far as incoming links are concerned, internal linking to your own site also contribute to your site's PageRank. So you have to understand how to build and organize your internal linking well.

However, if you are linking to bad sites on bad purpose, you will be kicked out of the search engines altogether sooner or later. So if you have a good site, don't link to bad sites and check that you don't get linked from bad sites either.

What about PigeonRank? Is it important too?

Ok. This isn't a myth really. Just that Google comes up with something to fool their users every now and then during April Fool's day. On April 1st 2002, Google came up with this wacky idea called PigeonRank™ that was supposed to be the heart of Google's fast search algorithm!

Another April is coming near. So be prepared for surprises from Google!

The bottom line is that PageRank is a methood developed by Google that ranks a webpage based on the number of backlinks it has got. Getting high PageRank is very desirable for getting popularity, but it is not enough to ensure that your website will get listed or rank well for given keyword.

Labels: internet, technology

Website Review

I will be featuring website reviews related to various topics starting from this month. If you want your website or blog to be featured too, you can drop a mail at nepalsites@gmail.com with some description about your website with the subject line "Website Review".

The theme for this month is

"Photographs of Nepal"

This site www.eyescoffee.com/nepal contains Black &White photography related to Nepal. The B&W nature of the photographs give them a nostalgic look. Some of the photos look like they are from centuries ago. Most of the images reflect the day to day life in many parts of the country. Such as that of children, animal sacrifice, and cremation.

In the words of the author, "EyesCoffee is not iced coffee. I also hope that it is not eyes candy, but something bitter, just like life."

This site www.photoblog.com.np contains mostly images of flowers and nature related to Nepal. Made on wordpress, it has an easy navigation ideal for photo browsing. The vistors can comment on the photos too.

The site doesn't have many photos yet, but the ones on the site are eyecatchy, and hopefully the authors will post more often.

This site www.maion.com/photography/nepal has a wonderful collection of stock photography by the outdoor photographer Jef Maion. The site has many photographs related to trekking and the Himalayas, such as Shorong Himalaya, Lumding Himalaya, Khumbu Valley and Everest.

Absolutely fascinating photographs!

Want to feature your website or blog here? Drop a mail at nepalsites@gmail.com with some description about your website with the subject line "Website Review".

Labels: website review