Traffic Stats of Pakistani Newspaper Websites [Correction]: ProPakistani

Traffic Stats of Pakistani Newspaper Websites [Correction]
Dr. Syed Ismail Shah Joins MoITT As Member Telecom
Ufone Introduces Star Name Service
Google+ Gets 20 Million Members in Less than a Month [Not Sure]
An Overview of Government Websites
Zong App Creator – Develop Application, Win Prizes

Traffic Stats of Pakistani Newspaper Websites [Correction]

Posted: 26 Jul 2011 04:40 AM PDT

Last week we produced these stats about the web traffic that Pakistani major newspaper websites get.

In a graph we, then, mistakenly reported that Business Recorder website gets 700 daily visitors, which happened due to a typo. In actual, Business Recorder website gets around or over 7,000 daily visitors a day.

Rest of the stats for Business Recorder and other newspapers are good to go.

We regret any in-convince caused to Business Recorder and our readers.

Here are updated stats (original post has also been updated)

Dr. Syed Ismail Shah Joins MoITT As Member Telecom

Posted: 26 Jul 2011 03:26 AM PDT

Dr. Syed Islmail Shah has been appointed as Member Telecom in Ministry of Information Technology and Telecom in the place of Dr. Mushtaq Bhatti who retired in February 2011.

Dr. Shah has vast experience in the ICT industry and academics at national and international level. He is a Qualcomm certified trainer on 3G technologies and a Life Member of the Pakistan Engineering Council, Senior Member, IEEE, USA and Member of the Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers, Japan.

He started his professional carrier in 1989 by joining the Telecommunication division of Siemens Engineering Company, Islamabad, Pakistan. He did his PhD in Electrical Engineering from University of Pittsburgh, PA, USA. During and after his PhD he worked at the University of Pittsburgh.

On his return to Pakistan in 1998 he joined the GIK Institute. In 2000, he joined Enabling Technologies and later, the Center for Advanced Research and Studies in Engineering. Dr. Shah taught in the Department of Computing and Technology, Iqra University Islamabad Campus in 2004.

Syed Ismail Shah, has been associated with the Department of Computing and Technology, Iqra University Islamabad Campus for more than 5 years and is also the Executive Director Central Asian CDMA Forum (CACF).

It is hoped that Dr Shah will play a crucial role in devising a comprehensive Telecom Policy for promoting latest technology such as 3G with his professional, research and academic expertise.

Ufone Introduces Star Name Service

Posted: 26 Jul 2011 01:39 AM PDT

Ufone has introduced one of its kind service that allows you to select a name instead of your number, where others can call you.

Called as Star Name, this can be your nick, date of birth, zodiac sign or any other thing that is unique and special to you.

How it works?

Once you have selected your start name, others can call you by dialing * followed by the name you have chosen. Suppose, if my star name is AHSAN (which surely isn’t) you can call me by dialling *AHSAN i.e *24726

How to Register:

You can register your star name by sending it to 3113

Charges:

This service has subscription charges of Rs 3.75 per week

Terms & Conditions:

Only one Star Name can be acquired on one primary number
Booking is possible only on primary number
Call charges will be deducted as per package plan
This service is not useful for incoming and out going international roamers
Off net and international calls and SMS are not possible with Star Name
SMS to 3113 will not be charged

To read more, click: Ufone Introduces Star Name Service
ProPakistani.PK

Google+ Gets 20 Million Members in Less than a Month [Not Sure]

Posted: 25 Jul 2011 11:34 PM PDT

ComScore – a web-traffic watcher company has revealed that Google Plus has witnessed more than 20 million unique visitors in less than a month.

It is three weeks or so since Google launched its social networking platform which was welcomed with both hands by users.

It is said that Google+ has shown such a steep rising curve which no product had ever shown so far. Despite of the fact that registration on Google+ is still invitation based, it has managed to get 20 million users in three weeks after its launch.

Also the search-giant Google has not completely launched its product to all its customers – as one can imagine, Google still has a potential of one billion unique visitors on its search engine, which is somehow unused at the moment.

Distributing the overall usage worldwide, USA tops the list with more than 5 million users while India comes second in the list with around 2.85 million Google+ users.

Integration with Gmail, Picasa and above all, the new toolbar (sandbar) above Google pages has given a new boost to Google Plus's popularity.

Comparing the progress with other competitor, Facebook and then Twitter, a Google+ user Leon Håland has made following interesting graphs:

What are real total number of Google Plus Members?

While on the other hand, no official stats at this moment have been revealed. Here we are to raise a question about the authenticity of these figures.

Since it is all about Google so we tried doing a little trick to see how things actually work and it came out with totally different figures. Using Google's own tools to customize search results, you can do different things such as to gather Google+ profile user links and Google counts them in less than a second.

Check the given search results http://tinyurl.com/676g8bj which show that there only 1.3 million Google+ profile links, that have been indexed by Google.

So either,

Google indexer is pretty slow,
or stats mentioned above are incorrect,
or 18.7 Million users have kept their profiles as private (not visible in search)

You decide yourself!

An Overview of Government Websites

Posted: 25 Jul 2011 10:30 PM PDT

The issue has been discussed over and over, Maintaining Official Websites! Yes it can be a matter of negligence on individual level or at least at an organizational level but what to say when it comes to the mighty government level.

In past we have seen couple of examples, including President's Website wrongly linked, Governor Punjab's website, PTDC website using adsense and many others.

Let's have a look at present situation of e-government campaign and the websites which are somehow being "managed" by Federal Government.

1. President of Pakistan's Website

No doubt, President of Pakistan's Website gets thumbs up after it's redesign. Discussed earlier, the website was awful before the current revamp.

But the change is here, and a real good one. New website has a decent as well as professional look. Designed well, managed well and unlike the previous one, it is attractive!

One thing that should make one happy is, though not totally but, the website is partially un-biased. Like we have seen the Governor Punjab's website redirecting to his personal website.

Website has a list of previous Presidents of Pakistan (images not working though) in addition to a dedicated section about Pakistan, covering different aspects.

By partially un-biased I mean there is dedicated page for Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto which in my opinion shouldn't be there as the website is all about Pakistan and President. Also social media part needs to be updated yet.

With minor typos, overall website design is awesome and it is good to see the change.

Coming to the dark side of the picture, there are many websites which are being ignored and are somehow full of errors.

With small URL and design error to complete website down at the other end, these are the important ones facing negligence.

2. www.Pakistan.gov.pk

A portal setup by Government of Pakistan to facilitate access to all the web sites run by various departments and is considered as the official website of Pakistan.

Website gets redirected to http://202.83.164.27/wps/portal and images as well style does not work. (though website opens properly, but rarely)

3. www.pak.gov.pk

The same thing as described above, is even in worse condition and the website is under construction for an unknown time.

4. Prime Minister’s Website

Confused? Yes there is no website for Prime Minister of Pakistan but a simple page which is not even working at the moment. http://www.pak.gov.pk/primeminister.aspx

5. PM Secretariat Website

http://pmsectt.gov.pk/ which seems to be offline since its its inception and never faced the audience.

6. Sindh Government’s Website

Sindh Government’s official website is also down with some error at server end.

7. Governor Punjab’s Website

Earlier we seen Governor Punjab’s website linking to Salman Taseer’s personal website even after his assassination and the story was published few months ago. Though the content has been removed now but point to ponder is, from January till July (since Latif Khosa took charge) website has not been updated in 7 months.

8. Ministry of Overseas Pakistanis:

Ministry of Overseas Pakistanis’ website is also down with a 404 error.

opf An Overview of Government Websites

There may be other as well with minor glitches such as wrong link to National Bank of Pakistan’s website on http://www.dgip.gov.pk/ (Directorate General Of Immigration & Passports Ministry of Interior – check Information Links in sidebar) but this post is just a wake-up call for all the concerned authorities and to make them aware what is going on.

I leave it for readers to comment who should be blamed in this regard?

If someone opines, keeping in view the present scenario, that we have lot more things to do than to mend these websites, then what are IT departments for? Why they are funded with millions of rupees every year?

To read more, click: An Overview of Government Websites
ProPakistani.PK

Zong App Creator – Develop Application, Win Prizes

Posted: 25 Jul 2011 10:25 PM PDT

Zong invites you to develop application on Facebook, promote it at Zong's platform and win prizes.

A Sony Cyber Shot Camera will be provided to that app which manages to get maximum likes.

So you do not need to be a professional developer to make an app here. All you have to do is to register at Zong App Creator Page and make your own application. Publish it to your wall and get as many likes as you can.

Creating an app is simple and easy. Just enter the question or any statement which you want to be displayed when your application runs, and few answers as well. Application will automatically chose random answer from the given ones. You are asked to provide with a minimum of 5 answers (phrases) to question.

For instance you can make an app, What is Your Lucky Number? and provide answers as different number so that when the app runs, it will display any random number from the one given by 'developer'.

So this is all about fun creativity and how can you get the maximum out of it using your inventiveness. And ultimately you may be able to win a Sony Cyber Shot Camera.

No deadline for app submission has been provided.

Blog of Asad Mirjat

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