Geshan's Blog

Just back from my work place I heard a news on FM, "SLC result 2065" is out and record high 68% passed this year. At the back of my mind a thought struck "Oh! my cousin sister also gave SLC this year". The news continued the results can be viewed online at www.soec.gov.np, www.moe.gov.np and www.doe.gov.np.

I rushed to my room and connected to the internet, to my surprise and utter dismay SOEC.com.np said "SLC result 2065 has not been published yet!" but still I punched in her symbol no. and the result was nothing. It was so slow I had to open the website in Chrome, trying over the same thing again and again I found out there was an unexplainable error. It was simple overload and I got a not found error in result.php. And yes MOE and DOE do not have SLC results or even the word SLC 2065 on their home pages.

Then after some minutes I got the following screen, oh my luck:

The site was suspended by the provided may be due to overload. So I sent a SMS to 7373 but here also no luck there was no sign of getting the result. Then I searched some news sites, then I found a news on The Himalayan Times website below:
But again they did not check the sites and wrote "The results can also be viewed by logging on to the websites: " I guess they forgot to write "After some hours" in that line. Another news told you can listen to the result Dialing 1600 on a land line and it said the result in not yet published. Man I had not tried this hard to know my own SLC result, I was lazying on my bed as at our times it was published in the morning 5 AM ;). Now already frustrated I checked twitter, after Michael Jackson people were tweeting about it but no one new an answer how to get the results.

My Frustration

1. Why "shout out loud" in media before the result is published.
2. Why don't people in media FM, online media check things before telling them out
3. Why is there no concept of load balancing on these sort of high traffic and high priority things. @bibstha man it must be done, lets do it.
   
4. There were 3 alternative sites none had a thing www.slc.ntc.net.np said " SLC 2065 Result will be available here as soon as it is published officially- Thank you".
5. The SMS thing and dialing 1600 was on no use.
   

Some Suggestions

1. Don't publicize things that you have not tried.
2. Don't publish results in the evening ;)
3. In result publishing make it a single/multiple text or HTML file where one can search easily not a database request just because in our system it times out.
4. Let the results of SLC be available via multiple servers or great load balancing 3 lakh 91 thousand is a very big number if around 30 % view results online its more than 1 lakh 17 thousand.
5. Use technology so that people have faith on it, not one that does not work when needed and people hate it.

I don't know why I wrote this as this is a sheer waste of time, nothings going to change. But if someone reads this and can bring in even a small change I would be happy.

SEO short of Search Engine Optimization has now become the buzz word in this web 2.0 world. With search engines like Google getting smarter, SEO campaigns should be left to the professional to reap maximum benefits.

If you take my word, SEO campaigns are like any other marketing campaigns, in marketing campaigns you target your audience, then make adverts be it print, audio or audio visual and start your campaign. In SEO you choose your keywords, apply some SEO magic and see your conversion rate get better. But major difference is push and pull marketing, in SEO the potential client is searching for you so you have more chances of converting the potential client to a client.

Searching for some SEO company I found KeywordPerformance.com a good one. They claim years of experience in search engine optimization and tell they have obtained long term search engine placement of keyword(s).
They aim to provide ethical search engine optimization which will organically rank you higher in search engines leading to maximum conversion rates and finally to more profit for their client. The SEO tools on their website like link popularity checker, server header checker and SEO glossary are very useful if you want to check your website's current SEO status.

The tips and articles about SEO included in the site come handy if you want to dig deeper into SEO. The main menu laid vertically with sub links poping up is good but if they could make it on hover rather than click it would have been better. They even provide a client login which deals with billings, website statistics and other things.

Keyword performance is an internet marketing firm which provides services like internet marketing, video SEO, search engine placement, search engine rankings etc. The sitemap page fully depicts the sections of the website and the pages in the website. A suggestion I would like to make is that if they had put some client testimonials it would have been better, as a visitor would know who has been their client and what the client's response to the service provided was.

They also have seo blog section, in this section they blog about SEO and related topics. I found the blogs in the SEO tools category interesting. The blog seem updated but I guees they can add more content to the blog section.
In relation to the design of the website, it looks average but it can be made better with some Web 2.0 things. They can work on the user interface, color combination and typography to make the visitor feel better and also uplift their own SEO ranking.

All in all, KeywordPerformace.com is a good website and I hope the company provides outstanding SEO services as it claims. The website can be made better. Hope you rank higher in all major search engines with good and ethical SEO practices.

Browsing through some Drupal themes, I found some great designed themes for Drupal 6. I will let the themes speak for themselves :). Amongst them here are my top 5 picks in alphabetical order (links open in new window/tab):

1. Acquia Slate: is by made Acquia with TopNotchThemes. It is very flexible theme with 14 block regions and lots of cool settings. Like Acquia Marina it is a great theme for blogs as well. Get it at: http://drupal.org/project/acquia_slate
   
   
2. Agregado: is a very cool looking dark theme. It looks very clean and elegeant and will surely be a great fit for a blog. Find it at: http://drupal.org/project/agregado
   
   
3. Color Paper: Yet another great theme for a blog, it has different color variations as well. This theme looks good but the title area can be made better. I am using this for my blog at my Drupal site here. Get at: http://drupal.org/project/colorpaper
   
   
4. Magazeen: is yet another bloggish 2 column theme. The section below header is the USP of this theme. Clean, simple and elegant, this theme has a good color combination of dark header and bright body. You can make it yours at : http://drupal.org/project/magazeen
   
   
5. Waffles: is a theme based on Acquia Marina, looks somewhat like it. The header is different and there is a header without the girl ;). It is a flexible design, and with 15 block regions it gives you 1-3 column layout. Get the theme at: http://drupal.org/project/waffles
   
   

I hope you like my selection of cool and refreshing new themes for Drupal 6. Only one problem, almost all themes are for blogs, when will Drupal have great free multipurpose themes?

To all the Facebook fans, addicts and users. You might be fully aware that now you can have a user name instead of the ugly URL that passed your user id ?id=123456789, which is cool. I guess this may be another bid of Facebook be similar to Twitter. In the last design change many had complains that it was too much like twitter mainly the wall thing.

Other things aside, I still have around an hour and half to go to get my username on facebook. So what will happen really then, see below:

(Image from Facebook Blog)

Let's hope everyone gets their desired username be it their own name, first name only, first and last name or a nick that identifies their web presence. So hurry up and grab your facebook user name at http://www.facebook.com/username.

UPDATE

Enjoy your desired faceboook username and don't be left behind hurry up.