GeekScribes

Earth Hour 2009 is here. Did I said today? Saturday 28th or March 2009 needs some actions from your side readers. Come one, as from 8.30-9.30 pm, switch off your lights. Yeah, for just one hour. (Time to go wild, you got one hour )

Oops, the poster above talks what Earth Hour is. I guess the time, the event will be taking place has been well chosen. It would not affect a significant number of people on duty at that time and many would have already finished dinner. Or would it be having candle light dinners. Today is your chance.

There was one missing element, 8.30 is referring to our local time or to particular time zone? And the official web site quoted “8:30PM local time, wherever you live on planet earth. Saturday 28 March 2009″. It is quite logical for the time being our local time, or else it would have served no purposes. The designated time would have been while we were sleeping or even during our working time. No use.

So do you think you will be doing this? Waiting to hear you in the comments.

On Earth Hour website there is also a section, “Earth Connect” where can share this views. Be sure to drop tips over there.

I created a Group at flickr for you to share picture on Earth Day 2009. People show us the darkness that reigns or how people do not know about this event. Keep tuned.

Today, 26th of March 2009, marks the 1st anniversary of GeekScribes!

We started out initially as a purely technical blog, and were simple blogging amateurs. Over the year, we have learnt a number of techniques, experimented a number of platforms and encountered quite a lot of difficulty to people to know what GeekScribes is.

Today, we are happy that after 1 year of effort, we are seeing the fruits of our efforts! Our readership base has broadened, and we have now started blogging on a variety of subjects and not only purely technical stuff, though we still highly love our niche!

I take this opportunity to send our biggest THANK YOU to our faithful readers and supporters and hope that we will still enjoy your company for the years to come! Thank you for making GeekScribes what it is today. As always, we welcome your comments and suggestions!

I had quite a nice surprise today. Visting the homepage, I saw the feed counter showing 35 subscribers. I was awed. It just took 1 night to shoot from 25 subscribers to 35?

I kind of headed to Google Analytics to take a look at the reports. Fortunately or unfortunately, there were nothing to help me deduce the magical source.

My suspect list.

1. Tutorialized
2. Good Tutorials
3. Search Engines (primarily Google)
4. Some referring weblogs
5. Direct Traffic

We have 8.56% Direct Traffic (quite very low), 19.84% Referring Websites, 71.60% Search Engines.

I have heard people writing we get most of our traffic from search engines. And the above mini-stats confirmed. Given the unappropriate way I have used my Google Analytics tracking potentials, I have got a rather handicapped statistics report. Who is to be blamed? I guess me.
There is an emerging need to track internal traffics and proper outside geekscribes traffic. Got any tips? Throw it in the comments.

Don’t forget, subscribe to receive news by feeds or email.

Fishing for subscribers is not a so easy task. Be it feed subscribers or email subscribers. I have brought back to life our Twitter account. Time to get some followers.

Motivations of use Twitter (Follow us on twitter)

• New posts updates directly in your twitter account
• A level of proximity between YOU and US.
• Short tips and tricks to be digested on your twitter

How can I use twitter?

There are many application for using twitter. Here is a small list:

• TweetDeck – Based on Adobe Air
• TwitterFox – Firefox Addon (Get updates in your web browser)
  
• Twhirl – Based on Adobe Air
  
• Twitter Web Interface (not an application)

The aboe mentioned would be sufficient to cater for your needs. I would propose you to use TweetDeck. It may seem bulky, but no, it is give an added benefit to “workflow”. Don’t forget to Follow GeekScribes.

If you are a Windows user, you know that sometimes you really need to make use of the Command Prompt, for things like “ping” or “tracert”. Unless you are a GUI fanatic.

But have you noticed that sometimes when you type a command in the Run box, the prompt closes immediately after execution? There must be a way to keep it open, right?

Today, I will share that trick with you, and it’s really simple to do.

First, you need to see what I mean. Type “ping google.com” in the Run box and type enter or press Ok. The prompt should close after execution of the ping, not giving you time to see the results.

If this has ever happened to you (it does for me, on Windows Vista), then try this:

Before you type your command, put in “cmd /k” before.

For example, if “ping” closes for the prompt after execution, try “cmd /k ping google.com” or any other address.

I have tested on WinXP and Vista. Both work. Hope this is useful to you someday.

Today I will be talking  a bit on PHP’s syntax and constructs. Previously I had given a small introduction on PHP. Now is the time to get your feet wet. Before going even further you should have PHP and MYSQL minimally running on your machine a.k.a localhost (You can go for an elaborate discussion on localhost at wikipedia or stick to my simple description. Refers to your own machine also addressed by 127.0.0.1).  I know you are a Geek, you may want to do your own setup but yet, I would recommend you to take a look at integrated packages such as:

1. Xampp (my preference)
2. Wamp
3. EasyPHP

As far as I know personally I have heard of these three packages. There are more out there in the wild. Xampp would be enough for all your development tasks. Please bear in mind these packages are meant only for development purposes. They are not to be used on a live website.

Continuing where I left. Lets talk syntax. uhh, let me remind you coding scripting in PHP is very different from conventional programming. As I say often, PHP has a philosophy, a way of getting things done. Don’t be afraid.

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As strange as this seems, not everybody is happy with Orange’s price cuts and speed boosts. However, there is one major difference here: it’s not the users that are unhappy. It’s the other ISPs.

(Btw, as from now, when I say Orange, I am including MyT in it too)

This news piece was reported by L’Express some days back. I can’t tell you the exact date since I no longer have the paper, but it must be from the previous week, in the Techno section. We can easily guess who is unhappy and why. I bet it’s MTML and Nomad leading the pack, and it’s quite understandable.

With the price cuts and speed boosts, Orange has now become the ISP with the best offers around, in terms of price and speed. Orange is offering prices that smaller ISPs will never be able to match without sacrifices or losses. And if you ask me, I find that to be quite unfair towards them.

We know that Nomad’s service is not what you can call the most reliable service around, and that MTML’s dial-up replacement offer is not very satisfactory because of the capping. (I think the capping must still be on, but I’m not sure). Also, their speeds are not the fastest on the market now. MTML’s main offer is the 144Kbps and Nomad’s maximum is 512Kbps as far as I know. On the other side, you have Orange that has migrated its users to twice the speed for the same price. I don’t know how you call that, but I term it “unfair competition”.

I’m neutral in that I am not pro-Nomad or pro-MTML or anything. I’m just a normal Internet user, but I kind of feel pity for the other ISPs. But, and it’s a big but, I’m really happy with the boost in speed as a customer. What would have been better is some kind of compromise. It’s as if the State (or ICTA?) has accepted the recommendations about prices and speeds too easily, without considering everybody’s case.

Personally, I can’t find workable solutions. There is one that would work, but I’m pretty sure will not be implemented in Mauritius. This solution is the breaking of Orange’s monopoly over the SAFE cable, so that other ISPs no longer need to actually buy bandwidth from Orange. I doubt this will work since I guess that the other ISPs can’t afford bandwidth directly from SAFE. Something like “degroupage” in France, if you want.

Next would be a drastic reduction in the price that Orange sells bandwidth to the other ISPs. That price keeps falling, but if smaller ISPs need to have a fighting chance, it’s still too high according to the losing parties.

What can I say? ISP business in Mauritius is a cut-throat activity, and if you can’t fight, you go down, no matter how much you invested in the first place. That must be quite a large sum for Nomad and MTML, considering that they installed antennas and all the other equipments to provide wireless access so that they don’t have to use MT’s wires and cables.

Funnily enough, Emtel remains silent till now about the boost. It’s 1.8Mbps offer is directly threatened by Orange’s 1Mbps. I’d like to know what they are planning.

Sadly enough, this boost which is a great thing for us users might bring back what we fear most: Monopoly. This could happen if other ISPs decide to pack up and go.

What are your views on this? What do you think can be done to help smaller ISPs?