Ever thought of social networking, there are many websites currently helping people to build a social network , such as facebook, orkut, hi5, etc. But a group of Pakistanis have come up with the idea of social networking for Pakistanis, stop.pk. Not only is it a social networking website, but it also pays you as you gain points, By saying pay, i mean there are awards such as easy load, domain hosting,etc. It also has an online forum for discussion. Other features include blogging, uploading images to galleries, uploading videos, games, stops, events, classifieds, schools, polls, etc.

Stop.pk, their moto “Extremely Addictive Internet Lifestyle for Pakistanis”, you will definitely find this site a little addicting and a little different then normal social networking sites. How does the points thing work ? For posting any thing you get points, for example a topic in the forums gives you 2 points, posting a reply gives you 1 point. The points vary for different things. You will have to earn certain amount of points to be able to get the rewards. After getting sufficient points, to get a reward, there is a seperate section for the rewards.

Stop.pk also gives you a customiable profile which you can design you self, though the intial profile looks good, but people will definitely want to customize it, so the option for the customization is fairly good. There also is a rating option on the profile, people view and rate your profile after you have edited it. Stop.pk also offers n online chat room, which is flash based, which is quite simple. It also has an instant messenger.

There are currently eight unique users, each with their own respect, and responsibilites. They include Hawalati (a person in jail), panggeybaaz(a person who likes messing about), aam log(Ordinary people), Khas Log(Special people), Counselor, Nazim, Chairman and Administrator (the last 4 are administrating people). The difference between aam log and khas log is the space provided, for aam log it is 10 MB and khas log it is 100 MB, No accounts are for any charge , and you can upgrade from aam log to khas log for free of cost. It depends on you which mode will you go to, If you spam a lot, you might end up being made Hawalati.

The sign up process is very simple, and easy to follow, the after usage is not that complicated as well. The website is very simple, and light not a very heavy one, though ads are there. So the website in it’s content is very good. So the question comes up. Does it meet international standards? Well, to be frank not yet atleast, there are a few flaws, but the flaws are being fixed. It has improved a lot after I joined. So we can expect that it will improve more, and keep on expanding.

So in plain words, stop.pk is a very good effort from the Pakistanis, and hopefully it will expand.

Note: To join it as my referral, click the following link

http://stop.pk/signup/friend_mutedart/

This is an important issue that we all face. We often have to search for many things. But many times we don’t get what we are looking for.  So here a few important tips for how to search.

1. Choose the terms wisely:

By saying this, I mean if you want to search for vacation locations in some place. Irrelevant terms can be vacation spots in the world, places for vacations in the world. This is rather a very wide area of search. I would say going with a term like tourism, etc will be better this way our search is also not made close.  But a better thing is for example if you are planning to go to Mauritius for vacations search for tourism in Mauritius will be better than searching for tourism or searching for vacation spots worldwide.

1. Search terms are normally not case sensitive:

Case sensitivity is a very important aspect that we often have to see. What does it mean? You might have noticed, that you can type alphabets in capitals or no capitals.  When we write in capitals it’s in UPPER CASE, and when we write not in capital, that is LOWERCASE. There is no difference between HELLO WORLD EXAMPLES, and hello world examples. You will get the same results.

1. Searching for a specific phrase:

I want to search for something like HELLO WORLD, how can I look for the exact phrase, it is quite simple, enclose the phrase within inverted commas (i.e. “Phrase that has to be searched”) if we were searching for HELLO WORLD we will write “HELLO WORLD”.

1. Operator usage in searching

We often use the and operator, this is denoted by &. We might want to search for something, for example Hello world and good afternoon. We will type “HELLO WORLD” & “GOOD AFTERNOON”.

1. Definition search:

Type in define: type here the word of which you are seeking definition, this is often very useful when looking for the definition. It works perfectly fine with Google. Don’t know about other search engines.

PS note: If you want me to add any other search tip, please leave a comment about the tip. And the tip will be added.

As I closed my early discussion by saying go ahead and use e-mail, which server is the best. The major servers are as follows:

1. Hotmail/ Live mail
2. Yahoo mail
3. Gmail
4. Maktoob
5. Aim mail
6. Gawab
7. Zapak mail
8. Mail.com
9. Lycos mail
10. Rediff mail

There are definitely many others, since I don’t use all of them I have no idea about how is the service. But these are the ones that I have heard a about.  Closing the discussion, each server has its own benefits. Though for a normal user I would recommend going with any of the major mail servers that are high lightened in bold.

Note: If you know any other server, please let me know so that I can add it to the list.

See others on the net post them here. Try posting some details of the servers as well…

Hello every one,
I have started work on my website, being initiated with a simple poster being uploaded to the site. and this is the poster. i would be more than happy to hear comments and critics about the site.. please feel free to pass comments about the poster and don’t forget to mention any thing that can be included in the site. i would be more than happy to add some thing …
Have a good day.

Poster for my upcoming site

We are now living in the 21^st century, years after letters had been started to send messages to people across the globe, this normally took days, or even months depending on where the other person is located. Many methods were tried. Still it is a procedure used commonly, though with great help of companies such as TCS, FEDEX, etc. A letter now takes far less time as it used to take some years back. But it still takes time, for example a person in Pakistan sending a letter to a person in United Kingdom; it would take around 2 working days to send a letter where as it would have taken several days to send by normal post. Normally in a letter all the emotions, all the messages are sent to anywhere. It suited the earlier technology since the technology was not so advanced at that time.

Coming to the new era, we have Electronic mail (E-mail), which is fast, reliable, and efficient. I should say e-mail depend solely on the mail server that you are using. Mail servers is the company that you are using to send e-mails, Examples of mail servers can include Hotmail, Yahoo mail, Live mail, Gmail, etc. Getting back to the topic of our discussion, E-mail has revolutionized letter sending, it is almost the same thing, but there are a few MAJOR differences, that can be:

E-mail is normally soft copy that is an electronic or digital copy exists but that’s not the problem as an electronic copy can be easily printed using printers. E-mail normally takes a couple of minutes to be sent to the other person, regardless of the location from where the e-mail is being sent.

I would also like to add there are a lot of chances your personal data in the e-mails is sometimes misused by criminals such as hackers.  Hacking is the process when a person gains unauthorized access to a user’s computer, and manipulates the data wrongly. But there are methods that can be used to avoid hacking. The method that is used to break into a computer is normally through by breaking the password. The solution to this is having an alphanumeric password.  By saying this I mean a password such as lion is not strong. But a password such as li2on is medium in security and a password such as Li2On! is very strong. So keeping a strong password does help.  

Getting back to the topic, I would close the discussion by saying that e-mail is the new letter sending technique. So have a go at it without any hesitation.

We use computers every day; it’s an essential part of our life now. What are the things that we actually do using it? That’s a question one should ask him/her self. Majority of the people are not computer professionals. The things that are done by a normal user can include:

1. Surfing the net: Mostly people use computer to surf the net, chat, send e-mails, increase social networking by sites such as facebook, orkut, hi5, etc.
2. Watch movies, cartoons, animes, and series; most of the people use computers for solely entertainment purposes.
3. Gamers use computers to play games, games are played wither single player that is against the computer or against other players with the help of a fast internet connection.
4. To burn CD’s , DVD’s of personal data, music, etc. Burning refers to the process of copying Information from your hard disk drive to a CD/ DVD.
5. To create personal documents using software’s such as Ms-Office, Open Office, etc. Documents such as presentations, word proccesing files, spread sheets, webpages, etc.
6. To listen to music.
7. Reading news on the net.
8. Dowloading softwares, music, etc.
9. To participate in online discussion forum such as forums, blogs, etc.

As a user becomes professional he/she might get more experienced and use of a computer increases. A few things that a more experienced person such as a developer or designer can do using a computer:

1. Develop software’s using highly professional Programming languages such as Java, C++, C#, J#, etc. These languages have a lot to them. Allowing developers to develop highly qualified and nice software’s that is all the software’s that you are using in normal use, let it be for any purpose.
2. Develop standardized webpage’s for people using HTML, XHTML, DHTML, CSS, JSP, ASP, etc.
3. Design graphics using powerful editing software’s such as Adobe Photoshop, Corel draw, etc. This is often the case; all the art work you see in advertisements is done using this software’s.
4. To develop 3d animations, movies such as the Shrek, Madagascar, etc are made in software’s such as 3d studio max, Maya, etc.
5. To edit movies, videos or create custom movies. This is done in software’s such as Adobe premiere, after effects, Windows movie maker etc.
6. To engineer complicated equipments.

I am sure there are other uses of a computer that a normal user has but I could only think of these. So keep reading and I am sure you will learn a lot.