PTCL’s wireless broadband solution, PTCL Evo, offers faster connectivity than most DSL connections here in Pakistan can offer.
Here’s what the official website says:
Evo Wireless Broadband offers up to 3.1 Mbps downlink and up to 1.8Mbps uplink. Average speeds vary from 300Kbps to 500Kbps for downlink and 200 Kbps to 400Kbps for uplink. However it varies depending on the physical situation of the user and the network at a particular time.
As much as i love my wireless USB connection, I have to say that this is more than a little bending of the truth. Here’s what really should have been written:
Evo Wireless Broadband offers up to 3.1 Mbps downlink and up to 1.8Mbps uplink. However, unless you’re in a 1-2 km radius of the tower and unless you’re using the device late at night when there’s little congestion on the network, you won’t experience the full capabilities of the advertised speed and service. In fact, if you’re indoors, your connection speed will suffer even more.
Having said that, if you’re a frequent traveler AND your work requires you to be plugged in 24/7, Ptcl Evo is a fantastic device and a lifesaver.
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Filed under: Pakistan - 1 Comments
For the last two years I’ve recommended TigerTech as THE website hosting company to go to in every single discussion on webhosting.
2 years as a blogger and consultant is a long time, and I’m proud to say that given the chance, I would have started out with TigerTech in the first place instead of wasting time and money at various ‘good but sometimes unreliable and often clueless’ web hosting companies for 6 years.
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Filed under: Reviews - No Comments
How do you alleviate suffering on a local and global scale?
How do improve conditions – security, living standards, health care, education, economy – in your country and in other countries?
A fundamental principle of human society is our responsibility to our fellow man – to aid, collaborate and generally work together for the betterment of society at large. We’re hardwired – genetically or socially, that’s up to you – to make things better for ourselves and for the people around us.
There are two ways we do this:
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Filed under: Thinking Out Loud - 1 Comments
Citizen Journalism is the modern manifestation of an ancient truth – no matter how (or what) you tell people to think, they’ll always:
- have their own opinions and
- find the truth if you’re lying to them
The Information Age has made gaps in our knowledge and gaps in the knowledge pushed to us by traditional information channels glaringly obvious. Citizen journalism is an evolving and effective mechanism for both finding those gaps and filling them where possible.
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Filed under: Blogging - 1 Comments
What’s Important, What’s Not?
There’s a guy down my street who lives alone. One morning he woke up, checked his fridge and realised he was out of anything to eat, so he thought about getting out of his house, walking 5 minutes down to the market and getting food for himself.
But since it was early morning he was lazy, so he plopped down in front of his computer, and started going through his email and daily blog reading.
A couple of hours later, a low growling in his stomach reminded him of more pressing needs. He checked the time, and split between replying to someone’s comment on someone else’s blog and going out to get food, he decided to wait for lunch time instead.
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Filed under: Help Yourself - 2 Comments
This is a brief template for promoting your website using social media using strategies from my personal experience and from those veterans who average 2-3 front-page Diggs every week.
If you have any questions, let me know in the comments section and I’ll update this page accordingly. Please keep in mind that this template outlines the process / steps; if you’re looking for an in-depth explanation of what the key concepts mean, mention this in the comments and I’ll cater for that as well in future articles.
How to get as many social media votes as you need for your linkbait promotion:
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Filed under: Promotion - 2 Comments
The Pakistani online community are a curious bunch. The IRC / forum / gaming vets stay underground, leading true double lives on and off line. The lone entrepreneurs plough on relentlessly, wondering when they will meet a fellow Pakistani entrepreneur while at the same time choosing to work instead of reaching out to other souls.
The idealists – every society has those but in Pakistan they take center stage – are vociferously vocal, active and prominent but not technical nor money making experts. And there are those who spend hours and hours on social media apps but balk at the thought of spending 30 minutes a day writing a blog.
The Lahore Bloggers Meetup (what, you didn’t know?) was an interesting experience – and now that I’m back home (don’t worry Lahore, I’ll be back soon), here are some takeaways:
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Filed under: Blogging, Pakistan - 5 Comments
Defining ‘blogging’ is like explaining ‘God’ (without the likelihood of ensuing bloodshed) – every blogger and non-blogger has their own idea of what ‘blogging’ is (and every believer, non-believer and fence-rider has their own idea of what ‘God’ is), and they’re all wrong about both.
When you can’t agree on what something is, it’s time to agree on what something isn’t. Here I sense that we will agree – God is not man (and therefore should not be anthropomorphised with human attributes) and blogging is NOT writing.
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Filed under: Blogging, Thinking Out Loud - 1 Comments
Ever since I started working online, I’ve had trouble answering a very simple question – what do you do?
In university it was easy – you could tell them you were studying computer science and while you never wanted to write code again in your life, people would have no problems in attaching a convenient label to you (computers in this case).
But after university, things got complicated. Saying ‘I write for a living’ was exotic but invariably followed by the question ‘but what is your real job?’ or ‘when are you going to get a real job’. Apparently earning twice as much as my fellow graduates while working half as much was considered cheating and without a future. Maybe it was, but what did I know?
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Filed under: Work - 4 Comments
Thursday, 9 October 2008.
Another bomb went off in Islamabad today, this time hitting the Anti-Terrorism Wing in the Police Headquarters. Where was everyone? The other end of the city, providing security for a 2-day briefing session on Anti-Terrorism.
It would be a laughing matter if a bomb going off in Pakistan wasn’t such a common affair. Common enough that when the bomb went off this morning one of the primary sticking points wasn’t ‘who did it’ or why did this happen’, it was the size of the crater produced from the blast.
I was in a building roughly 500 meters away from the blast when it happened – but once we knew we were safe (windows shattered but the building was still standing) we peeked outside the window to see the smoke and in less than 2 minutes, we were back to work.
We’re not scared anymore.
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Filed under: Pakistan - 1 Comments
