The Content - (Published and Fixed on April 30, 2007)
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Review
Quick Take - Every Nepali Loves a bit of Politics!
Please read when you have time, warning! We have no clue what we will be writing here... Want to correct us ? goto the forum.
Political news and blogs dominate the entire year. (You knew that didn't you?) Sites are growing not like individual flower, but as the same weed.
Uniqueness of Nepali websites are not the things of the past. Highlight this or that, select copy, then paste and consider job done.
Insert some ads and get some clicks! If we were to describe the year 2006 in one word it would be - "CONFUSED", and in a sentence, "A Complete ignorance and stupidity" by both Nepali websites,
as well as our Government. Government (You Ask ?) Yeah, the King and everyone else. Full stop for now, for we need to think again!
Are you bored already ? Then, please go somewhere else or take a nerve pill! We are starting to dump all that is in our mind, for we get to do this once every year.
Imagine going through hundreds of sites and not a single one of them upto our expectation to make us happy. Isn't that same as reading our newspapers and blogs and hearing the promises
of our leaders and seeing weak results. Hope, this page suffers more than the entire Nepali Population, for it still does not compare to
the anxieties, frustrations and tiredness that all Nepalese have. But a hint of optimism exists with us - The future will be bright.
If you enjoy reading as much as we have enjoyed reviewing nepali websites, just sit back and relax. Don't be so pessimist or blame us for writing so much. Just Take a cup of tea (for heaven's sake, drink Nepali tea),
enjoy sipping, reading this, but please don't giggle too much or chock or spill your tea all over the keyboard! Here we go, speaking our mind...
Democracy for Nepal
Hot topic gets all the looks. Our news remained about Democracy, Human Rights, Press Freedom. King Is Out, one time a couple among the sexual minorities gets married,
a little Buddha is born, then goes missing, then comes back again, Maoists come to tables, Terai starts to burn, King loses power, Terai again seems to settle down,
and still on the date of writing this, it starts burning again. The word "Republic" comes to our tongue. There are celebrations of Republic which is a very long way to go from where we are now.
Election is coming or not coming, and now Nepal's PM expands cabinet. A job could have been done before Terai movements. Our leaders are perhaps old or tired or do not have the vision to see tomorrow.
This and that, bla and bla... see what we mean "CONFUSED" (We can now hear you laughing or giggling, but please give us something for this headache, would you please?
The Year 2006 is the year of uncertainty for Nepalese as well as it`s Web. Everything looks great "Republic", Nepal without King - but does all the population in Nepal think that way ?
What does the future hold for Nepal ? Will Republic bring more jobs, will it ensure ever lasting peace ? Will it continue to expand cabinets ? Will politicians ride
on rikshas to get into Singha Durbar or better ride a motor bike themselves ? Let's cut this chain of questions coming out of ordinary Nepalese but not the
politicians who have no clue how to take care Nepal. Bloggers are blogging, some for making money while others just for the sake of love for blogging. None have yet fully provided any clear answers to their readers on where Nepal is going.
How could they ? They don't have a clue where the country is going nor do their politicians.
That's Nepal since the beginning to the end of this year. Nepali Web is a reflection of what goes in the country. So the terms "CONFUSED and in DISMAY" accurately
describes our Nepali Web for the Year 2006.
Web Designers
The Boundaries of Nepal are for the Politicians. Nepali Web designers don't care. They can go anywhere and they have done it this year more.
The number of sites in their "Portfolio" is increasing for sites designed for overseas clients.
A positive sign that Information Technology itself can earn foreign revenue just like tourism does.
Government should provide tax incentives to IT sector, and we say "RIGHT NOW!" Who knows, in about ten years from now, Nepal's IT Takes Over Tourism ?
When you have finished reading the rest of this article, be sure to visit our Web directory - > Information Technology (IT) -> Web Designers in Nepal for a list of web designers.
Making Money
Who wants to create a site and just let it sit there on the table with no money ? Web is a virtual land.
Anyone can buy a land, it is free - just create a site. What's the value of your real estate ? Unique Contents, Sites designed for Users,
Sites getting repeated visitors, Sites linked well with other similar sites have more value. In 2006, we have seen more ads on our Nepali websites than any year in the history.
Nepali sites seem to favor "Google's Contextual Advertising Program" (Google Adsense) than other ads. One reason could be
that there is no fee involved in getting this service while other sites such as Yahoo requires sign up fee that many of us do not have.
In a nutshell, this is the year we see amazing ads on our websites, some with too much, some with just a few, some placed besides an image of a Nepali model who perhaps do not know
that her photo is making money that does not come to her! Year 2006 has made nepali sites crazy of Ads. There are sites which are simply created to place Ads then offer contents to users.
Just how much are they making ? Well, that's a very personal question, we did not bother interviewing anyone. If you like, hop into the building of kantipuronline.com and nepalnews.com.
"Enough to pay for hosting and a few extra bucks to enjoy dining some nights" for websites getting good traffic,
and "Enough to pay to webmasters and hosting cost, and a few more extra to pay to the models that they put on their website" for Nepali News Sites such as kantipuronline.com (now, that was our assumption, did you spill that tea, and if don't have it by now, go make two, drink one for us...)
Sites and Traffic
Anyone can guess this one. Nepali sites offering "Online News" have more traffic than any other, followed by our
website of the Tourism Board, then the sites offering "Entertainments" in the form of photos of Nepali models,
music downloads, music videos, and forum. Source: Alexa.com Such rankings have remained consistent throughout the years. But the trend might not remain the same. Looking at the popularity of Nepali blogs, and users
moving away from Nepali Entertainment Sites to YouTube.com and other such video sharing sites, those who are standing tall might be
squeezed down to the floor in the coming years. Will that happen in the year 2007 ? In 2008 ? In 2009 ?
Where will the traffic remain for Nepali websites ? It's a question to think about!
Website Plagiarism
Every year, Plagiarism of Nepali websites continues aggressively . Search engines are using newer technologies to refine their results as well as to punish sites offering
duplicate as well as copied contents. Some search engines now even look at the domain details such as expiration dates. Longer the
expiration date, better the message is - "Site might be living long, it might be offering unique contents, it might not be a SPAM". Not too far away from now,
search engines will surely find out when a particular content first appears on the internet and its source, then it will learn if that content has been used without permission, then it will
penalize the site that does not follow this rule. Go back to the "Making Money" and read it again before we finish this one. To make money from web, start providing "Your Own Contents"
what-ever that might be. Start building your home in the virtual space with your own time and money. Such sites might live longer than Plagiarized ones.
Great Nepali Domains Expired
How can such a good name for your business be gone ? Last year we passed a simple tip, yet many of our business companies have
failed to value the value of a long lasting domain name. If you keep on moving from one domain to another, you will not be doing very good with search results. Stick with one domain, make it live long.
God knows, what happened to those businessmen, perhaps they switched web designers, or web designers forgot to renew their domains,
or yes, again, God knows. Here are some great Nepali Domain Names, all gone.., well hijacked or bought
by someone else! Here they are... (Type those address and see where it takes you, but, remember : We are not responsible for the external contents.) We will list here only a few among the Nepali domain names that are gone...
- www.abovetheclouds.com
- www.adventurenepalvision
- www.coolnepal.com (a new site was born, but all its contents gone, the domain now taken by myktm.com)
- www.guransetea.com (a very nice name owned by the Guranse Tea Estate Pvt Ltd, now gone, they changed to guransetea.com.np which is extremely slow. If your clients are foreigners, put your contents on the .com not on com.np! We have received confirmation that sites hosted in .np are extremely slow to visitors outside of Nepal.
- www.allnepalhotels.com (what a great name for a directory of nepali hotels, now gone!)
- www.fishtail-lodge.com (a domain owned by the fishtail lodge of pokhara)
- www.hotelbluediamond.com
- www.Merosansar.com (what a name! but how could it go like that ?)
Blogs and Nepali Voices
Blogging provided Nepalese with freedom of speech when King took over Nepal and suppressed freedom of speech. Today, More and more of us
are into blogging. We can even write jokes about our King that was so impossible a year ago without a fear of getting killed or put in jail
Number of Nepali Female bloggers can be counted by fingers. Nepali Blogsphere still does not provide the voices of Nepalese, it is
the voices of Males only.
Tourism Award
This year, we added a small section called Tourism Award in order to recognize excellence in content and/or design, and encourage webmasters to even build better websites.
We reviewed sites in the category "Travel Agencies" and "Hotels". Sites were reviewed by visiting every single
website listed by Nepal Tourism Board and Hotel Association of Nepal. Sites that were designed for search engines got less of our
time then those designed for users. Here is a site that we would not even look at it. Title of our travel sites are like these : bla bla, bla bla bla, bla bla bla, bla bla bla bla (add about 50 to 100 more blas, well even more really, now substitute bla with Nepal related words such as trekking, holidays, etc, etc) In fact, just by looking at such title of a website was enough to close it`s window - let alone
looking at it's fancy design or content. We simply closed our eye and said, "Sorry, better luck next time!"
So make sure to see what we have picked in this award category. This tourism award will continue from this year onwards.
For those of you, who did not win this award, remember there is always next time. Improve your site, make them useful for users. Search Engines are slowly becoming Users but not just crawlers! So when you design a site for users, you are designing a site for both. Just remember that.
Predicting the unknown
If you are not familiar with this one, check-out our predictions for the year 2006 and tell us about our accuracy. We are so
sorry that not a single site was born when King Gave Up, a site could have been born just to devote to that topic. Also sorry that Nepali Web completely ignored the people who died in the war, a site did not get born to honor the fallen heros of our deadly war.
So, what does the future hold for Nepali web in 2007?
King MIGHT come back or will still be part of the Nepali Government, and there will be blogs writing about the King and they will be making more money than any other bloggers. We are afraid that the above prediction might actually be true, but the cross-over line wouldn't work if that happens! Remember, we don't change a thing on this page after it has been written.- At least a Blog by a Nepali Doctor, site authored in Nepali language and helping all of us who can not read/understand English. If not, hope the WEBMD.com becomes available in Nepali language, but
there is no need to wait for that big site to tap into Nepali web. Perhaps some of our web designers will take this topic on their hands not by copying stuff from elsewhere but by personal knowledge. We got great doctors in Kathmandu. They could do this easily, since they walk less than the doctors up in the villages and of course make more money.
- Association of Nepalese Webmasters ? Well, that did not happen last year, we are still optimistic that someone will lead this task.
- Nepalese Movie/Music Industry will take legal action against users uploading their contents without permission on sites such as YouTube.com. Why would you buy a Nepali movie when you can get entire Nepali Movies on YouTube for free ? Is this hurting our Nepali movie producers and/or the industry ? 100% !!
- This year, many travel sites have started showing Prices of Travel Packages. Two Thumbs Up To all the sites! Hiding price won't work. So perhaps, by
the end of this year, all of our travel sites will offer packages not only with pages of Itineraries, also a simple price tag besides it!
- As the websites of Tourism Related Companies still dominate our Nepali Web, they will start SPAMMING by creating blogs with posts entirely dumped from their website
- Definitely more Nepali blogs, but not all about politics. Political blogs have reached upto our necks.. just too many, really! We will see blogs NOT related to POLITICS and GOVERNMENT, but just created for the users who are screaming "Enough is Enough!"
So what kind of blogs will we see ? Perhaps blogs about jokes, humor, recipes, education, astrology, sports, school life, college life, or a story of your life!
- Entertainment sites will start removing models and put them on a separate site titled "Here are Real Nepalese"
- One online news, simple but better than the fancy ones, also not affiliated with any of the main-stream newspapers and their media. We are keeping our fingers crossed. If anyone is thinking about it - go ahead, start this project. Nepali News Sites have more traffic than any other.
So what are you waiting for ? Reading news in our online news sites are awfully distracting and leaves you with lots of questions unanswered. On reason could be that they want you to buy their newspaper instead.
So, come on you = > Someone ! a web designer, get a site running - but with your own news not that copy/paste style thing again!
Conglomerate such as VOITH, Golchha, Khetan could also take this task, use the human resource that you already have, just hire some
Nepali Journalists and create `The Online Nepali News Site' that users have been waiting for. Will that come this year ? Let's hope so.
- Nepali Importers / Exporters will kill their existing sites as the boring "Contact US" form appears when you click the
"Buy this product" button. They will actually use ebay.com or amazon.com to sell their stuff without having to spend anything.
- At least 100 Nepali Female Bloggers will come-out, some of them will make the Male Bloggers out of business, and some will further empower female bloggers to come out to better
represent the Nepali blogosphere as the voices of Nepalese, not just the voices of Males!
- After Nepal becomes Republic, (if that happens)
- A Repeat of The Last Year : A site fully keeping photos and names of who is dead in our war and answering to the question why he or she had to die? Offering full details of the investigations.
- Definitely local portals will come offering contents such as telephone directory, city guide, etc. From which city ? Biratnagar, Nepalgunj, Bhairahawa, and others
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