Web

Search engine fun!

Given rare, unique words on a web page, one would expect search engines could easily determine the top sites to list for the keywords.

My interest led me to these keywords: "aczoom home page".

Google search, MSN search, Ask Jeeves search, all list my home page as the first or second item in the search results. They also list other aczoom pages in their results, and adding more keywords can find links to key pages at my site.

Here's a picture of the Google results in January 2006.

Yahoo search results are strange - they do not list a single page hosted at aczoom.com for the above search! They do list numerous pages that link to aczoom.com, but not a single direct aczoom.com page is listed.

[Well, one page is listed, but that area is supposed to be off-limits to search engines, I guess robots.txt does not work as it is supposed to work.]

Here's a picture of the Yahoo results in January 2006.

I have mostly used Google for my searches, but recently got intrigued with the issue search engines have with handling redirects, and I use Drupal, so started checking out how search engines behaved. My conclusion is that if Yahoo can't get this simple query right, it diminishes my confidence in the credibilily of their search results. This is also technically interesting - how is Yahoo building their list, that would result in this situation?

I did try to help them along, submitted aczoom.com manually to Yahoo, but that was a while ago. Shouldn't have had to do that anyway - they have so many pages that link to aczoom.com, would that not lead them to spider aczoom.com itself?

Solar Energy for Lighting in India

Regions in India receive an abundance of sunlight - over 300 days on average in a year.

Solar Energy can be harnessed to provide lighting for millions of homes, and in the villages, using solar energy achieves two goals: it provides good quality, longer lasting light for the homeowner, and it helps reduce the burning of fossil fuels such as kerosene resulting in decreased green-house gas generation.

burning kerosene using solar energy

Grameen Surya Bijlee Foundation has initiated the
Dignity through Electricity Program, and has taken the lead in installing 200 systems in a village. GSBF is now looking for partners - NGOs or Individual Donors - to help spread solar energy lighting to many villages that today cannot afford to use anything other than kerosene for lighting.

Grameen Surya Bijlee Foundation (GSBF) is a non-profit Trust set-up to provide lighting and other amenities to the villages in India, using renewable energy sources.

For more information, including names and addresses of the trust management, please visit: suryabijlee.com.

Related articles:
From online edition of Indian Express Nov 27, 2005, Sunlit nights by Rituparna Bhuyan, Digital solar lamps designed by two IIT graduates have brought light to Bhairavnath Vasti in Maharashtra.

Moving to Drupal

After months at looking at various Content Management Systems, Blogging Tools, I've decided to move this site to Drupal.

All the links that most people use are available at the top of the left-sidebar on this page, those pages will continue to stay as they are.