Techronnati Update

QS Asian University Rankings 2009 – Philippines in Top 100

Posted: 14 Aug 2009 12:10 AM PDT

I was browsing the net for hours already when some striking yellow links flashed on my screen like i’ve never seen before. It was such a teaser. Later on i found out, it was the QS Asian University Rankings 2009. And because i was eager to witness who were on the top lists, i immediately followed the link and behold this list flashed on my screen.

Wow! Couldnt help but be happy just when i saw my alma mater on the list. How about yours? =)

I’ve been actually following such stories even during the Asian Week Magazine – days. And there is always this sense of pride and honor especially seeing your school/alma mater belonging to the top university rankings. If you haven’t figured what QS means then this might come in handy:

Q stands for Quacquarelli and S stands for Symonds.

QS was founded in 1990 by Wharton MBA, Nunzio Quacquarelli with offices in London and the US. Fellow director Matt Symonds and the Paris team joined in 1994. Today, QS operates globally from offices in: London, Paris, Singapore, Beijing, Tokyo, Sydney and Washington DC.

Today, Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) has become established as the world's leading network for top careers and education. It links graduate, MBA and executive communities around the world with recruiters and education providers, both physical and virtual. The mission is to enable motivated people around the world to fulfil their potential by fostering international mobility, educational achievement and career development.

Representing the Philippines in the top 100 are University of the Philippines, De La Salle University, and Ateneo de Manila University. University of Sto. Tomas, on the other hand, lies on the 144th spot. In the 2008 Global ranking, UP ranked #276, a big jump from the previous year’s #398 ranking.

Rankings per subject are as follows:

If you are living in Asia and are planning to advance to further studies then it would be beneficial and relevant if you take a glimpse of the top universities now in Asia. And according to QS.com, here are the top 10 Asian universities:

1.) University of Hong Kong;

2.)The Chinese University of Hong Kong;

3.) University of Tokyo;

4.) Hong Kong University of Science and Technology;

5.) Kyoto University;

6.) Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology;

7.) Seoul National University;

8.) Tokyo Institute of Technology; and

9.) National University of Singapore and Peking University

For the complete list of the rankings in Asia, Europe, Country level, Australia and the US, you may want to visit QS.com

The ranking weights are:

   Peer Review Score (40%)
 Recruiter Review (10%)
 International Faculty Score (5%)
 International Students Score (5%)
 Faculty/Student Score (20%)
 Citations/Faculty Score (20%).

As I am also taking time to review some of the universities offering masteral degree programs i.e. MBA, MSCS which i plan to take probably later this year, such publication is important as it serves as a measuring cup to come up with a wise decision when looking for a good school. And as Vice-Chancellor of Massey University, Professor Judith Kinnear says the THE-QS ranking is a "wonderful external acknowledgement of several University attributes, including the quality of its research, research training, teaching and employability." She says the rankings are a true measure of a university's ability to fly high internationally. I couldn’t help but agree.

Which Philippine Universities do you think is best for MBA Program ? Or for that matter anything related to Management? Any idea?

How to make WordPress Permalinks work in Localhost

Posted: 18 Mar 2009 07:26 PM PDT

The other day i was playing around on my local Wordpress installation when this error message appeared on my screen saying…

Not Found

The requested URL /Techronnati/wordpress/ibm-db2-cognos-tivoli-websphere-microsoft-google.html was not found on this server.

I was surprised. As a matter of fact, i was not expecting that to happen. Now you may probably ask, what the heck i was doing all along? You see, I was playing around on my wordpress’ permalinks structure, pretty much learning about Search Engine Optimization in the Wordpress CMS. And so without much idea, i delved in and tried to investigate one by one that’s causing this error. Later on, i found out that WAMP or any other similar localhost webservers that can be run from a local computer do not have mod_rewrite enabled by default. I also discovered that the AllowOverride directive is set to none by default WAMP server installation, causing Apache to ignore an .htaccess file. If this is the case, your WordPress installation might return a 404 error, stating post not found and you would only be able to access your posts via a default permalink structure. I.E. http://localhost/yourwebsitefolder/?p=2. Collecting some information i got, here’s what i did.

Using a text editor, open your httpd.conf file. In WAMP server, this file can be found in the \apache\conf directory
Sift for the following line of code in that file.

#LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so
Next, remove the # from the line as seen below to enable the module: Just for information, # symbol is actually a comment syntax for httpd.conf. So this should look like this.

LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so
Then, search for AllowOverride in this httpd.conf file until you come to a line similar of the following:

<Directory />
Options FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride none
Order deny,allow
Deny from all
</Directory>
Verify if AllowOverride All is indicated. Change “none” to “all” if found otherwise so this should look like this.

<Directory />
Options FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride All
Order deny,allow
Deny from all
</Directory>

Save the httpd.conf file and Restart your wamp server. (Click on the ‘moon’ in the icon tray and select Restart Services)
Login to your WordPress admin panel and set your custom permalink structure as desired. Then go view your site. Custom permalinks should now work on your localhost WAMP/XAMPP or other server.