It's about SeleraKita technology

While approaching the release of my culinary website for Indonesian market, SeleraKita, I want to deal some of the technology used by it. As SeleraKita, we position ourself as service provider for people who wants to search for their culinary needs in a fast manner. We aim to provide comprehensive database of food around Jakarta initially, and later on targeting the whole indonesia. We hope the support of Jakarta citizen who are food-savvy to enrich our database by writing articles for us. This information will go back to the citizen, and solely used to make our service better for the sake of our user.

By leveraging current technology, we try to build an environment where it can scale up good in the future. As the first consideration, our server is located in Singapore, which is the closest internet landing point to Indonesia. We have chosen a service provide in Singapore because of their competitive price, and their proven support. If the demand increase in the future, we planned to locate the server back to the home country, Indonesia. Having a close landing point means that selerakita page will load faster.

Internet speed in Indonesia is also a concern. Jakarta is well exposed by broadband connection, but there is still noticeable amount of dial up connection user. Shared connection in internet cafe also not work as fast as a private broadband connection. we aim to provide a website where user which use dial up can access within time window less than 20 seconds at max. Having this target, we implement server side archiving of content before being sent to your browser. By archiving the content, a smaller package can be sent to you, effecting on a faster load of the web page.

SeleraKita website is fully javascript driven, using professional packages to drive its functionality. The same packages have been used by Google, Apple, and NASA to power its website, which are Prototype and Scriptaculous library. The decision to use javascript is to evade the excessive usage of Flash content. Scriptaculous provides animation framework which give the user a rich user interface experience. We will keep on working iteratively to make the user experience better in SeleraKita website.

SeleraKita has a search engine capable to analyze the current trend on the market. The result of the search will be given in a sorted order from the most famous to less famous location. All thanks to KulinerKita algorithm which runs every day to analyze the data of our user behavior. The searchengine is implemented by using Stored Procedure in MySQL database to attain the highest query speed possible. The reason that stored procedure is chosen is because we can gain the favor in speed if we bring the search process closer to the heart of the operation, MySQL itself by using the built in SQL programming language. Through time, we will keep improving the performance of the search engine so it can be as blazing fast as Google.

To speed up the building process of the website, we leverage industry standard PHP framework, Symfony. By using Symfony, Selerakita can build its website within time span of 30 days. The coding is supported by Eclipse IDE using various plug in for its Database modelling, Clay, and script editor, YAML. Symfony make use of Propel, capable of generating a fast way to access the database while eliminating the header of writing too much SQL query.

In our core, we are on the same time service-oriented team as well as technological team. we tried to deliver the solution using the most efficient technology there is. And of course the aim is better user experience for our user. In the end, no matter how advance our technology and how much we have spent, our users are the ones we serve. Within our business model, we would like to invite the user to take part in the process of inventing SeleraKita website. We are welcome for any suggestion through our community forum in Facebook and Friendster. If we think that the community of the users have good idea, we will answer their challenge by implementing it.

Stay tune for the launch on 16 July!!!! Around that date, I will release the second iteration plan to make SeleraKita better, such as mobile version, and the rest is surprise... ;)

It's about Shaping Business - Business 101 Part 2

On my last entry in the series of Business 101, I have talked about how you should answer to idea that pops up in your head. The focus on this series will be about taking this idea one step further to reality, carve its first shape. This is comparable to the step taken by artisan who made sculpture. He will get a big lump of stone, which he carved roughly to represent the shape that he wants. That’s exactly what we are going to do here. Note that it is dangerous not to plan carefully in giving shape to your business. Fail to plan means plan to fail.

Let us start first with branding. Branding is notably the most important aspect for your business. The term branding is also famously known in marketing world. According to my experience, product with weak / no branding will evaporate rather quick from the customer’s mind. Branding is all about the impression that your business get from your customer. It’s not about how you position yourself in the market, but how your customer will look at you. Do you see the differences? While the one has focus with competitor, the other focus more on the customer. Take for example when you heard the name Google. The first impression that comes to your mind is “Search Engine”, and yet the best “Search Engine”. When I say “BMW”, the first impression that might come ( or at least come to my mind ) is “Luxury car”. That’s what it means by branding. I consider branding to be more abstract and you have to work your way to get that branding, like Google effort to employ thousands of PHD to make Google the best search engine on earth. I’m not at any way affiliated to Google, but make them as example simply of their disruptive and innovative way of thinking. Which I apply also to a project I’m currently working on: SeleraKita.com , The Indonesia’s first culinary search engine.

Then we have to look from our point of view, who is our market?? Determining market is important, unless you have a product that is so general that it can reach all kinds of people, take for example TV- set. Even if your product is only meant for a niche-market, it will still sell. If you don’t believe, you can ask Lamborghini how it’s car is made. While all other automobiles factory depends on robotic arms, Lamborghini assembled its car by using man-power. And it’s only sold for limited amount of each type of car and which is BTW really expensive!!! So it is clear which market does the Lamborghini serve. So make sure you know your market, or community!!! A good targeted market can make a community by itself, and they generate more revenue. This practice is applied successfully by Harley Davidson, where you can see such community around the motorcycle sprung up in different countries. With the advent of internet, there is more and more chance to target different market segment. Internet disparate everything. Internet makes organization easier because it doesn’t have the demographic boundary and physical presence. You could imagine how many kinds of opportunity available in the internet. This is marked with the birth of Web 2.0, the social web paradigm. Due to long discussion around Web 2.0, I will not cover it right now. I’ll make sure to cover about it in coming articles.

And of course no one will believe / buy your product if it doesn’t have unique selling position. There should be something unique which you can offer to your customer, even if it’s not your main product. You can offer a good service around your product, and you will notice that the customer will pledge their loyalty to you. And be careful with angry customer, because they can do more damage than you may think of. First of all, they can tell their associates that your product / service sucks. And if they are internet-savvy, they will post in their blog, Digg, Facebook, or even You Tube!!! The next thing you will know is that you might have lost small percentage of your sales. If you don’t react to this, it is guaranteed that you will lose more. The same thing had happened to Dell before, where a group of angry customer wrote blogs about their service desk’s bad quality. This group succeeded to stall the sales of Dell in America, that Dell see significant changes in certain region. Luckily, Dell reacts rather quick, and it manage to save itself on time. And this experience gave birth to Dell’s Idea Storm where customer can propose idea to Dell. The product of the community around Dell was the roll out of Dell computer with Linux operating system in it. With your uniqueness, you want to broadcast the message that you are different from the other player. Unique Selling Position means also Differentiation. The way you differentiate your brand determines also who your market is. If you have a Mac, I’m pretty sure that you understand how you differentiate yourself from PC/Windows user ;) An example of unique selling position is coming from our Japanese friend, Nintendo. Nintendo released the Nintendo Wii around 2 years ago, and it directly become a hit thanks to its revolutionary way of playing game by using movement.

Another point which is known in the marketing world is positioning. I will not bother to do this, because in my point of view, positioning is rather same with branding. Although some people states that it’s different…. One example that I can see about positioning is a rent-a-car company in North America. I can’t remember the name, but there are two major companies playing in this field. The second best make their second position in the market as a slogan. If I remember clearly, it sounds like this “Because we are second, we works harder to be the first” :D I think it’s really catchy, and quite funny. So if anyone has idea about the main difference between positioning and branding, they are welcome ;)

And for the final act, I would like to add my own theory about social responsibility. I have coined this term after reading book about the management of Starbuck, and the founding of Google. I want to deal the vision of both these companies. The vision of these companies are not to be the best bla bla bla whatever or for the money, but they are aiming to improve the quality of mankind. Vision of Starbuck is to make human life better. Starbuck paid good incentive to their Barista, and they give leadership lesson to the people working in their shop. They strive to make a better human out of their current employee. The same with Google, with their vision of making information freely available for mankind ( and organized!! ) So you see, neither of these companies want to be the best coffee seller, or the best search engine, but they aim for something higher. Something social that make mankind life better. I believe that company with such social responsibility is able to attract various different parties to be involved with them. Everyone would like to have their shares to make earth / mankind better, but someone has to press the ignition button. And as the topping of my theory, I have included this social responsibility theory into the project I’m currently working on. It is done not based on a financial cause, but more for my willingness to prosper my home-country, Indonesia. We would like to bring the innovation of technology to the Indonesian market, and to disrupt the current way of working so that the people and government will benefit more with IT and internet.

And my social responsibility statement closed this article about shaping up your business. As time goes on, I will prepare yet another interesting article for you, especially technology-savvy and entrepreneur people.

It's about Long Weekend

There is nothing more fun than a really long weekend. I just had a chance to have 4 days free, thanks to The Queen of The Netherlands :) Long live the queen!!!! It was a celebration to commemorate the birthday of the late queen. We called it "Koninginendag" here in The Netherlands, or literally translated as Queensday. The Queensday celebration was held on Thursday, and I was entitled to take a leave on Friday, the day after. So it was a vacation starting from Friday till Sunday.

First of all, I had planned a trip to Turkey for this long vacation. But since the financial situation makes people think twice to spend money, no one are interested to go to Turkey. So my friends thought something nice to do on this vacation. We had a picnic!!! we were having a picnic alongside a river nearby people's favorite meubel store, Ikea. In that area lies a big river surrounded by nature park. We went there by bicycle and it took almost 40 minutes :( Talking about far.....

Upon arriving on the riverside, we directly fill our empty stomach with home-made sushi. thanks to Alia AKA "Lili" and Lia for the sushi. it was delicious, although some of them are wrapped with aluminium foil, in place of dried seaweed ( Nori ). It's ok, I don't prepare anything anyway, so I don't complain.... :D We were finished around 6 PM. Afterwards, I went to the movie to watch "Wolverine", a movie about a character named Wolverine in X-Men.

Friday was ok. I spend half of the day preparing my website. It is a culinary platform specially designed for Indonesia. We are going to soft-launch on July, so the schedule is quite tight. A man gotta do when he gotta do.... I guess this is the main fundamental difference between men and women. Men are so result-oriented. Women are also, but to certain degree. They enjoy to discuss about the "steps" to reach the result, while men only wants to go to the result.

On Saturday, I went to a barbeque party at my friend place. We had everything prepared for the day. The menu are hamburger, salad, stay made of various things ranging from chicken meat, paprika, and mushrooms. It's all thanks to Ze Wen that prepared for all of them. Although small in size, Ze Wen is really good at cooking and cleaning. This is ZeWen preparing the barbeque.

We finished around 5 PM. After that, everyone gather at my house to play Wii. In my last post, I mentioned that I bought a Guiter Hero set for my Wii. It is a fun game, you really can enjoy it especially if you like to play game and to listen rock music.

It's about Easter Celebration

"Living as Christian means living in fullness"

That was one sentence I heard during an easter celebration last Monday in Den Bosch. Living in fullness means that no matter what happened in life and whatever comes next in life, we have to face it with utmost believe that God; no matter what will guide us. It is a fact that life is never smooth. If you by any chance has never encountered problem, thank God who has given you a life with fullness.

I had pretty rough life in the past, and it is just so different compared to where I am today. Last Monday was one of the days where such fulness was present. I went to this easter celebration which was being held by Catholic community from the whole Netherlands. On that day, at least 1000 people are gathering to celebrate Easter. People are coming from every corner of The Netherlands, and most of them are Indonesian.

The celebration takes place in a sporthall somewhere in the outskirt of Den Bosch. The celebration is lead by few pastor, which two of them are my acquintances, Pastor Bart and Pastor Clement. Upon arrival, we were directly welcomed by Miss Yvonne, the chairperson of Catholic community in Tilburg. To say it correctly, she was looking for me because I am in charge of the offering :D We were a bit late that day because we missed one bus stop.

The celebration opened by a group of tradional dancers which lead the way for the pastors. In this place, you can really feel the atmosphere of Indonesian culture. The praise song were sang by Catholic communities from town such as Tilburg, Amsterdam, and Den Haag. The photo below shows the group from Den Haag, which happens to be sitting close to my seat. I think they are the most spirited group from all of the others.

The celebration takes about 3 hours. It is quite long indeed :D There were speeches held for abou half an hour, and that was the most boring part on that day. Well, as we say in Indonesia, There are no horn which is not broken.... which means that nothing is perfect :) What comes next is the moment that we have all been waiting for, the lunch time!!!!

For the lunch, everyone got a lunchbox for free ( Then I thought..... Yipeeee!!! ) The lunchbox contains a balado egg ( Egg with Chili mix from Sumatra island ), Rendang ( smoothed beef cooked with coconut milk and spices ), and Sayur Buncis ( Sauted long bean with garlic ). There were also kids meal which is not spicy :) All in all, We had a great day on that day, and accompanied by great food for closure. I really can't expect better than that. I hope that there are more celebration follows after this..... :)

It's about Guitar Hero Jamming Night

It's been a while since last post I wrote myself. Few weeks back, I hold a fun event at my house. I called it Guitar Hero Jamming Night!!! As I have mentioned in my three previous post, I bought a guitar hero world tour set. It consists of a drum kit, guitar, and microphone. So to gave it a try and unleashed the rock star within :D, I invited my friends to play along. The result was constant singing and screaming starting from 19:30 until 23:00. I do respect my neighbour, and I'm sure they don't want to hear us howling like lone wolf after 23:00 :D

Although some of us howl like wolves, some of us do can sing pretty good. There were two ladies in the club, and God I thank you for letting them came. Without those ladies, it would be a Guys night T_T The guys are not really good at singing, but we totally rock using the instruments. You will soon see how good we actually are :D I usually play the guitar, but since I'm taking the video.... I'm not visible. The bald guy licking his joint is very good with guitar :D




The jamming night goes on not only for guitar hero. We spends some of the time playing Wii Sport, and guess which sport..... Yep it's Tennis :D See, some of us never play Wii before. So we need to show them one of the neat stuff in Wii, and that is the Tennis game. It was so funny looking how they try to play the tennis game like in reality. Some did it cool without so many moves because they know how to play it. Some did it in extraordinary way that I never see before :D Some did it like he know the game, but keep losing.... :(

In the end, we close the night by enjoying Dutch snacks, complimentary ( but not free ) of T'Dreefke snack bar. It's a small snack bar behind my house run by egyptians. I'm so lucky to live near such a place like this :D

Well, see you guys on the next post about another game night. Probably it will be Mario Kart Drifting night, but who knows....

It's about Apple FLOP in India - Soon China follow...

iPhone came to India with a bang. That bang lasted only for the night of the launch. Since its launch it has been weighed, tested and found wanting.

Here are the 7 reason why iPhone did not work in India.

• Cost is too high for a phone which offers no new features except the touch screen. Priced at Rs31, 000 for 8GB and Rs36,100 for 16GB most of the phone buyers felt it’s not worth it.
  

• There is no 3G network yet in India. Though the 3G auction process is complete and the spectrum is allocated it takes a while for the service providers like Airtel and Vodafone to roll 3G enabled services out. It could be in early 2009, which is a good 6 months away. So why pay for a service which cannot be used?

• People are waiting for Nokia N96. Seriously, most of my colleagues have said that Nokia N96 is a better phone and they will wait for it rather than going for iPhone. Sure the iPhone’s touch screen is good and its iPod music playing capability is awesome but I would rather not spend my money for just that. I want more. Besides, the brand value of Nokia in India is pretty strong and Apple has to work really hard to break that. iPhone did not give a compelling reason (other than the touch screen) for people to leave their N series phones.
  

• Hygiene factors are missing. Many features which are a given in a phone that costs you Rs4, 000 are missing in iPhone. I am not sure why they were but, video recording, cut paste, sms forwarding (how can you miss this) options are lacking.

• Consumers are waiting for the price to drop. This has been the case for a while now. I bought a 4GB iPod Nano for Rs.18, 000 in March 2006. I have checked backed into apple store after 6 months and for the same price they were selling 30GB iPod video. It is an apples and apples comparison and they did not match. So, I think apple will cut its prices and people are waiting for that.

• Alternative routes to acquire the phone at a cheaper price. iPhone crazed are the people who mostly work with technology. They usually know what the going rate of iPhone overseas is. So, it is not hard to get an iPhone 2G for $200 and unlock it for Rs. 1000 here in India. I am not sure if this route will work for 3G. Since there is no difference between 3G and 2G right now in India this would be a steal. Even the rising dollar would not be a factor here.
  

• Apple’s monopoly did not go well with Indians. Apple has ingenuously designed products and equally ingenuous monopoly. Indian consumers do not want contracts. They would like to change phones, change numbers whenever they want. They do not want to be married to a number and a phone. Besides, when you buy a phone at such an exorbitant price, how can you justify the fact that you cannot change your phone for a different number or a different vendor? I am finding it hard to justify. Only Steve Jobs can answer that but until then Nokia might rule the roost.
  

iPhone in India has a long way to go. Unless the prices are slashed and apple ties up with other GSM service providers it might never take off. We just have to wait and see if rolling of 3G services might give it a second life. A price of Rs. 20,000 would find more takers at least for the 8GB version.

Taken from trak.in article.

This is why a company / a product / a service should cater to the local need of their mass

It's about 3rd World Country - Indonesia Learn 2009

Indonesia and any third world country should learn from the experience of one village in India called Tilonia. First appearances can be deceptive. Tilonia, a remote village in the Ajmer district of Rajasthan, looks like its not changed in the last 100 years. But spend some time there and you will realize why this tiny village has made its mark on the world map. The village is home to the Social Work and Research Center and the Barefoot College founder Sanjit Roy also known as Bunker Roy.

Set up in 1972 the Barefoot College believes that solutions to rural problems lie within the community and trains people who often have had no or very little formal education and teach them skills through the process of learning by doing. The college does not give out any paper degree or qualification after the course.

It has a campus spread over 80,000 square feet that has residences, a guest house, a library, dining room, meeting halls, an open air theatre, an administrative block, a small hospital, pathological laboratory, teacher’s training unit, water testing laboratory, a Post Office, STD/ISD call booth, a Craft Shop and Development Centre, an Internet cafe, a puppet workshop, an audio visual unit, a screen printing press, a dormitory for residential trainees and a 700,000 litre rainwater harvesting tank.

The village and the college are electrified through solar panels designed and manufactured by the villagers. The college serves over 1,25,000 villagers in the district.
“When I went into a village in 1967, I dint know what I was going in for. But I said if I don’t do it now I’ll never do it. People didn’t think I would last. Even I didn’t think I would last,” says Bunker Roy.

Within two years the villages in the block were electrified. ”After coming here I feel it’s not necessary to be educated. Even an illiterate person can learn to test and assemble solar panels,” says Kailash who makes solar panels in Tilonia.

He is a class eight drop out, who initially came to Tilonia from a neighbouring village to learn how to make circuits and electrify his village. He now trains many African women on how to make intricate solar circuits for products and has helped electrify villages around Tilonia.

After being replicated elsewhere in Rajasthan, the Tilonia model has now spread to 10 countries across Africa, Asia and Latin America. Engineers trained by the Barefoot College have solar electrified over 200 communities in India, bringing light to over 80,000 people. And that is not all. The village also trains women to make solar cookers and has 25 to 30 solar cookers made by women.




Taken from www.livemint.com
Part of plan for future initiative "Indonesia Learn 2009"

It's about Spiderman

BANGKOK - A Thai firefighter dressed as Spider-Man to rescue an autistic boy who climbed onto a third-floor balcony and dangled his legs over the side because he was nervous on his first day of school.

Firefighter Somchai Yoosabai was called in after the 11-year-old boy's teachers and mother failed to coax him off the ledge on Monday, he said in a telephone interview Wednesday.

"He was nervous about the first day at school, and he was asking for his mother," Somchai said. "He cried and refused to let any of us get close to him."

Overhearing a conversation between the boy's mother and his teachers about his love for comics and superheroes, Somchai rushed back to the fire station to change into a Spider-Man costume before swinging into action.

"I told him Spider-Man is here to save you. No monster will hurt you now," Somchai said. "Then I told him to walk slowly toward me. I was very nervous that he might have slipped if he got too excited and ran."

Somchai, who keeps costume of Spider-Man and a Japanese superhero Ultraman to liven up fire drills at schools, said the teary-eyed boy broke into a smile and started walking into his arms.

Taken from AP, Associated Press news...

It's about Having Fun part 2

It's been a while since I post an update to my blog. This is because I have been busy with many things lately. One is caused by my work. For few previous weeks, we have to perform major reorganization in our client, so it took most of my attention and time. In the end, it works fine in general. There is still room for improvement though. Well, at least we know now how to do it well and expecting the reorganization for other department.

Other things that taking my attention is the way I'm having fun lately. I notice that I play game a lot these days. My weekend is mostly comprised of going out to to town in the afternoon, and playing game in the evening. That way I still keep the balance of socialized life :)

I just bought a Nintendo Wii with 2 cool games ( I consider cool!!! ). One is the House Of the Dead Overkill, an arcade shooting game made by SEGA. It's a famous shooting game where it's first came out on 1997 or 1998. The current release of House Of the Dead series has entirely different format. The game has a character of Quentin Tarantino game, with a lot of blood, rude language, and cut scene-like movie. It's resemble close to a movie called Planet Terror. I bought the hand cannon package with the Game DVD. Take a look the packaging.

Beside this game, I also bought a set of Guitar Hero World Tour band package. God, it cost me a lot of money, but it's worth to buy. I enjoy playing music games. It's relaxing as if you are playing real instrument.

The band package comes with a drum set, a wireless guitar, a microphone, and the Gutar Hero DVD. I was not feeling really well on the day when the band package arrived. So I have to put it in my living room, waiting to play with it if I'm feeling well.

Having feeling well, I want to try the new toy that I just buy. I try to play with the drum set, and I must admit it feel really good. It has the feeling like you are playing with an electric drum. So kudos for the producer of Guitar Hero. The game contains almost 80 songs from famous band in the world, like for example:

• Metallica
• R.E.M
• System of a Down
• Van Halen
• Black Sabbath
• The Rasmus
• Beastie Boys
  

And some famous singer that we know such as Michael Jackson and Ozzy Osborne. Below you can see the picture of my latest collection :D

I let my friend to record the video where I play the guitar while she sings. She was embarassed when I asked her to upload the video to youtube :) So instead of embarassing myself, I will show you the trailer of Gutar Hero World Tour ;)

It's about Singapura

Singapura oh Singapura...

Pretty island sets in the sea

Singapura oh Singapura...

Pretty flower blooms for you and for me

This is a piece of song about Singapura. I visited Singapura few months a go, and it has changed quite a lot since my last visit 4 years a go. For people who wants to travel to Asia, but doesn't have a lot of time, you can visit Singapura. For me, Singapura is a place where cultures from Asian's continent merge with each other. There you can experience a lot of cultural diversity and commodity. Basically, you can found these following cultures: Chineese, India, Malay, Peranakan. Peranakan is a mix culture between chineese and malay. This culture comes from the Chineese people that are born and grown in a malay environment, known also as "Straits Chineese".

During my stay for 5 days, I have taste almost all cultures in Singapura, thanks to my friend Tety Intan Sari for her companionship. At morning we already began scouring the town for continental breakfast. Afternoon is the time to visit different places in town, and tourism sightseeing. In the evening, we prepare our stomach for Singapore's gastronomical delight. I have here a video which shows you a little bit about Singapura:

And a visit to a country like Singapura will not be complete without knowing about its political situation. Its famously known as "fine city" where even bubble gum is forbidden :D

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singapore

I happen to found a funny video made by Singaporean that shows a bit about Singapura's political situation

It's about mayonaise jar

When things in your life seem, Almost too much to handle,When 24 Hours in a day is not enough,Remember the mayonnaise jar and 2 cups of coffee.A professor stood before his philosophy class And had some items in front of him.When the class began, wordlessly,He picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jarAnd proceeded to fill it with golf balls.He then asked the students, If the jar was full.They agreed that it was.

The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and pouredthem into the jar. He shook the jar lightly.The pebbles rolled into the open Areas between the golf balls.He then asked The students againIf the jar was full.. They agreed it was.The professor next picked up a box of sand And poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else.He asked once more if the jar was full. The students respondedWith an unanimous 'yes.'The professor then produced Two cups of coffee from under the tableAnd poured the entire contents Into the jar, effectivelyFilling the Empty space between the sand.The students laughed.

'Now,' said the professor, As the laughter subsided,'I want you to recognize that This jar represents your life.The golf balls are the important things - God, family,children, health, Friends, and Favorite passions Things that if everything else was lost And only they remained, Your life would still be full.The pebbles are the other things that matter Like your job, house, and car.

The sand is everything else --The small stuff.'If you put the sand into the jar first,' He continued,'there is no room for The pebbles or the golf balls.The same goes for life.If you spend all your time And energy on the small stuff,You will never have room for The things that areImportant to you.

So...Pay attention to the things That are critical to your happiness.Play With your children.Take time to get medical checkups.Take your partner out to dinner.There will always be time To clean the house and fix the disposal.'Take care of the golf balls first --The things that really matter.Set your priorities. The rest is just sand.

'One of the students raised her handAnd inquired what the coffee represented.The professor smiled.'I'm glad you asked'.It just goes to show you that no matter how full your life may seem,there's always room for A couple of cups of coffee with a friend.'Please share this with other "Golf Balls"

It's about Idea - Business 101 part 1

I consider ideas as God's gift to human. We human have the capability to dream. And this dream in turns gives birth to idea. We encounter ideas in our daily life. The most fundamental ideas that we experience everyday are the way we solveproblems. We need idea to go through daily problem, and from idea we can also make something out of it. Great idea canbe a beginning of good business. Innovative idea can be the beginning of innovative business. In my point of view,innovative business has the advantage of gaining fast market share. Take for example Apple's IPod. When it was first introduced, there are no MP3 player with such sleek design like IPod. In no time at all, millions of IPod were sold world-wide.

My friend told me a story once about how he started a fitness centre. He has this creative idea to put high tech equipment in his fitness centre. The intention of this equipment is not for eye-candy, but rather to assist people better in their training program. According to him, there are three things people need in order to succeed in making business. number one is IDEA itself, number two is money, and number three is marketing. All of these three aspects are unseparated from each other.money and marketing without idea would means burning all your bucks. the same with idea and marketing without money, your idea will not take off from the ground.

So everytime you have idea for a good business, always follow it by assessing the financial aspect. There are a lot of ways to get money for your business, for example from family, bank loan, and investors. Bur rather than looking for investors first, you should before hand know your financial needs. Then know your target. Target determines the way you do marketing.If you do a good assessment of your target, it can make a LOT of difference on your advertisement budget. For example,if you have an online webshop, you will not consider to advertise in the television for start, eventhough you have big startup capital. Instead, you can do your advertisement in the web since people in the web is your target market. For consumer electronic, it is inevitable to do TV advertisement because your target are as much people as you can get.

So, that was basically the beginning of business in my opinion. This blog entry will follow few next coming articles of business 101.It will be more focused on web business and combined with few insight on non-web business. The next article will be about how you give shape to your business and bring them into reality ;)

It's about Having Dream

All of you will be agree that life is not sweet without a dream. It is comparable with dreaming while you are sleeping. When you don't dream, you still sleep well, but it feels better in the morning by having sweet dream. In the course of my life, I found out that I always try to fulfill my dream. My dream never stay the same.

When I was a child, I really like to read this Japanese Manga called Astro Boy. Astro boy is a robot figure which is created on the 22nd century. The story of the manga goes about the fight between Astro boy against evil people, robots, and aliens. The advance of the technology in the manga mesmerize me, that I decided to become a Robotic Scientist. It's easy to say for 10 years old boy :D

During high school, I found a new dream again, to become a 3D artist. I played video game a lot back then. One of my favorite RPG game is Final Fantasy. I even started to study 3D Studio MAX myself. Having realized that it's not that easy, I seek help to my friend. I happen to know this friend of mine who is really good at 3D Studio Max. At his junior grade, he already made his first CG movie :D It happens that his dream is to be a CG artist, and he still faithfully holds his dream. While improving his CG skill, he tried to make his living by becoming Manga artist. He just showed me one chapter of his manga to me yesterday, and I'm quite impressed... ;) So for you who read my blog, you can have the two pages sneak preview :D

Nice Huh!!! I feel really happy to know someone like him, who can hold his dream until now. It's just like he is being loyal to one purpose till the end. While I serve more than one purpose... :D

I found myself another dream again on my university period, to be a game programmer. I found out that I'm way better in programming than in 3D graphic. To be a 3D artist, you need an artistic skill, which I'm lacking of :( Having able to master programming really fast, I divert my course to game programming. I train myself to program game. I start first by programming 2D game. My first experience was my entry for Sony Ericsson Game Competition which brings me top 20 position in the world ;) Having mastered 2D, I move to 3D game programming. I have worked once for period of 6 months with a game studio called Playlogic in The Netherlands. Here, I made my first debut on console game, Xyanide Resurrection. I was in charge of programming some of the enemy movement. It was a small fry job... but I'm really happy to be given this chance. It was a good experience though. Gaming is hard industry. Full of overtime, and high learning curve. It's really a place of survival only for the fittest.

Yet I found know myself on the junction of my life again. For me, I consider game programming takes too much of my personal time. I would like to enjoy my life, going out with my friend, chill out after 17:00. I don't see myself having that luxury if I put my career on game industry. You can't bite more than you can chew. So here I am know pursuing my career in Software Engineering. I believe that I got the skill needed and the correct attitude for this choice. I do have big dream in this so called software world. My biggest dream will be to make quality improvement for the standard of living in third world country by utilizing Information Technology. Such program that aligned well with my ideal is for example OLPC program ( One Laptop Per Child). Currently, I am managing an internet startup to provide search engine service for culinary purpose, selerakita.com. This search engine is meant initially for Indonesian market, and will be our main innovative breakthrough for IT world in Indonesia. It features the newest Web 2.0 technology along with so called New-Wave advertisement medium :) SeleraKita site will be launched on June,1st 2009. Till then, I hope that you all can pray for our success. It's always about money in the end, but our vision is not making money. It's about increasing Indonesia's technology landscape by bringing in new way of thinking to the IT market.

It's about Having Fun 101 for Engineer

The time is now indicating 21:30. I just finished updating my Facebook account, answering my friend's mail, commenting on people status and stuffs :D There is a friend of mine who just joined facebook, and we ( me and my friends in Facebook ) are really making fun of her. Not in bad way though, it's just the way we express that we are happy that she finally has Facebook. I have been busy with Facebook around half an hour, and I gotta say that Facebook put a smile on my face. It helps you to connect with all your friends no matter where they are.

Two hours a go, I was still sitting in front of my laptop, diving through documentation for a PHP framework called Symfony. When the clock hits 20:00, I told myself to quit working and have a nice bath. I always took a bath whenever my head is heating up from all my work. A nice warm bath do really help!! It lets you relax your muscle, and after that you can enjoy your evening without thinking about work anymore. So what is my work then exactly... I'm starting this website called selerakita.com which is a food search engine for Indonesia. I currently managing the website technical part. On top of that, I work as a consultant for Capgemini.

With all this loads of work, one do need to have fun. Everyone should be agree with this statement ;) No one can live without having fun. My receipes for having fun are simple, do the things you like most!!! So for example I like to play games, so I do make time to play my Nintendo DS. Having a nice dinner is also irreplaceable, especially with a nice girl. It's always a pity to know that time flies so fast when you are enjoying the moment. Food is important for your life!!! Then you need to communicate. Communicating with people can relieve your fatigueness. Talk to your family or to your friend whenever you feel stressed. Don't talk about your depression, but instead try to ask how they are, and what are they up to in lifes. Problems is part of your life, you just need to face it. And if you are a man, you should stand strong enough to solve your problem. If you are a woman, then you are welcome to talk about your problem ;) It's just how woman is.... by talking about their problem, it gives them relieveness, and that is on the contrary for men.

So life's just once, DO the most of it, and ENJOY it!!!

It's about Valentine Days...

First of all, happy valentine for everyone who read this blog, especially female ones :) There is nothing special for valentine this year, except that I found something interesting in the chocolate shop. I bought some chocolates for my friends few days a go, and I saw this nice marsepaine rose. I bought that marsepaine rose and gave that to my best friends, since I'm currently not dating anyone. If anyone of you who read this aare single, you can leave your name and phone number on the comment ;) If you are curious about the marsepaine, you can see the picture below

What I found really interesting is that it actually looks like rose. When I gave it, they even thought it was a real flower. The history of valentine day is actually quite sad. Valentine was a name of a priest from ancient Rome time. That time, the Roman empire were banning marriage because soldiers which are married never stay long in the battlefield.

Valentine stood up to this decree, and secretly uniting people in a holy matrimony. Later on, Valentine got caught for his indigeous action and banished to jail. He got a death penalty for his atrocieous act. During his stay in prison waiting for execution time, he often saw the daughter of the jail master. The daughter is blind. The legend told that Valentine miraculously cure the jail master's daughter from blindness, and later on they were falling in love. On the day of the execution, Valentine asked for a pen and paper, then signed a farewell message for her "From your Valentine".

That's more or less the story about Valentine's day. I can't say if it's real or not, Do you????

It's About Masked Rider

Does anyone here know what a masked rider is?? Masked Rider is a kind of superhero made in Japan. Its like a person which can transform into super human form. I'm fond off this kind of things since I was a child. and now, I still put interest on it, although not as much as it was. Back then, I even remember how this human can turn ( translated in Japan "Henshin" ) into super human form by doing some series of movements. I usually practice that movement :D

Enough with the nostalgic moment... Yesterday I stumbled accross a spin off of masked rider. Usually you can consider masked rider as cool, and their henshin style is always superb. For you who never see masked rider, you can watch this video below for example.

  

Thos two are my favorites, the first one is Kamen Rider Faiz, and the second one is Kamen Rider Kabuto. Kamen Rider is how people called Masked Rider in Japan. Kamen means Masked. Yesterday, I stumbled accross a spin-off of Kamen Rider which made by a Japaneese TV. The way he henshin is really funny. This guy used Wine bottle to transform himself. And the belt is in form of bottle corkscrew :D It's so funny that I feel want to share this kamen rider with all of you. The name of this kamen rider is Kamen Rider G.



This is realy hilarious. I tought at first, it was a commercial made by beer company. But it actually a one episode kamen rider which made by the TV station to commemorate it's 50 th birthday. It is lame, but it's interesting to see :D

It's about Multi Touch Interface... (Again)

Yesterday, my friend at the office told me that Microsoft Surface finally being shown in our company. Too bad I wasn't there to see the things. But there is always tomorrow, so I can still check it out. Meanwhile, my interest on multi touch interface grow bigger each day. I still can't comprehend why that damn thing from Microsoft cost 15,000 dollars !@$%$^$^!

There are a lot of way to make this table yourself, basically you have to be able to do basic electronic things such as reading wiring schema, do some carpenter skills such as sawing table, and do programming stuff. In which luckily I can do all of them :D

Basically, multi touch table is just a screen being projected with a beamer, and behind it lies array of Infra red lights. The infra red lights is invisible for human eyes, so you will not notice anything. under the table, we put a camera which alredy covered with IR-pass filter. Then everytime your hand touch the screen, it will recognize the skin contact point as a point, or in multi touch term "blob". For a small table, one camera would be sufficient, but for larger table, you will need to place more cameras.

A library to develop a multi touch software also exist already. It's called touchlib. You can see touchlib in following site:

http://www.nuigroup.com/touchlib

As this technology is getting more and more mature, many people have thinking different ways to utilize this table. There are people that can use this table as a consulting means. It is indeed made for consultant to fulfill their consultancy needs!! Microsoft is trying to target a larger audience in areas such as hotel, banking, retail, restaurant, and consumer electronics. But seen the price given by Microsoft, there will be no one interested to use it, at least until the price drops, which are predicted in 2010. But hey, if you want it, you can buy it in credit though :D

It's about Indonesia Tourism

This morning when I woke up, I stumbled upon a video in youtube titled "Welcome To Beijing". I guess this is a promotion video used by Beijing in the time of Beijing Olympics 2008. "Welcome to Beijing" literally translated in Chinese language is "Beijing Huang yi ni" which you will heard throughout the video. While hearing it, I can get a strong feeling of Beijing inviting people to come and enjoy the culture and heritage of the land. Diverse people being shown in the video, and places, with a nice jingle song. You can see the video below, it's quite long though... :)



Having seen about this, I thought about Indonesia. Do Indonesia have such an AD??? Searching a bit, I found the a video about Indonesia that runs around 9 minutes, and It's really beautiful. The slogan of Indonesia Tourism 2008 is "Ultimate in Diversity". If you are curious, you can watch the video here:



So Indonesia also have a campaign to visit the country, but why the tourism of Indonesia is not going so well.... The only places where we see a lot of foreigner is only Bali. We rarely see one in other island such as Java and Sumatra. I live in a big city in Central Java, Semarang. So If the foreign tourism is blooming, I should notice that there are more foreigner to be seen in the city, but the fact it's not. Perhaps Indonesia has no budget to advertise itself abroad. Having living in the Netherlands for 5 years, I never see for even once, a TV ad about Indonesia, while I have seen ad for Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand for many times. Seriously, Indonesia is a beautiful country. It worth a visit because it's different from the rest of Asian country. It's not like China, not like Thailand, not like Malaysia. Indonesia is a culture heritage on its own that dated back to the 5th centruy.

Goverment should do something to increase exposure of Indonesia in outside world, and also increase the information infrastructure so foreign tourist can easily found its way in Indonesia. What makes me sad is the 1 minute TV ad about Indonesia, which is a cuts from the 9 minutes version. It shows nothing at all about the diversities. In place of that, it shows mostly about how modern Indonesia nowadays... that's pretty sad in my opinion. Foreign tourist is not interested on how modern we are now, but how cultural we are. You can see the ad here:

It's about YES!!!

Tonight, I just finish went out with my friends. We watched a movie called YES MAN!!! starred by Jim Carrey. This movie is a tale about a man that always say no to all possibilities in his life. He said no everytime his friends asking him to go out, his neighbour asking for help, or people in the street offering him something. His life changes when he follows a YES seminar, where YES is the new NO. He must say YES to everything that comes to him, whether he wants it or not and live with the consequences. It turns out that his life has turned upside down. He changes from a boring straight guy to a passionate spontaneous one. It's really good movie which I really recommend because it's so funny. I have a hard time not to laugh while watching this movie.

While watching this movie, I remember something about this yes thing. I read somewhere in a book that as a person, you must have a yes mentality. That doesn't necessarily means that you must always say "yes" to everything that comes to you. But be someone that is more spontaneous, try new things. If you don't like it than don't do it anymore. Live is only once and it's worth a living.

If you don't believe me that yes mentality is useful for you, I have a small exercise for you. You can try to close your eyes and say "no" for 10 times now in your heart. Now compare with you saying "yes" for 10 times in your heart. There must be a difference between those two, and you know which one feels better ;)

So What I want to say is, be a YES man!! embrace the future, embrace the opportunity. You don't know what waits you in the end, so it might better to take the chance.

I'm Yours

By looking at the title, someone who knows Jason Mraz might think to his song. I admit that Jason Mraz song is really nice. Back on my vacation period in Indonesia, I sang it a lot in the karaoke bar. I'm not as good as him, but quite close ;)

There is a song with the same title as Jason Mraz's I'm yours, its called "Aku Milikmu". "Aku Milikmu" is the literal translation of I'm Yours in Indonesian language. It's really nice song from Iwan Fals, a famous Indonesias ballad singer. He is now considered as legendary figure in Indonesia's music industry.

I was planning to translate the song for you who don't speak Indonesia... but I decided not to. This song is also enjoyable without knowing the meaning of the lyrics. Just watch the video, let your imagination flows, feel the color of the music :)





"When I'm gone away, just wait for me faithfully, and I will be there for you"

It's about my posting

Enough of Techy stuff, after this will be more down to earth stuff. Don't forget to check my blog daily, who knows it might appear tomorrow ;)

It's about Sony Walkman

During one of my holiday trip, I did a transit at Singapore's Changi airport. In the airport, I have a chance to going around and I happen to pass by a Sony shop. Here I see the normal array of Sony's product such as Vaio laptop, Handycam, SLR, camera. What really caught my attention was the showcase of Sony Walkman products. Yep, it's product in plural. Sony has been known for its breakthrough on portable audio player with Walkman. You can consider Walkman as IPod of the past.

Nowadays, people only use Ipod. even I have IPod. But by looking at Sony walkman products, I begin to realize that Sony is trying to go head on head with Apple. I have to admit that IPod design is not so interesting anymore,t he same circular slider, the same style. But Sony Walkman has a lot of varieties of design. Take a look at this small one. this walkman is thin and small

And also these two, one with big screen made for video, and one looks like a USB drive. The one like USB drive in my opinion is suitable for girl.

I think Sony did quite good job with the Walkman. In Taiwan, Sony even made a love song which is used as advertisement for Walkman. Sony hired two famous moviestar which are idolized by the youth in Taiwan. Here is the video, the title is "Wo hui hen ai ni" which means "I really love you"

Actually, Sony has the ability to go head to head with Apple. What they did with the commercial was a huge success. Here, we can see one of the marketing strategy where we tried to embrace the society by using medium which is familiar for them. Taiwanese youth always like to listen to love songs. It can be seen by the amount of such love songs produced every year. By understanding the local situation of specific country, Sony can boost sales in that specific country. What they need to do is act upon it. Maybe Sony can learn from Coke and their effort to commercialize Coca-Cola Zero around the world. Just like KFC and McDonald, each of their restaurants in the whole world are customized according to local taste. McDonald sell Fried Chicken in Indonesia, while KFC sells porridge in China. I don't need to tell the CEO of Sony about this but approaching the audience/customer with local contents is the receipt of success for company that established worldwide.

It's about This Hi-tech table

Today, I heard that my company just got a Microsoft Surface. Well, having heard about its feat for a long time, I'm interested to see what this "thing" can do. The table will be shown on public starting around next week. For you who is curious, the video below will show what A Microsoft Surface can do




So, having seen this, we all know that there is huge possibilities that this technology can be used for business solution. One of the good example is demonstrated by AT&T retail stores. Here you can see that the table is used as information table for customers





Now, I think that there is more possibilities where this table can be used. Imagine a restaurant where all the table is made from this surface technology, it would be really awesome. Or a narrowcasting point in a department store where people can interact with it. Not just interact when people touch it, but actually attracting people attention by using moving pictures. The moving pictures can be triggered if someone passing the surface.

The real problem is that this table cost 12000 euro. And even worse, the developer version cost 14000 euro. I guess the developer one has on-device debugging enabled. Still, the price is what makes it really ridiculous to buy. 12000 euro and you haven't calculate the custom software development for that table. Anyway, I'm looking forward to see the SDK of that table.

Now, What if we can produce a table like that with lower price?????? Interesting isn't it ;)
In fact, there is already such table which made with far more lower cost. And it has been proven to work. The problem is, the size of this "cheap" tehnology is not as small and as compact as the Microsoft Surface.

Yep, that's the guy, Jeff Han. He starts his own company that specialized in multi touch interfacing www.perceptivepixel.com

When calculated roughly, the cost of developing that table is around 1000 euro. This is just a rough estimate. So having bought the paper of Jeff Han, I plan to realize this table, and test myself how the "multi touch interface" can change the way we interact with computer. Nevertheless, by experimenting with new innovative technology, I'm sure that there will be new application for business solution.

It's about blogging

Kudos for the first entry of this blog, and I hope more entry will follow :D
I have been trying to start blogging for a long time, but there is always lack of time to make it a reality. After last vacation period, I have thought to commit some of my time to write blog and here it is. Like the title suggest, I like to discuss about many things that revolve around my life, whether it's about work, hobby, romance, or interest point. Nevertheless, by writing this blog, I invite people to share my mind. Blog can be seen as a medium that connects people. By having this in mind, I hope this blog can strengthen my connection with my ever-growing network of friends and associates.