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.