Diary of a jobless part 2

Well, this is the second week of unemployment. I have managed to stay occupied all this time, thanks to all of the paper works I have to taken care for leaving The Netherlands and approaching Singapore. Life is going good. In my previous blog, I mentioned that I was planning jog everyday, and I managed to keep that promise. I run almost daily for around 4 Kms. The downside is tto do that I still make few stops along the route because I dont have a really good stamina yet. So the next objective is to run non-stop for 4 Kms. I think another week of running, and I will be able to run 4 Kms non-stop ;)

A lot of grand planning is coming on the way. Starting with a plan to cycle to Antwerpen this Wednesday with a friend of mine, Izal. Kinda crazy, but might be worth while to try. I hope I dont faint on the way :D Looking at the route, a retour trip will take around 10 hours to complete. Must be sure to take some rubber plying stuff, in case we got a leak on the way. I decided to take my shitty bicycle for a memorable journey :D. Wait till you see the pic of the bike...


Grotere kaart weergeven

And tomorrowww, finally my new 3D camera from Sony will arrive. Yes, it has the ability to take 3D picture, and its a compact digital camera. This is a new release for cybershot model, DSC WX5. I was considering to buy NEX 5, but its too bulky, and would not fit in my pocket. Plus, I hate to bring a camera bag around. After all, digital pocket camera is really handy as I have experienced countless time of almost-got-pilfered by pick-pocket. Golden rule is, mind your wallet, but not your bulky expensive camera ;) A bit of teaser about my new camera



And guess what, along with the camera, I order a photography book. Might be handy to understand things about photography, especially about lighting, shooting angle, technical aspect of a camera, and some samples shot by John Freeman, a photographer and journalist.


We will see what is coming again next week, seems like there are awfully lots of things to do, and awfully lots of goodbye to say. The goodbye part is not that pleasant, but it is more unpleasant not to say goodbye at all ;)

Diary of a jobless part 1

Its been 3 days since I quit my job. I must say that this already been 3 beautiful days from this past few months. It has been hectic months this past few months as me and my team are rushing to deliver a software for our client. It has been good, and too bad I have to left my team in the middle of the process. I would like to continue to support them until next year, but I have already another appointment with destiny :D To cut story short, I will attend a MBA program at Singapore in November. Before that, I am taking 2 months vacation to relieve all the stress.

So the story goes... I have made a vow before to myself that I will do some sports when I quit my job. Today, I have run around 8 KMs because i got lost on the way!! I have my daily route everyday, but special for today I took a detour just for a change. It turns out to be a bad decision.... Anyway, I run more so its actually good :) I am trying to jog everyday now, just to recuperate from months of unhealthy life, full of red bull, coffee, and sitting in front of computer.

Here I am now, writing this blog with aching leg because of the stupid mistake this afternoon. And after that, I have to bike to other side of town to attend a choire training. Talking about working out my leg today... But the good part is that I manage to get some people to go to a city in The Netherlands called Giethoorn. I always wanted to go to this place since a long time, but never got the chance. This city is actually known as the 'Venetia' of the Netherlands. Simply put, the city is surrounded with waters and canals. Perhaps some picture will help to imagine.





















We are planning to go there perhaps coming two weeks. I will definitely update the blog if I have visited Giethoorn ;) Now its time to enjoy few cans of beer and continue living as a jobless.


"Life as a jobless is good until you finish all your money"

Five factors that affects organization success

The first key factor, that will ensure the success of an organization, is the ability to manage its collective expertise. Those who can tap and nurture these expertise will further increase their value. As a person, you have the needs to develop, and as an organization, it will get a lot of advantage if it can accommodate this desire to grow.

The next thing to have as an organization is the source of income. Income will be used to sustain the daily operation of an organization, and make enough profit to grow bigger ( and satisfying your stock holders, if you have any ). The clients or customers play important role here. To get the maximum advantage out of them, an organization needs to build a good relationship with them. This relationship must be based on mutual respect and fair play.

Good service or quality needs to be in place in order to retain customers. This is an important aspect because it defines an organization’s sustainability. Customers who are disappointed with its level of service/quality will tell their families or friends. This will be some sort of chain effect that might ( and possibly will ) cripple your income. A good case study around this subject was Dell, who was considered having poor customer service. What’s interesting to see here is the ability of the customers to found each other in the internet ( there were actually a lot that feels the same ) and later on spreading their complains through various blogs and forums.

When you have a sustainable organization, it means that you will be in the market for long period of time. Surely you will need to invent new product/service, or in other term, to innovate. Through innovation, you will embrace new development in your expertise field, and it might even lead you to a totally new market. The impact for an organization not to innovate is not immediate. Rather, it will cost the organization in the long-term run.

Along the way, the organization has picked vast amount of experiences in its expertise field. By using all of these experiences, the organization can assume the role of thought leadership. The term was first coined in 1994 by Joel Kurtzman, which means that your organization is capable to spearhead new initiatives. Such initiatives can broaden the reach of your field, while in the same time creating new chances for others to spur new businesses. Not to be confused with innovation, with thought leadership you will need to cooperate with others. It can be considered as a joint-venture between parties to gain mutual advantages.

And as a closing, organization will not cease to function when it becomes a thought leader. The new initiatives that are proven to be successful will be absorbed as part of daily business process. As new businesses grow, new competitors also come into play, which means that the organization will needs to stay innovative. All of the steps are repeated again in a cycle that keeps the economy revolves.

It's about Gundam Unicorn

Lately, I stumbled upon an advertisement about the newest installment of gundam series, called mobile suit gundam unicorn. I came across it when I am browsing my favorite anime site, www.crunchyroll.com. For you who don't know, you can watch anime for free in this site. not only anime, they also provide japaneese and korean drama. I sometimes watch korean drama too ;) sounds bit cheesy, but I like cheesy stuff hehehe

so back to the discussion about gundam. I am quite huge fan about Gundam, and I have some scale models of Gundam at home. the first episode that I follow was Gundam SEED. I just barely know about the previous Gundam episodes, like Gundam Wings, Gundam Zeta, and Gundam 00. I think there are a lot more hardcore gundam fans out there who can name more gundam episodes than me, but these are enough to get someone started to like Gundam.

So the story of Gundam Unicorn takes place in the far future, where human already found a way to live in space. The human in space has their own goverment, and its separate from the earth goverment. the earth was trying to maintain its control to the space colony. In the end, earth was having dispute about the control of space colony, and the space people didn't like it. War broke out for around 10 years between earth and space. The war was also colored by technology wars, where earth and space has their own gundam. On the end of this war, peace treaty was signed between earth and space. The story of Gundam Unicorn takes place three years after the end of the long war.

I have to say that I have just seen the first episode of Gundam Unicorn, and it looks really good. The graphic and the mech design is always superb in gundam series. For the story, I bet it will also be interesting, with a lot of plot twist here and there. the plot twist is mostly about war politics, I pressume. Without any further adeau, I present the trailer of Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn, for the curious head out there ;)

The rise of natural user interface

The term natural user interface means that when a computer device which has user interface can be used without series of learning beforehand. Natural user interface, or in short NUI, dictates that user can perform series of actions / control to the device by using daily motions, movements, and gestures. The most descriptive identifier of NUI is the lack of physical keyboard and mouse.

Such good example of NUI on action is the iPhone interface. You can do a flicking hand gesture to scroll through your contacts, or pinching on picture to change its dimension. Such action is actually more natural than clicking / dragging scroll bar button. we can say that a standard GUI is of exploratory nature while NUI is more intuitive. The most common application of NUI can be seen in the multi-touch technology. See the diagram below on how the user interface has evolved since the DOS era to nowadays.

Currently, this NUI concept is being considered as the future for user interface implementation. It was all started with iPhone, and then Windows 7 soon follows. Microsoft makes an investment of $24 million on multi touch technology developed by an Iranian company, N-trig. Windows 7 then support multi touch interface by default. Not only that, Dell and HP also brought the multi touch technology to the PC and laptop market.

More and more device in the future is going to incorporate Natural User Interface concept. For the tech watcher, I am sure you already know that Windows Phone 7 is on the making, and Microsoft already released some promotional videos. As you can see, it uses a kind of user interface that we never seen before in mobile device. In my opinion, the user interface looks slicker than the one Apple has. But then, Apple has their upper-hands in the app market which tolls more than 140 thousand apps.

I predict that in the future, we will see more and more different markets use natural user interface for their application. Starting from children, where they will have a table like notepad to make drawing and do their homework. Note that I don't refer specifically to iPad is it sucks, according to my previous blog :) Imagine you are an architect, where you can make a CAD model directly by using hand gesture. Or an office worker, where you can show the draft of your document directly to your manager, and apply rectification in-place only by gesturing through the document. Take also an example of showroom, say a cellphone showroom. You can use such multi touch technology as your virtual showcase. You will not need any dummy anymore, and it can provide informations about the device at the same time. The applications are vast, and it goes as far as your imagination can. I am quite interested about it, and I have placed a question at N-trig about ordering their multi touch hardware. Well, I hope that the prices is not that expensive ;)

Disney back to the classic with The Princess and the Frog

At last, the long awaited Disney classical has come to the cinema. I just watch this cartoon movie tonight, and I must say that Disney has found its root back. Since the beginning, Disney is always the best in making such classical cartoon. I must admit that the story can be categorized as cheesy by some type of people, but heck I like cheesy stuffs. In fact, the princess and the frog is more beautiful to me than cheesy. It is something that you haven't seen in ages since the story of Aladdin, Little Mermaid, Cinderella, Snow White, or Beauty and the Beast.

The movie was made by the same team who brings Little Mermaid and Aladdin to live. The think tank behind it is John Lasetter. He is currently the chief creative officer for Disney and Pixar, and also the director of Toy Story. Apart from that, the story and the music score intertwine perfectly in this latest installment of Disney. The story is not really heavy, and perfect for children. It also introduce them with fairy tale about prince and princess, live happily ever after, and wishing upon a star. A good norm is also taught in the movie, that you must work hard to reach your dream.

The setting takes place in New Orleans in year 1920. The story revolves around a waitress by the name of Tiana. Tiana comes from poor family, and she would like to build a restaurant in New Orleans. One day, A prince from Maldonia came to visit New Orleans, and there, he got tricked by a witch doctor. The witch doctor turned him into frog, and he met Tiana by accident. Tiana tried to help him, but instead she got turned into frog too. The story goes on about their attempt to turn themselves back to human again. There are a lot of things happen in their journey. The prince is a spoiled brat who only knows how to have fun, while Tiana is a hard-working person.

So that was a bit about the story. It is simple, right? if you are a Disney lover, you gotta see this movie. It is not a 3D cartoon, and you don't need to use those 3D glasses, it is not as long as Avatar, but you will enjoy its 100 minutes duration ;)

Why new IPad is a FLOP

By reading the title of this blog, I think you already know which side I choose. Yes, I choose a side that criticize Apple of its latest move releasing IPad. But before criticizing it, I would like to compliment Apple hardware house which release a new processor called Apple A4. Apple is the only company out there where you can innovate in such hardware and software level. Hey, even Microsoft doesn't make their own processor, not even Google. The performance of this processor is comparable to the "Moorestown" atom processor which is used in the Google Nexus One phone. It is considered as the fastest mobile processor out there.

Other compliment goes to the Apple ability to expand its revenue stream by making book store app inside its device. Apple cuts deal with a big publisher in New York in order to fill its virtual shelf with books. And this deal actually can be good for Apple, because publishers now have the chance to get out from the clutch of Amazon's Kindle. This can be good for publishers because with competitor for Kindle, they can bargain over the price.
























Now let me explain why it will be a FLOP. Let me start first with the presentation of IPad's spiritual father, Steve Jobs. If we compare the presentation between IPhone and IPad, the presentation of IPad just missed flares and optimism from Steve Jobs. It might just be my feeling, but for people who knows Steve Jobs, you should also look at his presentation when he is unveiling the first Apple computer in 1984. It is just not electrifying enough. And God knows what Steve, if you make such device that just simply an oversized IPhone, I don't think that you will be happy with your achievement. Hey, where is your famous "BOOM" word when you presenting IPad!

Second, I have problem with the price. The cheapest variant is 16 GB, sell with the price tag of 500$. 16 GB is not enough if you plan to put music, HD movie, and pictures there. I even choke with a 100 GB harddisk. So let us buy the 64GB variant, and it has price tag of 700$. If you have a data plan attached, then the price will be 829$. Compared to the price of Amazon's Kindle which is 260$, this device from Apple is still expensive. Compared to the price of netbooks in the market, they are all priced in the price tag around 250$ - 300$. But of course Kindle can not do web surfing as good as IPad!! but then let us look at netbooks. Netbooks can surf the web, and you can also read books with Netbooks. So IPad has to compete with netbooks in terms of functionalities.

Third, the operating system used is the same OS as the IPhone one. Only Apple made some built in app in order to make this device appealing. Also, all games that are made for IPhone can be played in IPad. And the backdraw of this OS is that there is no MULTITASKING!! Yes, it is not possible to chat with AIM while you read a book you bought in Apple Book Store. I chat occasionally, and I think it would be nice if I can chat while browsing through my favorite website.

Fourth, is the design of IPad. IPad use on-screen keyboard, which will be shown when you are typing mail, or having need to input something. If you know the shape of IPad, it is just like a flat slate, and imagine the position you have to take to type on that thing. You must put that thing on your lap, and by then you can type comfortably. Having to type on your lap for a long time is actually not good for your arm. As your arm is straining, it can cause some pain if the duration are long. Perhaps in the future, Apple will release a docking station and keyboard for its IPad. But if that happens, then its just Apple admitting the mistake of its INTUITIVE DESIGN. I better of with a tablet from HP where it has multi touch screen, and it has normal keyboard.


So All in all, this product is so NOT STEVE JOBS. I can say Mr.Jobs is proud of his multi touch, app store, itunes, book store concept. But for the device itself, probably he just feel so-so. If Mr.Jobs reads this blog, he can send me a personal mail to say if I am correct or not. No need for NDA because I will not tell anyone :)

Using Gmail as your mail server

Few weeks back, I face a problem when I am trying to setup a mail server for my website, SeleraKita.com. I found out that exim, the default mail server from my VPS is not working properly!! After looking the problem with a support technician from a web company, Pondok Media, it is actually broken because our previous sysadmin upgrade the Apache and PHP module manually through UNIX command, while he supposed to do it through WHM..... The moral of the story here is to always use your built in management control panel for your VPS. If you can't do it yourself, always contact the administrator of the VPS first, instead going on your own saga to do something that you will regret later :( :(

The solution of using Gmail as mail server was actually proposed by the web company I am working with. Kudos to the owner, William Sutanto who proposed this. So, instead of re-installing a new mail server, I can just outsource my mail server entirely to GMail. This is considered better solution than reinstalling the mail server, because a new mail server means that you must administrate it yourself. Using Gmail, it is administrated by google. Using Gmail as mail server falls under the feature of Google apps. There are already worldwide companies using this approach, such as Genentech, Salesforce.com, and Motorola. In this case, we are using only the gmail feature, but we can use many of the Google features such as Google calendar, groups, Docs, sites, and Video. all can be configured specific for your own company, and zero maintenance cost of course ;)


To use gmail as your mail server is actually very simple. You have a selection to use either Premier edition or standard edition. For cheap asses, use standard edition, its free!! You can see the comparison between standard and premier edition in the picture below



















SeleraKita only using standard edition because only gmail is used, and other enterprise functionalities are not yet needed. The steps to configure your VPS will be explained once you register to Google Apps. The nice about this is that you can use a mail address under your domain name, while the mail will be routed to Gmail server. For example, If I send an email to support@selerakita.com, then this mail will be sent to a gmail account that I made using Google Apps Control Panel. If you are enterprise company, you might be interested to use more advanced feature such as push mail, and this is also available. Even Single Sign On is supported by Google Apps.



















To cut the long story short, what you need to do is only modifying your DNS record. To verify that a certain domain is indeed yours, you have to add a CNAME record. In the configuration process of Google apps, you will be presented with a unique apps code. This code will have to be added as CNAME. Actually this step can be skipped entirely, and go straight to MX ( Mail Exchange ) record configuration. This is the entry that indicates that an email should be routed to Gmail server. You can see the example here below: