Andre P. Siregar

I don't hang out here anymore

2009-05-11T14:57:00.002+08:00

If you haven't figured it out yet, I don't update this blog often anymore. I am mostly at http://dregar.tumblr.com nowadays. Go visit me there! :-)

Singapore iPhone Fans Will Get A Chance to Show How Mobile-Savvy They Are

2008-03-21T15:44:00.002+08:00

There are two interesting news about the Apple iPhone lately. First, ChannelNewsAsia reported rumors of iPhone launch in Singapore around September 2008. If this is true, Singapore will be the first country in Asia to be the official market for iPhone (although there are 10,000 units already present in this 4.6-million people country).

The summary of the rumor is:

The operator will likely be SingTel. It is unknown whether the phone will be locked. It is a terrible, terrible idea to sell locked mobile phones in the South East Asia market, so Apple may arrange something like they do in France.
By September 2008, the iPhone to be launched is likely the newer version with 3G or HSDPA.
Will this coincide with the launch of iTunes Music Store in Singapore? One can dream. Meanwhile, all you can do is go to sites like iTuneShop.net.

Second, there is an article at the New York Times on 18 March 2008 about the usage of iPhones:

The results, from a January survey of more than 10,000 adults, are somewhat dramatic. 84.8 percent of iPhone users report accessing news and information from the hand-held device. That compares to 13.1 percent of the overall mobile phone market and 58.2 percent of total smartphone owners – which include those poor saps with Blackberries and devices that run Windows.

iPhone Users Love That Mobile Web - Bits - Technology - New York Times Blog

It's interesting that iPhone users' activities reflect a more mobile-savvy users compared to users of other smartphone platforms. One possible reason is because users of iPhones chose to buy their phones over other phones because of its features. Users of other smartphones may get their phones solely because their employers issue them and that they could care less about the features that make their phones smart. Or they may get their smartphones for other reasons. Indonesia is the biggest market for the Nokia Communicator, mostly not because of its incredible features, but because its consumers perceive the phone as a status symbol.

But it's clear that there are simple lessons learned here for Blackberry and Windows Mobile:

Consumers appreciate ease of use
Consumers will browse and use internet services on their mobile devices more if the experience is good
Blackberry and Windows Mobile don't provide a good experience

The truth is, Microsoft has a decade of head start in the mobile OS technology and they just have not learned fast enough. This article points out this fact really nicely: The top 10 things that are wrong with Windows Mobile. At the very least, Microsoft should get Pocket IE back to the drawing board.

Social Network Aggregators

2008-03-19T22:41:00.001+08:00

When I moved from Jakarta (Indonesia) to Virginia (USA) to go to college in the early 90's, it took about a month via post mail to tell my mom how small my dorm room was. Now in 2008, I get up-to-the-minute updates from across the world via Twitter on what my friend's dog is licking. Some people have a whole universe of "friends" on the internet. They post their thoughts and opinions using Multiply, update their friends using Facebook, or give mini-updates using Tumblr. They share web bookmarks using delicious, recommend interesting stories on Digg, and showcase photos on Flickr. These sites are called social networking sites (check out a cool video explaining social networking here). There are literally hundreds of social networking sites out there, relentlessly feeding you streams of your friends' new blog posts, recently snapped pictures, snarky comments and pets' activities. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

How do you keep up? Enter social network aggregators. These services aggregate updates from the various social networking sites you subscribe to, so instead of having to go to all those different social networking web sites, you can get the gist of your friends' updates by going to one web site.

I have managed to get my hands on three so-called social network aggregators: Plaxo Pulse, friendfeed and socialthing!. Here is my impression of them.

Plaxo Pulse

Plaxo started out as a company that promised you that your address book will always be up-to-date. By using Plaxo, when your friend updates his contact information (phone number, address, etc.), your address book will be updated automatically. In August 2007 Plaxo had a vision to be more than just your address book's synchronizer and be the internet's glue. They came out with Plaxo Pulse which is a social network aggregators for your Plaxo contacts (aka friends).

Plaxo Pulse was built on top of their existing service, which is address book management. This strategy certainly has some advantages. You may already know a lot of details about your contacts, e.g. their birth dates -- Plaxo Pulse uses this information to give you birthday reminders. You also have different security/sharing settings depending whether your "friends" are merely business contacts, actual friends in real life or family members.

On the other hand, due to their address book model, the people that you befriend in Plaxo Pulse will likely be limited to those you know in real life and not the internet celebrities that you freely follow (stalk? ). This is probably the main reason why Plaxo Pulse has not caught fire since it first launched. To a lot of people, the social networking scene is about quantity of relationship, not quality.

friendfeed

FriendFeed officially launched on 25 February 2008 and have been gathering a lot of steam lately. Unlike Plaxo Pulse which starts from the continuously-updated address book analogy, it's a lot easier with FriendFeed to "follow" the activities of a person who is not in your address book. You can follow the activities of just about anybody who shares their social networking activities publicly (i.e. the internet celebrities).

FriendFeed does not have a lot of features right now, but I'm sure they will be adding more and more.

socialthing!

Along with friendfeed, socialthing! is probably the social network aggregator with the most mind share these days. socialthing! is still in invitation-only private beta, but it has been garnering positive reviews. Like friendfeed, it's easy for you to follow somebody's publicly-available activities. Its main differentiator from Plaxo Pulse and friendfeed is that it recognizes your existing friends. For example, if I tell socialthing! my Facebook account, it will import my Facebook friends automatically and provide me with their updates from within socialthing!. Another differentiator is that you can interact with Twitter (e.g. reply to Twitter post) without having to go to the Twitter web site.

I expect a lot of good things coming out of socialthing!, however as of the writing of this post they have a fairly limited number of social networking sites partners.

Summary

Here's a comparison between the three social network aggregators:

	Plaxo Pulse	friendfeed	socialthing!
Aggregated sites (as of 19 March 2008)	35	28	6
Comment on feed entries	Yes	Yes	No
Marking feed entries as "favorites"	Yes	Yes	No
Pros	Better security granularity when sharing information: your contacts are divided into Family, Friends, Business Contacts and Public. Have the most features and partners compared to other aggregators.	The community is already large and interactive -- they create comments and join discussion, etc. Plaxo Pulse provides the same features, but the community is more quiet.	Automatically recognizes your friends. You can post to Twitter directly from socialthing!
Cons	Does not have the "excitement" and the mind share of socialthing! and friendfeed.	Web site design is dry compared to socialthing!	As of now, does not have a lot of social networking partners

How concerned should we be about data collection?

2008-03-16T15:46:00.001+08:00

In the movie Se7en, Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman got a big clue on the identity of the killer by looking at library records for people who have borrowed both religious books and books on torture and serial murderers. Once your book-reading records are viewable, it's fairly easy for others to profile your interest. And once your interest is profiled, somebody may go one step further in profiling you as a person.

The New York Times posted this article last week: To Aim Ads, Web Is Keeping Closer Eye on You

A new analysis of online consumer data shows that large Web companies are learning more about people than ever from what they search for and do on the Internet, gathering clues about the tastes and preferences of a typical user several hundred times a month.

Although the practice of internet data collection for targeted advertising is not new, the technology is getting more and more sophisticated to the point where the collected data may be traceable to the individual. With cookies being implemented in a lot of web sites, it's easy for internet advertising companies to track your browsing and searching habits and use this information to profile and target you later. Yes, there are ways to block your activities from being collected by internet advertising companies. The Adblock extension for Firefox browser is one option that I personally use. But in a bigger picture, blocking advertising is not the solution. Advertising is a very big reason why the internet is experiencing phenomenal growth in the last few years.

Handling of collected data is a serious concern. There is no mechanism implemented to ensure that only aggregate (and not personal) data is accessible to the company that collect them. In some countries like Indonesia, for example, there is no law whatsoever on internet data privacy. Above all, consumer awareness is key. Most people are not aware what information about them is being collected, let alone provide consent.

Yet another point to think about is the accuracy of data interpretation for the purpose of target marketing. I'll leave you with an old joke:

A young guy goes to a checkout counter in a local supermarket with one can of beer, one box of frozen dinner, one pack of Marlboro, one carton of milk, one bag of potato chips and an issue of Playboy. The cute girl behind the counter is ringing this stuff up and asks him, “Single, huh?”

“Yeah,” he says. “Is it because I'm buying one of everything?”

“No. Because you’re ugly.”

If The American Idol judges were Project Managers

2008-03-08T00:12:00.001+08:00

Unless you've been living under a rock for the past 5 years, you know who these three people are. They are on TV three times a week, influencing millions of Americans on what phone number to dial. What if your Project Manager is like them?

The Randy Jackson Project Manager. This is your buddy Project Manager, your hangout pal. He takes interest in your life outside of work. He wants to know your playlist on Last.FM, the stories you Digg and whether you caught that TWiT episode when Steve Wozniak was on. When you pass his desk on the way to the rest room, he would greet you with a "What up, Dawg!" without fail. When your module passes unit test, he would slap you in the butt and exclaim "That was hot!"

The Paula Abdul Project Manager. Project Manager would be a misnomer because she is more of a cheerleader than somebody that leads or manages. She believes happy coders are productive coders. She does not direct or coach, nor does she know what stage the project is in. When you can't figure out how to tune that stored procedure to finish under 3 minutes, she would pull you in for a pep talk and tells you that she sees a little Tom Kyte in you. She gives such generic kudos to everybody all the time, you wonder if she ever noticed the weekend work you put in to install the patch to fix that annoying crash when more than 2 people log in at the same time.

The Simon Cowell Project Manager. This is the manager who always lets you know whether you're in the doghouse or the penthouse. He doesn't mince his words. When you get your performance evaluation, you will not be surprised because he's been giving you constant feedbacks since day one. When a lot of your bugs are spelling errors, he will gladly give you a kick in the pants. When you don't sound confident during status report meetings, he will tell you so. Sometimes you wonder why he picks on so many little things and sometimes his feedbacks de-motivates you. Sometimes you hate him and even fear him. But you know that if you don't take his criticisms personally he can make you a better code monkey.

Singapore is best city for Asian expatriates to live: HR survey

2008-03-06T23:31:00.001+08:00

Via The Straits Times newspaper:

ASIAN expatriates have ranked Singapore as the best place to live in the world for its safe and clean environment, while Europeans chose Copenhagen, a survey showed on Tuesday.

Spore is best city for Asian expatriates to live: HR survey

I can testify to the above, being a resident alien in Singapore myself. I came from Jakarta to live in Singapore in June 2007 and so far the experience has been pretty good. Here are the reasons why Singapore is great for expatriates:

English is the primary language -- This fact cannot be understated. Being in a foreign country and able to read street signs, understand restaurant menus and ask questions to some random person on the street can give you a sense of control.
Excellent public transportation -- Singapore has a network of well-maintained, air-conditioned underground trains (MRT), buses and taxis that cover pretty much the whole country. Do you need to know when the next bus will arrive at your stop? Look it up with your mobile browser. Need a taxi? Call them up and most of the time they will arrive within 5 minutes. With all of this, you won't need to buy a car when you first arrive in Singapore, which translates to lower moving cost.
Low crime -- Being in an unfamiliar and foreign country can be an exhilarating experience. Being in an unfamiliar and foreign country fearing for your own security is quite another feeling. It's easy to take security for granted, but you have to remember that in some countries you cannot just listen to your iPods or talk on your hand phones while riding the city bus.
Affordable apartments are widely available -- I know Singaporeans bitch a lot about the cost of property, but the truth is, livable accommodation is still pretty much affordable. If you spend the same percentage of your salary on housing, you will find a nicer place in Singapore than you would in Jakarta, for example.

For me particularly, Singapore's close distance to Jakarta enables me to travel back and forth without needing to do serious planning. I can fly off for a weekend trip and be in Jakarta after an hour and 20 minutes flight. Ticket price is pretty affordable too.

In 2000, "there will be no C, X or Q in our every-day alphabet"

2008-03-03T22:35:00.002+08:00

Via Leo Laporte, here is an actual prediction made in 1900 about the world in 2000. It was supposedly first published in the Ladies Home Journal magazine (click the picture to the right). In case you're wondering, this is an actual magazine first published in 1883 (according to Wikipedia) -- apparently still going strong and has an online presence at www.lhj.com.

Undoubtedly, predicting the world 100 years ahead is extremely difficult. But some of their predictions came very close. Here's one example:

"Photographs will be Telegraphed from any distance. If there be a battle in China [...] snapshots of its most striking events will be published in the newspaper an hour later."

That's actually a pretty good prediction. Of course, by 2003/2004 people are snapping pictures with their camera-phones and sharing photos all over the world in a matter of seconds.

Social Networking Popularity Around The World

2008-03-02T22:40:00.000+08:00

Here's a partial map depicting the popularity of social networking sites around the world. The full picture can be found at this Le Monde web site.

You can barely see Singapore, but I believe Le Monde is saying that Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore are owned by Friendster. Interesting. Although I think this is accurate, from what I see in the three countries, the trend is definitely moving towards Facebook.

Update 3 March 2008: Via the Buzz Out Loud podcast episode 670, here is a more detailed version of the social network popularity map.

Technorati Tags: internet,socialnetworking

Free bed frame and mattress

2008-03-01T22:40:00.000+08:00

You spend a third of your life in bed, so I always believe that a bed is something you should spend good money on. When we moved to our apartment about three months ago, the previous tenant left a queen-sized bed previously purchased from Ikea. Imagine a wooden bed frame that comes in a box which you have to assemble yourself. Now, I'm a big 120-kg guy. The bed creaks and I get anxious every time I turn over in my sleep, thinking I would break one of the legs.

So me and my wife went to Courts and found a nice spring bed with independent coils, latex and the whole whiz-bang technology guaranteed to give a good night's sleep. Now, what to do with the old bed? I posted an ad on Facebook Marketplace -- free for whoever wants to take the bed.

The first response came a few hours after I posted the ad. That was quick, I thought. After checking availability, the person asked whether she could have two. "Two?", I asked. "I'm afraid I don't understand what you mean. I only have one bed to give away."

"Oh... You mean the bed is not new?"

A few seconds of awkward silence... Yes, the bed is used. Do I look like Santa Clause in my Facebook profile?

Technorati Tags: life,living,facebook

What's up NGA!!

2007-06-17T22:33:00.000+08:00

I got an email from Bank Niaga announcing their soon-to-be redesigned web page. The new design seems a bit... ummm... hip-hop. The new design will be introduced on 25 June 2007.

Thanks a lot, Hatta Rajasa!

2007-04-30T22:31:00.000+08:00

I received an email earlier today from WorldPerks:

[...]
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has advised that the country of Indonesia does not comply with international safety standards set by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). Therefore, effective immediately, Northwest Airlines^® has temporarily suspended its WorldPerks^®, passenger and cargo agreements with Garuda Indonesia Airlines. For more information, please contact Northwest Reservations at (021) 522-0512.
[...]

Sincerely,
[Name withheld]
Director
Pacific Marketing & Distribution Planning
Northwest Airlines

I'm ticked off, but not surprised. Unless you've been living under a rock, no Indonesian should be surprised by the international implication of this. Here is a pretty harsh but frank article on the severe lack of concern from the Indonesian government towards public safety:

Indonesia - Natural Disasters or Mass Murder? (Andre Vltchek)
"The Indonesian airline industry has one of the worst safety records in the world. Since 1997, at least 666 people have died in eight separate airplane crashes in the country. Some of the pilots are so badly trained that planes sometimes skip off the runway, or miss it altogether. Maintenance is another issue: flaps often don't function properly; wheels cannot retract properly after take-off; and seldom-changed tires have a tendency to blow out upon touchdown. It is a mystery as to how some airplanes — particularly old Boeing 737s flown by almost all Indonesian airlines — make it through the inspections."

Not satisfied with Jajah

2007-04-24T22:28:00.000+08:00

Here is my harsh email to Jajah:

I have given up trying to use Jajah for my international calls. Since I managed to upload funds to my account on 11 April, I have tried numerous times making calls from Indonesia to Singapore and Australia with Jajah. Jajah has never once able to make that connection. My phone never rang. Never. Even after my account was charged for the attempted calls.
And to think of all the inconveniences I had to go through to set up my account. Jajah would not accept credit card payment from me (the option was grayed out in the web page) and my only option was bank transfer. But Jajah does not have a bank account in my country (Indonesia) so I had to make an overseas transfer. This cost me US $10 of bank fees -- money that I hoped I could get back in terms of cost savings. Well, the web site says that Jajah has saved me USD 3.87 so far, but this is a lie. Jajah has saved me nothing and instead took money from my account for calls that were never connected.
I am very disappointed.

Jajah responded by crediting my account, but they didn't give any explanation why the technical problem occurred. I assume their servers were overloaded and couldn't make the connection in an acceptable time. I wonder if this problem happens in other parts of the world -- I'm sure Indonesia is not their primary target market.

I am now using Telkom's prefix 01017 to call Mina in Singapore. The promotion rate is Rp. 990 per minute (about US$ 0.10) to selected countries, including Singapore. I believe the rate is valid until end of May 2007. After that I may go back to Skype Out. I just hope Skype improves the drop call rate -- I usually need to call Mina 2 or 3 times to complete a 10-minute conversation.

More Thoughts on Virginia Tech Tragedy

2007-04-19T22:26:00.000+08:00

The Final Emotion (Will Stewart):

"As I searched for meaning in what happened, I finally found it. I found it in the incredible poise, control, and togetherness shown by the Virginia Tech family. The true character of a person, group, or institution shows itself under pressure, and what the Virginia Tech community has shown us is grace, cohesion, intelligence, and compassion."

TechSideline.com is the best site covering Virginia Tech athletics and I've been a frequent visitor since it was first founded with the name Hokie Central. Will Stewart founded this site more than 10 years ago and although Will writes almost exclusively about Virginia Tech, his writing is always top notch. His words flow beautifully -- whether to analyze statistics of a football game or to describe the emotion of players and fans. I always enjoy his columns and this latest piece from him is another example of his excellent writing.

A Sad Day to be a Hokie

2007-04-17T22:24:00.000+08:00

My thoughts and prayers go to the students and extended family of Virginia Tech.
Not in My Alma Mater:

"The school always meant something really warm and fuzzy to me. Today, I have a horribly sad feeling.

But I’m really hopeful because out of the worst tragedy, you watch people rise up. And it will happen on the campus of Virginia Tech.

Those students will rise up. I’ll bet on that."

-- Hoda Koth, Dateline NBC correspondent and Virginia Tech graduate

Sobering Dose of Reality:

"... Wait, what's that they're saying now? ... The deadliest shooting rampage of any kind in American history?

At Virginia Tech????

You say to yourself: This simply can't be."

-- Stewart Mandel, Sports Illustrated columnist

Jakarta airport new security regulation on liquids

2007-04-16T22:22:00.000+08:00

The Jakarta Soekarno-Hatta airport has recently imposed a new security measure to ban all liquid materials inside airplanes on all international flights. I traveled recently and, while waiting at the airport scanner, the person in front of me had four boxes of Krispy Kreme donuts carry-on. The donuts passed without any curiosity from the officers. But this got me thinking. What if, instead of jelly, the donuts were filled with liquid explosives? Can you imagine how messy the explosion would be?

I've just become a customer of Audible

2007-04-03T22:21:00.000+08:00

First of all, I love e-books and I wish all printed books have their e-book equivalents. I love the instant gratification that comes with purchasing an e-book: Being able to read it seconds after deciding which one to buy. Anybody in Indonesia who has done an online purchase can testify that it's a risky business dealing with the Indonesian postal service. You can only hope that on the day your stuff is supposed to be delivered, the mail man does not decide to keep it for himself. But to me the best thing about an e-book is the fact that I can always have it with me and that it's always available for me to read (I keep my e-books in my smartphone that I carry with me all the time).

Earlier today a friend recommended a book called "Zen and the Art of Making a Living" by Laurence G. Boldt. Rushing to Amazon.com I discovered that no e-book version is available. Fortunately an audio version is available through Audible.com.

I actually liked audiobooks. Before the age of internet and e-books, I had a number of audiobooks in my library. I found that audiobooks were easier on my ears than printed books on my eyes. Since I didn't have much choice on this book that my friend recommended and since I really wanted to read it, I decided to give Audible a try and signed up.

I think the first time I visited Audible.com was many months ago, when Ricky Gervais decided to move his podcast show there. I remember I wasn't too impressed by Audible then. However I think they've done a good job with their web site and offerings and it's much more attractive now. If you're mainly interested in the mainstream bestseller books (e.g. NY Times' or Business Week's list), Audible's selection is also better than the e-books offered by Fictionwise.com or Mobipocket.com. I signed up for their Gold Monthly membership. It's $7.49/month for the first three months ($14.95/month afterwards) and you get a free audiobook every month plus 30% discounts on other books. On a technical note, my Indonesian credit card was accepted without problem. Instructions for software download and all other technical matters are presented in idiot-proof.

Travel Journal

2007-03-22T22:20:00.000+08:00

The travel journal and photo album from our recent trip can be found in Yahoo Travel Trip Planner. It's called Mina & Andre North American Trip.

I've been using this Trip Planner service from Yahoo and have been pretty happy with it. It's choc-full of Ajax and Web 2.0 goodness plus a large community-contributed content. The photo album needs some improvement, but I'm sure they're working on it. Currently it is linked with Flickr, but not to Yahoo Photos.

Back from vacation

2007-03-18T22:20:00.000+08:00

Just got back from a 2-week vacation across Chicago, Cancun and California. Whew! Photos and journal will be posted to Yahoo Travel Trip Planner soon.

Revisiting Desktop Search Engine

2007-02-24T22:18:00.000+08:00

Desktop search tool is something near and dear to my heart. With the deluge of unstructured information we create and receive every day (email, MS Office documents, etc.), I can't imagine working without it anymore.

As I wrote before, I have been quite happy with X1. But recently I tried upgrading my Microsoft Office 2003 to Office 2007 and started experiencing performance problems with my laptop. (Office 2007 is a bigger memory hog than Office 2003). Since X1 takes up a lot of system resource and since I don't want to give up on Office 2007 just yet, I decided to experiment with other desktop search tools.

First off, I decided not to experiment with Microsoft Windows Desktop Search because I know it's a bigger memory hog than X1. Windows Desktop Search is supposedly well integrated with Office 2007, so it would be worth considering if I had a more powerful machine. My laptop has the following configuration:

Dell Latitude D610
Windows XP SP2
1.6 GHz Pentium M
512 MB RAM
About 30 GB worth of data to index

The first tool I tried was Google Desktop Search (GDS) version 4.5 because others have testified on its efficient use of system resource. However, after using it for several days, I decided to uninstall it. Along the way, I discovered several things:

Resource use is indeed lower than X1. If I go to Task Manager, I could see that my page file usage is about 100 MB less with GDS.
Initial indexing takes way more time than X1. With X1 I could install it and the end of a work day, then just leave my laptop running throughout the night and have the indexes ready by the next morning. With GDS, it was more than 2 days before indexing finally completes (in all fairness, because indexing runs over until the next morning, some of the indexing time was parallel to my working time).
The sidebar may be a good idea for some people, but not to me. I think there is too much distraction already when you're trying to do actual work on your computer. I just don't need to have the weather forecast or popular dugg stories constantly shoved in my face.
The factors that made me decide not to use GDS are:
- GDS does not allow easy filtering on the search results. For example, in X1 you can type a few key words to search for an email. On the search results, you can then apply other criteria (email folder, sender, whether there is attachment, etc.) to narrow down on the results.
- Search result preview is much weaker than X1.
- GDS does not allow scrolling through the search result based on the key word. Let's say you're trying to find a PDF file with the words "foo bar" in it. If you key in "foo bar" as your search key word in X1 and specify the document type to be PDF, it will return with a list of matching documents. In the preview window, you can scroll through the selected document and view where "foo bar" appears. GDS does not have this functionality.

After GDS, I decided to try Copernic Desktop Search 2.0 (CDS) which used to be a favorite of mine before I discovered X1. I always thought that X1’s user interface is plain ugly and CDS’ user interface really blows it away. The new CDS 2.0 even looks even better than 1.0.

Unlike GDS which uses a web browser, both CDS and X1 comes with its own search interface. CDS user interface is quite nicely designed and in my opinion the best in all desktop search tools. I mention above that X1 has the ability to scroll through search result based on key words. CDS takes this feature one step further by allowing scrolling through each of the key words. So in the example above, CDS allows scrolling through either “foo” or “bar”.

However, in the end, there are a few weaknesses of CDS that made me decide to stick with X1:

CDS does not come with the ability to search content inside zip (archive) files. This is an important feature for me because I zipped a lot of my important documents for the purpose of grouping and space saving.
It turned out that CDS used just as much system resource as X1 does.

So after all that effort, I decided to stay with X1. But at least I got to revisit these desktop search tools and review their newer versions.

SkypeOut Frustration - Conclusion

2007-02-22T22:14:00.000+08:00

Three working days after I tried a bank transfer, I finally got SkypeOut credit in my account. A full EUR 10 was deposited in my Skype account. Finally!

So, for Indonesians, here is the bottom line for purchasing credits with Skype:

Choose the bank transfer option when purchasing credit at Skype's web site. Skype will give a detailed instruction to send the funds to an account at a HSBC Indonesia branch.
- If you have an online account with HSBC, go to HSBC's online banking web site and make a fund transfer.
- For any other banks, go to your respective online banking site to see if an inter-bank transfer is possible.
- Else, you must physically go to your bank and do a funds transfer.
Any other payment method with Skype will fail. This includes credit card, debit card and PayPal.

SkypeOut Frustration

2007-02-19T22:11:00.000+08:00

In my moment of weakness, I could spend hours and hours trying to fix something that is advertised to work but doesn't. In the last few days I must have spent countless of hours banging my head against the wall trying to buy SkypeOut credit using anything except physically going to a bank to make a funds transfer.

It all started when Mina moved to Singapore and I found myself spending a lot of money making international calls. That's when I looked to Skype to remedy this situation. At first I tried to purchase SkypeOut credit using my credit card. However, due to Indonesia's notoriety in online transactions, even my platinum Citibank Visa got rejected. Of course Skype won't admit that this was the reason behind the rejected transaction, but it's publicly known that credit cards issued in Indonesia have very low credibility in the e-commerce world.

Then I discovered that PayPal is now offered for Indonesian residents. Of course this is old news (shame on me), as apparently PayPal entered the Indonesian market since October of 2006. I thought this was awesome as it would surely allow me to get those pesky SkypeOut credits now. But I was wrong for the second time.

Skype evidently has some reservations about Indonesian PayPal users as the PayPal payment option does not even show up from the purchase screen. This was after I registerd my PayPal account on Skype. I even tried to trick Skype by signing up for PayPal auto-recharge which would automatically make PayPal purchase if my SkypeOut credit falls below 2 Euros. None of this efforts worked.

Not willing to give up, I tried other ways to purchase SkypeOut credits. Next, I tried my Bank BII Master Card debit card. I thought a debit card would give more credibility in this type of transaction. I was proven wrong again as this card was rejected like a nerd on prom night.

My last desperate effort was to go Moneybookers.com. Apparently Moneybookers is the second biggest online payment behind PayPal. Except for having to go through the ugly brown web site, the sign up process was similar to PayPal's. Unfortunately, the conclusion was the same as well. I fared even worse than PayPal as Moneybookers even failed my credit card verification. No reason was given. Just plain rejection.

At this point I'm ready to throw in the towel. And by that I mean dragging my ass to a local HSBC bank where Skype has an Indonesian bank account via Global Collect. At the last minute, I opened my KlikBCA account to see if they offer any service that could help. Unbeknownst to me, KlikBCA now offers a way to transfer to other banks. I don't even know when they started to offer this service! I typed in the purchase amount and now it's a waiting game . I should know in 4-5 days and will put an update if this method works.

University of Bubur Ayam

2007-02-17T22:09:00.000+08:00

I ordered bubur ayam this morning, sold from a motorbike. I flagged the abang, as he rode in front of my house. This is a pretty common way to sell food in my neighborhood, but what was surprising was the abang's attire. He was wearing a University of Virginia cap -- the original one with the correct logo and color.

Usually when you see fake clothing items in Indonesia, you'll see peculiarities that any college sports fan can spot right away. Wrong school color is the most obvious one. Another is the mix up between NCAA and professional league (I once saw a "Harvard Major League Baseball" jacket). But the abang's cap was UVa's orange and navy blue.

I commented that the cap looked good on him. For the record, he said somebody gave him that cap and he didn't know what the logo meant.

Passionate about Employer vs. Passionate about work

2007-02-07T22:07:00.000+08:00

When you're working a 16-hour day to finish a deliverable, is it because you are passionate about the company you're working for or is it because you are passionate about the work that you are doing (or, worse, is it motivated by fear)? What's the difference and why should employer care?

This post gives a fresh take on this interesting topic. See how well you do on the 4 questions .

Dopod C720W

2007-02-05T19:49:00.000+08:00

I started using the Dopod C720W in December 2006 after previously using the HP iPaq 6515. Moving from the Pocket PC 2003 platform to the Windows Mobile 2005 Smartphone Edition (WM2005 SE), I had several concerns. What is the usability like with no touch screen? Will my existing software work the same way in the Smartphone Edition? After using it for a couple of months, I can say that I am very comfortable with the WM2005 SE and even prefer it to the touch-screen Windows Mobile.

The lack of touch screen may prevent some types of software to be used (e.g. sketching, scribbling tools), but for the most part it becomes a blessing in disguise for a Smartphone. I always believe that a true Smartphone needs to be operable using one hand. The Treo line of phones does this very well (I used the Treo 600 and 650 prior to using the iPaq 6515). But we don't see other Windows Mobile phones (the touch-screen ones) concentrate on this usability feature. The C720W does one-hand operation very well. There are some drawbacks, for example scrolling becomes slower in Pocket Internet Explorer, but this is not a major issue.

The best part of the C720W may be its thumboard. It feels significantly better than the iPaq 6515 thumboard and a joy for typing emails and text messages. The text prediction functionality is excellent. Not only it offers suggestions to complete the word you're typing, it is also smart enough to guess and offer suggestions for the next word. It does this by looking at your past words. If I typed "Dear" after "Hello", the next time I type "Hello", it will offer "Dear" as a suggestion.

The C720W comes with a few nice software and utilities. Worth mentioning is the copy and paste utility which allows selecting, copying and pasting without using touch screen. It also comes with basic RSS reader, voice commander utility and a Java engine.

Besides the positive points, there are a number of things that can still be improved. I will start with the JOGGR. The JOGGR is meant to be a next-generation scroll wheel, implemented using touch pad technology. At the top of the touch strip is a touch button that functions as a “back” button. At the bottom of the touch strip there is another touch button to access the messaging functionality.

The problem with the JOGGR is that there is no tactile feedback between the top button, the touch strip and the bottom button. You can easily accidentally touch (and activate) either the top or bottom button while trying to scroll. The lack of tactile feedback also prevents you control your scroll speed. I had to furiously move my thumb up and down before realizing that I could easily achieve the same effect (while using much less energy) by clicking and holding the D-pad. There really is no motivation to use the JOGGR when you already have the D-pad. Fortunately there is an option to turn off JOGGR so its weaknesses are off of my mind.

I should also mention that the location of the JOGGR (on the right side and slightly to the front) also prevents you to access it using your left hand. This is a design flaw to both left-handers and right-handers because right-handers sometimes hold their phones using the left hand as well.

Another hardware weakness that I note is with the Wi-Fi reception. It is sufficient if you have a small house or does not sit too far from the wireless router, but in general its reception is fairly weak. If I sit next to my D-Link wireless router with it, I only get 60% signal quality strength.

Overall, I have a very positive experience with this Smartphone device. The form factor is excellent and its thinness and light weight are quite a difference compared to the iPaq 6515. The build quality is also very good. I dropped this phone twice from waist high to concrete floor, and it kept on running.

Wet Weekend Part II

2007-02-05T19:47:00.000+08:00

I had to take Mina to the airport earlier today. We were worried that the toll road to the Soekarno-Hatta airport was blocked due to flood, as often happened during rainy season. Fortunately the trip was mostly smooth, except for a few rough spots where cars couldn't exit the toll road due to flooding outside of the toll road.

The toll road was built above the streets so it has the advantage of being dry despite flooding everywhere else. On the flip side, some cars that got on the toll road got trapped and couldn't get out because their exit got flooded. Rather than brave it out, these cars are parked on the side of the toll road near the toll exit. People then get out of their cars and walked around looking at the flooding underneath the toll road, causing a carnival-like atmosphere.

This is the pool in the Pondok Indah water park whose size is expanded by the flood. Beyond the net you can see the driving range. Picking up those golf balls became a lot harder now.

Wet Weekend Part I

2007-02-05T19:44:00.000+08:00

The big story this weekend is flood in Jakarta. The local government was caught by surprise, judging by the lack of preparation in anticipating such catastrophe. And who could blame them? Jakarta hasn't seen flood since... oh, wait... last year's rainy season!

The picture above was shamelessly copy-and-pasted from detik.com.

Leading Up

2006-07-19T19:41:00.000+08:00

I read this article on Yahoo News. The content itself is not extraordinary, but I find the following passage quite interesting:

Abrams, 40, is the ultimate example of what can happen to the office busybody. After years of peppering his bosses with memos and suggestions about what MSNBC could do better, they finally said, "OK, you try it."

In probably all of John C. Maxwell's book you'll find him saying that leadership is influence. And like he writes in his book 360-degree Leader, the act of leadership includes influencing your boss. Another business reading on the topic is "Managing Your Boss", a classic Harvard Business Review article by Gabarro and Kotter.
"Leading up" (Maxwell's term) is something that not a lot of business people appreciate. We often find it easier to criticize our bosses than to help them. It is indeed much easier to vent than to think and offer solution. But as the Yahoo article shows, leading up can mean a very successful career.

Would you like wi-fi with that latte?

2006-07-14T19:40:00.000+08:00

Ars Technica has an interesting article on cafes giving free wi-fi. I wish they have that problem in Jakarta, where internet is still quite expensive.

I have to admit that working in a coffee shop has its own appeal. I'm usually more productive when working at a local Starbucks because nobody bothers me there. Nobody comes to my table and asks why data is suddenly missing from their Oracle table. And because wi-fi in Jakarta is not cheap, I'm online only when I need to. The rest of the time, I'm typing away at my notebook, productively, offline.

Hua Hin, Thailand

2006-06-17T19:39:00.000+08:00

I just got back from an event in Hua Hin, Thailand, arranged by our good friends at IBM. This was an event designed to build partnership between IBM and my company, specifically in selling one of their server lines. It was my first time in Thailand and I have to say that I had such a wonderful time.

First, the location. We stayed at Anantara Resort in Hua Hin and I highly recommend this place. It was a wonderful resort hotel and the place was simply beautiful. I wished my wife could have been there. I was treated to the spa and I had, for the first time, the traditional Thai massage (just the massage -- nothing else). I really enjoyed it. But I was slightly disappointed when I learned later that the masseuse didn't do all the tricks in the book, like lift up your body to stretch your back. But I'm a big guy -- maybe she was afraid she couldn't handle my weight.

The networking was also great. I met a bunch of new people, both from the IBM side and people from other offices of my company. I also had a chance to meet with the top leaders of my company -- people who I don't get to see often. And to make socializing even easier, the soccer world cup was going on, which made it easy to start a conversation.

As far as the content of the event (i.e. the products that IBM hopes we can help push to the market), I have nothing but respect for IBM servers. But there is so much more involved in buying servers. Clients may have their own product preference to begin with, they may be tied to a particular platform because of skills, they may already have good relationship with a particular vendor, etc. Sometimes the technology does not matter much in sales. (See any arguments on Wintel vs. Apple.) However I applause IBM for doing what they can and I think increasing relationship and partnership with a major SI/consulting company like us is a right strategy for them.

X1 Desktop Search

2006-06-13T19:38:00.000+08:00

In my previous blog entry, I wrote about a few desktop search tools, namely Google Desktop, Windows Desktop Search, and Copernic Desktop Search. This past week I was fortunate to be able to use X1 Desktop Search for free. The tool costs $75 to the general public, but due to partnership between X1 and my employer, we were given free access to download and use the software.

One thing that's immediately apparent from X1 Desktop Search is its speed. Index building was about twice as fast as Copernic or Windows Desktop Search. Searching also feels faster and results seem to jump out immediately. I'm quite particular about resource usage and I complained about how Windows Desktop Search grabbed a lot of it. Obviously all of X1's horsepower needs resources, but I'm glad to say that its usage is still far below that of Windows Desktop Search (although slightly above Copernic's). X1 is also quite stable and never gave me problem despite heavy use alongside Outlook.

My complaints with X1 are related to the user interface and lack of information in the help file. Going from Copernic's elegant UI, X1's interface seems quite untidy. The icons are not the same size, and there are icons whose arrangement takes up too much space. Better interface design would increase screen real estate. The deskbar (the toolbar in the taskbar) also needs redesigning, or at least ability for customization. It has icons that do nothing for me other than taking real estate.

X1 comes with a modest help file, but a power user may need to find information somewhere else. For example, in Copernic I love the ability to scroll through instances of found search terms in the search results. In X1 this feature is also available, but you wouldn't know it unless you dig through the user forums because the help file doesn't mention it.

Which brings me to something that X1 excels compared to Copernic, which is community. I'm surprised that in this day and age, there is a company like Copernic that doesn't try to involve its users more. X1 does a good job in providing its users a community where everybody can interact, ask questions, and give suggestions. I believe this will make X1 a better product for its users and in turn foster loyalty.

I still have both Copernic and X1 installed on my notebook. I believe both are excellent products for my needs, but I believe X1 will someday be a better product than Copernic.

Desktop Search Tools

2006-05-28T19:37:00.000+08:00

The desktop search industry has been around for some time, but we only started hearing a lot of it when Google came out with its product in 2005. If you recall, at that time most internet tech publications did reviews and comparison articles on this matter with Google, Microsoft or Copernic coming out on top. Unfortunately, the interest on this matter seemed to wane down and if you do an internet search right now on desktop search software comparison, you won't find a lot of recent articles.

Desktop Search is something I use daily and I admit I followed the reviews closely in 2005. The 3 products I tried hands-on were Google Desktop, Microsoft Windows Desktop Search and Copernic Desktop Search. I ended up using Copernic Desktop Search mainly because it was the only product that could work well with multiple Outlook profiles. Believe me, I wanted to use either Google or Microsoft because of brand familiarity, but in the end logic prevailed over heart and I stuck with Copernic to this day.

With the recent release of Google Desktop 4, I again revisited my Copernic Desktop Search decision and decided to do another hands-on evaluation for myself. Coincidentally, the company I'm working for released their version of Windows Desktop Search that integrates with the company's enterprise search. Additionally, the research team at Microsoft came up with Phlat -- a new user interface that sits on top of Windows Desktop Search. So here are my thoughts.

Google Desktop 4 If you read the reviews, the new features of Google Desktop (sidebar, gadgets) are what separates them from the rest of the pack. I actually found them to be a bloat and wish they were not included. I use a 15" laptop most of the time and the sidebar reduces the screen real estate and is a distraction for me when I'm doing real work. I don't need for RSS feeds to be constantly displayed all the time and I'm sure the weather doesn't change every minute. If I want to read the news or look up the weather forecast, I'll go to my browser.

The Google Gadget is another thing I don't need. Well, I like the "gadget" concept, but I already have Yahoo Widgets which has a lot more software at this point. I don't care for the Google Gadget and I wish it wasn't bundled with Google Desktop in the first place.

Microsoft Windows Desktop Search I really wanted this product to work for me because it's endorsed by the company I'm working for and I want everything on my company-issued laptop to be compliant with their policies. After installing it and playing with it during actual work environment for about a week, I discovered a few things I really have a problem with:

It's a memory hog. A big one. If I go to Task Manager, it eats up about 200MB more than Copernic Desktop Search.
I simply prefer Copernic's philosophy on searching user interface. Having Phlat sit on top of Windows Desktop Search helps a bit, but not enough. More on this below.

Copernic Desktop Search CDS is never a flashy product and the company seems slow in releases (it's stuck in 1-point-something version), but CDS is good in areas that matter. CDS runs on a small footprint and the performance is pretty good (I never do a time comparison with other products, but it is as good or better than the rest). There are 2 specific features that keep me coming back to Copernic Desktop Search. First, it works with multiple Outlook profile. I use multiple profiles in Outlook because of my job and I found that neither Google nor Windows Desktop Search handle it well.

Secondly, CDS lets you choose a document type prior to conducting the search. Then, after search result is displayed , it provides an easy way to refine the search by adding filters or choose another document type. I find this to be more intuitive because 95% of the time I already know if I want to find an email, a file or a picture.

This way of searching is, in fact, what the folks at Microsoft Research agree to be the most intuitive way. This is in essence what Phlat does when used with Windows Desktop Search. Yes, Phlat provides document tagging and other little features, but it largely just gets Windows Desktop Search to where CDS already is.

What I'd like to see from Copernic (the company) is more effort to reach out to its customers. Other companies already have RSS feeds, forums, and other ways of interacting to its customers. I'd like to see Copernic start doing this so I can tell them to jump on the document tagging bandwagon.

Learning to value Social Bookmarking tools

2006-02-04T19:36:00.000+08:00

When David Filo and Jerry Yang first started Yahoo on a campus trailer in 1994, they could list the whole internet on a few web pages. Now, any 13 year old has a thousand of web bookmarks he needs to manage.
My first experience with bookmark web sites was with Yahoo's own. It was quite adequate for many years -- or at least I think it was adequate -- until Furl and del.icio.us brought new ideas to the game. To me, it was not the idea of sharing my bookmarks that mattered the most. The main advantages of such Social Bookmarking tools are (compared to Yahoo's old-fashioned bookmarking tool) for me are:

It makes more sense to save web "pages" (articles, blog entries, etc.) in Social Bookmarking sites rather than old-fashioned bookmarking tool. For example, http://www.newsweek.com can be saved in an old-fashioned bookmark. But an article about avian flu in Newsweek.com should be saved in a Social Bookmarking tool.
You can easily create tags or notes to the bookmark to clearly explain what the web site is about
In the case of Furl, it keeps a copy of the web page, in case the original web site goes down or goes out of business

Since mid-2004, I started keeping entries in Furl. As of this blog entry's writing, I have 654 bookmarks in it. I still keep my Yahoo bookmarks because I wanted to keep "home" pages of web sites (www.google.com, www.microsoft.com, etc.) separate from articles and blog entries I keep in Furl. On last count, my Yahoo bookmarks has 600+ entries in it and keeping them within the (numerous levels of) folders are beginning to be quite a hassle. That is why I am now revisiting other methods/tools for keeping my bookmarks.
After evaluating a number of bookmarking tools out there, I can sum them up thusly:

Yahoo Bookmarks. Cons: Simply put: not sexy. Needs the bloated Yahoo Toolbar to take advantage of.
Chipmark is a Yahoo Bookmarks clone. Pros: doesn't need Yahoo Toolbar. Cons: Saving bookmarks is constrained to the folder hierarchy, so you cannot have multiple tags to a bookmark (i.e. old-fashioned bookmarking).
Furl. Pros: Saves a copy of the bookmarked web page. Cons: Interface is a bit clunky -- it takes multiple clicks to attach new tags to a bookmark.
Yahoo My Web 2.0. Pros: Easy to have multiple tags to a bookmark. Easy import from Yahoo Bookmarks. Integration with other Yahoo services. Cons: Plain-looking. No easy way to import 654 bookmarks from Furl. Bulk edit can be improved.
Del.icio.us. Pros: Multiple tags to a bookmark. A gazillion tools/extensions available to enhance usability and user experience. Cons: Ugly-looking. Doesn't save a copy of the web page. No easy way to import from Furl.
Blinklist. Pros: Nice looking. Multiple tags to a bookmark. Easy to import from Furl and Yahoo Bookmarks. Cons: Doesn't save a copy of the web page.

At this point I have imported my bookmarks from Yahoo and Furl to Blinklist. However, because Blinklist doesn't create copies of web pages, I'm also keeping my bookmarks at Furl (I know, it sucks). What I'm really hoping is for Google to start getting serious in this area and enhance their own bookmarking tool (e.g. have an import feature, to start with). With its integration to the rest of Google service, it would certainly be kick-ass.

Evaluating your workplace habits

2006-01-26T19:36:00.000+08:00

Often times when you spend your 9-to-5 at the office, you feel like you're not getting as much done as you'd like. Or maybe you're just curious about how much of your work time is taken away by non-work distractions (impulse to web surf and other things). One tip I got from reading sites such as Lifehacker and 43 Folders is keeping track of the time you spend at the office. This means literally take note of what you're doing, including the start time and end time. Fortunately there are tools out there that help you do that.
Ideally, a tool that I'd like to use for this has the following features:

Small enough to fit in the toolbar and has an always-on-top option
Installed on the PC (because I don't always have internet connection)
Can easily switch from one task to another (because I do many different tasks in a day, and I don't do one task continuously from start to finish).
Has a decent reporting feature.
Free

I tried a number of different tools, ranging from the basic to the sophisticated, but finally settled on TimeTracker. It doesn't meet all my criterias, but I'll settle for it for now.
I've been using it for only 3 days now, but I'll share my experience. First, I regret to say that I broke the first rule of scientific study. When you're observing a subject, your observation is not supposed to affect your subject. However, in my case, the fact that I'm able to dissect my working habit as I'm doing it and evaluate whether it's good or bad, makes me improve my working habit at the same time. So at the end of 3 days, I see that I'm actually doing more work that before.

Well, in any case, even though my study is not valid, my goal to improve my productivity is achieved.

GTD and ebooks

2006-01-24T19:33:00.000+08:00

I became aware of Getting Things Done (GTD), a few months ago from various web sites around the internet. The more I read about it, the more I became interested in it. When I decided to buy the book, about 5 months ago none of the bookstores in Jakarta carried it. Fortunately Amazon carried the e-book version. 5 minutes later, I was happily reading the electronic version of David Allen's Getting Things Done on my iPaq hw6515.
This book started a whole avalanche of e-book purchases and the beginning of e-book love-fest for me. My preferred format is Microsoft's eReader (.LIT) because of the ClearType (seriously, I mean it) and other wonderful thingies such as bookmarking and highlighting.

The reason I prefer e-books to regular books are related to the teachings of GTD itself. GTD teaches you to utilize time more efficiently. The 5 minutes waiting for a meeting to start, the 2 minutes waiting for the light to turn green, etc. Those are the times I use to read my ebook. And I carry 10 books with me all the time... in my iPaq.

One good e-commerce site I discovered for e-books -- besides Amazon -- is FictionWise. Of course, relatively speaking, the choice of e-books for sale out there is pretty pathetic. I'm pretty pissed that publishers are not offering more titles as e-books and I can't understand (or rather, I refuse to accept the explanation) why they won't do that. Even if they offer a title, the cost is the same or more expensive than the paperback edition. Why? There's no cost for paper, no cost for distribution, no cost for the middle persons. Why the high price??

2005-04-15T01:38:00.000+08:00

This is one of our earlier pictures. Taken at Warung Warto, Blok A, one night in 2003. Happy times. I don't we ate anything that night. The food was never special and the place, frankly, smells. And don't get me started on the street musicians.