Gerakan Bawah Tanah - Mr. GBT

My telegram feed shows a lot of people subscribing to Telegram. What gives? Apparently, many people are starting to install Telegram because they are worried with the latest WhatsApp's privacy policy update. (I should put links here.) So, that's it. In short, in my opinion there's no need for the migration. I have an explanation in a video, but it's in Bahasa Indonesia. It's here. Now, back to the "euphoria" (if you can call it that). Would people start abandoning WA (WhatsApp) and switching to Telegram? Is it for good? I don't think it is happening. It's like abandoning Microsoft Windows for Linux. Linux is as good as Microsoft Windows. (In my personal opinion, Linux is actually better, but this is from a techie person who have been using Linux since its early stage. I am biased.) Have you seen majority of people migrating to Linux? No. People are staying with Windows. Why? Because, we are used to Windows. Linux as a nice desktop too, but it is no...

Some of you may know that I do quite a bit of presentations. Some of the are private or for internal organizations, but many times they are open for public. As an example, the next "presentation" (actually discussion) is on electronics industry in Indonesia. What are the issues relating to that?   I am going to have a discussion with pak Adi Indrayato whom I know for quite a while. We went to the same school since 1982. He is the best person to talk about the electronic ecosystem.This discussion is going to be in Bahasa Indonesia though. So, if you want to know more about electronics industry, then be there (or be square).

I love coffee. Correction, I LOOOVVVEEE   coffee. There. I made it bold to show how much I love coffee. If you read my other blog (the Indonesian one), you might already know this. As it happens, Bandung - the city where I live - is the best place to get black coffee. You may not believe this, but if you are here, you can see that every 50 meters there is going to be a coffee shop. Most of these coffee shops are using local coffee, Jawa Barat. Although many of them have coffee from other parts of Indonesia (and even outside Indonesia). To show you the variety of coffee that we have here, here is a list of photos of coffee that I've just got recently. (Less than 1 month.) These are just samples. I have more. As you can see, those coffee are from places in Indonesia. I tend to like coffee that are bold. Thus, I like the East part of Indonesia. These days, I like Flores and Papua. Most of these coffee are still beans. You get grounded ones, but most people pre...

Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook (as if you need this introduction - ha ha ha), is Indonesia. He met with our next president, Joko Widodo - famously called Jokowi, in Jakarta. Joko Widodo will be sworn as our president on Oct 20th. One of the photos that made me laugh (happy laugh) is this. In this picture, Jokowi showed Mark some kind of pants (I think it's a pair of jeans) from a small store in Tanah Abang. Jokowi was known for cleaning the mess in Tanah Abang. He loves to go to small places and meets with ordinary people. We call this "blusukan" (pronounce like: blue shoeq un - ha ha ha) in Javanese. Oh, btw, we make jeans in Indonesia. Those famous brands are made in Indonesia. Mark went to Yogyakarta before he went to Jakarta. Yogyakarta - or Jogja in short - is famous for Borobudur temple. Another photos that made me laugh is this. A group of tourists, not knowing who Mark Zuckerberg is, asked him to take a picture of them and he took the picture. Mark i...

Bandung is a food barometer in Indonesia. Well, not just food, but also fashion. This post is the food side. Next time, I'll post the fashion side. I am so glad that I live in this city. The new food buzz in Bandung is Bon Chon. This is a Korean-franchised fast food. It's the Korean KFC, sort of. Their favorite menu is the honey-glazed chicken. It's sweet and a little better compared to KFC, in my opinion of course. The rest is similar to KFC. The place is always packed with people. It's just a wave. Let see how long this will last. In the mean time, let me enjoy these drumsticks.

Just got back from Singapore. We flew from Singapore to Jakarta and went back to Bandung using train. The Argo Parahyangan train was okay. Lots of tourists were on the train. Arrived in Bandung, we decided to take taxi to our home. It has been a while since I took taxi from this train station. I didn't know what to do. So, when we were just off the gate, we were swarmed by unofficial taxi drivers. I knew I shouldn't say something and just straight to metered taxi, which I remembered there were plenty of them on the street outside the train station. But, I responded. Boy, I was so wrong. The taxi drivers offered me their service. I asked them how much. They asked where to and I said the area where we live. They offered Rp. 150,000,- (one hundred fifty thousands rupiah). I knew this is too much. I remembered taking taxi from Bandung airport to our home is just Rp. 70,000. So I told them that. They grunted and started to walk away, except for one guy. He relented that we shoul...

This afternoon, I am going to give a talk on technopreneurship at Institut Teknologi Bandung (ITB). One of the points that I am going to address is when to start. Many people have plans and dreams of becoming an entrepreneur but never actually made it. They wait for the perfect moment to jump. Well, there's no perfect moment. You have to get out of your comfort zone. There's a saying, " Life Begins at the End of Your Comfort Zone ." So jump in. A couple months ago I was a speaker at Innovfest Singapore. One of the speakers, Ike Lee, said that now it's the right time to start a business in Asia. Yes. Right here. Right now. Aren't we lucky? (Well, we means us here in Asia.) And so my soundtrack this morning is Van Halen's " Right Now ." See you in my talk.

For those who are not Indonesians or not in Indonesia may not know that presidential election is coming real soon. 9th of July 2014. And apparently there have been lots of negative and black campaign over the internet. Mostly on social media. Everyday, no correction ... every minute! there is a post on the candidates, followed by flurry of pro and contra messages. Then, the brawl began. Hate grew. Unfriend and blocking accounts took place. Many people wished that they could shut down their facebook account until election is over. It would be interesting if somebody from Facebook and Twitter could monitor the traffic and see the effect. This is a rare event. Anybody from facebook or twitter?

Pemilhan presiden sudah dekat. Salah satu calon yang muncul adalah Joko Widodo - atau lebih dikenal dengan nama singkatannya Jokowi. Banyak orang yang menyukai Jokowi. Namun salah satu kendala yang ada adalah orang juga kurang suka dengan partainya, yaitu Partai Demokrasi Indonesia - Perjuangan (PDI-P). Ada banyak pengalaman buruk dengan partai ini. Kombinasi ini yang membuat orang menjadi ragu untuk memilih Jokowi. Saya juga termasuk yang masuk ke dalam kategori itu. Untuk pemilihan anggota legislatif dari partai, saya cenderung masuk ke golput. Tidak memihak kepada partai apapun. Untuk pemilihan presiden awalnya saya juga berniat untuk golput. Apatis. Tetapi melihat apa yang sudah dilakukan oleh Jokowi, timbullah harapan baru untuk Indonesia ini. Bagi saya, Jokowi adalah hope . Semakin lama semakin saya lebih yakin untuk memilih Jokowi. Maka, meskipun saya tidak terlalu menyukai PDI-P, saya akan memilih Jokowi. Bismillah ...

Presidential election is coming soon. Looking at various social media here in Indonesia, people are trying to convince the others about their political choices. One might say that his candidate is better than the other. Worse, many do black campaign over the other candidate. The thing is, they don't realize that we don't change. Most people I know already set their minds on their candidates. Whatever you do won't change that. Would you (change)? I won't. You won't. We won't. Thus, what is this fuss all about?

Presidential election is coming here in Indonesia. One of the strongest candidates is Joko Widodo or Jokowi. Unfortunately, there are a lot of black campaign against him over the internet. Sadly, many people believe this misinformation. Here is a list of some of them. The SMK car. Jokowi was accused of using the popularity of car built by SMK students and now people are accusing that it is actually a Chinese made car. Here is the real story behind it . Yeah, I know about this since I was doing the IT-version of this (for SMK). Jokowi was issued as the son of Oey Hong Liong . This is a bit funny, because Oey Hong Liong is a rich person and you can find his information to find that this is untrue. He's not that old compared to Jokowi. If this is true, he would have had Jokowi when he was 14-years old. (Need link for clarification) Fake orbituary of Jokowi . It is sad that people are doing this. How do you feel if this is done to your father, son, or husband? Here is a clarific...

While the world is becoming faster, internet-wise, here in Indonesia things are still slow. I still cannot open Google+. Seriously. Nobody believed me. Now, I found the proof. Here's an infograph I found on the internet (need URL). As you can see, we are still a hippo(?). We are even slower than Vietnam. Ouch. With this condition, it is important to design applications. Your application should run on slow speed. That is if you want to grab Indonesia's market. Otherwise, ignore us with your need-for-speed-apps.

Today, April 9, 2014 is election day in Indonesia. While many people will not vote, there are more people who are going to election booths. You'll see lots of tweets (twitter of course) and posts on Facebook, Path, and the like. Myself? I have just got back from voting booth a few minutes ago. God Bless Indonesia ...

Here's a short news from Indonesia. Kelud (or Kelut) erupted. This is a volcano in East Java. The eruption is big. Here, in Bandung - West Java, the sky is cloudy and a tiny layer of ashes are covering the city I hope the people in the are safe and can get through this. Our prayers are with you. Before this, recently, Sinabung in North Sumatra also erupted. We're living dangerously in Indonesia. Related post: Kelud and Sinabung (from the Atlantic)

In past post, I mentioned that Indonesians love Path . Sure enough, Path closes funding deal led by Indonesian's company; Bakrie Global Group. But, we have to realize that Indonesia's cyber space is a fast changing environment. That's why - as I said many many many times - you have to be here, physically in Indonesia to know this. People are not flocking to Path anymore. In fact, I have uninstalled Path. And many have done so, leaving Path. It's just a short infatuation. Unless, Path is doing something, it is dying. Go down here . Talk to the people here. They are your main users! Most people think that sharing things in a close user group is the main thing. Thus, Path. But, most Indonesians do not care about privacy. They want people to see their postings (text, photos, etc.). The more people see the postings, the better. And you cannot do that if you post to just your friends. Update . After this news, there are plenty of funny "news", jokes, etc. ...

There are a lot of discussions on privacy these days. The internet and social media are getting most of the blame. Is this privacy issue for real? Yes, in the West, but no in Indonesia. I've been talking to some Indonesians about privacy. I give a lot of talks and in these talks usually I ask the audience what they think about privacy.  Many think that they have issues related to privacy, but from what they do it seems they don't have problems at all. For instance, Indonesians like to put their real identity - including birth date, schools they went, their child(ren), and more - on their social media! When I ask why they do that, the answers are simple; to get birthday greetings and to organize (alumni) reunions. That's why they have to put real birth dates and real schools. Same thing with photos. Indonesians like to share with families, friends, and even strangers. There was a survey - I lost the URL (if you know there URL, please let me know) - regarding privacy and ...

Gone are the days of BlackBerry in Indonesia. It is replaced by ... Oppo ! When I go to stores or malls that sell cellphones, there used to be many counters with BlackBerry signs. Nowadays, the view is diffrent. It is Oppo sign. At first, I thought the trend is Samsung. But, it is Oppo. I didn't see it coming. Oppo phones are Android phones. They have great features similar to those of Samsung's (and some say are better) but are less expensive. Price is still the dominant factor in Indonesia. Although, lifestyle still dominates the buying factor. In this case, Oppo did the right thing; great lifestyle and less expensive. [I still miss my Samsung Galaxy S4 though. It was a loaner and had to go back to the owner. I really like it.]

Culture is so fascinating. It is also important if you want to market a product (or service) to the people in that culture. To understand the culture, you have to be there - sort of speak. It baffles me that many IT-related companies are not in Indonesia to understand our culture :) This morning, I found this survey site that surveys the best football clubs according to their fans. (Here football means soccer in the North American term :)) The result is ... Persib is number one. Persib even beats Barca. ha ha ha. I guess most people - outside Indonesians - will find that strange. I don't. What/who is Persib? It's our city's (Bandung) football club. Indonesian football fans are maniacs. Just like UK's hooligans. The number of internet users in Indonesia is around 60 millions (according to Association of Indonesian ISPs). The number of cellphone users is easily doubles that. (The number of prepaid cell numbers already more than 200 millions.) You just add both of the...

G+ has just changed the look and feel (again). And, again, I don't like it. Correction, I actually like the look and feel but it is slow to show. That's because our internet connection is not as fast as in the US. People in Google seem to forget that there are places in this world with limitted bandwidth. In fact, many countries with huge number of internet users have slow internet connection. Indonesia is one of them. In another post I mentioned that Twitter is gaining popularity ove Facebook in Indonesia. One of the reasons is that Twitter is lighter than Facebook. Most of users in Indonesia access social network through mobile phones (smartphones). The quality of 3G or CDMA connections varies between places. Even in big city, like Bandung where I live right now, there are places with bad signal quality. My home is one of them. I opened my G+ page and it keeps on giving "loading" message. It's just too bloated. Trying to be fancy but ended up in the gutter...

Recently, I've been asked questions about Indonesian Internet users. To be frankly, I am also looking for data to analyze. (I am running my own internet crawlers, but they are kind of slow - my students are slacking :))  Most people are using SocialBakers as the source of Facebook and Twitter stats. Here's an example of their Facebook stats . The thing about Internet in Indonesia is that it grows rapidly. If you search the internet, most of the statistics are kind of old. Have a look at twitter users stats in 2009, for example. (Link to the report is missing. Will put it here.) Indonesia is nowhere to be found. And yet, I believe, today Indonesia is probably in the top 4 of twitter users. ( Report from Mediabistro shows that in 2012 Indonesia is in the top 5 twitter users.) New data / stats are needed.