Gerakan Bawah Tanah - Mr. GBT

There is a new trend in Indonesia and it is an application called "WhatsApp". It is an application that allows us to send messages to a person or - more frequently - a group of people. It is a replacement of BlackBerry's BBM. The BlackBerry's era is over. The reason is that Android is becoming more popular, as in other parts of the world. WhatsApp is cross platform and operator neutral. What more could you ask? I don't use BlackBerry, so I don't use BBM. I just recently bought an Android phone - it's an LG. WhatsApp is the application I installed and quickly I am part of many WhatsApp groups. I could see that many people are like me, embracing WhatsApp.

I have just read a job opening for RIM. The target market is Indonesia, but the job is in Singapore. I just don't understand this. Why don't the open the job in Indonesia ? I have mentioned this over and over again. You have to be in the place to smell the coffee. You can't be form far afar. (Why there's no Starbucks in Italy, eh?) For example, go to BEC (in Bandung) or Roxy (in Jakarta) to see what's going on. If you don't know those two names, then you know diddly. My point exactly.

Earlier I wrote that Indonesians are switching from Facebook to Twitter. Many - mostly folks from Facebook - don't believe me. Well, what can I say. (I was right in predicting things since late 80s or early 90s.) Here's a newer statistics about twitter. The number one place of active twitter users in the world is ... Jakarta, our capital city. My city, Bandung, is "just" number 6 (six) on the list. Can you imagine this? Oh, you cannot since you're not here. Ha. Like I said, you guys (Facebook, Twitter, and all those internet tech companies) should have an office here. Just to smell the coffee and find out the trend for yourselves. Oh, coffee here is also good! :)

as date marked we have planned for the worst it's armageddon as time approached speculation arises it's the end but folks, we have assumed control it's the beginning of a new journye we have assumed control we have assumed control ... control ... control ... control [21-12-2012 - inspired by Kerry Yackoboski 's posting on his Facebook]

By accident I saw BlackBerry ads in Indonesia TV channels. I don't watch Indonesia TV channels that much, by the way. To me, these ads are way off the target. First, there is this ads about socialites using genuine BBs. The focus is on the genuine BBs. First of all, I don't think Indonesians buy BBs because of wanting to be the same as elite or socialites. It (maybe) used to be like that, but it is not like that. BBs are not the hottest things. Second, trying to convice us of genuine? Come on. You know us better than that :) Then, there's this ads about must using BB for accessing Facebook. Well, Facebook is still popular in Indonesia but many younger users are moving more towards twitter. (I've been saying this, but those decision makers at Facebook and RIM would not listen. Fine. It's their loss.) So, advertising more towards twitter as oppose to facebook is more logical. What should be done? Facebook was the only service to provide easy upload of photos, ...

This morning I was dusting off my old collections. I found this Sally Oldfield - Water Bearer album. Interesting. This was her 1978 album, I think. So I gave it a spin. Lovely. Listening to old progressive rock music is just like reading old English literature. Interesting in a strange manner.

I love modifying the look and feel of my screen, especially changing the fonts. Many applications (web sites) do not allow the user to change the fonts. They suck! Enter Stylish . It lets me trap the layout and change according to my taste. I can have different look and feel according to the address, URL, or even global. I love Stylish. Now, there are (new) applications under Google Chrome . For example, I've been using tweetdeck under Chrome. The problem is, tweetdeck does not allow me to change fonts. I want to user Stylish to change the fonts but don't know how to do it. For example, I don't know how to match the address or URL for this. I tried to use "tweetdeck" as part of URL / regex, but it doesn't work. Any hints? For now, let me play with it.

Last time I wrote about the demise of BlackBerry (BB) in Indonesia and no one believed me. As you can see, BB's share is getting smaller and smaller. Android is getting all the attention. This time, I'll write my take on Facebook vs. Twitter. Indonesians love to talk. We don't write, but talk. It's just our culture. That's why the number of written publication in Indonesia is very small. Our culture translates well into Facebook. We love to tell people about our family and stuff. We love to show our photos. We love (class) reunions. Have a reunion, take pictures, upload them right away. Tell the world. Let's not go into taking photos of our food. That's another "strange" behaviors. Privacy? Well, that's not an issue to us. We don't really care. Ha! Seriously. Originally, Facebook is only accessible through web or computers. Access to computers are still limitted in Indonesia compared to cellphone. Thus, only a small number of people j...

I love taking food photos. I keep most of them for my self. Uploaded, but mostly for archiving purposes. Sometimes I do post food photos just to tease you folks :)  Like this one, lamb kebab. I should post more food photos :)

Ok here's the deal. I wanted to install Firefox on my Debian machine. I downloaded Firefox directly from Mozilla.org. After tinkering around a bit, since there was an error message related to libstdc6++, I got it up and running for me. But I wanted to install for all users. I understood that there is iceweasel and that it "is" Firefox, but to me they are different. For starters, current version of Iceweasel in my Debian is version 3.5 but the Firefox that I installed manually is version 15. They are just way far apart. Why is this? Isn't there anybody porting / compiling the latest version of Firefox for Debian? The second thing, is that I use stylish (userstyles.org) a lot. It just wouldn't install on my Iceweasel. So, iceweasel is no good for me. My conclusion ... iceweasel is not Firefox!

Not long ago, whenever I meet somebody, I was asked for my BlackBerry (BB) pin. These days I rarely got this question. Mobile phone number was asked instead. Facebook notifications also mentioned that many of my friends are starting to use Facebook for Android application. It means that they are switching from BB to Android-based phone. Recent status from a friend also showed this trend. What does all of this mean? It means that Android is replacing BlackBerry in Indonesia. We used to be a big market for BB, but now it is declining. Long time ago I urged BB to open a research center in Indonesia. To investigate our behavior, why we loved BB. You cannot do this from remote. It has to be here, in Indonesia. BB was nice at one point. Its price packaging was great at that time. You can send as many messages as you like with BBM. At that time we have to pay for SMS. Very small amount of money, but still in our mind we have to pay while BBM is "free". We forgot that there i...

Leadership is one of my fav subject. I want to know and write about this topic, but time is so limited right now. Let me throw this issue. Why is now difficult to find a leader? We've seen this in all part of the world. Lack of leader(s) what got us in this situation. When we read history that there are many leaders in the past. Be that they're cruel, but still leaders. But now, in many elections we are faced with no good candidate. What happened to us? Do we eat the wrong food? Wrong climate? Education? Or what?

I use(d) seesmic to do my tweeting. It has a nice web interface, which I customized so that it uses different fonts and the like. I love it. But, now seesmic is pushing users to use its "seesmic ping". There are things that I don't like. First of all, seesmic ping only allows you to post tweet. I don't know how to read tweets that I follow. For that I have to use another application / web site. Then, what's the purpose of using seemic ping? Second, the plan that I choose is the free plan. It only gives 10 posts / day. What? Even for me, who on average only tweet 14 times a day, it is too low. Right now it even won't allow me to post, saying that I have exceeded the account limit even though I have not posted at all. So I guess, now, I am looking for alternatives ...

I used to be an avid tumblr user, but these days I use pinterest more often. Pinterest, in my opinion, is tumblr on steroids. The reason I am leaving tumblr is that there is no innovation. Nothing new. And it is becoming ... boring. This is an example case of innovate or die. What do you think?

I was trying to upload photos through my Google+ but couldn't do it. I have a slow bandwidth and the g+ animation (and downloading of the photos) is just too much. For example, if I want to upload a photo into an existing album (which already has 50 photos) then it would load and show those 50 photos before it let me upload into the album. My way of avoiding this is to use picasaweb.google.com directly instead of using g+. Animation is nice, but too much animation is boring and annoying. No need to do that. Keep it simple, will you Google.

Few days ago I was watching Castle on TV. There was an advertising saying that if I captured Castle and Beckett in interogation room and send it to foxasia@fox.com I would get a chance to get a copy of Castle graphic diary (which is a comic). So, while watching the series I took snapshots on my camera. Hoping that it would show the TV screen. Mailed it to the email address. No response. Not even an acknowledgement. I felt cheated. Oh well. I guess next time I wouldn't participate in any of that (from Fox). There ...

I looked around in my neck of the wood. It seems that youngsters want to become artists, singers, and the like. Basically they want to be in the entertainment industries. Nobody seems to be interested in engineering anymore. That's scary. Being an engineer, I love the idea of building stuff. Creating things. Building the world. Sometimes it is man againsts nature. It is not easy, but it is fun. Let me emphasize it again, it is not easy. Period. There is an illusion that being popular is fun. In reality, it is not always. It's a grand illusion. On the other hand, youngsters don't know what it's like being an engineer. Maybe we should write more about this. Tell stories. Heck, even make a great movie about it. No, not Inspector Gadget-kind of movie, but a cool movie. Any takers?

this is what I have in front of me

Long time ago I asked a friend, what is missing living in a country without four seasons. She said that the sense of progress is what's missing. I guess the same feeling is missing when I am reading an e-book. Reading an e-book I don't have a sense of how many pages left to read. I know that there is an indicator of the number pages in most e-books reader. There's even a percentage indicator. But, I don't get the sensation. When reading a conventional, physical book, I put a bookmark. Looking at the bookmark I get the sense of how much more I have to read. Sometimes I flip the pages just to get the sense. I know I can calculate based on current page and the number of pages in the book, but it just don't work. Maybe this is because I came from an analog world? Anyway, it would be interesting if somebody can create that kind of progress sensation when reading e-books. That would be neat.

I've been using last.fm to keep track my music (listening) habbit . It has a great statistics. Love it soo much. But things have been like that for ages. There's no new thing. Recently, there are several applications that can keep track of your life by asking you to "check in" manually or automatically. The interesting thing is that they reward you for checking in. For example, in getglue you'll get stickers after several checkins. In other places you get points, rewards, or ranks. This is missing in last.fm. Last.fm could update their site by providing ranks (people who use last.fm frequently) or group people with the same interest(s) - say if they have more than 90% match - in a special group. They can even rename their group to a cooler name. This way we can find people with the same interest and perhaps learn new artists or bands from the rest of the group. Lots of ideas are still available if last.fm is interested. Or, maybe last.fm is a dying service?...