Making A Difference…

Wow ! Indonesia now has its own internet based on demand TV.

I just recently found out through our corporate grapevine, that WowTV is now available in Indonesia. It is a partnership between M2B World Asia Pacific with PT. Wow Television Indonesia (a subsidiary of PT. Agis, Tbk).

They offer programming through the web, or to your television through what they call WowTv media box, as well as through your handphone using WowTv Mobile.

There are several pricing tiers available to consumers, including a free one.

What’s so special about this ? Presumably it’s the ability to watch programming at any time 24 hours a day and on demand, unlike regular broadcast television, where you have to follow their programming schedule if you don’t want to miss your favorite show.

How good is it ? I really can’t tell you right now. I signed up for the free account and was able to browse through their free collections (which, by the way, seems to be really old programs that’s not bad if you just want to try out WowTv, but really can’t sustain you for more than several days). However, clicking on the programs, all I got was a “back to video listing” button in the middle of the screen.

I’m running it using Firefox on an iMac running Tiger. Perhaps there is some plug-ins or something that I’m missing ?

Do you hate traffic jams as much as I do ? Do you feel helpless not being able to do anything about it ?

Well, I and a friend of mine recently started a social network whose mission is to help all of us cope with the traffic jam in Jakarta today and to discuss and better yet implement solutions. This site facilitates the discussion, exchange of ideas, experiences, tips and tricks, and more revolving around the topic of driving in Jakarta and traffic jam.

Perhaps something good for all of us can come out of this, and we hope that this site can be a resource for all.

All of us would love to hear your thoughts, ideas, and insights around this topic, so why not join us by clicking here.

See all of you at the bebasmacet.ning.com site !

Here is an article that I posted today on bebasmacet.ning.com, a social network whose purpose is to share ideas on how to cope with the nasty traffic jam in Jakarta today, and possible solutions for tomorrow.

Would you believe it ? Jakarta has its own Traffic Management Center and it’s not half bad either.

Located within the compound of Polda Metro jaya, the TMC is the center for all traffic tracking and information for the city of Jakarta. It is also where they man the 1717 sms for traffic reporting and information.

The inside of the TMC reminds me somewhat of the houston command center where they control the launch of the space shuttles..:) There is one giant screen in the middle with about 4-6 other smaller screens on its sides.
Information from the different stations can be quickly pulled up to all of the screens, including the giant one, upon request, much like in the scenes of Star Trek, when Captain Kirk or Picard says “On Screen”.

There are about 6 different stations if I’m not mistaken, in the middle of the room, each with about 3 screens, and manned by police officers. The different stations have different purposes, including: sms monitoring, web monitoring, Police GPS locations, Traffic conditions.

Just behind the stations is a section which looks somewhat like a small auditorium. I believe this is where reporters or visitors can come and watch what is going on.

There are tons of information being recorded: traffic cameras, traffic conditions reported on different roads, accident reports, demonstration reports, police locations, traffic light conditions across the city, etc., etc. There is definitely no shortage of data.
They currently have about 38 traffic cameras all over the city. Some are looking over highways and some are pointed at major roads.
The cool thing is the cameras can be zoomed and panned remotely. Wow! Zoom in on that speeding car’s license plate ! (Zooming in to that level may not be possible in reality, though)

With all this information, the TMC can quickly know if there is a traffic condition that needs to be attended to, and can dispatch the closest police officer to the scene (If he/she is not in traffic herself, ofcourse).

A youtube video, which gives a glimpse of what the police officers are monitoring daily inside the TMC can be found in the videos section of the bebasmacet.ning.com site.

Are you aware of the existence of TMC in Jakarta ?

I don’t normally make a fuss about people smoking around me, unless I have my two little kids with me.

It was about noon time on a Monday, several days ago. We had just finished watching our kids perform at school and wanted to grab some lunch. After strolling Cilandak Town Square (Citos) for a while, we decided to have lunch at Mango. We were seated inside, near the drinks counter. We completed our orders and soon after the waiter brought us our drinks.

All of a sudden, two people who were sitting right next to my kids started lighting up their cigarettes. Concern about my kids, I called the waiter and asked to be moved somewhere else that’s a non smoking area. The waiter replied “This is a smoking restaurant. In fact the whole ground level of Citos is designated a smoking area. The only non-smoking area is on the upper floor.” (more…)

I’ve just finished listening to “Bootstrap Finance“, an article by Amar V. Bhide (audiobook by audible available here).  This is quite an old Harvard Business Review article published in 1992, at a time when Word Perfect was still a household name. He argues, and I’m paraphrasing, that you don’t need VC funding or at least you don’t need lots of them and would fare better if VC funding can be minimized.

Entrepreneurs better do it the old fashion way, where they focus on a niche segment of the market, generate break-even cash as soon as possible, and only grow as necessary, thus minimizing the need for huge sums of capital.  It takes longer and requires more patience, wits, and creativity, but you retain control, freedom, and can run below the radar under much less pressure.

It seems like good old fashion advice.  However, looking at the way startups are started today, it seems like people are doing it as if they will be crushed by faster competitors if you don’t grow big fast.  You either grow fast and dominate your market, or you’ll die. Is it really true ?

Anyways, some good advice for startups from the article:

1. Get Operational quickly
   Just jump in and do it, if necessary copy other people’s business first.  Don’t wait for the big breakthrough idea.  Opportunities will come once you jump in.
2. Look for quick break-even cash generating projects
   bootstrapping startups need to get cash to cover expenses as soon as possible.  Think of ways to generate this and don’t consider it as distraction to your core idea. This is how a startup can survive.
3. Offer high value products or services that can sustain direct personal selling
   Use your personal passion and salesmanship and willingness to go the extra mile as a substitute for big marketing budget to convince consumers to buy your product/service.
4. Forget about the crack team
   Strong core team is needed for VC to fund you.  If you don’t need VCs then you can manage without having that strong core team initially.
5. Keep growth in check
   Grow only at a pace which you can sustain with your current resources.
6. Focus on cash, not on profit, market share, or anything else
   In startup mode, cash, more than anything else is king. It’s even beyond profit and other strategic goals.
7. Cultivate banks before your company becomes credit worthy
   Maintain good relationships with banks so that you will be able to get loans from them when you need them later.

I met with a gentleman which has his own IT professionals recruiting services several weeks ago and I had a very interesting conversation with him. In essence he’s indicating that the quality of the IT professionals available in Indonesia isn’t very encouraging. In fact he says only about 1% of all the new IT grads available is really qualified to work professionally. This statistic comes from his company’s own experience with recruiting IT professionals.

There are several factors that come into consideration when he says they are qualified, including, among other things:

1. Technical Competencies
2. Passion for the job
3. Work ethics and attitude.

After grueling screenings, about 99% of the applicants fail and only about 1 % “diamonds” are found. Most of them fail in the passion and work ethics area.

This is a very sad statistic. Just when other countries are gearing up for information economy, we are only producing a measly 1% qualified IT professionals.

How is your experience in this area ? Is it just as bad ?

How would you feel if you buy a book (of the real physical kind, not an e-book) and it says on the shrinkwrap of the book that the minute you open the shrinkwrap you are agreeing to the following terms of use,

You are the only one authorized to read this book. Loaning, selling, or giving this book away is in violation of this agreement and punishable by law.
We reserve the right to at any time confiscate this book if we feel you have violated this agreement.

Absurd ! Ofcourse. But not so in the digital world !

I’ve got copies of e-books I’ve purchased from ebooks.com that is authorized only to be read by computers that I have authorized, and it is limited to 5 computers. I am not allowed to print, annotate, copy, or do anything with it. I can’t give it away either when I’m done with it, unless you want to sacrifice an authorization token. Worst of all I can’t move it and read it on a different device running a different software.
Is it really my e-book ?

I’ve got music that I download through iTunes that only works on authorized computers. I can’t loan it to anybody, I can’t give it away. I can’t listen on different devices.
Is it really my music ?

I know it is easier said than done, but I think they should get these DRMs to behave as they do in the analog world:

They should come up with a worldwide standard of DRM (like I said, easier said than done). Within this standard, people will be allowed to do pretty much the same things as they can do in the analog world, i.e. read anywhere, make copies for their own use, print, annotate, etc. The same limitations as the analog world will apply as well, such as

• You will be able to read/listen to your stuff anywhere, but it can only be used in one place at a time. All other instances will be disabled.
• You will be able to loan it to others, but your copy of it will be disabled until the loanee gives the stuff back to you.
• You will be able to give it away, thus disabling your copy and you can choose to delete it.

(It will be neat if there is the capability of carrying annotations around in the digital copies, such that people can share annotations. add links and other informations, etc.)

What do you think ?

Inspired by my own frustration with DRM, Scoble’s blog, and from an episode of TWIT (This Week In Tech with Leo Laporte) (I forgot which episode, though)

How much time have we all wasted sitting idly in traffic in Jakarta? Time that we can use to generate more revenues for our companies, time we can use to spend with our families, time we can use to grow this nation? Instead we are spending more and more time within the confines of our car looking at the same sceneries every single day going back and forth to our offices.

On several occasions, my driver has asked other drivers about how long on average their travel times are to and from the office. On average for people going into the sudirman area it takes about 2 hours one way. If they start going at 9 o’clock i n the morning, they’ll arrive at the office at 11. With that long of a travel time, they could already be in Bandung.

If say you consider that you spend 2 hours going into the city and about 1.5 hours going back, that’s 3.5 hours per day. Say you work 5 days a week, in one month you’d already be spending 17.5 hours in traffic. In a year you’d end up wasting around 210 hours. That’s roughly equal to 26 days of work days, or about one month worth of work time.

Imagine that ! Out of the 12 months that you go to work, you actually spend one month sitting in traffic. Can you think of other more useful ways of spending one month worth of your time ?

Getting tired of your tidy desktop on your windows or macs ? Here’s an innovation to messify your desktop. Inspired by real messy desks, this application actually makes your computer desktop fun and intuitive (or more confusing ?)

Just like your real desk, you can have piles and piles of stuff on top of it. you can also throw things around to bump on one another, you can pin things on the wall, fan them out, leaf through your stuff and much more.

Here’s a video demonstration of it:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0ODskdEPnQ]

You can find a presentation by Anand Agarawala, the creator of BumpTop at TED here

For more info, visit http://bumptop.com

Remember my earlier post about the Microsoft Surface, the iTouch table ?  Well, apparently there is also an iTouch Wall developed by Autodesk Labs.   Perhaps it’s an upcoming trend of “iTouch-ing” everything we interact with today.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qX8wOjUbmww]

 A short article about it is available at the GISuser site.