Making A Difference…

What exactly is google apps ?

It’s a collection of online google tools such as gmail, google docs, and google talk which you can setup for your small business own use by associating it with your registered domain, separate from the public google area.
The standard google apps is free and most of the time you don’t need the pay editions.

The easiest way to explain it is to look at gmail first. Say you own company XYZ, and you have already registered for the XYZ.com domain. Now you would normally get a hosting site for your website and then configure emails from the hosting site.  You can, however, choose to use gmail as your interface to your small business emails.

After doing some setups, you can then create @XYZ.com email accounts from gmail, and read and write emails to and from that @XYZ.com account from there. Read the rest of this entry »

How do you track the traffic to your blog once you have installed WordPress on your hosting site ? Google Analytics seem to be really good for this and it’s free, so here’s how I made it work for my site.

Read the rest of this entry »

After the longest time holding off on hosting my own sites and blogs, I finally caved in… What made me do it?  It’s the enticement of getting unlimited lifetime free storage at DreamHost.

If man were designed to think rationally, I wouldn’t have been as compelled to sign up. Read the rest of this entry »

Remember that speech Steve Jobs gave at Stanford a while back? Well I just found out that it was on youtube ( I know…it’s probably old news already, but hey I didn’t know about it being on youtube..:) ). I figured I share it here as well, if not for you guys out there who hasn’t yet found the video clip like myself. Be inspired !

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1R-jKKp3NA]

Could it be that twitter has finally been brought down to its knee today ?  My updates have been taking forever to be posted and no more twitter updates are received… Silent

Questions have been asked of whether twitter could scale if it really hits the mainstream, when, say, top celebrities joined and are followed by their fans, and twitter has to serve all these updates from these celebrities to all their fans.  Could that day be the end of twitter ?

In any case, perhaps it will be a good thing…. For once perhaps people, including myself, would stop tinkering with their mobile phones… then again there are lots of other social network types of apps to keep us busy on our mobile phones..

Three areas kept coming back to me as being fascinating: information technology, biotech, and the area of clean alternative energy.

Information Technology, ofcourse, has been at the forefront of giving us innovations that better our lives overall. This area hasn’t gotten old yet. In fact, it keeps coming up with new and breakthrough things for years to come. Just look at all the sites covering the topics of new technology: web 2.0 social networks, location based services, mobile technologies. The list goes on and on and on, and it’s always refreshing to discover them:

Biotech is another one that really fascinates me, especially the rapid advancements of genetic science and engineering. The concept that we are now studying how living being work at its most fundamental level, and discovering how to manipulate and harness its powers is just mind blowing. This will have really big impact in the future on how we view nutrition, as well as how we live our lives.

Finally we come to clean alternative energy. Several factors affecting the growth in this area are: Awareness of global environmental destruction, increasing awareness of people about our own responsibility to our planet, as well as the increasing cost of fuel. There are breakthroughs left and right here. There is the research into nanotechnology for solar panels, which increases the efficiency of solar panels by multiple factors, there is also research being done to use/turn water into fuel, as well as the recent news about Tata’s automobile using compressed air.

Fascinating…!

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.” Read the rest of this entry »