Category: Opinion

Trust Studio Made Android Apps To Help You With Electricity and Phone Bills

Often times, we see apps by local developers made it to the popular global marketplace, but most of them are made to cater the need of global market. Not many aim for the local market. Amongst this few, there are apps by Trust Studio called Tagihan Listrik and Tagihan Telkom.

I think both apps are very helpful in solving the problem faced by many Indonesian. The basic idea of those apps is to helo the user to check and inspect the amount of electricity bill (PLN) and home phone (TELKOM).

User needs only to enter the PLN or TELKOM customer number in to the apps. After pressing the button to check the bill for the inserted number, the amount of the bill for that month will be displayed. Actually, the purpose of both apps is only for checking the amount of electricity/phone bill.

But there’s something interesting in both apps.

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CHATcoid Provides 24-Hours Customer Care Service

PT JC Indonesia, the company behind Diskon.com, recently releases its newest service called CHATcoid. It provides outsourcing customer service service for website owner in Indonesia. The service is claimed to be the first in Indonesia.

By using this service, website or e-commerce owner does not need to employ someone dedicated to customer care. CHATcoid will put a widget which gives 24 hours customer care service through chatting. Then, CHATcoid will report the char transcript to the website owner via email.

CHATcoid offers lower price than hiring a customer care officer. In addition, because CHATcoid handles all the installation as well as the supporting infrastructure, CHATcoid gives comfort and effectivity for website owner.

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Publishing on Windows Phone Marketplace According to Puja Pramudya of Radya Labs

A few days ago we highlighted an issue with the Windows Phone Marketplace. A Slovenian developer, Matic Bitenc blogged about his difficulties in publishing his app called Toshl on Windows Phone Marketplace. Bitenc pointed at the lack of access for Slovenian developers even though Marketplace is already available to customers in the former Yugoslavian republic. As a result, Bitenc had to submit his app using a Microsoft Slovenia account.

We dug in to find out whether this is happening as well in Indonesia. The country already has its own Marketplace which debuted alongside the Nokia Lumia. We contacted Puja Pramudya, co-founder and developer at Bandung-based Radya Labs which specializes in Windows Phone platform. Radya Labs is arguably the most prolific Windows Phone app developer in the country, publishing apps for itself as well as for clients.

We asked Pramudya about the status of Windows Phone publishing in Indonesia and this is what he has to say about it.

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[Dailyssimo] Internet, A World Without Border

Several days ago, I had a nice chat with a friend via Facebook, this friend happened to be a photographer who live in Bandung. My friend Fred is expecting his first child and he told me about his dream to move to Jakarta because he thinks that his career as a photographer has a more better future in Jakarta rather than in Bandung.

My conversation with Fred reminds me of another conversation months ago. There’s a friend – let’s say his name is Bram, who lives in Bali and has been wanting to move to Jakarta. He told me that the business climate in Bali was not that supportive. Bram wanted to build an apparel business in Bali.

Fred and Bram have similarity of pattern of view which geographically trapped them inside the location where they live. I don’t know about you but for me who have been practically breathing in the online world, it feels a bit weird if we are still trapped like my friends. Current condition of the internet is far better than when the first time I decided to jump into the online world (around early 2000), connection fee becomes more affordable, which means easiness to be globally connected is determined simply by will and a little effort.

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[Simply Business] The Need for Niche

I am a big fan of basketball, from watching intense games of the NBA, to the exotic collection and vibrant culture of the shoes to actually playing the game on a regular basis. To put it short, I’m a basketball geek. I’ve invested in shoes (lots, like once per 2 months), jerseys, apparels, renting courts twice a week to play, and even NBA.TV yearly subscriptions and I spent all of my hard-earn money happily. I am a very good example of a niche market: obsessed, marketable and willing to spend.

One good example of a ‘startup’ that attack my niche market is @ngobrolNBA. The owner of the @ngobrolNBA account: @irrilD is a true NBA fan, you could tell from the 300 jerseys he owns or the uncountable shoes he collects over the year. Clearly the man got love for the game. He created the account out of love, and he’s smart enough to capitalize it.

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Facebook To Launch “Want” Button to Beef Up Social Commerce

Another day, another Facebook rumor. After one hell of a not-so-good IPO, analysts are expecting a positive announcement from Facebook in terms of product especially on how Facebook can generate more revenue from its huge user base.

When Facebook launched “Like” button, the web went crazy for it and the media was all over them. It was a huge success. And now alongside with “Like”, Facebook is rumored to be launching a “Want” button very soon. Web developer Tom Weddington discovered a code inside Facebook’s web that indicates a tag for a “Want” button, Facebook have since removed the code from the SDK and disabled the button code.

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[Manic Monday] The Show Doesn’t Stop (Or Start) At The Cinema

This weekend, people the world over are raving on about the last installment of the Batman movies directed by Christopher Nolan, The Dark Knight Rises. I watched it Friday night, 3 rows from the front, and I loved it. It’s a fitting finish for the Batman trilogy as narrated by Nolan, and the trilogy is one of the best renditions of the Batman saga on the silver screen. If you haven’t watched it, I recommend that you do. Especially if you’re a comic geek like me.

Don’t worry, I won’t spoil the movie for you, but I will talk a bit about how the TDKR opening was the pinnacle of a campaign that started… a year ago. The viral campaign started even before the movie shoots were finished. And towards the end of 2011, more tidbits surfaced about the movie. The vague nature of the viral campaigns added with the already much-hyped news about the movie itself, surely delivered many people to the cinemas even before the trailers started to run.

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Jumping Granny, One of Many Games Made by Local College Students

Amikom Game Dev (AGD), a STMIK AMIKOM Yogyakarta’s student activity units, launches its first Android game. The developed game is called Jumping Granny, and already available for download from Google Play so you can play it on your Android device.

Jumping Granny game is quite simple, Game Jumping Granny ini cukup simple, tells a story of a grandmother who wants to save her grandchild who was abducted by alien. Although the download count is not a lot but there is an interesting phenomenon in the launch of the game by AGD which is a part of Amikom.

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[Dailyssimo] Election on Social Media

For citizen of Jakarta, last July 11, 2012 is a day that attracts quite large attention because it was the day of the election for the new governor and vice-governor for Jakarta. The win of Jokowi-Ahok in the first round is quite surprising for many parties, but truthfully, said pairing is quite prominent after Foke-Nara pair. Then what about the cyber space? What happened? I will try to analyze the monitoring result by our friends on Saling-Silang which infographic can be seen here.

Based on the monitoring result of SX Index team, it is recorded that No. 5 pair (Faisal Basri and Biem Benyamin) manage to collect the highest positive sentiment of 92.43% while the next in line is Alex Noerdin and Nono Sampono pair with 84.49%. Hidayat Nur Wahid–Didik J. Rachbini 79.91%, Hendardji Supandji–Achmad Riza Patria 78.59%, Joko Widodo–Basuki Tjahja Purnama (Ahok) 78.27% and lastly, Fauzi Bowo–Nachrowi Ramli pair with 70.98%.

This result is very different with the reality. Yes, because many forget that the percentage of internet user in Indonesia is only 23% of Indonesian population and mainly focused in the big cities, and only 4.1% is in the rural area (data can be seen here). This means the success in social media is not valid to be an accurate prediction of the total result. But if we rule out the sentiment happened in the conversation, the buzz is quite representative. In the infographic, highest buzz is for Jokowi-Ahok pair and Foke-Nara. This means, both pair candidates manage to flood Twitter timeline with whatever sentiment and succeed in making a lot of people talk about it on Twitter.

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Introducing: Manic Monday

Today we’re veering from the oft-serious topic of the digital music business to go slightly mad. Well, not entirely (at least not yet), and I’m not going to break out in song on a tech blog. I am, however, introducing a new title to this column, ‘Manic Monday’, which could be applicable to any number of things related or not to tech, since we all “love” Mondays. But bear with me a bit, and I’ll show you a bit of what’s in store.

So for those of you who don’t know, ‘Manic Monday’ is a song by a band called The Bangles, which are probably more popular as the band behind the song ‘Eternal Flame’. The song itself was written by Prince, which became a no.2 hit in 1986, only outsold by Prince’s own ‘Kiss‘. The song’s lyrics basically tell about the fleeting dread that we feel when faced with yet another Monday, a feeling that most of us feel all to well.

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