PANDI and Devotion to Domain .id

News taken from CHIP Online stated that during the organization turnover of PANDI (Indonesian Internet Domain Caretaker), it changed the function from “registry” and “registar” in the same time, so there is only “registry” regulates and managed .id domain. “Registar” function that is to sell .id domain to costumers will be handled to each reseller who meet requirements, including foreign resellers.

The ownership of domains in Indonesia is not quite many. From 200 million domain names in internet, only 250 are registered in Indonesia. From that number, only 58 thousands use .id domain, or about only 23%. This is the fact stated by the new PANDI chairman, Andi Budimansyah. PANDI wants the increasing number of .id domain users from Indonesia.

It is not easy to get users’ interest in Indonesia to use .id in comparison to world-wide domains like .com, .net, or .org. There is also a trend to use domain as a part of the brand name or a word. PANDI realized that one of the reasons is the hard way to register .id domain. You should know the way around when you register .com domain, it needs not more than 5 minutes only.

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SME (Small Medium Enterprises) and Internet : an ‘Old Song’ or New Chance?

There are two press release came to wire@dailysocial last week. Both of them give information about SME, one of them is SITTI and another is Belibu.com.

In their press release, SITTI explain that they are preparing initiative for SME (Small and Medium Enterprises) in Indonesia through SITTI359. This program will collaborate with Satutempat.com. The initiative is called as “Kedai UKM SITTI”. It is an end to end solution for SME to improve their selling through digital marketing. This program will be launched in October 2011, the video about it has been released on August 17^th, 2011.

Meanwhile Belibu.com gives online media service and get local entrepreneur and SME as the target, also as their users’ reference. Belibu.com also provides facilities such as writing review on enterprises then upload it to their website.

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There Will Be No Such Thing As A “SMARTPHONE”

That’s a harsh conclusion, I couldn’t agree more. But this conclusion is the result of my observation during my trip to several cities around the island, and it’s good to see how technology adopted in areas outside of the big cities.

You can see everyone’s using the so-called “smartphones” in big cities like Jakarta, Bandung and Jogjakarta and the rest of the smaller cities surrounding it are filled with the so-called “feature phones”. The smartphone category is filled with iPhone, Samsung/LG/Sony Ericsson Android-based phones and high-end Nokia while the feature phone category consists Nexian, Skybee, Huawei and other cheap devices.

So I tried really hard to make a sense of this separation, and I find it to be very shallow.

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When a Company Being Assessed by How Many Patents They Hold

After the acquisition of (patent held by) Nortel then Motorola Mobility, suddenly patent became something important and priceless. In the USA, the value of the patent may higher then gold. In the time when innovation is less than it used to be and all people tend to create the same things, there is a nightmare spread by the patent holder, ROYALTY, and hundred million will be taken under the law.

Let’s see the hot news from Sillicon Valley. InterDigital and Kodak suddenly became the trend because their on-sale status and the numbers of patents they held. Palm, again, became the byword after HP stopped its device development, simply because Palm has webOS and thousands of patents. Most of us, in fact, haven’t heard the name of InterDigital, but it has been targeted by giant companies like Apple and Qualcomm.

What does actually happen? Only by doing a little slip will make a company accused for violating other’s intellectual properties and should pay for about hundreds million or event billion dollars. The worse thing is the long steps of law procedures. It may take months in the court. Moreover, it will take much money to pay the lawyer. After the court, suddenly the patent holder get significant income from outside of its business core. For me, it’s pathetic. The patents war will be tiring and not support the innovation. It tends to be contra productive.

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Rather than eat from the same pie, why not add more pies?

The startup scene in Indonesia seems to have been flooded by investors as well as budding entrepreneurs themselves but one of the concerns among several entrepreneurs is that the majority of investors are based in Jakarta and they prefer to deal with Jakarta-based companies rather than out of town ones. This creates a disparity and perhaps a little envy among those outside of the capital city.

Obviously Indonesia is far more than just Jakarta and despite the city being the business, financial, entertainment, and political hub of the nation, nobody should take the rest of the country for granted. In fact, the roles should probably be split up or shared with other cities but that’s an argument for another time. At the heart of the issue is the requirement by these Jakarta-based investors that the startups and entrepreneurs that they’re going to take under their wings to be located in Jakarta as well.

What is more likely the issue with these investors is that they may not have the resources at this stage to go to other cities as yet, let alone national. Alternatively, they may not be prepared to go beyond Jakarta for now because of the uncertainty that surrounds the industry. They could be concerned that some of the so called entrepreneurs are only in it for the money, not necessarily to advance their business. Of course, some entrepreneurs may be concerned that investors would be too restrictive with their terms but again that’s a different argument.

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A love letter for Yahoo! Koprol

Dear Koprol and Yahoo,

You guys have been working together for over a year and Koprol has been around for over 2.5 years but we haven’t seen major adoption of your service by third party apps and services thanks to your lack of open API. What is going on? Why can’t you guys get your shit together so you can finalize and release your damn API?

Many of your feature releases are ahead of Foursquare. Those guys are actually catching up with a lot of the stuff that your team put together in the past 2 years, these include image hosting, threaded comments, nearby venues, business profiles, and venue reviews.

So why aren’t you throwing your weight around?

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Waiting for Startup and Service in Music Segment to Continue Growing

In my opinion, the growth of music industry should be in line with the internet development. Both music and internet have been very close companies for a writer and music listener who always connected to the cyber world. So how to fulfill this two areas of enjoyment at once, especially using Indonesia’s local application and web-based service?

I see that music segment in the internet is still managed by telco – provider – label, focusing in music download and online music store (RBT – full track). On the other hand, there are also some media with music content, including the news of the musicians themselves. Some other segments are supplement for their printed version.

Other than those types may have the amount increased such as startups or another independent media. There are many media outside the mainstream that covers many sidestream music growths such as Musikator, YesNoWave, Deathrockstar, MusicBandung, GeekBible. YesNoWave has become an online music distributor or netlabel. Other examples of netlabel are Invasi Records, Reload Your Stereo, Stone Well Sound Records, Inmyroom Records, Hujan! Rekords, Mindblasting and StoneAgeRecords. This means there are enough recources for music content.

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Selling Music vs Selling Music as Experience

Several days ago, Indonesia’s Minister for Communication and Information announced that he was going to block 4shared along with the 20 other sites that have been shortlisted for access restriction across the country due to various copyright violations.

Additionally, the Minister also said that the cost of a downloaded song should not be too expensive, citing a range between Rp 500 and Rp 1000, adding that rights owners and publishers need to make a profit to sustain their businesses and creative ventures.

According to the Minister, people would not mind paying that amount to acquire music legally from the internet and that the payment method could be through credit cards or prepaid phone credits.

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The Drama Begins. Government Plans To Block 4Shared.

I’d knew this day would happen eventually, the day I fear the most. And yes, I am being dramatic when I have to say that Indonesian government through its minister of communication announces plans to block websites that distributes pirated music (MP3) files. Don’t get me wrong, I support this effort by the government to save Indonesian musicians, but when they announce to block sharing site 4shared, it’s a different story.

Quoted from Okezone while attending an event in Bandung, Minister of Communication and Informatics, Tifatul Sembiring states that the ministry haven’t blocked any site after the official initiative announcement a few weeks ago and that they’re focusing on blocking the big sites like 4shared.

Yes. 4shared.

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[Guest Post] Who Participates in UX?

Editor’s note: This is part of series about in User Experience (UX) which is essential element of product introduction to its user. This time, the author is discussing about who need to participate in the process of UX and what level are they required.

A UX designer is basically a generalist. The most important skill that he/she must have is communication skill. A UX designer is needed for communicating the needs of users, the wants of stakeholders, and the limitations of developers, among each other. The most important trait that he/she must have is the ability to empathize. A UX designer should be able to describe the big picture of the product in the languages of users, stakeholders, and developers.

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