Developing a Sophisticated Demand Culture

Editorial: This time, Razi Thalib wrote an interesting article about the development of a service/product from the consumer side, that consumers should also educate themselves in order to raise demand for the service/product quality, on the other hand this will encourage the company/startup to create/develop great services or products.

I feel like some development projects in Indonesia might as well be chaired by monkeys: show them bananas and they’ll dance, describe the possibility of a better banana and they’ll throw crap at you.

I am concerned at times to meet people who focus on the “how” over the “why” of a project. They prefer copying existing examples over exploring real problems and identifying the appropriate solution. They dwell on immediate rewards and neglect future impact. They think in terms of price and expenses rather than on value and investments.

I have seen a form of this in every industry (that I’ve been a part of) that there is a general lack of awareness and therefore lower expectations that lead to a lack of demand for innovation and change. For instance I’ve read that people in remote regions of Indonesia are generally very satisfied with their access to education. This probably does not mean they receive world class services but instead they just feel lucky to have a school building in their district.

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Indonesians, programmers, and Nasi Padang

Where are Indonesia’s talented programmers? Why aren’t international technology companies overrun by Indonesians? These questions bring forward the problems that are affecting the lack of recognition of Indonesian IT talents internationally. Indonesia does have talented programmers but almost all of them are hiding in the country. They shy away from the spotlight.

The next question is why. Why are they hiding? Why aren’t they working for American or other international companies? Well, some of them do, but not necessarily in a position that would put them in the spotlight. Most don’t hold executive positions. I have a theory that may just be the very reasons why Indonesians aren’t that well known overseas, so hear me out. This is long so those who don’t want to read too much, scroll down to the last three paragraphs to read my theory.

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About Google’s Investment in Indonesia

With the revelation that Google is planning to open an office in Indonesia, a lot of the talk has been about how it would be beneficial for them to do so, but many of the arguments I see on a number of blogs, news articles and on Twitter show a misunderstanding of benefits.

Most highlighted the argument that Google as a corporation would be more accessible to Indonesians, that it would be able to do more direct interaction with Indonesia and understand the market a lot better. After all, Indonesia’s 230 million people is the fifth largest in the world and with only 40-odd million internet users it’s a market that can’t be ignored.

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Why Companies Like Facebook and Google Don’t Really Need To Be In Indonesia

While attending the IDByte conference the other day, there’s one question that was consistently asked to keynote speakers from Facebook, Google and LinkedIn by the audience.

“Why you guys haven’t set up your office in Indonesia?”.

I won’t argue on how ridiculous and pathetic this question really is, but I will try to map out the reason why these big companies doesn’t have to open their office in Indonesia in the first place.

Google is currently entering the market, they’ve been roaming around the cities in Indonesia and meet with lots of people, doing events, recruit people and do some business activities even though they haven’t legally incorporated.

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[Guest Post] Productive Y Generation

Editorial: Y Generation, who is now still in college, working at a company or developing the business will play an important role in industrial development in the next 5-10 years, Joseph William Widjaya as a part of a university (lecturer) have an interesting view for this condition and also opinions about how to raise up a generation Y to be a productive generation.

Are you a Y Generation? Yes, if you were born in 1980 to 1995, and at least have the following characteristics:

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Opportunity for Virtual Reality Combined with Landscape Imaging

A picture is worth a thousand words. That may be just a saying but to some of us, it is true. A picture can bring a thousand imaginations and interpretation, just like Mona Lisa painting. With recent technology, not only we can create a 2 dimensional image, we can also create virtual reality via application or websites. If the image shown is a full rotation of 360 degree, how much are words “valued”?

What is virtual reality? According to Wikipedia, it is is a term that applies to computer-simulated environments that can simulate physical presence in places in the real world, as well as in imaginary worlds. In this article I will try to explain what opportunity we can have if virtual reality, in a simpler technology like web can be applied to help technology startup increase users experience.

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Nightspade’s Stack The Stuff and Application Potential in Education

Stack The Stuff is a new game that started making me addicted. Addictive because the game system is similar to Cut The Rope, where you must arrange all sorts of school supplies tools (ruler, pencil, pencil sharpener, eraser) to be balanced and can reach as many stars as possible. The special thing was the game that is universally available for the iPhone and iPad (and also be available for Android) was made by Indonesian mobile game studio based in Bandung, namely Nightspade. Nightspade, which recently gained funding from the East Ventures, indeed have the specialization to make a game on the mobile platform.

Stack The Stuff can downloaded for free and after several levels (multilevel models such as Cut The Rope or Angry Birds; 1-1, 1-2, and so on), you’ll be given the option to purchase (in-app purchase) the full version for $ 0.99. There is also the option to make donations (also in the app). I think this option is very effective because they don’t need to make two versions of the game, lite and full. Stack The Stuff seems to get a broad response globally and included in the list of New & Noteworthy in the App Store in many countries. It also earned high ratings.

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BBM social platform does not mean BBM on iOS or Android

Last week Research In Motion announced the availability of its BlackBerry Messenger social platform software development kit for Java, not today as we erroneously reported shortly before this post, but we’ll address that issue separately. What this SDK means however, is not something that apparently many think it does.

The release of the BBM social platform SDK means application developers can now tap in to the BBM environment to take advantage of the 30 or so million BlackBerry Messenger users around the world. RIM has been testing this for quite sometime actually but now it should be ready to roll. If you wanna skip the long explanation and get to the point, head straight down to the TL:DR (that’s Too Long, Didn’t Read) version. Continue reading BBM social platform does not mean BBM on iOS or Android

[Guest Post] Online Game in Indonesia and Its Monetizing Strategy

Editorial: Today’s topic is gaming, an industry that knows no age and continue to exist in various forms ranging from gaming consoles to social mobile gaming. The most important question for gaming startup is, how’s the monetization? In here Didiet of OneBit Media will try to share insights about the gaming business model in Indonesia.

There is an interesting phenomenon in social media lately in Indonesia. Some of the platform began to declare themselves as an online game platform. Friendster, as written in DailySocial, a social media platform ever rising and is very popular in Indonesia, to re-launch itself as an online gaming platform. In addition to Friendster, mig33 which has tens of millions of users in Southeast Asia began planning to sell virtual goods in the Asian market and moved their office to Singapore. Even Nokia held a Game Developer War which I see quite successful capture and publicize the potential seeds of local game developers Indonesia.

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