New Gplus UI is wrong!

G+ has just changed the look and feel (again). And, again, I don't like it. Correction, I actually like the look and feel but it is slow to show. That's because our internet connection is not as fast as in the US.

People in Google seem to forget that there are places in this world with limitted bandwidth. In fact, many countries with huge number of internet users have slow internet connection. Indonesia is one of them.

In another post I mentioned that Twitter is gaining popularity ove Facebook in Indonesia. One of the reasons is that Twitter is lighter than Facebook. Most of users in Indonesia access social network through mobile phones (smartphones). The quality of 3G or CDMA connections varies between places. Even in big city, like Bandung where I live right now, there are places with bad signal quality. My home is one of them.

I opened my G+ page and it keeps on giving "loading" message. It's just too bloated. Trying to be fancy but ended up in the gutter. I will definitely won't be opening my g+ very often. I will open when I know that the network is fast enough.

(Another problem is integration with posting links from blogs. Try posting link from Wordpress, for example, in gplus stream. Not pretty. Also try posting link from a blogspot blog post. It's messy. Don't they test with things like this in Google?)

What I am saying here? Unless Google makes a lighter version, the popularity will look like this:

Twitter > Facebook > Gplus

You don't have to believe me. Just go down here and ask any ordinary person on the street. In the mean time, let me open my twitter.

Gmail's New UI is Wrong

Gmail has just enabled/changed its user interface. There is one thing that bugs me and I think this should be corrected.

If you reply to an email, the body of the replied email is quoted at the bottom of the email. This makes the reply by default a "top posting" reply. It's a no no in netiquette. This is just plain wrong. Don't the designers know this (top posting)? They should not make this the default setting. This could be an optoin that the user has to enable it if one wishes.

Or, is top posting unrelevant now? I feel like a dinosaur, now.

Indonesia Internet Statistics

Recently, I've been asked questions about Indonesian Internet users. To be frankly, I am also looking for data to analyze. (I am running my own internet crawlers, but they are kind of slow - my students are slacking :))  Most people are using SocialBakers as the source of Facebook and Twitter stats. Here's an example of their Facebook stats.

The thing about Internet in Indonesia is that it grows rapidly. If you search the internet, most of the statistics are kind of old. Have a look at twitter users stats in 2009, for example. (Link to the report is missing. Will put it here.) Indonesia is nowhere to be found. And yet, I believe, today Indonesia is probably in the top 4 of twitter users. (Report from Mediabistro shows that in 2012 Indonesia is in the top 5 twitter users.)

New data / stats are needed.

Path is gaining

I noticed that Path is gaining popularity in Indonesia at the expense of Facebook. The funny thing is, Path is not well known in the US. This just to show you that you'll never know why things happen in other parts of the world (in other culture).

Time and time again, I tried to encourage IT companies to put their foot in Indonesia. To smell the coffee here, as the saying goes. But these companies are locating elsewhere. The closest is Singapore. Heck. What are you doing? You won't get the cultural thing if you are not here.

You don't have to trust me. But don't go crying if your market share is declining in Indonesia.

WhatsApp-ening

There is a new trend in Indonesia and it is an application called "WhatsApp". It is an application that allows us to send messages to a person or - more frequently - a group of people. It is a replacement of BlackBerry's BBM. The BlackBerry's era is over.

The reason is that Android is becoming more popular, as in other parts of the world. WhatsApp is cross platform and operator neutral. What more could you ask?

I don't use BlackBerry, so I don't use BBM. I just recently bought an Android phone - it's an LG. WhatsApp is the application I installed and quickly I am part of many WhatsApp groups. I could see that many people are like me, embracing WhatsApp.

Confused

I have just read a job opening for RIM. The target market is Indonesia, but the job is in Singapore. I just don't understand this. Why don't the open the job in Indonesia?

I have mentioned this over and over again. You have to be in the place to smell the coffee. You can't be form far afar. (Why there's no Starbucks in Italy, eh?)

For example, go to BEC (in Bandung) or Roxy (in Jakarta) to see what's going on. If you don't know those two names, then you know diddly. My point exactly.

Indonesians and Twitter

Earlier I wrote that Indonesians are switching from Facebook to Twitter. Many - mostly folks from Facebook - don't believe me. Well, what can I say. (I was right in predicting things since late 80s or early 90s.)

Here's a newer statistics about twitter. The number one place of active twitter users in the world is ... Jakarta, our capital city. My city, Bandung, is "just" number 6 (six) on the list. Can you imagine this? Oh, you cannot since you're not here. Ha.

Like I said, you guys (Facebook, Twitter, and all those internet tech companies) should have an office here. Just to smell the coffee and find out the trend for yourselves. Oh, coffee here is also good! :)

(we have assumed) Control

as date marked
we have planned for the worst
it's armageddon

as time approached
speculation arises
it's the end

but folks,
we have assumed control
it's the beginning of a new journye

we have assumed control
we have assumed control
... control ... control ... control


[21-12-2012 - inspired by Kerry Yackoboski's posting on his Facebook]

Unclear BlackBerry Ads

By accident I saw BlackBerry ads in Indonesia TV channels. I don't watch Indonesia TV channels that much, by the way. To me, these ads are way off the target.

First, there is this ads about socialites using genuine BBs. The focus is on the genuine BBs. First of all, I don't think Indonesians buy BBs because of wanting to be the same as elite or socialites. It (maybe) used to be like that, but it is not like that. BBs are not the hottest things. Second, trying to convice us of genuine? Come on. You know us better than that :)

Then, there's this ads about must using BB for accessing Facebook. Well, Facebook is still popular in Indonesia but many younger users are moving more towards twitter. (I've been saying this, but those decision makers at Facebook and RIM would not listen. Fine. It's their loss.) So, advertising more towards twitter as oppose to facebook is more logical.

What should be done?

Facebook was the only service to provide easy upload of photos, but now you can do that also in twitter. Lockerz is a popular service. There are others. (Google+ is not coming yet.) I'd say look into tying BlackBerry with Twitter (and these photo services). Perhaps buy Lockerz and integrate it with BlackBerry?

Indonesians still buy BlackBerry, but which Indonesians? I see that older Indonesians prefer BlackBarry for it's easiness. They don't have to install this and that to get newer features like the younger users do. Younger users don't affraid to install apps under Androids, for example, but not older people. Sell the stability and easy aspects of BlackBerry.

BBM is also still an important application, if not the most important. The only reason people are still hanging with BlackBerry is BBM. There are other solutions such as Whatsapp, but it is not happening yet. Then there is Line and now it is Kakaotalk. These challengers are still trying to take over BBM. BBM is still the winner. For now, at least. It would be interesting if BlackBerry (as the device) can integrate BBM with these new apps. It would make the domination even further.

Anyway ...

On Old Progressive Rock Music

This morning I was dusting off my old collections. I found this Sally Oldfield - Water Bearer album. Interesting. This was her 1978 album, I think. So I gave it a spin. Lovely.

Listening to old progressive rock music is just like reading old English literature. Interesting in a strange manner.

Stylish and Chrome Apps

I love modifying the look and feel of my screen, especially changing the fonts. Many applications (web sites) do not allow the user to change the fonts. They suck!

Enter Stylish. It lets me trap the layout and change according to my taste. I can have different look and feel according to the address, URL, or even global. I love Stylish.

Now, there are (new) applications under Google Chrome. For example, I've been using tweetdeck under Chrome. The problem is, tweetdeck does not allow me to change fonts. I want to user Stylish to change the fonts but don't know how to do it. For example, I don't know how to match the address or URL for this. I tried to use "tweetdeck" as part of URL / regex, but it doesn't work. Any hints?

For now, let me play with it.

Facebook vs Twitter in Indonesia

Last time I wrote about the demise of BlackBerry (BB) in Indonesia and no one believed me. As you can see, BB's share is getting smaller and smaller. Android is getting all the attention. This time, I'll write my take on Facebook vs. Twitter.

Indonesians love to talk. We don't write, but talk. It's just our culture. That's why the number of written publication in Indonesia is very small. Our culture translates well into Facebook. We love to tell people about our family and stuff. We love to show our photos. We love (class) reunions. Have a reunion, take pictures, upload them right away. Tell the world. Let's not go into taking photos of our food. That's another "strange" behaviors.

Privacy? Well, that's not an issue to us. We don't really care. Ha! Seriously.

Originally, Facebook is only accessible through web or computers. Access to computers are still limitted in Indonesia compared to cellphone. Thus, only a small number of people joined Facebook. Then, BlackBerry came in and made it super easy for people to access Facebook. Both BlackBerry and Facebook exploded. You can check the statistics (here and here). Indonesians are up there 2nd, 3rd, or 4th. Do we even wonder why? The signs are all there.

Now, things have changed. Again. First, you don't need BlackBerry to take photos and upload them to Facebook. Android phones can do that. Cheaper and it's an open systems - plenty of options to choose. BlackBerry did not respond quickly to this change. Either they don't know (because they don't have their R&D in Indonesia) or they don't care. They pay the price now. It's too late. Have you ever heard of a phone company that came back after being hammered like this? None. It's that bad.

Now let's focus on Facebook and Twitter. Remember that Indonesians love to talk. It's easier to do that with Twitter compared to Facebook. Facebook is "heavier" in terms of access and design. Twitter is more suitable for yada-yada. Another thing to consider is network (internet, cellular) reliability and speed are still problematic in Indonesia. Slow and unreliable. This makes Twitter even more attractive. The results, more Indonesians are using twitter these days. They are migrating from Facebook to Twitter.

What's still missing from Twitter is the ability to tag people in photos posted in Twitter. You can do that in Facebook and Gplus. But, I guess this feature is less important compared to the snappiness and easy access of twitter. Facebook should develop a client that only shows status. Quick and simple. The idea is to keep users from moving to twitter. (And twitter should have a photo tagging mechanism. That's a different issues all together.)

To understand the behavior of the users, you have to be there. I just couldn't understand why Facebook (and previously BlackBerry) doesn't have a small R&D in Indonesia. You have to be here and smell the coffee. I hate to say, I told you so. We'll see how it goes.

Food, food, and more food

I love taking food photos. I keep most of them for my self. Uploaded, but mostly for archiving purposes. Sometimes I do post food photos just to tease you folks :)  Like this one, lamb kebab.

I should post more food photos :)

Iceweasel is not Firefox(?)

Ok here's the deal. I wanted to install Firefox on my Debian machine. I downloaded Firefox directly from Mozilla.org. After tinkering around a bit, since there was an error message related to libstdc6++, I got it up and running for me. But I wanted to install for all users.

I understood that there is iceweasel and that it "is" Firefox, but to me they are different. For starters, current version of Iceweasel in my Debian is version 3.5 but the Firefox that I installed manually is version 15. They are just way far apart. Why is this? Isn't there anybody porting / compiling the latest version of Firefox for Debian?

The second thing, is that I use stylish (userstyles.org) a lot. It just wouldn't install on my Iceweasel. So, iceweasel is no good for me.

My conclusion ... iceweasel is not Firefox!

Goodbye BlackBerry, Welcome Android

Not long ago, whenever I meet somebody, I was asked for my BlackBerry (BB) pin. These days I rarely got this question. Mobile phone number was asked instead.

Facebook notifications also mentioned that many of my friends are starting to use Facebook for Android application. It means that they are switching from BB to Android-based phone. Recent status from a friend also showed this trend.

What does all of this mean? It means that Android is replacing BlackBerry in Indonesia. We used to be a big market for BB, but now it is declining.

Long time ago I urged BB to open a research center in Indonesia. To investigate our behavior, why we loved BB. You cannot do this from remote. It has to be here, in Indonesia.

BB was nice at one point. Its price packaging was great at that time. You can send as many messages as you like with BBM. At that time we have to pay for SMS. Very small amount of money, but still in our mind we have to pay while BBM is "free". We forgot that there is a monthly subscription. Or our monthly subscription is less than what we pay for all SMS we sent. We loved and still love doing texting / SMS here. SMS is now "free" for all operators.

Then there was group messaging. Well, there's what's up for that.

Facebook was a great thing. Facebook was the killer application for mobile computing in Indonesia. Remember, we love to chat. And ... we love takin photos, tagging our friends, and doing reunions (with past classmates). That's who we are! And all of these were catered by Facebook and are still monopolized by Facebook. (Google plus is not happening yet. That's why I urged Google to open a research center in Indonesia, but Google just wouldn't listend. Look what happened to RIM.)

BB was the best platform for accessing Facebook. Device-wise it was the best. Nowadays there are better devices for that. Tablet anybody? Samsung anybody? Price-wise BB was also the best. It was "free". Nowadays, many operator provide free / cheap facebook access from any phones! No need to use BB.

With all that, BB's popularity is diminishing. The reason people are sticking with BB is that they already have contacts in their BB. It's a pain to migrate to other platform. When their BBs are dead /broken and their contacts cannot be saved, then they have a reason to migrate. It's goodbye BB. Welcome Android.