Indonesia ecommerce rank - a dumb review

Ecommerce is not new thing. Back in dawn of this century ( or millenium) early 2000s, internet get strong momentum due to increases of PC user along with improve of hardware and software - mainly user friendliness of Microsoft Windows. Manual office and school works are being converted using so called 'information system'. Webmail and internet portals are the king of internet. Name one. Yahoooooo, you're right.

Some creative people came up idea to bring shopping experience into electronic, so then we were introduce to Ebay, Alibaba (1999) which still big player after almost 15 years later. But more names we only know them as legend and only found in history books. la to name some. And one the Indonesia legend is "www.precision.co.id", first Indonesia professional ecommerce selling IT related stuff. Hello there? Are you still there?

They did not succeed, at least most of it did not made until age 10. Died young. People found they are as not free as go to shopping malls to shop. They have to sit tight on a predifined station which connect to internet to shop. I need to setup modem dial up baut rare to 56.6 kbps in order to just open one page in one minute. Let alone shopping, news reading is still a hassle. After several pages opened, telephone bills start to cause headache. Lot more people cant afford the luxury.

Thanks to mobile telecommunication, the second wave of internet started to pulse.
It bring fresh blood to online activity, especially after mobile technology are become faster and affordable. Second wave of ecommerce is on the raise above horizon. They are actually not born yesterday.  Their seed is in ground awaiting right moment to grow and flourish. Tokopedia founded on 2009. Bukalapak founded on 2010. Lazada founded on 2012. You name it, google will tell you.

Just until recent years, together with improvement of infrastructure from telecommunication, roads and electricity, ecommerce can ride the wave of success. Yes, very basic factor - INFRASTRUCTURE. With good transportation, we can estimate when our package will arrive. With good telecomunication, buyers are keen to check back every few minutes whether any ongoing flash sale. Just ensure to recharge your device when it is low batt, thanks to electricity.

Different class different style
I often make jokes about how ecommerce is being classified. The lowest class is 'Bukalapak'. As a 'lapak' (non-permanent street kiosk) they are often become victim of Satpol PP, civil security force. Middle class we have 'Tokopedia', as they now a Toko, permanent shop or building. At top class we have : Jakmall. Full air-con, nice aisle, luxury shops and fancy restaurant is what we associated with mall. The lesson is : name is very important.

Key to sucess gain customer loyalty  check out decision.
Aggressive promotion accros peer is just to keep up each other, so one doesn't follow will left behind. Next is upgrade site to living platform, which may starts with selling goods now also serving : air ticketing, top up, pay bills, pay anything-you-name-it, hotel, investment, property, used-car, tax, order pizza, complaint about public service, traffic jam, upload video, look for a long lost friend, review a space trip, watch bactery plays. Although some service sound ridiculous for now, but with proper business plan, it can be cash in. But not now.

For now, please focus on : expand seller base to get best price, more product variety, and local shop (and warehouse) to cuts shipping time and cost.
One I need to underline is have a internal police to fight fake seller, good/picture/description doesnt match actual product, crazy cheap laptops, or simply take down those selling iPhone running latest Android.

Be a smart shopper and dont get caught for seller.

Be a wise social networker

Seems like social network has bring new wave of how human interact in virtual way. The good things is, why we all like it very much, it connect to old friends to a level of we could never imagine before. Of course this bring new value for humanity as well as human-and-human interaction. When Facebook surpasses it half billionth member registrations, in urban city it's hard to find someone who still dont have a Facebook account. From student, unemployment, and professional worker, all have their account.

Not only facebook, there are also Twitter, four-square, and some giant-backed service like Yahoo's 360, and koprol, Google's buzz which try to get user's trust to publish their social-personal voices. Fact I found, not all of us can measure the risk of posting personal information (including status, photograph, and video) to a service.

From my personal observation and experience, I'd like to share some tips to be a wise user, as well as protect our privacy :

1. Create account for intended use only.
If you just want to be a normal person, then just add your real world friend as your connection. If you're a really famous public figure (at least you thought of), then best advise is create a separate account just for it, where you can add whoever as your friend. I'm not a close person, but doubt the meaning of a friend for those who have thousands of "friends". Friend is supposed both way, isnt it ?

2. Don't say things you might regret it.
Never post or stand on an opinion that you think you might regret it in the future or blocking your professional way. Quoted from some reading that Internet never forget things, thanks to web crawlers and archive capability.

3. Never over-post your family
People just like to share, but never share or post photo, video and status about your children in your public account. If you just cant help yourself of posting it, create a dedicate account from them. Add only some close friend. No point to show of to your friend where or what you and your family is doing to anonymous.

4. Check it out as you are a stranger
Check privacy setting regularly and check your "wall" and posted item as anonymous. If still accessible, change setting or instead remove it immediately. Sometime I feel like people are more open even to their virtual stranger friend than to real world friend instead. Next time, when going to post a bit, hope you can be wiser to think of the risk.

Affordable internet but with fair usage policy

Affordable internet finally available !

With a series of new regulation from Ministry of Communication and Information (Menkominfo), now internet subcription is getting affordable. Compare to my last two (article 1 & article 2) article related to internet rates, currently unlimited internet is available with cheaper monthly fee.

Started of by Indosat with its Broom Prabayar Unlimited, price start from Rp. 100.000 (US$ 9) per month, you can enjoy unlimited internet. Even nothing much to be proud of beside the cheap price, but after launched several months, Indosat is overwhelming with increasing of subscriber, exceed their capasity. As demand increases, it's getting hard to the get the Broom's starter pack.

Then followed by XL with XL internet unlimited prabayar, at approximately same rates, XL plot the service with only 250K subscriber. Not really sure if the quota has been surpased, but same thing happen, no where we can get the starter pack. Telkomsel recently lauched their first unlimited prepaid internet. As they claim have suprerior QoS, monthly fee slightly higher than other competitor.

All these service above carying same one term : Fair Usage Policy. As now limiting access no longer acceptable for subcriber, Fair Usage policy seems to be best fit for current situation. Fair usage policy is limiting connection speed when a sucbriber reach certain quota. Most GSM internet provider lock the speed at 64kbps when quota reach 2-3GB. This is quite tricky because they mostly use term of Broadband 3.5G speed in their promotion, although the maximum speed only at 256kbps.

My personal choice for home internet is Firstmedia. Although some said the customer service isnt nice (in solving problem) but as long as you have no problem with your access, I almost can say its beyond expectation. With Rp. 135.000 (+tax) (US$ 12), speed we can get up to 384kpbs flat no fair usage policy. A real download could reach almost 50KBps from Rapidshare.
So far, I'm quite happy with this service. Hope this can help you decide what the personal internet connection that suits you.

Affordable Internet (for big city only)

After 6 months after my first post about affordable internet plan, no big and remarkable development for Indonesia internet plan for public. At least those hit the market and become headline on non-IT media. But the needs is clear. Public is now more and more aware the internet's purpose.

Actually we're not lack of idea to widening internet access. We have a lot. One of it is RT-RW Net which is originally proposed by local IT expert, Onno W Purbo. You can read his idea or simply visit his minimalist personal site. But all these come to a need for affordable internet backbones. Major ISP now still stick to a not-so-affordable price for home user. Not to mention the limited service area.

First media (previously Cablevision) is the first ISP provide affordable internet plan yet bigger coverage area. Priced at Rp. 99.000, Firstmedia provide unlimited internet bandwidth at 384Kbps through its digital TV cable network. But it cover big city, mostly in Jakarta only.

For small cities, expecting local goverment can be the leader to provide local loop and let local user to build RT-RW net.

Let see what connection we can get next 6 months.

Firefox 2 on Ubuntu Hardy Heron

Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron just rolled out from it's beta stage. For those ubuntu-lover, we just can't wait what are new features on this new release, especially that can be seen directly from its fancy desktop.

Firefox is one of among list. Even Firefox 3 offer lot of new browsing features, but unfortunately, I don't like beta softwares. Even it proved stable, but one thing is sure, it slow down my laptop, compare to previous version. Maybe you have same opinion with me.
Also, lot of my favorite plugin does not work with Firefox 3, including Foxmarks.

To roll back using Firefox 2 as Ubuntu Hardy default browser, simply uninstall firefox 3, get firefox 2 and change some shortcut links. Open a terminal session

$ sudo aptitute remove firefox
$ sudo aptitute remove firefox-3
$ sudo apt-get install firefox-2

Next is change default command firefox shell script to firefox-2, by type :
$ cd /usr/bin
$ sudo ln -s firefox-2 firefox

As bonus here is an article for you who love Internet Explorer, and wish to run it on your Ubuntu. Installing Wine, Internet Explorer and Visio 2003

Just like Asus tagline, now you can enjoy rock-solid heart-touching Firefox 2 :) and alternative IE on your Ubuntu.

We are plotted what media says

Information is our daily bread. Most people start their day by consuming information, beside of breakfast. A newspaper on hand, or simply turn on a television news channel. This is global world. Any event happened arround the globe, can be broadcast in seconds. Internet is playing main role, on serving more detail topic of an event.

Media giants, as well as strong government, with intention or not, to deliver information to support their role. Politic issue, economy benefit and personal fame are some of the reason media push biased message. Some country, using local media to keep people's loyalty and maintain government..

That's why, to maintain your personal opinion, it's good to have information on various source. Example, to be clear on what happened in Tibet, we need to heard from China's version as well as Tibetan media. As you read western's capitalism news, it's good to have a second opinion on what socialism said.

But not all people can have more than a version on what's happening. Indonesia, in era of information liberalism, even local election may lead to a social unrest. Sometime, they don't exactly know what they're fighting for. Protester was paid to run to road. That's why internet could be a media to deliver message on different perspective, and sometime not in positive way also.

So keep your perspective, be a neutral person, broaden your view, get information from any sources. Jangan jadi katak dalam tempurung!

Download Liputan6 video

Liputan6 is one of most popular news programme in Indonesia owned by SCTV (www.sctv.co.id) and has certains fanatic viewer, since Liputan6 gives a different point of view to a news. As it's slogan, Aktual, Tajam & Terpercaya, make it stand apart from other news programme.

Luckily, liputan6 has online version so even we're abroad and unable to watch this aired SCTV news programme, we can log on to its portal at www.liputan6.com. But to watch directly from the portal need at least 256kbps of steady connection. Even you has better connection, sometime it's not really enough due to the country's internet infrastructure is not sufficient for steady 256kbps streaming. When this happen, you need to download the video file and play locally.

Thanks to youtube, FLV is now the most popular video format on the net. Liputan6 uses VP6F codec FLV. At the resolution 320x240, each minute of video may sized up to 1MB.

At liputan6, each aired part will be create in one file. Each programme instance will contain 3 or 4 files. All files wrapped in a XML file. To download simply navigate your browser to http://www.liputan6.com/mediaplayer/playlist.php?program=prgramme_name. There are several valid programme name :
- l6pagi, for liputan 6 pagi, aired 5.00 am - 6.30 am daily.
- l6siang, for liputan 6 siang, aired daily at noon.
- l6petang, for liputan 6 petang, aired 17.30pm daily.
- l6malam, for liputan 6 malam, aired 00.00 am daily.
Some other non-daily news programme also available, like weekly's SIGI (id : sigi) and Topik Minggu ini (id : topik).

You may either visit addresses above daily and copy-paste FLV location to your download manager, or there's smarter way. If you have a always-connected internet and php installed, you can setup a scheduled download. Download this php script, change some configuration. Then add to crontab (if you use linux) or scheduled task (for windows user). php-cli must installed to be able run php script from linux shell.

Please notice each programme will publish to internet 30 minutes after aired.
Localtime is GMT +07.00.

Why Indonesia local TLD isn't so popular ?

Indonesia as part of global networking has its own top level domain (TLD).
1. co.id, is for company and business institution.
2. or.id, for non-profit organization
3. ac.id, for school and educational institution
4. go.id, for government and its related offices.
5. net.id, for internet related institution
6. web.id, for personal sites

Among these TLDs, there's common problem which can only be registered by person or company who has Indonesia Tax Number (NPWP) and strong reason why need to register the name. Simply no room for these personal domain and occasional domain registration. Have you think of to register i-love-blogging.co.id instead of i-love-blogging.com ? Even some government promotion are registered to dotCom domain!

Beside that, manual processed registration procedure makes only a professional can understand the form and fill it correctly. But some of these complicated procedure are taken care by hosting company. But everytime you need to make changes to these data, always have to ask your hosting company to do it. Although, some hosting company has their own control panel for client to manage. But what if we want to relocate the hosting ? Ooppss.

That's why when we need a domain to hook our promotion or project, Indonesia local TLD would never come as first choice. So, I'm calling Indonesia internet authorities, let build a strong management to handle this domain registration business. And I believe, this is a really potential business the worth to manage professionally and will produce a significant incomes.

What do you think ?