Visit Indonesia? It would be better to Visit Bali 2008 only

Posted on December 7, 2007 by Alist

Visit Indonesia 2008

Don’t say if I’m not a nationalist. After living my entire life in Indonesia, I just can think a place in Indonesia as a tourist heaven: Bali. Other places are beautiful, but not much developed compared to Bali.

Indonesian Tourism just relaunch its website http://www.my-indonesia.info/ to promote year 2008 as Visit Indonesia year, if you know that 2007 is Visit Malaysia Year. The website is quite beautiful, but I think was built by some not-so-bright web developer. The website loading time is so slow because so many large images that were not compressed and resized. Although they display small but hi-res image, but it is not a wise solution. Total size for initial load if I can remember is 500KB, big isn’t it huh?

The main function of the website is to describe tourism places in Indonesia, suggesting accommodation and local taste. A good start but could be better with additional information. I cannot find any visa information in it, etc etc.

But I like the image library section. It is a section containing photos from different part of Indonesia and you can save it as desktop wallpaper. And some other sections describing beautiful places in narrated story. Quite inspiring.

Hey, miss one thing. The website should be multilingual! English is international language but not so international that Japanese, Chinese, or Taiwanese can read. That’s why Singapore Tourism Website offers 11 different languages to visitors. And after looking entire screen, finally I found language-switcher on very top of the screen, yeah.. available but not easy to reach. There are Indonesia, English, Deutsch, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Netherlands.

Okay, Let’s Go Indonesia..

Indosat Matrix Auto: is it worthed?

Posted on November 3, 2007 by Alist

What makes Indonesian phone users afraid of postpaid service is afraid of over use of calls. Calling without limit will make people unaware that they have spend a lot of money just for chit chat. Then Matrix Auto should be a solution for that. It is basically GSM postpaid based, but with limit. Different from current Matrix, this Matrix Auto is based on IM3, thus number prefix will be 0855. You can decide the limit on registration, let’s say Rp 200,000. Then after use the card and reach that limit you will be reminded that it will switch to pre-paid mode. That means you must refill or top-up the card with IM3 voucher obtained from street vendors.

All rates will be flat for postpaid and prepaid, that is Rp 85/second to call Indosat mobiles. Is that cheap? Let’s continue reading..
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Operator Three (3) – How to Win Indonesian Market with Skypephone

Posted on October 30, 2007 by Alist

three It has been several months for GSM Operator 3 (operated by Hutchison) entered Indonesian market. First month of the launching was quite a hit and word-of-mouth. But recent months was quite difficult for 3 because they didn’t offer something CATCHY and BIG as a new player (you can compared with Esia or Fren). Surely they couldn’t compete in price level since many operators compete in price. It’s time for them to adopt their success story in Europe in here.

Hutchison 3 U.K has just launched Skypephone, a handset designed to simplify use of the Skype VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) application.
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New Ride: Tornado at Dufan Theme Park

Posted on September 23, 2007 by Alist

Yesterday I went to Dunia Fantasi Ancol Theme Park. Using free ticket got from Giant, with Yulia we entered the largest theme park in Southeast Asia. Yep, this time in Bulan Ramadhan we got few queue in most of the rides. It has been almost one year since my last visit, so many improvement have been worked.

The main attaction promoted heavily on newspaper is Tornado. It is basically sit-and-twisted ride, similar to Kicir-Kicir, but in bigger vehicle.
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New Corridor Line for Jakarta Busway

Posted on September 22, 2007 by Alist

Get ready for more traffic jam! Yesterday I passed S. Parman street in front of Slipi Jaya Plaza just found that workers were preparing for busway lane construction. It must be a heavy traffic since this main road is very crowded during day. It must be Busway Line 9: Pinang Ranti – Pluit. Can you imagine that is a main path from North to the South East? Although it will cover all the city with busway, but I just can’t imagine how my way is to city if I don’t take toll-road starting from tomorrow.

Although it is expected to operate on September 2008, new buses for those corridors have not been ready yet. So they are considering to open one or two corridors or delay all of them until end of the year.

So the govenment is building new lines:
Line 8 Lebak Bulus Terminal – Harmoni Central Busway Length: 18 km
Lebak Bulus-Ciputat Raya-TB Simatupang-Pasar Jumat-Metro Pondok Indah-Iskandar Muda-Teuku Nyak Arif-Letjen Supomo-Jl Panjang-Daan Mogot-S Parman-Tomang Raya-Kyai Caringin-Balik Papan-Suryopranoto-Harmoni.

Line 9 Pinang Ranti Terminal – Pluit Length : 15 km
Terminal Pinang Ranti-Pondok Gede Raya-Raya Bogor-Mayjen Sutoyo-Mt Haryono-Jl Gatot Subroto-S Parman-Prof Latumeten-Jembatan Dua-Jembatan Tiga-Pluit

Line 10 Cililitan -Tanjung Priok Terminal Length: 15 km
Terminal Cililitan-Mayjen Sutoyo-DI Panjaitan-Jendral Ahmad Yani-Yos Sudarso-Enggano-Terminal Tanjung Priok.

See my recommendation and see the new corridor map:
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Jogging Track Planned on Kelapa Gading

Posted on August 30, 2007 by Alist

Last week I went to Kelapa Gading Mall for some purposes. On my way home, I passed boulevard circle between East Boulevard and West Boulevard, just noticed that one corner in East Boulevard had been blocked and had a sign telling ”Jogging Track is coming soon”. It will be built by Summarecon and Local Government. No information about when it will open for public.
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Telkomsel You’ve Got Mail

Posted on June 29, 2007 by Alist

Notes: This article’s Indonesian translation available at Teknolagi.

Telkomsel has just launched new campaign called Telkomsel You’ve Got Mail. I call it as campaign because the promo was not a new thing. Basically Telkomsel provides mobile email client program (J2ME Java-based) for customer that can POP3 or IMAP from any mail servers that support that protocols.

Annoying thing is you will be charged on monthly basis for using the email client. I don’t know who develop the application, but they have branded the program with name Telkomsel You’ve Got Mail. Monthly subscription fee is Rp 150000, expensive and not to mention GPRS fee is excluded (Rp 12/kB). To activate this service, users have to dial *969#.

In this freeware and open-source era actually we don’t need such payware. There are a lot of freeware J2ME program that can do exactly or better POP email. GMail is the best in the market if you have Google Mail account, but it is not a POP3 client. By googling a bit in the web I could find mMail, vimoMail, or even you don’t have to find it since many smartphones already have such program pre-installed in Symbian (Nokia, SE M600i, P990i, W950, W920), Windows Mobile (Dopod, Samsung i600), PalmOS (Treo,etc).

So do you still need Telkomsel You’ve Got Mail?