Blogs are a Global Forum For Homespun Ideas

Jakarta Globe, Tasa Nugraza Barley, February 08, 2010

Blogs provide a door into the blogger's world. (StockXchg Photo/rrezendes)

"Blogs are naked conversations where you have no editing process. Communication can be very objective or biased,” said Jennie Siat Bevlyadi, 39, who has been blogging since 2004.

Born and raised in Indonesia, but now based in Northern California, Jennie is famous among Indonesian bloggers for her posts on social issues, human rights, minority rights, gender issues, entrepreneurship, writing and online learning.

She has described blogs as a way to exercise free speech that is cheap and easy, but can have a great impact on society.

As such she has tackled important topics, including a recent article on her blog at www.jenniesbev.com titled “Peaceful Pluralism and Non-Killing Policy” where she voiced her support for people in Indonesia living in harmony. She wrote: “But we have come to a point where we can no longer tolerate violence and killing. Even in the name of politics.”

Her writing has reached a wide audience and stirred up mixed responses; she has received fan mail — even love letters —from supporters, as well as threats from extremists. She also received an award in 2007 at Pesta Blogger, an annual gathering for bloggers in Indonesia, for best celebrity blogger.

Bloggers with personal rather than political motivations also benefit from the ability to communicate and form connections with people from across the world.

Anita McKay, 30, an Indonesian woman currently living in Perth, Western Australia, began a blog in 2005 to share her own feelings. But as her blogging and writing skills developed, she started to write posts on expatriate and women’s issues as well.

Her blog, www.finally-woken.com, now has posts ranging from discussions of her daily life to her take on political and social issues.

One of her pieces, “What Makes You an Indonesian?” was inspired by a comment she read on Twitter which claimed many Indonesians living abroad pretend to know more about their homeland than they actually do, and that while they like to criticize their country they do nothing to help. Her post challenges her readers to examine what makes them Indonesian.

“Blogs can also be an alternative form of information for people making decisions such as picking a restaurant [to eat at],” Anita added, saying the information that bloggers share is usually detailed and personal which means it can be trusted.

Ian Badawi, 26, is another young Indonesian who has used blogging as a way to stay in touch with his roots. Living in Washington he was frustrated with only ever reading bad news about his home country, so he began blogging with www.goodnewsfromindonesia.com.

“Good News from Indonesia is a blog by a group of young Indonesians who are committed to spreading positive news about Indonesia to the rest of the world,” Ian said.

He said the blog aims to show the strengths of the nation and to help Indonesians, especially young people, to be proud of their country.

Created in 2007, Ian said Good News from Indonesia has followers from places as far away as Norway and Brazil.

Blogging has exploded over the past years as it has become increasingly easy for people to put their thoughts online.

In 2001, local blogger Enda Nasution, 34, wrote an article titled “Apa Itu Blog?” (“What is a Blog?”), explaining the concept and giving people practical advice on how to start their own blogs.

According to his article, the term “weblog” was first introduced by an American blogger, Jorn Barger, in 1997 to refer to commentary Web sites that were updated regularly and contained links to other recommended sites.

His article was one of the first on the topic and since then blogging has become increasingly popular in Indonesia.

“Now there are probably more than one million bloggers in this country,” said Enda, whose efforts to promote blogging in Indonesia include helping initiate Pesta Blogger in 2007.

One of the first companies to give free blog service was Pyra Lab. In 1999 it launched www.blogger.com, which allowed people with little knowledge of Internet coding to start their own blogs.

Enda, a former advertising consultant who now works as a Web consultant, said he has always been a writer at heart and as a teenager he kept a diary of his activities and thoughts.

He said what made blogging remarkable was the way it allowed people to connect with others from across the globe, showing that regardless of religion, nationality or race, people are connected in unimaginable ways.

He once posted a piece about facing a quarter-life crisis. “Now that I’m not experiencing that anymore, I still keep getting comments from people who say things like ‘I have the same feeling’ or ‘Thank you for sharing this,’ ” Enda said.

Of all the many blogs he has created, Enda mostly posts on www.enda.goblogmedia.com, which is made up of his daily observations, mostly on political and cultural issues.

Anita on the other hand, said her blog focuses largely on the “culture shock” experiences that Indonesians, including herself, face living in a foreign country.

“For example there are behaviors that are considered normal in Indonesia but funny to people in other countries, such as dressing up to go to a mall,” Anita said.

Advertising consultant and blogger Ong Hock Chuan, 51, who was involved in organizing Pesta Blogger, said that it was a mistake to say that blogs offer new kinds of information to what can be found in newspapers and magazines.

“What blogs provide is a [different] context to the existing information,” Ong said.

He added that Indonesian bloggers had a uniquely communal nature.

“Bloggers elsewhere do their thing and don’t like to meet up. But in Indonesia bloggers like to meet [face to face] and do things together,” he said.

“Hence you get strong blogger communities.”

Ong said the popularity of blogging in Indonesia is growing. “Last year [Pesta Blogger] attracted 1,500 bloggers from all over Indonesia. We had whole communities of bloggers coming to Jakarta from as far away as Makassar and other parts of Indonesia just to meet with other bloggers,” he said.

This compares with 500 participants in 2007, the inaugural year of the event, and 1,000 in 2008.

Ong said that although there were many ways for people to communicate on the Internet, such as Facebook, Twitter and Kaskus, a local online forum, these tools are not necessarily in competition with each other.

“Each social media platform allows people to do different things, often in a complimentary manner,” he said.

Enda said he would advise new bloggers to use blogging as a tool to find their passion.

“Be original, never give up to keep writing,” Anita said.

“Popular bloggers who have loyal readers are the ones who are passionate about the issues that they bring up, while those who only try to follow the trend will run out of ideas and their blogs will lose their audience.”

Australian Saint-in-Waiting's Modern Miracle: 'Tweeting' From the Grave

Jakarta Globe, February 08, 2010

An Australian nun has taken to Twitter on behalf of saint-in-waiting Mary MacKillop, bringing the late sister’s messages of hope and forgiveness to a new audience a century after she died.

Annette Arnold has been microblogging as stmarymackillop since late December, when Pope Benedict XVI put MacKillop on course to become Australia’s first saint by recognising her second miracle.

“I just kind of take on her persona I suppose,” Sister Arnold told AFP, saying it was “absolutely critical” that the Roman Catholic Church embrace new methods of communication.

“Mary MacKillop was an incredible communicator, our archives just have hundreds and hundreds of her letters,” she said.

“I just think if she were still here today she would be on email, and I think given her passion for her work she’d probably be out there on Twitter and Facebook as well — they’re modern means of communication.”

Melbourne-born MacKillop, who died in 1909, was a pioneering educator and social reformer who founded Arnold’s Sisters of St. Joseph order.

Arnold tweets the latest news about MacKillop’s journey to sainthood, or sends followers quotes from the Order’s vast collection of her writings.

“I think Twitter’s really good at the moment because people are really keen to know what’s happening — is she going to be canonised, what’s the date and stuff like that,” she said.

MacKillop also has a Facebook page which has been running for 18 months, attracting 1,300 followers.

MacKillop, revered as a national icon by Australia’s five million Catholics, passed the first stage to sainthood when she was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1995 for curing a woman of terminal leukaemia.

The second miracle, in which a woman who prayed to her was said to have been healed of inoperable lung cancer in the 1990s, opens the way for the Vatican to make MacKillop Australia’s first saint.

“My birthday today... if I were still on earth I would be 168 years old! God is good and has done wonders!” she tweeted, via Arnold, on January 15.

AFP

China shuts down training website for hackers

BBC News

China has more internet users than any other country

China has closed down what is believed to be the country's biggest training website for hackers, state media has reported.

They say the site, Black Hawk Safety Net, gave lessons in hacking and sold downloads of malicious software.

The reports say three people suspected of running the site were arrested.

Hacking is a sensitive topic for China, especially since the internet giant Google recently threatened to pull out of the country.

Google said China-based hackers had attacked its operations but the Chinese government denied any involvement.

The hacker training operation openly recruited thousands of members online and provided them with cyber attack lessons and Trojan software, the China Daily and the Wuhan Evening News said.

Trojans, which can allow outside access to a computer when implanted, are used by hackers to illegally control computers.

Black Hawk Safety Net recruited more than 12,000 paying subscribers and collected more than 7 million yuan ($1m: £650,000) in membership fees, while another 170,000 people had signed up for free membership, the paper said.

The Hubei government refused to comment on the reports.

It was unclear when the shutdown had taken place but the Black Hawk Safety Net site was unavailable on Monday.

Cyber attack

Google threatened last month to pull out of China unless the government relented on censorship.

It said it had uncovered a computer attack that tried to plunder its software coding and the e-mail accounts of human rights activists protesting against Chinese policies.

Government officials have defended China's online censorship and said the country is the biggest victim of web attacks.

China has some 350 million internet users - more than any other country - and provides a lucrative search-engine market worth an estimated $1bn last year.

Google holds about a third of the country's search market, with Chinese rival Baidu having more than 60%.

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Almost all good news: 100 days of Windows 7

The Economic Times, 7 Feb 2010, 1940 hrs IST, IANS

MUNICH: Unlike politicians, operating systems (OS) don't get a honeymoon with the general public. Windows 7 has been on the market for almost 100 days now, so - as in politics - it's a good time to review how the software has performed so far. The results are largely positive.

First and foremost, Microsoft has to be pleased with sales, which have been brisk. Just a week after the Windows 7 launch Oct 22, 2009, the sales figures had already bested the company's expectations. "Compared with the start of Windows Vista, five times as many consumers have opted for the new operating system in the first five days," Microsoft reported.

Even better: despite millions of new installations, no major problems have been reported. "There have been astonishingly few problems with Windows 7," says Axel Vahldiek from German computer magazine c't. He'd know: his magazine fields questions from readers. Unlike the OS's predecessor, Windows Vista, the questions received by c't general involve minor issues.

That said, even the little things can rub nerves the wrong way. "The biggest problems are coming from older hardware," says Axel Vahldiek. If the manufacturer doesn't produce Windows 7-ready drivers, then the device will either refuse to work under the new OS or offer limited functionality. The difficulties are most prevalent in peripheral devices like scanners with SCSI ports.

The blame shouldn't necessarily be laid at Microsoft's door, though. The device makers sometimes make things difficult by design, Vahldiek explains. They might be speculating that those affected by problems will buy new hardware and throw their old devices out if they don't offer enough functionality. The hardware inside the PC usually works without a problem.

No major security holes have been identified yet. Microsoft clearly learned its lesson from the painful introduction of earlier operating systems. "From a security standpoint, Microsoft's Windows 7 has made significant progress over its prior versions XP and Vista," reports the German Federal Agency for Security in Information Technology (BSI). Attacks on the system itself have become so difficult that viruses are instead focusing on vulnerabilities in third-party applications.

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Microcredit on your mobile

Radio Netherlands Worldwide, 4 February 2010 - 12:01pm, by Johan Huizinga

Banking by mobile phone has really taken off in Africa. It's fast, relatively cheap, safe and easy to keep track of. Mobile banking seems perfectly suited to microcredit. So will the credit analysts be setting off into the bush with their PDAs? It will soon be happening in Kenya.

Lukas Wellen is an economist who has been involved with microcredit for many years. He helped set up microcredit banks in Ukraine and the Balkans, coordinated programmes run by the Dutch Development Organisation (SNV) in Vietnam and Cambodia and has recently been supervising projects in the Caucasus and East Africa.

He has come across the same problems in too many projects. The microcredit bank's IT department turns out to be the bottleneck. Administering the range of data involved in loans such as repayments and the behaviour of lenders is still mostly done by hand.

Know-how

The data is sometimes difficult to transfer between different software programs, ageing computers can no longer cope with complex data streams or there is insufficient IT know-how to get the entire system working efficiently.

The result of substandard data management is that there are insufficient checks on the loans so that investors do not have sufficient faith in the project and withdraw. The bank then remains too small and is unable to attract enough money to provide loans for terms of more than a few months.

Customers give up

Another problem Lukas Wellen came across was that customers of existing microfinance institutions often give up after a couple of months. They can't see the point of the loan, since it is generally a traditional group loan, whereby a whole group of people act as guarantors for each other.

People find the weekly group meetings, the collection of repayment money, the bookkeeping and the transfer of money to the bank far too time-consuming. And, as a local joke goes, "if there's a bar on the road between the group meeting and the bank, the money will never arrive."

Fraud

The economist says that fraud actually occurs in only a small percentage of cases. However, there are many stages at which things can go wrong. The person taking the money to the bank can mess around with the group bookkeeping, he may meet a friend along the way who needs money in a hurry and can't pay him back until next week. Then he can commit fraud with the receipt he receives from the bank and won't have to show to the credit controller for another week.

Lukas Wellen explains that mobile banking removes many of these obstacles. The weekly repayment to the bank can be carried out with a simple text message. All the data goes straight into the computer. Manual administration and paper receipts are virtually unnecessary, since everything can be checked directly by mobile phone and the lender doesn't have to rush off to the bank at three o'clock in the afternoon to deposit his money before it closes.

Safer and cheaper

The group meetings can be a lot shorter since the money doesn't have to be counted and it doesn't have to take place anywhere near the bank. It can be held at a different place - near a church or market, for example - where all the members go anyway on a weekly basis. In other words microfinance by mobile phone is more efficient, safer and cheaper for the customer.

Professor Robert Lensink, economist at the University of Groningen, specialises in research into microcredit. He regards mobile banking as a major step forwards, says it makes monetary transactions much safer. People who have made a lot of money in the market no longer run the risk of being robbed on their way home. And, since they no longer have to go to the bank themselves, it's also cheaper.

However, Lukas Wellen emphasises that the advantage for the bank is more significant. It has direct control and insight into the repayment behaviour of the lenders, which make it easier to attract investors who can be presented with a clear financial perspective.

Into the bush

In fact, credit banks no longer need local branches. Armed with a laptop and a mobile phone, the credit controller can travel into the bush to do his work. For the time being, however, he suggests they keep local branches open. He knows another overhead which can be made cheaper and more efficient.

The system stands or falls by virtue of a properly-functioning IT system at the bank manned by experts. Since this expertise can be found more readily and cheaply in the Netherlands, the banker will want to locate the administrative part of his company here rather than in Kenya.

The concept is of course only suited for regions where mobile banking has already taken off in a big way. But in East Africa the mobile phone looks set to be at the heart of modern microfinance.

Lukas Wellen is CEO at Musoni microfinance.

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Facebook grows into major news channel

Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal, Thursday, February 4, 2010, 6:49am PST

Facebook Inc. is now the fourth biggest source of traffic to online news sites, according to a report fromHitwise.

The Palo Alto social networking company was behind Google, Yahoo and msn as sources of of visits to news and media sites the week of Feb. 1, according to a blog post by Hitwise Senior Online Analyst Heather Hopkins.

News and media sites were the 11th most visited places on the Web that people went to from Facebook, she wrote, with 3.69 percent of the "downstream" traffic.

"To offer a comparison, 6 percent of downstream traffic from Facebook went to Shopping and Classifieds last week and 6 percent to Business and Finance and 15 percent went to Entertainment Web sites (YouTube in particular)," Hopkins wrote.

Internet Nominated for Nobel Peace Prize

Jakarta Globe, February 04, 2010

A statue of Alfred Nobel, founder of the Nobel Peace Prize. (AFP Photo)

Oslo. A Russian human rights group, a Chinese dissident and the Internet are among the reported entries for the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize.

Wired magazine's Italian edition says it nominated the Internet for promoting dialogue and democracy. It says the 2003 Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi has signed the nomination.

The awards committee keeps nominations secret for 50 years and kept mum as this year's deadline passed Tuesday. But some nominations are announced by those who make them.

Norwegian politician Erna Solberg says she nominated Russian rights activist Svetlana Gannushkina and her group Memorial. Kwame Anthony Appiah, a Princeton philosophy professor, says he nominated Liu Xiaobo, a recently jailed Chinese dissident.

The winner will be announced in October.

AP

IPRA opens conference in Indonesia

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Wed, 02/03/2010 12:21 PM

The International Public Relations Association (IPRA) opened its international conference in Jakarta Wednesday, with its president urging practitioners to embrace a new paradigm more commensurate with the new digital era.

"The emerging social media are having a major impact politically, economically and socially," Elizabeth Goenawan Ananto said in opening the two-day conference.

"This calls for a change of paradigm for public relations practitioners," said Elizabeth, who took over the presidency on Tuesday from Maria Gergova of Bulgaria.

The conference, themed Global Reach - Regional Leadership, brings in top-notch PR practitioners from around the world including Indonesia's own.

Elizabeth said PR has now come to be seen in the corporate world no longer as business cost but more as long term investment.

Can iPhone Challenge BlackBerry in Indonesia?

Jakarta Globe, February 01, 2010

To get more users, iPhone needs more relevant apps. (Bloomberg Photo/Dimas Ardian)

The iPhone is by no means king of the smartphones in Indonesia. That distinction belongs to the BlackBerry, which reigns over the entire archipelago.

People in the workplace are expected to own a BlackBerry and having someone ask for your PIN is as common as asking your last name.

Yes, it’s apparently hip to own a BlackBerry. They’re everywhere, from elementary school playgrounds to nanny waiting areas. Wherever you look you can see thumbs tapping on keypads.

BlackBerry’s Indonesian recipe is simple: it’s the most affordable smartphone out there and mobile network providers have raced to offer the cheapest plan possible. Indonesia is one of the first countries to offer a buffet of BlackBerry services with daily, weekly and monthly options.

What sets it apart from the iPhone is BB Messenger. The unlimited data plan that comes with a BlackBerry allows users to send unlimited messages to fellow users via BlackBerry Messenger. It’s as easy as posting a Facebook status.

Speaking of Facebook, it’s also a killer application that has misled the uninformed masses into thinking that Facebook was a BlackBerry creation. There’s also the push e-mail feature, which is essential for anyone trying to keep up in today’s work environment.

Local BlackBerry application developers say they would be more motivated to develop iPhone apps because writing them is apparently a lot less complicated than writing BlackBerry apps. However, there are too few iPhones in Indonesia to make it worthwhile. News portal detik.com says there are about 20,000 iPhones here compared to more than half a million BlackBerrys. Thus it makes little business sense for the developers to pursue iPhone apps.

Which brings me to my point. To be successful a device needs to have killer apps or killer features. It needs to have something extremely valuable that does not exist in other devices, or does so in far less impressive or useful form.

For example, back in the late 1970s and early ’80s, the Apple II family was a massive hit for Apple because it had a spreadsheet application called VisiCalc. Prior to this, any kind of calculations had to be done on paper or on blackboards. When it came to business projections, which can span weeks or even years, having several blackboards was the way to go.

This triggered activity in the personal computer industry, prompting Lotus to release its own spreadsheet app called 1-2-3, which was available for non-Apple computers and helped change the industry as well as business forever.

BlackBerry can thank push e-mail and BB Messenger for its huge popularity. People have a need to communicate and the more they can do so and the cheaper they can do it, the better for them.

It’s clear that BlackBerry’s strength in the eyes of Indonesians are the affordable plans that allow unlimited data for under $20 per month. This provides a platform for BlackBerry Messenger, Facebook, Twitter and all the e-mails one could possibly desire.

Apple’s iPhones are popular almost everywhere else in the world because they’re sold at affordable prices, and in some cases are given away for free. Users of the iPhone laud its flexibility and the more than 100,000 apps that are available on Apple’s App Store, which has been available to iPhone and iPod Touch owners in Indonesia with locally issued credit cards since July 11, 2008. Apple has been touting the 100,000 plus apps, but makes no specific mention of the number of apps available in individual countries. Applications stores for other smartphones are nowhere near as large because developers are concentrating on designing for Apple’s App Store.

Google’s Android hasn’t been that popular since its launch in August for a number of reasons, including HTC’s trademark battle with a local company, which prompted it to pull out of the country for several months. The latest word from an insider is that HTC has won its case and should be back selling smartphones in Indonesia within several weeks.

In Indonesia the iPhone is expensive. It is sold exclusively by Telkomsel for $700-$800 (from around $1,000 to $1,200 after the initial launch), complete with a 500 MB data plan that tends to leak for no apparent reason. It also has a pitiful package for voice calls, SMS and tethering, and there is little in the way of marketing, meaning there is little reason for Indonesians to make the switch.

Late last year, more affordable data plans surfaced from competing mobile networks. If Telkomsel iPhone 3G owners want to switch to other networks, a simple restore of the phone’s operating system will unlock the phone and allow them to migrate.

What Telkomsel needs to do is come up with a very strong and practical reason for people to buy iPhones. A phone, no matter how advanced, will not sell itself, especially when there is little support from the network provider. The strength of the iPhone is that it’s arguably the most flexible mobile computing device on the planet.

Telkomsel needs to recognize that fact and build on it by getting local iPhone developers to build killer apps, preferably with a strong local flavor.

The hottest thing right now is social networking. Facebook has its own app for each platform, Twitter relies on third-party developers, while Indonesia has Koprol, a location-based social networking service that was launched about a year ago.

Koprol lets you share your location and photos with friends and people nearby. It also lets you leave reviews of places such as malls, restaurants and other sites of interest. However, overseas competitors such as Foursquare and Gowalla are beginning to make inroads.

Telkomsel would do well to team up with Koprol to create an iPhone app. The Koprol guys are not only desperate for an iPhone app but Telkomsel needs to get those iPhones out the door. It’s near the bottom of Apple’s list of iPhone partners with regards to sales numbers. South Korea’s KT launched the iPhone 3GS in late November and managed to sell at least 100,000 units by the middle of December.

Telkomsel could also get shopping malls all over the country to link up with developers to create their own iPhone apps. Constantly updated mall guides on iPhones that can tell people about the stores, their promotions and the location of available parking spaces in their respective parking lots would be something that is not only useful for iPhone owners but would serves as an advertising/promotional platform for the malls and their tenants.

To get more users, it needs more appropriate apps. And not just any app but apps that are relevant to them — practical, useful and worthwhile apps. More important, users need to know how and where to get them.

Believe it or not, many Indonesian iPhone users are unaware that there are more than 100,000 apps available, tens of thousands of which are free. Many of them don’t even know that they can install apps on their phones.

A handful of one-shot low-engagement public events aren’t going to help raise that awareness. Telkomsel needs to show how an iPhone can be a boon to people’s daily lives.

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