Aria Rajasa

I was invited to the Samsung Event in Mulia where Samsung showcase their latest products for the South East Asia market. They display a large array of products that includes TV (that can tweet!), refrigerator (that can tweet!), vacuum cleaner (no, this one cannot tweet), DVD, AC, and of course the Samsung Galaxy product line.

Despite the overly-hyped tweeting refrigerator, my eyes obviously got caught on the Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0. I’ve reviewed the Samsung Galaxy Note 2 before so i’ll concentrate on the features that excel in the Galaxy Note 8.0 instead of the overall functionallity.

The Perfect Size

The 8″ size is definitely the friendliest form factor. It’s lighter and thinner than the 10″ version (obviously). This is important because my experience with the 10″ version was rather awkward, it felt uncomfortable to hold with one hand and I can’t use the pen while holding it with both hands. Holding the 8″ with one hand and using the s-pen to take note, draw, or browsing feels natural.

The Galaxy Note 8.0

I didn’t like the size bezel taking up a lot space but the bezel stops my hand from reaching (and screwing) the touch screen so I guess it has it’s uses.

The Phone OS

Because this is the Galaxy Note line so the Galaxy Note 8.0 uses the same OS as the Galaxy Note 2.0. It’s good for previous Note users as they would feel perfectly at home, those with prior experience with the Android Tablet OS would need time to get used to the diffence as it doesn’t provide on screen Home and Back buttons but rather a hardware touch screen buttons for Menu, Home and Back. Everything works the same as the Galaxy Note 2.0, the dashboard, the apps, the multitasking, the note taking and even the phone function.

Multitasking like a boss

Yes! It can make phone calls! Though you would look like an idiot if you perform this stunt on public places but that’s for you to decide.

Looking classy!

The S-Pen

The S-Pen is bigger than the Note 2.0 but still remain uncomfortable to use. It’s too small to hold, there’s a button to select text and it’s hard to press. Maybe it needs getting used to. Maybe it’s a good idea if Samsung provide a bigger alternative Pen to use (sold separately is fine).

The Conclusion

Should you buy the Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0? I think you should if you are thinking of buying the 10″ but feels that it’s heavy and uncomfortable, or you like the Galaxy Note 2.0 to draw and do creative stuffs on it but in need of a bigger canvas, or you lost your TV remote and you want to replace it with big giant expensive touch screen TV remote.

Update: just heard that the price would be $450 for the 16GB Wifi Version.

Disclaimer: this is a paid but honest reviews which reflects my personal opinion on the product. The review is based on my short experience playing with the device at the press conference launch.

There’s an interesting app for the iOS called imadeface that let’s you create an illustration of your face easily by combining the elements of your hair such as the shape of the face, hair, eyes, nose, mouth and ears. It’s easy and fun to use and most of my friends on twitter are already changing their avatars with the face made from the app.

You can go wild or you can make a perfect copy of yourself, that’s up to you. I’ve been playing a little bit more on what to do with my face and I think it would be cool to make it into a t-shirt (yeah i made tees so obviously that’s the first thing that comes to mind. I made this using Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator but you can do the same with Corel Photo Trace or any other vector tracing software. So here’s a bit of a tutorial on how to make a cool shirt out of your face.

1. Make your face

Of course this is the first step, download the app and make your own face. I decided to go with the image below for my representation. Save it to your computer somehow like emailing it to yourself.

2. Convert the image into a vector

We need a higher resolution so why not just change into a vector image so you can resize it all you want. Open your Adobe illustrator and open the image using the Illustrator. Do the steps below:

Now after clicking the live trace, don’t worry about the image going black and white because it’s customizable. After the step above, follow the steps below.

After that you should get something like the image below. Now remove the things that you don’t want and you got the image in vector mode!

3. Send it to tees.co.id!

Now that you have the image in vector, you can put it in the template from by tees.co.id and send it to them accordingly. I added by twitter name for further customization and the end result is something like the image below.  I’ve ordered mine and I can’t wait to wear it in public! If you’re too lazy to do it yourself then you can just email order[et]tees.co.id and the staff will help you make it into a t-shirt.

Can’t decide what looks to make? Look it up here for inspiration.

It hasn’t been a year since the launch of the first generation of Samsung Galaxy Note and even back then I had my doubts, will a 5.3″ screen too big for you? Well apparently millions of people are swayed into buying it and they appear to love it. Fast forward until today and you got yourself the second generation and surprise! It’s bigger! Sporting a beautiful 5.5″ screen with a rounder frame compared to its predecessor. The 0.2″ additional screen size is almost unnoticeable, see the image below (taken from recombu)

Despite what you’re thinking right now, it’s a smart move to make the screen bigger to accomodate a 16:9 screen ratio, the previous one had 16:10 which makes it rather awkward to watch videos. It’s fun to watch movies with the Samsung Galaxy Note 2 because you won’t be seeing a black border at the top and bottom and I gotta say it again, the screen is bright and beautiful.

I only had a brief time to try this at the Indonesian launch (thank you Samsung Indonesia for inviting me) so there’s not much time to play with it. The 8MP camera doesn’t hold up in poor lit room and the press conference room was rather dark, I can’t test it on the outdoors so I have no idea how it will perform. What I love about the Camera is the best face feature where you can rewind the best moment when taking a picture and get their best expression. It works on multiple faces as I’ve seen the promotion guy demoing it when taking 2 faces at a time.

The stylus holds up nicely compared to high end drawing tablets that I’ve used before. Drawing with the stylus feels really great especially because the screen is that big. Creative people would definitely love to sketch ideas, draw directions or just play around with your friends photos by putting a mustache on them (corny I know ahaha).

I’m also loving the app that Samsung made for the Galaxy Note 2, I love that we can take notes when on the phone, which would be really useful at times. The multi-window is great at taking notes while browsing for sources. The idea sketch is great for taking visual notes. Of course since this runs on the latest Android so you can install all the apps you want to support you even further.

The big screen may put some people off, it’s not really comfortable when you’re using it to call so I would recommend a hands free accessories when calling. You would need to use 2 hands to reach all of the screen as it is quite huge, most of the time you’ll be holding the phone with one hand and the other using a stylus. It’s also quite pricey giving the normal price at around 7 million rupiah.

In short, Samsung Galaxy Note 2 is great for creative people that loves to draw, express things visually and watch movies and play games on the go. If you think you’re that person then go for it!

Disclaimer: this is a paid but honest reviews which reflects my personal opinion on the product. The review is based on my short experience playing with the device at the press conference launch.

#Personal

Quitting is never easy, people told me that quitting is the easy way out and it’s a loser’s way of taking care of a problem. Well I disagree, quiting is hard, and it doesn’t solve the problems of those that you leave behind.

Nevertheless quitting is infact necesarry. Maybe it’s because of the countless disagreements, lack of appreciation, the long hours of meetings, the pointless bickering, the feeling of going nowhere.. But I guess it all comes down to the different personal vision about the business.

It may look like all the work you did in the past is such a waste but it’s better to waste the past that you can never get back rather than wasting the future that you can actually fix.

At this moment of time. I believe it is better to go separate ways and hope each other the best. So here I am hoping the best for Anang Pradipta which will be leaving his position as Partner and Chief Marketing Officer of Gantibaju.com.

Things will change, and things will change for the better.

Good luck and Na zdorovie!

Yeah so I kind of bail on this blog for a week due to being super busy on work and late night super secret activities that I can only mention as codename:cerberus. On a totally unrelated note, Mass Effect 3 is awesome! The ending however..

Well anyway,  I’m still writing for dailysocial.net (since I’m under contract) and here’s last week’s writing about the grim reality of newspaper digital distribution

The push for digital in the US is so heavy that it forces traditional newspapers to either go digital or go bankrupt. But then again the push for digital posed more problems than solutions for the business owners as they’re still finding it hard to find a profitable business model. For every $1 gained in digital, $7 are lost in print revenue.

You can also read it in Bahasa Indonesia here. Thx for translating it guys

~cheers

Who here has more than 1,000 unread emails? I do, it happens every couple of months. Those emails that you think you will read but never really have time to, those mailing lists from the marketing club that you promise to read, the email from an old friend that you’re planning to reply, the events you’re planning to RSVP, the groupon deals that have expired, etc. Well, if you haven’t replied to an email after 2 weeks then you’ll probably never ever reply it anyway.

What I do with every important email is turn it into a task on my favorite to do app or put it into evernote for archiving. The rest of the email that doesn’t get into the to do app is pretty much useless. It’s just there as an archive just in case I need to get back at it.

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I’ve been getting some emails from people with ideas, some are challenging, some got me excited. I love hearing fun and new ideas and would love to discuss them. So in the spirit of sharing knowledge, I’m announcing an open invitation to all who wishes to challenge their business ideas to email me to aria[et]rajasa.com. If it’s interesting enough let’s meet up at a cafe and chat, would expect you to pay for my meal though.

Of course I would only comment on things that I’m interested like creative business model, digital startup, and Indonesia-related scene and environment. It doesn’t have to be a startup idea, it can be some marketing strategy you would like to try, a launch plan, a new business model from existing business, etc.

This is basically from startup to startup, I’m a practitioner myself building startups from scratch. This is not me acting like I’m better than anyone, I just love helping people out and listening to great ideas. This is also a learning process for me.

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I just sold my iPad, it’s been sitting around the house collecting dust for months. Other than playing a couple of games (which are mostly also available on my iPhone), I see no other purpose for it. Not a single thing that I can do on my iPad that I can’t do better on my iPhone, so it’s a bother to have both at all times. In the phase of decluttering my life I decided to let it go. It’s been a while and I didn’t miss it at all.

I didn’t sell my Playbook though. Contrary to the iPad, the Playbook fits nicely for my needs. It has the books that I want to read, the movies that I haven’t watched and the games to keep me occupied. I’ve been using it for months and unlike all my other friends, I love my Playbook. You want to know why?

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Wednesday dose of reality check

Then it hit me, is $1.78 per hour cheap? The workers work 12 hours a day, let’s assume that they work 5 days a week. That would make about $1.78 x 12 hours x 20 days equals $427.2. That’s bigger than my first salary at an IT company in 2004! Not to mention it’s still a starter salary for most small companies in 2011.

Read more here

This is one of my attempts to make a themed post every week and I think productivity is still an interesting take. So here’s my take on tips to increase productivity. Some will be plain obvious, but I guess we (especially me) need reminders once in a while. For the first tip I’ll start really simple: Leave your email alone!

Here’s the 3 main reason why you should just leave your email alone and get back to work

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