Aria Rajasa’s Blog

First of all, the title is NOT a sarcasm or metaphor or ironic or whatever. I AM sincerely saying it.

I’ve just seen Microsoft Surface and it’s awesome! It’s a table-like computer that can detect your hand gesture and movement when touching it’s surface. It can also detect wireless devices just by putting them on it’s surface, example: You can put your digital camera, or a Zune (iPod doesn’t support wireless connection) and display your photos instantly. One cool feature is that it can also detect credit cards! Let’s imagine that being used on a restaurant, when you need to pay, you can just put your credit card and it can be processed. It will changes the way you interact with your computer. I really can’t expressed this in words, might as well for you to see it for yourself!

Awesome! I was awe on Silverlight and now this? Finally their going to the right direction.

written by Kuy

All of you in need of cute pictures of animal, you can see it on The cute project. Nuff said

Here’s a couple of examples:

~kawaiii

written by Kuy

Well, ketika gw lagi ngeliat2 referrer situs Sharingfoto.com, terdapat fenomena yang lucu si. Jadi ada orang meng-google wallpaper Julie Estelle and ended up di account gw di sharingfoto.com. It’s rather of a coincidence juga karena itu wallpaper toh bikinan gw dan not intended for promotional items tapi ternyata bisa menarik calon anggota juga. Apakah dia akhirnya jadi anggota? hm.. Kurang tau juga, tapi setidaknya dia sudah datang ke sharingfoto.com tanpa sengaja. Kenapa bisa begitu? karena gw tag gambarnya dengan well.. Julie Estelle tentunya. Menarik juga. Mungkin bisa dijadikan media promosi secara serius ni.

Satu lagi yang menarik. Seseorang dengan username fujitsu membuat album foto di sharingfoto.com untuk menjual laptop Fujitsunya dan menjualnya di kaskus. Cara yang menarik untuk menggunakan sharingfoto.com. And no, kita ga melarang penggunaan seperti itu kok.

Jadi seneng juga kalo ternyata sharingfoto.com bisa cukup berguna bagi orang lain. Kalo ada penggunaan-penggunaan yang cukup menarik lainnya monggo beritahu kami. We’ll love to discuss it here.

written by Kuy

Yup.. it’s official! I’m 91 kg!!! I’ll should start my daily workout again i believe.. But then again that’s the third time I said that this year and it’s only May!

Owh and I’ve just found out that Sharingfoto.com is the first Ruby on Rails application in Indonesia, well at least as far as I know and according to the list in id-ruby mailing list

Updates!
Anyway, these weeks were (still) hectic as ever. Sharingfoto.com has been stabilizing, We can cover mugs and pins now. New features! now we can comments on the photos. apply theme on Mugs. This week we’ll go after RSS, Widgets, and T-Shirt creation, next month we’ll start developing the system to make photo books and mini albums (hope it could be done in june). We’re also planning to make a desktop Uploader and firefox extensions but we’re kinda off on resources, Hope Hendra didn’t forgot about this.

The Company is also busy, we’re adopting a new marketing strategy that could elevate our sales to 100%. Suprisingly, it’s working as it should be.. If you’re wondering what it is, well.. sometimes the ultimate answer is the simplest of all.

written by Kuy

Sesuai judul, lengkap wal afiat, kondisi 98% kira2. Foto-fotonya dibawah:

Dilepas dengan harga 3jt, no nego. Yang berminat email ke rajasa[et]gmail.com

written by Kuy

Ada apa ya dengan provider XL? kok akhir2 ini melucu.. Dari ga dapet network coverage, tidak bisa dihubungi, sms ga bisa.. sigh.. Apakah sudah saatnya pindah ke three?

~mau?

written by Kuy

Sekarang di Sharingfoto.com sudah bisa cetak foto di Mug dan Pin monggo pak kalo ingin mencetaknya segera memesan.

written by Kuy

Yep, you read it right. I’m making my OS X to look like Ubuntu.

Why you ask? well, it’s pretty simple. I get bored easily.. And I’m bored of seeing the same Aqua looking interface for 2 years so I needed something new. I tried different themes for the OS X using Unsanity’s Shapeshifter but the themes they provided won’t get you far from aqua, milk, soft look that still resembles the same old interface, so why bother.

Then recently, I discovered a theme called Mahuntu. it’s an effort to make OS X looks like Ubuntu. Hm… with the current hype of Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn and my love for Open Source Software (well.. maybe not love..) so I decided, what the heck. Let’s try this theme shall we?

It doesn’t support some applications like Journler and iPhoto (don’t support as in it makes it ugly) but in overall, it looks good. If some applications looks ugly with this theme, then you can just exlude it with the Shapeshifter’s exclude list.

Here’s a screenshot of what it looks like on my desktop:

written by Kuy

I’ve just notice recently that there are a lot more Joomla! sites popping around in Indonesia from news sites like the competitor of detik: Okezone.com to an online book store selling amazon’s merchandise called juraganbuku.com. All of this is possible by combining Joomla! with various components and modules that you can easily get from their . You just have to know where to look.

It’s quite a joy to see this all those sites using Joomla. Rajasa.com itself is uses Joomla! to make their site and also develop websites using Joomla! as it’s core. But Joomla! is just a tool, like Wordpress, Drupal, etc. How good you are with your tools will definitely determine the end result of your doing.

Please be reminded that tools alone cannot make you king in your industry, and I learn that the hard way. I can teach you how to make a better okezone.com in 5 minutes, but there’s more to that then the site alone like good reporters, writers and editors to fill it with good stories, the designer to make the design (although I believe they could do a better job than that), marketing to socialize it through radios and TVs. That alone makes it a lot more complicated than it seems.

A colleague of mine ask me to build him an exact copy of okezone.com, and like I said to you guys before, I told him that I could make it before the end of the day, but can you manage your content nicely, socialize it, and lastly: have the funds to do all that (including paying me of course). If he didn’t have what it takes, then I recommend taking a detour on his current marketing plan.
I had clients with great vision for their websites, with big funds, but less planning. In a couple of months, most of the sites was abandoned. Contents aren’t updated frequently, lack of quality in updates, and more reasons that I can’t really say here.
All I wanna say is that with the current technology, making websites is easy, maintaining it is the hard part.

written by Kuy

Detik.com is the most famous news site in Indonesia (at least as far as I know). There go a long way to reach this point, from surviving the dot com boom too having hundreds of millions worth of commercial banners. They’re probably the first in their kind. But they’re certainly not putting all their effort in it. Here’s a few things that can get them better

1. Really Simple Syndicate (RSS) Feeds

Give us RSS feeds! this is the thing that I don’t get with most Indonesian’s site, most of them don’t provide RSS. RSS is a good way for viewers to keep updated with the site. It’s easy and unobtrusive, but very much underrated.

Maybe they’re worried that with RSS, people wouldn’t visit their site anymore. Well then that’s easily solved by having only the title and a bit of the news to catch our attention so that we would be drawn to the site. Also, RSS provide another place for them to put their ads. Simple? yes. Implemented in detik.com? No.

2. Newsletter

Okay, most of us aren’t that keen to RSS. Fine! then give them newsletter. So that we could get updates directly to our mails everyday. Heck, even Garfield.com have them. And again, just provide us with excerpt. It it’s interesting, then we’ll definitely click it.

3. Flexible Layout

This is the age of wide screens, people have screens from 13.3” to maybe 21” or maybe like 30”. You can even browse from your TV. So why do they persist with the same small width layout. Hey! if I had 30” wide screen monitor then I sure want to read my news widescreen.

4. Mobile Accessibility

Most cellphones these days can browse the internet, then why don’t they make it more comfortable for us to browse detik.com from our cellphones? Having 2 versions of the site like what Gmail mobile or studiohp mobile could really benefits them by increasing more loyal readers.

There are a lot more things that they can do like better and more relevant ads placements, better colors and contrast, better article arrangements (category, search), tags implementations, and many more.

Maybe having a competitor would make them consider these tips

written by Kuy