Photo Gallery had Fix feature, which is basically a light photo editing program, somewhere under Adobe Photoshop Elements and definitely way under the famous Adobe Photoshop. But hey, like they said about cloud application, you wouldn’t always need all those more advanced editing functions anyway.

From the fixing features, the most essential tool is of course the Adjust Exposure function. This play with the brightness and contrast of the picture, attempting to boost the under exposed pictures or lower the over exposed pictures. Of course, sacrifice had to be made, except of course you use format with wider digital range such as raw or HD Photo, then you can do something like this.

Anyway, my favourite adjustment in the group is the Highlight and Shadow setting (as well as Level). It works like brightness, but only on certain range of the histogram. Highlight works on the brighter parts of the pictures, while Shadow works on the darker side of the pictures, in case you don’t want to change the whole picture. Or quoting from Photoshop Elements’ website:

Easily lighten shadows and reduce the glare of highlights in photos taken in poor lighting conditions.

I usually lower the highlight and raise the shadow. Boosting each too extreme, the picture will be ruined (because the mid-range brightness can’t be controlled).

Then, to enhance the colour, there’s the Adjust Colour function. Colour temperature, in short, is enhancing the picture’s colour channel between blue (cyan?) or red. I prefer redder colour (warmer) most of the time because it felt more natural. Tint, plays the colour between Green and Magenta, rarely played with this, I’m not good with it yet. While saturation is the strength of the colour. Go all the way left and you get desaturated picture (read: black and white). All the way right, and the colour is strong, sometimes with visible noises (disturbing, but depending on the picture might be a nice effect).

Although I’d love to have blurring tools and better area selection in Live Photo Gallery. It would open the window to more post-processing.

Sorry for not including any screenshot (forgot to make it).

As a disclaimer, I’m an amateur still tying to learn the baby steps. If anybody want to give better understanding about those adjustments, please :)

The place I worked in, seems to have a rule of thumb of picking titles. When faced with limited purchase slot, prefer long running title than short titles, even if the short titles is better. There are technical reasons, such as the difficulty of arranging new rights, and availability of products to work on. But there’s non-technical aspect too, namely, with so many products, when a title ended, it’ll most likely be forgotten by most (move on, nothing to see here). Long products will stay longer, and there’s a sticking aspect of the cash cows buying after they had invested in it (“too late to stop” thing).

Microsoft in the other hand… seems to prefer selling big titles (something like our novel publishing sister-company). Keep things in development, and release when it’s ready. Well, at least from a casual enthusiast’s point of view.

Personally… I think… I’d prefer them to do things in reverse. Thought of it while being tortured with standing, back-ache, steamed and light oxygen deprivation during the commuting trip home.

The logic in it? Well, books, I pay for those. Naturally, I want titles I’m really interested in. But I also prefer shorter stories, because I had to pay for each releases and I prefer to finish paying the investment sooner and go to the next.
Software in the other hand, at least web services, are mostly free-as-beer, so does beta software. And like beer, let it come in free flow, every drops of it in bite-sized releases. Besides, every time something new came out, we’ll come to check it right? At least out of curiosity, then talk again about it rather than always talk about the competition.

Other thing. I’ve seen a lot of case, about political issue, where peoples are quoting “experts”, as in journalists or the geeks (in social-politics). The population can’t find the right words for their emotions, so when someone coined a great arguments for their side, they take it as their own idea (and the person as sort of prophet). I think, it’s not that bad to give “geek credits” even if it’s not so much for practical use other than being “in the cutting edge”; after all, the authoritative voices are influential, and they had short patience(?). Do it for good image.

There’s a lot of web services in the internet. Quoting the release info from Windows Live Team:

For our partners, they’re great because just like other viral sharing mechanisms, they help new people discover each site’s content within the context of global services like Messenger and Hotmail that are already used by nearly 450 million people a month. And, the content being shared is more relevant and likely to be clicked on by the viewer, because it’s coming directly from their friends.

Web activities actually do more than that for me. The release assume that the users of Windows Live is already member of the services, and that it drives new peoples to come and visit.

In my experience, the availability of aggregation in sites I used is actually as important as alternate login (e.g: OpenID, Facebook Connect). If there’s aggregation for the service available, I’d be more encouraged to try those sites. For example, when I tried Fotolog,, Goodreads, Last.fm and StumbleUpon. Also, the reason I choose Digg instead of del.icio.us. Not just Windows Live, also Friendfeed (Backtype, Mixx, Tumblr) and Retaggr (CoComment).

Why? Just like the alternate login, I get something I can use for more than something in the closed garden. I can login using the key I bring from other place. For these websites, well, I can share it more widely, easily. It also gives a standard motivator to give that push on the back for curious me to try those services and try using it regularly.

The problem with the choices though. Windows Live now had more services supported than FriendFeed, but the choices is dominated by services popular in a specific local market. That’s why I find more than half are services I’ll never actually use.

最近は見なかったな. 忙しいのかな?

アプローチは激し過ぎかな? 別にそういうつもりは無いのに. でも, プライベートの日常を知りたいのもさすがに拙かった?

これは初めてじゃないから, いいか.

Went to watch 2012 today, or as I tried saying in Twitter, watch Roland Emmerich try to destroy humanity once more from the face of this planet.

Personally, the self-made comment I remember about… “Jackson, Gordon, you two could try and be danmaku pilot” Although the intensity of the projectiles and obstacles is nothing the level of Touhou games.

Anyway, after a long day with company-recommended medical check up, short date, oh, and stepping on dog shit (literally) in the morning to be troubled by it all day long; bought the ticket. I was lucky to watch it alone, because other than a single seat by the left aisle on the third lane from behind, the next available seat is at the front most, and even that is scarce.

In going to the movie, I’m welcomed by rain, I think rank 3 out of 5 where 10 is the hard rain with strong wind but still weaker than F-scales. I’m expecting to be greeted by… something not as spectacular as daybreak as in the movie, but at least the rain stopped.

Naah… met with an elementary school’s classmate opening a Blackberry accessories store in the mall and we get into short talk, although I think I’m becoming the annoying-talkative again. Must be my habit, compressing the whole topic to prepare for short time window even if I had more. But that’s it, the mood of welcoming the outdoor is gone :P

Timeline, stream, the popular format of conveying thoughts isn’t it.

From the time when blogs came, and change websites based on hierarchical document structure into long page going to the next long pages with articles stacked on another FIFO. Then Facebook’s feed, Twitter’s timeline too.

I guess, in BBS it’s called… “flat”, everything in one surface. I’d use the term, 1-dimensional, because like Timeline it is, this form has only length and simple back-reference to point on what is being replied.

What’s two dimensional? Well, Facebook and Friendfeed’s feed is an example. It has the option to comment/reply to an object and group the discussion under a single parent. It has the length (timeline) and width (reply ”timeline”). Personally, I enjoyed this type better, because unlike BBS, there’s no sectioning by Twitter. I prefer posting thoughts or sharing things in Twitter rather than having timeline dominated by replies. Friendfeed’s approach is part to blame on :P
But really, it’s a lot more comfortable that way, like Windows 7’s new taskbar grouped instances of different windows under same icon *winks*

True threaded BBS, where there’s a clear structure for reply-of-reply… what do you think? 2.5 dimensional, or 3 dimensional?

And in spirit of “what’s next”, what do you think of the next dimension in discussion? I don’t have strong visualization of it, but maybe, no… not the jargon “real-time” that’s popular recently, instead I think of, interlinking cross-platform discussion.
Some of it is visible now, with plug in like BackType can pull replies from Friendfeed, Twitter, etc. for a blog post. But we still can’t… for example.

Ann replied a blog article in Twitter, then Bob, seeing from his Tumblr make a reply blog post to it. This post by Bob can then be read as part of response to the original article, and received by Ann without the need of Bob to cross-post his response either manually or automatically.

Sounds impossible in the walled ecosystem of now though, and would give a headache if we try imagining the thousands of web services interlinking like the world wide web is not enough of a cobweb already.

BTW, I never tried Google Wave, so I don’t know how that thing would fit in (and no, I don’t know anything more than keywords: “Google, Wave, XMPP, real-time, collaboration, how is it relevant”).

I went to the Windows 7 tour event in Pondok Indah today. Since the first day is yesterday, I assume the representatives only came yesterday formally. But still, there’s a number of Microsoft Indonesia’s event crew on spot, I even met an acquaintance there. The stand looks interesting, at least better than Microsoft’s booth in Indocomtech 2009.

As expected, they had close cooperation with hardware partners like Acer and Gateway. The products shown are… well, the trend in Indonesia, notebook & netbook, and all-in-one PC (Gateway ZX series, although I like HP TouchSmart better). Anyone missed the day where they would showcase build up desktop PC and hung motherboards on the booth wall? I guess the visitors nowadays has been brainwashed to see those PC guts as too geeky to show.

But I do get the chance to play Virtual Earth using Surface interface (part of Windows 7 Touch Pack).

In the middle of the Gateway’s booth, there’s a small stand showcasing Windows Phone. They showed Samsung Omnia Pro, Sony Ericsson Xperia2 and Acer’s 3 units including one SnapDragon device.

The touch screen on both phone and PC is still unresponsive. But since I think even the iPhone’s display is not so responsive, I guess this is technology limitation.

Even so, on the other side, Windows Phone is never affordable (at least those that worth it). I avoid Standard device at all cost because of a simple reason. The popularity of touch screen devices made non-touch Windows Mobile into a marginal product not good enough for peoples that like to play with 3rd party applications. Developers want to ride the biggest bandwagon, touch screen devices. Non-HTC device is also not so worth it, because there’s not much ROM to be found in place like XDA Developers (yes, it’s shunned, but I’d rather pay for the OS than paying hardware tax just for software upgrade).

Anyway, the greatest story I heard today is that, they’re selling Windows 7 Ultimate at promo price of IDR 2.4M for 3 license key! Yup, gonna buy that. My desktop, my notebook. The other two, my dad’s notebook and my brother’s, which one should I install the 3rd ?

I’ve just realized when checking price again in a local online store.

Although Microsoft said that they would reduce the price of their most popular retail product for consumer… the keyword here is “retail” as in “FRP”. Yes they might have cheaper price, up to 31% (Indonesian price) for Windows Vista Ultimate. But again, “retail” is the keyword.

For example, although they cut 32% off Business/Pro (again, Indonesian price), there’s an 8% raise in the OEM price. How come ? Well they cut the price gap between FRP and OEM to 26% from the previously crazy 54% on Vista (add: Vista Ultimate had approx 40% price gap between OEM and FRP).
Which means, for us who buy the OEM version, that's not much of a good news.

The situation are as follow:

• You might not want to follow everyone. Imagine the mess your main timeline would become.
• You can only create list of peoples you followed.
• Although they might say “there’s a list for that”, some list are terribly personal, best bet is that you’re the only one who would make it.

Considering such points of inconvenience… it might be a nice idea to have an extra account, follow all those peoples related, and then create lists. Yes, account made to host lists of those newsmakers you might not want to bother following officially yet nobody else make list exactly as your requirements. Then subscribe to them from your real account.

So that be:

• List account, follow probably hundreds or thousands of peoples.
• Main account, follow peoples you’re actually interested enough, and subscribe to the lists from list account or other users.

The list account wouldn’t just benefit yourself, but also others. Example case, providing list of Twitter users in your community to others who don’t want to follow each and everyone but still need a convenient way to view their updates in single place..

There’s not much online store in Indonesia, especially for computer. The popular stores must be, Bhinneka (known for being more expensive than most Mangga Dua standard) and Rakitan/Quantum (more or less the same as other stores around).

Why? Maybe, just maybe…

• Taking care of online shop is troublesome and costly.
• Lack of interest in online shopping. Even if they’re interested, they would shop from personal importers in online forums with cheaper price.
• They know, their site will just become reference price list and the customer will still go to another stores and haggle the price down.

Culture… *knocks head*

Besides, unlike online shops in US, they don’t offer crazy bargain price or discount or rebates. Even if there’s discount, it’ll still be higher than the average price. Again, this might had to do with the culture.

The distributors play the game with lots of smaller partners (something in level of mom-pop shop). Because many end customer bought their retail from there, the distributor might not want to disappoint them by giving big players price advantage. While the shops… they had almost fixed price among one and another, like a cartel.

Disclaimer: done without formal research or observation and had to be taken as assumption.