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’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..

The price of Windows 7 and the OEM version is out in some online retailer in Indonesia. The official launch partner seems to be Bhinneka.com, who I usually use as reference site when shopping. Reference as in “if it’s more expensive that this you’re ripped off by the store” a.k.a upper limit. :D

Following on the right is the comparison between the price of full retail package and OEM version in the store before discount (although, in some Indonesian electronic store, discounted price is after marking up the base price so the discounted price is about the same as market price).

In comparison, here’s the price of Windows Vista (still sold) in the same online store. All four datum as per this morning (2009-10-25).

Seems like Microsoft set the price difference to be smaller between the FRP and OEM for now. Although not as pretty as in Vista, the deal of OEM price for Business/Professional is still the best among the list.

For more comparison, here’s the price in Newegg (USA). More expensive retail price tag and greater gap in the OEM price. Because the US is not categorized as emerging market, no Starter or Home Basic edition.

Why should we buy retail when there’s cheaper OEM package? Well, officially, OEM edition are for system builders (I assume, smaller computer builders who can hit multi-million dollars deal with Microsoft for high volume licensing like the top 8 makers). Technically:

• You can’t upgrade your motherboard or processor. No problem if you don’t plan to or can’t afford to in Windows 7’s lifetime, and no shit happened to either of the components).
• No upgrade install, because this is for new PC (but old time Windows wisdom always recommend doing back up and clean install always).
• No support from Microsoft (good enough for those scourging online resources for solution instead of calling Microsoft). Actually if you get custom built Windows PC from computer store, I think the support should be covered in the store’s warranty, so bring it to them to handle the trouble shooting.

The above price is from the official partner. But there’s some store that cut their profit by selling lower than the SRP. I’ve seen another store selling the retail for [105-121-195-210], a nice USD 28–61 cheaper. But the difference with their OEM price is smaller single digit number most of the time.

Should be cheaper though. The price for Ultimate is somewhere above the average monthly salary for a fresh graduate with not special qualification.

The sorry state of things as confirmed by PalmInfoCenter:

By now, Asia-Pacific Palm fans will have heard the sad news that we won't be receiving the Palm Pre anytime soon, as confirmed by intrepid investigator Jason Lingohr and reported by PreCentral yesterday.

Asia Pacific region would be left out by Palm because they have no money to sell and support it here. Just as what’s feared, or maybe worse. So, maybe they’re happy enough with the exclusive deal with operators back in the western world, after all, the carriers can’t just return unsold goods to their manufacturers right? Someone will buy from them in bulk and money comes in without waiting for each and every customers buying it from the store?

By the way, Windows Mobile’s homepage for Indonesian sub is also a poor adaptation of the US site. The search feature doesn’t search by brand, but by carrier. In contrast, I think there’s only one carrier giving contract (yet charging full price) and it’s only for iPhone and HTC Hero so far. Others are sold unlocked, yet the site doesn’t give us option to search for it.

Because it won’t make it for my deadline (early 2010), I’m starting to contemplate on having another OS for replacement of my phone. First criteria: I’m not shelling out money for the overpriced iPhone (USD 750 with contract in Indonesia) and I’m still not putting my data in sacrificial altar to Google. That leaves small range of choice.

Windows Mobile choice… is not so preferred. The thing a consumer would like after deciding which device to purchase (that is considering quality and requirements) would be the product lifespan. Until now, and maybe until Windows Mobile 7, consumers are at the mercy of the carrier and manufacturers to provide OS update to their device, just like Apple’s computer. How sad is that. Windows Mobile 7 would be released next year, how much of today’s Windows Mobile 6.5 device would be upgradable? The touch screen would follow the trend to capacitive screen anyway right?

Today, Windows 7 is launched, in Indonesia. No, not a celebration post, but disappointment. Microsoft Indonesia’s site has no information whatsoever about the launching event that will be held today. While not sure, I think it’s safe to assume this as an invite only press event so the general mass had no rights to join the show.

At first, I thought the Indonesian sub had not enough budget to held the global launch event, and fill the stand in Indocomtech event early next month. Ah, that’s a computer sales event; not like the tech events in other country that have marketing folks presenting technology, this one is filled with sales folks trying to reach their sales target. Not that I remember the Vista launch events 2 years ago, but the photo seems more crowded that time.

No information on retail price either. There’s gossip that the Home Basic would be priced at IDR 900k (approx. €64.33) although it’s unclear if that’s the price for full retail version or OEM version.

Have you bought Windows 7?

I think I’ll buy it in the event, after buying new motherboard and processor. Still contemplating between Home Premium or Professional edition. Actually the only two features I wanted from edition higher than Home Premium are “Remote Desktop Host” so I can remote my desktop from my notebook (lots of mosquito and bugs around my desk) and “Previous Version”. But looking at the price, I guess it’ll be Home Premium again.

Last, a funny thing. Some shop in Japan seems to give extra bonus in form of Windows 7 branded toilet paper. What does it means? The person who posted the picture asked.
A proposed answer from someone else: lets wash away the past (Vista).

Quoting ReadWriteWeb

Lifestreaming apps generally fall into two categories: those that help you keep track of and display your own lifestream and those that help you keep track of your friend's lifestreams (or both). For the sake of clarity, we've focused mainly on the former for this list.

Sadly for me, the article focus on the first group.

As someone who doesn’t have high authority, the most of my interest is always the second type, to gather contents from other sites. This is the main reason I stick with FriendFeed despite the pessimistic future it has after being drained by Facebook. It has feature that’s relevant to my need of gathering content, and less of the part I hate the most (invites).

Today, I found a service that might be the one I’m looking for. Spokeo. The service take data from address book, then search to list of online services to check for the account. But two major drawback that drag it down harshly from like to let’s-forget-it.

• No way to manually add persons. It’s always full access to the whole address book regardless of relevancy.
• Paid service, with a lot of features crippled out. Maybe there’s manual adding available for premium, but I’m out.

It’s not that I cared that much about the service in Facebook itself (other than probably looking for some translator who respond faster using Facebook message than e-mail). But there are other websites where I can’t do much without access to that biggest social networking sites. More active peoples would have longer list, but this is mine, list of sites I can’t use with the office blocking Facebook.

• Brightkite. Login for this location based status service (like Twitter with geolocation before Twitter had the API for it).
• Cnet news. Commenting, actually for the whole CNet.
• Digg. Frankly, I’ve forgot my username/password combination there.
• Mixx. News gathering and commenting service like NewsVine. Hope this one got added to web activities too. Had other login with OpenID though.
• SocialMedian. Like the one above, although admittedly, I never used it.
• Techcrunch. Commenting. I know there’s Twitter OAuth too, but I prefer the Facebook’s.

My short list as I remember, and not include other sites with Facebook Connect but no Disqus.

I really hope Windows Live could provide login service used by more 3rd party sites. But remembering that even Google’s friend connect is behind Facebook connect, let’s not put our hope too high here :D

Ctrl+D in Internet Explorer to add the currently viewed page to the bookmark.

Back then when Netscape is still standing tall, I used the feature to bookmark sites so I can get there easily. Those are reference sites and regularly visited sites such as discussion forum. It’s really an indispensable feature of every browser, especially since not everybody had the money to buy easy to remember domain name.

Windows Live used to have part called Live Favourites that works to store that browser bookmark online and synchronize it with Internet Explorer in other computer. There are other 3rd party solutions predating that, and now we also have Opera browser’s Opera Link and Chrome had the bookmark synchronization feature soon.

Live Favourites is changed, merged with Skydrive and become a social bookmark service like Delicious or Digg. This way, we can share interesting links to our friends and the world to see and comment.

Frankly, first time I heard the term bookmarking site or social bookmark, I never grasp the concept. Bookmark that I know is keeping links so I don’t forget and can access is quickly. Because of the tree structure of desktop file, without searching feature, I tried putting value to pages and decide if it’s worthy to bookmark or not. Rather than article, I bookmark the main page because most of the sites are static with links I can quickly find back the article, unlike the hi-speed internet of nowadays.

Being that, seeing peoples who seem to bookmark (& broadcast) anything they see is… not so understandable. Not just using bookmark site, but also the currently more trendy Tweet & Retweet. As in typographical design tips, when the whole sentence is bolded, there’s no emphasize anymore.

Well, in this information super highway age… (wait, that term’s almost a decade old isn’t it?) where articles come and by quickly (yeah, Twitter) keeping them has its good side. For example, when writing articles and need those lot of reference links back (either for description or maybe arcane art of SEO) it’s easier to find from shortlist of bookmark rather than use search engine to find them back.

While at it, why not broadcast it to everyone?

For some users, the announcement of Facebook Lite might be a holy grail even more than Apple’s announcement. It’s something close to life, and free as beer. The thing is not the lighter interface it promised, but that this alternate interface push away those annoying applications. Yes, we want to know our friends, but we don’t care about their mafia game, or who they are according to zillions of quiz applications. We want to know about their snappy thoughts (status update, groups), interesting links, or their activities (events, photos) and interact with them. Those apps, as far as I know, are just like 97% of e-mail traffic.

Some basic science class now. Evolution is triggered by change in natural environment forcing organism to adapt or die. Events like the mass extinction weeds off most of the old player and introduced new face. When Facebook decide to change their layout design so that most apps are pushed back to the next tab instead of cluttering the first page, there’s joy. No more checking profile infested by dozens of useless applications they never cleaned.

But they evolve, as we know it, into application that spam the news feed as often as possible. These are quiz applications which grow in variant faster than any other computer virus.

Then Facebook Lite will eliminate those apps from feed, keeping only the basic functions like status message, links, photos, etc. I missed groups and pages, but can live with it as long as there’s no those pesky quizzes.

And as I commented in several places, how I’m so wrong. They evolve. First day Facebook Lite is launched, I had my feed already infested by something scarier. The applications are using the access they have to post generated picture into the Wall, then tag everybody in the contact list to spread itself. What a horror, it’s no longer a virus, it’s evolving into a Photo apps cancer.

I just hope Facebook will review and kill them off as soon as possible.

One of the new features of Office 2010 is the paste option. This small menu will pop up most of the time if we pasted something to the document. The function is to help in deciding whether we want to paste a text with the same formatting as the source, or strip away all the styles. This remove the need to go to the Paste Special menu, it can even be accessed without having to move to the mouse.

The problem though, this option is activated using one of the most used non-alphabet key in the keyboard, Ctrl, which is also used to move cursor quickly between words. When doing quick typing, this could cause errors, which in worst case, left unnoticed.

It’s not like the it doesn’t tell us where to remove that option if we find it useless or pulling our fingers when typing; but here it is anyway. From the option, choose Advanced. and then the Cut, copy and paste (second group). It’s the “Show Paste Options button”.

Much better. Too bad the team doesn’t give it a less used key for shortcut, such as… right Shift or Ctrl button (after half-breaking my PC keyboard, I’ve just realized I almost never used the right side Shift and Ctrl.

An interesting idea from a commenter in the article.

So they're turning twitter into a global forum for everything in real time? Sounds pretty awesome. Just wait for the forum styled front ends to appear they should be brilliant.

Originally posted as a comment by Chris on Mashable - The Social Media Guide using Disqus.

It’s actually possible isn’t it ? The thing needed is a formal way to group the posts together to form a discussion threads, probably using hash tags.

The front end would just be a web based Twitter client, automatically entering a unique hash tag for each thread and keep a database to translate the random code into understandable title in the interface. Adding Twitter’s feature to “reply” and track which posts are replied, the forum could be flat and threaded.

Talking about possible, actually Hatena Haiku works as a cross between microblogging and forum. The architecture is different from Twitter though. In that site, it has “Title” field to specify the threads, and it has almost infinite text length, also supporting line breaks. That one has very low participant from outside Japan though.

Although not so sure, I think the InPrivate browsing feature from IE8 had a certain rule that ignore the rule set in the blocked site list.

This rule is… it doesn’t block the ads served from the same domain. For example, if I blocked www.google-analytics.com, I can still open the site. Or another example, even if I blocked www.mydomain.com/ads/.* I will still get the ads when visiting www.mydomain.com. Too bad actually because some forum I visited hosted the advertising scripts in their own server in a directory. InPrivate is limited to blocking files in at least another sub-domain or another site.

Clarification please…

Put wide LoL smilies here. Anyone might know if there’s such service somewhere in the deep… web of the world wide web?

Realization tracker for schedule. Much like the sleep tracker. The concept is, someone fill in their calendar (or import from other service) and then at the end of the day, fill in the realization.

Example:

• Plan: meet with friend on 12:00.
• Realization: meet with friend on 13:00.
• Excuse: fell asleep and nobody’s waking.

Private publishing tracker. For writer to publish ongoing work. The features includes:

• Commenting system, with option for message from author (for example: the author want to limit current session for critic on specific language use).
• Online editing tool as well as upload option supporting popular file formats. Author could also write update, but keep it private (not publishing it to the public yet).
• News feed, for the author to inform there’s an update. Automatic is fine too, but I’d also like to see the authors had the option to tell their readers when they’ve finished the latest update, especially for those editing online.
• Bookmark tool, for readers to know where they last read the story. Also for the writer, so they can mark from where the latest story starts.

Willingness to use if there exist: none.

Last Monday, I had a new toy to waste the boring time.

Not really a toy in usual sense anyway, just a text editor and a “rulebook” to play with. It’s called FOAF.

Just like my habit for trying out different sites as well as aggregator, this thing is really interesting. I could define almost all the usual identity attributes.

Let’s see… the usual name, nickname, birthday, gender, phone, e-mail.
We also had some joke-attributes such as DNA hash code.
Website for company and projects done (instantly made me think of the peoples working in internet work groups).
The online properties had usual homepage, weblog, and branches that define online accounts and chat accounts.

The part I hasn’t explore is the Knows section, defining the list of peoples I know. Too long, no thanks (^ー^;;)

Search engines, such as Google (IINM) scan the foaf.rdf file linked to index someone’s identity, I wonder about Bing.

I imagine this would be handy in the vast online profile sites. For example, we could register using OpenID and then the consumer could pull this identification definition file from the server, or even pull the update periodically to keep the information in sync between sites. After all, 15–20 online profile might not be enough to have during a frenzy.

Other than that, because the file could also list online services, aggregator should be able to use the information to fill in the list of accounts.

Next time, maybe I’ll try and check for CSS3 :D

With tabs, the file I wrote yesterday is 9,693 bytes, excluding the Knows. Had lot of personal information, but I still think more can be included.

What size is small enough to not shy out? I mean for notebook computer. I often bring along my 12” notebook in messenger bag to build up skeletal problem for my later age, but to take it out doesn’t prove to be as easy. 12” is already quite small, borderline to the current netbook class at 10” max. It’s still big and I could only took it out in more quiet place and of course, settled down. Doesn’t feel comfortable to be the only person who use it in the room.

I needed smaller device, that I can casually pull out everywhere, even while standing. From all the form factor available today, I guess the Vaio P is the great form factor. Seven inches screen and not much space wasted for the bezel. That size, I think I can pull it out everywhere and still won’t really attract attention. It also has the instant on feature. The problem is on the price of course.

Other than not standing out in the crowd, what do I need anyway? A wider keyboard, internet browser and office document editing. So, why don’t I just use the like of Celio Redfly? Two reasons. First, the device doesn’t seems to be available in Indonesia. Second… it lacks one very critical MS Word feature I need, styling and document structure (Heading, Body text, etc).

Browsing to other UMPC sites, Kohjinsha seems interesting. The price through parallel import is around… Rp.4.5M.
The dimension compared:

• Vaio P : 245 × 120 × 19.8.
• Kohjinsha SH : 227 × 170 × 33 (Δ -18 × 50 × 13)

Too bad that it doesn’t have any stripped down instant-on interface when there’s not enough time to load into Windows. By the way, my Q3 and Q4 looks bad.

PS: watched Office 2010 the movie just now. Laughed out loud when seeing the cast names announced, Clippy’s grave, and the best line in for me is this though:

Where’s the font?
Between Arial… and Wingdings.
Wingdings!? Hah!

Well, that and the Winner of Redmond Local Movie Award. or “another IT Guy”.

Recently, I installed Download Accelerator again to my computer. The need is simple, the need to do batch download a picture gallery that would take long time to click one by one from browser (better go to sleep).

But these days, file download are usually protected behind anti-leech scripts, or file sharing sites. Broadband connection also made download faster, so no need to resume download. Bit Torrent download is… well, that.

Being so used to sites using file sharing sites to host their scan releases, I almost forget until yesterday, when a group released scan for the comic I’ve been looking for a while. I recently got informed that a friend had got the hardcopy version, so when I don’t really need the scan anymore, it pops out of nowhere.

But this time, the connection got reset and cut off midway, to my annoyance. That’s when I remembered… download manager! This site is unusual that it doesn’t use Megaupload, Rapidshare, or the such (particularly hate Uploaded.to, it kept disconnecting after several hundred kb for me).

Imagine, if the search from address book feature doesn’t just work one way.

For example, if I search for my Windows Live contact in Twitter, the expected behaviour is that Twitter will search in my address book and then give list of users that match the e-mail address so I can follow them.

How about the other way around too. So while on the search, Twitter will suggest if my already existing Twitter contacts have Windows Live profile too. Win-Win for both side of the deal.

Of course, this is easier said than done. Making both side read each others in the same session. Outside technical difficulties, there’s also the non-technical decisions too (most likely). Imagine… doing such search for Windows Live-Facebook-Google. Sometimes, two FriendFeed to follow is already more than enough.

Interesting tweet first thing in the morning for me.

RT @silverwind is amused that Indonesian celebs are starting to tweet too

Lets see how well it do for Twitter’s popularity. As far as I know from around me, the popular newest social networking tools used by peoples around me is Facebook. The sample is of course in a really confined population, peoples in my division, friends in online forum and most of the other friends I know. A friend even said something along the line “no micro blogging for me except for work”.

Exception would be the social butterfly and social application junkies (like me, who just want to try the application but in no meaning had lot of friends). Even then, looking at the URL embedded in Facebook status messages, the popular choice seems to be Plurk. The Indonesian I know mostly used that, although those who most likely had active engagement with international friends had Twitter. A comment I get about the phenomena is that… Plurk might be fancier, it has emoticons for example. And my own opinion, it has more in the web interface like graphical timeline, unlike the Spartan design of Twitter (but hey, I used several apps and almost never visit the website anyway).

Of course, it all came to the critical mass thing. Not really something new in social though. When everyone in the class are talking about football, including your friends, then the choice are not that much. Try to establish new topic, stay alone, or go with the flow. It took some big fishes to choose the stream though, like a hypothesis about how product placement leads to the popularity of Blackberry here even more than the iPhone (well, iPhone is ridiculously expensive here).

Now, maybe the pattern wont be like Ameba which is said that 75% of its traffic came from access to Talents (read: seems to be the term for idols, that are produced endlessly in Japan) blogs, but it would still be really interesting to see how more common peoples would join Twitter.

Found some old Sony product websites today, using Bing. Well, I guess it wouldn’t really matter which search engine used in this query though.

The first item is Sony VAIO U VGN-U8G. It’s an old model from back in 2004 when XP SP2 is still new (correct me if I’m wrong). One of the smallest netbook, back when they still call it UMPC. Extensive connectivity for that time, plus port replicator and foldable keyboard and connectable to external monitor, for that small size. But actually the reason why it has a place in my memory is simpler. The fin stylus design, loved it so much. First time I saw it, I want to try making it to an earring. But the whole unit is too expensive. (^^;)

Second item is Sony Clie. It’s a shame they back off from the PDA market back then. In my opinion, their design is far better than the PDAs nowadays, yes, even the iPhone for that matter. But then, I love clamshell design (which almost disappear as the touchscreen madness change everything to slate) and can tolerate chunkier designs such as the Clie N series, which is rather thin. Looks far more inspiring than newer models.
My first encounter with the twist screen transformable clamshell-slate (like most tablet PCs nowadays) is the Fujitsu 900-series phone from DoCoMo though.