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.

And any other countries in the matter of fact.

Is it weird for adults there if they can’t drive? Regardless of if they could afford a car or not.

Maybe because of the corrupt system of getting driving license here, I sometime feel I’m getting weird look when saying I can’t drive and prefer taking public transport, or if I say one of my main requirement if looking for my own home would be how long it would take to reach bus stop by foot.

Windows Live Profile, is your online profile, showing your activities across the web. So please…

• Give more web activities. Maybe even, give a gallery for it, even if it needs approval process (well, human resource limitation).

Windows Live Home, is the aggregation of activities from your network where you can see what’s new from peoples you care about. So please…

• Our network, not our Windows Live network. Why not let us pull updates from friends not in the network, and give added value for those who’s also in Windows Live.
• Let us comment on updates (idea from Greg). For platform that support it, let us post comment for Facebook item also to Facebook without leaving Windows Live. Also allow the comment to be CCed to Twitter.
• Give one click sharing option for the items into Live Favourites.
• In short, change the WNF into a web application to aggregate updates from larger number of sites instead of just from Windows Live users. Rather than compete with Facebook, make it compete with something across FriendFeed and TweetDeck for example. It might even help Windows Live user stays longer in the site rather than going to competitor’s, after all, they can access the most important functions right here.

Since this is a long time wish anyway, I think I’ve written something similar in this Space several times already.

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.

If just my stomach is not in a bad condition back then, I’ll still be watching movie in the theatre right now.

But this is not about the movie, but the trip. I’m going to Melawai area, a place in Jakarta that seems to have enough Japanese population to sustain specialty shop and justify in-store signs written mainly in Japanese. Had several nice shots too, although I missed one at the bus terminal because I have to catch the bus.

Somewhere in the middle of the route to the shopping mall (going to the cinema), a loud noise can be heard in the bus. According to the bus crew, one of the back wheel is busted, and the metal is making noise. Luckily, each side of the back wheel consist of two, so it can still go, somehow. And with each spin, there’s sound of the metal brushing together making noise vaguely alike with harmonica, only shorter vibration and in my opinion, better than a harmonica. If not thinking that it could cause an accident, the music is actually nice to listen to.

Too bad, I’m urgently needing to go to the toilet and it’s dark, so I didn’t manage to take a picture of the wheel (probably the inner wheel of the pair, difficult to see from outside.

For us the common folks (come on, journalists are above common people, just see what happened if they died in incident or got held as hostages, all news make a bigger fuss of it), Windows 7 will have grand launching too. It’s stated on 6–8 of November 2009 in Pondok Indah (the other side of the capital for me). The fun event (read: with significant persons) would most likely be on 6th, the first day and also Friday, so the place wont be clogged with the other mall visitors.

Maybe if I’ve done most of my jobs, I’ll take a day off to come to the event.

The other launch in Indonesia would be on:

• Mall Kelapa Gading: 13–15 November 2009.
• Mall Taman Anggrek: 20–22 November 2009.
• Senayan City: 27–29 November 2009.

All’s held in mid-to-high market shopping centre, so it’s easy to assume this would just be like any other company’s event in Indonesia that’s not invite only (press event): it’s sales, not marketing. Start selling and start making money :D

I’ll still most likely go there anyway. The date is the same as Indocomtech, but that event has been disappointing these late years. They participants only focus on the better selling notebook, unlike how they used to have big booths that sell motherboards and graphic cards for example. Stage for companies like MSI, Asus, Acer, all’s filled with notebook only, no variation at all. I guess, that’s how they do things now, just focus on the strong and proven product that will most likely bring money and not making any efforts to help the weaker products.

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.

In time with the annual report to the stockholders, the office has been quiet. Less pressure from above for sure, at least until today (and the weekend).

Thanks to the reporting, there’s some trouble to us the grunt force of the company, but more or less the finish line for this FY seems to be crossed already and only results are waiting. There’s still several calls to ask the status of key products that hold a lot of their stakes though. (^-^;)

From the division right across the alley, music and games. Maybe there’s not much jobs, but seems like someone is really off his leash.

Right, going out first. Had to renew my bank account book.

Second part of the rant.

There’s an egoistical cell-phone users behaviour around me that I saw a lot. Usually it’s not from tech or modern social butterflies that uses communications for their activities daily. In my case, it’s circle of housewives and age group that are used to old communication (landline) or using mobile phone only to manage their business. This egoistical attitude is “want to call but don’t want to be called”. They had phone, but only to call others such as sending command to their shop staffs for example or asking why the other friends are so late.

Calling back is another thing though. They could keep their phone in silent in bag and don’t pay attention at all. This means, don’t expect the call will be answered, they don’t know and don’t care.

In my opinion, it’s a totally egoistical attitude. Why have a phone at all?

A small lesson from today (not my experience), although sounding very obvious.

When you share e-mail address in public in expectation of having e-mail correspondence with your readers, and strictly e-mail correspondence, then avoid using Live, Yahoo, GMail address and such that also have instant messaging support.

Work correspondence using work e-mail address. While personal mail with IM is, god forbid, not to be considered in my opinion, except when you’re ready to had risk of getting more peoples bugging you after reading articles you wrote. It’s these unsolicited messages, without ethics and just keep bugging peoples, that starts to feel like annoyance.

The last option is of course, like handling stalkers, move away. Create a new account and ditch the old one as spam-bait account. Like changing phone carrier in countries not so fortunate to have number portability, involves the hassle of informing everyone important about you moving.

But if you’re not ready for that, there’s white listing solution. First, to Messenger’s menu, then Tools –> Option
On the option menu, select Privacy.

First, select the “Only peoples in my Allow List can see my status and send me messages”. This should automatically move “All others” into the block list so they can’t chat with you until you add them.

The sky is clear… so when someone calls out flood, it sounds like a joke.

Well, it’s real. Water flowing down from the elevator shaft (yes, that elevator shaft). Report so far mentioned it’s from the 4th floor, no idea on the detail, but from the smell, that’s not fresh water.

Checking up to the 4th floor, the AHU (air conditioning?) unit failed, one of the valve is broken and the cooling water flows out. So probably that’s the cooling agent’s smell from the water.

By the afternoon break, there’s also a new trend… mimicking alarm voice, somewhere from the production design division.

Yesterday, it rained hard. Maybe too quick to make an assumption, but rain season is finally coming, a bit early. Last year it starts around November if my memories is right. But there’s also chance this is just sporadic events during the season’s transition.

Cool and strong wind is the best part. Trapped in bus stop is the worse part. But mix and match the timing, we can get the best of it, right?

By the way, I’ve just realized that the  trees in our residential area starts to flowers too. Not sure what kind of tree it is, but seems like it’s one of the common species used by our city administration to plant in green area around the city. Seems like they waited for rain to begin, and I’ve lived here for probably more than 10 years, this is the first time I thought about it.

Hail the power of obliviousness.

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

Uploading a file to try the Office Web Apps technical preview. Since Word is not available yet, I tried the second most used Office apps, Excel.

I tried making a list of the Web activities feed partners recently added (and those not yet active).

The focus is blogging here. Does web activities bring more social networking and the instant sharing that harms blogging activities? For Live Space, maybe yes.

But admitedly, Live Space need to refactor and clean up the display codes to show things up faster. Like my old argument that my friends only check my Live Space from RSS reader and doesn’t comment because it’s too heavy to open (not yet including the numerous verification redirects), and needed logging in to Windows Live ID to comment (again, Yahoo Messenger is the dominant IM in my social circle).
The layout argument is there too, why limit the expression by only adding gadgets but doesn’t have control on the shape (layout). But let that alone since there’s other blogging sites with such layout limitation too.

back to topic. How much feed partners have blogging activities included? In the official category list, it’s 8 partners or 10.81%, not as much as the 39.19% social networking partners. But look more closely, other partners also had blogging in their activities. Fotolog and MetroFlog for example, are photoblogging site, post picture and tell story behind it. Tabelog, other than reviewing restaurants, had spot for diary (gastronomic diary, I suppose). Social networking sites like Friendster or Facebook also had place to write down thoughts. I hasn’t even checked video sites that could be used for video blogging.

In that incomplete check, feed partners that can be used for blogging goes to more than 20%, not bad actually.

It’s one of the title where I had the special feeling when first reading it. Say… something like love at first sight. When I first got the shipment of Comic Alive magazine from Media Factory to the office, this is the title that caught my eyes (other than titles I already knew), 断裁分離のクライムエッジ by 緋鍵龍彦. By the way, fair warning that the author used to be 18+ oriented comic artist so some of the links are not work safe.

Even so, this title is almost safe for work, most of the times. As per Comic Alive magazine 2009-10, the story has just reached part 5 and no information of single volume version yet. The raw scan is also available somewhere, but apparently nobody translate it more than chapter 1.

Haimura Kiri is a boy with a problem. He had a liking to cut hairs, which turns into obsession. One day, he went to a mansion in the middle of the forest, rumoured to be haunted by ghost of a girl with long and beautiful hair. Half of it is true, because there’s no ghost, just a girl. Kiri fell in love instantly with her hair and want to cut it.
Mushanokouji Iwai is the girl. She stayed in the mansion after her parents deceased. She’s cursed with the “uncutable hair” so she had never ever cut her hair, not even once, because nothing can. This curse is also the reason she quit school as the other students bullied her.

But there’s more behind both of them. Iwai’s ancestor is known as the “hair queen”, passing down that curse to her descendant. Kiri’s obsession is not simply some mental problem, he also had his share of family curse. His ancestor is a legendary serial killer known to have more than 200 victims he cut to pieces using pair of scissors with rough edges.

According to Iwai’s story, great serial killers left curse on their tools, the killing goods. Those tools can’t be destroyed, only passed down to the next generation. Each time, it became stronger, more destructive, more lethal, but worst of all, it brings the ecstasy of killing to their owners, making them turning into serial killers themselves. Kiri does had a hair shear he inherited, something he forgot to try on Iwai’s hair. Combined, maybe they can work out on something.

They’re not free from their curse, but they find a way to fill each others, and ward of the rest of the killers participating in the game (whoever killed the hair queen will get their wish granted).

I think, the first reason that made me interested is, I naturally loves mouthful terms like the title, and the promise of more such name coming up. Then, the relationship between both characters of course. No violent action, both know they liked each others and tried to show it in innocent and clumsy emotions. Anyway, like my opinion about many series, first episode ends beautifully, let’s hope it doesn’t get too long and too complicated.