This Idul Fitri festive season might become a new milestone for Excelcom, Indonesia’s third largest cellular provider. Its outgoing call traffics increased almost 600 per cent or six-folds higher than the last year’s Idul Fitri.

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Indonesia’s giant network provider, Telkomsel, revealed that the volume of its short messages service (SMS) has increased drastically during this Idul Fitri festive season, reaching more than 400 million SMS traffic.

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Since Indonesia has been sharply criticized for being slow to act in its fight to control bird flu, we hope the Government should take a serious effort on this matter.

Officials say the boy, who had tested positive for the H5N1 strain of the virus, died Saturday in a hospital in Tangerang.

More than 200 people worldwide have died from bird flu since the outbreak began in 2003, mostly in Asian nations.

Source

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This is the first Indonesia’s CEO blog, and I hope other will follow Mr. Irfan’s footstep in Indonesia’s fast growing blogosphere.

On his five recent entries, Irfan wrote mostly about how people can get benefit from current trend in communication. Keywords such as productivity, mobile, and communication are used there. Using Bahasa Indonesia for expressing his idea, this blogging initiative will keep its audience in Indonesia closer.
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Mr. Setiaputra’s blog will hopefully open a new shortcut to interact, not only between audience and him, but also to Cisco as a company for a whole. [From Ikhlasul Amal’s posting]

Should CEOs blog? Yes, they should blog! Blog is one of communication means, and one of the main tasks of CEO is to communicate! The leader can use blog to communicate with his/her customers, stake-holders, employees, and even with his/her rivals!

Come on, Indonesia’s CEOs!

Indonesia has moves forward beyond blogosphere: the country already enters the new world, called web 2.0 services. Several user-generated content services already launched, and the country’s community responded to them enthusiastically.

Check-out my CNET Asia tech post on web 2.0

Despite the fact that the online gaming market in Indonesia is definitely at its early stage, recent developments indicate that it has started to leave its shell as an emerging gaming market.

IDC’s latest study has identified the following trends present in the Indonesian online gaming industry, specifically in the areas of online games and service providers (SPs), which are likely to affect gamer base expansion and growing market mindshare.

Check-out my CNET Asia tech post on Indonesian gaming industry

Nokia has teamed up with the three giant network and Internet providers, Telkom, IM2 and CBN. Nokia signed the joint agreement today with IM2 and CBN, after a similar agreement with Telkom two months ago.

Check-out my CNET Asia tech post on free hot-spot

Source: Thomas Arie’s posting

Source: Ikhlasul Amal’s posting.

As many as 864 people were displaced in Sukabumi and another 736 in Garut after their houses were flattened to the ground by waves of up to three and four meters high.

Areas hit by the waves include Sumatra’s Padang city, Pariaman city, Padangpariaman regency, Agam regency, South Pesisir regency and West Pasaman regency.

A report said, losses incurred from damage caused by the tidal waves have reached Rp 1.19 billion (US$132,200). At least 2,440 people were displaced due to the tidal waves and have been temporarily accommodated at neighbors’ houses, school buildings and in tents.

Source: The Jakarta Post

After Java — where Indonesia’s capital, Jakarta, located — was picked-up as the Sun’s platform technology, I just surprised to find that Sumatra, another big Island in the country, was also used as technology-related product: Sumatra PDF.

I just discovered it today when I walked across the blogosphere:

What is Sumatra PDF?

Sumatra PDF is a slim, free, open-source PDF viewer for Windows.

Why another PDF reader?

Sumatra has a minimalistic design. Simplicity has a higher priority than a lot of features.

According to Wikipedia, Sumatra (also spelled Sumatera) — where I was born more than 30 years ago — is the sixth largest island in the world (approximately 470,000 km²) and is the largest island entirely in Indonesia (two larger islands, Borneo and New Guinea, are partially in Indonesia).

So, how about the other country’s islands names? Such as Kalimantan (aka Borneo)? Sulawesi (aka Celebes)? Papua? Anybody else’s interesting to pick them up? Hurry up

Original post 

What’s wrong? Do we not have the talent or capability in this area? I don’t think so. Maybe our IT guys have already accomplished something, but haven’t received proper exposure.

Or maybe they created something big, but didn’t have enough strategy to promote and market it — so it remained silent, unknown and finally disappeared.

I often meet talented young programmers when I make a trip to cities across the country. And when I talked with them — amazing! — they had brilliant ideas! They had even created a prototype and it operated well, but it’s a pity they didn’t have the first clue how to capitalize on it.

I suggested that they talk with some investors or possible business partners. But here the problem is — one of them, at least — they don’t network well.

I tried to cross-check the information: I spoke with the potential investors they mentioned, and I got the impression that most of these investors weren’t interested in the software or application due to the weakness of its business model.

“They failed to convince us how to sell and make money from that,” said a guy in the telecommunications industry. “Most of them create their software or application by approaching its technology side and ignoring its business side. Of course, it would be absurd for us to step forward with them.”

Yes, to create a start-up company, especially in the IT sector, it’s not enough to count on technology geeks, but should incorporate professionals from other fields like business, management and law.

Fine. Start-ups should come up with solid team members instead of forming just a techie group, which has small bargaining power when they deal with the industry.

The full version of this piece was originally appeared in The Jakarta Post

“Thus, the Transportation Ministry should improve four basic elements of the railway system. They are infrastructure, rolling stock, human resources and the management system,” he said.

He said infrastructure, such as the signal system, the rail tracks and the supporting ground, needed continual monitoring.

“The rolling stock, or the vehicles that move on the railway, also need better supervision,” Bambang said.

The role of human resources, such as railway inspectors, has decreased over the years, he said. “Meanwhile, the management system, which studies the management of the whole railway system, also needs improvement.”

On Saturday the Serayu passenger train was derailed in the West Java town of Garut, injuring 70 people and temporarily closing the southern railway track from Jakarta to Kroya in Central Java.

State railway company PT KA claimed that heavy rain was responsible for the accident.

Link

He would have turned 35 this Thursday. Mamora was one of 32 people killed in the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history, carried out by South Korean student Cho Seung-Hui, who also killed himself.

His father chose Virginia Tech because he thought it was among the world’s best technical colleges and hoped to one day become a teacher. His father said he sold property and cars to help him reach his goal.

“Mora, my dear son, goodbye,” said his stepmother, Sugiyarti, weeping as his silver coffin was lowered into the ground. “May God accept you.”

Sugiyarti, a Lt. Col. in the Indonesian army, saluted as colleagues stood by in army uniforms, and an afternoon drizzle started to fall.

Before the burial, several dozen relatives and friends sang Christian songs after gathering for a private service at the family’s home in the capital, Jakarta.

Link

The award will only be presented to individuals or organizations whose products could be proven to be useful, original and uniquie.

The last date to submit product to be judged is June 25. The awards will be presented on August 10.

Source: The Jakarta Post

HCPT Indonesia will compete with existing local giants Telkomsel, Indosat and Excelcomindo as well as CDMA-based operators Telkom, Mobile-8, Bakrie Telecom and Sampoerna Telecom Indonesia.

Telkomsel leads Indonesia’s cellular communications industry with some 35 million subsribers, Indosat with 16 million and Excelcom with 9 million.

Welcome to the jungle, Hutchison!

Source: The Jakarta Post

The statistics indicates that bird flu has infected 81 people in Indonesia, killing 63, since the first human case was identified here in July 2005. Globally, there have been 165 fatalities from 271 human infections.

Bandung Institute of Technology’s Ph.D student, Ria L. Moedomo, has successfully created the application provides a system to assist in processing and analyzing the poultry sales and distribution process to track and combat against Avian Influenza.

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