Author Archive

Grameen Technology Center Application Laboratory
Position: Program Manager
Location: Indonesia (based in Jakarta)
Job Type: 12 month contract (renewable with adequate performance and funding)
Starting Date: Immediate
Contact: sdewitt@grameenfoundation.org

continue

The event was held in a very cozy restaurant/bar in Kuningan area – the Aphrodite. Andy opened the session and Aulia the Managing Editor of MacWorld Indonesia welcomed the audience to the event.

Mark Hanusz opened up his presentation by reminding us that the “iPhone OS” actually powers two platforms: the iPhone/iPhone 3G and the iPod Touch. The iPod Touch, having a worldwide distribution, enables a worldwide availability of iPhone OS platform. It is estimated that 12 million iPhone OS devices are already sold.

On a quick poll basis: one lucky guy (Ed. two, including Mark) confessed/showed that he owns an iPhone 3G and few guys have downloaded Apple SDK and all of them got a nice souvenir from Mark.

Mark also highlighted the availability of iTunes App Store for Indonesian citizen (Ed. I just got my account recently, only a valid credit card and an email address are required to apply…). But also challenged the audience…. application with Indonesian content/context = ZERO.

iTunes App Store is widely popular, one newspaper recently published that in just 1 month after its launch: 60 million applications were downloaded, which equals to approximately $30 million of revenue generated.

Mark is encouraging all Indonesian developers to start the development of iPhone OS applications. He shared the story of his company, Equinox Apps – the first  iPhone OS registered developer in Indonesia, and their first educational application: KidsCards. He also welcomes all developers who are interested to work with Equinox Apps.

Ari Soetjitro then complementing Mark’s presentation by  showing a demo about iPhone OS SDK suite. The SDK includes all the necessary tools to start developing for iPhone OS: Xcode IDE, iPhone Simulator, Instruments, and Interface Builder. SDK can be freely downloaded on Apple’s developer website. Ari also hinted an Apple Developer Camp event coming to Indonesia in November…

All presentations are online, download links are listed here: August MobileMonday presentations

Special thanks for Equinox Apps and iBox for sponsoring this event.

Oh, one more thing, the slick slides were produced using KeyNote and the presentation were controlled remotely using an iPhone 3G… cool…

Selamat menunaikan ibadah puasa!
See you in October!

Join us in the new venue! An award winning bar, Aphrodite in Klub Rasuna, Jl. HR Rasuna Said Kav C-22 (just behind Pasar Festival)

• New place, much larger
• 12 large screen & TVs for your viewing enjoyment
• Better food? Try and taste yourself
• Venue info and map @ www.aphroditebar.com (location map http://aphroditebar.com/about/a_location.php )

We will hear presentation and see demos about the hottest topic: iPhoneOS!

This will be the last MoMo before Hari Raya. We are taking one month off during Ramadhan, make sure you do not miss this one.

If you haven’t sign up for this event, please kindly register on our website: http://www.id-mobilemonday.com/content/view/44/92/

As a bonus for attending the event, you can enjoy special treats from Apple:

• Win the free merchandise!
• Special discount only for MoMo audience for new Mac computers (condition applies)

Everybody agrees that iPhone is one of the most interesting phenomenal and innovative product launched in the mobile space recently. The key behind it is a very interesting operating system: the iPhone OS.

iPhone OS is the operating system developed by Apple for the iPhone and iPod touch. The iPhone OS’s user interface is based on the concept of direct manipulation, using multi-touch gestures. Interface control elements consist of sliders, switches, and buttons. The response to user input is supposed to be immediate to provide a fluid interface.  Interaction with the OS includes gestures such as swiping, tapping, pinching, and reverse pinching. Additionally, using internal accelerometers, rotating the device on its y-axis alters the screen orientation in some applications.

The iPhone OS Software Development Kit (SDK) was released on 6 March 2008, and has been downloaded over 250,000 times – making it the hottest mobile software platform on the market. Over 1500 applications have been made with the SDK and all are distributed through the iTunes App Store. Over 60 million applications have been downloaded since it opened on 10 July 2008, generating revenues in excess of USD30 million.

Last month, Apple opened up the App Store for residents of Indonesia to purchase apps for use on iPhone OS devices. All that is required to download apps locally and legally is an Indonesian credit card and a valid email address.

MobileMonday invites you to the first ever iPhone OS event for the Indonesian mobile community!

Do you want to develop applications for iPhone OS? More importantly, do you want to monetize it, not only in Indonesia but globally? Learn from the best how to tap into this exciting opportunity!

Join us to hear presentations by Mark Hanusz, the founder of Indonesia’s first and only registered iPhone OS developer, Equinox Apps. Mark will demonstrate the iTunes App Store and it’s implications for worldwide sale and distribution of Indonesia-developed apps. Also speaking is Ari Budiharto Soetjitro, Indonesia’s only Apple-Certified Trainer, on development resources and registration for the iPhone OS developer program.

Event details:

• Date: Monday, 25 August 2008
• Time: 18.00 – 20.30 WIB
• Place: t.b.a. (Kuningan/Sudirman area)

Please register on our website to attend the event: registration page. Remember, space is rather limited, so first come first served.
See you there!

Join now…
http://www.new.facebook.com/group.php?gid=28711995482
Note: you need to be in the Indonesian network to join.

OK guys, a quick recap on yesterday’s event. (It’s already late, and tomorrow’s a holiday).

First of all, thanks for BuzzCity who specially sponsored for this event, along with Nokia Siemens Networks and Nokia Mobile Phones.

Secondly, we gave out FREE books for all who’s attending, courtesy of Equinox Publishing. The book is titled Loose Wire: a personal guide to making technology work for you (website here) authored by a good friend of MoMo Jeremy Wagstaff. So, those who are not attending… didn’t you regret for not coming? :-p

Anyway, we still have a plenty of stock available, so watch this space if you’re interested in getting one…

Next, comes the recap.

Denny Yohanes from Nokia Siemens Networks opened the session with highlights from recent market survey that NSN commissioned about (mobile) broadband usage in Indonesia. He explained what is the perception, expectation, recent for adoption, and usage pattern of broadband end users. Clearly, mobile broadband is an interesting market opportunity, because a lot of potential users will readily jump the bandwagon if the broadband service is correctly packaged.

If I have to summarize, I would take two points: 1) adoption of broadband is fueled by the recommenders, delight them and you will get the mass market. Then 2) Denny offered excellent insights for service providers to do that: excite the users through creating a stable & reliable connection, differentiate your broadband offer through easy package and interesting content to feed snack-like consumption, and finally expand the market to the mass by simplify the experience and campaign for productivity.

Jeff from Friendster went on to explain the features of Friendster. The most popular social networking site in Indonesia. If we’re at 20 million Internet subs (APJII data/estimate 2007/2008), then half of them are in Friendster (11 million users, 8.2 unique users). He explained further certain features that are availble for the mobile version to cater the market needs and openness of the platform.

In my opinion, the stickiness of (mobile) social networking in interesting and its popularity in Indonesia . People generally spend up to twice the time in social networks website compared to other website (even YouTube).

BTW, do you know that Indonesian artists do have Fan Profiles in Friendster, and they are using it to maintain the fan-dom? Have you add Sandra Dewi to your account, join the other 100k fans!?

Hisham from BuzzCity then reiterated the importance of mobile community in Indonesia. BuzzCity is running an award-winning mygamma.com mobile social networking site and combined with advertising network (a winning combo!). According to their statistics, most of their users are male, young (70% are 20-30 y.o.) and college educated (an interesting profile for ad target, BuzzCity Indonesian ad growth is already at 85% for Q2/2008).

Further more, Indonesian mobile soc-netters enjoy sharing movies, videos/TV, music, and fashion. And an opportunity lies in their readiness to make e-commerce transaction, even through their mobile, especially purchase of digital goods (e.g. virtual gifts, music, e-books). Interesting… For further details, I encourage you to visit their website and look for their “Digital Lifestyle Report”

Ah, and finally Ryan from Indonesian Opera Community told his Internet usage story. Ryan is particularly pleased with the recent advancement of mobile browser (Opera Mini, to be exact), which allows users to enjoy the “full web” experience on their mobile phones. Besides web browsing, email and chatting (he mentioned a lot of apps to do this) are two important applications to be experienced on mobile phones…. talking about getting 24/7/365 connectivity.

I knew that Ryan often complained about his Internet connection quality – which is a challenge in Indonesia. And beyond that, web publishers, he mentioned, should provide users the option to switch freely from mobile web v.s. full web, thus maximizing the capability of recent breed of mobile web browsers.

We closed the session with an entertaining music from ESound (check out their website here), don’t forget to listen to their original tracks: Khayal. (I noticed that there is a person from a record label, will ESound land a record deal soon…?)

That’s all, folks.

Oh, one more thing, slides can be downloaded from our Download Section.

From the blogosphere, our friends at MOPocket wrote about an online survey re. mobile social networking. Indonesia, being one of the largest fan of MoSocNet, should definitely take part in a survey.

The results of this survey will be compiled during the month of July 2008. Findings report will be made available in August 2008 and will be blogged about on MOPocket. Your input and comments are invaluable to this study.

To help out and take the quick survey click here.

[via MOpocket]

The fun part of being in MobileMonday is… to attend parties as well… MobileMonday @ Opera Gathering last Saturday. Say hi to our new friends from Opera! Putri (the only Indonesian working at Opera Software) and Tatsuki Tomita (SVP, Consumer Products).

According to them, Opera aims to deliver a “One Web” experience, blurring the Internet experience between multiple screens (PC, TV, and Mobile). And up to now, Opera Mini has been downloaded 44 million time, and they got 15 million unique customers in May 2008. Have you tried the Opera Mini or Opera Browser?

PS. Salute to the young Ryan as well, who’s one of the My Opera Community Indonesia caretaker.

Plazes, the location based social networking services has been acquired by Nokia for an undisclosed amount.

For those who aren’t familiar, Plazes is a web service for geo-social navigation. Members of the community can publish and share  their current location with others creating a collection of their favourite and day-to-day locations in a geo-database. Members of the Plazes community can actively locate one another, connecting their digital and real-world identities. By providing location context the service makes it easy for its users to coordinate with friends, family and business contacts wherever they are.

This add on to Nokia’s arsenal on location based services, following up their acquisition of Navteq last year and earlier purchase of Gate5 in 2006, which resulted the Nokia Map 2.0 which we are using now. Imagine if later Nokia can integrate the location sensitive communities and mobile based advertisement togerther. It will be a sure killer service! Nokia should have all the formula as they also the owner of enpocket mobile advertisement platform. Let’s wait and see…

Plazes is a German based company, which is also the winner of MobileMonday Global Peer Awards in 2007! Hmm…

Another shocking interesting fact from Google. Andrew McGlinchey shared with us that search done from mobile in Indonesia is growing tremendously since September 2007. And for the last 6 months, basically the number has doubled already.

The why is still a mystery, but also this is an encouraging trend that mobile Internet is potentially a big market here in our country. Interestingly, the same trend is confirmed by other global and regional (mobile) Internet players, like Opera Mini, AdMob, Buzzcity, etc.

One more thing.

Could you help Google to validate their findings (search log) by doing this search on your mobile phone?

Please enter a search in the format of
“Momo1234 operator plan phonetype”

Example:
“Momo1234 Telkomsel Prepaid 3G Nokia N95″
“Momo1234 Indosat Matrix Huawei Modem”