The New Yahoo Mail

Posted on August 29, 2007
Filed Under Internet, Daily Notes, Software | Leave a Comment

Last Monday the news of Yahoo cut off its “Beta” tag on its Mail features were coming in. Herewith Yahoo finally released their crash-test dynamic web apps that were introduced back in September 2006.

I haven’t been using my Yahoo Mail account for ages now. Ever since Gmail came to town, the ever-so-static Yahoo Mail weren’t appealing no more. Yesterday I give it a go once again. Okay, much have change in its new interface, kudos to Yahoo for that. It seems the dynamic of AJAX has enclosed the entire page to make Yahoo Mail looks shiny and much more interactive.

Yahoo Mail interface

The first thing that comes up was the “Outlook-Style” panel in the Mail interface. The interface was consisting of three parts the left part, the reading pane in the middle, and the not-so-important banner ads pane in the right side. This is the thing that irritates me so much. That huge banner ad spends ¼ parts of the pages that’s located at the right side. I mean this is too much, you can’t expect a lightweight AJAX web-based e-mail when you had that big banner. Why can’t they put a couple of related ads there like what Gmail did?

One of the much talk about features on this version of Yahoo Mail was the text-messaging service. So basically now you can send a text-message to your friend’s cell phone right from Mail. Unfortunately I can’t try this nifty features since it’s only applied on certain countries such as U.S, India, Philippines and Canada. I’m not sure when it can be use globally.

The integrated RSS reader that they provided (can be accessed by clicking the “All RSS Feeds” link) weren’t good enough. You can choose feeds that you want to subscribe by browsing their Editor’s Pick and Recommendation. But I’m having difficulty to add an RSS feeds of my own since it’s seems that they only gave a search field for finding a certain sites. And they don’t provide categorization on their RSS Feeds either. So it wasn’t good enough feature.

The integrated instant messaging feature combined their famous Yahoo Messenger with Yahoo Mail. It’s a bold move, but I’m happy with this idea, since I’m rather sick with the stand-alone application of Yahoo Messenger and have turn to solutions like Pidgin or the web-based Meebo.

These IM features were rather concealed. You have to click the “Contacts” link; from there, it will show your contact list. To start chatting, you have to change your Status (located at the upper left of the page) to “Available”. Then you must click the yellow avatar on the contact that you want to chat with. This process is rather daunting for a newbie. The interface are similar than the real Yahoo Messenger but the feature are basic. Don’t expect many features of YM to show up there. So I think this integrated IM is handy when you want to chat to someone straight away from e-mail. But don’t use for day-to-day activities.

All in all, though all those nifty AJAX feature will certainly makes Yahoo Mail back in web-based mail business, the performance are still lack of that in Gmail. I personally still believe in Gmail and its interface is the right gun for me. No Yahoo, your “Unlimited Storage for e-mails” weren’t convincing enough to make me switch back yet. You got to give me something more special than that.

But worry not, Yahoo. You’re still the number one web-based e-mail service that is use in Indonesia. Right, people? :)

Community Building 101: Beyond “Kopi Darat”

Posted on August 26, 2007
Filed Under Community, in Indonesia, Daily Notes | 1 Comment

Kemarin Sabtu, saya dan rekan-rekan kantor pergi mengikuti acara nonton bareng dengan anak-anak komunitas CHIP Online. Kami turut serta sebagai perwakilan dari CHIP Team. Di jalan, salah satu teman saya bertanya, “Pat, jadi ini konsepnya gimana? Kita nonton bareng dan bayar sendiri-sendiri begitu? Terus apa uniknya?”

Dari situ saya mulai berpikir, apa benefitnya dari nonton bareng seperti ini? Ya seperti yang kita ketahui dalam suatu komunitas maya, acara berupa temu bareng atau yang biasa di Indonesia dinamakan dengan “kopi darat” merupakan suatu hal yang tidak dapat dihindarkan. Keinginan untuk bertemu muka dengan muka dengan teman-teman yang biasa hanya dilihat di dunia maya pasti ada dalam suatu komunitas. Karena kita dasarnya adalah makhluk sosial, rasa ingin saling mengenal lebih jauh terhadap teman-teman lain dalam satu komunitas tentu pasti timbul.

Dari komunitas CHIP Online sendiri, kopi darat sudah dilaksanakan semenjak CHIP Online baru berdiri setahun, kira-kira tahun 2005 kemarin. Meskipun awalnya inisiatif datang para anggota komunitas sendiri. Tapi di akhir tahun 2005, kami dari CHIP Team melihat peluang ini dan kami memutuskan untuk meresmikan pertemuan-pertemuan kopi darat ini menjadi acara yang dinamakan CHIP Online Gathering. Acara yang umumnya dilaksanakan tiga kali dalam setahun ini mempunyai tujuan mempererat jalinan komunikasi antaranggota komunitas.
Tapi CHIP Online Gathering, tidak lebih dari satu kopi darat. Yang pada umumnya hanya berisi interaksi dan diskusi antar anggota komunitas. Meskipun pada setiap pertemuan kami terus berusaha mengembangkan format seperti ini.

Untuk itulah dari tahun 2006 kemarin, suatu inisiatif baru kembali dimulai dari para member sendiri untuk mengadakan acara aktivitas lain dari komunitas yang diisi dengan suatu aktivitas tertentu. Mulailah timbul acara-acara seperti Buka Puasa Bareng, CHIP Unofficial Weekend Getaway (CUWG), dan yang paling terkenal: CHIP Lan Party (CLP).

Acara-acara ini memiliki satu kesamaan, yaitu acara pertemuan antar anggota yang tidak hanya berisi acara diskusi tapi juga diisi dengan acara aktivitas yang dilakukan secara bersama-sama. Aktivitas ini bisa berupa: Ke luar kota bareng (CUWG), main game bareng (CHIP Lan Party), ataupun buka puasa bareng.

Lalu seperti yang ditanyakan teman saya di atas, apa benefit dari semua ini? Kalau dari segi finansial, hampir dari semua aktivitas ini dilakukan dengan biaya bersama yang dikumpulkan secara kolektif. Biasanya hal ini dilakukan selama lebih dari satu hari dan tentu saja setap anggota komunitas harus mempersiapkan waktu khusus dari rutinitasnya. Lalu apa?

Berkumpul dan melakukan aktivitas secara bersama-sama antar anggota para member dapat mempererat hubungan antaranggota. Perasaan senasib seperjuangan dapat mengikat tali solidaritas antaranggota.

Inilah yang menurut saya yang menjadi dasar dari acara aktivitas bersama di dalam suatu komunitas. Dengan adanya urunan bersama untuk membiayai acara ini, terdapat rasa gotong royong dan kesatuan di antara para anggota.

Untuk acara nonton bareng kemarin misalnya, benefit yang bisa di ambil berupa kebersamaan dalam menikmati hiburan dari suatu film yang baru keluar (kebetulan kemarin kita menonton “Rush Hour 3” yang menurut saya sangat lucu).

Tentunya ke depan, kami dari CHIP akan mengakomodasi aktivitas seperti ini sehingga para anggota dapat mendapatkan benefit-benefit lain (potongan discount, souvenir menarik, dll) agar aktivitas seperti ini dapat lebih menarik lagi.

Jadi bagaimana dengan komunitas Anda sendiri? Apakah Anda sudah melakukan aktivitas lain beyond kopi darat?

Update: Tambahan Foto dari acara nonton bareng Sabtu kemarin

Safari on Windows: A Rather Brief Review

Posted on August 24, 2007
Filed Under Internet, Wordpress, Software | Leave a Comment

I’ve wanted to write about this for a long time now. Yes, I’ve missed the Safari going Windows hype. I’ve only try this Safari for Windows about two months now. Though the first month I literally neglected it, since it’s just crash randomly on my PC. Last week after they announced another update for the browser, which promises “better stability”, I decided to try it again (yet still in beta).

Okay I had a love at first sight moment to it’s font anti-aliasing feature. I only found this kind of rendering on Mac system. So looking at the beauty on PC is such a joy. But other than that, shame on you Safari.

They claimed that they are faster than on handling JavaScript, but other says different thing. The sudden random crashes were less, but still happen occasionally. Oh yeah, they don’t provide session restoring. So when your Safari crashes when you open five or so of your important webpage, don’t expect it to comeback when you start another instance.

Faster page loading? Yes, if you compare it to Opera. But with Firefox, I don’t see any difference. Back to JavaScript function, I find it very buggy on different websites. Some AJAX features on some website were not working at all, prove for that: JavaScript drop-down menus were off limit.

The proxy setting options is strangely disabled. So it follows the proxy from the Internet Option setting on Control Panel (which clearly set from the Internet Explorer setting)

Well you can read a full-blown review of Safari 3 here. For me the problems are irritating and I won’t use it for a day-to-day production browser yet. Now I use it for reading feeds and blogs since I love the anti-aliasing rendering. Other than that, though I expect a lot from this browser, it’s just not quite ready yet.

PS: Been trying to use Safari for my wordpress wysiwyg editor to write this post but stuck since it doesn’t provide any necessary (important!) text editing button. It just disappear magicly on Safari. Oh well, back to ScribeFire for now

The Anyer Experience

Posted on August 22, 2007
Filed Under in Indonesia | 2 Comments

Sudah lama saya tidak pergi liburan yang benar-benar menyenangkan(kalau offroad sepeda tidak dihitung ya). Jadi begini ceritanya, sebulan yang lalu Nenez salah satu teman baik saya di kantor mendapat giliran menempati villa kantor di kawasan Karang Bolong, Anyer. Tentunya hal ini tidak disia-siakan dong. Ia mengajak teman2 di kantor untuk bersama-sama pergi ke Anyer. Dari seluruh redaksi, hanya beberapa yang bisa ikut. Yah tidak apa-apa, toh kuota individu yang muat di villa tersebut hanya belasan orang. Akhirnya terdaftarlah 16 orang dari rekan-rekan kantor untuk pergi bersama.

Kami pergi pada saat long weekend 17 Agustus 2007 kemarin, kalau dilihat-lihat, nasionalisme kami kemana ya? Orang lain sibuk upacara bendera kami malah pergi keluar kota untuk liburan. Yah, begitulah, memang kadang-kadang nasionalisme tidak bisa diukur dari pergi upacara saja. Saya sendiri lebih merasa bangga dengan bangsa ini pada saat ada pertandingan olahraga internasional dimana kontingen Indonesia ikut serta di dalamnya. Wah kok jadi ngomongin nasionalisme sih?

Sampai disana bermain di karang-karang

Oke, sampai di tempat tujuan agak siang. Villa tempat kami menginap memang tepat di pinggir pantai, namun pantainya bukan berjenis pasir putih, tapi berkarang. Mungkin keliatannya kurang enak ya, tapi kalau diperhatikan baik, sebenarnya karang-karang tersebut menampung banyak pernak-pernik dan makhluk laut yang indah.

Foto Bersama di atas Karang
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iPhone! On The Palm of My Hand….

Posted on August 3, 2007
Filed Under Multimedia, iPod, Daily Notes | 2 Comments

I’m one of the view people in Jakarta who were lucky enough to get my hands on those cute little thing they called iPhone. That phenomenal over hyped gadget arrived at the office yesterday. A friend of my boss, an expatriate, graciously lends his newly bought iPhone, so it could be reviewed by CHIP.

The problem is, none of the reviewers in here are vacant, and they were kinda occupied with finishing their article, considering these are the deadline days. So, the boss ordered me to do a hands-on review for this gadget A.S.A.P since we had to give it back before 5 in the afternoon. Tough job, but somebody had to do it right? And there I am, examining that stuff quickly and find interesting features on it.

The results? We’ll you have to read it yourself on the next edition of CHIP magazine. :P

Meanwhile, here’s that cutie….