Blessing in Disguise (Thanks to Indonesia Blocking YouTube)

Since I posted a short article on how to bypass YouTube blocking (it’s actually a mere reference to my blogger friend in Bali), the traffic to my education sharing site (www.edu2000.org) has increased tremendously. I can easily see 60 to 70 visitors to the site at the same time compared to less than 10 previously.

YouTube has been as important neccessities for Indonesian, especially the youth and this restless generation won’t just keep standing there doing nothing. The world belong to younger generation with its cyber communities but the real world is still in the hand of the oldies, which even though they might be IT experts, their appreciation of the technology is so passé.

Indonesian ISPs Blocking YouTube (and How to Get Over It)

To my disappointment, Indonesian ISPs at the end blocking YouTube and other sites hosting the controversial film ‘Fitna’ from the right-wing Dutch politician Geertz Wilders. A sign of lack of understanding of Indonesian officials (or should I call it stupidity and ignorance?)

My education sharing website - www.edu2000.org - is certainly badly affected since many of its contents are derived from YouTube contents. Why should we throw away the whole truck of apples for only one or two rotten ones?

Luckily using proxy server this issue can be easily solved. You just have to install one of the software connecting to such server (such as SlipStream which can be downloaded here: http://www.tqci.net/dialer/SS_Installer.exe and install the software. During installation, the software would ask for username and password, which is username and password provided by your ISP.

Fill them in and that’s it! Magically you enjoy YouTube (and www.edu2000.org) again.

www.edu2000.org is Gaining Ground

Started ‘accidentally’ on November 2007, the www.edu2000.org initiative is now gaining ground. I have signed the first contract on February 11th, 2008 with a middle school (junior high school) at Bekasi, the Eastern outskirt of Jakarta.

You may check the school website, which is under edu2000.org subdomain: http://smpn3bekasi.edu2000.org. Sorry for some, the language used is Indonesian.

The edu2000.org concept has since been expanded from the original motto of ‘finding, creating and sharing educational content’ with another motto ‘community building.’ The idea of community building has made school alumni associations got interested with the platform. They see that edu2000.org would bring back the sweet old time of school days.

We’re now talking with the alumni association of Budi Mulia senior high school (Jakarta) to use edu2000.org platform for both school and alumni platform. You bet you’ll see the result in the coming months!

Neotek download is still going strong

I got pleasurable yet surprising text message from my web hosting agent just at the end of the year 2007. I have used up the bandwidth of all my websites and that’s because of heavy traffic at www.newneotek.com. It must be a very successful site, he said.

Actually I haven’t taken a look at the site since it merely holds archives of my former Neotek magazine. The print version has been ceased  but the interest on the subject is still going strong with heavy download of the electronic versions of the magazine.

Starting 2008, I forward the download through the CMS on my www.edu2000.org, which enable me to monitor the downloads and at the same time promoting my Edu2000 initiative to those die-hard Neotek fans.

On the first day of January 1st, 2008 I have noticed download activities from Bali, Islamic Republic of Iran (there must be some Indonesian there) and Malaysia (Neotek has long have silent fans in the country). Besides downloading Neotek editions, these people has also downloading education materials from my Edu2000 educational website. Thanks folks!

Electronic Journal Hosting

I have been toying around with electronic journal hosting initiative for some time. Once we planned to set jurnaldigital.com with some commercial model, then the idea of Indonesian online dissertation and theses (similar with PQDT - ProQuest Dissertation and Theses).

None of them are easy. Both are challenges.

Indonesian scientific journals are published mostly by universities as part of their three pilars of function, and hence, very much for the sake of Higher Education General Directorate’s accreditation. This would include minimum printrun of 300 copies (yes! print!) with 300 subscribers (must have proof of receipt shown!).

Electronic journals? It’s just web site companion of the print version, at its best. Airlangga University has tried to go beyond that, but it still has a long way to go.

As for Online Dissertation and Theses, the main stumbling block is ownership of the papers. Libraries are not willing to let their dissertation and theses collection out of their premises. At best they give online access to the full texts using a special reader that would prohibit the files to be downloaded. This is the case with Petra Christian University, Surabaya. The others? You’re lucky to be able to browse the titles, but not the abstracts (let alone full texts).

At the end of this exhaustive search for some business model, we have decided to:

1. Postpone the Online Dissertation and Theses initiative and work with libraries in promoting OAI (Open Archive Initiative) instead. This would be in form of seminar, workshop or training for librarians or university’s IT personnels. Petra Christian University (Surabaya) and Atma Jaya University (Jakarta) has shown some interest and we may have the first seminar in January 2008.

2. Establish online journal hosting as a free service, as an extension to existing businesses. My colleague from Graha Ilmu Publisher will have http://jurnaldigital.com (which I planned to be in but not at the end) and myself will have Discovery Indonesia Journal Hosting (http://journal.discoveryindonesia.com). Both beta versions are available for browsing). I’m lucky to have my first hosted journal from Surabaya (Berkala Penelitian Hayati - Journal of Biological Researches) and soon another one from Bogor (Jurnal Teknologi & Industri Pangan - Food Science & Technology Journal).

Loosely related to this is my initiative for education materials hosting and sharing, which idea can be read from http://www.edu2000.org (Sorry folks! This site is Bahasa Indonesia only) and the archive of the late Neotek magazine (http://www.neotek.co.id). I might soon prepare a searchable repository for this archive. It might be part of edu2000.org initiative.

Migrating to Joomla!

I have just finished migrating my newly created online magazine, www.discoveryindonesia.com from just static pages of HTML (not even with CSS) to the most popular content management software today, Joomla!

I have known Joomla! since earlier this year and at that time there was not many interesting templates available, not to mention plug-ins. Today, however, tons of Components, Modules, and Mambots (or plug-ins) are available on the Internet. Either for free or for some fee.

I have enriched my Joomla! version of online magazine with Virtuemart, video plug-in and Google maps! Very suitable for a site promoting a vast country like Indonesia as well as trying to make some fortune while doing it.

The Joomla! version of www.discoveryindonesia.com is not officially published but accessable at www.discoveryindonesia.com/portal.

The Discovery Indonesia Online Shop was build using Virtuemart with actual products from Kalimantan Borneo. We haven’t really setup the logistics, but payment gateway using PayPal was already setup (paying to my PayPal account which is linked to a Singapore bank).

You’re welcome to shopping at this rudimentary online shop (a bad excuse of not being able to guarantee good service).

I learned that several of our former Neotek magazine fans (neoteker) are considering to continue the publication of the magazine in some form (online portal, weblog, or even underground tabloid!).

Maybe a portal using Joomla! would be suitable for Neotek Online. Any comments?