The End of PT Neotek Maju Mandiri

I made an important decision yesterday, that is closing down PT Neotek Maju Mandiri, the publisher of Neotek magazine. To disappoinment of some, Neotek 07-01 will be the latest Neotek (print) magazine published.

However, I will still continue with the effort of DiscoveryIndonesia.com online magazine, which will be published without any connection (and hence confusion) with the older Neotek print magazine. Materials on preparation for Neotek 07-02 will then be published as Indonesian (and print) version of DiscoveryIndonesia.com by Graha Ilmu Publisher.

The most important person to contact about this is main partner in Bandung, who has no objection and he’s looking forward to work even closer with me in other fields. I have made appointment to visit him in Bandung next July while I will be having vacation with my whole family.

The other important person to contact is my finance manager who will arrange details of closing down of the company by first preparing final financial statement, list all liabilities to third party (in which I have promised my main partner in Bandung to be settled from my personal account), and contacting all the minority shareholders and stakeholders.

Anyway, I’m proud to be part of a short but buzzling hacking and security culture in Indonesia, especially on the years 2002 to 2003, by when Neotek is the ‘must read’ magazine by all the hacker wannabes.

To keep the memory alive, I will keep PDF files of old Neotek print magazine for free download on a special server based in Singapore. I haven’t decided whether to keep the domain name neotek.co.id. Anyway it’s not really a big issue since I have created newneotek.com domain name under my personal account.

It’s a sad but neccessary move. The new electronic era leaves only little space for print computer magazines. Neotek have to cease following the same fate of PCPlus or KomputerAktif and other.

Goodbye Neotek, you have been an important part of my life and also lifes of others involved.

e-Journal Platform for Indonesian Researchs

I met Information System Director of Airlangga University, dr. Dripa Sjabana, M.Kes, in Surabaya today. The purpose of the meeting is to understand their strategy on electronic platform known currently as Airlangga University e-Journal. I learned that the university is actually working to catalize the digitization of national-wide research results, whether from universities or societies and encompassing all subject fields.

Too ambitious? Not really. With the start of 22 journals within the university itself and preliminary commitment from 22 more Indonesian pretigious universities, the goal will be achieved in forseeable future. “We don’t talk commercial with these journals,” Dripa said. “We even encourage them to provide full text download for all the articles, even though the print versions are for sale; they must very clear what they want: commercial or exposure and commerial is certainly won’t be achievable with the current situation.”

“It will be like Stanford’s Highwire,” he explained further. “People know Highwire but not neccessary the Stanford University itself. It seems that Airlangga University would like to assume the role like Stanford University here in Indonesia.

The tangible result of this meeting is that Graha Ilmu, would like to introduce the electronic journal hosting to all universities in contact with the company. It would help Airlangga University obtain more content while at the same time improve Graha Ilmu service to the higher education world.

Blog as support and communication site

Today (in fact last night and early this morning) I have finished installing WordPress at several sites, they are all at the Singapore server. The effort to install the same at a Jakarta server failed, therefore just provide link from a website hosted at Jakarta server to the blog hosted at the Singapore server.

The Blogs installed are:

Discovery Indonesia Author’s Gateway (English)
http://www.discoveryindonesia.com/wordpress/

Giga-mmh.org Collaboration (English)
http://giga-mmh.org/wordpress/

New Neotek Blog (Indonesian)
http://www.newneotek.com/wordpress/

PT eSolusi Pirantikita Esa: software support site (Indonesian)
http://www.newneotek.com/blog/wordpress/

The last one is blog for my software company site. I failed to install WordPress at the Indonesian server, therefore I just install one at a Singapore server alongside with other blog (New Neotek). It works perfectly, but the domain name used is of my other site’s. Not very convenient, buy maybe it’s still OK for the sake of cross-selling (but hopefully not confusing).

Tracking fishes with RFID

This advertisement has been displayed for some time at the facade of the Specialists’ Shopping Center at Orchard Road,  but only today I had the opportunity to take a photo of it. It reminds me on how electronic technology has contributed a lot in surveys including tracking fish migration pattern with RFID.

With global warming and forseeable Asian fishing crisis, surveys and researchs on fish migration patterns will be more important than ever. My online magazine DiscoveryIndonesia.com in some extend discuss fish migration pattern (for tuna) while discussing fishermen’s profile at the Southern Coast of Java. You might be interested to read the article and contribute comments on it.

Please visit: http://discoveryindonesia.com/Fishermen%20at%20the%20Southern%20Coast%20of%20Java.html

About tuna population decline caused by overfishing: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6301187.stm

News from old establishment

Prior to taking the above photo I had ‘free’ lunch with my former Elsevier colleagues. I’m glad that they’re doing OK. I also learned that the company has hired a new MD for South East Asia but haven’t installed the person on service yet.

One former colleage made a blunt remark that I could had better chance under the new management if I had been staying, which is actually true. I said to her that I knew that I had to go prior the new MD installation to avoid outshining my then current boss. In fact I have pity on him, a man of no dignity and (without his knowing) not gaining respect from his subordinates.

Anyway, I have no regret of leaving since I have been tired of politicking and the opportunity cost outside the company is getting more and more expensive to ignore. It’s pretty clear that I should move forward and having this lunch with former close colleagues might not be a good idea afterall…

Accounting Principles Tutorial (Indonesian) - 2

Today we have uploaded Chapter 3 of the tutorial. It seems that my colleague can only submit one chapter every week, which means I foresee that the whole tutorial will be ready by early August 2007. Not too bad since by that time I will arrange DacEasy report writer training for him in Singapore.

Print and Electronic (Almost) Parallel Fairs

I went to PC Show at Suntec City today. The bazaar started on May 31st, 2007 up to June 3rd, 2007. This bazaar represented the ‘brave new electronic world.’ At the same time (May 25th to June 3rd) there was also World Book Fair 2007, representing the ‘old print world.’

While people were struggling only to pass the alleys at the PC Show (150,000 guests on the first day and should be more on the day of my visit), it’s not the case at the World Book Fair. Opened by a Singapore minister, 250 companies mostly from Singapore and China exhibited their proudly published books among themselves! There were not many people visiting the book fair.

Sign of time?