Editorial: Early as birds | The Jakarta Post

On naming our daughter

My wife and I named our daughter Fara Allegria Maharani. While I insisted on the name Maharani, my wife picked her first name and we also agreed on using a musical term somewhere in her name a long time before we were even married.

I had no strong feelings for or even against her choice of first name but I did think it was a nice name. She told me it was the name of a wife of one of the prophets. Allegria was from Allegro, a brisk tempo. Maharani means queen.

When she was born, we were blessed with such a joyful, cheerful, playful and happy daughter. Fara has never been short of providing us with such a great time as a family, always finding ways to have fun especially since she’s been able to walk, run, throw things around, laugh, smile, and do things that babies do.

Today, nearly 14 months after Fara was born, my wife Dm’d me over Twitter. She apparently looked up Fara’s first name in various languages and discovered a few things.

Do you know Middle English’s Fara = Beautiful One, Arabic’s Farah = Joy, Afgan’s = Glory, Farsi’s = Joy, happiness, cheerfulness,

no wonder she’s SOOOOOOO GENKI!

beautiful/joy/cheerful, joy/spirited, great queen = sugar high queen?

Sugar-high queen she is. She also runs very fast.

She really does live up to her name. Her uncle calls her Speedy, after Speedy Gonzales. She loves cheese too.

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[Update August 2012]

Fara, if you come across this post, read this blog please? I miss you.

The Lippo, Astro, and Axis ruckus

Back in September, Malaysia’s The Star daily newspaper ran this story about Astro.

The gist of it is this:

Lippo’s Direct Vision and Astro All Asia Network went into a joint venture to run a pay-TV operation under Astro’s brand. The Lippo Group owned Natrindo Selular which was also partly owned by Malaysia’s Maxis Communications.

Maxis, who’s also partly owned by T. Ananda Krishnan who heads Malaysia’s Astro, raised its share of Natrindo to 95% and shortly after sold 25% of his Maxis share to Saudi Telecom which was “packaged with a 51% stake in Natrindo”. The Lippo Group predictably was furious about the deal as they were kept out of it.

Saudi Telecom and Maxis then announced Axis, a new cellular operator in Indonesia, with much fanfare.

Malaysia’s Astro declined to renew the broadcast license in Indonesia after having failed to reach a deal with Direct Vision and left thousands of Astro subscribers in the dark.

It may not seem so convoluted but when you follow the news in Indonesia about how Astro collapsed and realize how ubiquitous Lippo Group is in Indonesia, it becomes so much more complicated.

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The Jakarta Post just got served

Jef Ooi, noted Malaysian blogger who visited Indonesia with for Pesta Blogger ‘08 somehow managed to score himself a copy of The Jakarta Globe, (something that apparently even Globe staff has failed to do outside their offices despite having claimed a 50-60 thousand print run) and published this review of the new daily.

Some have criticized the newspaper’s asking price of Rp. 8500 when long-term incumbent English daily The Jakarta Post charges much lower, but they forget that the Globe at 48 pages and three sections delivers more news in more variety and in full color as opposed to The Post’s black and white 28 pages.

None of the above sentence applies to me though as I don’t read print publications especially when the news that matter are available online. Regardless, I think Mr. Ooi was pretty scathing in his attack of the Post when he said,

I don’t think the Post, with its 28-page configuration including the classified and news and features befitting the appetite of a village paper, could match the Globe in terms of width and depth in content.

That’s one heck of a thumbs up to the new paper by a foreigner.

Disclaimer

I am a regular tech contributor to the Jakarta Globe

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PUBLICITY STUNT | The Jakarta Post

Exchange challenge

From my dear wife

Anyone feel like doing a greeting card/letter/gift exchange?

It almost the end of the year and I suppose throwing a little challenge will be a fun way to close this year.

Here’s how
1. Post this challenge in your own blog, or if you want to bring it to RL put it on the notification board at your dorm/office etc, so you can have as many people to participate.

2. If you’re interested, please let your friend know which exchange you want to take part. Also, please, please, please… find you a bit about the other person you want to send. Trust me, it’ll make life easier that way.

3. Swap address! Make sure you have your postal details. If you feel rather paranoid to post your RL home address in your blog (e.g. Moi!) , you can put your email address instead so your friend know where to contact you and get your address directly from you.

4. Card/letter/gift has to be hand made. Please don’t buy pre-made card/letter/gift from the store, instead, be creative! Make your own card/letter/gift and decorate it with your own hand. It doesn’t have to be too fancy or expensive.

5. Please consider the postal services, too. Don’t send a 10 ton stuff doll you make on your own because… well… I think you get my point. And please, consider the high traffic during the holiday season at the post office. Our postal servicemen and women need some rest, too!

6. Be playful if you want and expect to surprise others.

7. Last but not least…. HAVE FUN and SPREAD THE LOVE & JOY!

So, who’s up for it?

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A View of Social Media From the Inside: The Cat Hasn’t Meowed Just Yet | TerryStarbucker.com

Meh chosen for 30th anniversary of Collins English Dictionary – Times Online

10 People to Follow on Twitter

@javajive asked this question today: If you had to make a top 10 list of ppl to follow on Twitter, who would you include?

I follow over 300 people, many of whom are my friends pre-Twitter, some I met through Twitter, and others are people in my industry, news accounts, or people whose values, opinions and views I respect. I also follow funny people. A guy’s gotta have his funnies to stay sane, right?

Having to come up with a top 10 is not easy so I’ve decided that the 10 Twitter people will be those that I think people might enjoy following. I’m not going to recommend non-people Tweeters, that is accounts such as @macworld, @twitter, @tuaw, @cnn, @bbc because arguably it’s not much different to subscribing to RSS feeds of their respective websites.

This list is about people. Some respected people either have stopped tweeting or don’t tweet much to be of good value so I won’t recommend them in the list but you can find and follow them if you wish. Quantity is by no means quality, but Twitter is not so much about what you are doing anymore, it is about sharing useful information, being funny, being conversant. So here are ten of those people.

1. @guykawasaki
Founder of truemors, alltop, and Garage Technology Venture, public speaker, writer. Guy Tweets links to interesting news, some of which via truemors, promotes new alltop channels, his travels, activities.

2. @problogger
Darren Rowse is a professional blogger who dishes out tips and tricks about marketing, blogging, photography, tweeting, and just about everything else that might be useful for your online activities.

3. @gruber
John Gruber is a professional blogger who writes thorough analyses of issues regarding Apple, Inc., their products, marketing, and designs. A passionate liberal who pulls no punches, he also tweets gems such as “Old political skeleton: I once smoked marijuana. New political skeleton: I once wrote something dumb on my MySpace page.”

4. @wilw
Wil. Freakin. Wheaton. If you’re memory of Wheaton is Wesley Crusher, you’re missing out on a lot.

5. @jowyang
Jeremiah Owyang. A tech maven who works at Forrester research. You’d be wise to follow this man on Twitter and read this post about how he uses Twitter. I’m learning a lot from him.

6. @hotdogsladies
Merlin Mann has teh funnies

7. @grammargirl

MIgnon Fogarty helps your English. Also wrote a book.

8. @moltz

John Moltz used to run the always entertaining Crazy Apple Rumors blog until he decided not do do it anymore. He still dispenses the funnies on Twitter

9. @warrenellis

Come on, it’s Warren Ellis. Not that many people cooler or more awesomer than him. Yes, I just said awesomer.

10. @presentationzen

Garr Reynolds. Master of presentation with style. No Virginia, presentation does not have to mean suffering 100 slides full of 16 point text.

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Apple Online Store T-Shirt

Apple is giving away T-shirts to commemorate the opening of Apple Online Store for South East Asian countries. On November 11, Apple opened the stores for Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines. Singapore already has its own store for quite some time now.

Got a coworker to don the shirt for these pics.