Blackberry Gemini Curve 8520 - OS 5.0.0.610

OK I’ve been using the new OS for 2 days and everything seem quite unexpected. There are improvements and unfortunately, there are setbacks. I’m gonna talk about setbacks. The most notable difference is when you realize that in your Home screen, you won’t find the Lock icon. This is annoying. I’m used to setting the Lock icon as one of the first 6 icons and most notably, locking the Blackberry with it before putting it in my pocket. So far the easiest solution is to press and hold the A/* on the keypad. To unlock it, press the Mute button on the top. I can’t fathom why RIM is doing this, it doesn’t make sense. ...

April 25, 2010 · Batista Harahap

Tech & More @ Singapore

Okay, back in Jakarta after a 4 days trip to Singapore. Thanks to the organizing committee and the panelists for inviting Mediafusion to Singapore to present our ideas. Although the presentation was a fairly unprepared ordeal for us to say the least, we managed to get our ideas in the open and have gotten inputs and most importantly critics. [caption id=“attachment_251” align=“alignnone” width=“423” caption=“Mediafusion @ Singapore's NUS”][/caption] ...

April 22, 2010 · Batista Harahap

Google Nexus One, How GREAT!

Okay I just got myself a Google Nexus One from one of the best Indonesian community in the WWW. Kaskus’ FJB is the most exciting e-commerce website for Indonesians. I’m still waiting for my Android SDK downloads to finish and I though why not blog about my new toy :) While unboxing the N1, I noticed that the packaging is quite sleek with Google colors accentuated just enough to have a Googlish feeling about the box. ...

April 14, 2010 · Batista Harahap

My GMAIL Account Hacked

Okay, To all of you who received an email from tistaharahap [at] gmail [dot] com earlier this evening around 2.15 AM (GMT +7), please ignore it. It was sent without me knowing. I don’t know how the sender got my password but the emails certainly got my signature in every emails the sender sent. [caption id=“attachment_240” align=“alignnone” width=“340” caption=“The Sender was from Poland”][/caption] ...

April 13, 2010 · Batista Harahap

RIM Inactive Use or User Hoax

Okay, I’m telling you guys why the RIM Inactive Use or User message is a hoax. I hate broadcast messages because it is like a robotic message being ping-ponged around without any soul in it. Well here’s why it’s a hoax: This is the most important reason: YOU PAID FOR YOUR BLACKBERRY SERVICE! Indonesians are lucky our BB Service plan is unlimited data plan for a fixed rate. Elsewhere in the world, people are capped by the Megabytes of data they send and receive. Imagine pissed customers being tagged inactive and robbed off of their PAID services including with their BBM contacts, lawsuits will follow at least to your respective Operators if not directly to RIM. I'm an IT guy and I do work for the masses of people that will benefit my services. So it is with great ease I tell you that if you're inactive with your BBM activity, this will benefit RIM! I bet you're asking why in your head. Less activities mean less load on the servers and this is cost saving. Did you know Facebook pays US$ 1 Million every month for their electric bill? So you can imagine the electric bill savings if you're not active with your already PAID BBM service. This might be RIM's own doings! You never know right? This kind of thing builds hype and awareness and as you all know, there's no such thing as bad publicity. It's just plain old publicity. So please refrain yourselves from broadcasting another message. You already PAID for your Blackberry handset and its services, isn't that enough tangible profit for RIM? You're just giving them more profit intangibly. Some say it's competitor jealousy. I can vouch for this. The amount of people clicking on the link to Blackberry.com/inactiveusers can make RIM's web server crippled. It's far fetched but if the traffic is plenty enough to cause a Distributed Denial of Service then competitors reached their goal. Although still it's RIM's gain because one more time I'm saying this, no such thing as bad publicity! It give great opportunities for people like me who is aware that situations like this is profitable. Why so? Well you're on my blog reading this article. I think that is clear enough why. If I'm a malicious person, I can trick you and prepare a phishing page to get all your Blackberry Email Settings login details. So be careful next time clicking on links from your BBM or any other untrusted source. So please be considerate and think before you act when sending and receiving broadcast messages. As I said before, broadcast messages doesn't have any soul in them and should only be used to deliver reliable and trustworthy messages. Other than that, you're just being played. Retweet this post and let others be aware! ...

April 8, 2010 · Batista Harahap

The Inconviniency of Biznet MetroNET

Update: 14 April 2010 - A certain engineer from Biznet called me this afternoon. He was one of the engineers who were responsible for a great Yahoo OHD 2009 Internet connection. He sensibly told me that it was indeed a flaw in their recent policy change and that all MetroNET 1 Mbps accounts are experiencing the same thing. He said there will be a policy change yet again this Saturday so I’m gonna keep my fingers crossed. Thanks Biznet. ...

April 8, 2010 · Batista Harahap

Mobile Augmented Reality, A Basic Tutorial - Part 1

On my last post, I mentioned the definition of Augmented Reality (AR). Now I’m adding the word Mobile to it. At the current time, platforms that I’ve tried to developed upon supporting AR are iPhone and Android. Well actually I coded once and used Titanium Developer to make the actual executable files for each platform. Titanium offers current web standards as a mean to create those mobile applications. I’m now using Titanium Developer 1.0 with the 1.1 Mobile SDK. The requirements to be able to run Titanium and produce for iPhone & Android are: ...

April 6, 2010 · Batista Harahap

A New Breed of Web Potentials

This year 2010 is set to be a cloudy year! Why? Well it’s practically the year where everything cloudy are launched. Web Development has never been so fun and so fresh before. The mobile world is getting its taste of how The Web will change its course. [caption id=“attachment_181” align=“aligncenter” width=“282” caption=“Web 3.0”][/caption] Over the years, your mobile phone anywhere in the world has been a primary need in metropolitans. When it’s came to this stage, mobile phones are practically a part of our daily routines. A new revolution is coming and it’s making mobile phones as its stage. ...

April 5, 2010 · Batista Harahap

Hobby: 3D Panoramic Photography

I've known about Panoramic Photography for quite a while but 3D Panoramic Photography, that's something new. For the last year I've been focusing my efforts to study about the techniques involved. The worst part of the hobby is the pricing. Everything is NOT reasonably priced! This kind of photography is considered niche for tripod head makers and they overprice their products to the point where it is becoming a significant barrier for amateurs. Because of the high price tag, products are never a ready stock here in Indonesia. We have to wait as long as 6 months for distributors to re-stock their inventories. ...

April 3, 2010 · Batista Harahap

Reworking Bango29.com

Ok it’s been a few months since my last post. Just a few days ago I was looking at the statistics for Bango29.com and I found some interesting numbers like so: Each month the number of visits peaked at 30%. Especially around February when I started to guerrilla my way posting technology related tweets with my @tista twitter account. Bango29.com is mostly visited by visitors from Russia, accounting for roughly 52% of the total pageviews. This is why I paid Google a little visit to translate a phrase, so here it goes "Privet, Rossiya". Now this is the most interesting fact that got my attention right away. At least 91% of the total visit was a direct visit which means most of the visitors typed in Bango29.com into their browser's address bar. I'm flattered :) Hope this trend will keep continuing. So eventually I'm currently reworking Bango29.com and adding in some Twitter elements. I've come to love Twitter by the way. It feels great to share information and knowledge to others. I mean this. In the following weeks I will be experimenting with different approaches and my apologies if some of the experiments will have a bad effect for your eyes. Lastly, I wanna give a big warm welcome to everyone and hopefully you all will enjoy this blog as much as I do. Thank you very much! ...

April 3, 2010 · Batista Harahap