Setelah sekian bulan memaki-maki BlackBerry, akhirnya gue luluh juga untuk mencoba BlackBerry. Tawaran dari Nanda untuk sebuah BlackBerry Javelin dengan harga ‘cuma’ 5,5 juta ( 1 juta lebih rendah dari harga normal) menjadi alasan untuk mencoba. Biaya Internet-an dengan E71 yang kadang menghabiskan dana lebih dari 200 ribu sebulan juga menjadi alasan utama, mengingat dengan BB cukup mengeluarkan 160 ribu (Indosat).

Atas saran teman, gue beli kartu baru untuk BB dan pilihan jatuh kepada Matrix. Setelah isi pulsa 50 ribu untuk pemakaian selama 1 minggu dengan proses aktivasi yang relatif mudah, si BB siap digunakan.

Selama lima hari menggunakan, sebetulnya si BB ini cukup memuaskan gue. Ukurannya yang gak beda jauh dengan E71 (kecuali sedikit lebih tebal) cukup enak dalam genggaman. Kamera 3,2 MP-nya lebih bagus dari E71 untuk pemotretan malam hari.

However, sesuai judul gue akan menulis apa-apa yang gue gak suka dari BB. So, listnya mungkin akan bertambah panjang (atau mungkin juga tidak) :

1. Dengan pemakaian yang sama dengan E71, konsumsi baterai BB lebih boros. Semisal kemarin malam : BB gue charge jam 11 malam tapi karena (mungkin) pemakaiannya cukup intense, jam 9 malam baterainya tinggal 1 bar. Ya, masih bisa diperdebatkan, memang…

2. “Copot baterainya”. Itu kata pacar gue waktu gue gak bisa kirim message lewat BBM. Heh? koq gitu caranya? tapi setelah dicoba memang begitu kenyataannya. Duuh…ribet, yak?

Dah, sementara 2 dulu. Ntar kalo ada lagi pasti gue tulis

Oiya, kalo pengen tau apa yang terjadi dengan E71 gue, ITC Fatmawati masih mau menerima dengan harga 3,5 juta “Ada lecet nih, mas.. dan gak ada earphone-nya”, kata si mas di sana … Ooookeeeehhh….

UPDATE - March 10, 2009

Yang gue gak suka:

3. Gak otomatis bisa sinkron dengan Calendar di Outlook Express. Katanya sih masih harus kotak-katik BlackBerry Desktop Software-nya supaya bisa sinkron dengan Javelin (tanpa menggunakan kabel data - over wireless network). Well, E71 dan e-mail push gratisan dari SEVEN (http://www.seven.com) bisa memberikan fitur ini dengan lebih cepat.

Untuk poin #2 di atas, informasi dari mas Yanuar di PC Media, masalah seperti itu bisa diatasi dengan software http://www.mobireach.com/upload/989/22989/QuickPull.jad

Yang gue suka:

1. Biaya komunikasi berbasis Internet jadi lebih terukur (160rb/bulan)

2. I like Voice Note, apalagi kalo lagi nyetir. Gak usah repot-repot ngetik sms

3. Posting and tagging photos in YouTube is a lot easier Dasar narsis!

deden General

This is probably the questions posted by many parents when their children is entering school age. That happened to me seven years ago when my first child is nearing her ’school age’. At that time she was just having her first birthday.

As first time parents, I turned to literatures and online advises, as my mom who lives in the other continent still have the ‘old’ perception that a child should be playing with her friends until they are old enough to learn. While the environment prompted me to start an education program for my child since they are just a tiny dot in my tummy. Early education, gym babies, crawling class (!) you name it. Those places are easily found all around my residential area.

So, after confering with my online buddies through discussion forums, listen, discuss, debate, I decided to enrol my daughter in one of those baby classes. The most compeling reason/rationale from my online buddies (by that time, I was among the first who have children in my peers) was that enrolling a barely walking baby into a class will provide her with the necessary social skills she will need when she is at the right school age. To me (at that time) that is a good enough reason. And yep, I saw her building her social skills right there and I was so proud of her.

A year later, her baby brother come along. Now, it is different. My daughter need to learn how to cope with sibling rivalry. While her baby brother will need to learn what his sister know in order for them to play together. So, when my second child celebrate his first birthday, I enrolled him in the same pre-school as his sis. Mission accomplished? No. Far from it.

Baby brother wants to be in the same class with big sister. So, he was constantly skipping his own class and play in big sis’ class. Chaos.

I thought it will only last maximum a year. I was wrong. Now, both my kids are in primary school and I still face the same issue. If big sis wants to learn math, lil bro also want to learn math. If big sis wants to take english lesson, lil bro follows, to the point of the school club that they attend.

I do want my kids to excell in school. I do want them to earn top grades and if possible get a scholarship. And I think both my kids are okay. Big sis is doing very well, and lil bro is doing good.

So what’s the problem?

Well, both of them does not seem to need other people. They are very much content of having each other and to them other kids are just complementary. Whenever big sis has new friends, lil bro immediately befriend them too. Lil bro does not seem to need his own friend, which makes him the one little boy in a group of giggling third grade girls.

Both my kids are very special in their own way. Big sis is very much into studying. She likes to have lots of lessons and courses and seems to be bored if one of her many ‘courses’ are on holiday. She also likes sports a lot, swimming, soccer, badminton, you name it.

Lil bro is very techie. That boy is a little whiz with gadget and gizmos (well, both of them are digital natives). He can easily work out a complex cabbling systems that connects the TV, the DVD player and his beloved Nintendo Wii. Sometimes even sort a technical problem ,that his father can’t even fathom, through simple logic.

I can say that my kids are quite book smart, tech savvy, have an open mind and exposed to more things than I do when I was their age. Now, you might say that I shouldn’t have to worry to much. Well, people are difficult to satisfy.

But I want my kids to be able to survive LIFE. In this mean and vicious world, where we are forced to put up a barbed wire around our home and suspicion and danger lurking everywhere, I want them to be independent and experience things that are important part of growing up smart. Able to mingle with many people, have lots of friends and still maintain their independence, going to school with public transport, how to earn pocket money, how to deal with threat, how to stand up to a bully (not that there are bullies in their school), basically I want them to be street smart.

I know that is possible. Now, my question is anybody knows how can I make sure my kids are both book smart AND street smart?

misty Parenting baby, book smart, children, education, kids, misty maitimoe, school, stree smart, street smart

Captain Planet

Nowadays you can see many people promoting the concept of saving the earth from global warming. I even lost count of how many times the tag line “Go Green” has been used. Al Gore’s movie “The Inconvenient Truth” has elevate the issue of global warming to new heights. Politician, whose perceived by many to be dirty and uncaring, is suddenly one the most prominent spokesperson in the campaign against human greed that is consuming mother nature.

All this talk about Go Green reminds me of a cartoon serial I watched when I was still in elementary school. It was “Captain Planet and The Planeteers”. In the story it was told that ever since Day One, Gaia has been preserving the earth and its inhabitants. However as man grew more sophisticated, they started to sacrifice nature for their own personal gain. In order to protect the earth, Gaia appointed five teenagers and gave them five power ring. Kwame from Africa with the ring power of earth. Wheeler from North America with the ring power of fire. Linka from the Soviet Union with the ring power of wind. Gi from Asia with the ring power of water. Last one is Ma-Ti from the Amazon forest with the ring power of heart. These five teenagers helped Gaia in fighting off polluters, either through action defeating the bad guys or through their good deeds in helping other people and the environment.

The best of course when they combine the power of their five rings and bring forth the mightiest hero…” By Your powers combine, I am Captain Planet”. He is the champion of earth who fights polluters and all those who damage our beloved nature.

That’s a brief summary of the cartoon show Captain Planet and the Planeteers. What so special about this show is it carries an environmental, diversity and multiculturalism messages. More over this show aired during the 1990s when nature conservation hasn’t received that much spotlight.

At the end of each episode, there is always a public service education. Where the main characters inform the viewer of the danger our earth is facing and how each one of us  can do our part in saving the nature.

I found myself amaze when watching the re-run in Boomerang channel. All of those messages from the year 1991 are so true even now. Too bad I didn’t understand what they meant back then when I first watch this. I wish cartoons producers nowadays can take examples from those old heavyweights who viewed cartoon not simply as a no-brainer but as a medium to connect with the youth to obtain a sustainable future.

So friends, do your part in saving mother nature because…

“THE POWER IS YOURS!!”

Note: This writing piece was originally posted in the writer’s personal blog http://patriagintings.multiply.com/journal/item/64/Long_Before_Go_Green_Campaign

patria General Captain Planet and The Planeteers, go green, IndoPacific Edelman, patria pinandita

Beberapa hari lalu saya menerima sebuah sms dari operator gsm yang saya gunakan, tepatnya dari kantor cabang/sales representative office mereka di bekasi, tempat saya tinggal.

Setelah lebih dari 8 tahun menggunakan kartu pasca bayar dari operator ini, seingat saya baru kali ini saya menerima sms seperti ini dari mereka, dan ‘anehnya’ dikirimkan oleh kantor cabang mereka. Isi smsnya? Ucapan selamat ulang tahun dari segenap management dan karyawan

Sayangnya sms ini saya terima satu hari setelah hari ulang tahun saya, but it’s ok., better late than never… hehehehe. Saya curiga smsnya dikirim secara manual oleh salah satu pegawainya, mungkin karena tanggal ulang tahun saya jatuh pada hari minggu sementara mungkin tidak ada yang masuk kantor pada hari itu.

Perasaan saya sebenarnya antara salut dan prihatin. Salut karena mereka masih ingat ulang tahun saya , prihatin karena baru kali ini saya terima padahal tidaklah susah menurut saya untuk melakukan itu mengingat mereka punya semua data pribadi saya sejak 8 tahun lalu.

Memperlakukan pelanggan secara lebih pribadi sudah banyak dibahas buku-buku marketing 101, dan kita semua tahu efeknya; mulai dari customer retention dan loyalty sampai mereka yang lalu menjadi agen virus getok tular produk kita.

Saya tidak tahu aplikasi crm (customer relationship management) yang digunakan, tapi rasanya tidak sulit untuk menambahkan fitur kirim sms pada saat si pelanggan berulang tahun. Untuk perusahaan yang tidak punya aplikasi CRM yang canggih, rumitkah melakukan seperti operator saya tadi? well.. tergantung…kalo customer kita ribuan dan anda punya database yang cukup lengkap, bisa dengan berinvestasi pada sebuah modem GSM (dan kartu prabayar) dan aplikasi yang secara rutin ‘membaca’ database pelanggan anda, lalu mengirimkan sms ucapan selamat ulang tahun, atau mungkin ulang tahun perkawinan. Secara teknis mungkin sedikit lebih rumit dari yang saya sampaikan, tapi tetap bisa dilakukan.

Kalau pelanggan anda cuma puluhan / beberapa ratus, bisa minta sekretaris anda untuk memasukkan reminder ulang tahun mereka di microsoft outlook (atau software2 reminder lainnya). Tindakan setelah itu ya terserah kreativitas kita : kirim bunga, kirim kartu atau kirim sms seperti operator saya tadi.

Atau anda punya cara lain?

deden Digital customer, loyalty, operator, sms, ulang tahun