Albert Tanutama

It was three years and four days ago, when my grandfather passed away. It was a sad, and yet peaceful - knowing that he had finally relieved from all the pains. Reflecting back, I didn’t know much about his life. I kinda happy with all the fond memories that I have had of him. I didn’t realize what I missed, that is until I read a little biography of him, written by his nephew. It was touching, because he was not forgotten. It was sad, because I missed the opportunity to know him better. It was exciting, that he actually lived his life to the fullest. Thus, I’d just like to share his story here, titled “Dr. Tjan Joe Hok, my uncle” written by my uncle Pandu.
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As much as I like the accessibility of the Web than desktop application, there’s still issues. Reliability is one of them. It just happened suddenly that I could not access my gmail account - “Gmail is temporarily unavailable. Cross your fingers and try again in a few minutes. We’re sorry for the inconvenience”. Well, this is really bad. All my mails and tasks resources have suddenly become inaccessible. Worst, I have no local copy - which means I can’t hardly proceed doing my tasks.

Such situation made me think how redundancy is required - and perhaps, this might be a case that I could try “shadowing” in gmail. Interestingly, I’ve simultaneously experienced another gmail issues: unable to logout in Firefox. Hmm…

What will you do if you have 50 gmail invitations available?

Well, I created another gmail account for my web subscription. Any mail sent to my domain account (albert at tanutama dot com) will be forwarded to the new account. This provides me with two advantages: first, I do not have to worry about checking various mail services, and second, I leverage on google powerful anti-spam service. By separating the email address that I like from the actual storage, I will be able to switch my email storage without affecting my subscriptions.

Now, who said that decoupling can’t be used in email?

Can’t help smiling reading this website Can you imagine a butler in McDonald’s toilet wearing tux, dispensing soap and fancy paper towel? Or People without pants boarding train? How about asking people to join in a surprise party on the train? It’s hilarious! Singapore would need people like that. Cheers.

I have a new hobby of listening to mp3s with my muvo. They, however, are not songs but rather recorded sessions from many (IT) conferences from IT Conversations. I think it’s really cool, because those recorded conversations were rich with information and insights. They are inspiring, because most of them deliver their points passionately. Those are the feeling which can’t be experienced simply by reading books. My favorites are Malcolm Gladwell’s session about the tipping point and blink. The longest I listened to was from Clay Christensen, author of the innovators’ dilemma.

Another positive aspect of listening to those conversation is that I’m listening to the properly structured and spoken english. Something that often missing in Singapore: accent and vocabulary. I guess, it can be really effective and efficient way to learn - and this what makes muvo (or any other Flash based devices) really cool, and useful. Download - and it’ll become personal learning center.

Talking about social network application such as Friendster and LinkedIn, I recall 43Things. The idea of 43Things is that we write down our goals, get inspired with other people goals, and share our progress in achieving the goals. Now, I must admit that I was pretty excited about this application before because it seemed to have more useful functions than Friendster. But, it does not work for me (yet).

I liked the idea that people could write about something and find other people with similar interest. Thus, theoretically, 43Things allows me to establish a kind of personal community. However, it is not good enough to make me regularly use the application. 43Things is not equipped with feature that help me to accomplish my goal, except theoretically moral support from fellow members with same interest. As a result, it is pretty much abandoned.

So how can we make it works ? 43Things should focus on assisting people reach their goals rather than simply posting progress and comments. It should be rather be integrated with some sort of project management tools. It should be easy to add and update the progress of the tasks and at the same time, should provide reminder on the pending tasks. Integration with some sort of resource manager, like delicious would be useful. Imagine that each of the people with similar goals are sharing resources like web bookmark. I can tag bookmark with the activities, rather than concept. Now, that’ll give me reason to find more activities and use the application.

I’ve recently joined LinkedIn. It’s like a friendster of professional network. Unlike Friendster (which I believe it’s to explicitly track network of friends and for fun), LinkedIn offer much better value and purpose. First, I establish my professional profile (a.k.a resume and interest). The profile is the one that makes the fundamental difference. By ensuring professionally and seriously written profile, everyone engaged in LinkedIn will be able to do purposeful activities. Because of this purposeful activities, I will be enticed to use LinkedIn more regularly - something that I rarely done in Friendster. On the other hand, I wish that they’ll improve “find user” - so far, they only allow me to search within my network. Friendster has done much better job in this case. Hopefully, I will reach “the tipping point” soon, so that LinkedIn can be really useful for me - keeping contact and meeting new people.

Introducing new look and feel of my weblog This time, the design was done from the scratch, with the help of many great CSS tutorials out there. The purpose for redesigning is to come out with a really simple design, that could be easily extended as I will continue to add more content and make it fully functional website to showcase my portfolio. In addition, it is more badwidth friendly as there’re not many graphics included in the design. Finally, please feel free to leave feedback, comments, or (touch wood) bugs encountered (and now you know why I call it as “beta” :P)

Mary, my favorite Java blogger, posted her famous “Friday Free Stuffs” contest. How can’t I not join the fun? Yay! I missed the famous Java coffee cup, tho. On the other hand, I’m surprised to see new look of Java.com - it has refreshing orange look and feel.

*Bear with me as I’m starting a new “life” for this blog as well :)*