Tutorial: Mencari Jalur Transportasi dengan Naver

Mesin pencari Naver bisa digunakan untuk mencari arah seperti GoogleMaps. Untuk daerah di Korea, arah yang diberikan lengkap dengan petunjuk bus untuk ke sana. Kelemahannya adalah kita harus menggunakan bahasa Korea.

Caranya (klik gambar untuk memperbesar):
1. Buka website naver: http://www.naver.com/
2. Ketikkan "길찾기" (=arah) di kotak pencarian, lalu tekan enter
3. Naver akan membuka halaman pencarian arahnya, seperti terlihat pada gambar. Terdapat dua kolom untuk memasukkan, asal di kolom di sebelah kiri dan tujuan di sebelah kanan.

4. Masukkan tempat keberangkatan dalam bahasa Korea ke kolom 출발지 (=asal) di sebelah kiri dalam bahasa Korea. Misalnya 포항공대 (=Postech). Nanti akan muncul pilihan yang berkaitan dengan tempat yang dimasukkan.
5. Masukkan tempat tujuan dalam bahasa Korea ke kolom 도착지 (=tujuan) di sebelah kiri kanan, juga dalam bahasa Korea. Misalnya 죽도시장 (=Pasar Jukdo). Pilih juga dari pilihan yang muncul.
6. Klik tombol di bawah kolom untuk moda transportasi yang dikehendaki, dari kiri ke kanan:  자동차 (mobil), 버스/지하철 (bus/subway), 자전거 (sepeda),  도보 (jalan kaki).
7. Akan muncul rute yang tersedia, juga pilihan rute alternatif, seperti pada gambar

8. Tersedia juga fitur untuk melihat suasana jalan (mirip fitur StreetView Google). Klik tombol 거리뷰(roadview) di sebelah kanan gambar di atas, lalu klik pada ruas jalan yang terlihat dalam peta. Akan muncul panorama jalan yang dipilih. Pengguna lalu dapat menggunakan panah navigasi untuk menyusuri dan melihat suasana sekeliling jalan. Gambar di bawah memperlihatkan suasan jalan di depan Pasar Jukdo.

Demikian, semoga bermanfaat!

Fun Presenting with Prezi

We all know about the all too familiar Powerpoint presentations. They are mostly follows similar structure and used to present about virtually anything, which become the defacto standard of presentation slides. So, when my friend shown me Prezi, I was excited.

Prezi is a tool to make presentations, or "prezis" as they are called, with a unique way of transition between focuses. Instead of just slides between slides, prezis jumps from one focus to the other by zooming in and out. Actually this product is one that I have in mind when I tried to learn Flash last year. Indeed, Prezi is also Flash-based. But as the saying goes, your ideas are worthless, execution is king. The guys at Prezi simply nailed it. Hats off!

Here is a prezi that I made this weekend. I had some fun and the end result is not too shabby. Watch in fullscreen to enjoy.

*for you who wonder, this presentation illustrates the IT system of PERPIKA which designed by yours truly.

Life Questions to Think About

Hello, been a long time. Why? Life, as usual.

I read “How Will You Measure Your Life”, an old article from 2010, wrote by Prof. Clayton M. Christensen of HBS.  This article feels so relevant to me since now I’m in my last phase of my study. I wished I had read it when I graduate from my undergrads.

On the last day of his class, Prof. Christensen asked his students to find their answers of these three questions:
1. How can I be sure I will be happy in my career?
2. How can I be sure that my relationships with my spouse and my family become an enduring source of happiness?
3. How can I be sure I’ll stay out of jail?

The first question is a classical one. Since career is one thing that will take major slice of your life, it should bring us happiness right? Well, the popular answer nowadays is “Find your passion!” Unfortunately, that suggestion is not so practical. I spend some time after my graduation pivoting with some jobs, yet I still did not feel this passion thingy. I am not saying that it is a waste of time to try finding your passion. I learned many things and now I do have some idea about how I want to lead my life. It was time well spent, yet it is not enough to guarantee your happiness on your career.

The second question for me is interesting in a peculiar way. You see, just recently I stepped –up my relationship with my partner. Well, we already talk about marriage since day one, but now that both of us are at the end of our study we talk about it more concretely.  You know, making plan together, talk about jobs, parents opinion, monthly budgets, car-or-house first, those kinds of stuffs. So this question will fit in quite nicely in our discussion.  

The third question might sound silly, but it is a serious one. There are already some people from my alumni that spend some time behind the bars. I’m quite sure none of them planned to do so when they graduated, and I definitely do not plan to follow their footsteps. Therefore, some conscious decisions have to be made regarding this.

To sum up, the article is very insightful for me. I’m I highly recommend you to block some reading time, since it is quite lengthy, and go read it deeply.  Now excuse me, I have some thinking to do.

POSTECH Shuttle Bus Schedule

Diambil di Bus Stop Jigok Community Center

E-Toll Implementation

Thanks to a big ruckus by our minister, the issue of long queue at toll booths has gained my attention. My memory flashed back two years ago when I was a regular user of highway. At least twice a month I did Jakarta-Bandung round trip, commuting between Jakarta and Bandung. It seems that there is no improvement since there.

This is a minister who ordered to cut the queue line in toll booth until the length of five, and saw a 30 cars long queue at 6 AM in the morning. When he saw that the two out of four booths are closed because the employees were late, he got furious. Hence, the chair throwing is understandable. If something get wrong in my works just because somebody's laziness, things start flying too.

Long queue due to human negligence like this would not have happened if we already adopted E-toll payment system. In fact, Mandiri already launched E-Toll card since 2009. From the discussion in my alumni mailing list, in term of number of transaction, the card already has reach a number equivalent to 20% of all credit cards number of transaction in Indonesia, or 75% of all debit cards transaction. The numbers suggest that actually the toll card has dominated the Indonesian card payment realm. Why it does not have expected impact? I guess that show the barrier of implementation is more cultural than technical. Indonesian just does not used to pay with cards. In this respect, the operators should have been more aggressive in marketing. Taking example from Korea, the operator can use discount to get more customer to adopt the card payment. In Korea, card users will get discount ranging from 5% to 50%, depends on the time and location.

Another example of culture barriers is the implementation of nonstop E-Tollpass. In other countries, it is possible to make e-toll payment completely without stopping. The booth will detect the cards in your car remotely, see your ID, and deduct the fee from your account.  If you pass through the non stop gate  without valid account, hence not paying, a camera would shot your licence plate. Soon there a fine letter will arrive at you address. All this is technically possible to be implemented in Indonesia. One problem however is that when people buy/sell second hand cars, they commonly do not change the owner identity of the car, especially if the buyer and the seller are related. Hence, if the car do violation, the previous owner will get the fine instead of the culprit (serve him right IMO since it was due to his negligence). Therefore even in non-stop E-Tollpass the operators install mechanical gates that will not open without the detection appropriate payment.

This case of e-toll implementation prove that localization is important in technology adoption in developing country.