Categories
Umum

Simple Stream

I still have my orangescale.net domain name since I registered it back in 2006, but I do not used it for few years. This blog used that domain name for few years. Rather than having the domain unused, I decided to use it for something simple as simple aggregator.

So, orangescale.net now (well, for now!) has list of posts from this blog (thomasarie.com) and also from my podcast page at anchor.fm. I made it using Sourdust Feed Aggregator. Originally, Sourdust uses Bootstrap for its HTML/CSS, but I decided to redo the interface — still simple! — using Bulma.

My fellow, Zam, also has this kind of aggregator and I subscribe to it. I am thinking of having the similar aggregator, but for now keeping the updates with my daily reading sources I use RSS reader and also blog subscription feature, if available.

Categories
Umum

Hello, HEY!

Yes, I’m joining the crowd to give HEY — email service by the awesome guys at Basecamp — a shout. I wrote them to request for an invite three around three days ago. I am sure that they’re having lots of invitation requests, but today, I finally got the invitation code to register an account.

Before registering, I have read some key information about HEY: about how it works, the HEY manifesto, some key points on the FAQ page, and also how the pricing will work. I also understand that Imbox is not a typo.

Some key points about HEY

In my opinion, these are some key points about HEY. It’s not about my personal preference, but more about ‘what I — or probably you — should now by having a @hey.com account.

  1. It’s NOT an email client. So, it’s not like Gmail for Android/iOS. It’s not Outlook you can have on your Android, Mac, or iOS devices. It’s not even close to Spark, Postbox, or Newton.
  2. It’s an email service provider, with — currently — @hey.com domain for the email address created. That’s right, it’s like Gmail by Google, or Yahoo Mail, or Outlook. It’s also like how you have your email address, powered by your cPanel-based hosting, or maybe you have it installed yourself and having Roundcube as the interface. Creating an account at HEY is like you open an account at Gmail, or having an email at Yahoo Mail service.
  3. It’s not free. It’s a paid service. To enjoy the full service at the moment, with the upcoming features in the futures, we need to pay US$99/year minimum. We need to pay extra if for ‘shorter’ username. 2-characters of username costs US$999/year, and 3-character of username will cost US$349/year. And, we need to pay a year in advance.
  4. It offers “better” privacy. Hint: Gmail.
  5. It might change your workflow. It might be better for some people, but probably it’s not for everyone.

More features that might works better for you can be seen at HEY website.

Let’s give it a try

Reading some of those points above, I was curious about how it works. I mean about the interface, functionalities, workflows, and more. It’s 2020, and making working with email to become an enjoyable experience — for those who work a lot with emails — is still a big challenge.

I am a Gmail user — or Gmail-based email, because I also use Google App for Work — and I use lots of Google services. I signed up for my Gmail account when it was still ‘invite only’ period.

My first question about HEY was, “If HEY is that good, how the integration between services I currently use?”. I have an Gmail email, and once I signed up for it, I can use all the other services right away. The integration between those [Google] service is already that good.

I still believe that HEY is not ‘just another email provider’. Basecamp is a reputable company. I follow Signal vs Noise blog. I bought both REMOTE and REWORK. It’s built by people who know what they do, and who want to make the idea of working to become something efficient and fun at the same time. If we’re talking about productivity, Basecamp should be mentioned here.

I already logged-in to my email account. I have HEY app installed on my iPad and Android phone. I also already sent my first email to it.

Let’s see.

Categories
Umum

OCTO Clicks, Bukan Lagi CIMB Clicks

Sebelum saya menginstal OCTO Mobile, seluruh aktivitas perbankan saya di CIMB Niaga hanya saya lakukan melalui CIMB Clicks sebagai nama layanan internet banking dari CIMB Niaga. Bahkan, transaksi yang saya lakukan cukup umum saja: membayar tagihan kartu kredit, melihat mutasi rekening. Beberapa transaksi lain sudah dilakukan secara otodebet.

Setelah OCTO Mobile dirilis untuk menggantikan Go Mobile, giliran OCTO Clicks hadir untuk menggantikan CIMB Clicks. Saya rasa keduanya — OCTO Mobile dan OCTO Clicks — berusaha hadir untuk memberikan solusi yang lebih lagi terkait layanan perbankan, terutama secara digital.

Jadi, ketika biasaya saya membuka internet banking CIMB Niaga melalui cimbclicks.co.id, sekarang alamat berpindah menjadi octoclicks.co.id. Nama domain lama sudah tidak digunakan lagi.

Dibandingkan desain sebelumnya, tampilan yang baru sangat jauh berbeda. Desainnnya mungkin terlihat lebih modern. Desain yang appealing tentu saja sebuah nilai plus. Tapi, yang lebih penting adalah secara fungsi.

Categories
General

Adding Block Storage to an Existing Cloud at Linode

This site is hosted at Linode’s smallest package. Besides this blog, I have some other domains and small WordPress-based sites here. Most of them are not busy site. So, $5/mo is just gret. But, there is a small problem: storage.

Yesterday, I almost utilised 95% of the 25GB of storage limit. I was thinking of upgrading the to the higher specs. $10/mo is still a good deal. But, I only need the storage at this moment. Paying $10/mo will give me additional 25GB of storage.

I already knew that Linode also provides block storage, and I never looked up for this addons. So, I gave it try and tried to prove that the how-to works as written. So, from the panel, I chose to add 20GB of storage and follow the instruction in the input fields.

It took only less than a minute I think to create the disk storage.

Once the disk created, I only need to run some commands as instructed in the configuration page. It was that simple.

After that, I moved some of my files to the new partition, and changed some configurations. Also, I moved MySQL storage to this partition, because it utilises the most. the process also pretty straightforward.

And, I only need to pay extra $2/mo for 20GB additional storage.

Nice!

Categories
Umum

Harga Nama Domain .ID Naik per Akhir Juli 2019

Hari ini mendapatkan informasi melalui newsletter salah satu penyedia jasa layanan registrasi nama domain dan penyewaan server hosting mengenai perubahan harga registrasi/perpanjangan masa aktif domain .ID. Awalnya dulu harga registrasi mencapai Rp250.000,- per tahun. Namun, untuk menambah daya tarik, harga dasar diturunkan sehingga domain dapat dijual dengan harga separonya, bahkan lebih.

Namun, per 29 Juli 2019, harga nama domain .ID akan naik menjadi Rp250.000,- untuk pendaftaran baru maupun perpanjangan masa aktif — dari kisaran harga saat ini sekitar Rp110.000,- per tahun.

Categories
General

Moving to Google Apps for Work

Google Apps for Work

It’s been two for around two months since my small office moved the email service to Google Apps for Work. So far, it’s been a great experience and I think it was the right decision to make.

Why Moving?

Before moving to Google Apps for Work, we manage the email servers on our own. Meaning, we needed to do the setup, maintenance, including backup. There are less than twenty email accounts to manage under two main domains. The email was hosted on a cloud-based server — we used DigitalOcean. Everything was running almost without any issues.

We depend on emails on day-to-day operation. At the same time, we need to have (almost) zero maintenance and increase our productivity. Our small team needs to share lots of things like documents, spreadsheets, and agendas. The thing is that we need to use our personal Google account to share documents. The other things is on the storage. I have more than 6 GB of email (for work). So, moving to Google Apps for Work is an anticipation. Here are some main reasons on the migration:

  1. Zero maintenance. By outsourcing the email service to Google, we at least only need to keep the domain active.
  2. Integration with other Google services like Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Calendar, and more. The integration also includes the seamless collaboratoin between coworkers.
  3. Flexible storage. By default, I have 30 GB of storage for my Gmail, Google Drive, and photos. If later I need to upgrade, the price is pretty reasonable. 100 GB for IDR 27,000 (per account) is a good deal.
  4. Simple setup and management. Setting up each service provided by Google Apps for Work is very easy.

Migration Process

The migration process was pretty easy. Since there were only around 12 email accounts, so moving them individually did not take too much time. My coworkers moved all the email account by themselves. The only challenge is not to have the downtime. There is a simple guide to work on this area. During the registration process, I only need to use a primary domain — and setup the secondary domain as domain alias later on.

For the cost efficiency, I worked on the settings on email routing. For example, if there is an email address that was only accessed by specific people in the organisation, I created some routing rules. By this, I can minimise the number of accounts.

After all emails (including attachments) had been migrated to Google Apps, we kept the “old” servers online for few days just to make sure that no data left behind. I was not sure how long the whole processes was completed, but it was around one week.

Categories
Umum

Pengalaman Mencoba Layanan Uber untuk Bisnis (Uber for Business)

Di pertengahan Oktober 2015 ini, saya mendapatkan informasi melalui surel yang saya gunakan untuk akun saya di layanan Uber mengenai hadirnya fitur yaitu “Uber for Business”. Saya sendiri sudah menggunakan layanan ini beberapa bulan, dan secara keseluruhan mendapatkan layanan dan pengalaman yang baik. Walaupun, sampai sekarang saya baru menggunakan layanan ini kalau saya kebetulan ada keperluan pekerjaan di Jakarta.

Layanan Pribadi

Untuk keperluan pekerjaan, penggunaan Uber yang saya lakukan — atau rekan-rekan saya lakukan — menggunakan akun pribadi. Dengan kondisi ini, maka pembayaran dilakukan secara pribadi (dengan kartu kredit milik sendiri), untuk kemudian dapat dilakukan reimbursement. Sebuah mekanisme yang sepertinya cukup lazim digunakan oleh banyak perusahaan.

Fitur ‘Uber for Business’

Uber for Business yang diperkenalkan ini saya rasa memberikan beberapa keuntungan dan kemudahan, apalagi dalam konteks bahwa kebutuhan moda transportasi (menggunakan Uber) seharusnya dapat dikelola dengan lebih baik. Sejak menggunakan layanan Uber ini, memang saya merasakan bahwa biaya perjalanan cenderung berkurang — ketika membandingkan dengan mobilitas yang sama dengan layanan transportasi sejenis/taksi.

Secara sederhana, Uber for Business ini merupakan sebuah konsep yang memberikan kemudahan bagi perusahaan untuk mempermudah dalam hal pengelolaan perjalanan bagi karyawannya (ketika memilih menggunakan Uber). Berikut beberapa hal utama tentang layanan ini:

  • Perusahaan membuat sebuah akun bisnis/korporat
  • Seluruh pembayaran akan ditanggungkan ke akun perusahaan
  • Perusahaan mengatur karyawan yang dapat menggunakan pembayaran langsung oleh perusahaan
  • Perusahaan dapat mengatur kebijakan pemakaian terkait dengan pembayaran yang ditanggung oleh perusahaan

Aktivasi Uber for Business

Walaupun secara tim tempat saya bekerja belum terlalu banyak, namun saya rasa penggunaan fitur ini dapat membantu. Saya mendaftarkan akun untuk keperluan ini melalui https://www.uber.com/business. Prosesnya sendiri cukup mudah. Dan, saya sudah langsung dapat mulai melakukan pengaturan akun.

Welcome to Uber for Business

Untuk pengaturan awal, saya diminta untuk memasukkan beberapa informasi seperti metoda pembayaran (memasukkan informasi kartu kredit yang digunakan), melakukan pengaturan kebijakan bagi tim, dan tentu saja mengundang tim yang boleh menggunakan pembayaran melalui akun bisnis ini.

Informasi Pembayaran

Uber for Business: Payment Settings

Saya memasukkan informasi kartu kredit yang nantinya akan digunakan untuk pembayaran seluruh perjalanan baik bagi saya sendiri, atau bagi tim yang nanti akan saya undang. Menilik dari informasi pada penambahan informasi pembayaran, ada beberapa poin:

  • Sistem Uber akan melakukan proses otorisasi dengan melakukan penarikan sebesar US$250 dari kartu kredit. Menurut informasi, dana ini akan langsung dikembalikan jika proses ini berhasil.
  • Rekan kerja saya yang nantinya akan menggunakan pembayaran dari kartu kredit saya tidak akan dapat melihat informasi kartu kredit milik saya. Informasi yang terlihat hanya berupa label teks saja, misal “Nama Perusahaan”.

Pengaturan Kebijakan Perjalanan

Uber for Business: Ride Policy

Pengaturan kebijakan penggunaan ini dapat diatur sesuai dengan kebutuhan. Sehingga, penggunaan metoda pembayaran dapat pula dibatasi. Pengaturan ini misalnya:

  • Mengatur kapan saja metoda pembayaran dapat digunakan; di hari apa saja, dan dalam rentang waktu jam berapa saja.
  • Mengatur dimana saja bisa melakukan perjalanan, misalnya lokasi penjemputan, termasuk waktunya. Jika ditentukan batasan lokasi penjemputan, lokasi penjemputan hanya bisa dalam radius sekitar 400 meter saja.
Categories
Umum

Persyaratan Pendaftaran Domain .id

Saat ini, penggunaan nama domain .id sepertinya cukup banyak. Salah satu sebabnya mungkin karena domain .id memiliki harga yang relatif lebih murah jika dibandingkan dengan domain umum seperti .com, .net, atau .org. Walaupun memang kadang domain tersebut juga bisa lebih murah, misalnya ketika kita membeli domain beserta paket hosting. Atau, misalnya karena promo registrasi domain.

Saya sendiri memiliki beberapa domain .id. Seperti domain situs ini. Dan, beberapa domain juga saya daftarkan untuk beberapa keperluan pekerjaan. Terkait dengan syarat, saya rasa syarat pendaftaran domain .id juga cukup mudah. Informasi terbaru tentang persyaratan pendaftaran domain .id  berdasarkan Diskusi Umum Terbuka PANDI yang diadakan pada 10 September 2015 yang lalu mengenai revisi aturan penamaan domain .ID adalah sebagai berikut:

Persyaratan pendaftaran domain .id

  • Nama domain .id minimal harus terdiri dari 5 karakter.
  • KTP Republik Indonesia
  • SIUP/TDP/AKTA/Surat Ijin yang setara

Persyaratan pendaftaran domain .co.id

  • KTP Republik Indonesia
  • SIUP/TDP/AKTA/Surat Ijin yang setara
  • Sertifikat Merek (bila ada)

Persyaratan pendaftaran domain .or.id

  • KTP Republik Indonesia
  • Akta Notaris atau SK Internal Organisasi

Persyaratan pendaftaran domain .web.id, .my.id, .biz.id

  • KTP Republik Indonesia

Persyaratan pendaftaran domain .ac.id

  • KTP Republik Indonesia
  • SK Pendirian Lembaga dari Kementerian Teknis terkait lainnya
  • Akta Notaris Pendirian Lembaga/SK Rektor/Pimpinan Lembaga

Persyaratan pendaftaran domain .sch.id

  • KTP Republik Indonesia
  • Surat Keterangan Kepala Sekolah atau Pimpinan Lembaga
  • SK Pendirian Lembaga dari Kementerian atau SKPD terkait
Categories
General

Preview: New Google Contact

Google Contact

Google is about to roll out its Google Contact service page. On a personal note, I use Google account to organise my contacts or address book. So far, I think this is the best solution (for me) since I use multiple devices and I need to have the simplest mechanism to manage the address book.

If you want to see the preview, go to contacts.google.com/preview. It will be available for Gmail and also Google App Domain.

Categories
Umum

Konfirmasi Melalui Telepon untuk Transaksi Kartu Kredit BCA

Saya sudah beberapa tahun ini menggunakan kartu kredit dari BCA (Visa) untuk kebutuhan transaksi perbankan saya. Sampai saat ini, saya tidak mendapatkan masalah untuk seluruh transaksi yang saya lakukan. Apalagi, kebanyakan transaksi adalah terkait dengan kebutuhan pekerjaan.

Transaksi yang saya lakukan kebanyakan adalah secara daring (online), untuk pembelian tiket pesawat, pemesanan hotel, pembayaran sewa server hosting, pembelian nama domain, atau pembelian barang. Selain itu, saya gunakan kartu kredit untuk melakukan pembayaran di beberapa outlet seperti tempat makan.

Kemarin, saya melakukan transaksi melalui internet. Transaksi yang saya lakukan tersebut (di salah satu situs) bukan kali pertama, mungkin lebih dari sepuluh kali, dan tidak ada masalah. Kemarin, ada yang sedikit berbeda.

Beberapa saat setelah saya melakukan transaksi, saya mendapatkan telepon dari nomor yang tidak saya kenal, yaitu: 021-29910700. Ketika saya coba angkat, saya mendapatkan pertanyaan dari penelpon (yang saat itu langsung menyapa saya dengan nama saya). Melalui pembicaran singkat, penelpon memperkenalkan diri dari BCA yang terkait dengan transaksi kartu kredit, dan menanyakan apakah benar saya baru saja melakukan transaksi melalui internet.

Penelpon tersebut tidak menanyakan informasi yang sifatnya personal ke saya seperti nomor kartu, nama ibu kandung, atau informasi untuk identifikasi. Kalaupun ditanyakan, mending saya memilih untuk tidak  memberikan. Apalagi saya memang belum yakin apakah ini benar dari BCA atau bukan. Setelah membenarkan bahwa saya memang melakukan transaksi, penelpon tersebut mengucapkan terima kasih, dan mengakhiri pembicaraan.

Karena agak penasaran apakah benar itu dari pihak BCA, akhirnya saya putuskan langsung untuk menghubungi Halo BCA melalui telepon. Saat itu, saya diterima oleh operator bernama Fajri. Saya sampaikan secara singkat kejadian yang baru saja saya alami. Pihak BCA mengkonfirmasi bahwa memang benar bahwa nomor 021-2991070 adalah dari pihak BCA. Dan, saya tanyakan/pastikan bahwa tidak ada masalah dengan kartu kredit saya.

Categories
General

Photon: WordPress.com's Content Delivery Network

Dealing with side loads for heavy-traffic website sometime can be painful. But, of course there are some common practice to deal with this kind of situation. For example, you can take advantage of cache system, offload to other service to reduce server load/bandwidth, or using CDN (Content Delivery Network).
For WordPress-powered sites, you can take advantage from its Jetpack. This free plugin offered lots of handy features to help you work with your WordPress installation. One of them is a featured called Photon.

Give your site a boost by loading images in posts from the WordPress.com content delivery network. We cache your images and serve them from our super-fast network, reducing the burden on your Web host with the click of a button.

That’s right. You should see some big hints there: content delivery network, cache, super-fast network. To activate this feature, just hit the “Activate” button, and you’re set. All your uploaded media files will be served using WordPress.com infrastructure. After having this feature activated, all image URLs in your posts will be modified. For example:

  • Original URL: http://domain.com/dotsios300.png
  • New URL: http://i2.wp.com/domain.com/dotsios300.png

If you are interested, here is an example of the image header served from WordPress.com network.

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Cache-Control: public, max-age=63115200
Content-Type: image/png
Date: Sun, 06 Oct 2013 17:06:28 GMT
Expires: Wed, 07 Oct 2015 05:06:26 GMT
Last-Modified: Sun, 06 Oct 2013 17:05:27 GMT
Server: ECS (sin/47C6)
X-Bytes-Saved: 8597
X-Cache: HIT
X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff
X-nc: HIT iad 90
Content-Length: 46456
Categories
General

Welcome, YouTube Indonesia!

Isn’t nice when YouTube Official blog post an article using Bahasa Indonesia for its subject? Well, I know… it’s only a title. Yes, YouTube just announced that they launched its new domain for Indonesia. It’s youtube.co.id.

If you open youtube.co.id on your browser, you will be redirected to http://www.youtube.com/?gl=ID&hl=id So, is it only a matter of having YouTube in Bahasa Indonesia? I think it’s not.
By having “Indonesia” under location list (see at the bottom of the page), YouTube homepage will bring more relevant contents from/for audience in Indonesia. It’s like “the local version of YouTube”. Anyway, if we refer to statistics by Alexa, YouTube is ranked on the top 5 sites visited from Indonesia. Among the top 5 list, there are some other website like Facebook, Google (search), and also Blogspot. Internet users in Indonesia love YouTube.
On the other hand, it’s a new strategy for YouTube to work together with local providers to bring more contents that target Indonesian internet users. Watch the video:

Categories
General

Google+ is now available for Google Apps Accounts

Finally, Google Apps users now can have the full access to Google+ service. Previously, if you’re using Google App for your domain, you need to migrate to other Google account to get the service. I did that already. But now, Google made it available for Google Apps user.
Quoting from Google Enterprise blog:

Starting now you can manually turn on Google+ for your organization. Once Google+ is turned on, your users will just need to sign up at google.com/+ to get started. For customers who use Google Apps for Business or the free version of Google Apps and who have chosen to automatically enable new services, Google+ will automatically become available to all of your users over the next several days.*
Google Apps users will have access to the same set of features that are available to every Google+ user, and more. In addition to sharing publicly or with your circles, you’ll also have the option to share with everyone in your organization, even if you haven’t added all of those people to a circle.

I don’t use Google+ on daily basis. And since I’m already linked my other Google account to Google+, I am not sure what I need to do with my current Google Apps account. Here are some screenshots about the registration/activation processes.
If you’re already logging in to your Google Apps account from your internet browser — opening an email for example — you can directly go to plus.google.com or google.com/+

Since Google+ needs Picasa Web Albums for photo sharing and Google Talk for chat, you need to link it to you existing Picasa Web Albums.

Categories
General

about.me offers free email for its users. Do you use it?

I decided not to use it.
I’m using about.me service to create my personal splash page. You can see mine at about.me/thomasarie. It looks good, and very useful to display multiple online profiles like Twitter, Facebook, or even Instagram. Everything works great.
Few days ago, about.me users received an email informing about an offer to get more personalized email address. Yes, another mail service! Last May, Nokia did the same step by powering its mail service called Ovi Mail using Yahoo! Mail features. Since about.me is now part of AOL family, you will get AOL Mail-powered email. Just a reminder: AOL bought about.me back in December 2010.
I claimed my email address. Yes, I have now thomasarie [at] about.me, powered by AOL. If you want to get yours,  authenticate yourself at about.me website, and you should see “Offer” menu under “Dashboard” menu on the top navigation.

The setup was easy. You only need to give your date of birth information. I use Google Mail — Google Apps for domain — as my primary email service right now. I also keep my Yahoo! Mail account checked on regular basis. They offer a good service until today. AOL Mail did offers some features, but I haven’t found any features other mail services don’t have. So, I decided not to use it. If you send your email to thomasarie [at] about.me, it will go to my inbox. But, I’m not sure whether I check it regularly or not.
And, this is how the the email frontpage looks like. Sorry, I just need ’email’.