Tag: review

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Umum

Password Manager: Let’s Give Bitwarden a Chance!

I have been using password manager since 2017 since I think there should be an easy, secure, and handy mechanism to deal with passwords. Of course, by using password manager, life is a little bit easier.

And, I chose LastPass. Last year, I still renewed my premium subscription for US$36 per year. LastPass works really well, but at the same time I am sure other password manager applications — like 1Password, DashLane, Keeper — share similar quality of features. But, it’s about choice.

Most “popular” password manager applications also offer similar subscription price, around US$36/year. My LastPass subscription will end next April, and I am thinking of moving to other application that does its basic jobs like storing password (of course!), generating good passwords, and managing credentials in categories/folders. Also, it should be also work on multiple devices and browsers.

After reading many articles, I decided to give Bitwarden a try. And, I read pretty much information about Bitwarden. One of the big differences with other password managers is that Bitwarden is open source. The other reason is on the pricing. It’s only US$10/year for personal use, or US$40/year for personal (family/organization).

My decision is not related to LastPass’ upcoming plan regarding the limitation for the free account since I was a paying customer since day one. According to a blog post:

We’re making changes to how Free users access LastPass across device types. LastPass offers access across two device types – computers (including all browsers running on desktops and laptops) or mobile devices (including mobile phones, smart watches, and tablets). Starting March 16th, 2021, LastPass Free will only include access on unlimited devices of one type

LastPass blog: Changes to LastPass Free

From the interface point of view, it’s not that beautiful — at least compared to LastPass. But hey, it’s about the features. As long as it works for me, I am fine with the interface.

About Bitwarden:

  1. Bitwarden official site
  2. Bitwarden on GitHub
  3. Bitwarden apps (desktop, mobile, including CLI)
  4. A detailed review about Bitwarden. CNET has some basic comparisons of multiple password managers.
Categories
Umum

EIGER

Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

Di linimasa Twitter saya kemarin, tiba-tiba banyak dipenuhi oleh cuitan mengenai kejadian yang melibatkan EIGER (PT. Eigerindo Multi Produk Industri) melalui akun @eigeradventure di Twitter dan (awalnya) dengan salah seorang warganet yang membagikan surat keberatan terkait sebuah ulasan video yang diunggah di platform YouTube.

Ketika saya melihat isi surat keberatan tersebut, saya langsung menuju ke laman video-nya yang berjudul “REVIEW Kacamata EIGER Kerato l Cocok Jadi Kacamata Sepeda” karena penasaran juga. Lalu saya putar videonya, dari awal sampai akhir, tanpa ada bagian yang saya lewatkan. Komentar saya: “Ini video dan kontennya bagus! Ulasan personal, dan secara umum menginformasikan sesuatu yang positif terhadap produk (kacamata) dari EIGER!”

Saya juga sering melakukan ulasan untuk produk, jasa, atau layanan di situs ini. Namun memang jarang yang sifatnya audio/visual. Dari persepektif kreator (di video tersebut) saya apresiasi sekali karena membuat konten tersebut juga membutuhkan usaha.

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Umum

Microsoft Mengakusisi GitHub

Microsoft mengakuisisi GitHub senilai 7,5 milyar dolar AS. — “Under the terms of the agreement, Microsoft will acquire GitHub for $7.5 billion in Microsoft stock. Subject to customary closing conditions and completion of regulatory review, the acquisition is expected to close by the end of the calendar year.”

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General

123RF Verification on Credit Purchase

123RF

Disclaimer: This review is based on my personal experience. 123RF did not request me to write this article and I’m not endorsed or paid for making this review.

Today, I just decided to purchase some credits under my account at 123RF.com since I need to get some images from there. After creating an account, I simply made a purchase. It was a simple process. When I made the my purchase, I was connected to my office VPN. So, I was detected in Singapore while I was physically in Yogyakarta, Indonesia.

I filled in all billing information. I have been making lots of transactions using my credit cards, and I had most of them succeeded.

When I hit the purchase button, I got a notification saying that a verification process was needed and it would be by calling my phone number. I waited for the next few minutes. But, I didn’t get any phone call (on my mobile number).

So, I decided to contact 123RF from its Live Chat feature. So, I provided the customer service staff with my invoice number and some basic information about my order and account. The customer service staff informed me to make verification process based on the instruction sent to my email. She also requested my mobile number again and I gave her my numbers.

I replied the email with the information about my full name, bank account information, and my home address. I provided all the information based on my credit card information. No credit card number of verification number provided during this process.

In the next few seconds, I got a phone call from 123RF. She introduced herself as Jessica from 123RF, and she was using Bahasa Indonesia. She asked me for some details about my order and the situation that I made an order  from Singapore (while my address is in Yogyakarta, Indonesia). Of course, I was more than happy to give the best answer. Then, she told me that she would be back to work on my order.

After few minutes, I got another call from her telling that the credit was already under my account. I checked directly by refreshing my browser, and the credit was there.

Overall, I had a good experience on my first credit order. I know that each companies — when it comes to payment or security — has its own standard of the payment or security. 123RF has its own verification process. Based on my experience just now, 123RF made the verification simple enough.

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General

Photoshop 1.0

No live preview, no layers, one-time Undo. Yes, it was 25 years ago.

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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.

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General

Google Offers Free 2GB Extra for Google Drive

Screen Shot 2015-02-10 at 11.43.52 PM

Google offers 2GB of storage for Google Drive for those who completes Google’s security checkup process. This offer ends on February 17, 2015. It’s also to celebrate Safer Internet Day. Right now, I have 15 GB of storage for my Google Drive and use around 5 GB of it). There are still plenty of room for my storage, but 2 GB of free upgrade is too good to be skipped.

The security checkup is a simple and straight forward. It’s to make sure that your Google account is safe by doing some checking on these areas:

  • Recovery information. Make sure you to have an active phone number and alternative email for account recovery.
  • Recent activities. Review the recent login activities using Google account.
  • Account permission. Check the services, or apps you give permission to use or connect to Google account.
  • App password. You can use specific password for logins. So, using Google, you don’t always supply your primary password. If you’re not sure or find the applications you don’t recognize, remove them.
  • 2-step verification. I use this security method. Just make sure to have backup phone number there, including the backup codes.

Even this offer does not apply to Google Apps for Work and Google Apps for Education, but it’s recommended that Google account owners should review the security checkup. After completing the security review checkup, the additional storage will be automatically added at the end of February 2015.

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General

Let's talk about the (new) Yahoo's email service

Recently, Yahoo redesigned its mail service again. I’ve talked about Yahoo Mail last August. I hoped for an improvements. Recently, on its 16th birthday, Yahoo gives a new look for its mail service. Quoting from a release published at Yahoo’s blog:

We redesigned Yahoo Mail to be more efficient, too. Things you do all of the time like search, starring, and deleting are now one-click actions that appear when you hover over an email. We also wanted to give you more breathing room in your inbox, so you can collapse the left-hand toolbar to be more productive.

I’m not a big fan of Yahoo email service actually, I’m sold to Google Mail. I use Gmail web-based interface on my daily basis. So, what Yahoo offered on this redesign this time?

1 TB of storage to handle email and attachments.

Yes, that’s huge! Currently, Google ‘only’ offers 15 GB of free storage (shared between Google Drive, Gmail, and Google+ Photos) with some detailed conditions. The 1 TB storage is tempting for marketing purpose and by number. Do I really need 1TB? I can live with 15 GB Google offers. By having 1 TB of storage, it can handles more than 54 million of emails.
Previously, if you’re a Flickr user, Yahoo also offers 1 TB of storage to store more than 500,000 photos in original quality. This one is really a good deal!

Themes

I’m not a fan of themes for email service. I left my Gmail in the standard look, without fancy themes. Yahoo — since it also owns Flickr — brings some selected photos from Flickr to choose as the background theme. Here how it looks.
Yahoo mail themes
For the web interface, I choose the of of the clean theme styles.

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General

My Nokia N9: Personal Review

I have been using Nokia N9 for about a week, and I would like to share a bit more about this phone. In my previous post, I posted about the unboxing photos. In short, I think this phone works for me and I’m comfortable with the features, speed, and more importantly to keep myself ‘connected’ to the internet world.

The design

When I opened the box, it was like love at the first sight. I got the black Nokia N9. I think Nokia N9 has a beautiful product design. Here’s why.

I have been using some Nokia phone in the last few years with various phone designs. My first Nokia phone was Nokia 3110. That’s right, that big phone. After that, I switched to Nokia 5510, Nokia 3230, Nokia N78, and Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. I also tried Nokia E72 (with the QWERTY keyboard). The latest Nokia phone I have is Nokia N8 which I’m using right now.
Lots of phone companies put their efforts creating products that are not only about the technical aspects like hardware specifications, but also the design. “This [put the product name] is beautiful!” is a very common expression. And I think Nokia N9 got this expression.
Large screen is another features. Lots of phones has bigger screen these days. But still, people will use their hand to operate. I like phone with big screen, but not too big. I was not sure whether Nokia N9 has ‘big enough’ or ‘too big’ screen area. Can I hold and work with it only with my right hand? It’s taller than Nokia N9, and iPhone 4.
Can I reach whole screen area using my thumb? I can. For me, this is something important.
I look at the design, and I could not find any buttons at the front. I’ve heard that it’s all about ‘swipe’. The only buttons/keys are only on the right side: volume/zoom and power/lock keys. It took few minutes to explore how the swipes work. And, it’s not difficult at all. It’s easy. I will write about swiping on Nokia N9 later.
About the SIM card, I need to have the micro SIM card. There are two options: buying it from my desired provider, or make it by cutting the regular SIM card. I went with the second option.

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General

So, what is the best Twitter Client?

Not exactly a Twitter client, but tool to manage social media accounts like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and more.
When I created my first Twitter account in 2006, there weren’t any applications for desktop or mobile. But, it’s 2011 and the service grows so fast. It’s around one billion tweets sent per week (according to March 2011 data). I love Twitter, and I also joined some other services. I don’t use all of them on daily basis, but more about learning how the service works, and how they’are designed. This is something I consider as something-I-like-to-do.
We are connected to each other using social media services. Many people want to be in the front row to get the latest news. They also want to know what is the latest information in the industry they’re involving with. I want to get the news shared by people I’m following on Twitter, or just to see what’s happening from my timeline.
At the same time, I want to share updates. These things seemed easy to be done. But, when it’s involving multiple social media accounts, I can be very busy. Not always, but sometime.
I have been trying and have some application installed on my gadgets — and also my MacBook Pro. I’m having Nokia N8, BlackBerry, and iPhone 4 now. Okey, don’t ask me why I need to have those gadgets. I just have them and don’t use them at the same time. But, I usually switch between those gadget — and of course, applications installed.
The thing is that not all applications works on every device I have with me, even they share similar features. Among many applications (free or paid) to manage my social media account. And these are some applications (including Twitter clients) I use — I switch between applications when I’m on my iPhone as my primary device right now.

I don’t have iPad and Android-based devices anyway. So, why bother having (too) many applications when I don’t use them all? Again, I like exploring how those things work. And, I like working on my account using its native application. For example like using Facebook for iPhone to explore Facebook, even HootSuite also works fine. Why? Switching between application is easy. Right?
I don’t have any other applications like TweetDeck, or Twitter for Mac on my Mac. For the web-based tool I sometime use HootSuite, CoTweet and Twitter website.
For the next post, I think I’ll write short reviews about those applications. From a end-user perspective. There are many tools/services that offer so many features. Probably, they works for businesses, not for personal use. Some are paid service, and some are free. When it comes into a simple question: “What is the best Twitter client?”, the answer should be simple: A client that works for you. Right?

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General

Hello iPhone 4!

Two weeks ago, I bought myself a black iPhone 4.  So did Lala. She bought the white one. I decided to buy it after I searched for reviews, looking up what I can do with it, and also how people work with this gadget. I was lucky because there was a great deal I didn’t want to miss.
For those who keep convincing me to get an iPhone 4, you may stop now. And, I personally would like to thank Firman Maulana (@kakilangit) for his kind help. He helped me a lot. Matur nuwun!

I like it so far. Really. Since I like photography, I love working with photography applications. Probably, iPhone and photography means Instagram. So yes, I joined Instagram — I’m @thomasarie. Also, I’m enjoying iPhone apps.

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General

Nokia Maps says hello to iOS and Android


From Ovi blog:

  1. You can see where you are on the map, thanks to HTML5 support for positioning
  2. You can find addresses, businesses and other places of interest, anywhere in the world
  3. You can get to know the places: all the essential information about a place are presented on one page (pictures, user reviews, popular travel guides description, contact information)
  4. You can plan the fastest route to your destination by car or on foot
  5. You can see where the public transport lines go, and where the stops are
  6. You can share your favourite places with your friends via SMS, email, Facebook or Twitter
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General

Goodbye Nokia E72!

Nokia E72No, not that I hate my E72. I lost it. Last Monday, I reached my hometown for holiday. I liked the fact that I finally got home without loosing anything. A perfect situation. :)
On the evening, I had plan to have dinner with my girl. That should be a nice dinner. But, it turned into bad situation when I realized that I didn’t have my Nokia E72 with me. That was the time when all food were on the table. I haven’t touched anything — well, not really ‘anything’, but only some peanuts. Last time I remembered was that when I was in a taxi. I called the taxi operator and worked with the guy on the phone. I even called the taxi driver and asked him to pick us again. No luck. In short: I lost my phone. Now, I only have 5800XM with me.

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Nokia Messaging for Social Networks Beta: First Impression

Two days ago, I gave Nokia Messaging for Social Networks Beta a try on my Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. This application will help Nokia users to keep update with the social media services — in this case Facebook and Twitter. Of course, it’s still in beta so I should not expect too much.
The installation process was easy and I didn’t have any problems. Everything was smooth. This early preview is available on the Nokia N97, Nokia N97 Mini, Nokia 5530, Nokia 5800, and the Nokia X6 devices. Go to messaging.nokia.com if you want to see applications from Nokia Messenging for your device.
After having this application installed, I used it right away. When running the application for the first time, I got this welcome screen:
Home Screen
I use Twitter more than Facebook. First, I use the Twitter feature. Here’s the login sreen:

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