17.12.08

IT & ME, A Decade


“ellie, you may be old, but you are so up-to-date!”

By Eddy, in one of our YM chat

Thanks Ed, that’s truly a compliment.

Last Sunday evening, while having this flood coming into my house, my mom and I watched our favorite motivating program at Metro TV, Mario Teguh Golden Ways.

Mr. Teguh said,

“The young people are those who keep on renewing themselves through a lot of learning and knowing new things, never give up, never stop”

One of my ways to keep myself young is by being up-to-date. This seems to become a must for living in the era of fast progressing technology. Information Technology (IT) is one of the modern innovations of this century that progress so fast.

My first encounter with IT started a decade ago. It was in 1997 when I went to Boston for studying. Students in my school in Brighton sneaked into Boston College Library for getting the access to the internet. At that time, not all American schools had internet access provided for students. We didn’t have it in our school. So we went to the nearest school, pretending to be one of the students there and got the access.

So there I was, walking confidently pretending as BC student into the library, got the access of the internet for several times before being caught by the librarians.

Thanks to English that made it easier to understand the new technology. It was quite easy, just click and click to open the windows of Internet Explorer, and voila there you go.

At the beginning, I didn’t know ‘surfing’, just used the internet just for e-mail. I tried MSN hotmail services to send email to my cousin in Samarinda.

At that time, my cousin had already known a lot about internet. He gave me a book about internet before I went to the US. He had the access by telephone connection to the internet. I guess he was the first time in our city having internet access.

Anyway. Back to Samarinda in 1998, it was so frustrating to get the internet access. In my home city, there was hardly any internet café (Warnet) like today. I needed the internet access mainly to email my boyfriend and some close friends from Boston. I searched through the city to find access. Almost gave up then my sister told me that her friend got the internet access at our main post office.

So, there I went. You know? In fact, in 1998 our main post office only had less then 5 computers provided for the internet access. It was in one of the office room on the second floor. It was hard to notice that they actually provided internet access for public.

The cost was IDR 10,000.-/hour for the access. As there were many more people coming to the post office for the internet, they finally opened a special corner.

Then couple of months later, there was another internet corner provided for public from one of local bookstore in my city.

In 1999-2000, when I worked in the Governor office, it was for the first time they built intranet access for the people in the building, the pioneer of internet access for office. Sometimes during my work, I sat in the corner of my office accessing the internet.

Don’t ask about the loading, it was such a slow loading.

During 2000 – 2007, there were a lot of internet café all over the city. A phenomenon and a trend of lifestyle that started to booming in Indonesia. Telkom, a state-owned communication company had already provided Telkomnet instant. There was also a tool that can be installed in each office to have their own internet access.

I guess between 2006 – 2008 then there are more others internet providers coming up with easier services, such as Telkom Speedy. Others provide portable modem for internet access like Telkomflash, Indosat, Esia, and many more.

Some places like hotels, restaurants, cafes, shopping malls and universities have started providing hot spot for wireless internet access.

After a decade of my friendship with internet, finally I have my own private access at home. Telkom Speedy offered me smart choice. Only with IDR 75,000.- I already can have the access.

My need for internet access is now no longer for email.

I do a lot of ‘surfing’ or getting any information through search engines like Yahoo and Google. Mainly it is for my work and for collecting materials for teaching English. When I was studying in the university, I did a lot of surfing for getting materials and up-to-date news on international relations.

As my sociality expands, Yahoo Messenger (YM) is the favorite one to stay connecting with friends. Now I use Skype for having connection via VOIP (Voice Internet Protocol) by which I can connect with friends with WebCam that we can see each other virtually face-to-face and talk with each other. Skype provides good picture and voice quality.

Hi5, Friendster, and Facebook are also my favorite sites for my friendship link. With Friendster, which is popular in Asia, I found back my long time old friends from kindergarten, elementary school, junior school and highschool. While with Facebook , I found back my old friends from Boston who are now spread all over the world. It is crazy to find friends again after 10 years separated. Other popular social sites are MySpace and Orkut.

Lately, I expand to Blog in which I can have my own page where I can post my writings and share it with friends and anyone who visit my page. Google Blog is the one of the favorite provider for blogging. Many of blogger also sign up to be the member of WordPress.

I also build my own Website by which I can explore more my page than just ordinary blog.

Instead of putting my writings, I can also feature business. I do promote both my own business and my friends business. It is so fun to have my own e-shopping and e-services. Crazy IT!

I also establish study corner in which I can recommend or share my academic potentials for others. I put files that are downloadable for people and link people to other academic links and even job vacancies.

Now I am thinking about creating e-learning for English, as I realize that my students in the university I teach in need more materials. Perhaps, I will also create e-Consulting for IR too.

I learn that it is actually very easy to create your own website. You can learn autodidact. There are many providers such as www.own-free-web.com or www.webs.com where you can create free website for you. There are also so many webmaster tools to enhance the performance of your website. The most favorite one is Google Gadget and Yahoo Widget.

Here are my favorite links to enhance your Blog and Websites:


So, are you ready to up-date yourself through IT??

Enjoy being Young!!

Posted by Mariamellie at 3:54 PM  

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