Archives for the month of: March, 2008

Yahoo! Messenger Mac … Now It Can Speak !! Well…

March 27, 08 //
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I got update notification when fired up Yahoo! Messenger yesterday, and instantly get excited with the word “Now with voice !!”… True, when it came out as beta for quite a while and wearing “3.0″ on it’s back, I can not say that it’s an inferior product compared to it’s Win version sibling. In fact, it has far much better look and feel despite of many lack of features yet to be implemented.

I’m not a believer of one application does it all, but more on “do one thing , do it good” side, but for Yahoo! Messenger I kinda put my expectation a bit diversed. And the latest update really does excite me. It can do voice, so i can voice chat with my overseas friends without having to switch to other software, although Skype still a champion here, but I think it will be nice if software that I use nearly all the time to connect to my friends can also do voice call once in a while. It can save transcript into message archive, a good feature for business and long time feature on Win Y!M. And many other thing, that makes me thing that Y!M Mac developer team really know how to prioritize. I couldn’t care less about audibles or changeable smiley sets, so I missed nothing in that area.

One thing that bothers me is Sending SMS to mobile number. Okay, it is a text message to mobile, but WHY the hell the UI have to resemble cellphone keypad ? I know it only for phone number entry, but I see no reason to play cute here, even on a Mac. It’s a desktop PC, no space limitation, no keyboard limitation. What make it worst is that it was not intuitive at all. I click Send sms, a big icon on top of a chat window, then pops up that clumsy little mobile phone keypad… what the hell is that ? do i type the message there, or do i enter number there ? Why not just pop a dialog asking enter recipient mobile number , then go back to chat window. Sigh.. Not sure where or what is wrong, maybe it’s just me, or maybe the UI design team are wacky enough to create such annoyance inside a great sofware… Come on, Kai Krause’s concept never really took off, why trying too hard to catch with it… Once again.. Sigh…

The Hazzle of Getting a Home in Indonesia

March 26, 08 //
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It’s been several months now since me and my wife applying for housing loan, well actually it was before we were married, about 5 months ago… First the bank turned down the application because my wife is a contract worker at one of United Nation’s organisation, then, it was just this afternoon, i got two calls from two different banks, verifying my job, and both really spin my head off… The first bank rep called me stated that :

Because I own 20 percent of the company, I can’t apply as employee, therefore i have to reapply as self employment, meaning additional paperworks, like company legal papers, balance sheets and company account reports, for whick i never really get in touch with, because somebody else taken care of them all.

The bank need to survey the company, as in physical office… this is another glitch for me as a virtual worker. the company does have a small office space, but it is, well, a small office space.. a place to the programmers & designers to work, which never really occupied by more than 3 persons at a time. Sigh…

The other bank rep called me with more twist :

Since the company is small, the analyst will put suspicion on my salary amount.. Whaatt ??!!… May as well pull the trigger straight to my head then… I just don’t get the logic. I have my payroll slip, all my bank account reports, which I may say pretty much in sync. Then they still can’t believe that I can actually make that much money ? Double sigh..

Oh well… I’m thinking of calling these all off now, because of all strange procedures and it just take too loooooooong… Virtual workers rulezzz !! .. or is it ?