everybody can create a website, now it’s easy….. and FREE!!

Trying to get a homepage up n running is not a very hard task this day. I still remember few years back, write a homepage will require you to open your text editor type tags, validate your HTML, then find a place to host it and pay them for the service. Back in those days, creating a websites will require a company spending hundreds to thousands of US$ just to built a static WEB page.

Then few years later DHTML come to solve the requirement to have a dynamic website. ASP, PHP, and JSP enable people to have a database driven website. Updating content not necessarily change the HTML source code, web-administrator only need to insert, update, n delete database. Some -good- web developers also build a user interface to update the contents so clients can easily change texts, images, even upload a video.

Developers that have business sense, then package codes n database into a product. Make web developers’ job easier by not have to create everything from scratch, shorten development time, and most of all create opportunity for more people to create a websites.

WEB 2.0 make things even more interesting. User generated contents reduce web-admin work. Internet users can modify their own page, using easy to modify UI (started by Friendster if I’m not mistaken, where user can modify their profile page..). Blogging sites, more advanced social networking, made internet even more fun.

Some internet start-ups as well as all giants are in race to create the most sophisticated but easy to use applications. I’ve shared my story about google-applications. Saturday morning I got an email regarding newly launched Google product in their google application portfolio.

Before writing this post, I try to play with it and create a sandbox (http://sandbox.dotjuicer.com – not much to see, but for a person that not focus on web-programming it’s very easy… ).

I imagine a if this kind of application can be introduced to SMEs or even home industry in Indonesia. It will surely help them a lot. They don’t need to spend a lot, even they can do it in nearest internet cafe and build their website as if it built by professional web programmers.

So many things can be done; as a start, maybe universities can encourage their IT students to help nearest SMEs or home industries by set-up a short training course to use this new feature from google. This will have a meaningful impact to the community development. It doesn’t need to be sophisticated, the most important is to be exist in www world then any potential buyers can search them through internet.

Google, please get your emerging market team to Indonesia ASAP

free internet presence cost (a google apps testimonial)

When I start my company ; a creative digital media agency (mobile media and internet media), my first priority is to set-up a domain name, e-mail, and (still under-construction) website. 

At the same time, I was really into all Google innovations and been trying to keep track of what they’ve done by browsing their google labs and tried out some of their future features in there. My eyes was really into google-pages. I thought to my self, if only google also give a web hosting service with customized domain for free. It will be very useful for a low budget company in order to get exposure in unlimited potential of www.

We can train home industries or help them to use this google-pages as their online front-end with email to contact/contact number so it will eliminate unnecessary mediator that took incredibly high margin and still pressed these home industries to give the lowest price for them. 

For example; a handicraft home industry can show their product in WEB by build a simple homepage, using easy to use google-pages and upload their product images.  Then point their selected domain name to Google free web-hosting facilities. This will stimulate faster community development.

A month after google-pages tried out, I find an article in my google-reader that google launch their new product called google apps (google applications). 

 

It has google docs, google calendar, google pages, start page, etc. I tried out google apps standard edition (because it’s free :p). It turns out they provide mail service and customizable domain into what-ever domain you have. So I try my company domain, dotjuicer.com

Now, I have my domain web-page (although it still under-construction :p), my email service (using @dotjuicer.com) that also can be retrieved using POP3 or IMAP, and ‘dotjuicer’ calendar. 

Total cost: IDR 100,000,- (for a year domain name rent)

If we can leverage this and equipped home industries so they can have their front-end in internet with this low cost implementation, I believe they will get lots of benefit out of it.

It’s cool, it’s cheap, it’s applicable, and relevant for community development in emerging markets.