The idea of having a blog has been going around in my mind for a while. I did not decide to have one earlier, because I always thought people who write blogs are those who do not know how to spend their leisure time, or they simply have too much free time. Besides, I always think that I am not worthy enough to write something useful for people from anywhere in the world to see. And I would not want to write something useless. Anyways, today I had an inspiring experience, which had encouraged me to, at last, create my own blog and start writing something. It may not necessarily be useful for everybody, but it might just be an insight to particular group of people who are seeking for similar topics.
One of my high school best friends has decided to step it up a little in his commercial life by creating a small company of 2. Teaming up with one of his family members, he developed an idea of a new media for company's advertisements, which involves an IT system (I am holding back details to keep its originality) . He had found a software developer who managed to develop a system that enables network filtering for advertisement purposes so that people using internet connections at 'hot spot' cafe's/restaurant could "elaborate further" through their internet browser. Having zero knowledge of ICT, he then turned to me, who had just graduated a bachelor's degree in software engineering and fortunately enough is on holiday in Jakarta, for a second opinion. Although I am just a fresh graduate, but he thought it might be a good idea to have someone who is actually into "these things" to have a look at the system that has been developed, before concluding the deal.
Anyway, what I wanted to spot out in this post, which by the way also the kind of topics that I'd like to keep posted around this blog, is the IT elements of this story. When I was first told of the idea, I went "Wow! that's actually a really good idea! I think that's gonna work really well. Really nice prospects on the commercial side as well", but when thinking of the development of the system, I immediately thought of writing a project plan, a little bit of tools research, sketching up some design, development, testing and boom... we're talking about at least 2-3 weeks. But then my friend went "..yeah I found this dropped out IT guy who has developed the system and I want you to take a look at it. Oh and by the way, he did it overnight..". I was in shock. What a waste of 4 years of software engineering study! I thought to myself.
So I went to this meeting held at a cafe with my friend, his uncle, the "IT guy" and his middleman. My friend started out by stating again the whole idea of the system, then followed immediately by a demo of the system by the "IT guy". The system is actually not as complicated as I thought. A machine (Linux based) acting as the server would catch all port 80 requests and reroute them to a dedicated port. Using a particular mechanism, the server would then fetch the objects contained in the request, add desired contents into to the objects, and then hand them all back to the users (browsers). A little bit of HTML designing, and boom! you have your desired contents visible on every browser that tries to use your connection.
What I can highlight from this story is how amazing and easy system (software) developing is nowadays. With all the open source software available, cutting all production costs (no license required), giving the "IT guy" the power to sell his product at whatever price he wants his skills to be valued. We had a little chat and he told me that he finished this project in approximately 6 hours. I was quite amazed at first, but then I came home, did a little research myself on the available tools and I thought, hey, its not that difficult after all. I mean, I am sure this guy is highly talented and experienced, but it got me thinking, how many people with a little bit of IT background and an internet connection could do that? I do not know if this idea has been developed anywhere else in the world (I believe they have it already in The States?) but I can almost say that this post could endanger the originality of my friend's business idea. Well, my intention has only been to share the IT perspective of the story. And I am sure people who read this are polite enough not to copy other people's ideas. Cheers! ;)
