Covid-19 dan ICT

Dewasa ini penularan wabak penyakit Coronavirus atau Covid-19 ini sudah dalam keadaan yang sangat membimbangkan. Lebih-lebih lagi negara-negara yang mempunyai pesakit Covid-19 yang tinggi seperti China, Korea Selatan, Itali, Jepun, Perancis, Jerman, Spain, Amerika Syarikat, Singapura dan Hongkong.

Negara kita Malaysia dikira bertuah kerana pesakit yang dijangkiti tidak seramai negara-negara tadi, dan juga kes-kes tersebut kebanyakannya sudah dapat dipulihkan. Alhamdulillah.

Kementerian Kesihatan kita juga melarang untuk ke negara-negara yang berisiko tinggi tersebut. Negara-negara tersebut digambarkan dalam keadaan panik. Topeng mulut dan tisu banyak kehabisan stok. Jika sesiapa yang baru pulang dari negara-negara yang berisiko, pihak majikan menyuruh agar pekerja mereka dikuarantin dahulu sebelum datang bekerja di pejabat.

Banyak lagi info-info tentang Covid-19 Coronavirus di laman sesawang CoronaTracker.com, dan laman tersebut hanya memaparkan berita yang telah disahkan oleh ahli profesional mereka.

Kisah-kisah kuarantin orang ramai, yang bermula di kota Wuhan, dilaporkan virus tersebut dari market penjualan makanan eksotik. Kalau tidak silap, haiwan kelawar. Saya fikir ia sememangnya bala dari Tuhan, kepada segenap manusia, asbab oleh segelintir manusia yang suka makan makanan yang dilarang oleh Tuhan. Ya Allah ampunkan lah dosa-dosa kami.

Bandar yang gilang-gemilang diwartakan sebagai kawasan larangan. Penduduk-penduduk disuruh agar berada di rumah masing-masing. Jadi akan berlaku impak ekonomi yang tidak baik dan penggunaan teknologi ICT yang meningkat.

Ekonomi

Banyak sektor ekonomi terjejas disebabkan oleh virus ini.

Bermula dari perlancongan, kurangnya orang mahu pergi ke tempat luar. Hotel-hotel kurang tempahan. Lalu keuntungan merudum, cash-flow berkurang, dan pekerja-pekerja tidak dapat dibayar gaji. Pekerja mungkin kehilangan pekerjaan.

Sektor pembuatan juga begitu, disebabkan pekerja tidak dapat hadir disebabkan dikuarantin, operasi pembuatan tidak dapat berjalan. Ia mengakibatkan kesan domino kepada pembuatan yang lain yang memerlukan sumber bahan lain. Akhirnya produk akhir kepada konsumer tidak dapat juga dihasilkan.

Sektor perdagangan dan events banyak dibatalkan. Ini adalah sebab kerisauan oleh semua, kerana kita tidak tahu siapa yang dijangkiti virus turut serta dalam events.

ICT

Dalam hal yang lain, industri ICT juga tidak kurang terjejas apabila beberapa events berkaitan dengan ICT terpaksa dibatalkan.

Namun, kepenggunaan ICT dalam kehidupan kita dapat membantu lebih-lebih lagi dalam tempoh kita berdepan dengan isu Coronavirus ini.

Selain dapat berhibur melalui ICT, ia memberikan rakyat cara untuk berkomunikasi dengan lebih mudah dengan adanya smartphone dan mobile apps. Video call yang boleh digunakan menjadikan perhubungan lebih erat walaupun tidak berjumpa sebenar. Ia dapat mengelakan isu jangkitan kerana virus tidak merebak melalui alatan ICT.

Ya, tidak syak lagi, dengan menggunakan ICT dapat mengelakan jangkitan virus walaupun untuk kekal berhubung antara manusia dengan manusia.

Pesakit boleh video call doktor untuk mendapatkan khidmat nasihat.

Pekerja dapat melakukan kerja dari rumah, tanpa bertemu langsung dengan rakan sekerja dan majikan dengan menggunakan teknologi chatting Telegram, Slack dan sebagainya dalam komputer mahupun telefon pintar.

Ringkasan

Akhir kalam, wabak ini adalah kes antarabangsa, walaupun tidak terkena banyak di negara kita, kita masih harus berhati-hati, ambil langkah berjaga-jaga dalam pembasmian virus. Banyakan berdoa dan berusaha agar kita dilindungi oleh Yang Maha Pencipta. Semoga titik tolak usaha kita semua dan pihak berwajib dapat meredakan wabak ini dalam anggaran tahun ini.

UX Design Sprinting

I had chance to conducting a short UX Design Sprint at ••W Industries for their new mobile app which will integrated with current app for 'on-demand'-like system and mobile apps. 

There are about 10+ people participated, from few different departments: technical, marketing, call center and higher ups. 

The techniques of my UX Design Sprint is having :

- Using paper to be fold for 4 or 8 small screens.
- As the facilitator Process flow by the end-users's standpoint.


Here are take away from the session:
- At first, I have explained why we will doing the activity: based on the Goldilock principle it’s to use shortest time to get ‘good enough’ information or specs. 
- UX is not always about how beautiful the user interface design but rather the usability. Just draw simple shapes like rectangle or circle then add on some text for explanation are okay.
- ‘together alone’ way to note down ideas then share with the facilitator. The facilitator will take note from the unique ideas from participants. The result was the participants were engaging to give their solutions based on their own experience.

So currently we will bring the noted, sketches, process flow into a solid wireframe ( + design ) for next review.

Learning More about Business

The premise of business at first is giving a solution to a problem faced by a human. In return, we are getting paid by providing a solution.

And to run business we also need humans to provide the solution.

However in business there is two worlds: making money and managing money. The sides of making money are: marketing, sales, operation. While managing money are: admin, HR and finance.

There are 6 types of people needed to run a sustainable business.

It's not simple for one person can do all types of works. But with technologies we can delegate those types to technology. Or take some courses to understand the fundamental inside the business management.

Tech Stack for 2020

Tech Stack is something that a person or a company can offer for development.

Right now I am not open into all kind of tech stack that we can serve.

For Business Case:

Mobile App:

• React Native
• iOS (Swift/Objective-C)
• Flutter

Web App:

• Laravel/PHP
• ReactJS
• Bootstrap
• SCSS

A New 2020, A New Decade

Hey guys, it's 2020, and it look and sound awesome. And it's a year that start yet another decade for our life.

First of all, let pay a grateful to Allah for giving us a chance to live in this world. We human are not eternal, and all the live we have and the belongings are rezq from Allah. Let's be grateful, always :)

2020 in my perspective it's a whole decade for me as in Information Technology (IT) industry. 10 years in the industry gave me some the basic training ground to get started in this industry.

To be honest this industry is never been growing this much, and the demand is expected to grow.

For those who want to learn IT / Computer Science / AI, I highly recommend that.

Overall Business Improvement

I am honestly looking forward to bring my business to the next step.

As using the technology as the base. As I am the software engineer. Not only I should think about the tech, I need to do research on the demands and market.

I need make things that can give value to the world. At the same time, I am also have the problem, so that I am solving my own interesting problems, with passion, and also solving other's people problems too.

Innovative & Futuristic 

Innovative things that should I make so that it can be picked up by people and people can amazed with how clever the new solution could be.

I should not just creating the hype but really can help people, with some twist. Hey, that should be the business, part of the marketing, which is at first make people recognize you. Let people know you, then like you, then love you, then become your raving fan.

Back to Basic

Prior 10 years's stint in the industry, I have been an avid fan of tech. Like doing HTML we since I was teenager ( maybe at 13-year-old at that time ) to build a website. Back-then of course I was using some of WYSIWYG tool like FrontPage and Dreamweaver. Those things are short-cut to develop web.

Yes I was into the web things. And then landed into PHP & Flash world.

But then I jumped into mobile app development for a quite long time like 5--7 years now. The first app I build was 'Calc Drill' in 2009 on iPhone 3G. I published the app on 2010, it was picked up in Japanese market because Japanese people like to train their calculation strength.

Now the trend and the business shall going first to the web.

Web technologies nowadays is super cool, I feel it's like an app.

With the core web technology, I have been started servicing clients for Laravel web development since 2019 and will keep continue.

I can say, for business, web is not only become the backbone to support their online presence on the web, but also serve as the backend for mobile app as well.

And the web can be more dynamic and interactive, yet easy to make changes, make the webapp deployed almost at no time, I can also say web is so much important to utilize and master it.

For starter my stack for web development is Laravel/PHP + ReactJS + jQuery + SCSS.

Building an awesome web app has never been this dynamic and better developer experience.

Let's Move Forward

Thinking for the future is what we do everyday. Innovation by the big companies come at the rapid pace. We have to adapt it. The world is very interconnected and with internet everything is at the search result.

So as business owner, utilizing the tech is key for your competitive advantages.

We really want to help business owner to grow their business in 40% by utilizing mobile app and cloud system.

We have the result from Bateriku.com which they improve their sales by using mobile apps to get quick order from customers.

We hope to move forward together as a tech partner.

< /2019 >

👋🏻 

So 2019 has come to the end let’s reflect what iReka Soft has done during this year of 2019. 

Let’s list down some projects we have done (aka active revenue). 

1. UX design, hi-fi wireframe. 

2. Marketing app. React Native, Laravel, React, Pusher, real-time chat, Push Notifications. 

3. AR viewing asset loads from the server. Swift, ARKit. 

4. Front end consultation. React native development. 

5. Laravel + react marketing website. 

6. Publishing Unity apps with Vuforia. AR App. 

7. Judge at school

8. Update Google’s Maps SDK. Publishing iOS IoT app. 

9. Webapp hi-fi wireframe. 

10. React native app update to support 64-bit and API handling update. 

11. Laravel webapp with react, design sprint, wireframe, webapp. 

12. Design sprint webapp / system in logistic. Hi-fi wireframe. 

This year is the return of the investment made from last year on 4 things: systematic wireframing, React Native development, leads to Laravel + React, and also deploying to VPS properly with git.

I would like to say thank you to all of our clients. The services hopefully gave a meaningful value to the clients.

Ok, let’s talk about passive revenue. You have to maintain at least yearly to make the apps relevant to the App Store. You know with the new iOS and what not. 

1. Apple App Store, app purchase & in-app purchase. 

2. Google AdMob. Advertising. 

A month Away to 2020

Hello Readers, It's Already December 2019, and it's a month away to 2020.

2020 is poised to be a futuristic year for Malaysia to become a developed nation as 'Wawasan 2020' goes.

And here we are. To be honest nothing has changed so much. But... for the last decade we can see the technological changes to our society. And especilly with the advent of our phone, now become a smartphone, and the things and services that we can use to excelerate or at least help our live better.

10 years ago, in 2009, I was in Japan, while studying Computer Science in Tokyo University of Technology. So at that time I was also celebrating 2010 also in Japan. I just want to reminessance how much changed of 2010 in Japan and now 2019 (moving forwards to 2020) in Malaysia in technological perspective.

Japan is so called highly technological place, where people are, very highly-class minded, where always thinking forward. They just want things get better. And their works ethic are at the absolute best as worker, to produce best things and best customer support. Thus make their economy turns up. They are details oriented, leads to high quality products. And people like that is quite a lot. They like to do quality works, and also deserved quality goods as well.

Things like good-sense, leads to good work. It's their want to have a good sense of the product, and work hard for it. I think it came from good inspiration and good environment. When people get motivated with good quality things, they will also want to product good quality thing as well.

Compared to here Malaysia, we will produce with the inspiration what we had exposed so far. With the help of the internet, we can learn a lot from outside of our country.

And, what I realized is that not many people in Malaysia is going on the nitty gritty of the technology. Poeple would talk about the A-B-C-D things (the cutting-edge technologies) but usually don't goes deep in to learn that so much. 'Business' people who will use the terms to get some projects or grants, and then find some technical people to execute it, but most of the time the technical people would not being compensate as much as business people. This thing can decrease the motivation for many people to become more technical and more business.

While it's not wrong doing the business, which is about the management, finance, HR, admin and so on. In fact, it's quite important, when you are on the business, and want to sustain and grow it. It's rather to be quite important, trust me, and learn more about it.

However, for those who are technical at heart would like to tinker more about the technology. Well this is also depends on how deep the level technical people want to tinker. Maybe in general, more deep, or super deep. This will determind what kind of product that can be produce, or how innovative the products can be. Surely, understanding things can leads innovation.

So back to the comparing 2010 and 2020 ( soon ), in terms of mobile internet, Japan has long time using mobile internet, in 2010 it's already mainstream, with Japanese old-school feature phone. Nowadays it's all iPhone, or Android phone. Japanese uses QR code a lot in 2010, to access mobile site. Now it's become mainstream also in Malaysia, just about everywhere can find QR code.

And also we have a multitude services based on the smartphone apps. Also leads to wannabes.

On this thing, quality apps and good services win. Take look at Grab & foodpanda, those apps that I started used this year. They are reliable, make things done.

The technological advancement for those apps are not the simple, to make it just work in any given time. And the apps is evolved by weekly basis. It's a living apps, it's on improvment and evolving eversince as the business is keep growing rapidly.

I cannot overstate, that we need to maintain the technologies event after we have launched to the public, the services has to be updated in monthly or yearly manner. Man.... 2019 was so fast. But I would say that 2019 is the best year yet so far for our business.

This is because we have open up the other posibilities in our services: websystem devleopment & depoloyment. We can make custome backend sevices to our client. And coupled with mobile apps make the services even better user experience by bringing it to your palm of your hand.

Yes, the possibilities is endless, and we will keep striving in this mobile technological area.

Thanks,
Hijazi