“Déjà vu, from French, literally “already seen”, is the phenomenon of having the strong sensation that an event or experience currently being experienced has been experienced in the past, whether it has actually happened or not” – Wikipedia.

It’s the basic form of something I’d like to call “mindfuck”, where you brain gives you the impression that you’ve been there before, of you’ve seen this before, where it’s actually incorrect. It’s actually a form of a mild brand disorder which is kind of scary.

It’s not a form of prophecy, but rather that it is an anomaly of memory, giving the false impression that an experience is “being recalled”. It’s our brain messing with our memory placement.

I’ve always thought that I have that kind of superpower because I get déjà vu like 3 times every month. I always think that my brain has the power to predict the future, although according to the latest research apparently I might have a disorder.

What am I trying to say? Nothing really.

As we all know, the mobile app industry is so big they actually created a whole new industry and segment called “The App Economy”. The market ecosystem simply consists of platform owners, developers and of course the users. Tens of millions of apps has been submitted to the marketplace, millions of them are now ready to be download by users, but only a fracture got the chance to survive. And a big part of this is the platform owner’s fault.

App marketplace have three main task: curation, distribution and discovery. They curate and filter the apps in order to kick the bad apps from the marketplace and make sure users feel safe downloading these apps. Some marketplace like Apple’s App Store is very strongly controlled with high standards, while some marketplace such as Google Play is more loosely filtered.

Distribution-wise, I think all platform owners are trying very hard to sell devices and get their platform to more users.

But nowadays, all marketplace have the same problem in which only the app developers can see: discovery. For the past few months, a lot of developers are trying hard to get their app featured on the marketplace’s frontpage using their personal connection to the platform owners, some even don’t mind paying to get under the spotlight.

Their objective is to get their app to be featured on the frontpage of the marketplace. They can always use other methods to promote their apps outside of the marketplace, but that means that the marketplace is not doing one of its main job. Nobody’s going to go as deep as the 10th page on the search result to find cool apps, they look on the frontpage and MAYBE the 2nd and 3rd page. It’s different if the user knows exactly what they’re looking for, they can always search and find the app.

This situation is similar to Hollywood’s film industry, where a movie is counting on the earnings on the first weekend of premiere. It’s “Make it or break it” game. Of course there’s always an exception, but generally speaking, if an app doesn’t get enough downloads in the first month or so since they launched, they are done. And not necessarily because their app suck, in some cases they just don’t get enough people discover their app.

From the platform owner’s side, of course it’s hard to promote all the hundreds of apps under their platform but whoever can crack the code and give developers the same fighting chance as another can gain the support from developers. In this game, it’s better to have hundreds of developers making hundreds of thousands of dollars, rather than 5 developers making millions of dollars.

An interesting social media phenomenon just happened this morning. Started with Detik.com, a prominent online news portal, published a news about shark fin being a good business. This news triggers the reactive society of Indonesia going ballsy furious, as they think the news about shark fin being a good business will get more people to go on a killing spree for shark fins.

Now, I totally agree with all those points of save sharks and all, but what happened next was totally uncalled for.

A group of influential people on Twitter started tweeting about the news being insensitive and that the news should be taken down before it attracts new businesses hunting for shark fins. One of Detik’s executive, who also happens to be on Twitter, Budiono Darsono received thousands of tweets mentioning him, begging him to take down the shark fin piece.

To my surprise, they took down the piece.

Now, I love sharks and all. Well, maybe not really, but I agree that shark hunting needs to stop. But it’s important to note that the people who started the movement to take down that shark fin post, is the same group of people that complained when the government decided to block websites (mostly porns and other illegal contents). The same group of people that rage against government censorship is applying the same censorship force for their own agenda.

Regardless how noble that agenda may be.

It would be elegant if the group of influential community go against that shark fin piece with blog posts, educate the society intellectually instead of pushing Detik to take down the post. Blog post against blog posts. This will also educate the Internet society about “Freedom of Information” and “Freedom of Speech”. People can say what they want, if you don’t like it, you can say a counter-argument intellectually.

That’s how modern society works, my beloved Indonesia.

One of the issue that takes place everywhere in the world. It’s a clear sign for economic inequality, it is most common use is as a synopsis of a socialist criticism of capitalism, implying the inevitability of what Karl Marx called the Law of Increasing Poverty.

One way to see it, is that the poor people no matter how hard they work will still be under the rich people doing their dirty work.

But I’ve found another way to see it based on my experience talking to the very people who said those words constantly.

What I’ve found, is that most poor people are used to what they have and subconsciously refuse to upgrade their life. They don’t want to leave their comfort zone (no matter how dis-comfort it actually is) in order to learn something new.

The concept of learning something new and working hard is tough for some people, and surprisingly rich people already have that knowledge and passes it to their children. This is the essence of most problem behind the saying.

Of course I don’t want to generalise, some poor people worked their asses off and manage to live a better life they earned. And some rich people are probably working even harder than anyone else.

I hate to be poetic and all, but it just suck that after years of good experience using Paypal, I finally have to deal with credit card fraud on the platform.

Tonight, I woke up in the middle of the night and check my email (I do that, pretty often) and found 3 receipts via email from Paypal that I found very suspicious. It was a receipt for purchasing SMS Bomber, a Wifi account somewhere in the states and a $5 wire transfer to someone.

Now, I’m not the kind of guy that shops around that much, pretty sure my password is strong (been keeping them secret, too), also pretty sure I never click any spam, linkbaits or something like that, so these transactions were getting to my nerves because they were unauthorized.

It’s just a shame that my experience has to be tainted with this kind of issue, and now I have to hold back before using my Paypal account again. I guess.

This is not the end of it.

The very best startup ideas tend to have three things in common: they’re something the founders themselves want, that they themselves can build, and that few others realize are worth doing. Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo, Google, and Facebook all began this way.

If you think the whole iOS vs Android vs Windows Phone war is overrated, then you are in for a treat. Finland-based company Jolla recently launched its new mobile Meego-based OS called Sailfish OS and so far it’s looking GREAT.

The Nokia spin-off is solidifying its strategy of focusing on China first. The alliance around its mobile OS will be based in Hong Kong and take in major industry players from chipset vendors and OEMs to retailers and operators.

Okay I have to admit, that title is pretty lame.

But what I’m trying to say is, today is me and my wife’s first anniversary. This day, one year ago we took a vow to love each other until death do us part. This day, one year ago we promised to take care each other until we’re old. This day, we have an amazing son that just turned 3 months.

I can’t be more grateful with my new life, and so far, it’s been an amazing ride. I love you Puspa, looking forward to be with you for the rest of our lives.