Convergent technology

Convergent technology

I read in your Sunday edition, March 18, page 12, a report by
Sri Ramadani titled ANteve begins airing 'Boleh Contest', which
wrongly said the program organized by bolehmail.com was the first
program in Indonesia to combine television and the Internet,
allowing viewers to communicate with participants via email.
Perhaps The Jakarta Post, which usually is strong in tracking
local developments in technology, did not have an adequate
opportunity to do its research carefully before reporting this,
and hence I am obliged to provide the Post with some relevant
information that will give your readers an accurate and correct
perspective on what is really meant by the term "combining
multiple media" for providing content, and how the industry is
really developing in Indonesia today.

Our company Kemana (www.kemana.com), in association with PT
Jaring Data Interaktif, is actually the first company in
Indonesia to innovatively use television, Internet and print
media for its music program KeNada Workshop bersama Gilang
Ramadhan. This is a two-hour program on Quick Channel that
interviews famous musicians on techniques for playing music.

Viewers can log on to a chatroom at
http://kenadaonline.com/workshop and communicate live with the
host and the guest musician while the show is on. In addition to
this, Internet users can view the television program on their PCs
via streaming video, as well as browse information relevant to
the program. This is a true example of combining the Internet and
television, and not just sending email to participants, which no
doubt is a significant improvement over existing practices but a
primitive way of utilizing convergent technologies.

This weekly program was first aired on Dec. 16, 2000, and then
every Saturday starting on Feb. 3, 2001, from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m.
The program is ongoing, scheduled for the next six months,
featuring over 22 famous musicians and several other bands and
artists.

Readers wishing to learn more about media convergent
technology can see this program during the week via several
reruns on Quick Channel and I-Music Channel, available on
Indovision and KabelVision or on their PCs, with, of course, a
broadband Internet connection. As proof of the uniqueness of this
program format, several leading music industry companies in
Indonesia are already supporting this venture.

I hope this information proves useful to your technology savvy
readers, who no doubt will be extremely pleased and proud to know
that there are Indonesian companies today working very hard to
successfully develop cutting-edge convergent programming. I
believe that such concepts are still on the drawing boards of
even world giants of convergent technology such as AOL Time
Warner.

SACHIN GOPALAN

Technical Adviser

PT Jasa Cita

Jakarta