Krisdayanti joins famous people by building her personal website

By Mila Day

JAKARTA (JP): She sings well, dresses elegantly and also knows how to act. Krisdayanti is probably an Indonesian 21st century icon. And yes, she is on the Net, too, with her "still-under- construction" personal website. Check out www.krisdayanti.com if you are curious.

Often, a site with a domain name that uses one's own name, personal site for short, is sometimes not established by the owner of the name. It could be established by a fan or a group of fans. The beautiful Malaysian singer Siti Nurhaliza, for example, has a site (www.sitinurhaliza.net) established by a geek fan.

The site www.leary.com was constructed by young people who had met or adored the deceased Timothy Leary. He was the fascinating ex-Harvard lecturer who wrote Chaos and Cyberculture and whose ashes were scattered in outer space.

The site www.leary.com was picked as the Net's Best Site in 1996. By that time, there were not so many marvelous web designs: no sound, no video and no Flash technology. Flash, by Macromedia (www.macromedia.com for a free software download), creates animated vector-based websites.

Speaking of Flash technology, there is one local personal site supported by Flash: a site set up by techno-fiend media mogul Peter F. Gontha (www.gontha.com).

Okay, Krisdayanti and Siti Nurhaliza are pretty. Leary was a guru who envisioned cyberspace far before the Internet hype took root in the 1990s. If a businessman as great as Peter Fritz Gontha establishes his personal site with amazing vision, does this mean that he really keeps track of new technology in all media?

To find the answer, I logged onto www.gontha.com. With the so- called sophisticated Flash technology, I had to stare at a very long and boring "loading" tag. After that, I registered in out of curiosity. Unfortunately, nothing happened when I logged in again after registration. Ah, this is either a ghost site, a website that is no longer maintained but that remains available for viewing, or the owner just wants to keep the domain name. No vision yet.

Get a domain name

There are two ways to get a personal site. You can purchase a domain name (see www.netsol.com), or you can join a provider of free space, (e.g. www.geocities.com). Gontha's site takes the first route. Many recreational users take the second.

Joining the second group, I used to have one at www.xoom.com before www.NBCi.com bought xoom.com. Soon afterward, there were none. By the way, it was really fun designing, typing and posting it. For someone like me -- who cannot sing beautifully or envision the Net radically -- I needed to give an intro of who I was. I pasted up a picture of myself. I also mentioned what I liked and did not like.

I really felt great about it until one day a friend of mine stopped by my site. He was a computer nerd who lived in San Francisco, USA. He said, "It's too naive". I didn't understand at the time. As I found out more about Internet security and privacy, I began to understand. I was just too naive to type my real name, age and address. This could be critical.

Back when there was only a small number of people logging onto the Net, online crime and information abuse was zilch. Today, even a college student like Steven Haryanto can say "nothing personal" explaining his dubious sites (e.g. www.kilkbca.com, www.klikbac.com, and so forth) that snared customers who mistyped Bank Central Asia (BCA)'s web address www.klikbca.com. The crime stops there though: he did not take advantage of people who mistakenly typed in their passwords. BCA accepted an apology before the matter was sent to court.

Madonna has fought for her domain name in court. The last time I logged in, her site www.madonna.com was a retired or invisible site (one which doesn't exist anymore and results in a "not found" message when you type the address). Her domain name is her trademark. She has, of course, many bodyguards to protect her privacy.

Personal sites

You may want to look around for personal sites in your leisure time. There are millions of other personal sites you can look at besides the ones I mentioned above. Log in to www.yahoo.com and click "members" to view some. Or click geocities, which is owned by yahoo, for a browse. You may want to check out some other search engines, too.

Alternatively, you can randomly type in anyone's name with .com or .net, for example www.miladay.com, which is not mine. Sometimes, typing a name may lead to a different site than the one I expected to find. I typed www.clinton.com to find out more about Bill Clinton, yet I found a registered investment advisor firm.

If you are interested in having your own personal site, please consider some rules. Rule No. 1: know how to design well and efficiently. Let the visitors enjoy it page by page. A bit of knowledge about web technology is Rule No. 2. Actually you can upload anything with a simple program like Microsoft Word. Last of all, Rule No. 3: beware of what and how to reveal information about yourself on the web. See but not touch. Touch but ... keep it for yourself. It can be a cruel cyberworld out there.

Famous sites

Local: www.gontha.com (Peter F. Gontha), tya.iscool.net (Tya Subiakto), www.krisdayanti.com, www.anggun.com (Anggun C. Sasmi), www.peggymelatisukma.com,

Overseas: www.rupertmurdoch.com, www.leary.com (Timothy Leary), www.tlc.com, www.sitinurhaliza.net,