Krisdayanti joins famous people by building her personal website
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that is no longer maintained but that remains available for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,