Lisa Siregar

Domikado Labs is the first in offering local content for BlackBerry users in Indonesia, which includes stock data and news. (Photo: Lisa Siregar, JG)

Give Your BlackBerry a Local Touch

Checking movie schedules can now be done at a touch of a button by BlackBerry users in Indonesia — all thanks to Domikado.

The recently launched BlackBerry application, created by local developer Domikado Labs, allows subscribers to access some handy content — including real-time stock exchange data, news headlines, clubbing and restaurant information, the latest sports scores and Twitter trending topics — at absolutely no cost to them.

The Domikado application brings in news headlines from media sources like The New York Times, Reuters, Antara News and the Jakarta Globe in 12 categories, from National News, to the Economy, to the Arts. The headlines link readers to the full stories.

According to Ronald Ishak, president director of Domikado Labs, the initial idea was to allow traders to access Domikado via their BlackBerrys and have access to real-time market data.

“We wanted to offer a different approach for traders to stay online, which is by using their cellphones,” he said.

Ronald majored in Information Management in the United States. Despite being offered a job at MySpace, the popular US social networking site, he opted to return to Jakarta.

Ciptadana, a local online trading company, asked Ronald to help them build a Web site to provide information about online trading. The Domikado application is part of the Web site’s development project.

Domikado’s news and entertainment content further added to the application’s appeal, making it popular not only with traders, but with other BlackBerry users as well.

Domikado is the name of a popular children’s game in Indonesia, but this was not the reason why Ronald used the name.

“Domikado is actually my old, unused Web site for music sharing, which I used to run back in my college years,” he said.

When the team had finished the application and needed a space for it online, Ronald decided to resuscitate his old domain.

The Domikado application was first launched through the BlackBerry messenger service, local mailing lists and social microblogging site Twitter on Aug. 20 at dusk. The message was rapidly passed and re-posted. By midnight, Ronald had received a phone call, saying that Domikado already had 5,000 users.

“We didn’t know it would be this big,” said Ronald, who had only thought they’d get hundreds of people to use it. That night, the team had to transfer its server to a US-based cloud computing server system, anticipating a crash. The system costs them $400 per month.

Within a week of the launch, more than 30,000 Blackberry users had downloaded the application.

Ronald said that this was because Domikado has no competitor in running an application with localized content. “It’s a part of the market that has not been touched,” he said.

The only other local application for BlackBerry users in Indonesia is XL Malls, which allows one to buy ringtones, themes and wallpaper.

Domikado Labs is Indonesia’s first program developer to have obtained a license from the BlackBerry Alliance. Getting the license was a bit tricky, Ronald said.

They had been waiting for Research In Motion, the producer of BlackBerry phones, to respond to their request for a license. “Then I met the guys from RIM at their first BlackBerry Developer Conference back in October in San Francisco, and I told them about my request, and that’s when they started to pay attention,” Ronald said.

Creating an application for BlackBerry is quite complicated, Ronald said, especially when compared to Apple’s iPhone.

“With iPhone, it’s so easy because Apple has created Mac as the system,” Ronald said.

BlackBerry’s local popularity was what prompted Ronald to go ahead and create an application.

“Even I converted to BlackBerry [only] after a while,” Ronald said. He previously used an iPhone and is a fan of Apple.

Ronald and his team are getting ready to launch Twitter Client, which will let users post updates, and geo-location, which will enable access to a digital map of the city and provide them with information and contacts.

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