drewkam

What? Exactly.

Most of you may have heard of a website named friendsreunited which I think helped spawn a growth in reuniting not just friends, but also long lost relatives etc. Well, another bunch of smart arse professionals decided to do a family tree website. Well, what’s so interesting about it? Check it out at www.geni.com.

Normally I wouldn’t even take a look - but I am really impressed with how they have implemented the interface and the simplicity of it all. A little dissapointing they didn’t decide to go with AJAX (they have implemented the tree view with Flash), but still an incredibly usable and slick interface.

Who’s knows - you could be related to me!!

Back from London and fresh from a nice break, work took me to a meeting with one of Thailand’s largest banks - Kasikorn Bank (formerly known as Thai Farmers Bank).

Now, the state of Internet technology is still in its infancy - and someone apparently compared Thailand to the USA in terms of advancement in Internet technology and development, with Thailand being at the very least 5 years behind the US.

Well, coming from UK - its apparently that the Internet service here is much to be desired. Read a popular ex-pat forum such as adslthailand.com’s English forum and you’ll see a lot of complaining. A lot.

Only recently has there been a drive by corporates to try and pry themselves out of the monopoly of CAT telecom, the body that controls the International gateway for Thailand. And unfortunately, a government run body. Hence inadequate International bandwidth and poor service levels. Recently, True Corp - sick and tired of CAT, has decided to make use of its newly acquired IIG type-2 license (this license allows leasing of international bandwidth from foreign operators) and has challenged CAT by opening its own international gateway (read more at the Bangkok Post).

Digressing enough, its back to the bank. Sitting through an hour presentation of how to perform electronic payments through their system, it is not unlike payment gateways such as Authorize.net or PayPal. But the part that got me was that the user was still taken to a page hosted by the bank to enter the credit card information. Normally, this is an option. But, the fact it wasn’t was rather backwards to me - and really hit home how far we have to go yet in this country. Even the variable options and interface didn’t match what Authorize.net or PayPal had to offer - and this bank has money, lots of it!

At work I am really trying to push my developers to produce more advance and complex work. But the skills gap is still huge, and I’m really finding it difficult to find people who really understands or appreciate what the web is all about. I spend my time teaching these concepts and trying to enthuse my developers with exciting new technology (perhaps not new technology e.g. Web 2.0 - it really is a mash-up of existing tech) and hoping they’ll catch the bug and read sites like alistpart.com or techcrunch.com in order to keep themselves up-to-date. The problem is, there’s very little material in Thai language with this kind of news - and their english just is not up to par.

I really do hope there are individuals in Thailand who are just as interested, and just as exciting about a fast moving medium such as the web - and catch this bus before it leaves us behind. If not, I think I’m gonna have to open my own web school! netdesign is a school is Thailand - and they to be honest, just do not cut the mustard in my mind.

What have you experienced in Thailand or other countries?