ICT NEWS

Apple iOS, Google Android new device activations skyrocket

2011-12-29T20:15:00.000+07:00

Google says 3.7 million Android devices activated last weekend

Activations of new iOS and Android devices soared on Christmas Day, jumping by 142% over the same day last year, a Web metrics company said.

Meanwhile, Google's head of mobile claimed that 3.7 million new Android smartphones and tablets had been activated last weekend.

According to Flurry, which provides metrics services to app developers, total activations of new iOS and Android devices reached 6.8 million on Sunday, Christmas Day. That was 142% above the previous one-day record of 2.8 million activations on Dec. 25, 2010, and a 353% increase over the average of 1.5 million activations daily between Dec. 1 and Dec. 20, 2011.

Not surprisingly, Flurry attributed the massive jump in iOS -- iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch -- and Android phone and tablet activations to holiday gift giving.

In a Tuesday blog post, Flurry said that its metrics services -- used by more than 140,000 iOS and Android apps -- "detects roughly 100% of all new iOS and Android devices activated each day."

Google added to the activation number discussion today.

"There were 3.7M Android devices activated on 12/24 and 12/25," said Andy Rubin, senior vice president of mobile at the Mountain View, Calif.-based company, in a tweet early Wednesday.

Rubin's timespan of both days last weekend -- Christmas Eve as well as Christmas Day -- differed from Flurry's Dec. 25-only period.

Earlier this month, Rubin claimed that more than 700,000 Android devices were being activated daily, up from approximately 300,000 devices each day in December 2010.

Apple does not discuss activation numbers for iOS devices, although some mobile carriers do. Last October, for example, AT&T said it had activated 2.7 million iPhones in the quarter that ended Sept. 30, 2011, or about 29,300 per day.

Last year, Apple sold 16.2 million iPhones in the fourth quarter, and 7.3 millioniPads. However, most analysts are betting that Apple will nearly double the iPhone number this year, and sell more than 12 million iPads during the period.

Computerworld -

IT managers are aloof, insular, says psychologist

2011-12-29T20:09:00.000+07:00

If they changed their ways, IT managers could have enormous impact on their organizations

IT managers and their staffs are different from the rest of us.

They view the world in terms of "us against them" and see others in an organization as pests or threats to their IT universe, says Billie Blair, who holds a doctorate in organizational psychology and heads Change Strategist Inc., a Los Angeles-based management consulting firm.

Organizational psychologists have an understanding of management and psychology. They use that knowledge to help firms and organizations understand behaviors that can impinge on the ability to implement required changes, said Blair.
Blair also has the perspective of having once overseen an IT department as a former dean of the College of Psychology and Human Services at California State University.
Blair looks at the performance of an entire organization, including IT, and draws observations from that work.

IT managers see themselves as "reigning supreme," says Blair, but they are also capable of having a dramatic impact. In an interview with Computerworld, she outlines various personnel and organizational issues facing IT executives.

Are IT managers different from other managers in an organization? IT managers are different than managers in the other parts of the organization, for the most part. They tend to adopt a persona of aloofness. They are different from the operations and sales folks. They feel themselves to be odd men out to start with, and they are. They perform a specific service that the organization can't do without.

What makes IT managers different? Is it the type of job or the characteristics of the people it attracts? It is a little bit of both. It is the type of job, and clearly people choose their professions based on their proclivities, interests and natural inclinations. It's the same thing with CFOs, or people in the financial accounting arena. In IT's case, it is a love of things technical and they are typically very good at it. Mostly, in these days, people in those positions have been told since childhood that they were gifted in all things technical. They feel very comfortable in what they do. They have chosen their job because they like it a lot. I would tend to say that they love it. Technical jobs are an engagement with things rather than people, for the most part, and it's that engagement with things which is what got them to the management level. Now, as managers, they have to deal in a whole new arena. With IT managers, within their group, their cadre of other IT folks, it's pretty much an 'us versus them' approach. We are the gurus and the knowledgeable people and those other people are the ones that are always making demands and keeping us from doing our real jobs.

Do IT managers feel under siege? There are always demands. It's sort of useful to look at the IT manager in the university setting. In the university, they are aloof because they know their area. But in the university setting there are lots of people that enter into that category, but still IT folks maintain a persona of aloofness. This is in a setting where everybody is a specialist and everybody has that giant ego. For the most part, they (IT professionals) get away with it. This sounds like I don't like IT people - I actually really do and certainly respect their knowledge and ability. But it's their attitude that gets them in trouble in organizational settings. It is (an attitude) that they know it all, and that everybody else is a fool, and all that everybody else does is just mess up their systems.

Do IT professionals have a problem explaining what it is that they bring to the business? For the most part, they don't try to explain very much. That's part of their problem. They just want people to bow to them as they come into the room. They are not talented in dealing with people. They don't understand that in doing that they are generally being very off-putting to the person they are dealing with. It's a matter of learning how to be part of an organization. Every time they are dealing with the rest of us they have very little patience.

Outside of the IT department, how are IT managers and their departments perceived? They are seen as difficult to get along with. The phrase you will hear most often is 'difficult to get anything out of' and that means, typically, services.

It sounds as if a lot of people try to avoid IT departments. True? Yes. They would if they could. That's absolutely correct.

Isn't that detrimental to the business and the IT department? It is detrimental to everybody actually because the IT folks have a lot to give. They have a tremendous amount of knowledge and they can solve problems. They have a lot of capability but most of that is hidden from the public (others in the company). They do themselves such a disservice by not engaging. Other workers in the organization generally don't know their capabilities because they never allow them to be seen.

If you are someone who has to deal with the IT department, how do you get them off their high horse and deal with you as an equal? When I had the clout of a dean, I could force them off their high horse. In a university setting, deans carry a lot of clout. They knew what their (IT workers) bounds were in having to engage and being more reasonable. For the other part, when (IT and non- IT) employees are interacting, the best approach is to engage personally and try to learn about their interest, their family and set up a relationship. Unfortunately, because of the boundaries that are set up by IT folks, that takes more of an effort.

How do IT managers perceive themselves? They don't get many people engaging with them at all. Because they don't see any evidence to the contrary, they typically view themselves as reigning supreme in any organization.

What does it mean to 'reign supreme'? It means whatever you say is gospel, and whatever you say that needs to be done is carried out by whomever, your superiors and your subordinates. There aren't many hurdles to what you want to do and what you expect to do.

If IT managers have an Achilles' heel, what is it? They isolate and insulate themselves from any outside world, the outside world being the rest of the organization, and they form these cadres where they are true to one another. That's what brings them down every time; if they are brought down, it's the arrogance combined with insularity.

Do CIOs have the same characteristics of IT managers? No, they don't. They probably once, very long ago, started out that way, but anyone operating at the c-level has to be very agreeable with the CEO in order to stay in that elite group. C-level folks, who typically have been in their careers longer than IT managers, have learned a lot along the way. They have learned to deal very well with people and they have also learned to listen and adapt to what they hear.

Can't CIOs smooth out and mitigate some of the worst behaviors of IT workers? Yes. Whether they do or not is part of the reason we're in organizations. CIOs do have that responsibility, but it takes more work on people who are not keen on developing great people skills and see it as a badge of honor or courage when they don't. CIOs must make their choices, whether to spend a lot of time developing their people for the human side of things, or devote their time to being the advisor on things technical to the corporation itself.

Is the CIO treated by lower level IT managers as one of the 'others' in the organization? Yes, it's sort of like the one who has gone over to the dark side.

IT is under constant pressure to move to lower cost platforms, which puts some under threat of job loss. How does the human impact of a platform shift play in an IT manager's decision making? If the men and women in IT can get out of their 'us against them' mentality, they can manage to overcome that particular threat. The IT manager is going to protect his team of folks. It will likely make them (IT managers) initially more reluctant to embrace those shifts, cloud computing being one. More often than not the CIO will go to bat for his people to try to retain them.

Is that any different than other department in that respect? Yes and no. All departments form affiliations, and that's what I'm describing and that's why there is resistance to changes in the IT area, but the IT department forms stronger affiliations. If you have any knowledge of the Marine Corps and their esprit de corps, it's that sort of thing translated into the corporate world. And that's a standard deviation different from the esprit de corps among typical employees and their departments.

If you were to suggest a 12-step program to help IT managers change their behavior, what would be included? IT managers are generally very bright people and in order to make any behavioral change, the individual has to understand why that change is needed and has to want it to happen. Because IT folks are numbers, technically driven people, we lay out the data for them. It could be any of the management assessments that look at, in very real terms, the anonymous feedback that's given on their performance as managers. We often start that way and we ask them to react to that very real data, and we begin to slowly work through the engagement process where the person comes to want to do something differently.

Would that assessment data show IT managers that they are seen as aloof? Yes, or something like that. When one is dealing with a person who has great capability, very real great capabilities, and believes in those capabilities, they are going to have an ego that supports that. We have to present a realistic view of the person, not to destroy them but to cause them to take pause in what they are doing.

What kind of reactions do you see after presenting the data to IT managers? First, it is usually anger, and often anger at us, and disbelief. But then we continue to talk. We try to do it in a technical way. They are always engaged, as I say, by data. We try to have, as well, performance data about the organization in and of itself and where it is trying to go. We sort of engage and come to an understanding that we are all in this together. When we talked about the arrogance and insularity (of IT managers) what that really means is that they are not a team player necessarily. When I talk about them not being a team player, it sort of sounds as if they haven't done anything at all to support the organization, and I certainly don't mean that at all. They do. But as far as really allowing the organization to work in its very best way, they have to become a team player.

What are the characteristics of an ideal IT manager? It's the same as for any other manager. The person is perceptive. They are willing to hear what others have to say. They are willing to be a participant in the goals of the organization.

IT managers are technically astute, smart, and aren't intimidated by statistics or raw data. If people with these attributes do become fully participating members of an organization, a business, what impact could they have?

Dramatic. Absolutely dramatic. Think in terms of Steve Jobs and the things he was able to do in his company. The IT folks have the capability of doing similar things and making similar kinds of contributions in their companies. So much of their life is hidden under a bushel because they don't discuss things, they don't divulge what they know, and the innovation that comes from that process doesn't happen, therefore, in the organization.

Computerworld

Web designing service: higher demand, new tendencies

2011-12-29T20:05:00.000+07:00

The demand for web designing has been increasing rapidly, especially from small and medium enterprises, since businesses now think that they need eye-catching websites with friendly interfaces which can help them boost e-commerce and popularize their products.

Demand up

Tran Chi Han, Director of Nhat Tien Trade and Service Company which specializes in trading car lamps, said that he has hired to re-design the company’s website. Han feels satisfactory with the new website which has a more friendly interface which allows customers to more easily search for the company’s products and allows administrators to more easily manage the information. Especially, the website now also allows people to place online orders and make online payment.

According to Lam Quang Vinh, General Director of Vina Design, the demand for web design from enterprises, especially from small and medium ones, has increased by 50 percent in comparison with the same period of the last year.

“Businesses now understand that they need to have the websites with eye-catching interfaces and attractive content in order to attract customers. This has made the web design market become more bustling,” Vinh said.

Huynh Ngoc Duy, Director of Mat Bao Media Company, said that the number of customers that Mat Bao Media got in the period from August to October of 2011 increased by 20 percent in comparison with three months before.

A survey conducted by the E-commerce Agency under the Ministry of Industry and Trade showed that in 2010, more than 40 percent of businesses got turnover from their e-commerce websites, while a half of which said they made investment to develop e-commerce applications.

60 percent of polled businesses said they believe the turnover would increase thanks to the e-commerce. In order to increase the capability of approaching to the market, more than 40 percent of businesses have set up their own websites, while 15 percent have e-marketing activities.

The survey also pointed out that 21 percent of businesses plan to build up their websites in the future, an increase of 24 percent over the same period of 2009.

Tendency changes

According to Vinh, there are some big changes in the requirements for web designing.

In previous years, businesses wanted to have beautiful websites, i.e. they paid more attention to the appearance. However, they seem to be more practical now. Besides the aesthetic requirements, businesses nowadays pay attention to the sale efficiency that the websites can bring, and the e-marketing efficiency.

According to businesses, a friendly website needs to satisfy three requirements: friendly to users, friendly with search tools and friendly to web administrators.

Meanwhile, according to Duy, there are two kinds of businesses that have the demand for web designing. The first one includes the businesses which need to have “good faces” on Internet to introduce about their companies, products and services. These businesses still do not make investment on online sale. TH second group includes the businesses which want to sell goods through Internet and they have invested heavily on e-commerce.

“Last year, in every 10 new websites, three ones had e-commerce features such as baskets and payment portals. Meanwhile, this year, the ratio is 5/10, i.e. that there are 5 e-commerce websites in every 10 websites, an increase of 70 percent,” Duy said.

Vinh said that the biggest difficulty that Vina Design usually meets is that clients do not understand their purposes and targets themselves. Therefore, web designers have to give consultancy to businesses.

Meanwhile, clients just want to have the websites which they can use to popularize the products of the companies, while they do not pay much attention to update the information on the websites. This has partially been attributed to the fact that the companies still cannot see the big benefits the websites can bring, or they still do not have officers in charge of taking care for the websites.

Source: TBKTSG

Microsoft's So.cl project isn't aiming to rival Facebook

2011-12-17T07:57:00.002+07:00

Microsoft Research's So.cl social network project

(Credit: Microsoft; screenshot by Jay Greene/CNET)

Microsoft finally disclosed what its rumored So.cl project is, and it's not a Facebook killer after all.

The site, details of which leaked last month, is designed to give students the ability to network with their peers to share information, "transforming the web and social networks into the new classroom," according to a post on the Microsoft Research Web site.

The project, which comes from Microsoft Research, is specifically designed for university students, and not intended to compete broadly with consumer social networks such as Facebook.

"So.cl has been designed for students studying social media to extend their educational experience and rethink how they learn and communicate," according to the Microsoft Research post.

So.cl (pronounced "social") is an "experimental research project," according to the post, that the company is making available to students in information and design schools at the University of Washington, Syracuse University, and New York University. It plans to expand the program over time.

It's unclear from the post, and articles from GeekWire and ZDNet , why students would gravitate to So.cl rather than existing social networks, or why they'd limit their use of the new social network to work and play at their universities.

cnet

Windows 8 aims to take pain out of managing passwords

2011-12-17T07:56:00.002+07:00

Juggling passwords for all the Web sites and accounts we use is a neverending challenge, but one that Microsoft hopes to resolve in Windows 8.

Protecting yourself on the Internet typically requires the use of passwords. But that process has never been easy or truly safe. Most people either try to remember too many passwords or simply use the same passwords for all their accounts. Both approaches leave the door open for hackers to access your personal information.

What's needed is a simpler yet still secure approach.

In the latest edition of the Building Windows 8 blog, Dustin Ingalls, a group program manager on Microsoft's security and identity team, explains how both Windows 8 and Internet Explorer 10 will try to adopt that simpler yet secure approach.

The upcoming new version of IE will let users store and access the account names and passwords for all of the Web sites and many of the applications they use. You can choose to have IE10 securely house your credentials and then automatically retrieve them when you visit a password-protected site.

The new Metro-style apps can also tap into the same feature since developers will be able to design their apps with the ability to store and retrieve user names and passwords.

As a result, you can set up a complex password for each online account without having to remember it.Further, as explained in a previous blog, Windows 8 will allow users to log in with theirWindows Live IDs across multiple PCs. Doing so will let you synchronize the same settings and other data from one PC to another. This includes the ability to sync your login credentials to all of your Windows 8 PCs, ensuring that your passwords stay consistent on any PC you choose.

"When you store credentials in conjunction with signing in to Windows with your Windows Live ID, Windows enables you to set your password for each account to something that is both complex and unique; since Windows 8 will automatically submit the credential on your behalf, you'll never need to remember it yourself. If you need to see the actual password at some point later, you can view it in the credential manager from any of your Trusted PCs." Ingalls explained.

The new Windows 8 Credential Manager will help you store and retreive your Web site passwords.

(Credit: Microsoft)

Windows 7 already offers a Credential Manager through which you can store usernames and passwords, but it looks like the version destined for Windows 8 should provide greater functionality and hopefully ease of use.

Of course, the option to allow Windows 8 and Internet 10 to manage your passwords will be totally voluntary. Users not comfortable with this approach can simply choose not to use it. And there are alternatives.

Password managers such as RoboForm and LastPass already let you generate, store, and access complex passwords for all your online accounts. To be fully secure, all you need to remember is one single master password to launch the software.

But Microsoft is also looking beyond passwords by offering better support for certificates, smart cards, and other alternatives in Windows 8.

Though securing your online accounts will probably never be 100 percent easy or foolproof, it's good to see Microsoft at least paying greater attention to this never-ending challenge.

iPhone, iPad processor made by Samsung in Texas, report says

2011-12-17T07:55:00.000+07:00

Steve Jobs talks up the A5 processor at an Apple event in March.

(Credit: Apple)

The processor running in the iPhone 4S and iPad 2 is being produced in Texas, a new report claims.

According to Reuters, citing sources, Samsung is producing the Apple A5 processor at a new 1.6-million-square-foot factory in Austin. The facility, which went into full production earlier this month, cost Samsung $3.6 billion. Although the facility doesn't only produce Apple's processors, Reuters' sources say, "nearly all of the output" comes from the A5.

Samsung's Apple-branded A5 is a system-on-a-chip (SoC), featuring a processor, graphics, and system memory.

Reuters' finding is rather interesting when one considers that the majority of components in Apple's iPhone and iPad are fabricated and assembled overseas. Currently, South Korea and China are key areas in Apple's supply chain, and it has long been believed that the U.S. was not.

But there's more to this story than simply location. Apple and Samsung are bitter rivals in the mobile market, and are currently waging legal battles around the world. Samsung argues that Apple's iPhone 4S violates patents it holds, while Apple has said that the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, as well as the company's smartphone line, copy its own products.

So far, Samsung and Apple have been able to keep their concerns about alleged patent infringement away from their supply partnership. But earlier this year, reports surfaced saying the iPhone maker was looking elsewhere to strike deals. A report in June said Apple was possibly considering jumping ship to chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, though neither company confirmed that claim at the time.Furthermore, it appears the companies aren't looking to end that battle anytime soon, even though so far, neither company appears to be getting a leg up over the other. Over the last several months, Apple has won a few judgements, only to see those victories overturned soon after.

Now, though, there is speculation that Apple and Samsung will team up on the Apple A6 processor rumored to be coming to the next iPhone and iPad.

"Apple has been in talks with Samsung over shipment of its A6 quad-core mobile processor chips to be used in the next iPhone," an executive from an Apple parts supplier in Korea told The Korea Times on condition of anonymity in October. "It appears that Apple clearly has concluded that Samsung remains a critical business partner. Samsung Electronics will apply its advanced 28-nanometer processing technology to produce qualified A6 mobile APs."

Neither Apple nor Samsung immediately responded to CNET's request for comment on their future supply plans together.

Software Engineer

2011-12-17T07:53:00.002+07:00

Software Engineer - CGI Technologies & Solutions Inc. -
Fairfax, VA (& various unanticipated locations nationwide)

Write, develop, test & maintain customized computer programs based on client requirements. Provide IT tech services support throughout software dev life cycle. In handling multiple requests from clients, write tech design documents & troubleshoot tech issues. Design & develop customized software units. Convert client requests into tech specifications for development teams to create flowcharts for coding into computer languages. Perform testing & propose solutions to resolve identified defects. Support Explanation of Benefits applications integrated w/ health insurance applications. Create seamless implementation of web systems intranet & internet w/ IBM Genelcos Life Support Plus & Health Benefit Management System utilizing base insurance systems & .Net applications. Incorporate best practices on security driven applications to prohibit access to PHI & PII info. Conduct end-to-end processing of new business applications, insurance websites & explanation of benefits w/in health & life insurance application in compliance w/ HIPAA & SOX standards.

Must have bachelors degree or equiv in Comp Science, Comp Info Systems or related + 3 yrs exp in IT technical services including handling multiple requests from clients & converting requests into tech specifications for development teams. Exp must include conducting end-to-end processing of new business applications, insurance websites, & explanation of benefits w/in a health & life insurance application in compliance w/ HIPAA & SOX standards. Employer will accept single degree or combo of degrees, diplomas &/or professional exp equiv to a bachelors degree. Any suitable combination of education, training or experience is acceptable.

40 hrs/week, 9:00AM-5:00PM, Salary: $83,762/yr. Normal company benefits. Must have proof of legal authority to work in the U.S. Submit resumes to:

Recruitment and Employment Office
CGI TECHNOLOGIES AND SOLUTIONS INC.
Attn: Job Ref #: CGI53685
P.O. Box 56625
Atlanta, GA 30303

SOPA meets strident opposition at House hearing

2011-12-17T07:48:00.000+07:00

Computerworld - A controversial bill to prevent online piracy by rogue foreign sites appears poised to pass the House Judiciary Committee despite strident opposition from some lawmakers.

At a sometimes contentious hearing held Thursday to mark up the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), several lawmakers expressed concern over the speed with which the proposed legislation is being pushed through the House.

Several called on Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, (R-Va.), to schedule a hearing for experts who could testify on the security and technical ramifications of the proposed legislation; others wanted more time to digest recent amendments.

There was little indication that either of those requests were likely to to be entertained. And proposal after proposal to amend the bill to make it more palatable to opponents were shot down, raising the possibility that it will go to the full House soon.

Committee members met into the evening to discuss proposed amendments after a request to adjourn failed on a voice vote.

The SOPA bill has been at the center of a raging controversy since it was introduced earlier this year by Smith, along with John Conyers, (D-Mich.), Bob Goodlatte, (R-Va.), Howard Berman (D-Calif.) and several other lawmakers.

The measure would give U.S. law enforcement authorities, as well as copyright and IP owners, more tools to go after foreign websites dedicated to copyright infringement, IP theft and counterfeiting.

The original version contained provisions that would have given copyright and IP owners the right to ask online advertising networks and payment service providers such as MasterCard and PayPal to cut off services to allegedly infringing sites. An amended version introduced Wednesday now requires content and IP owners to get a court order before they pursue such action.

However, several other controversial provisions remain largely intact. One is a provision that would let the government ask ISPs to use DNS blocking, filtering and other "feasible and reasonable" methods to cut off access to foreign infringing websites from the U.S. It would also let the government order search engine companies such as Google to disable links to infringing sites in search engine results.

Supporters of the bill insist such measures are needed to counter the theft of hundreds of billions of dollars worth of IP and content annually by websites outside the reach of U.S. law. The have repeatedly said that SOPA is solely focused on the most egregious foreign websites.

"All we are trying to do is to stop online piracy," said Conyers during today's hearing. "What could be the motive behind people or organizations that don't think stopping online piracy" is important, he said.

"If somebody thinks a bill of this magnitude will get stalled because we will get tired..., (they) have got it wrong," he said.

Goodlatte said that SOPA would address a "gaping loophole" that allows piracy; he vowed to press on, as well.

Critics contend that the bill could lead to an Internet censorship regime where content and IP owners would have inordinate power to shut down not just rogue foreign sites, but U.S. sites, too.

They argue that any website hosting user-generated content, such as a YouTube or a Flickr, would be vulnerable to SOPA's provisions.

Currently, the Digital Millennium Copy Right Act (DMCA) allows content holders to ask sites like YouTube to take down infringing content. But the sites themselves have a Safe Harbor from prosecution.

SOPA critics contend the law would let content owners do an end run around those protections.

Jared Polis, (D-Colo.), warned that the search engine suppression and DNS blocking provisions built into SOPA would "Balkanize" the Internet.

Rep. Dan Lungren, (R-Calif.), expressed concern over the uncertain security implications of such measures and suggested the committee should hear from Internet security experts before moving ahead.

"Why is there this rush to judgment?" Lungren asked. "Why can't we slow down and take a look."

Lungren insisted that his call for testimony from experts was not an effort to stop the bill but to simply better understand its technical and security implications.

Rep. Zoe Lofgren, (D-Calif.), said it would be "preposterous" to ignore the serious technical and security concerns that have been raised about SOPA by some of the Internet's leading scientists and architects.

Rep. Darrell Issa, (R-Calif.), one of the most vocal opponents of the bill, insisted that SOPA as written is not ready for prime time and insisted that several changes need to be made to make it more acceptable.

He dismissed suggestions that the bill is aimed only at foreign sites and called SOPA "a domestic bill lock, stock and barrel."

Vietnamobile commercializes 3G service

2011-12-17T07:45:00.002+07:00

Vietnamobile on Tuesday became the country’s final mobile operator to commercialize the third generation (3G) network service, in the context that it is now left with only half of the license to deploy the service.

Vietnamobile will provide 3G services at a transmission speed of 21.6 Mbps, including web browsing, online television, video phone call, and video blogging, allowing users to upload their video clips on the web hosting of Vietnamobile at http://3g.vietnamobile.com.vn.

Unlike other 3G service providers, Vietnamobile applies the same prices and SIM card for both cell phones and USB devices. Therefore, customers can choose to use 2G or 3G on their own discretion.

During the beginning period, the network operator will focus on developing 3G services in big cities like HCMC, Danang and Hanoi.

Although being the last mobile service provider to join the 3G market, Vietnamobile’s 3G services has an advantage to compete fairly with its rapid transmission speed of 21.6 Mbps, the fastest speed on the market so far, said CEO Elizabete Fong of Vietnamobile. In addition, the low and economical service costs would contribute to the success of Vietnamobile’s 3G.

Fong said the local telecom market had currently seen the competition rising among seven network providers sharing the same market. Still, there is more room for 3G to develop further thanks to the rapid growth of mobile internet service and rising spending on 3G.

Regarding the concern how Vietnamobile would develop 3G when its joint-venture partner EVN Telecom for 3G is to be transferred to the military run Viettel next year, Fong said Vietnamobile has formed a competition formula for 3G based on transmission speed, convenience and reasonable prices.

“Regarding the joint-venture 3G license between Vietnamobile and EVN Telecom, we are still pending the final decision of the Government. In the coming time, Vietnamobile will operate normally,” Fong said.

Vietnamobile was established by a joint-venture between Hanoi Telecom Company and the Hong Kong-based telecom firm Hutchison. The network now has 11 million subscribers after switching from CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) to GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) technology in 2009.

Earlier in November, Hanoi Telecom submitted a document to the Government and related agencies seeking approval to take over the money-losing EVN Telecom, which had earlier been planned for merging into Viettel.

Hanoi Telecom offered to acquire the 3G devices and infrastructure at the same financial value invested by EVN Telecom. As for the strategic fiber-optic infrastructure and other telecom infrastructures, Hanoi Telecom said such facilities should be more efficiently utilized by other telecom corporations.

Thus far, the Government has yet to come to a final decision on transferring the 3G devices and infrastructure of EVN Telecom to Vietnamobile.

VIR

After a month, Siri finds her voice

2011-11-27T18:21:00.000+07:00

The arrival of voice technology that works marks an inflection point in computing

After a month of using Siri, the new voice-controlled "personal assistant" available on the iPhone 4S, I've decided it may be time to add voice control to the list of paradigm-shifting ways to interact with a computer -- right behind the mouse, keyboard and, more recently, touch gestures. While voice control remains far from perfect, the ease of use and instant results Siri delivers may be just enough to shift people's habits. It's certainly changed mine.

Controlling computers using voice commands has been a promised fantasy for years. Though various companies have tried, none has delivered something easy, convenient, or reliable enough to work well for most users. Apple's Mac OS has had voice commands built in since the mid-1990s, and I recall Windows booths at CompUSA staffed by Dragon Dictation engineers wearing awkward headsets, as OS/2 Warp gathered dust on the shelves.

In fact, most phones have been able to do voice-controlled contact and number dialing since before the arrival of smartphones. Despite widespread availability, voice control never gained traction because the effort required to get it to work right wasn't worth it for most people. Voice control -- from the old Speakable Items in Mac OS to the method of dialing contacts on older cell phones -- always required specific phrasing that sounded more like a command than natural speech.

"Dial 5-5-5-5-5-5-1-2-3-4" -- enunciating each word and number -- is a lot harder to do on a regular basis than to simply say "Call mom."

How Siri is different

Siri changes things in much the same way the original Mac changed computing for many people. Before the Mac arrived in 1984, most computers required specific text commands to be entered into terminals. The combination of the mouse and the graphic user interface not only forever changed the direction of those who built and designed computers; it also opened up computing to a new batch of users. Similarly, touch-screen devices were available long before the first iPhone arrived in 2007, but it was the iPhone's hardware and software combo that changed expectations of what a next-generation phone should be like -- and opened the door to the iPad three years later. How you connect with technology matters, whether it's by GUI, touch or voice. And new ways of interacting with technology can pique the interest of people who have avoided it in the past.

This is what makes Siri different -- and better -- than earlier voice technology. With Siri, the syntax -- that is, the way you phrase an inquiry -- doesn't always have to be exact. For the most part, when you make a request for information, dictate an email or issue a command, the technology behind Siri parses out what is meant and responds accordingly. As noted, most phones understand a "dial" command followed by a string of numbers, but Siri knows exactly what to do when told to "create a reminder for every Thursday morning at 7:08 to take out the trash."

That doesn't mean that Siri reads minds. When it listens to a sentence, the response is triggered by certain keywords or variations of what is meant. While the artificial intelligence behind Siri is better than previous voice command technology, there are times when specific syntax is still important. "Send a message to my sister telling her to call me later" will result in a text message to my sister that reads: "Call me later." Impressive, right? But saying "Show me upcoming birthdays" will cause Siri to respond, "Sorry, I don't understand 'Show me upcoming birthdays' " (with the option to search the Web). But if I phrase the query this way -- "Show me birthday appointments" -- then the proper information from Calendars will be retrieved and shown.

Siri uses natural language to understand what you're asking, and responds in kind.

In other words, there are still times when you have to adapt to Siri rather than the other way around. (It's also why the technology is still technically beta.)

Even though the use of specific syntax is essential sometimes -- for instance, if you want to tell Siri to specifically search Google, Bing, Yahoo or Wiki -- the need for it has been minimized. More importantly, Siri currently recognizes enough commands to lower the bar of entry to entice users that may have given up on good speech recognition. I know it has enticed me.

Personality goes a long way

But Siri goes beyond answering questions or pulling up results. Siri will respond with questions in some cases to help refine your query, and it'll walk you through dictating emails and text messages. Even more endearing is that Siri has a bit of personality. For instance, "Open the pod bay doors" is a popular command that numerous iPhone 4S users have tried -- and posted about online. (Anyone familiar with the movie 2001, A Space Odyssey will understand the reference.) Siri's answers vary from "sigh" to a slow, drawn-out imitation of HAL, quickly followed by a sarcastic "Are you happy now?"

During my initial testing of Siri right after I got my iPhone 4S, I wanted to know the exact date for the upcoming Friday, so I asked Siri, and Siri told me. I followed up, "When is Halloween?" Siri responded, "Halloween is on Monday, October 31, 2011. I sure hope I get the day off." It was enough for me to do a double-take; and I haven't been able to duplicate that response since.

Siri can tell you what airplanes are in the sky above you in real-time.

Pop culture references, smart aleck remarks, and sometimes unintentionally funny responses create an emotional, visceral connection with the device; you never quite know what answer you're going to get. It helps humanize the technology further and subtly encourages you to keep asking questions and interacting with Siri. As Samuel L. Jackson said in Pulp Fiction, personality goes a long way. The seeming randomness of Siri will get people to use it, but it's not just for fun.

In the past month, I've used my voice to create a wide variety of reminders, notes, appointments, emails, and text messages. I've used my voice to look up word definitions, check traffic, and find the location of my friends. Since I spend a lot of time driving in my car, the ability to do this by simply speaking out loud is a big deal. Ideas that I couldn't write down in the moment are easily transcribed by tapping my hands-free unit and starting with "Note to self"; things I need to do or items I need to buy are quickly added to my Shit lists ("Siri, add this to my To Do -- or To Buy or To Fix -- list, thanks"). In the past month, I have used reminders, timers, calendars and messages more than I did during the entire summer I spent working with the dev builds of iOS 5, and I'm convinced that once people are more aware of Siri, they will, too.

Why? Siri is effective and simple. Tapping out letters and words -- which requires unlocking the phone, navigating to an app, launching the app, oftentimes hitting a + button to add a new note or reminder, then typing -- suddenly seems like a waste of time. With Siri, completing tasks has essentially been reduced to thinking out loud.

Some of the things Siri can do are as fascinating as some of the things it can't. For instance, I can tell Siri, "Remind me to call Mom when I get home," thereby creating, in effect, a "geo-fence" around my home location using the built-in GPS. I'll get an alert upon arrival at the house. But I can't tell Siri to decrease the brightness of the display or to toggle bluetooth on or off. (There's a tip guide built in so you don't have to guess too often about what Siri is capable of.)

More work needed

Although Siri easily crosses the bar set by earlier voice command software, there's obviously still work to be done; voice interaction and the technology behind it are very much a work in progress. Siri's voice recognition is handled by Dragon -- still at it, after all these years -- and the noise-canceling technology built into modern gadgets means clunky headsets are increasingly optional. But any ability to control a device by voice alone is only as good as the ability to transcribe the voice accurately. Siri's software can still be thrown off by regional accents, slang, and excessive background noise.

More annoyingly, Siri requires an active network connection to work -- even for tasks local to the phone. As most AT&T subscribers can attest, this just isn't possible at all times. Even if you have a connection, Apple's servers -- which process the commands -- have to be up and running as well, and they've already had brief outages. There's nothing more annoying than the sudden fail of technology you've grown to rely on.

Despite existing shortcomings, the crazy-good part about Siri is that this is just the beginning. How quaint the software that powered the original iPhone now looks, four years in. Imagine how quaint Siri 1.0 will seem four years from now. Like the hardware and software that hosts it, Siri will only become better with time.

Tell Siri you're hungry and you'll a list of nearby restaurants.

Any technology hoping to gain mass appeal has to be good enough to change the thought process from "Why are you using that?" to "Why aren't you using that?" In essence, it has to offer a continuing "wow" moment that starts a feedback loop of sorts. You try Siri and find that it generally works well enough to keep trying it. You find that it's not just useful, but fun, which encourages more experimentation. And that helps the technology behind it "learn" how users are using it, thus allowing engineers to make it better and, in turn, encourage even more use.

Like any good paradigm-shifting technology, Siri removes layers that have, until now, prevented many people from interacting with the wealth of information available at their fingertips. Its arrival marks another turning point in how we integrate technology (and information) into our daily lives.

On a lark, I told Siri, "You're pretty cool technology, Siri."

The response: "Am I? I'd like to be."

computerword.com

Vietnam still facing too many difficulties with digital signature

2011-11-27T18:16:00.000+07:00

Nearly two years after the Public Certificate Authority Services (CA) were put into use, the systems have shown the lack of connectivity. Meanwhile, Vietnamese digital certificates have not been recognized in the world.

Agribank said that it is connecting customs agencies by using CA service provided by the Vietnam Post and Telecommunication Group (VNPT) – VNPT-CA. Meanwhile, the A individual, who makes transactions at the bank, is using Viettel-CA. When A needs to pay tax to customs agencies, A’s files are transferred to the bank which cannot be directly sent to the customs agency, because the customs agency now cannot verify the certificate provided by Viettel-CA.

Problems still exist

This is one of the big obstacles that hinder the application of digital signature in public administrative agencies, enterprises and among people, which could serve as the lever to create a market for service providers to develop.

To date, 5/6 enterprises have provided services, while it is expected that 12 enterprises would be licensed to operate in the market.

However, after two years of utilizing digital signature, all can see that there must be a mechanism which ensures the interaction of the services.

According to service providers, the biggest problem now is that there are not many state agencies which provide electronic public services and use public digital signatures.

To date, the services have been mostly provided to taxation and customs agencies. However, the systems of the two sectors prove to be incompatible, which has caused big difficulties in operation. Meanwhile, businesses still have worries about the security of digital signatures, fearing that the signatures can be forged.

Especially, the legal framework still does not have necessary provisions on the issues. For example, no legal document clearly stipulates if the digital signature of businesses is equivalent to the stamp or the signature of the representative.

All that reasons explain why businesses still do not intend to use digital signatures, even though they well understand that this will help cut down expenses and shorten procedures.

According to Phung Huy Tam, Card Technology Deputy Director of Nacencomm, the most popular service package has the service maintenance fee of 1 million dong per annum and 500,000 dong for the device that makes personal digital signature on average. Most businesses use digital signature once a month to pay tax via Internet, which is really a big waste.

Meanwhile, service providers complain that the initial marketing expenses are really big, while the number of public services using digital signature remains modest. Therefore, they said they face big challenges in their investments.

The General Department of Taxation (GDT) is the first organization that utilizes digital signature in tax declaration. By October 2011, nearly 50,000 businesses had been granted digital certificates and it had received 500,000 tax declarations via Internet.

It is expected that by 2012, the number of businesses using that service would rise to 80,000, while by 2012, at least 50 percent of businesses declare tax via Internet. The figures show the big opportunities for service providers.

Vietnamese CAs facing challenges

In 2010, Intel became the first foreign investor whose digital signature was accepted in Vietnam (the CA service provider was the US VeriSign) for making e-customs declaration. This was the first exception case in Vietnam.

In principle, the digital signatures of foreign businesses will only be accepted when their service providers get the operation licenses in Vietnam. However, in order to create favorable conditions to the investor, the government accepted to grant a special mechanism to Intel.

The case can shows the problems of the digital signature service in Vietnam.

Meanwhile, Vietnamese CA service providers complain that they are facing many barriers, because Vietnamese digital signatures still have not been recognized in the world.

The problem is that in order to be recognized, Vietnamese service providers need to satisfy a lot of requirements, while they seem to be not ready enough for these.

Source: SGTT

Developing human resources for nuclear power sector

2011-11-12T14:14:00.000+07:00

Training human resources for the nuclear power sector will be the top priority in Vietnam’s National Nuclear Power Programme until 2020, says Deputy Minister of Science and Technology Le Dinh Tien.

Tien made the statement at an international seminar on human resource development for nuclear power programmes and nuclear knowledge management, which was held in Hanoi by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the MOST’s Vietnam Atomic Energy Agency (VAEA). He also emphasized that Vietnam will pursue its nuclear power program with the highest level of safety.

The seminar is part of a joint project “Development of a National Nuclear Infrastructure” between IAEA and VAEA.

According to Yanko Yanev, head of IAEA’s Nuclear Knowledge Management program, in order to have qualified human resources, it is necessary for Vietnam to introduce preferential policies for talented people.

Yanev also proposed that the country train highly skilled workers to ensure the safe and effective operation of future nuclear power plants.

Nuclear knowledge management in projects, organizations, or nations is an integrated approach applied for the construction, establishment, and operation of a nuclear power plant, he said, adding that such management directly affects the human resources, technology, management approach, document management system, and the strategy of a company or a nation.

The VND3 trillion project on training and developing human resources for the atomic power sector is aimed at improving the quality of human resources in the field, consequently meeting development demand and ensuring the safe application of atomic power in various socio-economic areas.

Under the project, a national steering committee on developing human resources for the atomic power sector has been established and a memorandum of understanding on setting up an information centre, sponsored by Russia’s Atomic Energy Corporation ROSATOM, has been signed.

VNA

Inner-network call package war anticipated

2011-11-12T14:12:00.002+07:00

Undercurrent waves have been raised on the telecom market. Telcos rush to offer big preferences for inner-network call packages in order to attract more subscribers.

Right after Beeline’s “billionaire package” finishes on October 31, VinaPhone, one of the three biggest mobile network operators in Vietnam, launched the “10 minute call” package with attractive preferences, applied to all VinaPhone’s MobiFone’s and VNPT’s fixed line subscribers.

A representative of VinaPhone revealed that the launching of the service package aims to retain subscribers.

The “Beeline’s effect”

The “billionaire package” and the super-cheap mobile phones launched into the market by Beeline in the period between September and October, proves to be the biggest wave on the mobile telecom market so far this year.

The promotion campaign activated by Beeline once drew the special attention from the public, and Beeline’s services have become the choice of many families and offices.

Hoang Hai Yen, an officer of a media company in Dong Da district in Hanoi, said that she has bought 120 Beeline super-cheap mobile phones and simcards for all the members of the company and her family members. Previously, officers of the company used services of different mobile network operators, while they now only use Beeline’s services.

The works of a media company require the staff to communicate with each other regularly. Yen said that in the past, she had to spend 300,000 dong a month on call charges. But now she has to pay 20,000 dong only.

“It is clear that the Beeline’s package is much cheaper than that of other network operators,” she said.

Yen has also purchased 5 Beeline’s mobile phones for her family, saying that since the mobile phones were put into use, the mobile phones using Viettel’s or MobiFone’s services have been put idle.

In general, when mobile network operators launch super cheap packages in sale promotion campaigns, they mostly target general school and university students, while the preferences are only applied for a certain short time. Therefore, when promotion campaigns finish, people would leave the network operators for others and shift to use other more attractive packages.

However, Beeline applied a special policy for its sale promotion campaign. It offered “super-cheap” fees to the subscribers with the subscription prefixes of 0993 and 0995 for a long period of 10 years. By doing so, Beeline not only can attract new more users, but also retain clients for at least 10 years.

It is clear that the package has changed the habit of using mobile phones for communication and has created “Beeline offices”. It is very likely that the clients using the “billionaire package” would become a loyal subscriber of Beeline, if the quality of Beeline’s services is okay.

The war in inner-network call packages begins

Like Beeline, Vietnamobile is considered one of the small mobile networks in Vietnam. The biggest success of the network operator is the launching of Maxi Talk package into the market which has helped attract a big number of subscribers.

Maxi Talk of Vietnamobile allows people to talk all the day long with just 5000 dong. Maxi Talk, the backbone of Vietnamobile got the title “the most excellent package of 2010” granted by the Ministry of Information and Communication.

According to Elibabete Fong, General Director of Vietnamobile, thanks to Maxi Talk, after one year, the mobile network operator has attracted millions more subscribers, who are students and office workers. By January 2011, the network had attracted 10 million subscribers.

Meanwhile, Beeline’s number of subscribers has increased by nearly 400 percent just after 1.5 months after it launched the billionaire package.

Experts believe that inner-network calls will bring more opportunities to small network operators, while they do not have advantages in inter-network calls, because it still depends on connection fee policies applied by different network operators.

Source: TBKTVN

Anonymous again says it will not attack Facebook on Saturday

2011-11-06T21:54:00.001+07:00

The hacker group has previously denied being involved in a plan to knock the social networking site offline

Facebook will not be targeted by Anonymous on Saturday, the hacking group said in one of its Twitter accounts, again distancing itself from a threat that has gotten broad publicity since it surfaced several months ago.

"We told you many times ddosing Facebook was a fake operation," reads a message posted on Friday in the group's AnonOps Twitter account.

The threat to "destroy" Facebook on Nov. 5 via a DDOS (distributed denial of service) attack originated with a video posted on YouTube in mid-July.

However, the plan was never announced in Anonymous' Twitter feeds nor on its blog, anonops.blogspot.com.

On Aug. 10 the group said on Twitter that it wasn't involved in planning a Facebook attack.

"WE DONT 'KILL' THE MESSENGER. THAT'S NOT OUR STYLE," reads that post on the group's AnonOps Twitter account.

In a statement released on Friday, Anonymous said the initiative against Facebook was led by an individual acting on his own, according to a Cnet report.

This man was warned to stop promoting the attack as an Anonymous action but he pressed on, so as retaliation Anonymous has released his name and contact information, including a phone number, according to the Cnet article.
computerworld.com.au

Vietnam seeks Japanese aid for nuclear power projects

2011-11-06T21:51:00.002+07:00

Minister of Science and Technology Nguyen Quan met with Japanese Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) Masaharu Nakagawa in Tokyo on October 31.

Minister Quan, who accompanied Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung on his current visit to Japan, highly valued MEXT’s assistance in promoting joint research activities. He proposed the Japanese Ministry continue providing assistance for Vietnam to implement nuclear power projects for peaceful purposes.

Mr Quan thanked the Japanese side for its aid in building a space center in Hoa Lac High Tech Park, and hoped that both countries will strengthen cooperation in research and application of space technology, especially satellites.

The Vietnamese Minister also pledged to support joint research activities between universities of both countries, and create a network of Vietnamese and Japanese scientists to implement research projects of mutual interest.

Meanwhile, in his meeting with Kazuo Watanabe, Japanese Foreign Ministry ambassador for science and technology, Minister Quan expressed his satisfaction with the fine development of the two countries’ strategic partnership, particularly in atomic energy and space technology.

Mr Quan also asked the Japanese side to provide further support for developing the infrastructure of Hoa Lac High Tech Park.

During a working session with the Japan Nuclear Energy Safety Organization (JNES), Minister Quan called for the organization’s help in training Vietnamese engineers and experts who will operate future nuclear power plants in the country.

VNA

Lenovo's third quarter profit grew 88 percent

2011-11-02T18:39:00.002+07:00

Lenovo's profit for the third quarter nearly doubled year on year as the company continued its fast-paced growth, beating Dell to become the world's second-largest PC vendor.

For the quarter ending Sept. 30, Lenovo reported profit of US$144 million, up 88 percent from the $77 million in the same period a year ago. Revenue in the quarter was $7.78 billion, an increase of 35 percent year on year.

Lenovo's PC market share in the quarter reached 13.5 percent, surpassing Dell, according to research firm Gartner. In the second quarter, Lenovo took the third spot, ahead of Acer.

Despite global PC sales slumping due to weak spending and rising demand for tablets, Lenovo has continued to post double-digit growth in shipments for the last quarters, making it the fastest-growing PC vendor among the top five companies.

Lenovo has credited this to protecting its home turf in China, which in the second quarter exceeded the U.S. in PC shipments and sales. Lenovo leads in China with a 31.5 percent market share, according to the company.

Lenovo has also been targeting emerging markets. Lenovo's Russian and Indian business have reported fast growth, with their market share growing in both nations by more than 3 percentage points for the last quarter.

In mature markets including the U.S., consumer spending has been weak, said Lenovo CEO Yang Yuanqing during a conference call on Wednesday. "But in emerging markets including China, we believe it will continue to keep double digit year on year growth," he said. "We are very confident we will continue to outgrow the market."

Along with PCs, Lenovo has also been seeking a larger share of the tablet and smartphone market. In the last quarter, Lenovo's smartphone shipments grew by 335 percent year over year, much of the growth driven by the company's LePhone A60 handset sold in China. Lenovo has also risen to become the second-largest tablet vendor in China, with an 8.4 percent market share, according to the company.

Lenovo plans to create tablets and smartphones for the high, middle and low-end markets in China, Yang said. Lenovo sold 160,000 tablets in China in the last quarter, almost double sales in the previous quarter, he said.

Lenovo also announced on Wednesday that its chairman, Liu Chuanzhi, will step down from. Liu, the founder of Lenovo, will focus on his work with the company's parent Legend Holdings, which invests in different industries.

computerword.com.au

B2B trading floors contrive to live on small income

2011-11-02T18:33:00.000+07:00

Like many other businesses, B2B (business to business) electronic trade floors are facing big problems in terms of capital, revenue and labor force. Some B2B floors have to set up new strategies for their development, or they won’t survive the current difficult period.

The dissolution of Gophatdat.com after a prosperous period (had 17,000 members, 9000 types of products in 23 fields in its golden time), and the current inaccessibility to other websites such as vietgo.com, b2bvietnam.com, vietnamb2b.com, vnemart.com, daugia247.com, marofin.com can partially say about the current difficulties of B2B online trade floors in Vietnam.

Most of the online trade floors, that had to leave the market, did not have many clients, while they could not collect membership fee, thus leading to the low income which could not ensure the existence of the websites.

Domestic trade floors facing big challenges

A senior executive of the Saigon Thuong Tin Merchandize Trading floor (Sacom-STE), said that the number of clients joining the trading floor has increased by 30 percent over the same period of the last year, especially in the steel sector. Meanwhile, fertilizer transactions have only attracted some 50 businesses so far, since the trading activities just kicked off in last August.

Sacom-STE plans to arrange transactions in many other fields in the time to come, instead of focusing on farm produce, seafood or industrial goods as currently.

Sacom-STE will not only connect sellers and buyers, but also plans to provide credit services to buyers. For examples, buyers will only have to pay a deposit of 30 percent of the contracts’ value; while they can borrow the other 70 percent from Sacombank which will disburse through the trading floor.

Ha Tuan Anh from Vinametal.com, a steel trading floor, said that the number of clients has increased by 50 percent over the same period of the last year, but the revenue growth rate remains very modest.

Anh said that in order to ease the current difficulties, he would still allow Vietnamese businesses to post information about merchandise prices free of charge, but may consider collecting fees from providing “hot news”, such as the information about the prices, the demand and supply of some big markets in the world, or the reports of market survey firms.

By providing hot and timely information, Vinametal hopes it can help enterprises to flexibly build up their business strategies that can satisfy the market demand and make timely decisions.

The trading floor is also considering strengthening its media activities. Especially, it plans to set up the English version of the bulletins in order to attract foreign enterprises.

Foreign run trade floors also have problems

Tran Dinh Toan, Deputy General Director of OSB, an investment and technology company, the representative of Alibaba.com in Vietnam, said that the trade floor has launched new services into the market to help import-export companies more easily find and access partners, including “sub account”, “Biz trends” or “sub webs.”

As for the “Sub account” function, besides the main account, businesses would have five auxiliary accounts which help businesses easily allocate the labor force for taking care for customers. Meanwhile, the “biz trends” function allows businesses to realize which keywords buyers usually use when searching for products. This will help exporters select suitable keywords when posting information about their products

Vu Thi Hang, Public Relations Director of Globalsources.com, said that her trading floor would step up the marketing activities in order attract more businesses that use services, usually organize trade fairs which serve as the places for Vietnamese businesses to display their goods in big import markets such as Hong Kong, India, Brazil.

The trade floor would cooperate with the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) and the HCM City Investment and Trade Promotion Center ITPC to create favorable conditions for small and medium enterprises to join the trade floor at lower expenses.

TBKTSG

Founder Says WikiLeaks, Starved of Cash, May Close

2011-10-25T18:01:00.000+07:00

Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, said on Monday that his Web site could be forced to shut down by the end of the year because a 10-month-old “financial blockade” had sharply reduced the donations on which it depends.

Calling the blockade a “dangerous, oppressive and undemocratic” attack led by the United States, Mr. Assange said at a news conference here that it had deprived his organization of “tens of millions of dollars,” and warned, “If WikiLeaks does not find a way to remove this blockade, we will not be able to continue by the turn of the new year.”

Multimedia

Since the end of 2010, financial intermediaries, including Visa, MasterCard, PayPal and Western Union, have refused to allow donations to WikiLeaks to flow through their systems, he said, blocking “95 percent” of the Web site’s revenue and leaving it to operate on its cash reserves for the past 10 months. An aide said that WikiLeaks was now receiving less than $10,000 a month in donations.

Mr. Assange said WikiLeaks had been forced to halt work on the processing of tens of thousands of secret documents that it had received, and to turn its attention instead to lawsuits it had filed in the United States, Australia, Scandinavian countries and elsewhere, as well as to a formal petition to the European Commission to try to restore donors’ ability to send it money through normal channels.

WikiLeaks receives and publishes confidential documents from whistle-blowers and leakers, who are eager to see the site continue with the publishing sensations that drew worldwide attention last year. WikiLeaks released and passed to news organizations huge quantities of secret United States military and diplomatic cables on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and other subjects. Among the organizations the group worked with were The New York Times; Der Spiegel, a German newsmagazine; and The Guardian, a British newspaper.

Mr. Assange held the news conference while on a brief break from his effective house arrest on a country estate 100 miles outside London. Limits on his movements are part of the bail conditions imposed on him last year while British courts decide whether to extradite him to Sweden. The authorities there want him to answer questions related to accusations that he sexually abused two women during a visit to Stockholm in the summer of 2010. A British appeals court ruling on the extradition, pending for months, is expected at any time.

At the news conference on Monday, Mr. Assange said he and WikiLeaks were victims of a “conspiracy to smear and destroy” them, led by the United States Treasury, American intelligence agencies and “right-wing” forces in the United States, including powerful corporations led by Bank of America and Visa. He said the attack had also included “high-level calls” to assassinate him and other WikiLeaks associates, but offered no specifics to support the allegation.

The finances of WikiLeaks, and of Mr. Assange personally, have been part of the controversy that has swirled around the organization for the past year. Internal disputes have prompted several of Mr. Assange’s closest associates to quit the organization, and one of the issues they have raised concerns the tight, even secretive, control he maintained over its money.

This year, the Wau Holland Foundation, an organization that has operated as a channel for WikiLeaks donations and as a keeper of the organization’s books, issued a report saying that WikiLeaks raised $1.8 million in 2010, and spent slightly more than $550,000, leaving an apparent surplus of about $1.3 million at the start of 2011. A representative of Wau Holland who appeared with Mr. Assange on Monday at the Frontline Club in London said that its work for WikiLeaks had also been halted by the American financial measures. Asked in an e-mail after the news conference for details of WikiLeaks’ current financial status, Wau Holland said it would respond by the end of the week.

A signal that WikiLeaks was in increasing financial distress came last month when a collection of memorabilia associated with Mr. Assange was put up for sale to raise money for WikiLeaks. The items included a sachet of prison coffee he said he had smuggled out of the Wandsworth jail, where he was briefly held last year before bail was set in the extradition case, and an “exclusive” photograph of Mr. Assange at Ellingham Hall in eastern England, where he has lived since then.

One standout item in the sale was a laptop computer said to have been used in the preparation of the secret American government cables that WikiLeaks released; it was posted at a “buy it now” price of more than $550,000, with the highest early bid coming in at $6,000, according to a BBC report at the time. In a Twitter posting, WikiLeaks vaunted the attractions of the laptop, telling potential buyers, “In this exclusive auction item, you will get the full set of WikiLeaks cables, the WikiLeaks computer and its passwords.”

Mr. Assange responded brusquely on Monday when a reporter asked whether donations to WikiLeaks had been used to finance his extradition battle, with legal bills running into hundreds of thousands of dollars. A posting on the WikiLeaks Web site invites donations to the WikiLeaks and Julian Assange Defense Fund, but Mr. Assange said that no money intended for WikiLeaks had been used for his legal defense.

Last month, Canongate Books, based in Edinburgh, published a 340-page biography of Mr. Assange based on 50 hours of interviews he gave to a writer, Andrew O’Hagan, that were initially intended to yield a memoir. Mr. Assange later repudiated his book contractand, according to newspaper reports, refused to return a $650,000 advance; sales of the book have been sluggish.

nytimes.com

Steve Jobs and Me: A journalist reminisces

2011-10-25T17:55:00.000+07:00

Fortune contributor Brent Schlender shares some of the stories and personal photographs he collected during more than two decades as Steve Jobs' chronicler and confidant.

Jobs' scribe: Schlender (left) interviewing Jobs at a Next company picnic

FORTUNE -- Most of us who wrote in depth about the brilliant career of Steve Jobs sooner or later came to realize that we were complicit in the making of a modern myth. You simply couldn't avoid it. And while it is true that Jobs was as charismatic as Clooney and as manipulative as Machiavelli, the legend we helped him construct served many purposes beyond pumping up his own ego. He was an irresistible force who knew that in order to bring to market the amazing technological wonders that bubbled in his imagination, he also had to become the Svengali of the digital revolution that was to be the hallmark of his generation.

Nevertheless, Steve was merely mortal. And his storied life was one of dissonances and contradictions. He proudly flouted authority, yet he embodied extreme self-discipline. He wouldn't suffer fools, but that wouldn't keep him from turning on the charm to woo a "bozo" who had something he needed. He was the ultimate nano-manager, who also could limn the grand strokes of a big picture that others rarely could fully perceive without his help.

While he never settled for anything but the extraordinary and dearly loved his Gulfstream jet, he led a curiously modest domestic life, especially after he had married and embraced fatherhood. He was intensely private, yet he hid in plain sight. He took his physical health far more seriously than most of us, yet his body utterly failed him. And the final irony is that when he died, by many measures he was at long last reaching his full stride. Yes, he had manipulated other people all along the way, sometimes callously. Likewise, we journalists exploited his fame and charisma whenever we could. But now that he's gone, it's plain to see that in the process of transforming all of our lives, Steve used himself up.

Looking back on my 25 years of dealings with Steve as an outsider who occasionally was invited in, there were chapters in his story I was never able to tell, either because they would violate a personal confidence or because what I had learned didn't really fit into a typical analytical business story. They are the kinds of observations and experiences that, for me, gave Steve a three-dimensionality and a depth of humanity that myths inevitably foreshorten.

Indeed, over the years the Jobs legend all too often bordered on cliché. And in many ways he liked it that way. Consequently one of the challenges -- and there were many in telling his story -- was to come up with apt and original ways to describe his uncanny knack for fanning something akin to lust for just about anything he chose to tout, whether it be a computer mouse or a software upgrade or a Pixar movie. Early on, when Steve was still in his twenties, one of his engineers called him a walking, talking "reality distortion field," and the metaphor (which he detested) stuck. Likewise, "brash" and "mercurial" became the overused adjectives of choice for many when describing his notoriously prickly personality.

In reality, his talents and idiosyncrasies were so diverse, complementary, and unusual that there were many different ways to interpret and describe his genius, and that was a big part of the fun. Ross Perot called him "the damnedest one-man band I've ever seen." Business guru Jim Collins likened him to the "Beethoven of business." Silicon Valley billionaire Larry Ellison dubbed him "our Picasso."

In various Fortune cover stories I called him the computer industry's "chief esthetic officer" at Apple (AAPL) and the "original impresario of virtual reality" at Pixar. And during Apple's sluggish stasis in the early 2000s, prior to hatching the iPod that would turbocharge its growth, I mockingly called him the "graying prince of a shrinking kingdom." Truth be told, that elicited a quick phone call from the "brash and mercurial" Jobs to tell me how it had given him a good laugh. Seriously.

1999 - Product review: Jobs scrutinizes the "dock" of icons that appears on the bottom of the screen of Apple's OS X user interface with an anxious team of engineers, designers, and marketers.

I first met Steve Jobs in February 1987, not long after moving to the San Francisco Bay Area to be the lead technology reporter for the Wall Street Journal. This was early in his "wilderness period," after he had been booted out of Apple in 1985. Within months Jobs had recruited a band of Apple colleagues to start a new computer company, appropriately called Next. On a whim, in 1986 he also plunked down $10 million to buy the digital-animation skunkworks that would come to be called Pixar Animation Studios, from film director George Lucas. It was a steal of a deal and would eventually make Steve an honest-to-God billionaire a decade later, after he took it public in 1995. (When Disney (DIS) acquired Pixar in 2006 and he became Disney's biggest shareholder and a director, his stake was worth many billions.)

Jobs cultivated our relationship because he wanted to stay in the public eye in order to promote Next and Pixar and to rebuild his credibility as a business and technology savant. He knew that I also covered Apple for the Journal, and let me know that if I ever wanted to exchange "intelligence" or needed a back channel to understand the real dynamics of what was becoming an ongoing soap opera in Cupertino, he was around.

I wrote several feature stories for the Journal about both Next and Pixar before moving on toFortune in 1989. Jobs and I seemed to click personally, in part because we were virtually the same age and had experienced similar adolescent rites of passage, and we shared a strikingly similar taste in books and movies and music. We would find out a few years later that one of my best friends from high school had very nearly married Steve's sister, the novelist Mona Simpson. Talk about a small world. (Steve, who was adopted as an infant, was in the process of tracking her down when I first met him.)

Still, I was always the reporter and Steve was the source and subject; I was the ink-stained wretch, and he was the rock star. More than anything, he wanted to get his stories told to the biggest and best audience possible, and I could give him that. For my part, I could sense he was bound for even bigger things and wanted to have a front-row seat. And so the overarching purpose for our social and personal interactions over the next 20 years would be journalistic transactions. And not all of them would please him.

2001 - Front-row seat to history: Schlender captured on camera the iPod launch event (left and center); nine months earlier he traveled to Macworld Toyko and watched Jobs (right) prep for his keynote.

The goal in most of my encounters with Steve was to bump him out of keynote mode and get him to extemporize about business, technology, the arts and media, politics and world events, and even his personal life. His instant analyses could be as sharp as they were blunt. That's when you would begin to see the true depth of his insight and intelligence, and realize that his penchant for performing was also something of a smoke screen that obscured his incredibly quick mind. There was so much one could learn in an unscripted hour with Jobs that my top editors at Fortune in New York City timed trips so that they could tag along on my interviews with him.

In one instance, John Huey, who is now Time Inc.'s editor-in-chief, joined me at Apple headquarters in Cupertino in 2003, not for a story interview but instead to get Jobs' advice on how he would clean up our struggling parent company, then known as AOL Time Warner. Steve looked at us incredulously and muttered something about what a waste of time it was to look in the rearview mirror. He then proceeded to spend the next 20 minutes methodically explaining in excruciating detail why AOL's business model of being a dial-up Internet service was a complete mismatch and had served only to slow down Time Warner's build-out of its much more promising broadband business. Then he waxed acerbic about why AOL's "postcard production values" for its online content were so "hopelessly last-century."

"Well, I guess that means you don't think it could be fixed," Huey said. To which Jobs replied, "I didn't say that. I know how you could fix it. I'm just not interested." Then, inexplicably, he went to the whiteboard and spent 15 more minutes mapping out a strategy right off the top of his head to turn AOL into something more like a media company. (That's more or less the course AOL (AOL) eventually followed, albeit with mixed success, after being spun out of Time Warner (TWX) several years later.)

"That's how I'd do it," he concluded, snapping the cap back on the dry marker with a flourish. "But like I said, I'm not interested."

2003 - Cover shoot: When photographer Michael O'Neill shot singer Sheryl Crow and Jobs for a Fortune cover, Schlender was there with a digital camera of his own.

The most enlightening meetings often were ones that Steve himself initiated, usually with a telephone call to my home out of the blue and always with a very specific purpose in mind. One Saturday morning in May 1995, he rang up and asked me to grab my two grade-school-age daughters and bring them over to his house in Palo Alto right away. "I'm watching Reed this morning, and I've got something cool to show them" was all he would say.

When we arrived, 3-year-old Reed Jobs greeted us at the kitchen door, wrapped in blue and red silk scarves and screeching, "I'm a witch!!!"

After making some popcorn and getting the kids some juice, Steve led us into the den and slapped a VHS cassette into the player. The music swelled and a stream of illegible, pencil-drawn storyboards simulating the opening credits of a movie flashed on the screen. And then, suddenly, an entirely new kind of animation burst forth in full color. All three kids were spellbound, even though the full animation had been completed for only half the movie. The soundtrack was finished, but entire scenes were only partially animated or in storyboard form.

It turned out that this was an early cut of Toy Story, the movie that would put Pixar on the map after its premiere six months later. The board of directors hadn't even seen this much of it. But this was market research, Steve Jobs-style. When it was over, he asked my kids (not me), "Whaddya think? Is it as good as Pocahontas?" Greta and Fernanda nodded vigorously. "Well, then, is it as good as The Lion King?" Fernanda replied, "I won't be able to make up my mind until I see Toy Story five or six more times."

Meeting with Steve wasn't always fun and games. On the Sunday after Christmas in 1995, Steve summoned me to his house to "talk on background" about the drama unfolding at Apple. This was around the time it had been rumored that either Sun Microsystems or Philips NV was about to make a bid to acquire the troubled company, and Steve was dropping hints that he and his "best friend" Ellison, the founder and CEO of Oracle (ORCL), were contemplating making their own bid for the company if that happened.

It seemed an odd gambit, and I told him it sounded to me like courting trouble. Steve replied that he wasn't really that serious about it. Still, he swore me to secrecy and then walked me out to my car. When he saw the decaying 1976 Toyota Celica parked at the curb, he stopped short. "I sure hope you don't drive your kids around in that thing! I'm not joking. That car has no airbags. Get rid of it."

10 ways Steve Jobs changed the world

A year later, in late 1996, rather than team up with Ellison to make a run at Apple, Jobs persuaded Apple CEO Gil Amelio to acquire Next for $400 million and take him on as a special adviser. Once inside, it wasn't long -- seven months to be exact -- before he had engineered a palace coup and put his team from Next in charge. Jobs' wilderness years had ended, and the sequel to the Steve Jobs Myth was about to begin.

During the next seven years I wrote four cover stories about Steve's transformative leadership at Apple and edited another. He gave Fortune an exclusive first look at the Mac OS X operating system. He also allowed me to be the only journalist to observe how frighteningly temperamental he could be during the final rehearsal for one of his Macworld keynote speeches. In 2001 he showed me the first iPod (under embargo) several weeks before it was publicly announced, primarily so he could see what I thought of his remarks for the introduction. And a year later he gave Fortune a first look at the iTunes Music Store before it went live online.

Of course, he took serious issue with some of the stories we published about him, and when he did, I'd be the first to hear about it. When we used him as the cover image for a June 2001 story called "Inside the Great CEO Pay Heist," he threatened to pull Apple ads fromFortune indefinitely. Although I didn't write that story, I encouraged him to write a letter to the editor to make the case that the story unfairly maligned him. He had a point, but in the end, he didn't ever hold a grudge. Not against me, at least.

I feel more strongly about Steve Jobs than any other famous person I have written about for one other reason. Like him, I have spent a lot of time in the hospital. Fifteen years ago I had my first heart attack, and when Steve heard about it, he called my hospital room to chew me out for being a smoker for much of my life. Six years ago I nearly died after a freak infection in an artificial heart valve turned into meningitis in my spine and brain, which in turn wiped out most of my hearing. I was in the hospital for five weeks, and Steve came to visit me twice, even though I was bordering on delusional at the time. I couldn't hear him either, so he had to write down what he wanted to say to me, which included a joke about Bill Gates that shouldn't be repeated.

When I recovered, I started planning a book project I wanted to call Founders Keepers that would attempt to explain why certain entrepreneurs seem to be able to grow as business leaders even faster than the companies they create. Steve consented to be one of the primary subjects of the book, along with Bill Gates, Michael Dell, and Andy Grove. All of them had agreed to meet with me for a roundtable discussion in Silicon Valley in late November 2008.

One week before the meeting, Steve called me at home. "I really hate to do this, Brent, but I have to back out of our meeting." Maybe it was just my new hearing aid, but he sounded uncharacteristically subdued. "I trust you not to say anything to anyone about why I'm canceling on you, but I'll tell you the truth. I really have to get to the bottom of my health problems once and for all. I'm in no condition to meet with anyone and am going to go on an extended medical leave after Thanksgiving." Three weeks later he received a liver transplant. We spoke only a few times after that. And three years later he was gone.

Steve Jobs certainly was a living legend and a prima donna, as well as a journalist's dream interview. He could be a beguiling charmer when he wanted to be and a petulant whiner when things didn't go his way. He loved his family. Yes, he was larger than life, but life deserted him. In other words, he was as human as they come.

cnn.com

Linux 3.1 is out and supports OpenRISC, NFC, Wii

2011-10-25T17:48:00.000+07:00

Linus Torvalds released Linux 3.1 Monday and the new feature list is long and wide. Linux 3.1 includes a new iSCSI implementation and support for OpenRISC, Near-Field Communication chips, and -- get this -- Wii controllers.

OpenRISC is a project to build a free and open CPU under the GPL license and encompasses the CPU architecture, software development tools, libraries, and so forth. The implementation included in Linux 3.1 is the 32-bit OpenRISC 1000 family (OR1K).

RESEARCH: Network World Open Source Subnet

NFC support is interesting but not surprising. It is interesting because NFC is becoming the latest must-have feature for smartphones, and whileAndroid is a Linux derivative, it is in its own development sphere (some would call that a fork). So there really isn't another form of Linux smartphone out there yet, now that MeeGo is dead. However, Intel is still trying. Last month it announced it had landed Samsung as a new partner and would be working on a new Linux mobile project called Tizen, dusting its hands of MeeGo.

While it's not surprising that Linux would add NFC support -- the kernel tends to support up-and-coming technologies -- the question is how one would actually use NFC if not on a smartphone. Apparently, NFC is viewed as an important attribute for netbooks, tablets and embedded devices such as keycards or ID cards. NFC can also act like a barcode scanner, reading NFC tags on displays in museums or retail shelves, directing people to audio or visual information according to the Kernelnewbies.org site. It also has Bluetooth qualities and can be used to beam contacts, files, media and applications between devices. Linux 3.1 adds a NFC subsystem and a new NFC socket family.

This release also includes the latest iSCSI implementation. It replaces SCST in favor of Linux-iSCSI.org SCSI and ends a longstanding and formerly contentious fight in the Linux community over which iSCSI technology would be included with the kernel.

Support for the Wii controller remote is equally interesting. With this you'll be able to use the WiiMote and other Wii controller devices with Linux machines for whatever creative purposes you can imagine (or program). There are a couple of ports of Linux available today that run on the Nintendo Wii console: Wii-Linux and GameCube Linux. But perhaps with Wii remote support baked in, gesture-based gaming will soon be an option for Linux devices -- like desktops. Many Wii controllers such as the balance board, Nunchuk, etc., support Bluetooth and can also interact with a computer that way.

There are also "performance improvements to the writeback throttling, some speedups in the slab allocator, bad block management in the generic software RAID layer, a new 'cpupowerutils' userspace utility for power management, filesystem barriers enabled by default in Ext3, and new drivers," according to Kernelnewbies.org.

In his note announcing Linux 3.1, Torvalds joked (a little) about the securitybreach at kernel.org and noted that 3.1 is signed by his own GNU Privacy Guard key, an open source implementation of PGP. To recap: In late August hackers broke into the Kernel.org site that is the home of the Linux project. They gained root access to a server known as Hera and ultimately compromised a number of other servers in the kernel.org infrastructure. This led the Kernel.org folks to take down and rebuild the entire site and is one of the reasons the 3.1 release took nearly a month longer to release than the typical Linux release cycle.

Here is the full text announcement on 3.1 from Torvalds posted to the Linux Kernel Mailing List:

"As promised, the kernel summit has started, and Linux-3.1 is out. The (small) shortlog of changes since -rc10 are appended, we have mostly some sparc and networking changes, along with some radeon and intel iommu fixes (mostly for largepages and integrated graphics issues).

"Most people probably will not notice the changes. One big change from -rc10 is that there are tar-balls and patches, so if you aren't a git user (why?) you can download it now in a traditional format. On of the things to note is that the files are now signed by my gpg key, and it's the *uncompressed* version that the signature is for.

"And of course, this means that the merge window for 3.2 is open. I'll do some merging during the KS, but probably most when I get back home - but you can still send me the pull request, even if I may not necessarily pull it for a few days.

"NOTE! Because the -rc series was longer than usual, and as a result linux-next is bigger than usual, I'm going to be much more of a stickler for 'has your patch series been in linux-next' than usual. If I get a big pull request for things that I can't find in my linux-next branch, I will simply not pull it - we have enough code that has gone through the proper channels as it is, and we don't need anything extra.

"Another thing worth mentioning is that I really want the pull request to be validated some way. With the small changes late in the -rc series, I could afford to spend the time to look at commits and try to verify them, but with the merge window (and the 11k commits or so that I saw pending in the last linux-next tree), that just isn't reasonable.

"So use git.kernel.org or some other host that I can trust is really you.

"Have fun,

"Linus"

Julie Bort is the editor of Network World's Microsoft Subnet and Open Source Subnet communities. She writes the Microsoft Update and Source Seeker blogs. Follow Bort on Twitter @Julie188.

computerweorld.com.au

Blackberry users complain of fresh crash

2011-10-12T11:04:00.004+07:00

Blackberry users have complained of a fresh crash hours after the company which makes the smartphones, RIM, said all services were "operating normally".

On Twitter angry users reported renewed issues with their handsets and an inability to send messages and email.

The initial blackout saw Blackberry services across Europe, the Middle East and Africa disrupted - but that has now spread to Latin America.

RIM said the problems were caused by core and back-up switch failures.

One tweeter summed up the mood of many: "Blackberry server down AGAIN?!!! you have got to be kidding me!!!!!"

'Data backlog'

Many called on the phone firm to "sort out" the problems and get the network running again.

RIM acknowledged it was still experiencing problems and apologised for the inconvenience.

"The messaging and browsing delays... in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, India, Brazil, Chile and Argentina were caused by a core switch failure within RIM's infrastructure," a company statement said.

"As a result, a large backlog of data was generated and we are now working to clear that backlog and restore normal service as quickly as possible.""Although the system is designed to failover to a back-up switch, the failover did not function as previously tested.

The crash comes only a few hours after RIM had issued a statement which said all services were now "operating normally".

That blackout left millions of users without email, web browsing and Blackberry Messaging (BBM) services following the crash around 11:00 BST on 10 October.

The cause is believed to be due to server problems at RIM's Slough data centre.

Blackberry users around the world began reporting problems with their handsets mid-morning on 10 October and at 14:42 BST, Blackberry UK sent out a tweet which said: "Some users in EMEA are experiencing issues."

The "issues" left many Blackberry owners only able to text and make calls.

'Harsh criticism'

Many corporate customers said they had not lost service, suggesting that the problem was with Blackberry's BIS consumer systems, rather than its BES enterprise systems.

"Blackberry runs two infrastructures," explained Simon Butler, a Microsoft Exchange consultant at Sembee.

"The understanding I have is that the BIS service has crashed.

"The business side runs on a different set of servers, although enterprise Blackberrys can still use messenger and the consumer services, so they are also affected," said Mr Butler.

Such a major failure will still come as unwelcome news to Blackberry's owner RIM, which has been losing market share to smartphone rivals - in particular Apple's iPhone.

Many corporate clients have switched to the device after Apple made a concerted effort to improve its support for secure business email systems.

Malik Saadi, principal analyst at Informa Telecoms & Media, said RIM would have to resolve the problem quickly.

"The current situation with the Blackberry outages couldn't come at a worse time for RIM, following some harsh criticism in recent months," he said.

Such crashes may lead RIM and others to "re-evaluate their reliance on centralised servers and instead look to investing in more corporately controlled servers", he added.

But he thinks customers will stick with the firm despite current frustrations.

"It will take more than just a couple of collapses to persuade loyal consumers of Blackberry services to look for alternatives," he said.

Many of those complaining about the crash said on Twitter that they could not live without access to BBM.

bbc.com.uk

Improving foreign technology, Vietnam will make a leap

2011-10-12T10:54:00.002+07:00

Foreign experts said that Vietnam should not worry about its dependence on foreign science and technology. If it simulates and improve foreign technology well, Vietnam will achieve a great leap in technology.

Patrick Gilabert, chief representative of UNIDO in Vietnam.

This comment was raised at an international conference on the sci-tech strategy of Vietnam in 2011-2020 period, held last week by the Ministry of Science and Technology and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO).

Domestic and foreign experts analyzed the weakness of Vietnam’s science and technology, including: low working productivity and unreasonable structure of sci-tech organizations; Vietnamese enterprises’ ability to absorb new technology is poor; most enterprises could not take advantage of outside knowledge and technology resources, for example of foreign companies.

Prof. Henri Dou, director of the Atelis Strategic Intelligence Renovation Organization from France, said that Vietnamese enterprises should not be worried about the dependence on foreign technology of the local industry. Almost all developing countries have to depend on foreign technology in the initial period. For example, South Korea had to simulate foreign technology in the 1960-1980s to develop its light industry and other sectors to replace imports. But now this country’s GDP ranks tenth in the world.

Prof. Dou said that if Vietnamese businesses can improve foreign technology to create profit, Vietnam will achieve a great leap in technology and Vietnam will attain its goal of becoming an industrialized country.

Experts also said that investment in science and technology in Vietnam is low, un-concentrated and ineffective. Policy-making agencies are divided. For example, the Ministry of Science and Technology is responsible for working out sci-tech strategy but this ministry has to combine with the Ministry of Planning and Investment, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Education and Training and Ministry of Home Affairs to implement policies on science and technology.

The link between research institutes, universities and businesses in Vietnam is quite loose.

Many businesses only receive trainees from universities, not combine with universities to commercialize research works. Institutes have a few products that can be used in daily life. As a result, businesses have to seek foreign technology or process goods for foreign partners.

Prof. Martin Fransman, director of the Japan-Europe Technology Research Institute of the Edinburgh University in the UK, pointed out problems of Vietnam’s technology. Vietnam has 1,320 research organizations, including 694 state-owned, but only a small number of State-owed organizations work effectively.

Prof. Henri Dou, director of the Atelis Strategic Intelligence
Renovation Organization from France.

Vietnam’s Strategy on Sci-tech Development aims to set up 3,000 sci-tech businesses by 2015 and up to 10,000 by 2020.

Shin Taeyoung, vice chair of the South Korean Sci-tech Committee, said that Vietnam should not be so interested in the number of sci-tech businesses. All States can create sci-tech businesses by orders but the market is the decisive factor for the existence and development of these businesses.

He advised the Vietnamese government to take urgent action to create a favorable environment for the establishment and development of sci-tech businesses, to make institution reforms so research institutes and universities become a strong supportive force for businesses, and to facilitate Vietnamese businesses to reach the world market.
vietnamnet.vn

Telecom needs a push to maintain growth

2011-09-23T19:36:00.003+07:00

After a rapid development period, mobile network operators have entered a new period when they see the slowdown in growth, due to the stiffer competition and the lack of innovative services.

The income of telecommunication networks has been mainly coming from telephone services, while content services just can bring 20 percent of the total revenue. Meanwhile, the investments in telecom networks prove to be very big: every network operator has injected trillions of dong in 3G technology infrastructure.

Telcos understand well that it is the time to compete by providing added value services to create differentiations, not by slashing call charges. However, no one can do that.

According to the International Telecommunication Union ITU, if the number of mobile service users increases by one percent, the GDP of the country may increase by 200 dollars per head. As for Internet users, the figure would be 400 dollars.

Lacking innovative services to stimulate the demand

Experts have pointed out that the above said criteria could not be applied to the Vietnamese telecom market, because network operators, in the stiff competition, has been trying to increase the numbers of subscribers at any cost, thus having generated “virtual growth rates”.

According to BMI, Vietnam had 155 mobile subscribers in 2010, which meant the population penetration ratio of 176 percent. And once the figure rises to 180 million subscribers, the ratio would be 200 percent!

Buu dien newspaper has reported that FPT Telecom, after deciding to exclude the “virtual subscribers” (the subscribers, who registered services, but have not been using the services), now sees the number of subscribers decrease by 200,000, or 1/3 of the market share of the enterprise.

If the move is followed by other network operators, i.e that the other operators also don’t count on virtual subscribers, the actual numbers of subscribers would be much lower than the declared figures.

A big challenge for Vietnamese telecom service providers now can be seen in the high expenditures on developing 3G and the low ARPU (average return per unit).

Hoang Ngoc Diep, a consultancy expert, said on Saigon Tiep thi that the unsustainable development of big mobile networks on the 3G basis can also be seen in the high percentage of pre-paid subscribers. He said that once pre-paid subscribers still account for more than 90 percent of the total subscribers, one should not believe in the loyalty of users.

Telcos told to take full advantage of the community’s dynamism

Diep believes that developing telecom infrastructure is just a simple work, while the more important thing is to develop important procedures, including the customer service systems, security solutions, or charge calculation. Vietnamese network operators have got good technology foundations such as GPRS, EDGE and 3G, still cannot provide diversified services except the basic services which bring low income.

Meanwhile, network operators have thrown much money into 3G, and they can only succeed once the service applications are accepted by the market. However, network operators have never had open policies, which allow to mobilize the community’s strength in designing content services and designing applications.

The unreasonable mechanism on profit sharing applied by network operators to intermediate developers for a long time has also hindered the development of the market.

Dr Mai Liem Truc, former Deputy Minister of Post and Telematics, also said that Vietnam has been wasting resources when nearly all network operators try to develop infrastructure just to serve the market with 100 million of population. This means that the network operators have to bear high investment rate.

Truc believes that the best solution for the telecom market in the new period, is the investment socialization mechanism under which capital from different sources will be mobilized for developing telecom.
vietnamnet

ASEAN nations bridge rural digital gap

2011-09-23T19:28:00.000+07:00

The digital gap between rural and urban areas remains a challenge for people in the rural communities of ASEAN member countries, who struggle to get better access to key services such as education and healthcare.

The challenge prompted information and communication technology (ICT) experts from ASEAN member countries and IT groups to gather at a conference on September 21 in Hanoi to examine ways in which ICT can bring more efficient key services to people living in rural areas.

The three-day ASEAN rural connectivity conference for education and development also highlights the building of ASEAN-US public-private partnerships to facilitate the financing of underserviced rural areas of ASEAN.

Dr Somsak Pipoppinyo, director of Finance, Industry and Infrastructure Directorate of the ASEAN Secretariat said rural information and communication technology (ICT) needed to be promoted in rural areas by increasing access, improving quality of services and availability of applications. This will help narrow the digital gaps between urban and rural areas and offer more digital opportunities.

ASEAN leaders in October last year ratified a master plan on ASEAN connectivity which encompasses three key elements of physical connectivity (energy, ICT, transport), institutional connectivity and people-to-people connectivity, he said.

Regarding financial issues, Jun Labadan from the ASEAN-US Technical Assistance and Training Facility said challenges were numerous. Challenges include raising the amount of infrastructure required, providing Internet access, upgrading facilities and training manpower for use and support.

He suggested solutions such as stimulating local government financing, private public partnerships with local telecommunications companies and banks, grants and tie-in services that generate both service and income.

Regarding strategies for rural connectivity and technology in Vietnam, Vice President of the National Institute of ICT Pham Manh Lam said the Prime Minister in October last year approved projects for development of information and communications in rural area during the 2011-15 period.

"The project's target is to have 100 per cent of communes in remote areas having post and telecom service and connecting to broadband network. Almost all people living in rural areas should have access to universalised post and telecom services," he said.

VNA

3D smart phones meeting great challenges in Vietnam

2011-09-23T19:27:00.002+07:00

Manufacturers have begun launching 3D smart phones into the Vietnamese market. However, with the limitations in technology and the poor 3D content, the products are still far from becoming a growing tendency in 2011.

After TVs, laptops and game players, smart phone is the next electronic product which joins the 3D technology trend. On the 4-inch screens, users can enjoy 3D film scripts, pictures, and game apps with their naked eyes, without glasses. Together with the dual core mobile phones, 3D smart phones are expected to create a new tendency among hi-tech users in Vietnam.

LG has put Optimus 3D to the shelf which is priced at 13.8 million dong. Meanwhile, HTC is planning to introduce EVO 3D with the manufacturer’s suggested retail price of between 14 and 15 million dong. These are considered the two genuine mobile phone models which have officially joined the domestic market.

Prior to that, a lot of models of 3D smart phones, sourced from Japan, had also hit the market. The products have been carried to Vietnam across the borders by travelers to Vietnam, or imported through unofficial channels.

Thien Vien, 40, who was seen testing an LG’s smart phone at Vien Thong A Supermarket on February 3 Road in HCM City, said he once intended to buy a 3D smart phone of LG, but has given up the idea. “The phone is well designed with a large screen. The 3D technology is attractive. However, I still think that the technology used for the smart phone is not very good.”

“You may easily get eyestrain with small screens. And though you can look at the screen without glasses, but the visibility will be bad with just a minor eccentric look,” he said.

A salesman here admitted that 3D smart phones have caught the special attention from the public. However, the sales have been going more slowly than other normal smart phone products.

Tran Manh Cuong, an executive of LG Vietnam, said that problems still exist in 3D smart phones. Users need to look into the screens from a certain angle, which is considered a weak point if comparing with TVs or the devices with large screens.

Cuong also said that it is too early to say that 3D smart phone is the tendency of the year. It is more likely happen that manufacturers would introduce the next generations of 3D smart phones, with the improvement in the angles, by the end of the first quarter of 2012.

Sharing the same view, Nguyen Hong Chau, Chief Representative of HTC Vietnam, said that HTC launched EVO 3D as an introduction of the new technology, while whether 3D-technology smart phones can develop will still depend on the convenience level in the eyes of users. Chau also does not think that 3D smart phone is the new tendency of the smart phone’s community in 2011.

One of the other problems of 3D smart phones lies in the associated entertainment content. Nowadays, producers sell smart phones with associated demo film scripts, HTC products, for example, has three 3D games ready with the phones, while LG’s have 10 games. However, users believe that they quickly feel eye-stains when playing games on 3D smart phones. The South Korean manufacturer provides the feature of converting from 2D to 3D, but the pictures are not as lively as real 3D films.

The representatives from HTC and LG both say that they introduced 3D smart phone partially because they want users to generate content themselves. Both EVO 3D and Optimus 3D have two cameras on the backs which allow to take pictures, make 3D videos on HD 720p. LG’s products allow users to upload scripts to YouTube 3D for storage.

According to Vu Hai, a manager of a mobile phone shop on February 3 Road in HCM City, the high prices of 3D smart phones are also a big problem which prevents the 3D technology from becoming popular.

“3D needs powerful configuration, dual core at least. Therefore, it is impossible to equip the feature for low-class series,” he said.

Source: VnExpress