Southeast Asia's Wealthiest People

Malaysians led by media, hotel and property tycoon Robert Kuok dominated a list of Southeast Asia's 40 wealthiest people released by US business magazine Forbes in the publication's Sept 6 issue.

Malaysia accounted for 10 entries on the list, followed by Thailand with nine. Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines each contributed seven names.

Kuok, owner of the South China Morning Post newspaper in Hong Kong as well as the Shangri-La hotel chain and real estate developer Kerry Properties, had a net worth of US$4.1 billion, according to Forbes.

He was followed by fellow Malaysian Ananda Krishnan, owner of cable operator Astro and mobile phone company Maxis Communications, who was estimated to be worth US$3.5 billion.

Third on the list was Singaporean property developer and hotelier Kwek Leng Beng, worth US$2.8 billion.

Serving Sabah & Sarawak

Telekom Malaysia Bhd is expected to invest RM200-RM300 million on equipment and services to provide Internet coverage and telephony services to the country’s under-served areas in Sabah and Sarawak, sources tell FinancialDaily. Telekom has called for a “tender to supply, deliver, install, testing and commissioning of code division multiple access (CDMA) and its associated equipment".

Telekom’s business has seen flat growth in the maturing fixed-line segment, while growth has been seen in the cellular services.

Its unit TM Net Sdn Bhd is expected to benefit from the investment in the rural areas as it will boost its services to other untapped areas, thereby increasing its Internet subscriber base.

In May, TM Net said it expected its broadband subscribers to increase almost 100% to 300,000 subscribers by year-end from 160,000 currently.

TM Net said it received about 15,000 new applications monthly for its broadband services. Telekom has about 90,000 payphone units across the nation.

Sarawak and Sabah lowest in Internet dial-up facilities

ACCORDING to official figures, Sarawak, with a population of only 2.2 million and a population density of 17 per sq km, has an Internet dial-up penetration rate of only seven per cent as at March this year.

Of all the states in the country, it fared better than its neighbour Sabah, which registered the lowest penetration rate at only four per cent.

While admitting household incomes had a significant impact on the people's affordability to subscribe to internet services, Aden argues:

Given the availability of relevant supporting infrastructure, namely reliable power supply and telephone lines, the penetration rate may easily double or triple in no time.

Easily hundreds of Sarawakian households, especially those with school-going children who have to master Information Technology, at this point of time, are only waiting to subscribe to the Internet....The reason is obvious: A big number of the villages, especially those located on the fringes of towns still have to depend on generator sets for their power supply and are still being deprived of having a fixed telephone line at home.

To depend on generator sets would also mean the people would have to make do with unreliable and unstable power supply. Worst of all is that most of the villages that still depend on generator sets would have the luxury of power supply for barely five hours nightly, normally between 6.00 - 6.30pm and 10.30 - 11.00pm.

Ironically, if nothing is done urgently to tackle the problem, the people will not only have to be satisfied with unreliable power supply but they would also be deprived of the need for their children to master IT - the in thing in all of today's workplace and lifestyle.

Aden suggests the federal government to take another step and build the relevant communication link, perhaps through allocation of more funds to subscribe to the Internet.

See the world through customers' eyes

Anthropologist Genevieve Bell helps Intel see the world through customers' eyes. She is working with local ethnographers in India, Australia, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, China and Korea (a list that her administrative assistant short-handed as I AM SICK). The ethnographers helped her find families in each country who were willing to let her move in with them for a few days to watch how they interacted with each other as well as with the technology in their homes and offices.

She recounts her experiences of working in Malaysia:

"I began to hear the term 'kiasu,' for which there was no English counterpart...

They would use it in talking about the education of their kids, when they were concerned about their kids not being left behind."

This is an indication of the depth of R&D being done by companies like Intel and a sobering thought for us as we aim to tranform Malaysia into a developed country with a knowledge-based economy.

Sweden's Success Story

Jonathan Power of IHT writes:

"..a recent report by the United Nations showed, that if you factor in not just national income, but the longevity of its people, low infant mortality and high levels of education, Sweden is probably the most successful country in the world.

Moreover, a new study by Professor Richard Florida, of Carnegie Mellon University, which measures the kind of creativity most useful to business - talent, technology and tolerance - puts Sweden at No. 1 in Europe and ahead of the United States. In the future, Florida argues, this means that Sweden will become a "talent magnet" for the world's most purposeful workers.
neighboring island of Gotland, when visitors come from all over Sweden just to walk quietly around in medieval dress.

Sweden has more multinational corporations per head than any other country and, despite its socialism, state-owned enterprises barely exist. Sweden has pioneered private competition in a range of endeavors from railways to hospital management and schools. Immigrants have been welcomed generously. Sweden is the only country in Europe not to insist on some years of transition before the workers of the new eastern members of the Union are granted the right to free movement"

On the combined Human Development Index of the U.N. Development Programme, Norway and Sweden ranked first and second in 2004 out of 175 countries.

Security Woes for Apple

"Norwegian hacker Jon Johansen, who broke the security code on movie DVDs to prevent illegal content pirating, has apparently succeeded in hacking into Apple's AirPort WLAN and releasing an encryption key to users.

The key unlocks Apple's AirPort Express wireless hub protecting music streams from the iTunes Music Store. Johansen reportedly also released a program called 'JustePort' that enables users to stream MPEG4 files to the AirPort Express module.

With the encryption key now widely available, it is possible that other programmers can create applications that let users play music files that are not supported by iTunes."

[Via Dailywireless]

Spectrum Policy

Excerpts from a special report from the Economist:

"There is no limitation in the spectrum of sound waves, only in the refinement of the human ear. The same can be true in the electromagnetic spectrum.

There are four broad categories of new technologies that could make this idea a reality. The first is called “spread spectrum”, or “wideband”. As both names imply, this is a way of spreading an electromagnetic signal across wide bands of frequencies at low power, instead of booming a high-power wave through a narrow band. Wi-Fi is one good example of wideband technology—the large range of frequencies and the low power allow it to co-exist with cordless phones and other devices. Hopes are highest, however, for a new technology called “ultra-wideband”, which will communicate by whispering its signals so softly across the frequency bands of other, higher-power transmitters, such as broadcasters, that these will not even notice the presence of another signal.

Another approach is to use “smart” antennae. These are systems of multiple antennae that can “aim” a signal in a particular direction (instead of radiating it out indiscriminately) or pick out a particular signal from background noise by calculating the wave's angle of arrival (for example, from a satellite instead of a source on the ground).

A third technology is “mesh networking”. In a mesh, each receiver of a signal also re-transmits it. Every meshed laptop computer, for instance, in effect becomes a node or router on its network. This has three advantages. One is that, as with spread spectrum, signals can be sent at very low power, since they only have to travel to the next user's node, which will be hundreds of metres, instead of kilometres, away. Another is that each newcomer to the network not only uses, but also adds, capacity. A third is that the network will be robust, since traffic can be re-routed easily if nodes fail, the approach already taken by the internet.

Open-spectrum enthusiasts are most excited, however, about the day when radios become software-powered computers, or so-called “cognitive radios”. This would end the limitations of dumb radios. “Moore's law meets Marconi's transmitter,” says Kevin Kahn, research boss for communications at Intel, the world's largest semiconductor-maker, referring to the prediction, so far correct, by Gordon Moore, one of Intel's founders, that the number of transistors on a chip doubles every 18 months. Radios would double their intelligence every year and a half, in other words. They could learn to hop around on the spectrum to find quiet bands for transmission, to encode digital information in new wave forms, or to analyse incoming noise and pick out only the relevant signal".

Starter Edition of WIndows XP

Microsoft announced a 12-month pilot program to provide personal computers running stripped-down versions of Windows XP to Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia starting in October.

Microsoft isn't selling the software separately from the PCs, or disclosing how much it is charging computer makers. The company expects the PCs to be priced as low as $300, a Microsoft spokesman says. In the U.S., low-end home computers typically start at around $400; Windows XP Home Edition by itself typically costs about $99 for users that are upgrading to the product, or $199 for a first-time installation.

The new offering, called Windows XP Starter Edition, is an example of how Microsoft is trying to serve developing countries without jeopardizing its profits in developed economies. The test program also should help Microsoft try to counter the Linux operating system, which is gaining ground in some countries against Windows.

Service Convergence

Rajesh Jain blogs on WSJ article:

Imagine walking to work while talking on your cellphone. Out on the street, you're using a cellular network and paying your mobile provider for each minute you gab. But once you reach the office, your cellphone detects a signal from your company's wireless Internet, or Wi-Fi, transmitter and automatically switches you from the cellular network to the Wi-Fi one. Your call is now being routed over the Internet, saving money on cellphone fees. You're also able to browse the Web on your cellphone at superfast broadband speeds.

Such technology -- under development in Japan and elsewhere -- stands to revolutionise telecommunications on two levels. For the consumer, the technology combines the convenience of cellular access with the low cost and high speeds of Wi-Fi, all in a single device. For the industry as a whole, this technology illustrates a new but increasingly common theme: how the convergence of once-discrete technologies -- in this case, mobile-phone service and the Internet – is pitting unlikely rivals against each other in a battle for chunks of a brand-new territory.

Japan serves as a prime example. Here, two companies have just announced handsets that function on cellular and wireless networks. One is made by NEC Corp. and will be marketed by NTT DoCoMo Inc., Japan's largest cellular provider. The other device is from Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd., a unit of computer-maker Fujitsu Ltd., which has long cooperated with DoCoMo by making handsets for the carriers' exclusive use. This time, however, Fujitsu, in a joint-project with telecommunications equipment-maker Net-2Com Corp., is striking out on its own.

Of course, Japanese companies aren't the only ones developing such devices. Other companies, including Motorola Inc., Schaumburg, Ill., and Hewlett-Packard Co., Palo Alto, Calif., have unveiled phones that combine cellular and Wi-Fi technology.

SMS Contest

Local TV station Channel 9 signed an agreement with two mobile content providers, AKN Messaging Technologies Bhd (AKN Mtech) and WAP Portal Sdn Bhd, to provide mobile content based on SMS, MMS (multimedia messaging service) and video-streaming services.

The station plans to introduce an SMS (short message service) contest that will be based solely on skill and not involve any element of chance.

Semiconductor Firm MEMS Tech Listed

SEMICONDUCTOR firm MEMS Technology Bhd (MemsTech) made a strong debut on the Mesdaq Market of Bursa Malaysia Bhd on August 11, closing at a 166.1 per cent premium over its issue price in heavy volume.

MemsTech designs, develops, manufactures, tests, assembles and packages microelectro-mechanical systems (MEMS)-based products. Among its products are silicon pressure sensors, accelerometers, thermopile arrays, silicon microphones and MEMS-based memory storage devices.

These have potential uses in medical, telecommunications, consumer electronics and automotive industries.The technology has also been identified by the Government for clustering promotion.

Swinburne Copyright Talk - Anti-Competitiveness

Ida Madieha Abdul Ghani Azmi, Ph.D (Lon) Associate Professor, Private Law Department, International Islamic University Malaysia writes:

"In Malaysia, there is no particular concern about the current practices of the intellectual property right-holders. This is because the respect for intellectual property rights is still waning and the public still needs to be educated about the values of respecting intellectual property rights. This means that the interface between intellectual property rights and competition policy is largely unexplored and ignored. However, in lieu of the TRIPs agreement,9 there is a need to establish a framework for competition laws as we move towards globalisation, trade liberalization and harmonization of laws".

"With regards to copyright, the main concern relates to the imposition of restrictive conditions contained in copyright licences or assignments, refusal to supply, tying arrangements and blanket licensing. Whether these types of conducts and activities may be considered as anti-competitive is subject to vigorous interpretation by the courts of law in many jurisdictions".

"The developed countries have a rich tradition and long history of balancing private rights and public rights in the sphere of intellectual property. To them the idea of curtailing the conduct and activities of intellectual property proprietor is nothing new... it is felt that if we were to focus on the conduct rather than the form of control, we will have a better informed view of the present tension between intellectual property and competition law. With respect to Malaysia, this should not be a daunting exercise as notions such as 'dominant position' and 'substantial lessening of competition" is already present in Communication and Multimedia Act 1998. What is required is a simple extension of these principles to other markets and industries.

However, the first thing we have to embrace is the notion that monopolies and restrictive practices may and usually do operate against the public interest. Hence, it is desirable that we introduce legislation whereby all unjustified anti-competitive practices are unconditionally prohibited, restricted and curtailed".

Swinburne Copyright Talk - Prep Notes

Preparatory notes on upcoming copyright talk to Swinburne University of Technology students. Need to confirm with Ondris Pui, the lecturer inviting me to do the talk the courses being undertaken by the target student audience: Bachelor of Multimedia (Business Marketing):

"Graduates may seek employment in a broad spectrum of career opportunities in eCommerce and the multimedia industry. Employment can be found in website development, multimedia project management, running a multimedia business, public relations, internet marketing, international marketing, eCommerce consultant, product/brand management, advertising and marketing research".

AND/OR Bachelor of Business (Marketing)

"Graduates should be able to relate their university studies to the world of business and to offer employers a competitive advantage in business operations. Employment can be found in public relations, advertising, product/brand management, market research, direct marketing and international marketing".

Malaysian Copyright Links
Ministry of Domestic and Consumer Affairs - Intellectual Property Division on copyright

SMS Novel

Chinese author Qian Fuchang has cut down his original novel into bite-sized chunks for transmission by text message. Called Outside the Fortress Besieged, it tells of the effect of an extra-marital love affairs on relationships.

China has approximately 260m mobile phone users and, like many other countries, text messaging is hugely popular with them. Last year, the Chinese sent more than 220bn text messages, more than half of all messages sent in the world.

Small Town Wi-Fi

Rajesh Jain blogs: Glenn Fleishman point to The Seattle Times, which writes about Maverick Wireless, which "builds citywide Wi-Fi networks in areas with fewer than 50,000 residents.

"How it works: Maverick partners with a utility district or a city, which pays for the infrastructure, including laying fiber and installing access points on utility poles. Maverick then handles customer support. Or Maverick can pay for the infrastructure and provide customer support.

Not free: To access the system, users subscribe at prices that start at $24.95 a month for speeds of 120 kilobits per second, or two times as fast as dial-up. For 1 megabit per second, they pay $59.95 a month.

Little-known fact: Schmelke said there is the common misconception that Wi-Fi is only accessible about 200 to 300 feet from an access point. But the right equipment, he said, can reach as far as four miles, making citywide deployments easier. Still, Maverick doesn't deploy to every inch of a city, but rather the densest parts.

Biggest concern: Security. Schmelke said Maverick tackles the issue by installing software on each user's computer, using 256-bit encryption and passwords".

Students & Cybercafes

Instead of attending school, 25 students- between as young as nine years old and 18 – went to a cybercafe yesterday. They were all under-age or in school uniform and were not accompanied by their guardians as required by law. Police hauled them up for committing the offence. The youngsters were later let off with a warning and Kuching Deputy Police Chief, Supt Tan Soon Tiong, said it was now up to their schools to mete out the punishment.

Stealth Wallpaper

A type of wallpaper that prevents Wi-Fi signals escaping from a building without blocking mobile phone signals has been developed by British defence contractor, BAE Systems. The company has based its solution on the secret "stealth" technology that it uses to hide military radars. The covering, called Frequency Selective Surface (FSS) sheeting, is used to shroud radar antennas on warships or aircraft. The technology is designed to stop outsiders gaining access to a secure network by using Wi-Fi networks casually set up by workers at the office.

SMS Remittance Service

From SmartMobs:

This article in the IHT looks at a "new text-based remittance service offered by Smart Communications, the Philippines' largest mobile phone company.The service, started last week, is said to be the first of its kind in the world".

The article goes on to explain that "Smart's remittance service works this way: A Filipino who is overseas will file his or her remittance in any of Smart's remittance partners, currently found in 17 countries: Travelex Money Transfer, Forex Hong Kong, Dax, CBN Grupo, New York Bay Remittance, Banco de Oro Universal Bank or Calsons.The remittance partner then sends a text message to the recipient in the Philippines, informing him or her of the transfer. The transfer will automatically be reflected in the Smart Money electronic wallet account embedded in the recipient's Smart mobile account".

Scaling City-Wide Mesh

Article from DailyWireless.

Sending Data over IM

Bill Burnham's writes in DIM: Hijacking IM for Data Transport:

"Why send data over IM? One reason is that IM infrastructures have solved a lot of tough technical problems such as firewall traversal, multi-protocol transformation, and real-time presence management. Sending messages over these networks allows applications to leverage the investments made to solve these tough problems. Another reason is that many companies already have IM “friendly” infrastructures which means that all the necessary firewall ports are open, the clients are already certified and installed, and operations infrastructure like logging, back-up, and even high-availability are already in place. Thus by using IM for computer-to-computer communication, developers are able to “hijack” all the valuable investment made in IM and use it for a purpose that its creators likely never intended."

SMS Office Thoughts

Russell Beattie blogs:

"I want my phone to work with every single messaging app we use here. I want to be able to send an SMS and have it alert people via IM, get copied to people's phones, send off emails and get logged to a central blog available via RSS. I want people to respond and have those messages go back to the original user wherever they are. I don't want to think about it either, I want it to "just work".

Seth's Blog: Are blogs backward?

"Weblogs were designed to be like newspapers. The idea was that people would stop by and read some more every day, and that each post would build on what had come before... and that frequent readers would have no trouble keeping up.

This is great in a world with a finite number of blogs and a static community of readers.Today, though, there are two factors to keep in mind:

1. We've now got more than 3,000,000 blogs, and every two weeks (my guess) the number of people reading blogs for the first time increases by 10 or 20%. That means that most of the people who are reading your blog are doing so for the first or second time.

2. A lot of blogs are no longer about the original intent--to link to current posts on the web with small comments. Instead, corporate and personal blogs are much more focused on telling a story, a story that has a beginning and a middle, not just a current end.

This leads me to two thoughts:

a. a lot more blogs should be posted in chronological order, like books. If you're trying to chronicle something, it makes a lot of sense to start at the beginning, as long as you provide regular readers an easy way to just read the current stuff (That's what RSS is for, right?). No, this isn't right for gizmodo. But it makes a lot of sense for someone, say, chronicling her experience in a 12 step program.

b. we need Movable Type or someone to create a simple way to create "greatest hits" pages. Not an archive, but a simple way for a new reader to read the ten posts we want them to start with, in the order we want them read, before they dive in.

I know it's weird to read a chronological blog. It's worse, imho, to leave a great blog just because the last two posts don't make sense out of context.

Shareware Games - Doomed?

id software, the creator of Doom, was one of the first companies to distribute shareware games.

The videogame business has changed significantly since id launched the original version of Doom in 1994. Today id remains a maverick in an industry where most other independent game developers have been bought out by powerhouse publishers such as Microsoft and Vivendi Universal.

Of the top 50 console games of 2003, only three-SOCOM, SOCOM II, and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic-were created by independent developers. Today's games, with their complex graphics and realistic effects, have become extremely expensive to produce-in some cases costing as much as $30 million. That's a hefty sum for a small firm such as id.

Moreover, most videogame companies launch multiple titles each year, hoping one will be a hit-much as a Hollywood studio releases dozens of films in search of that one blockbuster. But id, which launched its last game, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, in 2001, is betting the company on its latest version of Doom. Period. So far, that kind of faith has paid off: Over the past ten years co-founder John Carmack's technology and the warped minds of the id creative team have run up a perfect track record. Every one of their games, from Wolfenstein 3D to Quake III, has been successful. But can a reliance on creating a nonstop stream of megahits be considered a prudent business plan?

SMS Solutions from Maxis

Maxis Communications Bhd has added two new applications - SMS Campaign Manager and Direct SMS - to its suite of enterprise SMS (short message service) solutions. 

SMS Campaign Manager, a web-based application, allows companies to communicate with their customers using SMS messages. Unlike mere SMS broadcasts however, replies from customers can be tabulated and summarised for analysis. 

With Direct SMS, organisations can build or extend their own applications to send and receive SMS messages. This enables certain events, such as a customer transaction, to trigger the system, which will automatically send the relevant SMS.

Shanghai Beckons

CHINA’S main and roaring economic engine, Shanghai, offers many opportunities for business in various sectors, particularly for the country’s largest South-East Asian trading partner, Malaysia.

Significant Growth in Asia-Pacific's Biotech Industry

Ernst & Young recently published its 2004 Global Biotechnology Reports in which it cited Asia-Pacific as showing its strengths as “a centre of biotechnology innovation and an emerging partner within the global biotechnology industry”.

According to Carol Wong, executive director, Ernst & Young, the survey shows the United States still dominating the market, with Europe experiencing a resurgence of interest in recent years.

"Asia-Pacific’s significant growth is due to government policy and initiatives, and as such, many US companies are looking at the potential for cross-border alliances in the region.

Malaysia can leverage its IT expertise as it is a matter of extending skills to work with scientists. Furthermore, the country has plenty of natural resources to tap into for its biotechnology industry, and hence, it can create a niche for itself in the region’s burgeoning biotechnology industry.”

Sybase's Unwired Corporation

Recognising that his new company lacks the muscle to compete in its traditional competency – databases – with powerhouses like IBM Corp and Oracle Corp which are better able to market their databases to enterprise customers, Sybase Inc's new South-East Asia MD Andy Woo aims to steal a march on them by connecting corporate databases with mobile devices. 

These mobile devices include personal digital assistants (PDAs), new-generation mobile phones and notebook computers. Connecting corporate databases to them would enable what Sybase calls the “unwired corporation".

Specialised Children's Education

The first six years of a child's life is a vital period to inculcate the love for learning and knowledge.

South First Strategy

Some excerpts from BusinessWeek article: Vaccinating The World's Poor by Kerry Capell in Rixensart, Belgium | Apr 26 '04

Jean Stephenne is an unlikely revolutionary. The president of GSK Biologicals, the vaccine subsidiary of GlaxoSmithKline PLC, is unusually soft-spoken, almost shy. But his gentle demeanor belies a bold risk-taker willing to gamble hundreds of millions of dollars on vaccines to combat diseases in the world's poorest countries.

Stephenne's bet this year may be the biggest in his 30-year career at GSK Bio, in Rixensart, Belgium. He is investing as much as $300 million to test a vaccine against rotavirus, a highly infectious parasite that can cause deadly gastroenteritis. It is one of the largest and most expensive such trials since the Salk vaccine was tested against polio more than 50 years ago. But this time, most of the 60,000 inoculated children are in Latin America. And even though rotavirus is endemic throughout the world, Stephenne submitted the vaccine for approval first in Mexico, where authorities could give it the nod by the end of this year.

For Glaxo and the drug industry, the trial marks a new paradigm in vaccine development. Traditionally, products have been introduced in wealthy countries first, reaching developing countries only after the manufacturer has recouped the cost of research and development, which can take decades.

Stephenne is taking the opposite tack -- and if he succeeds, it'll be the first time a new vaccine is launched in a country with massive medical need but little profit potential. His plan is to roll out the vaccine in low- and middle-income countries in Latin America, Asia, and eventually Europe -- saving the U.S., the most lucrative market, for last.

Seoul Digital Media City

The Center of the new economy of Northeast Asia.

Seoul City in 2010.

Spin

Spin is an array of LEDs on a keychain that, when spun, draw a clock face to the air. Clockwise motion draws the image to the user, counter-clockwise to the audience in front of the device.

Siemens Bets on Convergence

Siemens is betting on convergence, combining its ICN wireline network division with its ICM wireless network and handset unit to form a comprehensive telecom division. Siemens said it is keeping the company's original goals for its new telecom-wide division and plans to grow the division faster than the overall telecom market.

The announcement comes amid recent losses reported in the company's mobile phone business. Siemens expects its new telecom division to post sales between €17 billion and €18 billion for the 2004 fiscal year.

Stylistic Tablet PC

One of the rare instances Microsoft has demonstrated innovation ahead of the rest. Although the handwriting recognition capabilities are quite astounding, I (like most people I know) type much faster than I write so tablets, while undoubtedly nice, are of little use to me (you try blogging with one!)

Daniel Tackles the Tablet PC My son Daniel loves the Journal application where he can doodle all he wants without getting into trouble.

SIM Card Becomes Credit Card?

Cassis Services Sdn Bhd, a Malaysian software company has collaborated with SK Telecom of South Korea to bring to consumers a way to use their third-generation (3G) cellular phones as stand-ins for credit cards. It claims to be the world first company to bring the Europay/ MasterCard/ Visa (EMV) wireless payment solution to mobile phones. 

The solution was based on the EMV standard and the Universal Subscriber Identification Module (USIM) smartcard standards.The latter provided for storing encrypted cardholder information on the Subscriber Identification Module (SIM) chip in the phone, and for a personal identification number. A cardholder’s card information would be sent to a download server, enabling a short message service (SMS) or web download into the cardholder’s EMV-compliant SIM chip.

Spotting The World's Best Countries

Newsweek's Jeffrey D. Sachs writes:

"Every place on the planet has something of unique beauty and significance to contribute to the "good life" on earth. Africa's open savannas awaken our sensibilities as do few places on the planet. Manhattan, Shanghai and Paris transport us to the heights of urban achievement. The verdant, terraced paddy fields of Southeast Asia show us life in rural areas of unsurpassed beauty. We would search in vain therefore, for a single "best" spot on the planet.

For years the U.N. Development Program has measured human progress by including measures of literacy and life expectancy alongside per capita income. On the combined Human Development Index, Norway and Sweden ranked first and second in 2004 out of 175 countries, with the United States coming in eighth, and the larger countries of continental Europe ranked in the teens. Nordic health and wealth build on high-quality governance. These are also the countries where corruption finds zero tolerance. The global-corruption watchdog Transparency International ranks Finland, Iceland and Denmark right at the top of the list of the world's "cleanest" governments. France and Spain are tied for 23rd.

Broadly speaking, the Nordic region took three basic decisions. First, it prioritized education,—study and science. Second, it decided that it would leave no countryman behind. Social insurance—pensions, public health care, public education—became a basic shared commitment in each of these countries. And third, the region built a vigorous private sector. Ericsson and Nokia are not government creations. Outsiders predicted that the Nordics' high tax rates would stifle their private sectors, but the region has an enviable record not just of innovation but of wringing profits out of high-tech breakthroughs. And while these countries benefit from natural resources—fish, oil and gas, timber, iron ore—they do not rely on these resources for their long-term economic future. Iceland does not merely sell fish to the world. It sells know-how about sustainable fisheries management.

The beauty of globalization is that every corner of the world can learn from the others. A little less ideology, and a little more openness to the ideas adopted by the Nordic states, would do us all a world of good."

Sci-Fi Soldiers

The newest concepts for lightweight, lethal uniform systems to be worn by the future soldiers in battle were displayed at the Russell Senate Building in Washington on July 23. Two uniform systems are under development. The Future Force Warrior system will be available for fielding to soldiers in 2010. The Vision 2020 Future Warrior system, which will follow on the concept of the 2010 Future Force Warrior system, is scheduled to be ready 10 years later.

The Malaysian Government has enshrined the year 2020 as the year Malaysia attains developed-nation status under "Wawasan 2020" or Vision 2020. Advanced and developed nations like the US tend to spend the most on tech in terms of their defence/military. No one can doubt the might of the US military as a consequence of the billions Washington has spent over the years. A more subtle concomitant activity of protection which most in the developing world might not be acutely aware of has been going on for some time too. What am I on about? Copyrights, software patents and the protection of what is confusingly termed intellectual property rights.

According to Professor Mark Lemley of the University of Texas Law School, the widespread use of term "intellectual property" is a recent fad, arising from the 1967 founding of the World Intellectual Property Organization or WIPO. WIPO represents the interests of the holders of copyrights, patents and trademarks, and lobbies governments to increase their power. The hypocrisy of calling these powers "rights" is starting to make the WIPO embarassed.

The open-source movement is rapidly heading towards a "showdown" with intellectual property rights. The momentum can be gauged by the "honour" of us Malaysians having Bill Gates visit our humble country last July.

The open source community and communism are completely different but ironically, the miserable failure of socialism in part was due to the refusal of both workers and corporations to depart with property rights, and to ultimately choose instead the rewards of traditional capitalism. In an eerie coincidence, leaders of the open source community point to distrust of “bosses” and large corporations as the biggest threat to shared community ownership of property.

As Linux continues to assert itself within the private sector, we will soon learn if this cynicism was indeed well-placed.

Swaziland Adopts Malaysian Telco Model

Swaziland would continue to learn and adopt models from Malaysia's experience in telecommunications, said King Mswati III of Swaziland.

It will do this through its technology partner, Applied Information Management Services Sdn Bhd (AIMS), whose services include the hosting of major telco services and acting as a conduit between local and international telecommunications companies.

AIMS hoped to drive the Internet penetration rate of Swaziland from 2% to 20% in five years. Swaziland currently has a population of over one million people, of whom 20,000 have Net access. 

Sun Acquires Suse-Linux?

Sun Microsystems President Jonathan Schwartz has sparked speculations that the Santa Clara company may be considering buying Novell Inc., a major vendor of Linux.

Software Patents and the Penguin

Ken Brown opines in Patents and the Penguin:

"The software patent is viewed by both proponents and detractors of Linux as a serious threat to the well-being, and perhaps the survival, of the Linux community. Ironically, this is not only the view of competitors that are eying Linux customers, but leadership within the Linux community itself. While much of the debate regarding Linux and its accompanying license, the General Public License, or GPL, focuses on the provisioning of copyrights, a growing number of observers point to the growing popularity of software patents as a far bigger concern.

There is not a process in place that efficiently screens code for patents before it is contributed to the GPL. There is no master list of software patents held that claim an impact or relevance to open source software. This means that to do a thorough patent check on a software idea, it would have to be done individually or by a law firm. This is not a problem unless, you a downloader does not take potential patent infringement seriously. Unfortunately, some developers download open source under the assumption the software is 100% protected under the GPL’s provisioning for copyright and patent transfer. Obviously this is a significant accident waiting to happen. If any downloaded GPL’ed software used for a commercial application infringes upon a currently patented software product, any number of users and entities could face civil damages."

Sarawak To Acquire High-Tech SAR Equipment

Sarawak is looking at investing in hi-tech equipment for Search and Rescue (SAR) operations that would be most effective for the state's rugged terrain and jungles. This announcement came after the 18-day SAR operation in Bario and Ba'kelalan for a missing helicopter which crashed and killed all seven people on board.

sms2call from Inovas

Inovas Telecommunications Sdn Bhd launched the Inovas “sms2call” which allows a phone call to be placed via the short message service (SMS).

Essentially, the sms2call works from anywhere in the world to help minimise and even eliminate expensive mobile phone international roaming call charges that mobile phone companies have been charging a premium for.

Seoul Society

CNET News reports on how South Korea leads the way in terms of broadband. Some excerpts:

South Korea's policy--the cornerstone of a national technology initiative to help revive a devastated economy--has created true broadband competition, which in turn has helped prices fall and speeds rise. The country's achievements are even more impressive considering its starting point in technology. In 1995, fewer than 1 percent of South Korean residents used the Internet, though a larger number subscribed to proprietary Korean-language networks that were somewhat like the closed CompuServe and America Online networks of the late 1980s. By 2004, more than 71 percent of South Korean households subscribed to broadband Net services, according to local estimates.

Korean regulators set out a clear path for the network industry with well-publicized national goals. All big office and apartment buildings would be given a fiber connection by 1997. By 2000, 30 percent of households would have broadband access through DSL or cable lines. By 2005, more than 80 percent of households would have access to fast connections of 20mbps or more--about the rate needed for high-definition television.

The daily pervasiveness of broadband in South Korea is one of the primary reasons that Intel created a new lab dedicated to the digital home in Seoul. The company is studying how Koreans use the Internet, from shopping to gaming, to understand how the technology can be developed for other countries.

So successful has South Korea's experiment been that it is even exporting its expertise. Several companies are marketing consulting services and equipment to Russia and Southeast Asia.

Soccer Scribe on Globalisation

Franklin Foer tackles globalisation in How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization

"His fervent hope is that as soccer becomes more polyglot and global, it will provide an outlet for a healthy, sporty togetherness that supersedes race and creed. The best example Foer uncovers is Iran, where soccer stadiums have become the place for both Arab men and women to engage with the Western world. And he reserves his highest praise for the city of Barcelona, which he sees as a model of an open and adaptable culture that uses soccer to forge a benign but proud Catalan identity."

DailyWireless had this to say:

"Did soccor(sic) create a melting pot with a nation-state identity?

Quite the opposite. People adopted more closely than ever to their local identities. Meanwhile, players became globally integrated but adopted a local identity.

Globalization may be a phenomena more outside the United States then inside. Same deal with broadband."

Sousveillance Project

Networked Performance blogs about iSee, a p2p sousveillance project:

"iSee is a web-based application charting the locations of closed-circuit television (CCTV) surveillance cameras in urban environments. With iSee, users can find routes that avoid these cameras - paths of least surveillance - allowing them to walk around their cities without fear of being "caught on tape" by unregulated security monitors."

SENT

SENT will be the first major exhibit of phonecam art in the United States. The aim is to explore the camera phone's potential as a creative tool in two ways:

"...through an online public dialogue in which amateur photographers and phonecam users around the world share mobile snapshots of their lives; and through an invitational exhibit in which professional photographers, artists, and public figures test the limits of creative possibilities offered by these hybrid devices.

The fact that phonecams fuse together the abilities to capture, view, and distribute what we see (through e-mail or online photo weblogs) makes them revolutionary. Phonecams are changing the way we see the world, and our place within it. They're an extension of urban eyes. They democratize, hack, and deconstruct photography. When everyone is both photographer and publisher, how will art change? How will human conversation change? What will be the difference between professional and amateur? "

Suing iPod Users DownUnder

Via Sydney Morning Herald: "Most people know it is illegal to download songs from the internet without paying. But far fewer people know it is illegal to copy music from a CD you have legally bought.

Anyone who has copied songs from a CD onto an iPod or computer hard drive has fallen foul of Australian copyright laws, which critics argue are failing to keep pace with technological change. Copying music for personal use is generally OK in the US and Europe. But not in Australia.

Copyright expert, Kim Weatherall, of Melbourne University's law school says:

"You could possibly use it to listen to music that you've recorded yourself or even to a recording made by your friend's band, but that's about it."

Unlike its rivals, Apple does not allow legitimate music websites such as Telstra and Ninemsn to sell digital songs for the iPod. Because Apple does not allow Australian customers to buy songs from its US iTunes website - and there is no local site - there is not much you can do legally with an Apple iPod in Australia.

Smart Homes, Malaysian Style

WITH a total of 65,000 smart homes of various categories, from apartments to terraces to bungalows, to be completed by 2010, Putrajaya Homes Sdn Bhd can be considered as one of the biggest smart home developers in Malaysia. According to the company's director Wan Hashimi Albakri Wan Ahmad Amin Jafri:

“It’s the vision of this cyber city to equip its residents with state-of-the-art lifestyle, through the smart homes. As a housing developer in the country’s first intelligent city, it’s our motto not to just provide bricks and mortar to the buyers. We provide the homes together with a lifestyle, that is the digital lifestyle, which we hope will add value to the house buyers in the long run.”

Putrajaya Homes’ smart homes are equipped with a "brain", ready to be connected to the various smart home devices such as Web camera, sensors and lights. Basically, smart homes in Putrajaya have three types of intelligent features, namely home intrusion detection system, home automation system, and home structured cabling system. These systems are interconnected with each other to make an effective smart home. Wan Hashimi has a short but comprehensive definition of what a "smart home" means:

“A smart home is a home that interacts with its owner."

Steve The Sorcerer

Apple will create a new iTunes mobile music player, which Motorola will make the standard music application on all their mass-market music phones, expected to be available in the first half of next year. Click the link to the PR and note the URL. Or try iphone.org... something's happening here...is Apple playing a much bigger role in Motorola's seamless mobility drive?? Mike Davidson makes the case for the Apple iPhone:

"...the two killer apps of the iPhone will be the music player and Mobile iSync. Many Apple users don’t use .Mac right now because there is no compelling reason to do so. With .Mac synching built into the iPhone via iSync, $99 a year doesn’t seem so bad anymore. Especially considering that Apple’s data plan could include many mobile browsing niceties like a mini-Safari-KHTML browser, Dashboard-like applications, and a nice native mail/newsreader.

It’s the clearest sign yet that Apple is waking up to the cell phone industry. With Cupertino handling the hardware design and UI and Motorola engineering the circuitry and infrastructure, we could have a real product on our hands pretty quickly here".

Singing Swede

Swedish mobile giant LM Ericsson's president and chief executive officer Carl-Henric Svanberg is very happy, reports Edgedaily.com:

At the media briefing just before the opening of CommunicAsia 2004, Svanberg told journalists that Ericsson sees a return to growth for the mobile industry and that Asia is the destination with the greatest prospects. He went so far as to describe Asia as the "world's greenhouse" for mobile communications, with two factors making it the most exciting region for growth — it has one of the world's lowest mobile penetration and it has the most advanced users.

The total number of global mobile subscribers today is around 1.34 billion and is expected to hit the two billion mark by 2008. About 80% of this growth is expected to take place in new high-growth markets in Asia-Pacific, China, Africa, Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Latin America.

Singapore Gets Top Scientist

Singapore has embarked on a project to develop itself as a world-class hub for biomedical research and development in Asia. Research activities include finding a cure for killer diseases such as cancer. David Lane, one of the scientists credited with the landmark discovery of the cancer gene ‘p53’, joins a cast of prominent cancer scientists to relocate to Singapore, including Axel Ullrich of Germany, Edison Liu of the United States and Yoshiaki Ito of Japan.

Sarawak Tribune Site Hacked

Hacked by basher13, the page title states
" basher13 was here! Patch your system"

Sacofa Submarine Cable System

SACOFA Sdn Bhd, a Sarawak Government-backed company, has successfully laid a 950km long submarine fibre optic linking Buntal in Kuching to Mersing in Johore. This "East-West Submarine Cable System" has a capacity of 20 gigabytes, said State Secretary Datuk Amar Abdul Aziz Husain who performed the soft launch in Kuching recently. The fibre optic system would enable broadband services to be more easily available to the people.

StreetNet WiFi Network

Bristol City Council and Cityspace announced an agreement to build the UK’s largest urban digital network offering outdoor wireless broadband access to Bristol’s residents, visitors and city workers. The record-setting agreement provides for ‘StreetNet’, a network of wireless broadband (Wi-Fi), serving ‘always-on’ access to the internet and email, allowing council and city workers to access private networks (VPNs) whilst doing their job on the city streets. Critically, it can also provide wireless connectivity for CCTV, allowing very low cost mobility of cameras for deployment around street events and general security surveillance.

Councillor Helen Holland, Executive for External Affairs and Partnerships for Bristol told Muniwireless they decided to provide Wi-Fi public access to make Bristol a more accommodating place for visitors and residents. In addition, the city sees a lot of other uses for the network, notably, for police, health services, transportation, utility workers and city employees. The creation of a Wi-Fi network also goes hand in hand with the city's recent moves to deliver services better - via the Internet - for example, allowing residents to pay their taxes online, renew library books, report damaged street lighting, etc.