Juniper Networks today introduced its new Data Center Infrastructure Solutions in Malaysia. Designed to advance IT initiatives for data center consolidation, server virtualization and sustainable information technology, the Juniper Networks Data Center Infrastructure Solutions can significantly reduce network complexity and total cost of ownership by up to 52 percent in capital expenditures, up to 44 percent in power, up to 44 percent in cooling and up to 55 percent in rack space in the data center.
Industry leaders increasingly depend on their information infrastructure to accommodate growth and maximize revenue. To remain competitive, they need to provide a growing number of users with robust applications and services while lowering costs. In the data center network, however, these businesses are constrained by legacy architectures that cannot scale with increased information processing demands and energy requirements. With Juniper, customers can achieve greater operational simplicity, agility and efficiency for accelerating the deployment of new applications and services.
Juniper simplifies data center network design with the combination of its’ EX-, MX- and SRX-series products to consolidate services and data center switching layers resulting in significant capital cost savings. Juniper’s Virtual Chassis technology in the EX 4200 series Ethernet switches combined with line-rate 10 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) performance on its chassis-based products can significantly reduce the number of interswitch links and the amount of equipment required in the data center by up to half. Juniper’s data center approach, which includes switching, routing and security technologies, all running on a single network operating system – JUNOS® software – is supported by strategic partner IBM and customers.
Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq: ADBE) today announced the call for entries for the ninth annual Adobe Design Achievement Awards (ADAA). The competition honours the best student graphic designers, photographers, illustrators, animators, digital filmmakers, developers and computer artists from accredited higher education institutions worldwide. Now in partnership with the International Council of Graphic Design Associations (Icograda), the awards ceremony will be held during the Icograda World Design Congress in Beijing, China in October 2009. The Congress will bring together 2,500 delegates from around the globe at the China National Convention Center, located in the heart of the Beijing Olympic Green.
In August this year, Adobe announced the winners of the eighth annual Adobe Design Achievement Awards for 2008, which marked another record in submissions with more than 2,700 students from 33 countries competing in the program.
The Awards had been were extended to include entries from Malaysian institutions of higher learning for the first time in 2008, resulting in over 70 entries from Malaysia and 20 semi-finalists. Malaysian submissions to reach the semi-finals included entries in the Designer/ Developer, Motion Graphics, Illustration, Packaging, Photography, and Print Communications categories.
For Malaysia in 2008, there were:
13 semi-finalists from The One Academy of Communication Design College, including 8 in the Packaging category, 3 in the Print Communications category, 1 in the Motion Graphics category, and 1 in the Design/Developer category
3 semi-finalists from Limkokwing University of Creative Technology - in the Illustration, Print Communications and Photography categories respectively.
2 semi-finalists from Multimedia University, both in the Illustration category
1 semi-finalist from University Putra Malaysia (UPM), in the Photography category
1 semi-finalist from KDU College (Penang Campus), in the Photography category
In Malaysia, the availability from the Communications and Multimedia Commission, of a Networked Content Development Grant for local companies has created interest in digital content development for online digital TV, 2.5/3G mobile data services for information purposes (ie.Tourism, e-Government, e-Learning, e-Health), entertainment, E-commerce, and interactive Education. Use of Adobe software can and does help local organisations nurture local talent and develop innovative offerings.
In Education, Adobe Systems’ products are actively used by nearly every institution in Malaysia - both in the pre-tertiary education sectors as well as in universities; because of their ability to advance digital literacy amongst schoolchildren and students. In particular, Adobe has forged an effective collaborative partnership for digital literacy tools in schools, with the Malaysian Ministry of Education. This extends from the provision of Adobe Presenter for up to 60,000 teachers’ laptops, to further initiatives. Adobe provides MoE with very strong consultative support and resources – including training and curricula development, along with access to Adobe’s regional Education technology specialists, in support of MoE’s vision and initiatives in Pembestarian Sekolah and IT provisioning for the Malaysian education sector.
At the Adobe Systems Education Leadership Forum in April this year, high-level education decision-makers, principals and vice principals of education institutions and schools, teachers and lecturers, heard how Adobe products can help deliver engaged learning to prepare the next generation to compete in the global economy. 190 international participants from Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Korea, New Zealand, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Taiwan and Thailand, as well as from Malaysia, heard about the status of digital education in Asia, the latest digital media education trends, and new digital literacy tools for educators.
However, the method illustrated has the following flaws:
Doesn’t run well with Vista (if you just double click the SetupTas.bat) Unlike Windows XP, Vista default each ‘command prompt run as administrator’ to ‘C:\Windows\System32’, thus after you have run SetupTas.bat, it will not find any file through the related folder ‘.\’
‘osql’ utility will not work when the machine was freshly installed with MSSQL 2005.
Solutions:
Problem 1:
We need a way to set the relative path to the CD ROM. To that, we will create a custom installer (using VB6) which will point to the relative path of SetupTas.bat
Problem 2:
Since ‘osql.exe’ is a utility which doesn’t required to be installed, it can be copied into the CD (together with its dependencies file) and we can invoke it from the CD itself.
This sample code illustrates the usage of Windows API to track a process ID belonging to a command prompt process whether or not is already terminated before proceeding to perform other task.
The command prompt process in this example is to perform a timeout for 10 seconds before auto-closing the window. When this happens, the command prompt process terminates by itself.
The VB6 program will pick up the signal and then will send out notification.
You need to use two kernel32 APIs namely..
Private Declare Function OpenProcess Lib "kernel32" (ByVal dwDesiredAccess As Long, ByVal bInheritHandle As Long, ByVal dwProcessId As Long) As Long
Private Declare Function GetExitCodeProcess Lib "kernel32" (ByVal hProcess As Long, lpExitCode As Long) As Long
Check out the code here or download here or here (Planet Source Code).
Thanks to these reference sites which offers incomplete descriptions.
Three bright and talented Malaysian university students wrote thousands of lines of code to augment existing open source projects during their term break through the Google Summer of Code™ program, whose goal is to increase the world's supply of open source software while providing young computer programmers with inspiring, meaningful summer jobs.
Over the last three months Raj Kissu Rajendran (21), Phua Khai Fong (24) and Devtar Singh (22), learned, experimented and collaborated with mentors from open source organizations worldwide through Google Summer of Code 2008, which matches university students with an interest in open source programming with international open source organizations.
They were the only Malaysians among over 900 students globally who successfully completed their projects.
Raj Kissu Rajendran, a student of Asia Pacific Institute of Information Technology (APIIT), wrote code to implement BLOBStreaming in phpMyAdmin to allow for easier management of media streaming over the Internet. He was mentored by Marc Delisle of MySQL.
Phua Khai Fong, a graduate of Multimedia University (MMU) wrote code for The Squeak Project to enable 'freeCAD' (a basic 3D CAD with Motion Simulation) to function in a virtual world environment called Croquet. freeCAD/Croquet can be used as a powerful education tool that helps improve the way people teach and learn using 3D graphics. He is currently working and partnering with his mentor on open source projects such as KMZ Importer for Cobalt.
Devtar Singh, also a graduate of MMU, constructed the Umit Bluetooth Scanner to aid users in accurately tracking Bluetooth-enabled devices. He is also working on a version that will soon be integrated into the Umit Network Scanning Suite. Adriano Monteiro Marques of Umit mentored Devtar throughout the program.
The development of standards for 100 Gigabit Ethernet is a key part of the process to support widespread cost-effective deployment of 100 GbE technology. The IEEE is currently targeting mid-2010 for industry agreement on a 100 GbE standard.
Internet2, ESnet, Infinera, Juniper Networks and Level 3 Communications today at the annual SC08 conference in Austin, Texas, announced they have agreed to work together to aggressively develop and test emerging 100 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) technologies. The initiative will build on fresh-from-the-laboratory technologies to create a 100GbE testbed on the Internet2 and ESnet networks with an operational network capability soon thereafter.
The initiative highlights the leadership of these organizations in ensuring the Research & Education community has the networking capacity and speed they need to drive advancements in fields such as high-energy physics, telemedicine and climate research.
In support of the development, Juniper Networks plans to leverage its industry-leading T1600 core router. As the only 100 Gbps-ready core router available today, the T1600 provides unparalleled investment protection and a seamless migration path to 100 Gbps. With 100 Gbps of capacity per slot, the T1600 ensures Internet2 and ESnet could quickly and easily deploy 100 Gbps interfaces.
Press Release:
KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA, 19 November, 2008 – Internet2, ESnet, Infinera, Juniper Networks and Level 3 Communications today at the annual SC08 conference in Austin, Texas, announced they have agreed to work together to aggressively develop and test emerging 100 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) technologies.
The initiative will build on fresh-from-the-laboratory technologies to create a 100GbE testbed on the Internet2 and ESnet networks with an operational network capability soon thereafter.
This joint development effort brings together the technical leadership of Level 3 Communications, Infinera, and Juniper Networks, as well as ESnet and Internet2's unmatched experience supporting research communities with the most demanding networking requirements.
Frankly speaking, I would have never imagined this day when USA is struggling with its economy. For instance, the automobile industry is really struggling and gives warning for serious consequences in the wake of collapsing.
It seems these days that people around the world are buying Toyota more often that you think. My uncle in Singapore told me that the two best brands are Toyota and Honda where the former is rugged, tough and economical and the latter is ladylike; smooth, desirable and not-so-tough. He warned me not to buy Nissan and etc. But I think Nissan Grand Livinia is cool.
So, nobody really cares about buying USA made cars, I suppose so. And it seems like the Americans also don't care about royalty anymore.
We have heard the story that Lenovo Thinkpad and Apple Macbook is not the most popular laptop in Japan, it is Toshiba because of royalty culture. Similarly, we also know that Koreans will only use Korean-made technology, so forget about selling to Koreans. There is actually not much different from Taiwan.
The point now is that culture differences has succeeded in helping the economy to become more diversified and helps with competitions which in turn promotes better economy.
But the Internet and globalized media is probably the spoiler. End-users' opinions have never been so important than before, couples with proliferation of blogs, the trend of buying is shifting to one-brand economy. Just think about Microsoft, Google, Toyota and whatever, you would understand.
This may not be a bad thing after all. This offers a window of opportunity for those rising stars to capture the global market with high possibilities faster than we could imagine. My take is that it could happen to you pretty fast, but you have to work hard and fast. Internet is definitely going to be the ultimate market place, we need to find a way to engage users more proactively and effectively through the Internet. And it is low-cost thing to have access to the Internet.
However, what's bitter is that when it is over, it is over. Entrepreneurs today running a risk that there will be no more loyal customers, it is possible that anyone can replace you.(Unless you become the one-brand)
The one-brand economy could perhaps be the peak of capitalism and the world needs to be ready for the next economy and I don't know what it is.
Got this compilation from email (Thanks to TK Chin)
Happenings Around Malaysia
Flextronics 4 days week for Month Nov and Dec 2008.
AMD Penang announced this morning VSS lay off 500 employees.
Spansion force to take leave (5 days in this quarter)
Jabil planned shut down from Dec 24 to Jan 4, will be 6 days leave.
Agilent planned shut down from Dec 24 to Jan 4, will be 6 days leave.
ASE shut down every fortnightly on Monday starting from Nov 3.
Fairchild planned ‘Mass Vacation’ for 9 days leave in FY08 (Q2 : 3 days,Q3 : 2 days,Q4 : 4 days)
ST-NXP Wireless cuts 500 jobs World-Wide, including subcontractors, from the current total of more than 7500 people.
Flextronics cuts 118 jobs in Limerick, Ireland
The job cuts were confirmed during this weekend. Flextronics has announced that the company will cut around 100 jobs at the Limerick plant, said RTE. The reason for the cut backs is due to the global economic downturn.
Flextronics employs around 300 staff at the Limerick facility, which provides warehousing and logistics services to a number of companies in the region.
Dell lays off 700 in Ireland
The Dell facility in Raheen, Limerick is to lay off 700 temporary workers. Additional to that, Flextronics in Limerick is also rumoured to lay off 100 staff. Mary Coughlan, Irish Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, met with members of Dell’s senior management to discuss the future of 3000 employees at the manufacturing facility in Limerick.
STMicro to lay off at Phoenix facility
Switzerland based chip maker STMicroelectronics is to lay off staff at its Phoenix, Arizona facility. Local news states that the chip maker will lay off 100 staff. The facility - which currently employs around 850 staff - will expercience an ongoing lay off process. azcentral cites spokesman Mike Michael Markowitz in saying that "about 100 of the plant's 850 workers were let go this week and that the process would continue".
Last year, the company announced closure plans for 3 American chip facilities and that chip manufacturing would be transferred to low-cost locations. Staff and management hoped for a buyer to keep the plant open.
Dell workers asked to take unpaid vacation
Media reports state that CEO Michael Dell - of computer giant Dell - has asked employees to consider taking a maximum of 5 days unpaid holidays.
As reported earlier, Dell is currently running a restructuring programme to counteract the economic and financial downturn.
This include 8,900 job cuts, voluntary severance packages and a global hiring freeze. "We are asking employees on a voluntary basis to consider taking off (up to) five days ... as unpaid time off as a flexible way to reduce costs for the company," the CEO was cited in a Reuters report in saying.
Tele-Fonika Kable to cut 900
Polish based cable and wire producer Tele-Fonika Kable plans to lay of 900 employees or 19% of its workforce. The lay offs will affect all production units across the group. The company has seven plants, of which five are located in Poland, said PB. Tele-Fonika Kable also plans to sell parts of its business, however it will not close down any plants. The company wishes to optimize production process and reduce costs.
Juniper Networks announced the appointment of Mike Rose to the newly created role of executive vice president of Service, Support and Operations. Most recently, Rose was the senior vice president and chief information officer for Royal Dutch Shell, where he led a 10,000 person service and IT group. Prior to Shell, Rose had a 23-year career at Hewlett-Packard (HP) in roles across finance, IT and field operations. This included serving as HP's chief information officer.
Press Release:
KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA, November 14, 2008 – Juniper Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: JNPR), the leader in high-performance networking, today announced the appointment of Mike Rose to the newly created role of executive vice president of Service, Support and Operations.
Rose will report directly to Chief Executive Officer Kevin Johnson, and reporting to Rose will be the leaders of Juniper's Services and Manufacturing organizations.
Check out the full details of all new features for web, print and production.
Other interesting stuffs presented by the evangelists ...
Smarter Adjustment Tools - Photoshop CS4
A few things which Tim mentioned swiftly was the 'Dodge Tool' which is now a better shading tool. And then he mentioned the 'Smart-Guy Tool' which in a automated built-in feature for alignment of objects on the canvas; just think of it as automated alignment tool and it is smarter now.
Then you have the 'Content-Aware-Scaling Tool' which is smart enough to auto-generate according to patterns when scaling.
In this video, you can see from the low resolution video that the ship object is actually being rebuilt on real-time in order to accommodate for the picture getting bigger or smaller.
Tim over and over again kept reminding us that the 3D engine in Photoshop CS4 has been rewrote from scratch so that everything (within the 3D context) becomes objects. This allows great feats to be accomplished such as totally merging of an image into a 3D surface and removing a 3D surface without affecting other parts.
Check out the video below.
My biggest impression on Tim was the mention of IDML (InDesign Markup Language), which is a new technology (based on XML) in InDesign CS4 which allows automation, period.
Think about it, if you want to automate certain tasks while working on InDesign, you can't unless you get CS4 and make use of either one of the followings:
Scripting
IDML
For instance, if you have an InDesign template and would like to generate 100 different posters based on 100 different slogans and images stored in a database, then this will be useful for you. It is similar to MS Word Mail-Merge.
This is for programmer. IDML is just an open format for InDesign's Document based on the XML technology. So by referring to the specification, software developers can now develop third party software applications to create InDesign's document. This is pretty cool!
Tim also reminded the audience to make use of the 'GREP Tool' to make bulk changes to InDesign's documents for repetitive texts such as dates for working with formats.
He also demonstrated the use of 'Pencil Tool' to wrap a text object around an object such as human body.
The best tip Tim gave the crowd as finale is the method to improve bad taken digital photos. He went on to explain that the biggest problem with digital photography is when you do not have enough lights to support the taking of crisp shot; I totally agree, especially when you are using 2M pixels camera. But sometimes it is also due to bad cameraman.
He demonstrated that by taking 4 to 6 shots of all bad shots of an image such as these two blurred images.
This is what you can do...
Take 4 - 6 shots.
Load in Photoshop CS4
Goto 'Tools/Load Files Into Layer/Auto-Align Layers/Convert Smart Objects'
Goto 'Layer/Smart Object/Stack Mode/Median'
Photoshop CS4 will rebuild for you an enhanced image.
What I can remember getting from Karl Soule was 'Adobe Device Central' which can be used as Content Simulation Tool for testing the effectiveness of a content such as video designed with a generic specifications. It is able to perform transcoding for you into many mobile devices.
Selecting Devices
Content Simulation
The other thing which Karl mentioned was the 'speech search' in Premiere CS4 where speech will be subjected to speech-recognition to generate transcripts which will then be used for text based searching.
Tim Cole started his career at Aldus Corp. in 1988, doing technical support and training for PageMaker. He has been with Adobe since 1998 when he returned to work on the launch of InDesign 1.0. Since that time he's been an evangelist for InDesng and InCopy, as well as Photoshop and Illustrator.
Tim works extensively with newspaper, magazine, and book publishers around the world. he speaks at industry events, users groups, product conferences and at seminar events around the world. he and colleague Rufus Deuchler collaborate on the Adobe TV program Caffe Fibonacci where they discuss and demonstrate the powerful features and workflows avaialble in Adobe Creative Suite Software. More About Karl Soule' (Creative Evangelist, Digital Video & Audio):
Karl Soule' is responsible for promoting Adobe's video and audio tools to creative professionals. Soule' joined Adobe throug the company's acquisition of Serious Magic, the original creators of the OnLocation software, where he was Product Marketing Manager, and interim Product Manager, Professional group. in this role, he oversaw the development and marketing of the OnLocation and Ultra Software, now part of Adobe CS3 Production Premium. Prior to Serious Magic, Soule' was a Senior Sales Sales Engineer and Trainer for GlobalStreams, Inc., GlobalStreams is a leading provider of video communications hardware and software for the video production professional.
Soule' has extensive experience with live video streaming technologies, engineering live broadcasts for sites such as countingdown.com and playTV.com. His video production experience includes graphic production, live switching, editing, chroma keying/virtual set operation, and 3D animation. Soule' has provided training for companies such as NFL Films, Yahoo, WWI, CBS Marketwatch, and national goverment agencies like the House of Parliament in Ottawa, Canada.
Soule' first jobs in production were working for several local radio stations, cutting comedy segments for a top-rated afternoon talk show, and engineering NBA broadcasts for the Scaramento Kings.
Soule' began his professional career at age of 14, working with dBase II and a CP/M terminal for lobbying firm in Scaramento, CA.
Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) today launched Gmail voice and video chat, making it simple for Malaysians and people around the world to chat in high-quality video within Gmail - all for free.
Now Malaysians can make video calls to friends and family and cakap-cakap all you want, all for free, right alongside your email.
Here’s how to get started with Gmail voice and video chat:
Go to mail.google.com/videochat and download the Gmail voice and video chat plug-in
Be sure to restart your browser when asked
Sign in to Gmail
In the Chat section of your Gmail, select the contact you want to call. Click on ‘Video & more’ in the lower-left part of the chat window
Click either ‘Start voice chat’ or ‘Start video chat’. If your contact doesn’t have a web camera, you can still have a voice call or a one-way video call
If you’d like to make the video area full screen, just move your cursor over the video chat and click the icon in the upper-left corner
When you’re done chatting, just click the ‘Hang up’ button
Following hot on the heels of its announcement with Cartoon Network last week, here is another significant move for MESDAQ-listed mTouche. mTouche is collaborating with Paramount Digital Entertainment to distribute Paramount Pictures’ movie content through mobile devices, exclusively for Malaysian and Thai consumers.
Press Release:
Kuala Lumpur, 13 Nov 2008 - MESDAQ-listed mTouche Technology Berhad (‘mTouche’) today announced its collaboration with Paramount Digital Entertainment to localise and distribute Paramount Pictures content through interactive mobile devices exclusively for Malaysia and Thailand in the South East Asian (SEA) market. Paramount Digital Entertainment is part of Paramount Pictures Corporation - a unit of Viacom Inc. (NYSE: VIA and VIA.B).
Terms of this deal will enable Paramount Pictures’ rich filmed-based content to be transformed, localized and accessible in SEA via multiple wireless touch points.
Additionally, mTouche will develop and deliver a hybrid roll-out of content offerings, including movie-themed ringtones, wallpapers, java games, on-demand video clips and movie updates to be based upon a select list of titles from Paramount Pictures’ existing catalogue and upcoming new releases.
Adobe Creative Suite 4 had a launching event yesterday (11th Nov 2008) at Shangri-La, Kuala Lumpur Malaysia.
Check out the details of what's new in the products for web.
The session was conducted by Mr. Paul Burnett, Senior Worldwide Evangelist, Creative Solutions Adobe Systems Inc.
Paul started by evangelizing Adobe's Fireworks which he said is important for two things:
Creating designs for the screen (web). Try not to use Photoshop which later you have to optimize for the web again. You can use Fireworks for slicing as well.
Rapid prototyping of web projects.
Slicing with Fireworks
The cool new stuff in Firework CS4 is that you can now do the following two things:
Export web projects prototypes into interactive PDF, send the PDF file to customers for reviewing.
Export prototypes into CSS/Javascripts (xHTML) files (after slicing) and into Dreamweaver for further development (incorporating scripts). In CS3, you can do the same except that there will be no CSS exported, for CS4 the CSS exported is clean-cut, crisp and most important of all, it is based on web standard compliance. So, if you are still trying to create CSS for your web templates, you are wasting time starting from yesterday (in Malaysia)
Export xHTML from Fireworks for Dreamweaver editing
Thus, as a web designers, you should be using Fireworks for designing and prototyping. Dreamweaver is meant for programmers where you can do the following things in CS4.
Search for CSS of a particular element.
Live-code viewing - where you can see on real-time the generation of dynamic HTML codes out of the CSS/Javascripts combination of your project files.
You can also now export end products (web projects) not just in binary format (swf) but in XPL (XML for Flash) format so that you can open the same project files in other CS4 softwares such as InDesign, Photoshop and etc as a project files (objects are objects, texts are texts, images are images) and performing editing from thereon
Fast search CSS for editing
Live-code Reviewing
Check out some videos of the new features demonstrated.
Paul is responsible for promoting the use of Adobe products, talking with customers, giving product demonstrations at trade shows and seminars, speaking at industry conferences, and leading specialized, advanced training sessions featuring Adobe's Creative Suite product line.
Before joining Adobe, Burnett worked in the web, multimedia and video industries for more than 18 years running his own company, MAD (Multimedia, Art Design), and wining many awards including five Macromedia/Adobe Site of the Day awards.
Burnett also worked for several years at Macromedia as Senior Evangelist for Asia Pacific, presenting new products, seminars and master classes throughout Asia, Australia and New Zealand.
Trained in analogue video and audio production, Burnett initially used and taught Adobe Premiere Pro soon after its release in the early '90s and started using Adobe After Effects when it was first released, to creat both standaline video productions as well as incorporating video into multimedia and the web.
Burnett holds a degree in Education from University of canberra.
Adobe Creative Suite 4 had a launching event today at Shangri-La. Kuala Lumpur Malaysia.
Check out the details of what's new in the products web, print and video.
During the media briefing, the managing director of Southeast Asia Adobe Systems Mr. Ashley Wearne presented an overview of CS 4, which he called it 'Cool Stuff 4 you!' and it is interesting to note a few interesting facts.
First of all, you got to be serious Adobe users in order to appreciate CS4. According to Flavert Media Blog, all the new features are killer features.
According to Ashley, all these features are what the customers asked for and they include people like BBC, Direct TV, Disney and etc. CS4 is really focusing on the idea of integrated solution to achieve the state of fully collaborated software architecture.
Check out a few number facts about CS4.
14 products
14 technologies
7 services
6 suites
19 languages
178 countries
10,014 pre-release customers. (Beta testers). So even company like Adobe Systems leverage on real customers for product testing.(This is something useful for software developers to take note)
And this product took them 17,000 person years of development.
What customers should consider when thinking about upgrading from CS3 are just three reasons:
Time Saving
Integration
Innovation
It only costs RM 3,689 to upgrade from CS3 and that is really affordable. Deal or no deal ?
Ashley said that the trend of people adopting CS4 is about 20% for early adopters and it will take a year or two for others to follow suit.
When asked about where are the core software engineers based in ? Ashley mentioned that mainly in three locations; USA, China( for mobile-related development) and India as well. Adobe's headquarter is in San Jose, California USA.
Finally, came the killer question about the probability of the assumption that CS5 will be out latest in 2 years timeframe, Ashley replied that Adobe Systems is a software company and thus they are always innovating. Of course, speaking from experience, CS5 is definitely on the way.
In the Q & A session, when pressed for backward compatibility, Mr. Paul Burnett (Senior Worldwide Evangelist, Creative Solutions) mentioned that backward compatibility works in a sense that there will be features-lost moving files from CS4 to CS3.
And on the issues with learning curve, Burnett highlighted two initiatives:
There are more than ever more online tutorials out there.
Newer features are getting more and more intuitive than ever.
Ashley Wearne is based in Singapore, where he spearhead the development and growth of Adobe's business in the region and serve to further strengthen the bonds between its customers and partner communities.
Prior to joining Adobe, he was the VP for Australia, New Zealand, Southe East Asia and India for McAfee where he was responsible for charting the growth of McAfee's customer and partner business elements. Ashley joined McAfee (then Network Associates) in April 2002 as Managing Director for Australia, New Zealand and moved to live in Singapore in May 2003. Previously before joining McAfee, he was the Managing Director for Novell in Australia and New Zealand.
Ashley as a wealth of experiences in IT Industry having led an illustrious career that spans more than 20 years. Throughout his career Ashley has held several senior management positions in areas such as general management, channel management, corporate marketing and sales management for a number of leading companies which include Unisys and Burroughs.
Ashely has worked and lived in Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and Singapore and has a degree majoring in Economics from the Flinders University of South Australia.
Image via WikipediAdobe Creative Suite 4 had a launching event today at Shangri-la, Kuala Lumpur Malaysia.
Check out the details of what's new in the products web, print and video.
Check out the main hall at Sabah room. It is full house and there could be like 500 participants.
Participants consist of mostly advertising firms, design firms, educational institutions and partners.
The crowd was in jovial mood, mostly applauded the new cool killing features of CS4 has to offer and everybody had fun while evangelists played up jokes coupled with ingenious ingredients that cook up the agenda of the day.
In short, the crowd simply loved it and I have never witnessed such NOT-boring event since lately. This suggests that people of these industries are jovial, fun, loving and always illuminating sense of goodwill.
Education needed to curb rampant cyber crime and terrorism, the EC-Council Asia Pacific Roundtable Forum (ECC|RF) concludes.
Press Release:
KUALA LUMPUR, November 7, 2008 – “Everyone must be aware of the risks that cyber crime and cyber terrorism poses, as ignorance may lead to huge losses and even endanger lives” This was the unanimous response from the participants of the inaugural EC-Council Asia Pacific Roundtable Forum (ECC|RF).
EC-Council, the world’s leading e-business and security certification organization hosted the inaugural Roundtable Forum at the Sunway Convention Centre in conjunction with the H@cker Halted Malaysia Conference on November 6, 2008. The objective of the roundtable forum is to let it be the platform for authorities and corporations to convene, discuss and develop strategies and defenses to ward off escalating cyber terrorism and cyber crimes.
Picture from left :
Mr James Aquilina, Executive Managing Director for Stroz Friedberg LLC
Mr Jay Bavisi, EC-Council President
Prof Dr Lech J. Janczewski, Associate Professor of the University of Auckland, New Zealand
Mr Anthony Fung, Senior Investigator Microsoft APAC
Maj. Scott Applegate Ex-Chief, US Army Red Team
Mr Paul Wright, Head of Cyber Crime Unit, City of London Police
My thought is that the Cyber War is probably going to be the second next threat after the environmental threat to civilization. I don't think the next war will be on F-35 (Lightning II) fighting with MiG (Russia) or JF-17 (China) because the USA has already gained so much dominance over the industry. One of the strategy of USA military to nullify the threats of war is to sell older technologies to other allies, this is very apparent in the case of sales of F-16 (Falcon) to so many countries. This is like the saying where if Google is using Visual Studio 2008 to develop some cool technology, that technology is still Microsoft technology. This applies to the theory why Sony couldn't produce the first iPod ?.
So as far as I am concerned, F-35 (Lightning II) will be just something for exhibition and a way of motivation to move forward or probably fighting with alien but not with human.
Nuclear war is another story but cyber war is very much real and still infancy but growing fast.
Singapore Telecommunications Limited (SingTel) is offering Managed Security Services (MSS) enabled by Juniper Networks security solutions; to prevent unauthorized access into customers' networks and provide the first line of defense against cyber-threats such as viruses and worms.
SingTel's MSS leverages the robust protection and ease of management of Juniper Networks Secure Services Gateway (SSG), Integrated Security Gateways (ISG) with integrated Intrusion Detection and Prevention (IDP), and high-performance firewall solutions.
The SingTel MSS are designed to provide enterprise customers with fast, reliable and secure access to applications and services from a single network architecture. This eases the strain on customers' own IT resources, and reduces risk as well as operational and capital expenses, so high-performance enterprises can focus on running their businesses and driving competitive advantage.
Press Release:
KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA, November 10, 2008 – Juniper Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: JNPR), the leader in high-performance networking, today announced that Singapore Telecommunications Limited (SingTel) is offering its Managed Security Services (MSS) enabled by Juniper Networks security solutions.
As a part of SingTel's suite of managed services, the MSS solutions prevent unauthorized access into customers' networks and provide the first line of defense against cyber-threats such as viruses and worms.
During our regularly scheduled account maintenance and security verification procedures, we have detected a serious in your account and security profile. This might be due to either of the following reasons:
A) A recent change in your personal information. B) Submitting invalid information during the initial security update process.
Integrating toon fun with the hottest mobile trend
Press Release:
Kuala Lumpur, 15 October 2008 – Fancy having BEN 10, Tom & Jerry and the lovable, all-time favorite Flintstone characters on your mobile interface? MESDAQ-listed mTouche Technology Berhad (“mTouche”) has announced a strategic collaboration which aims to bring fun mobile content to a wider audience – specifically to the young and the young at heart - with Cartoon Network. Mobile phone users can now fully enjoy an exciting experience through this all-new Cartoon Network WAP portal.
Targeted at 16- to 35-year-olds, the WAP portal offers a series of popular content which features characters from Cartoon Networks hits such as BEN 10, Dexter’s Laboratory, The Powerpuff Girls, Johnny Bravo, The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy, as well as the iconic Tom & Jerry, Scooby Doo, Flintstones, Cow & Chicken, and Samurai Jack, etc. Subscribers can enhance their mobile usage experience by downloading their favourite applications onto their phones from a gallery which includes a wide variety of animated wallpaper, ringtones, truetones, screensavers and Java games.
I am just wondering how much should I make by running a software business or as entrepreneur being involved with software activities.
Let's imagine that you started alone and you have a product, and you needed like RM 3,500 per month to survive, you got to at least sell 1 piece at 3,500 rite ? But since the most popular entry-level software in Malaysia (UBS Accounting Software) is selling at RM 598.00 (with hidden cost), and you look at very useful software like Adobe Photoshop CS4 is price at RM 2,869 and technically useful software like Business Objects' Crystal Report at RM 1,800, the dream of doing one product and selling just 1 piece per month may not be feasible. And the dream of selling an off-the-shelve product for RM 5,000 is definitely out!!!!
The reason is that hot sellers like Photoshop is a huge system with so many uncounted functions and it keeps getting better.
So let's say you sell at RM 1,500 per piece, you got to sell to 3 customers per month right ? So imagine that the software is perfect that it doesn't require much support and you maintain that for a year, the next year you got to sell at higher price because you need to start making money. So, by taking into consideration that the Malaysian inflation rate is about 2.1% annually, by the next year you are supposed to sell at about RM 1,531.5.
But what we really concern about is for start-up. Assuming that you can sell the product at RM 1,500 (at year 1 on Jan 1) and just minor supporting the 36 customers for the whole year with one man show while at the same time, re-engineering the product to make it better and to create the next release for year 2 to be launched at Jan 1, then it will be great. The question is always would people really want to buy it ? Because if you projected to sell 36 copies for year 1 and if that number doesn't realize at 31 Dec, you will then be making loses for a one-man-show business.
So, you can't be sure of the sales not that the product is not useful, but whether the trend of the society is able to accommodate you as part of the culture and you can't be sure how much effort you would require to support those 36 customers and at the same time do the work for the next release all with one man effort. The risk of selling the product at RM 1,500 per piece is high (for a start-up).
Revenues: $16,005 Employees: 3 (Allen, Gates, and Ric Weiland) MITS promotes Altair BASIC, the computer language developed by Gates and Allen for the Altair computer. Hobbyists are ecstatic, despite the fact that, even with BASIC, there is little you can actually do with the Altair. The "MITS Mobile" travels through the western United States demonstrating the Altair and "Micro-soft" BASIC. It also unwittingly distributes copies of not-quite-ready-for-prime-time (i.e., pirated) BASIC.
Revenues: $22,496 Employees: 7 MITS sponsors the World Altair Computer Convention (WACC) in Albuquerque, for Altair owners, dealers, programmers, and anyone interested in microcomputers. The convention features a 20-year-old as the keynote speaker: Bill Gates.
The BASIC Foundation for a company Revenues: $381,715 Employees: 9 Microsoft's flat fee of $21,000 for what becomes Applesoft BASIC seems like a good idea at the time, until Apple sells more than a million machines with BASIC built in. Put your calculators away; it works out to 2 cents per copy.
Revenues: $1,355,655 Employees: 13 Anticipating the success of the 16-bit processor, Microsoft begins development of simulators in order to speed and simplify code development.
So according to the report, at 13 man power, Microsoft revenue achieved US$ 1 million.
So, imagine this happened to me where I would hire 12 software engineers at RM 3,500 per month, I would spend RM 504,000 on the salary and I would make a profit of Ringgit Malaysia half a million for that year. That is not bad at all.
What I learned from this Microsoft case study are:
Sell the product at a higher price and with lesser customers to support so that you can spend more time innovate the product and nurture future releases
Always have next release and customers will have to pay for it. This is particularly hard for those who have to deal with agents because customers usually prefer not to buy upgrades when there are agents to service them as compared to just buy it from the shelves. This is why UBS Software is actually charging about RM 200 per annum for support and updates (excluding the agents' interest) and it is back-tracking.Adobe is doing well in this area, people are willing to buy the next release if they have decided to ditch the old releases.
To follow the Microsoft model, you got to sell the product in CDs or DVDs and not download from the Internet (which is another business model totally).
To start up, it might be better to sell to one customer (for year 1) at higher price and still retain the rights to resell (for year 2) than trying to sell to 36 customers. To make this happen, you have to look for opportunity and not wait for opportunity. Creating and selling games is a good choice actually. Think of an idea, create the prototype and look for a publisher (for year 1).
There are only two types of consumer software business model namely the off-the-shelves and the Internet (you have to choose one)
And the end of the day, you had wished that Adobe Photoshop had been selling for more expensive. These products determine the price trend but not the inflation rate of 2.1% annually.
Google Inc., pemimpin dunia pencarian online dan periklanan, telah menguatkan cakarnya di teritori video game, walaupun mungkin tidak sebagus form game pada umumnya. Pengumuman ini disampaikan Google, Rabu lalu, mengenai launching versi beta dari AdSense for Games, sebuah teknologi yang didesain untuk meletakkan iklan game yang relevan di web.
Langkah pembuatan AdSense for Games versi beta ini merupakan perluasan program Google AdSense, yang mencocokkan iklan dengan content dari website. Dengan kata lain, AdSense for Games akan menampilkan, misalkan target iklan untuk pria muda yang suka dengan olahraga dan game action. Maka iklan tersebut kemudian akan menampilkan video yang akan memainkan game action yang berhubungan dengan olahraga atau setelah melengkapi semua level game.
Dengan adanya AdSense in Games, Google menjadi lebih leluasa untuk mempromosikan ‘tempat lain’ untuk pengiklan dan mencakup pelanggan yang lebih banyak.”, kata Christian Oestlien, manager produk senior Google, Mountain View, California.
Google masuk ke dalam dunia game, sejak pihaknya membeli Adscape Media, sebuah perusahaan iklan game kecil, di awal tahun 2007, dan kurang dari setahun setelah Microsoft juga membeli perusahaan iklan, Massive Inc. Selain itu, masih ada rival Google, Yahoo Inc. yang juga siap dengan iklan model game download, dari dua buah perusahaan iklan game, Double Fusion dan NeoEdge.
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