CRN has selected the 25 Most Influential Executives of 2009, who are believed to have changed the computing landscape with aggressive channel sales expansions, blockbuster acquisitions, breakthrough cloud computing initiatives and strong sales even in the midst of the biggest downturn in the economy since the Great Depression.
They are:
Mark Hurd, Chairman, CEO and President, Hewlett-Packard
John Chambers, Chairman and CEO, Cisco Systems
Larry Ellison, CEO, Oracle
Ben Bernanke, Chairman, Federal Reserve
Enrique Salem, President and CEO, Symantec
Steve Ballmer, CEO, Microsoft
Rob McKernan, Senior Vice President and President North America, APC by Schneider Electric
CRN has selected the Top 25 Most Innovative Executives of 2009, who are believed to have put big profits into solution provider pockets with breakthrough products and channel programs that cover the most explosive emerging technology markets.
They are:
Stephen Cho, Director of Google Apps Channels, Google (Web 2.0/utility computing)
Steve Munford, CEO, Sophos (security)
Michael Klayko, CEO, Brocade (computer network)
Evan Williams, CEO, Twitter (social networking)
Steven Chang, President, Asus (netbook)
David Farr, CEO, Emerson Electric (green IT solution)
Danny Windham, CEO, Digium (VoIP)
Bill Gross, Co-founder and Secretary Treasurer, EFolder (SaaS)
Bob Cagnazzi, CEO, BlueWater Communications (value added solution provider)
Gavin Garbutt, Co-Founder, President and CEO, N-Able (managed service provider)
Peter Cannone, CEO, OnForce (outsourcing services)
Christopher Dean, Chief Strategy Officer, Skype (Internet telephony)
Mike Lazardis, President and Co-CEO, Research In Motion (mobile wireless solutions)
Mont Phelps, CEO, NWN (system integrator)
Adam Selipsky, Web Services Vice President, Amazon.com (online retail)
Jen-Hsun Huang, President and CEO, Nvidia (3D graphics processor)
Lars and Jens Rasmussen, Wave Design Developers, Google (Google Wave online communications)
Joel Allen, Founder, President and CEO, AllenPort (360-degree GPS solution)
Mark Shuttleworth, Founder, Ubuntu (Linux distribution)
Rick McEachern, Co-founder and Chairman, LongJump (cloud computing platform)
John Kish, President and CEO, Pano Logic (virtualization)
Michael Gold, Founder and CEO, Zlago (SaaS)
Sridhar Vembu, Founder and CEO, Zoho (online business applications)
The Malaysia's Most Valuable Brands (MMVB)is a brand valuation and benchmarking of high performing Malaysian brands by The Association of Accredited Advertising Agencies (4As) in collaboration with Interbrand.
There are 3 brands fell off the 2009 list:
Proton
MAA
Ogawa
There are 2 new brands enter into the 2009 list:
Alliance Bank
Premier
The 5 biggest winners are:
Sime Darby (+82.6%)
Padini (+20.2%)
RHB Bank (+13.8%)
Sin Chew (+13.5%)
AirAsia (+8.7%)
The 5 biggest losers are:
Malaysia Airlines (-61.3%)
TV3 (-43.3%)
Maybank (-42.5%)
Kurnia (-29.4%)
Resorts World Genting (-22.5%)
The Malaysia's 30 most valuable brands in 2009 are:
Public Bank (6.593b)
Maybank (5.374b)
CIMB (5.245b)
Celcom (3.993b)
Parkson (3.740b)
Resorts World Genting (3.464b)
DiGi (3.129b)
Astro (3.023b)
Sime Darby (2.992b)
Petronas (the listed Petronas Dagangan & Petronas Gas) (2.649b)
Perodua (2.644b)
Hong Leong Bank (2.591b)
Giant (2.244b)
AmBank (761.327m)
YTL (739.754m)
Malaysia Airlines (708.391m)
RHB Bank (691.255m)
TV3 (586.922m)
AirAsia (411.068m)
The Star (371.398m)
JobStreet.com (313.475m)
Dutch Lady (276.400m)
Padini (244.634m)
Sin Chew (215.768m)
Affin Bank (198.998m)
Alliance Bank (195.330m)
Kurnia (139.329m)
Premier (111.303m)
Sunway City (108.452m)
Bonia (96.559m)
Do you invested or plan to invest in any of the above Top 30 MMVB?
Do you use a mobile phone? If yes, are you aware about the Online Customer Service (OCS) website of your mobile service provider?
In fact, all major mobile operators in Malaysia (Digi/Maxis/Celcom/Yes) have their free OCS website accessible by all their prepaid and postpaid customers.
Among the services available in the OCS website are:
Manage account detail (such as contact info, etc.)
View and print itemized bill statement (including prepaid account)
Pay bill online using credit card
Check for SIM card PUK code (required to unblock a SIM card with too many wrong password retries)
Make change to account plan
Subscribe/unsubscribe to certain value added services (VAS)
I notice that many people are unaware about the existence of their mobile operator's OCS website, or not making use of it. Perhaps this article can bring some awareness to such free service available on the web.
Here is the list of auspicious dates in 2010 for organizing and hosting meet-up with friends and/or relatives (会友), which is produced based on the Chinese almanac Tong Shu.
The dates are applicable for house warming, open house, home party, gathering, and any other similar functions to meet up with friends and/or relatives.
Bear in mind that although the Tong Shu is a compilation of Chinese astrology and calendaring studies gathering wisdom of thousands of years, we should use it wisely and rationally, but not be too superstitious on it.
Here is the list of auspicious dates for renovation in year 2010, which is produced based on the Chinese almanac Tong Shu.
Bear in mind that although the Tong Shu is a compilation of Chinese astrology and calendaring studies gathering wisdom of thousands of years, we should use it wisely and rationally, but not be too superstitious on it.
Dr. Arthur Langer who is the senior director of the Center for Technology, Innovation and Community Engagement at Columbia Uniersity has thrown out several analytic questions for managers and/or senior management people to assess how prepared they are to continue moving on to their next position, either inside or outside their current organization.
Here are the questions:
Do you spend enough time with the business? (beside your own domain such as technical...)
Who is your replacement? (are you trapped in your job because you do it too well?)
Do you know your individual weaknesses? (do you have good staff that compliment your weaknesses?)
Where is your organization vulnerable? (are you serious in continuous improvement?)
Are you involved with corporate social causes? (which you can get more attention and value to the management)
Are you involved with getting new clients? (are you playing a key role in driving major business opportunies?)
With these strategical questions entered your mind, you are more prepared to move on for your next higher position in your career.
Here is the list of auspicious dates in 2010 for getting a baby (求嗣), which is produced based on the Chinese almanac Tong Shu.
The dates have good element(s) to embro/faetus. Traditionally, the dates are referred for conception planning (making love and expecting a baby to the family). Nowadays, people also make reference to them for Caesarian delivery of new born.
Bear in mind that although the Tong Shu is a compilation of Chinese astrology and calendaring studies gathering wisdom of thousands of years, we should use it wisely and rationally, but not be too superstitious on it.
The ESRI Thailand Street Map (TSM) NT v10.0 for Garmin is released and available in both English and Thai language.
Enhancements in this version include:
Added more than 1,000 images of new Junction View
Updated approximately 500,000 Point-of-Interests (POIs) for the whole country that have been either opened and closed from the past year by actual field survey
Added and updated about 10,000 kilometers of road data
Added the exits in Highway Mode for major roads, not just the highways
Added entrances and exits on major buildings and landmarks
Added local voice navigation for all 4 regions of Thailand (for compatible devices)
Added about 10,000 of new telephone numbers
Improved map data quality
Miscellaneous improvements
Known issues to this version of TSM:
Some of the functions including the address search, junction view, etc. only work in the Thai language version of the map.
Searching for a place by using the “near…” button function might cause certain model of GPS to unexpectedly shutdown or reboot by itself
"Ending hunger is the humanity's top priority, change will follow," urged FAO.
The global food insecurity situation has worsened and continues to represent a serious threat for humanity. With food prices remaining stubbornly high in developing countries, the number of people suffering from hunger has been growing relentlessly in recent years.
“The silent hunger crisis — affecting 1/6 of all of humanity — poses a serious risk for world peace and security. We urgently need to forge a broad consensus on the total and rapid eradication of hunger in the world,” FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf comments.
Here is the list of auspicious dates for opening business in year 2010, which is produced based on the Chinese almanac Tong Shu. It can be applied to new business opening or reopening of business after a break/holiday.
The highlighted dates are right after the celebration of Chinese New Year.
Bear in mind that although the Tong Shu is a compilation of Chinese astrology and calendaring studies gathering wisdom of thousands of years, we should use it wisely and rationally, but not be too superstitious on it.
Here is the list of auspicious dates for moving to new house/office in year 2010, which is produced based on the Chinese almanac Tong Shu.
Bear in mind that although the Tong Shu is a compilation of Chinese astrology and calendaring studies gathering wisdom of thousands of years, we should use it wisely and rationally, but not be too superstitious on it.
If you are going to move to a new home, don't forget to visit the "home idea" section of my blog to find out my sharing on mortgage, renovation, furnitures, electrical appliances, pest control, etc.
I have posted the list of auspicious dates for wedding/marriage in 2010 recently, and here is the reverse, namely the inauspicious dates to avoid for wedding/marriage in 2010. The list below is produced based on the Chinese almanac Tong Shu.
If you are concerned, then should avoid getting married on the listed days above, especially for those born in the year of snake. Note that the dates iterate every 12 days.
You might have noticed that unlike the previous years, the mid-autumn festival day of year 2010 is indeed an inauspicious day for wedding/marriage.
Bear in mind that although the Tong Shu is a compilation of Chinese astrology and calendaring studies gathering wisdom of thousands of years, we should use it wisely and rationally, but not be too superstitious on it.
Here is the list of auspicious dates in year 2010 for signing contract, signing offer letter, register for marriage, receiving religious baptism, and other similar agreement-related activities. It is produced based on the Chinese almanac Tong Shu.
Note that 14 February 2010 which is the Saint Valentine's day, is also one of the auspicious dates in the list. That day is also the 1st day of Chinese New Year. Hence it is auspicious to register for marriage on that day, except for couple which either one of them was born in the year of Cow.
Another interesting auspicious date is 10 October 2010, which can be written as 10-10-10.
Bear in mind that although the Tong Shu is a compilation of Chinese astrology and calendaring studies gathering wisdom of thousands of years, we should use it wisely and rationally, but not be too superstitious on it.
Today I would like to share my experience in cancelling the Touch 'n Go Zing Card.
I have been using the Maybank Touch 'n Go Zing Card for several years, until recently I decided to switch over to CIMB Touch 'n Go Zing Card.
The switching process involves applying a new Zing card from CIMB and cancelling the old Zing card with Maybank.
The reasons for the switch are:
I plan to cancel my Maybank credit card.
The auto-reload fee of CIMB Zing card would be cheaper in long run.
For example, if you use about RM200 Touch 'n Go value per month. In a period of 6 months, if you use Maybank Zing card, you will need to reload 12 times, and the total fee is RM2 x 12 = RM24.
If you opt for RM200 per reload in CIMB Zing card, you will only need to reload 6 times, and the total fee is RM2 x 6 = RM12.
The saving of using CIMB Zing card rather than Maybank Zing card is 50%!
And here is the procedure to cancel the Touch 'n Go Zing card:
1. Cancel the card with your bank. Call their call centre.
2. Cancel the card with Touch 'n Go. Call 03-76285115.
3. A RM5 processing fee will be charged for the cancellation. It will be deducted from the stored value in your Zing card.
4. Your Zing card will be blocked from further usage.
5. The remaining money in your Zing card will be refunded by Touch 'n Go to your credit card within 30 days.
Here is the list of auspicious dates for wedding/marriage in year 2010 (year of Tiger), which is produced based on the Chinese almanac Tong Shu. (Click the image to enlarge)
The dates highlighted in pink are considered even more auspicious.
You might aware that 10 October 2010, which can be written as 10-10-10, is among the auspicious dates. Another interesting date is the Saint Valentine's day which fall on 14 February 2010 and is a Sunday. That day is also the 1st day of Chinese New Year. You can expect many couples will get married on that auspicious day.
Bear in mind that although the Tong Shu is a compilation of Chinese astrology and calendaring studies gathering wisdom of thousands of years, we should use it wisely and rationally, but not be too superstitious on it.
Individuals with excellent interpersonal skills rise to the top – in their careers, in their organizations and in life! You’ve probably seen it happen time and again.
Take 2 people with similar skills and knowledge, but one of them has enviable people skills while the other’s interpersonal skills are only mediocre. Which one gets ahead faster and goes further? You know the answer to that one — no contest! What you may not know is that effective interpersonal skills can be learned – just like any other skill.
The ability to build effective professional relationships, to strike up instant rapport, to communicate with tact, and to make a memorable impression are nothing more than a collection of techniques that you can learn and cultivate.
To be conducted by Mr. Casey Tee, Strengthening Your People Skills in the Workplace is an intensive new workshop that provides you with ways to gain the essential people skills you need to push ahead in your career.
This workshop is... Organized by: Training Zone Dot Com Sdn Bhd To be conducted by: Mr. Casey Tee Date: 12 & 13 January 2010 (Tuesday & Wednesday) Venue: Grand Dorsett Subang Hotel, Kuala Lumpur
The world's largest travel guide book and digital media publisher Lonely Planet has released their 208 pages Best in Travel 2010 guidebook, and you can find it in Amazon.com online bookstore.
Being the 5th in their annual collection of the best places to go and best things to do for the year ahead, this traveller's guidebook highlighted 850 trends, destinations, journeys and experiences for year 2010.
"Malaysia is a clever choice for travellers on the lookout for a bargain”, they commented in the guidebook.
The technology capabilities that IT organization needs might form a very wide and deep list, varying based on the business strategies in place.
Richard Brennan, managing director of Denver-based technology strategy and advisory firm Tipperary Partners, has come out with a list of 8 common technology capabilities for our reference.
Operational: Expert in operating systems, networks, data centers; scaling them efficiently while appropriately managing risks.
Development: Expert in leveraging the appropriate technology to code and deploy complex systems.
Innovative: Expert at introducing technologies and processes.
Project management: Expert at managing and delivering complex projects within budget and timeframe.
Architectural: Expert in designing reliable, scalable and extensible applications and systems.
Data management: Expert at collecting, managing, organizing and providing access to data.
Process: Expert in establishing and managing operational and business processes.
Agile: Expert in reacting quickly to the changing technical/business environment.
This list is good enough for organizations to use as reference to determine and define technology capabilities of their own need. It is also a good evaluation/assessment list for both employers and employees.
Bear in mind that we might not be able to master in all of them. It is better to pick at most three to four items in the list and excel in them.
Maxis, after privatized and delisted for some times, is coming back to KLSE again with a new IPO.
According to the latest news, they will not be issuing new shares, but will offer 2.25 billion shares, representing 30% of its existing share capital. The estimated IPO price is RM5.20 per share.
With this information, let's do some calculation.
The total shares of Maxis is 2.25 billion / 30% = 7.5 billion.
For your information, Maxis made a revenue of RM8.45 billion and net profit of RM2.4 billion in 2008. For the 1st half year of 2009, revenue is RM4.24 billion and net profit is RM1.14 billion.
Let's estimate the EPS of Maxis now.
I'll estimate the net profit with the following simple guessing formula:
Multiply the half year net profit of 2009 by 2 to get a full year figure.
1.14 x 2 = 2.28
With this, the EPS will be 2.28/7.5 = 0.304
If the IPO price is 5.20, then the PE will be 5.2/0.304 = 17.11
Maxis stated that they plan to give back 75% of net profit as dividend. So the dividend will be around 0.304 x 75% = 0.228.
And the estimated DY will then be 0.228/5.20 = 4.38%
So, are you willing to buy Maxis IPO at the PE of around 17?
I think they come out with the proposed IPO price by referencing to Digi (6947), which currently has a PE of around 15.
Currently, even Digi doesn't seem attractive to me, so why should I buy Maxis at a higher PE and lower DY? This IPO is not attractive to me from the fundamental perspective.
Disclaimer: This article is intended for sharing of point of view only. It is not an advice or recommendation to buy or sell any of the mentioned stock counters. You should do your own homework before trading in Bursa Malaysia.
The new software version 2.80 is now available for Sing/Mal version of Garmin Nuvi 205/205w/255w.
This version will:
Synchronize to English v5.30
Update GPS firmware to v3.90
Here are the steps I have taken to successfully updated my Nuvi 255w.
Download the installation file from Garmin's website (link provided at the end of this article). The filename is nuvi255W_SG_v280.exe with the size of 10,672kb.
Remove the SD card (that I use to store additional maps) from the GPS slot.
Connect the GPS to my computer with USB cable and access to its storage.
Rename the file /Garmin/GPX/Current.gpx to /Garmin/GPX/temp.gpx. During the update process, a new Current.gpx file will be created and data in this temp.gpx will be restored to the new Current.gpx. If this step is not taken, you might lost your saved waypoints and/or favourites.
Delete these 3 files from /Garmin/Voice folder:
English_American_Jack.vpm
English_Australian_Karen.vpm
English_British_Daniel.vpm
Don't worry, they'll be replaced with new version of voice files during the update process.
Run the nuvi255W_SG_v280.exe from the computer. It will copy over some files to the GPS.
Safely unplug the USB cable and let the GPS reboot by itself. You will see the message of "Software loading..." on the screen of the GPS while it is performing the update.
In less than a minute, the GPS will automatically reboot itself after the update is completed.
Now the GPS is loaded with new software v2.80 (successfully updated from the previous v2.70).
Quite disappointedly, there is still no ecoRoute feature in this v2.80 of Nuvi software for Sing/Mal 205/205w/255w units.
Now you can withdraw your money from Paypal directly to your bank account in Malaysia.
Withdrawal is free of charge if the amount is above RM400. Else RM3 is chargeable.
Banks which can accept money transfer from Paypal are:
Affin Bank (PHBMMYKL)
Alliance Bank (MFBBMYKL)
Ambank (ARBKMYKL)
Bank Islam (BIMBMYKL)
Bank Kerjasama Rakyat (BKRMMYK1)
Bank Muamalat (BMMBMYKL)
Bank of America (BOFAMY2X)
Bank Simpanan Nasional (BSNAMYK1)
CIMB Bank (CIBBMYKL)
Citibank (CITIMYKL)
Deustche Bank (DEUTMYKL)
EON Bank (EOBBMYKL)
Hong Leong Bank (HLBBMYKL)
HSBC Bank (HBMBMYKL)
Maybank (MBBEMYKL)
OCBC Bank (OCBCMYKL)
Public Bank (PBBEMYKL)
RHB Bank (RHBBMYKL)
Standard Chartered Bank (SCBLMYKX)
Royal Bank of Scotland (ABNAMYKL)
UOB (UOVBMYKL)
The 8 characters code in bracket is the MEPS bank routing code which you need to provide during withdrawal from Paypal. You will also need to provide your bank account number too.
The withdrawal will normally take 2-3 days of processing.
This question "What would you do with 10 million dollar?" stroke my mind when it flashed out from the presentation slide of David Axmark during his talk about “Persevering in a FOSS business valued at USD$1 billion” in FOSS.my 2009 conference.
David Axmark is the co-founder of MySQL, the great database management system in used by many websites and applications nowadays. Somebody asked him this question few years back, before MySQL was sold to Sun Microsystems for US$1 billion.
David Axmark told us, by the time he was asked the question, he had no idea, though he sensed the investor might expect the answer something like "grow it to 100 million or more".
So, if you were asked the same question, what would be your answer?
Some of the possible answers might be...
Employee: retire immediately and enjoy your life
Businessman: grow it to 100 million or more
Investor: possibly the same answer as businessman above
Kind person: charity and social welfare, eg. build a school, setup a charity fund, help the unfortunate, etc...
Traveller: go around the world, take a lot of pictures and videos, then produce books, films, etc. to share with the whole world about your discoveries
Scientist: fund research to bring a better life to mankind
Environmentalist: fund for activities to save the mother earth!
Politician: fund for contesting in election
Movie director: well, that's probably not enough to make a great movie. Too bad.
many many more possibilities of answer (put in my comment page if you are generous to share with my readers...)
Today is the 2nd day of FOSS.my 2009, a Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) conference organized and supported by grassroot communities in Malaysia, and the high tide being Richard Stallman's keynote speech about free software movement of more than 2 hours, right before the delayed lunch.
Well, the lunch time was delayed due to a slight delay on the keynote speech, and more importantly was mainly caused by overwhelming Q&A with some strong debates.
During this session, all the seats in the big lecture room in APIIT were full, and there are people standing around. Several hundred audiences attended his talk today.
For those who still wondering who is Richard Stallman, well, a.k.a. RMS, he is an American software freedom activist and the founder of GNU Project as well as Free Software Foundation. He is the first person who talked about software freedom back in the 80's, and also the first person who put it in action to bring the free GNU operating system to us.
If not of his great philosophy and numerous hard work, the history might changed and, the subsequent emergence of Linux kernel and numerous free and libre software might not be going as far as today.
RMS is very humerous. Guess what he wore on his head? (Hint: it is an IT product, probably obsoleted by today.) However, when come to his principal of software freedom, we see the very strong perseverance, no ambiquity, never compromise side of him.
RMS strongly disagreed some of the terms imposed by proprietary software vendors, such as "piracy". He said "piracy" is about attacking ships which is very bad, but copying and sharing software with friends is of no way be valued to compare with the act of attacking ships. We should be given freedom and encouraged to do so, for the good of the entire society.
RMS has reemphasized his philosophy on free software in his speech. He believes that free software is a matter of the users' freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. More precisely, it means that the program's users have the four essential freedoms:
The freedom to run the program, for any purpose.
The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to make it do what you wish. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbour.
The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements (and modified versions in general) to the public, so that the whole community benefits.
RMS also differentiates clearly free software movement from open source movement, and he strongly against being labeled as the "father of open source". He said free software value things from ethical perspective, while the open source is a practical movement which might compromised his philosophy.
Perhaps not all of us agree with RMS' free software philosophy in 100%, but his speech did stir up our mind to think more in-depth about our freedom in software. We need great warrior like him to keep us awake about our rights and freedom that we should pursuit for.
Today I'm going to compare among the map of MalFreeMaps (MFM), MalSingMaps (MSM) and City Navigator (CN) by viewing exactly the same location with the same detail setup. Then it is very obvious to immediately figure out which one is better.
Maps used for comparison (click to enlarge them):
MFM 091019
MSM NT 2009.30
CN Southeastern Asia NT 4.50
The order of the maps below will always be MFM, MSM then CN. Here we go!
First we go and take a look around Mid Valley Megamall.
Then we go to smaller place, like Teluk Intan.
How about Melaka?
Lastly, we look at higher place, such as Cameron Highlands.
Now, do you agree with me on the following?
MFM and MSM have far more POIs than CN.
MFM has more beautiful map than the other two.
MFM uses better and more precise icons to display the POIs.
MFM has more detail lane coverage, especially in smaller town such as Teluk Intan.
Gals, you have started your dating night looking gorgeous dressed, but you have to watch your drink at all times!
There have been an increasing number of victims to spiked drinks and abuse. As such, the British lippy company 2LoveMyLips has come out with idea to attach a drug detector kit together with their lipgloss products.
The detector kit is to be used when gals are suspicious about their drink. It contains test stripes which can detect Gamma Hydroxy Butyrate (GHB) and/or Ketamine. The stripe will turn dark blue upon detection of such colourless and odourless drugs in your drink, alarming you about the risk.
CNBC is letting us to vote for our CEO of choice from the list of 12 nominees of excellent business leaders in Asia. The vote is opened now until 23 October 2009.
The business leader with the most votes wins the Asia Viewers’ Choice Award that will be announced at this year’s 8th Asia Business Leaders Awards on 26 November 2009 at Grand Ballroom of Capella Singapore.
The 12 nominees are:
Mr. Adirek Sripratak, President & CEO, Charoen Pokphand Foods PCL
Mr. Dean Lao Jr., Managing Director, Chemrez Technologies Inc.
Mr. Zhou Jichang, Chairman of Board of Directors, China Communications Construction Co.
Mr. Frank Gaoning Ning, Chairman, COFCO Corporation
Mr. Johan Dennelind, Chief Executive Officer, DiGi.Com Bhd
It has come to the 8th year for the editors of Oracle Magazine to present the Editors’ Choice Awards to people who exemplify leadership, vision, and dedication in working with and managing Oracle technology.
And the winners for year 2009 are:
João Cumerlato from Odebrecht Group, Brazil - CIO of the Year (Latin America)
Andy Platt from The J.M. Smucker Company, Ohio - CIO of the Year (North America)
Hyojoong Kim from STX Group and ForceTEC, Korea - CIO of the Year (Asia Pacific)
Giovanni Chiarelli from Telecom Italia Group, Italy - CIO of the Year (Europe, Middle East, and Africa)
Hideo Higuchi from Omron, Japan - CIO of the Year (Japan)
Katherine M. Tamer from United Space Alliance, Texas - CTO of the Year
Angelo Romano from Office of the Comptroller, Connecticut - IT Manager of the Year
Jake Ruttenberg from Starbucks Coffee Company, Washington - Data Warehouse Architect of the Year
Zachary Sherburne from Black & Decker, California - Performance Management/Business Intelligence Architect of the Year
Martin Buechi from Avaloq, Switzerland - PL/SQL Developer of the Year
Jerry Aber from MoneyGram, Minnesota - Content Management Architect of the Year
Kari Branjord from University of Colorado, Colorado - Applications Implementer of the Year
Hüsnü Sensoy from Turkcell, Turkey - DBA of the Year
Kelly Tuggle from Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, Texas - SOA Architect of the Year
Tim Frazier from National Ignition Facility/Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, California - Enterprise Architect of the Year
John Turato from Avis Budget Group, New Jersey - Oracle Grid Architect of the Year
Raimonds Simanovskis from TietoEnator Alise, Latvia - Developer of the Year
Brenda Hughes from Cisco Systems, California - Security Architect of the Year
Jennifer Briscoe from Collect America, Colorado - Oracle Fusion Middleware Early Adopter of the Year
Edwin Biemond from Whitehorses, the Netherlands - Java Developer of the Year
Chris Muir from SAGE Computing Services, Australia - Oracle ACE Director of the Year
David Jones, Gerry Hanifan & Arnaud Benjacar from Irish Life Investment Managers, Ireland - Oracle Fusion Middleware Architects of the Year
Naveen Garg from Colorcon, Pennsylvania - Oracle Enterprise Manager Architect of the Year
Ross Sharman from Knowledge Global, Australia - Green IT Architect of the Year
Dimitri Gielis from Apex Evangelists, Belgium - Oracle Application Express Developer of the Year
Patricia Dues from City of Las Vegas, Nevada - User Group Evangelist of the Year
Ray Fasullo from Telcordia Technologies, New Jersey - Embedded Architect of the Year
Firstly, you need to create a new directory in your computer to store the generated files (output of this conversion process). In the example here, I'll create C:\Garmin\MalSingMaps.
Under the Files section of GMapTool, select the mapset file by clicking on Add Files.
Then, you must specify the full path of your installed cGPSmapper in the Options section.
Continue to the Split section.Click the Directory button and select the new directory you've just created. Make sure you choose to create files for MapSource. You might also want to compile the preview map.
Click the "Split all" button when you are done. Make sure there is no error and the process completed successfully with a "Done!" message.
To install the map for MapSource, run the install.bat script in the output directory.
Now you should be able to open the map in MapSource.
If the map is locked, you need to unlock it by saving the unlock code in MapSource before you are able to see the map. You can do so by going to Utilities > Manage Map Products > Unlock Regions. Click the Add button and paste in your unlock code for the map.
The Edge Malaysia Top Property Developers Award ranks the best property players in the country, from the consumer’s perspective for both their quantitative and qualitative attributes.
The quantitative elements were the companies’ shareholders’ funds, revenue, pre-tax profit, gearing, and cash and cash equivalents for the fiscal year ended 2008.
The qualitative attributes include the quality of the product, innovation and creativity, value creation for buyers, image and expertise.
And the Top 30 ranking is:
Sime Darby Property Bhd
SP Setia Bhd
Sunway City Bhd
IGB Corp Bhd
Island & Peninsular Sdn Bhd
IOI Properties Bhd
Bandar Raya Developments Bhd
Eastern & Oriental Bhd
Sunrise Bhd
Bandar Utama City Corp Sdn Bhd
Gamuda Bhd - Prop Div
IJM Land Bhd
YTL Land & Devt Bhd
Paramount Corp Bhd
Selangor Dredging Bhd
Mah Sing Group Bhd
Naza TTDI Sdn Bhd
Selangor Properties Bhd
Dijaya Corporation Bhd
UEM Land Holdings Bhd
PJ Devt Holdings Bhd
WCT Land Sdn Bhd
Metro Kajang Holdings Bhd
Penitude Bhd
Naim Holdings Bhd
Malton Bhd
United Malayan Land Bhd
Hunza Properties Bhd
Segajuta (S) Sdn Bhd
Bolton Bhd
Is your house's developer among one of the Top 30 above?
For more information, please refer to the City & Country pullout of The Edge Weekly dated 12-Oct-2009.
I just learned about this last lecture of late Dr. Randy Pausch by chance, read through his amazing presentation slides and video on Youtube, and would like to share with you about his great talk delivered on 18 September 2007 in a lecture hall of Carnegie Mellon University.
Randy Pausch was a computer science professor and alumnus of Carnegie Mellon University. He got pancreatic cancer which took away his life at the age of 47 on 25 July 2008, 10 months after he delivered this last lecture.
The talk has been uploaded into the Internet and viewed by millions of people. A best-selling book titled "The Last Lecture" based on the lecture has also been published and translated in thirty over languages.
To date, his Last Lecture titled "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams" is still giving great impacts to people around the world.
His talk was about his childhood dreams, how he overcome the barriers to realise his dreams (or at least getting close to it). He also talked about enabling the dreams of others, and some lessons learned.
He mentioned several times that "the brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough. They’re there to stop the other people. Brick walls let us show our dedication."
Some of his important advice:
Be good at something: it makes you valuable
Work hard … “what’s your secret?”
Find the best in everybody; no matter how you have to wait for them to show it
Be prepared: “luck” is where preparation meets opportunity
He ended the talk by saying,"It’s not about how to achieve your dreams. It’s about how to lead your life. If you lead your life the right way, the karma will take care of itself. The dreams will come to you."
Do you realize that nowadays we have to carry so many cards with us -- ATM cards, credit cards, member cards, petrol cards, discount cards, Touch 'n Go card, medical card, ... you name it.
I have been wondering is there a stylish and nice looking card wallet for me to keep my cards in my pocket, without cramping them into my money wallet, and I've found the patented ACM card wallet with money clip from the internet.
This Auto Card Manager (ACM) card wallet has a special compartment that can store up to 6 cards in a well organized manner. There is another model which can store up to 12 cards, but could be too bulky to carry in pant's pocket.
The cards can easily be slotted into the wallet. There is spacing between each of the cards, a feature said to be able to prevent card demagnetization, scratching and premature magnetic strip failure.
This is how it looks like with all the cards slotted in completely. Once slotted in, the cards are held firmly in the wallet and will not slide out by themselves. The cards are easily retrievable by pushing the button corresponding to their slot.
There is a money clip at the back of the ACM card wallet, which can be used to clip bank notes, receipts, name cards, etc.
And the money clip is easily detachable.
This ACM card wallet comes with 18 interchangeable button icons pads and a leather pouch. Its casing is made of metal meterial, which is pretty durable. Despite that, it only weighs about 90g with 6 cards installed.
Sponsored by Cisco and conducted by a team of MBA students from the Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford and also the University of Oviedo’s Department of Applied Economics, the 2nd annual global study on the quality of broadband connections has just been released on 30 September 2009.
The 1st groundbreaking Broadband Quality Study was published in September 2008 to highlight each country’s ability to benefit from next-generation web applications and services.
It was found that broadband quality is linked to a nation’s advancement as a knowledge economy and countries with broadband on their national agenda had the highest broadband quality. This year’s report covers an additional 24 countries to 66 and includes new analysis on broadband quality in more than 240 cities.
The study was based on approximately 24 million records sourced from actual broadband speed tests from Speedtest.net (Ookla) for the target 66 countries during May 2008 and May to July 2009.
The research team concluded that broadband experience is mainly affected by broadband speeds in both directions, latency, network over-subscription, and packet loss. These parameters were grouped into 3 major categories: download and upload throughput, and latency.
The Broadband Quality Score (BQS) for each country was determined using a formula that weighted each category according to the quality requirements of a set of popular applications now and in the future as follow:
It is found that:
Overall average broadband quality increased across the globe, with global average download throughput increased by 49% to 4.75 Mbps, while global average upload throughput increased by 69% to 1.3 Mbps. The global average latency has decreased by 21% to 170 ms.
South Korea tops the 2009 Broadband Leadership table. Driven by continuous efforts by the government to strengthen the country’s position as one of the world’s ICT leaders, and combined with higher broadband penetration, South Korea rises above Japan (in the 2nd place now) in the global Broadband Leadership rankings.
The Global Top 10 Broadband Leaders are:
1. South Korea
2. Japan
3. Hong Kong
4. Sweden
5. Switzerland
6. Netherlands
7. Singapore
8. Luxembourg
9. Denmark
10. Norway
Malaysia ranked 48 and China ranked 49 in this broadband leadership matrix. The United States ranked 15.
