Friday, October 30, 2009
Komputer peribadi mini termurah dilancar
KUALA LUMPUR - Syarikat pengeluar telefon bimbit tempatan, CSL Group of Companies (CSL) semalam melancarkan sebuah model komputer peribadi mini, N1008.
Naib Pengerusi CSL, Ir. Megat Radzman Megat Khairuddin berkata, pengenalan model baru itu sejajar dengan permintaan terhadap komputer peribadi yang semakin meningkat di kalangan pengguna di negara ini.
"Ia merupakan model ketiga selepas siri N1000 dan N11000 yang mendapat sambutan hangat selepas ia dilancarkan pada Jun dan September lalu.
"Apa yang menariknya, model ini dijual pada harga RM1,099 iaitu terendah berbanding siri-siri lain di pasaran serta mempunyai fungsi serta rekabentuk yang dijangka memenuhi cita rasa pengguna," katanya pada sidang media selepas pelancaran komputer peribadi N1008 dan pelancaran kiosk bergerak CSL serta cawangan CSL ke-127 di sini semalam.
Monday, October 26, 2009
Free WiFi now a topping at Pizza Hut
KUALA LUMPUR: Pop into Pizza Hut now and you’ll also enjoy free wireless Internet service with your food and drinks.
The restaurant chain has partnered with Telekom Malaysia Bhd to provide its patrons with the hospot Web access. Wireless Internet is available at 163 Pizza Hut outlets in the country, which operate from 11am to 11pm daily. At the outlets, patrons have a choice of wireless service — Streamyx Zone or Pizza Hut WiFi.Patrons with a Streamyx Zone password can log on and surf at speeds of up to 384Kbps (kilobits pers second).
High-speed broadband to be deployed by June
Deputy Information, Communications and Culture Minister Datuk Joseph Salang Gandum said the system is being tested at four exchanges in the Klang Valley — Bangsar, Shah Alam, Subang Jaya and Taman Tun Dr Ismail.
Telekom Malaysia, he said, has also started physical work at 22 other exchanges nationwide.
“The network access will provide highspeed broadband via 1.3 million premises in the Klang Valley, Iskandar Malaysia, and in several economic and industrial zones in Malaysia,” he said in reply to Saifuddin Nasution Ismail (PKR — Machang) during question time.
“The comprehensive testing is to be completed this year and the service will come on stream by the middle of next year.”
Joseph said that apart from last-mile access, the joint venture project between the Government and Telekom Malaysia would also cover the core network and the international gateway which is currently under preparation. “Most of the domestic core network has been installed and is being tested. As for the international gateway, the existing AmericanAsia Gateway undersea cable system is being enhanced and work is expected to be completed by year end,” he said. — Bernama
Don’t take eye off broadband quality, Govt urged
PETALING JAYA: Many people welcome the decision to grant tax relief for those who subscribe to broadband Internet, but they also want the Government to keep pressuring the service providers to improve the quality of service.
Most of the people contacted by The Star said the RM500 tax relief incentive is bound to help the country boost its broadband penetration rate. But they fear that the service may suffer with the sudden influx of more subscribers.
As it is now, they said, they pay for a certain speed but usually have to put up with substandard connections that are deemed the “best effort” of the service providers.
“I love it that the Government is going to subsidise my broadband service,” said a housewife who asked to be identified only as Adelina. “But if the quality of my Internet speed is going to stay the same as now, I think the Government won’t be getting its money’s worth.” “It would be a waste of public funds,” she added.
Belinda, a media relations executive who also wanted anonymity, believes the Government should be spending that money on getting the service providers to improve broadband speeds in the country.
“If the broadband quality goes up tremendously, the people will be flocking to subscribe to the service,” she said. “There would then be no need for a carrot like the proferred tax relief.
She said not many people would turn down the incentive but that won’t be much of a consolation if they have to suffer erractic or slower than expected Internet connections.
Actor Fish Fazil hopes the increase in broadband service subscribers that the tax relief incentive brings, will be enough to encourage the service providers to improve their infrastructures.
Broadband is becoming an essential utility now, like electricty and water, and its quality must be just as good as those.
He is hoping for broadband services that are on par with those in the other countries which are leading the world in that respect.
“Unfortunately, broadband here today is more like narrowband,” he laughed. “Come on everyone, we can do this.”
The tax relief incentive would be implemented next year and would last till 2012.
Broadband penetration in Malaysian households is 26%, compared to 88% in Singapore and 95% in South Korea.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
RM3,000 is poverty line for the urban poor
PETALING JAYA: The Government has decided to set RM3,000 as the poverty line for the urban poor based on feedback from people living in major urban areas such as Kuala Lumpur.
This is according to Federal Territories Minister Datuk Raja Nong Chik Raja Zainal Abidin whose ministry is to be renamed Federal Territories and Urban Wellbeing Ministry, in efforts to improve the lives of the urban poor.
“If you have three children and your household income is RM3,000 or below, you’re almost at the poverty line,” he said, adding that many lower income families had more than four children and still needed to pay for their cars, houses and other mortgage payments.
Therefore, a new set of criteria to eradicate urban poverty is in the pipeline, he said.“I will have to work out the details with my ministry’s secretary-general,” he said on the sidelines of a family fair at the Malay-sian Tourism Information Centre here yesterday. Raja Nong said his ministry would also have to conduct a new census to identify those who came under the urban poverty mark.
“The number of urban poor and slum dwellers in the cities is rising,” said Raja Nong.“There is no social safety net for such people, including single parents with three to five children living in low-cost flats.”
In his Budget 2010 speech on Friday, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak an-nounced that urban poverty eradication programmes would be drawn out nationwide.The Budget had allocated RM48mil to implement the programmes.
According to Housing and Local Govern-ment Minister Datuk Seri Kong Cho Ha, the Government had decided two to three months ago that urban poverty eradication would be handled primarily by the Implementation Coordination Unit (ICU) under the Prime Minister’s Department.
“The information of those identified as being in the urban poverty bracket will be passed on to the ICU, which gets a list from the Rural Department, and other ministries and departments.”
Friday, October 23, 2009
Silver lining in cloud computing
NOT too long ago, a Singaporean schoolboy wrote a drawing program for the iPhone to help his younger sisters draw on the touch-screen using their fingers. Called Doodle Kids, it was downloaded nearly half-million times in three months from Apple’s App Store. The nine-year-old boy’s got IT!
Technology isn’t about building and maintaining infrastructure. It’s about using IT to solve problems.
Yet, nearly seven in 10 enterprise IT dollars are spent on maintenance, and in a distributed computing environment, as much as 85 per cent of IT capacity can remain idle.
This is not to reduce the importance of maintaining infrastructure, but the true value of IT lies in providing users with information that they need to make critical business decisions.
Today’s mobile, interconnected workforce places new demands on business application delivery. To meet such challenges, enterprises typically over-provide computing capacity and network resources, leading to idle excess capacity.
This needs changing.
Enter cloud computingThe combination of the Internet, broadband networks, virtualisation technology and increasingly powerful commodity computing resources creates the conditions for the next development in IT – cloud computing. The aim is to harness pools of computing resources to give enterprises access to IT infrastructure without incurring large capital investment. Cloud computing removes the need to over-engineer infrastructure. With it, enterprises can buy resources as needed and when usage peters off, the resources can be turned off, offering more flexibility. When you only pay for what you use, the economics of providing IT resources changes dramatically. Available on a metered basis, IT expenditure shifts from capital expenditure to operating expenditure.
If enterprises see IT as a utility, then continued investment in infrastructure when options exist, is like operating your own power station to get electricity. IT is an information utility. Growing adoption of virtualisation will advance cloud computing and its promise of selfservice, on-demand usage and portability.
Research firm Gartner expects enterprises to buy as much as 40 per cent of their IT infrastructure as a service by 2011. And that at least one-third of business application software spending will be as service subscription, instead of product licence, by 2012.
The move to cloud computing won’t happen dramatically. Rather, it will be evolutionary as enterprises get used to freeing applications from being tied to specific infrastructure.
Advisory services firm Merrill Lynch sees the global market for cloud computing to reach US$95 billion (RM327 billion), or about 12 per cent of software deployed in the world, in the next five years.
Local prospectsCloud computing is, of course, no panacea for all economic ills.
But it does offer businesses a new way to provision infrastructure and computing services as well as a compelling financial argument by freeing up capital otherwise locked in physical equipment.
The Malaysian Government is quick to recognise the benefits of cloud computing. Earlier this year, research and development agency Mimos joined the global Open Cirrus initiative, establishing the local chapter of a cloud computing research and open source testbed.
The Government is looking to eventually roll out a national cloud computing platform to deploy services throughout the country, focusing on enabling services through software, security frameworks and mobile interactivity as well as testing new cloud tools and methodologies.
The open source, collaborative model of developing and consuming software will be pivotal in cloud computing, In fact, open source and cloud computing are a natural fit, not least because of the inherent cost advantages. As cloud providers grow, given their scale, the cost of buying proprietary software will be large in business calculations.
More importantly, communitydriven open source software makes sure that cloud computing is open standards-based and interoperable.
Openness delivers choice. It makes it possible for enterprises to switch cloud computing providers or architectures when new business needs arise.
Conclusion
In the United States, where the cloud computing wave is gaining momentum, nearly all major cloud providers such as Amazon use open source software. Demand for open standards and development transparency will push the adoption of open source in cloud computing and in doing so, redefine the way software is developed and consumed.
The on-demand cloud computing model will transform the way in which enterprises use IT. Freed from the time and cost constraints of implementing and maintaining underlying IT infrastructure, enterprises can go back to creating business solutions that they need.
In their continuous search for business advantage, enterprises need to re-emphasise the information in IT.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Perisian Windows menerusi telefon
Microsoft menjangka akan mempunyai hubungan kerjasama perniagaan dengan lebih 30 syarikat telefon bimbit di 20 buah negara menjelang penghujung tahun ini.
"Kami mahu menjalin hubungan dengan orang ramai dan setiap informasi adalah penting, tidak kira sama ada anda berada di rumah atau di tempat kerja.
"Telefon yang dilengkapkan dengan Windows membolehkan orang ramai menerima informasi, komunikasi dan hiburan secara digital tidak kira di mana mereka berada," jelas Ketua Pemasaran dan Operasi Microsoft Malaysia, Yasir Yousuff.
Sesuai dengan personaliti kehidupan masyarakat pada masa kini, Microsoft turut menawarkan Windows bagi Custom Theme Creator. Ini bermakna pengguna boleh memilih tema sendiri dengan padanan warna menarik dan hiasan yang lebih menawan.
Bukan sekadar e-mel
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Belajar secara maya guna iPhone
Justeru, apabila pelajar menjalankan tugas luar, mereka boleh menggunakan iPhone untuk merekod, merakam gambar, temu bual dan merakam video.
"Kami telah mempunyai semua sumber bagi penggunaan iPhone dan sentiasa membangunkan aplikasi sendiri," katanya.
Konsep Sekolah Bestari (Smart School)
Apakah perbezaan antara sekolah yang sedia ada Sekolah Bestari?
Komponen utama Sekolah Bestari adalah seperti berikut:
- Pengajaran dan Pembelajaran (P&P)
- Sistem Pengurusan Sekolah Bestari
- Polisi
- Sumber Manusia, Kemahiran dan Sikap
- Teknologi
- Proses
Komponen-komponen ini akan dinilai dan diubah untuk memastikan tahap kecekapan dan keberkesanan yang lebih tinggi.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Dari "PC Games" ke "Edu-Games"
Anak anda suka bermain permainan komputer tanpa jemu? Berjam-jam di cyber-cafe atau di rumah tanpa pengawasan? Memperkenalkan satu pembelajaran berbentuk interaktif yang terhangat di pasaran iaitu score A!!!
Program Score A merupakan satu perisian online yang interaktif dan mudah pengguna (user friendly). Ia merupakan perisian online yang menggunakan konsep pembelajaran kendiri (Self-Education Learning). Dimana ia menerapkan displin kepada pengguna bagi mencapai objektif program iaitu melahirkan pelajar yang cemerlang dalam pelajaran. Ibubapa atau penjaga dapat membuat pengawasan 24 jam, 7 hari seminggu berkenaan prestasi anak melalui online dan sistem pesanan ringkas (SMS). Semuanya di hujung jari.
Antara kehebatan program score a adalah:
- Program ini merupakan 100% meliputi Sukatan Pelajaran Malaysia & memenuhi piawai Silibus Terkini KBSR/KBSM dari darjah 1 hingga Tingkatan 5.
- 90% Output Learning (Latih Tubi) yang INTERAKTIF & TERBUKTI BERKESAN.
- KOMPILASI set-set SOALAN PEPERIKSAAN SEBENAR UPSR & PMR (1993- Terkini),Ekslusif dari Kementerian Pelajaran Malaysia
- Keputusan setiap Latihan/Peperiksaan terus ke Telefon bimbit
- eNota berbentuk peta minda(Mind Mapping) dan eKamus disediakan.
Program ini juga telah mendapat mandat dan persetujuan akan keberkesanannya dari Mantan dan Menteri Pelajaran Malaysia iaitu YB Datuk Seri Hishamuddin Tun Hussein dan YAB Tan Sri Muhyidin Yassin. Seiring dengan matlamat Kementerian Pelajaran bagi melahirkan pelajar celik IT melalui projek Sekolah Bestari Sepenuhnya menjelang tahun 2010.
"Program ini bukan saja memenuhi keperluan Output Learning malah ia turut melengkapkan keperluan Input Learning, justera membantu dengan banyaknya seseorang pelajar dalam membuat persiapan pembelajaran sebelum kelas dan latihan pengukuhan selepas kelas dan lebih-lebih lagi bagi pelajar yang sedang membuat persediaan peperiksaan.." Dr Shukri Abdullah- Pakar Motivasi & Strategi Belajar Malaysia
"Saya lihat program ini sangat-sangat HEBAT! Program ini WAJIB dilangan oleh setiap IBUBAPA bagi memastikan KECEMERLANGAN anak-anak dalam peperiksaan. Saya merasa amat bangga bersama program ini dan melihat ramai anak-anak muda BERJAYA..." Puan Rokiah Alias- Mantan Pengetua Cemerlang Malaysia, Kolej Tungku Kursiah (TKC), Seremban, N.Sembilan (1998-2005)
Sesuai untuk pelajar setiap masa sama ada pada tempoh persekolahan dan juga cuti persekolahan. Semuanya dengan menggunakan komputer riba dan di hujung jari dan terkini.
Untuk maklumat lanjut bagi penerangan sila berhubung dengan e-konsultan kami iaitu:
Kamarul : 013-3321215
Ina : 013-3321214
atau sebarang kemuskilan boleh dihantar ke: