NEWS: E-resource Centre Launched

THE INTI Education Group has entered into a collaboration with Ricoh Malaysia (Ricoh), which has invested RM800,000 to establish an E-resource centre at INTI University College in Negri Sembilan.

The state-of-the-art centre will provide INTI students with a real-life business environment as well as access to the Ricoh Intellectual Property Proprietary Development Kit Programme for developing embedded and interfacing software applicable to Ricoh’s multi-functional products. This will enable students to customise and develop new applications for various devices.

Under INTI’s E2E (enrolment to employment) strategic initiative, of which Ricoh is a partner, students and staff are exposed to various business and technology solutions. They also get the chance to learn best practices from industry practitioners via the E2E BizTech and Ricoh Tech Talk table discussion series.

“E2E works closely with the industry to develop courses based on market needs,” said Ricoh managing director Lim Eng Weng.

“This gives students a distinctive edge over their peers. The E-resource centre is our way of giving back to society and helping to produce good quality graduates,” Lim added.

“We are committed to ensuring that our students stand out. We do this with our emphasis on career-focused courses and initiatives such as this one with Ricoh, which helps to ensure experiential learning,” said INTI Education Group deputy CEO Graham Doxey.

The E-resource centre is equipped with the latest multi-functional printers, software services, workflow applications, and unrestricted wireless Internet connectivity. All costs for the set-up, maintenance and development of the centre are borne by Ricoh.

Ricoh engineers and interns from INTI will manage and run the centre.

NEWS: Facebook收回富爭議條款

（美國）社交網站Facebook收到大量用戶投訴及質疑後，收回富爭議的改變條款。

公司表示，他們將收回新的條款，並以舊有條款為依歸。Facebook現時約有1億7500萬名用戶。

最近有用戶發現Facebook對用戶服務協議進行了修改，稱Facebook對用戶上傳的資料擁有“永久”的許可授權，即使用戶刪除帳號。此外，雖然不擁有用戶的照片、狀態更新等信息，但為了廣告創收Facebook卻可以使用這些資料和圖片。

有關做法令用戶感到強烈不滿，私隱權受到侵犯。（香港明報）

NEWS: 讓各族群瞭解州內事‧“當今雪蘭莪”推出4語網頁

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  中文版“當今雪蘭莪”網站1月非正式推出，讓華社更可容易上網瞭解雪州政府時事。（圖：星洲日報）

（雪蘭莪‧巴生）雪州民聯政府又一創舉，這次將其創立的“當今雪蘭莪”網站以4種語文推出，包括華、巫、印及英文版，以讓各國內族群，甚至全世界都能瀏覽瞭解。

10種不能碰的男人！女人必須看清楚！

雪州民聯政府是自去年3月8日大選執政後，設立了http://www.suaraselangormaju.com.my的網站，之後改為http://www.selangorkini.com.my網站，讓人民瀏覽瞭解雪州一切事務，包括州政府最新動態和文告。

中文版網頁仍在試用期

據瞭解，中文版網頁在1月開跑，目前仍在試用期間，因此還未正式向外推介。

來自大臣辦公室的職員透露，由於淡米爾文版的網頁還未完成，因此當局唯有延後整個推介禮。

這網站除了可瀏覽一般文告之外，也有雪州政府和州議員的新聞，瀏覽者也可以搜尋一些文章，惟目前中文版網頁還沒有增設任何文章。

這網站也設有“雪蘭莪視頻”一欄，讓網友觀看議員新聞採訪過程，甚至瞭解一些時事。

這個網站將由雪州大臣丹斯里卡立新聞秘書阿爾法負責監督，至於其他語文網頁，則由專人所負責。

NEWS: 新加坡‧新一代迷上網少閱報‧政府為傳信息頭痛

新加坡）新加坡總理李顯龍坦言，互聯網的興起已改變了年輕一代國人閱讀與獲取信息的方式，使得政府在思考未來如何向民眾傳達重要信息時，面對巨大挑戰。

他指出，政府過去只需透過傳統媒體如報紙與電視台，便能把信息傳播給廣大民眾，因為人們普遍都有閱讀報紙和觀看電視新聞節目的習慣。但是，現代的年輕人則是憑自己的興趣和喜好去選擇信息來源。

“現在的年輕人一覺得悶，就會上網隨意瀏覽，人們也可從網站上載任何喜歡的東西。除非你能引起人們的興趣，否則他們不會上你的網站閱讀。所以，要如何傳達信息並引起人們關注，以深入思考和瞭解一些重要課題，對政府是個很大的挑戰。”

李顯龍接受亞洲新聞台訪問時舉例說，他的孩子雖然也閱讀報紙，但是閱讀偏好不同，有些喜歡閱讀副刊，有些是閱讀世界新聞或一些要聞，但他們其實花更多時間在互聯網上。即使上網閱讀新聞，也不像人們過去那樣，可能花45分鐘詳細閱讀整份報紙的新聞。

談到個人的閱報習慣時，總理說他每天早上其實也是先上網閱讀新聞，包括上新加坡主流報紙、亞洲新聞台、英國廣播公司（BBC）等的網站，然後才翻閱印刷版報紙。而電腦科技的發展下，在屏幕上閱讀也會越來越方便。

“現在有了更寬的電腦屏幕和更好的軟件，你在屏幕上也能看到相當不錯的電子版印刷報紙。我想我的閱讀習慣也可能會進一步轉向電腦屏幕。”

他也指出，新聞網站消息的更新速度其實相當快，並不遜於政府的通訊管道，因此可為民眾提供完整與及時的消息。

NEWS: 加拿大30%青少年上網與陌生人交友

（加拿大‧溫哥華）一項關於年輕人上網的調查發現，雖然互聯網對年輕人的生活有很正面的貢獻，以及年輕人對上網風險的認識有所加深，但仍有一些青少年和兒童進行危險的網上活動。

此項調查由加拿大微軟和Youthography主持，接受調查的是加拿大1000名年齡在9歲到17歲的青少年。一如人們所預料的，互聯網已經成為年輕人生活的重要部份。他們利用網絡和朋友及家人溝通，做學校作業時上網搜尋所需資料，以及上網玩各種網絡遊戲。他們對於上網的風險也相當瞭解；超過75%的受訪者表示，他們在網上輸入個人資料時，非常小心。

家長的關心和介入也已十分普遍。84%的受訪者表示他們和父母就網上可能遭遇的風險進行過討論；86%的受訪者指出，他們的家長已經採取措施，來敦促他們的網上安全，比如將電腦從兒童房間搬到比較容易監控的地方如家庭室或廚房。但是，年輕人在網上不少地方仍有危險行為。它們是：

‧一些年輕人將他們的個人資料放到社交網上，這些資料包括個人相片、所居住的城鎮地名、學校名稱，和自己的電子郵件地址。如果瞭解到一個上述的資訊，就可以讓壞人瞭解年輕人的真實身份。

‧30%的年輕人在社交網上虛報年齡；15%的人假裝自己是另一個人；超過30%的人接受陌生人作為朋友。

‧25%的受訪年輕人在網上搜索成人性生活內容；超過20%的年輕人瀏覽的網頁上有暴力、衝突和種族歧視內容。

‧40%的年輕人曾在網上受人欺凌；另有16%的人承認他們曾欺凌他人，不過他們中的一半聲稱他們之所以欺凌他人是因為他們本身曾遭人欺凌。

‧20%涉及網上賭博的年輕人，會和網上認識的人發生電話、電子郵件和見面等實際的接觸。

調查發現，45%的青少年是為了躲避自己的問題、家庭，或試圖減壓而上網的，也有的是迫於網癮。此外，年輕人對網上安全的擔心，超過毒品、酒類、吸煙、受傷和性病。（溫哥華明報）

Article: How Facebook is taking over our lives

President Obama used it to get elected. Dell will recruit new hires with it. Microsoft's new operating system borrows from it. No question, Facebook has friends in high places. Can CEO Mark Zuckerberg make those connections pay off?

Fortune Magazine) -- Facebook held no appeal for Peter Lichtenstein. The New Paltz, N.Y., resident had checked out so-called social networking sites before, and he wasn't impressed. ("MySpace," he recalls, "was ridiculous.")

A chiropractor and acupuncturist, Lichtenstein was already a member of a few professional web-based user groups. The last thing he needed was another message box to check. Then a buddy posted a link to photos from a trip to Thailand and India on his Facebook page and flatly refused to distribute them any other way. The friend's assumption: Duh - everyone's on Facebook.

And so Lichtenstein, 57, recently became an official member of the Facebook army, 175 million strong and, Facebook says, growing at the astounding rate of about five million new users a week, making it a rare bright spot in a dismal economy. If Facebook were a country, it would have a population nearly as large as Brazil's. It even edges out the U.S. television audience for Super Bowl XLIII, which drew a record-setting 152 million eyeballs.

But these days the folks fervently updating their Facebook pages aren't just tech-savvy kids: The college and post-college crowd the site originally aimed to serve (18- to 24-year-olds) now makes up less than a quarter of users. The newest members - the ones behind Facebook's accelerating growth rate - are more, ahem, mature types like Lichtenstein, who never thought they'd have the time or inclination to overshare on the web. It's just that Facebook has finally started to make their busy lives a little more productive - and a lot more fun.

Try logging in to quickly check a message, and you may find yourself scrolling through new baby photos from that guy who used to sit next to you in Mr. Peterson's English class. How did such a goofball end up with such a cute baby? And how'd he find you here anyhow? Soon you're checking the friends you have in common. This addictive quality keeps Facebook's typical user on the site for an average of 169 minutes a month, according to ComScore. Compare that with Google News, where the average reader spends 13 minutes a month checking up on the world, or the New York Times website, which holds on to readers for a mere ten minutes a month.

The "stickiness" of the site is a key part of 24-year-old CEO Mark Zuckerberg's original plan to build an online version of the relationships we have in real life. Offline we bump into friends and end up talking for hours. We flip through old photos with our family. We join clubs. Facebook lets us do all that in digital form. Yet we also present different faces to the different people in our lives: An "anything goes" page we share with pals might not be appropriate for office mates - or for the moms and grandmas who increasingly are joining the site. Basic privacy controls today allow users to share varying degrees of information with friends, but when I recently met with Zuckerberg in Palo Alto, he waxed philosophical about eventually giving a user the ability to have a different Facebook personality for each Facebook friendship, a sort of online version of the line from Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself": "I contain multitudes."

His ultimate goal is less poetic - and perhaps more ambitious: to turn Facebook into the planet's standardized communication (and marketing) platform, as ubiquitous and intuitive as the telephone but far more interactive, multidimensional - and indispensable. Your Facebook ID quite simply will be your gateway to the digital world, Zuckerberg predicts. "We think that if you can build one worldwide platform where you can just type in anyone's name, find the person you're looking for, and communicate with them," he told a German audience in January, "that's a really valuable system to be building."

Just how valuable is subject to great debate. Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500) in 2007 invested $240 million for a 1.6% stake in the company, giving Facebook a valuation of about $15 billion. But according to a June 23, 2008, court proceeding, the company values itself at $3.7 billion. (With a 20% to 30% stake, Zuckerberg quite possibly is the world's youngest self-made billionaire, on paper at least.) A big part of the challenge in assigning a valuation to Facebook is that its financial results don't come anywhere near to matching its runaway success signing up members: The site pulled in estimated revenues of just $280 million last year, and sources close to the company say it didn't break even.

Indeed, sometimes it seems as if everyone but Facebook is capitalizing on the platform. The Democratic Party in Maine is using it to organize regular meetings. Accounting firm Ernst & Young relies on the site to recruit new hires, and Dell (DELL, Fortune 500) will soon do the same. Microsoft's new operating system has a slew of features lifted straight from Facebook's playbook.

Zuckerberg knows this is a make-or-break moment for the company he founded five years ago in his linoleum-floored Harvard dorm room. He must figure out how to continue to add new members and make Facebook vital to its mass audience without alienating the kids and early adopters who helped popularize the site. (Growth has leveled off at MySpace, the original mega--social networking site with 130 million members, and it may wind up as a playground for music lovers.)

He'll have to fend off search giant Google, which has its own grand plan to profit from social networks. And he has to live up to his change-the-world bravado: The Net is riddled with examples of companies and services that promised to be the next great communications platform - AOL (owned by Fortune's parent) and Yahoo (YHOO, Fortune 500), to name two - but failed to do so.

To help Facebook figure out how to profit from its scale and popularity, Zuckerberg has brought in a chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, who built Google's money-minting AdWords program. YouTube's former chief financial officer, Gideon Yu, runs the finance operation. And the board is packed with old-school cred (Washington Post publisher Don Graham and venture capitalist Jim Breyer) and tech smarts (PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel and Netscape founder Marc Andreessen). Zuckerberg, who favors jeans and T-shirts, has taken to wearing ties beneath his black North Face jacket because, as he tells his colleagues, "2009 is a serious year."

And not just for Facebook. Few ultra-young tech company founders manage to hold on to the CEO reins as long as Zuckerberg has. They either go on to become the stuff of legend (Bill Gates) or flame out fabulously. There are certainly those who wonder whether the wunderkind is in over his head, punting on profitability when every other company in Silicon Valley is under enormous pressure to make money. And what's a stiff, reticent guy who'd rather be writing code doing in the CEO's job in the first place? Sure, Zuckerberg's done pretty well so far, creating a site that has won a rabid following among mainstream web users. But a lot of those people were once passionate about their AOL accounts too. Zuckerberg has our attention. What's he going to do with it?

A digital world

Mark Zuckerberg has always liked to build things. I first spoke with him in the summer of 2005 when he was still crashing on a friend's couch in Menlo Park, Calif.? He was on his cellphone, pacing back and forth in the backyard as he explained his parents' reaction to his project: "The thing I made before Facebook almost got me kicked out of school," he said, referring to Facemash, a site that let people rate photos. He went before the school's administrative board to answer questions about how he gathered data. "When I started making Facebook, [my parents] were, like, don't make another site." Then all his Harvard classmates - as well as students from the rest of the Ivy League - joined, and he spent the remainder of his college money on servers. So much for school.

Even in our initial interview, Zuckerberg was clear that he wasn't simply creating another online tool for college kids to check each other out. He called Facebook a "social utility" and explained that one day everyone would be able to use it to locate people on the web - a truly global digital phone book. And he also knew that if the site were easy to use, a combination of peer pressure and the so-called network effect would, like, totally kick in. Since that summer afternoon Zuckerberg has passed legal drinking age, found an apartment, accepted more than $400 million in venture capital, and attended the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, several times.

But Zuckerberg makes it clear to me that he's still intensely focused on connecting the entire world on Facebook - only now his vision goes well beyond the site as a digital phone book. It becomes the equivalent of the phone itself: It is the main tool people use to communicate for work and pleasure. It also becomes the central place where members organize parties, store pictures, find jobs, watch videos, and play games. Eventually they'll use their Facebook ID as an online passkey to gain access to websites and online forums that require personal identification. In other words, Facebook will be where people live their digital lives, without the creepy avatars.

To achieve that goal Zuckerberg has brought in plenty of seasoned veterans, like Google's Sandberg, but he's also surrounded himself with young enthusiasts who share his view that Facebook can change the way people live and work. Like the early employees at Google, most won't see 30 for a long time. Pass by a receptionist, a straw-haired woman with funky glasses, and you'll notice she's updating her Facebook profile. Stroll through the stretch of University Avenue in Palo Alto that houses the company's different offices (it is getting ready to consolidate operations in new digs in April) and you'll be able to differentiate the Facebook employees from the venture capitalists who toil in offices nearby: The Facebookers are the super-young brainiacs in ratty T-shirts and jeans.

At times it may seem hard to reconcile Zuckerberg's lofty aspirations for Facebook with the utterly commonplace content that users create on the site. Consider 25 Random Things, a new take on the chain letter that has grown so popular it was written up in the New York Times Style section. You list 25 supposedly random things about yourself and send the note on to 25 of your friends (who are supposed to do the same), but your randomness also ends up on display to any gawker who may be surfing your profile. The items range from the banal (No. 17: I never, ever, ever throw up. Like five times in my adult life) to the intimate (No. 2: I knew I was gay in the sixth grade but didn't tell anyone until I was 19). The feature is high profile - some 37,500 lists sprang up in just two weeks - but taken as a whole it just seems like a lot of user-generated babble.

Yet it is that very babble that makes Facebook so valuable to marketers. Imagine if an advertiser had the ability to eavesdrop on every phone conversation you've ever had. In a way, that's what all the wall posts, status updates, 25 Random Things, and picture tagging on Facebook amount to: a semipublic airing of stuff people are interested in doing, buying, and trying. Sure, you can send private messages using Facebook, and Zuckerberg eventually hopes to give you even more tools to tailor your profile so that the face you present to, say, your employer is very different from the way you look online to your college roommate. Just like in real life. But the running lists of online interactions on Facebook, known as "feeds," are what make Facebook different from other social networking sites - and they are precisely what make corporations salivate.

The stream

Every user on Facebook has two feeds. There's a personal feed, which you'll find on your profile page along with your photo and list of interests. Every time you log a status update, comment, or video post, that interaction is captured and stored for your review; those changes also become fodder for a second news feed that runs on your home page, the first page you see when you log on to the site.

That feed keeps tabs on all the interactions your friends are having (and alerts friends to updates you've made on your personal feed). If your brother RSVP'd to a dinner party, for example, you might be notified about it, even if you weren't invited to attend. And if you change your profile photo, it may let your brother know. Like Facebook itself, the feeds are subject to the network effect: The more data you share and interact with, the more robust your news feed becomes.

Zuckerberg calls the sum of those interactions the "stream," and it's his newest obsession. Unlike Google, which uses complex algorithms to serve up advertisements based on what you search for, Facebook lets you help "curate" your feeds. The information that pops up is partly a result of controls you establish in your privacy settings and feedback you provide to Facebook. But Facebook also can track your behavior, and if the site notices you're spending a lot of time on the fan page of a certain movie star, for example, it will send you more information about that celebrity.

Needless to say, marketers would love to tap into that information. "If there are 150 million people in a room, you should probably go to that room," says Narinder Singh, chief product officer for Appirio, which helps big companies like Dell and Starbucks (SBUX, Fortune 500) find ways to connect with users over the site. "It's too attractive a set of people and too large a community for businesses to ignore."

Yet because businesses haven't yet effectively infiltrated Facebook, its users may be under the mistaken impression that they aren't under surveillance. "What I like is that it doesn't bombard you with advertisements, so it feels really personal," says Heather Rowley, a 35-year-old photographer in Berkeley. It seems inevitable that some members will feel betrayed or uneasy when ads based on casual chats with friends start to appear on their feeds.

Facebook already has had one brush with member backlash in 2007 when it introduced a feature called Beacon, which allowed members to see what websites their friends visited, and even showed purchases on e-commerce sites. Users protested vehemently - one even filed a lawsuit on privacy grounds - and Facebook apologized.

Now the company is trying a slightly different approach. A feature called Facebook Connect lets users log on to company websites using their Facebook logins. The system, which dovetails with Zuckerberg's vision of a Facebook account as a form of personal ID on the web (privacy settings and all), appeals to advertisers for a couple of reasons. When a user logs on to a third-party site using Facebook Connect, that activity may be reported on her friends' news feeds, which serves as a de facto endorsement. The tool also makes it easy for members to invite their friends to check out the advertiser's site. Starbucks, for example, uses Facebook Connect on its Pledge5 site, which asks people to donate five hours of time to volunteer work. If you sign in using a Facebook account, a new screen, a hybrid of Facebook and the Pledge5 home page, pops up with information on how to find local volunteer opportunities. A tab on the page asks you to "help spread the word." Click on it and your entire address book of Facebook friends pops up, enabling you to evangelize Pledge5 with just a few keystrokes.

So far most of the organizations using Facebook Connect are social enterprises, like Pledge5, or news outlets, like CNN, soliciting members for discussion groups. Who knows how Facebook users will react when a brokerage asks a member to spread the word about its services. Of course, members can ignore the exhortations to invite friends, the same way they might decline to forward their 25 Random Things.

He also insists that marketing on Facebook isn't obtrusive, and that users can control what kind of advertising they see: Each ad contains a small thumbs-up or thumbs-down button. If a user finds an ad irrelevant, repetitive, or offensive, she clicks thumbs-down, and Facebook records her dissatisfaction. Eventually the inappropriate ads will go away. And when ads are useful, many online users do click on them. Rowley, the California photographer who values Facebook's intimacy, says she recently clicked on a Virgin America ad for tickets to the East Coast when it popped up on her news feed. "I was going there, so it made sense," she says.

Still, the company couldn't have picked a worse time to start wooing marketers in earnest. Online advertising growth is expected to decelerate in 2009 from 17.5% last year to just 8.9%. And historically most of those ad dollars have flowed to portals and other online destinations, not experimental sites and social networks like Facebook. When Sheryl Sandberg arrived at Facebook, a substantial chunk of the company's revenues were still coming from a 2006 deal with Microsoft in which the software behemoth sold traditional banner ads on Facebook pages and the parties split the revenue. But attempts to sell traditional online ads on Facebook and other social-networking sites have failed miserably: Banner ads can sell for as little as 15 cents per 1,000 clicks (compared with, say, $8 per 1,000 clicks for an ad on a targeted news portal such as Yahoo Auto) because marketers know that members ignore them.

Sandberg acknowledges that Facebook has much more work to do to secure advertisers. "What we have to figure out is, How do we build a monetization machine which is in keeping with what users are doing on the site?" she says. "It's about execution, doing things faster and better, getting more users and more advertisers."

Facebook's march to 200 million users began in earnest in January 2008. That's when the site made translation tools available to international users. Today more than 70% of Facebook users are outside the U.S., and most of them read it in their native language. But anecdotal evidence suggests that American baby-boomers have discovered Facebook in a big way: Some, like Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, use the site to keep an eye on their kids' online activities. Others are using it as a networking tool in a bad economy.

The fastest-growing demographic on the site? Women 55 and older, up 175% since September 2008. Cynics might say that if Granny is on Facebook, the site absolutely has jumped the shark. Quite the contrary: Having a broad swath of users is exactly what Zuckerberg wants. The arrival of an older, less web-centric crowd suggests that he has succeeded in making the site easy to use. And Facebook can't become a standardized platform if only cool kids use it. Besides, there doesn't currently seem to be another hot social-networking site that is drawing young users away from Facebook in large numbers.

But the Facebook juggernaut still could very easily go awry: Remember AOL's Instant Messenger? Teenagers lived on it and companies started using it in lieu of e-mail. But AOL never figured out a way to make money on it.

Facebook could meet a similar fate; indeed, it is a little worrisome that neither Zuckerberg nor Sandberg seems to feel any particular urgency about putting Facebook in the black. Zuckerberg prefers to leave the question of revenues to Sandberg, who punts: "I think what's really important is that we are able to fund our expansion, and we're very focused on that," she told me in mid-February. Investors seem pretty passive about it as well. Early board member Jim Breyer, who put in $1 million of his own money and $12.7 million from an Accel Partners fund, says that profits are "a secondary consideration in this stage of the growth." He wants to get a return on his investment, but he's not pushing anything now.

And then there's Microsoft, which is in the unusual position of being a Facebook owner, a partner, and, through its Windows Live social network, a competitor. Since taking a stake in Facebook, Microsoft has been working closely with the site to create links between Facebook and the Windows Live social network so that when members update their status message or upload photos on Facebook, that information appears on the Microsoft site too.

Facebook has influenced Microsoft in other ways. Its new operating system, OS 7, features a list of interactions, news, and information that happens to look a lot like Facebook's news feed. Could Microsoft end up buying Facebook outright? Both sides would have much to gain from the arrangement. Facebook investors could get their money out, and Microsoft, which has been searching for a way to deliver more of its software applications over the Internet, would own a viable online platform for selling a new generation of services. But Zuckerberg, like that other famous technology-loving Harvard dropout, seems determined to create a business empire that touches virtually every computer user in the world. Zuckerberg's not interested in selling to Microsoft; he wants to build the next Microsoft. And with 175 million "friends," he's off to a helluva start.

REPORTER ASSOCIATE Beth Kowitt contributed to this article.

NEWS: The IT Edge

SUN Microsystems Malaysia Sdn Bhd (Sun) recently signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Multimedia Development Corporation (MDeC) to train university graduates in Sun Learning and Certification solutions.

The alliance will see Sun providing course materials for Java EE, Java SE, Java ME, MySQL and OpenSolaris, with the relevant certification framework as well as training sessions for graduates.

All smiles at the signing ceremony were (from left) Lin, Loo, Badlisham and Ng.

Successful candidates will also have the opportunity to do a three-month apprenticeship at MSC Malaysia Status companies.

This collaboration is in support of the government’s initiative to develop a pool of talented and skilled engineers to meet the increasing proliferation of open source software adoption in the country.

Students will be equipped with the relevant know-how and expertise to develop software applications, thus enhancing their advancement opportunities in the highly competitive, global technology marketplace.

“Despite the economic slowdown, the ICT industry is facing an acute shortage of skilled workers.

“Under this MoU, students will gain relevant IT skills and improve their employability, whilst the global IT industry will have access to a pool of trained manpower on emerging technologies,” said MDeC chief operating officer Datuk Badlisham Ghazali.

“The collaboration will establish a supplementary curriculum that can bridge the gap between industry requirements and the capability of graduates entering the work force for the first time,” Badlisham added.

“Sun is committed to helping the next generation of entrepreneurs spur innovation through the transformative power of open source technologies,” said Sun Malaysia’s managing director, CP Loo.

Also present at the signing ceremony were MDeC vice-president (Capacity Development Division) Ng Wan Peng and Sun Microsystems vice-president (Global Communities) Lin Lee.

NEWS: Help is a call away

HELLO, Hishammuddin here.

I would like to enrol my child in a fully-residential school. What should I do, please?”

All smiles at the signing ceremony were (from left) Lin, Loo, Badlisham and Ng.

Posing as a parent, Education Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Tun Hussein called the ministry’s customer service centre and was given helpful pointers by an employee.

Pleased with the response, Hishammuddin said anyone with queries, suggestions or complaints should just pick up the phone and dial the centre. One of the personnel on the line would be sure to lend a hand.

The one-stop centre, which can handle up to 76,000 calls a month, would make it easier for people to contact the ministry, Hishammuddin said after launching it at his ministry last week.

“It will improve our delivery system and help us respond effectively and efficiently to enquiries from the public,” he added. The centre, a collaboration between the ministry and Telekom Malaysia Bhd, will cost RM8mil to set up and maintain.

Hishammuddin also distributed RM50mil in aid to Parent-Teacher Associations (PTAs) of all government schools in the country, the first time such an allocation has been given. The money will be channelled to schools based on their student population.

Primary schools will get RM8 per pupil and secondary schools, RM10 per student. A total of RM25.2mil will go to 7,627 primary schools and RM22.6mil to 3,155 secondary schools. The remainder will be distributed to new schools.

Schools are expected to receive the money within 14 days. The aid was given following the ministry’s decision that schools defer the collection of PTA fees until June this year to reduce the burden on parents who may be facing financial difficulties.

However, schools can still collect PTA fees from students after the amount has been agreed to at the PTAs’ annual general meetings.

To contact the Education Ministry, call 03-7723 7070 between 8.30am and 5.30pm, Monday to Friday (except public holidays), or e-mail
kpkpm@moe.gov.my. You can also visit
www.moe.gov.my. — SIMRIT KAUR

NEWS: More doors open for graduate

KUALA LUMPUR: The demand for open-source software in the ­country and the expertise required in this area is rising, according to the Multimedia Development Corp (MDeC) which spearheads the MSC Malaysia initiative.

Open-source software, said networking systems giant Sun Microsystems, is gaining popularity mainly because the advantages of user malleable programs are becoming more apparent.

Since the source code is ­accessible to users, a company could tweak open-source software to better meet its needs, compared to proprietary software which arguably has to be used as is.

In view of this increasing ­interest in open-source ­applications, MDeC and Sun have banded together to offer local university graduates the ­opportunity to master open-source skills.

Under the partnership, Sun will provide the graduates with industry-recognised technology training and certification tools, through MDeC’s network of institutions of higher learning.

The training will include ­teaching the students to master Java, a programming language developed by Sun Microsystems that has been in use since 1995.

In addition to that, they will learn about OpenSolaris, Sun’s open-source operating system, around which the vendor has built developer and user ­communities.

Also on the cards is to make the graduates experts in MySQL, a relational database management system that ­reportedly has more than 11 million installations worldwide.

“The students will gain ­relevant IT skills which will improve their employability, and the initiative will also help meet the local industry’s demand for competent IT professionals,” said MDeC chief executive Datuk Badlisham Ghazali.

He was speaking at a press conference in the capital last week to announce the ­partnership.

C.P. Loo, managing director of Sun Microsystems Malaysia, emphasised the importance of obtaining certification in open-source software.

“Our programmes are designed to enable IT ­professionals to better harness Sun’s leading open-source ­technologies,” he said, “as well as improve their communication and interaction skills.

The graduates will also be more productive once their ­technical and problem-solving skills are honed, Loo added.

Candidates who complete the course may be awarded a three-month apprenticeship at an MSC Malaysia-status company.

The MSC Malaysia initiative is aimed at developing the ­country’s knowledge-based economy, as well as boosting its information and communications technology industry.

NEWS: Forge smart partnerships, Kong advises inventors

KUALA LUMPUR: It is often said that inventors and scientists do not make good businessmen.

Deputy Finance Minister Datuk Kong Cho Ha has a suggestion for them – forge smart partnerships with the business community.

“They need to trust business people and not hold on to their inventions for dear life.

“If big businesses can offer them 5% to 10% of their profits, they would make a few million ringgit instead of having to set up their own business and struggle for 10 years, he said.

The MCA vice-president said four years ago he took the initiative to establish the MCA ICT Resource Centre (MIRC), tasked with empowering small and medium-scale enterprises (SMEs) to use improved technology.

“We not only had the SMEs transformed but we too were transformed,” he said at the second Technopreneur Development Semi-nar and Study Tour yesterday.

MIRC has set up two incubator centres for ICT in Kuala Lumpur and Penang and is discussing with parties involved in the Iskandar Development Region and the Perak technocrat centre for more incubators to be set up.

NEWS: Students send e-mails to Obama to end Palestinian conflict

KUANTAN: In light of the recent bombings in Palestine, Mercy Malaysia initiated a programme called E-mails From Pahang Students to President Obama.

The event saw students from various schools in Pahang gathering at the Pahang Foundation hall to protest against the violence affecting Palestinians.

They shouted “Save Palestine” to express their disapproval of the bombings.

Anti-violence: (From left) Students Alisson, Hannah, Darsyanah and Ira Izzura displaying a Palestinian flag at the event in Kuantan recently.

Mentri Besar Datuk Seri Adnan Yaakob was present to lend support.

He also launched the programme, which encourages students across Pahang to send e-mails to the newly-elected US President Barack Obama.

From the e-mails, several would be selected by Adnan to be sent directly to Obama.

Friends Alisson Wong Wy Qin and Hannah Leong Wai San, both 16, were among those selected for the programme recently.

Hannah said: “I think it is a good method to get President Obama’s attention on the war. The victims are innocent. Seeing their pain makes me want to make a difference. If we unite in our efforts, we can.

Another student, Ira Izzura Ahmad Norhalim, 16, said: “I think it’s a great idea for us to e-mail messages to Obama. In this way, he can see how serious we are in fighting for peace in Palestine.”

Darsyanah Nadarajan’s message to the world was: Save Palestine, save the world.

Adnan later handed over funds collected to help Mercy Malaysia in its mission.

NEWS: Undergrad helps lovers say it with roses

OHOR BARU: A second-year civil engineering student is cashing in on Valentine’s Day by selling roses on the Internet for extra pocket money.

Wen Siau Kit, 23, who posted his advertisement last month, said business has been encouraging, with enquiries from not only people in Johor Baru but also in Kuala Lumpur.

Flowers for sale: Wen showing the advertisement he put online to sell roses for Valentine’s Day.

Wen, who is from Cameron High­lands, said he started the business last year together with three friends.

“Since I can get the flowers at a low price from a friend who has a rose farm, we decided to try out the business,” he said.

“The response was good and we sold 300 roses last year. We expect to double that this year.”

Besides the Internet, Wen and his friends rely on word of mouth to publicise his business.

Asked whether he would get anything special for his girlfriend for Valentine’s Day, he smiled and said that he was still unattached.

“We will deliver the roses today and tomorrow. Each wrapped rose is priced between RM6 and RM10,” he said, adding that they had also obtained a temporary licence to market their flowers at Danga Bay.

Wen said red roses were the most popular, followed by pink ones.

All his customers are men.

Wen, who is the third of four siblings and who used to help his father on their vegetable farm, aspires to be an entrepreneur.

NEWS: Sabah and Sarawak to get RM21mil under government stimulus package

KUCHING: Mission schools in Sabah and Sarawak will receive RM21.4mil under the government’s economic stimulus package to carry out upgrading work and other projects.

Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak said the allocation would be channelled directly to the schools’ board of directors.

Financial scheme: Najib (right) chatting with Alfred Jabu in Kuching yesterday. Looking on are Ong and Dr Wee (left).

He said it was the first time the Government had given such a large allocation to mission schools.

“I am confident that by giving the money to the board of directors, we will get value for money because they are responsible people and will use the money wisely,” he said.

He urged the schools to spend all the funds this year to help stimulate the domestic economy.

The funds are part of a RM50mil allocation for mission schools nationwide.

Najib paid tribute to mission schools, saying that they contributed to Malaysia’s development by producing well-educated students.

He noted that many political leaders and corporate figures were products of mission schools, including himself, a former student of St John’s Institution in Kuala Lumpur.

“It is most appropriate for mission schools to be given financial assistance as they are schools of excellence and well-known for their ethos and spirit,” he said when presenting the funds to representatives of mission schools at SMK St Thomas here.

Transport Minister Datuk Seri Ong Tee Keat, Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Tan Sri Bernard Dompok, Sabah Deputy Chief Minister Datuk Joseph Pairin Kitingan and Sarawak Deputy Chief Ministers Tan Sri Alfred Jabu and Tan Sri Dr George Chan were also present.

Deputy Education Minister Datuk Dr Wee Ka Siong, representing Education Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Tun Hussein, said there were 410 mission schools nationwide, including 128 in Sarawak and 75 in Sabah.

He said the ministry was committed to assisting the board of directors of mission schools which needed help in carrying out projects such as improving facilities.

Najib also advised the Bidayuh community not to put their trust in politicians who were powerless and running for office.

“I want the Bidayuh people to be with Barisan Nasional and to continue to have faith in Barisan,” he told some 1,500 Bidayuhs at the Dayak Bidayuh National Association (DBNA) headquarters.

Bidayuhs make up about 8% of the state’s 2.4 million people. They live mostly in the Bau, Lundu and Serian districts in southern Sarawak. They have three Barisan MPs and six assemblymen.

Najib later announced a Federal Government contribution of RM4mil to the DBNA to fund the construction of its proposed multi-purpose centre.

NEWS: MDeC to tackle retrenchments

KUALA LUMPUR: The Multimedia Development Corporation (MDeC) is ­helping retrenched workers to get employment in the over 2,000 MSC Malaysia-status ­companies through its re-skilling programmes.

TRAINING PROGRAMME: According to MDeC, callcentres are an example of an ICT sector that re-skilled workers can find a job in.

MDeC, which is the guardian for MSC Malaysia, said it is co-operating with the Human Resources Ministry in this effort.

A total of 33,451 workers lost their jobs last year, according to the Labour Department. From last October to January 20, 13,040 people had been retrenched, according to The Labour Department’s department director-general Datuk Ismail Abdul Rahim (The Star, Jan 21).

MDeC chief executive officer Datuk Badlisham Ghazali said that MSC Malaysia will be a key referral centre in terms of looking for ­placement of the retrenched ­workers in ICT-based companies.

“We will assist the retrenched workers by encouraging them to take part in the existing MSC Malaysia programmes, which has been enhanced to accommodate them,” said Badlisham.

There are currently four re-skilling programmes that were ­originally targeted at unemployed graduates — the Graduate Trainee Programme, Undergraduate Skills Programme, Undergraduate Apprenticeship Development Programme and Job Camp.

These programmes, which began three years ago are specifically tailored towards different ­competencies.

“Based on the database provided by the ministry, we will match the skills of the retrenched workers to the sectors which have these ­shortages,” he said.

Badlisham said the Shared Services and Outsourcing (SSO) industry, the Creative Multimedia Content and callcentres are ­examples of ICT sectors that the re-skilled workers can find jobs in.

“There are job opportunities within the MSC. It’s not true that you have to have an ICT background to work within the MSC as it needs people do to sales, human resource, finance and others,” he said.

Muhammad Imran Kunalan, general manager of the K-Workers Development Department said MSC Malaysia will have its first training programme in mid February.

About 50 unemployed and retrenched people (mostly from the manufacturing sector) will undergo training at the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank (HSBC) Electronic Data Processing centre in Cyberjaya.

“After the training, HSBC Electronic Data Processing is expected to absorb most of them,” Muhammad Imran said.

He added that MSC Malaysia is looking to re-skill people not just for basic callcentre duties but for Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) activities, such as finance and human resources.

“There’s a common ­misconception that BPO is just about callcentre staff. For instance, a bank needs people to research a prospective client’s credit history when he applies for a loan. That requires some financial experience, and not just answering phones,” he said.

NEWS: A Good Start

THe new, technology-enabled Taylor’s College Sri Hartamas campus recently opened its doors to about 350 pre-university students, all enrolled in either the Cambridge A-Levels or South Australian Matriculation programme.

The contemporary furnishings, coupled with lots of open spaces, zesty colours and free wi-fi access seem to have scored points for the students who lauded the “high tech” study environment.

Students at the new Taylor’s College Sri Hartamas campus were in high spirits.

“Today’s students are more attuned to technology. For this reason, we place greater emphasis on the use of ICT for teaching and learning here. Our teaching revolves around student-centred learning,” said Taylor’s College Sri Hartamas’ Cambridge A-Levels programme director Ananda Kumaresh.

“We integrate our teaching and learning framework with extensive use of technology,” said Cambridge A-Levels academic department head Hariandra Muthu.

“This means our students have easier access to our teaching resources. For example, lecture notes are given out in soft copy, revision lessons are offered in audio and video recordings, and downloads are enabled using Bluetooth — all made available on Blackboard 7, a web-based course management software,” he added.

Located close to Mont Kiara, Damansara and Kuala Lumpur, Taylor’s College Sri Hartamas offers time- and money-saving solutions for students who no longer need to travel to Subang Jaya, Selangor, for their pre-university education.

“Besides, this new campus is much nearer to my house, so I managed to convince my dad to let me study here.”