Flying Windmills

Flying Windmills

A small company is taking an unusual tack to produce cheaper wind energy. Ted Greenwald

Wind harvester: The Makani Airborne Wind Turbine sits on a runway outside of Oakland, California. The craft generates electrical power during flight.
Makani PowerMultimedia

          In a concrete control tower of a decommissioned naval air base just outside Oakland, California, a team of engineers is building what might best be called a hybrid of an unmanned aerial vehicle and a wind turbine. The 120-pound craft has rotors on its wings to lift it into the sky helicopter-style; a thin tether attaches it to a platform. Once in the air, the craft begins to glide like a kite, its 26-foot wingspan tracing circles 250 feet overhead. Now the propellers become generators, spinning freely and generating electricity that flows down the taut tether—and, someday, into the local grid.

         This craft, developed by Makani Power, is a long-shot bid to tackle one of the world's toughest problems: getting clean, cheap energy. Currently, wind power costs from five to 10 cents per kilowatt-hour—but the price of electricity from burning coal can fall below four cents per kilowatt-hour. Makini Power, however, aims to bring down the price of wind energy to three cents per kilowatt-hour. 

         With wind energy, most of the cost of generating power is tied up in building and maintaining huge blades and turbines. Makani believes its vehicle will cost less to build than conventional turbines and will harvest wind energy more effectively, because its flying pattern lets it generate energy under more wind conditions. "The magic is in flying crosswind," says CEO Corwin Hardham, referring to how the vehicle moves perpendicular to the wind like a kite. "We use aerodynamics to move the rotors many times faster than the actual wind speed."

         The company has carried out a series of test flights, including a flight this fall during which the carbon-fiber prototype with a 26-foot wingspan generated five kilowatts of power. Within two years the company hopes to have an 88-foot wing that generates 600 kilowatts—around a third what a large conventional wind turbine can generate. A gargantuan wing to generate five megawatts is on the drawing board.

         The company's project has drawn some interest from funders.  Google has put $15 million into the company, and in September 2010, Makani won a $3 million grant from the Department of Energy's ARPA-E program, which funds high-risk ideas that could lead to what the agency calls "transformational and disruptive energy technologies." Hardham is an avid kite surfer, and in mid-2006 he was working for engineering firm Squid Labs when he hit upon the idea of using similar aerodynamics to generate energy. (In kite surfing, the rider stands on a board and is pulled by a large nylon parachute.)

         Today, the 20-person company occupies Spartan, military-issue facilities with a machine shop in the rear and an assembly area up front. Composites are baked in a shipping container outdoors; the old control tower's aerie serves as a lunchroom and occasional bar. Hardham describes the company's situation as both "humble" and "perfect." He says, "There's an obvious advantage to being more nimble than big corporations."

         Makani's technology is designed to take advantage of the relatively consistent winds that blow well above the ground. Conventional wind turbines top out at roughly 300 feet, with blade tips reaching 500 feet, beyond which it becomes prohibitively expensive to build stable structures. Researching the potential for wind power, Hardham came across a 1980 paper by Miles Loyd proposing a tethered wing that could elevate the business end of a windmill to any height.


 http://www.technologyreview.com/business
 Ted Greenwald

blue moon..

          NASA's Kepler space telescope team this month unveiled "Kepler-22b." A planet some 600 light-years away, Kepler-22b circles its star squarely in a "habitable zone" — the orbital distance where a world's surface temperature would neither boil nor freeze water, perhaps allowing oceans to survive as on Earth. Water is widely seen as one of life's vital ingredients by planetary scientists.

Catchy names, clearly, aren't a priority in astronomy. Other proposed habitable zone worlds reported by astronomers (among the more than 700 planets detected in the last two decades orbiting nearby stars) sport monikers such as "55 Cancri f" and "HD 85512 b.

          But at least some solace comes from the Kepler space telescope team's estimate that just in our Milky Way galaxy alone, some 500 million planets likely orbit inside their star's habitable zone. "We have many candidates in that region," said Kepler principal scientist William Borucki of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., at a briefing unveiling Kepler-22b to his colleagues earlier this month. At his briefing, Borucki showed a chart depicting more than 50 possible habitable zone planets, as well as Kepler-22b, among the 2,326 planetary candidates detected by Kepler since its 2009 launch.

         How has Kepler piled up so many planet candidates? The $591 million space telescope gazes unblinkingly at roughly 170,000 stars within 3,000 light years (one light year is about 5.9 trillion miles) along the "Orion Spur" of stars in our Milky Way. Kepler detects planets by spotting dips in starlight, eclipses called "transits," that they cause when they circle in front of their stars.Science fiction fans hoping that Kepler-22b is another Earth may need the solace that many more habitable planets may be out there. That's because the early indications are that Kepler-22b's habitable zone isn't all that habitable for that particular world.

         For one thing, Kepler-22b isn't really Earth-like. At 2.4 times the width of Earth, Kepler-22b seems more like a smaller version of the gas-shrouded world Neptune in our own solar system, according to planet hunter Geoff Marcy of the University of California, Berkeley. Where Neptune is about 17 times heavier than Earth, Kepler 22b is likely about 14 times heavier than Earth, estimates astronomer Francesco Pepe of Switzerland's Geneva Observatory, who attended the Kepler briefing. At that weight, Kepler-22b likely has an atmosphere nothing like Earth, likely making it uninhabitable.

         The Kepler team for example estimated that Kepler-22b, if it had an atmosphere like Earth's, would enjoy balmy average temperatures of 72 degrees Fahrenheit, "a little warmer than a nice day here in California," Borucki said. But even the draft paper written by Borucki and colleagues describing the discovery admits this is "not very likely." 

         "No, too big," says planetary scientist Lena Noack of Germany's Institut für Planetenforschung (Institute for Planetary Research), for at least one other reason. In research presented at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco the same week as the Kepler briefing, Noack found that planets need to weigh less than five times as much as Earth to possess plate tectonics, the continental movements that characterize our world.

         Plate tectonics causes earthquakes, but also releases volatile gasses, nutrients and minerals important for life. Pointing in our own solar system to Venus, which is almost Earth's size but seems to lack plate tectonics, Noack says: "Earth might be unique."

Looks pretty bleak, science fiction fans. But hold on, there is some hope still for Kepler-22b. Earth, after all, has a moon, one about one-fourth as wide as our planet. And so might Kepler-22b, or the other habitable-zone candidate planets."Kepler-22b is certainly a great target for moon hunters," says astronomer David Kipping of The Hunt for Exomoons with Kepler (HEK) project, which already rates the newly-discovered world a "high-priority" target . "Any moon of mass greater than about a third of the Earth's mass should be massive enough to hold onto its own atmosphere and thus be a habitable exomoon," Kipping says, by e-mail.

         Basically, if a planet and its moon are spaced far apart, Kepler might see two transits, at least in cases where the space telescope is sensitive enough to detect Mars-sized planets, ones about half-as-wide as Earth, Kipping says. But if the moon and planet are close, astronomers might see a "triple eclipse" in their transit data. "This is when during the transit of the planet across the star, the moon passes in front or behind of the planet too," Kipping says.The result would be a camel-backed double bump in the amount of starlight blocked from a star during a transit by a planet, resulting from the time when a moon is eclipsed. "So wide or close, the moon tends to always reveal her presence," Kipping says.

          Kepler team scientist Jack Lissauer, also of NASA's Ames Research Center, is a little more cautious, saying, "if the planet (and) moon were very close, it would be difficult to tell the difference between the pair and a single larger planet."We'll see. Kipping hopes to present some preliminary reports from the HEK project early next year at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Austin. Let's hope he has a HEK of a chance.So hang in there, space fans, "where there's life, there's hope," as folks sometimes note in science fiction films. "I hope so," Noack said, even after pouring cold water on Kepler-22b. "I still hope to find life somehow out there."

 http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science

rocket booster!!

          

 Mission commander Oleg Kononenko and his colleagues, American Don Pettit and European Space Agency astronaut Andre Kuipers are to dock with the space station on Friday. The blastoff from the snowy launchpad in Baikonur, Kazakhstan, took place without a hitch and the spacecraft reached Earth orbit about nine minutes later. Video from inside the craft showed the three crew members gripping each others' hands in celebration as the final stage of the booster rocket separated.

          The three aboard the Russian spacecraft will join three others already on the ISS, NASA's Dan Burbank and Russians Anton Shkaplerov and Anatoly Ivanishin. The six are to work together on the station until March. The launch came amid a period of trouble for Russia's space program, which provides the only way for crew to reach the space station since the United States retired its space shuttle program in July.

The launch of an unmanned supply ship for the space station failed in August and the ship crashed in a Siberian forest. 

          The Soyuz rocket carrying that craft was the same type used to send up Russian manned spacecraft, and the crash prompted officials to postpone the next manned launch while the rockets were examined for flaws. The delayed mission eventually took place on Nov. 14. Just five days before that launch, Russia sent up its ambitious Phobos-Ground unmanned probe, which was to go to the Phobos moon of Mars, take soil samples and return them to Earth. But engineers lost contact with the ship and were unable to propel it out of 

          Earth orbit and toward Mars. The craft is now expected to fall to Earth in mid-January. Last December, Russia lost three navigation satellites when a rocket carrying them failed to reach orbit. A military satellite was lost in February, and the launch of the Express-AM4, described by officials as Russia's most powerful telecommunications satellite, went awry in August.

 http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/space/story

Data to be a defining tech trend in 2012

 

THE FUTURE: This undated file photo courtesy of IBM shows 

Watson that made headlines by beating a human Jeopardy! television 

quiz show champion. According to a Silicon Valley analyst, computers such as 

Watson, which harnesses the power of data analytics, will drive major 

breakthroughs in the years ahead. - AFP/Relaxnews

The start of this year was marked by a tech industry obsession with where to put growing mountains of information gathered online and by sensors increasingly woven into modern lifestyles.
External drives boasted seemingly unfillable capacities and companies touted services for storing bits and bytes at massive data centres in the Internet "cloud."
As 2012 approaches, focus has turned to searching for trends, patterns and other useful insights about people's preferences and behaviours that might be buried in troves of data.
"Big analytics toward the end of the year became the big term and into next year it will be the big term," said independent Silicon Valley analyst Rob Enderle.
"Analytics is really the core of what will be happening in everything from medical research to advertising."
The theme for this year's Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco was unlocking the power of "big data," and the topic was dissected by top Internet company executives at an array of industry gatherings.
"Analysing data can tell you want resonates and what doesn't," Enderle said. "Applied to elections it could be the difference between winners and losers."
An IBM computer called Watson that made headlines by beating a human Jeopardy! television quiz show champion at his own game demonstrated the power of data analytics, according to the analyst.
"Could you imagine Watson used for legal or medical research?" Enderle asked. "You can do some amazing things by drawing conclusions from information you already have but couldn't make heads or tales of before now."
He predicted that analytics would drive major breakthroughs in the years ahead.
Large businesses out to recapture the intimacy of running small shops in tune with local customers are turning to a startup that gleans insights about people from cold, hard data. Collective(i) will come out of stealth mode in January with a unique service that helps businesses better understand even their smallest customers through real-time data analysis.
"We are bringing analytics and business intelligence to the masses," said Collective(i) chief executive Stephen Messer.
"What Ford's assembly line did for cars we are doing for analytics," he said.
The New York City-based firm operated by Cross Commerce Media has been in test mode for seven months, winning fans such as US gift service 1-800-Flowers and flash-sale website Gilt.
"At the end of the day, what I am always trying to do is re-create the relationship we had with customers when we started with one flower shop in Manhattan in 1976," said 1-800-Flowers president Chris McCann.
"Collective(i) has given me the ability to do that in a different way than has been done before," continued McCann, who was 15 years old when he joined his older brother in their first florist shop.
While analysis companies typically present clients with charts showing break-downs of market or sales data, Collective(i) figures out why numbers turn out as they do.
Messer gave the examples of deducing that people buy more macaroni-and-cheese when the outside temperature dips below a certain temperature, or that folks see the dish as a prime alternative to soup.
Stores can tailor ad pitches or promotions to the weather as well as their customers, he explained.
"Others give you the facts, we give you the 'why'," Messer said.
"What it means is that companies are listening to their customers again and not just pitching you products you don't want," he contended. Analytics will let companies more shrewdly target money spent on advertising, potentially saving money in the multi-billion-dollar ad market.

 http://techcentral.my/news/story

luar negara punye citer

China city tightens control of microblogs

 

 

MONITORING MICROBLOGGERS: People surfing the internet in a cafe in Shanghai. 

The local government of the city has imposed new regulations which 

will require microbloggers to register under their real names as a means to 

'foster healthy Internet culture'. - AFP/Relaxnews

Shanghai will require microblog users to register under their real names from Monday, state media said, the latest local government in China to implement the rule after a spate of violent protests.
Beijing and the southern province of Guangdong have also ordered users of weibos - microblogs similar to Twitter - to register using their real names, as authorities tighten their grip on the Internet.
The move comes amid a surge in social unrest that has been concentrated in the wealthy manufacturing heartland of Guangdong.
Residents protesting against land seizures and a power plant in the province recently posted photos and reports of their demonstrations on weibos, defying official efforts to block news of the incidents.
With more than half a billion Chinese now online, authorities are concerned about the power of the Internet to influence public opinion in a country that maintains tight controls on its traditional media outlets.
Shanghai said the new rules aim to "foster a healthy Internet culture" and improve management over social networking, the official Xinhua news agency reported late Sunday.
The guidelines will apply to both private and corporate users in Shanghai.
Previously, users have been able to set up weibos accounts under assumed names, making it more difficult for authorities to track them, and allowing them to set up new accounts if existing ones are shut down by censors.
Despite official censorship of the Web, ordinary Chinese are increasingly using weibos to vent their anger and frustration over official corruption, scandals and disasters.
A weibos user is believed to have broken the news of a deadly high-speed rail crash in China in July that provoked widespread condemnation of the government - much of it online.

 http://techcentral.my/news/story

Creativity bytes

Producing the Dunia Eichak 3-D animated series was a labour of love. Siti Syameen Md Khalili speaks to the man behind the creative content team

 

          FOR someone in the niche creative content scene, Azman Azahar, surprisingly, was not academically trained for it. A communications graduate from the International Islamic University, Azman is the driving force behind creative house Addeen Multimedia Sdn Bhd. The 34-year-old insists that he is a creative person inside, something that he says runs in his family.

          Brought up in Kuala Lipis, Pahang, he developed a keen interest in visuals and sounds at an early age.
“I guess I inherited my father's genes. He was an accomplished violinist. My brothers and I developed an ear for music. They were also very good at illustration and colouring,” says Azman, who is also vocalist and bassist for traditional Malay folk ensemble Dewangga Sakti.He was also a great fan of cartoon shows and spent long hours watching his favourite characters on TV.“Tom and Jerry is my all-time favourite and a great inspiration. Their love-hate relationship makes for an engaging story. I love the animation techniques too.”
But Azman did not act on his creative passion until he finished college. His job stint at Multimedia Development Corporation (MDeC), however, appeared to rekindle that passion.“At the Creative Multimedia Department, I was involved in various programmes related to the industry. The creative side of me came alive,” he says.

          After nine years, he quit and set up Addeen Multimedia in 2008. The pull of the creative world was just too strong. Today, he is part of a team that make up Addeen’s creative arm, producing apps for smartphones and multimedia applications for high profile events. But his biggest challenge is yet to come.

ANIMATION
In 2008, his team came up with a 3-D animation project under the brand name Dunia Eichak. The story follows Eichak, a 10-year-old gadget-loving city boy whose family moves to a village in Tasik Chini, Pahang.
Azman describes Eichak as a curious lad. “It was not long before Eichak ventured out into the woods. One day, while fishing, his line gets stuck. He pulls at it but falls into the water instead, accidently opening a portal that transports him to a parallel world reigned by creatures who walk and talk. He befriends most of them.
“It is the dream of all kids to be whisked away to a fantasy world, hence their preoccupation with games and cartoons. We take this lead but at the same time we don't want them to get lost in
Dunia Eichak and come out with nothing. That would be a waste. In many western cartoon series, kids are often portrayed as outspoken, even with their parents. This is not so in the East. So, we hope Eichak will be our way to inject our own interpretation of good values based on our own moral compass.”
According to Azman, producing Eichak was a real challenge.
“The animation project went through many stages of development and evolution since it was conceptualised in 2008. Initially, the main character was not even a boy, but rather a brave little mudskipper that fights dragons and monsters to keep his home in Tasik Chini safe!
“Coming up with Eichak was a labour of love — it was a highly meticulous process. The graphics used are rich, detailed and vibrant. It was easy to get carried away as we created the kind of animation we ourselves would like to see on TV. For me, personally, it was my creative outlet as I’d always been passionate about music, movies and animation.”
The project won a government grant, via the MSC Malaysia Intellectual Property Creators Challenge (IPCC) Series 2009, which consequently helped the company produce a three-minute animation entitled Eichak In Riddles Of Chini.
“The three-minute animation garnered us recognition as it showed the industry what we were capable of,” says Azman.
Encouraged by the support and recognition, the same animation clip was previewed at a digital media conference helmed by MDeC, X Media Lab 2010 where Addeen met up with industry leaders from around the world.
“We sat with, among others, Lea Hoyer, the director of development for Disney Television Animation, Juhaidah Joemin from Al-Jazeera's Children Channel and Zareh Nalbandian, who served as executive producer of the animation film, Happy Feet. They were all impressed with our work but agreed on one point — that Eichak was just not suitable for TV. It was too graphics heavy and coming up with a single episode would have taken months, whereas with TV, a new episode is expected every week. It was a project more suitable for a feature film,” says Azman.
“It took quite a while to review the situation. We could not proceed with Eichak as it was, but we refused to quit. So the only way forward was to start again from scratch.”
According to Azman, the team attempted to keep a clean, Pokoyo-like animation that was vibrant and went well with characters that appealed to parents and children.
“If the old Eichak catered to adults who wanted characters to be detailed, rich and fierce, this time we minimised the features to tackle the hearts of kids aged 6 to 10, while retaining a gripping storyline,” he says, adding that the team worked with Autodesk Maya 3-D animation software as well as Adobe tools.

AFTER THE STORM
Though it has been a bumpy ride for Addeen, as far as the 3-D animation venture is concerned, the future looks bright. There are already six installations of Dunia Eichak’s public service announcement aired on TV3.
“I am happy with the progress we have made so far. Our animation is in the final stage of negotiation with TV3. If everything goes well, Dunia Eicak The Animated Series will be aired on TV3 next year,” he says.
Mohammad Shafieq Syazwan (better known as Afiq of Idola Kecil 1) lends his voice to the main character. Other voice talents include Ahmad Ikhwan Mohamed Rashid (as Chip), Firdaus Abdillah (Fenggo), Ahmad Shariffuddin (Jimi), Mohammad Zaini Sharudin (Koozie), Razima Shahira Abdul Razak (Didie), Fazleena Hishamuddin (Elly), Rashedah Mohd Ismail (Bobbie) and Azalan Hussain (Pawang).
Apart from Afiq, Eichak is also getting some serious star power from rock queen Ella. “Addeen appointed Amiruddin Syawal of Family Tree Studio to come up with the audio works and songs for the series. It was through Amiruddin that we managed to secure a song called Kunci by Ella, as Dunia Eichak’s theme song,” says Azman.

WHAT’S NEXT?
He adds: “We are at the early stages of coming up with our next IPs. Dunia Eicak The Movie is one of them. It will also be in 3-D. Our target is to be one of the leading animation and Visual Effect (VFX) houses in the country.
We have a pool of 15 good animators and VFX artists who can do quality work. I have confidence in our technical/animation capability.
“As a company, we are new but most of our talents are mostly experienced and some are seasoned players in the industry. We are looking to increase our animation team from next month.
The plan is to continue investing in hardware, software and manpower. What’s for sure is that we are not planning to be a one-off player.”


NST By  Siti Syameen Md Khalili

the savior :)

Edwin Ong takes his love affair with cars a little further to make our journeys safer,

ne lah mamat yang cipta benda alah tu..

           TWO years ago, while fixing a customer’s car at his workshop in Puchong, Edwin Ong received a call on his mobile phone. Before he could even say “hello”, a voice on the other side burst through the ear piece; “Help me Ong, help me...” followed by a cry. Ong knew it was his best friend Angela (not her real name) and that she was in trouble, but he couldn’t do anything to help as he had no idea where she was.
He tried to ask her for her location but his friend had panicked and couldn’t describe her whereabouts. To make it worse, the line was cut off.

          By the time Ong managed to call her back, it was too late. Angela was robbed by two men on a motorbike when she stopped at a street junction. The incident prompted Ong, 28, to come up with a technology solution  called EARs, short for Emergency Assistance And Response Services. It’s a service where a user presses one button on his  smartphone in case of emergency and wait for help to come.

How it started
Ong’s invention did not come out of thin air. It is the culmination of events he experienced as a mechanic.  He often received calls from friends and customers when their vehicles broke down.
“Usually, the callers could only give a vague description of their whereabouts when their cars broke down in an unfamiliar area. It’s worse if the person is in danger or in a creepy place,” says Ong.
“In an emergency, you need to get to the people in need quickly. But with vague directions, it will cause a delay that can put the person in danger.”
Popularly known as the handy guy among his friends, Sitiawan-born Ong thought hard about how he could improve existing emergency assistance services.
“It dawned on me that we could make use of the GPS function on smartphones to relay location details of the caller. This gave me the idea to manipulate the GPS feature to pinpoint the user’s location,” he says.
To simplify the service, Ong decided that a one-button smartphone facility would be an apt solution, so he put software and a call centre service into the equation.
“Once the button is pressed, a call centre will notify five people who are close to the caller and all the details on the caller’s whereabouts are relayed as GPS co-ordinates.”

From zero
The innovation route for Ong did not come easy. Firstly, he had no knowledge of computer programs. What he had was a passion for fast cars and his skills in upgrading them.
After high school, he enrolled in a local college to take up a business course, but stopped half way.
“I was engrossed with cars and motorsports. By the time I entered college, I wanted to do something else and had different goals. So I dropped out and started my motor business venture,” he says.
Luckily, his parents were supportive as long as he knew what he  wanted to do with his life.
Ong credits his father for his love for cars and motorsports.
“My father was a naval officer with an engineering background. He loves cars and upgrades and repairs them himself. I grew up watching and learning about cars from him. I guess the talent rubbed off on me,” he says with a twinkle in his eye.
His mother was a kindergarten teacher.
With the idea to simplify distress calls in mind, he bought a MacBook and learned programming online. “There are a lot of resources on the Web as long as you are keen to learn,” he  says, adding that his friends, who are skilled in programming, also guided him.
After many trials, tests and failures, Ong came out with the the first version of EARs in late 2009.
Even though not perfect, the concept worked. The program he created allows a smartphone user to press a button, instead of dialling contact numbers, in case of an emergency.
The program was refined when Ong came out with the second version last month.

How it works
EARs simplifies the process of emergency alert and notification. Just tap the icon and a signal is immediately sent within five seconds to the EARs system which identifies the user’s name and pinpoints his location via GPS.
“You will receive a call from an EARs agent within a short time frame to ascertain your condition and safety, and to confirm the emergency service or assistance you need. The agent will then contact the relevant service providers to assist you,” says Ong.
At the same time, EARs will also alert five of your closest contacts to inform them about your situation. If you are involved in an accident, EARs is also able to assist with police reporting, workshop co-ordinations for repairs and insurance claims.
In the event of a personal emergency such as a kidnapping, if the EARs app is launched and the person is not contactable by the agent, the five closest contacts are immediately alerted via SMS and one primary contact is called to act on the situation, armed with important information such as location coordinates.
Ong partners with more than 500 workshops and tow truck companies.
“Under the package, we provide RM200 worth of tow expenses regardless of how many times your car breaks down,” he says.
The free EARs program can be downloaded at iTunes by typing “earsalert2”. Ong is giving a free 30-day trial subscription.
EARs also addresses the emotional and psychological needs of individuals who are disoriented by such experiences.
“Individuals may be in shock or injured, uncertain of their whereabouts or frustrated at having to contact different parties for help” he says, adding that the application is also designed for parents who want to safeguard their children.

Flexible
To make the package flexible, there are weekly (RM5) and two-yearly subscriptions (RM130). Initially available only on iPhone,  the application also works on Androids. Ong is working on Windows and Blackberry platforms.
He hopes to provide cross-border services where people can use EARs in neighbouring countries such as Singapore, Thailand and Brunei.
“This will allow people to travel without worries,” he says.

 NST By Izwan Ismail

awasi anak² anda..

IMAGINE this: Mia, 8, is surfing the Internet in the living room. Her parents are in the dining area nearby. Suddenly, she calls her dad, pointing to an adult toy video advertisement that pops up on the computer screen. Her dad immediately runs to her and covers her eyes with his hand.

Parents need to play an active role in providing a safer Internet experience for their children

          The above scenario, unfortunately, is pretty common today, where children come across negative content online from time to time. Parents may find it difficult to monitor what their children are doing online whom they talk to, the sites they visit and the games they play. And they can’t simply take away the Internet from their children as the online world is very much part and parcel of today’s children’s lives.

          Now, DiGi Telecommunications has initiated an effort to help parents provide a safer Internet experience for their young. It’s offering two-pronged protection to its broadband customers through a collaboration with McAfee — subscription to McAfee Internet Security and McAfee Family Protection.
“This is an anti-virus and family protection service from real-time viruses, malware and spam. It shields children from exposure to inappropriate Web content, social networking risks and other online threats,” says DiGi head of broadband Mohd Nazeem Mohd Nasir.

          What’s cool about the service is that it has an Internet messaging traceability feature. This means parents can trace whom their children chat with online and the history of the messages.
It also has a time allocation feature where parents can limit Internet access to their children when they are at work. “If the kids start giving out personal info such as home address to strangers, the system will alert their parents,” explains Mohd Nazeem.Though there are no serious cyber threat incidents in the country as yet, it’s important that parents take precaution for their children. With the popularity of social networking and online gaming, the unseen threats could just be a click away.

The online protection service is available at shop.digi.com.my/mcafee.

NST  By Izwan Ismail

gadgets..gadgets..gadgets

          two months after it was officially announced the iPhone 4S is finally here in Malaysia. If you’re not part of the first batch of iPhone 4S buyers that stood on line in the wee hours of the morning on December 16 then you’re probably biding your time to see if the iPhone 4S is the right device for you.
With the iPhone 4S available from three major operators at the same time, getting one has never been more complicating than it is now. With the selection of plans and options from different operators all offering different data, voice and monthly subscription packages, it’s very easy to get overwhelmed with what’s available in the market.
      
          So which operator offers the best iPhone 4S plan for you? Can you get the iPhone 4S without a contract? Is the iPhone 4S really that good? How good is the camera? What about Siri? Does it work in Malaysia? What are other smartphones in the market right now that’s just as good as the iPhone 4S?
Whatever questions you might have about the iPhone 4S, we probably have the answer tucked away in a post somewhere. So head on over to right after the jump to check out what is probably the best iPhone 4S Buyers Guide in Malaysia right now

p/s : best kan kalau dapat sebijik due.. harge dye pon best jugak.. hehehe.

http://www.soyacincau.com/tag/iphone-4s-launch-malaysia/

assignment oohh assignment..

          FINDINGS from a recent evaluation report on the school adoption scheme by the Education Ministry should augur well for the future of information and communications technology (ICT) programmes in schools.
Apart from the observation that many students are fast adjusting to the new mode of learning through technology tools such as PCs and the Internet, the report highlighted that the majority of teachers agree that they need to bring themselves up to speed on digital literacy skills, mainly to build their confidence in integrating technology into their lesson plans.

           This is encouraging and important too, as teachers play a vital role in ensuring the success of ICT programmes in schools. Teachers need to keep pace with the latest ICT developments and incorporate them into their teaching delivery. For example, with Web 2.0 technology, teachers can create collaborative platforms to manage and share teaching and learning resources.

           The Education Ministry also needs to have an effective support system to constantly expose teachers to innovative teaching and learning methods that are based on ICT. These include continuous support to enhance teachers’ digital literacy skills through training in the use of multimedia computing and Internet-based pedagogies. Such efforts will further drive greater ICT competence among teachers and knowledge creation among students.Lending support to this push is a recent move by the education authorities in the United Kingdom to set the bar higher for those aspiring to become teachers.

           A report by the Institute for Learning, with support of the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills, Lifelong Learning UK and Standards Verification UK, says ICT ability will be one of the personal skills required for teachers to be granted licensed practitioner status. It states that all providers of teaching training must make sure that they work to develop important personal skills, including ICT, in their students. Looks like only those who are committed to teaching and adopting ICT are given the trust to integrate ICT successfully into classroom practice.


new straits times
by Ahmad Kushairi

my opinion : actually usaha yang cuba dilakukan oleh kerajaan malaysia adalah sangat bagus kerana mereka cuba memperkenalkan kecanggihan teknologi kepada pelajar² sekolah supaya mereka semua celik IT dan tidak terkebelakang daripada kanak² yang berada di negara lain especially negara omputih yang sangat advanced budak² dye.cume ibu bapa haruslah memantau aktiviti anak² ketika menggunakan kecanggihan seperti ini agar lebih selamat digunakan.. :)

agak kompius yew..

          ok arini actually aku nk kena update site ne.. bnyk lagi task² lab yang aku xsiapkan.. xtau la nk mule dri mner.. mcm da jauh jew kena tinggal.. membe² len mesti semua da siap.. aku habuk pon xde!! bila kaw nak buat ne dila?? adoyaii.. aku xtau sgt la ngan blog² bagai ne.. aku bukan minah blog yang slalu akan update blog aku sbab bab² menulis ne aku lemah la.. xde idea.. BLANK!!.. tapi nk xnk kena la jugak crik idea kt ceruk² mner untuk masukkan kt dalam blog ne untuk jadikan blog aku lebih cathcy la bak kate lecturer aku (Tuan Syed )

mgt 300

Ok guy ne blog aku buat khas untuk MGT300 which is one of the subjects yg aku blaja for this semester. Lecturer aku cakap benda ne semua student WAJIB BUAT!Aku ulang eh WAJIB BUAT!!so x ade pengecualian untuk sape² pon yang amek subject ne termasuk la aku nee ha...cam sdey jew bunyikan..mner x!aku ne bkn nyew pandai sgt pon pasal blog² ne semua..bantai jew..tanye membe² sebelah ne la hsil blog aku yang xseberapa ne..hehe..