Managing more with less – allocating your IT portfolio intelligently to remain resilient in the current business environment, was the theme of the IT Showcase Asia 2009 event organised by business performance enhancement company, the JFPS Group at the Berjaya Times Square Hotel & Convention Centre in Kuala Lumpur on 6 & 7 October.

The topics covered included issues such as virtualisation, cloud computing, security, information technology (IT) service management, outsourcing, open source software, shared services and so on, their benefits in terms of greater efficiency of IT and human resource use and the risks involved if not handled correctly.

“Given that many organisations have limited or reduced budgets, yet they still strive to achieve performance excellence but given the current state of the economy, companies are trying hard to curb unnecessary spending, while ensuring their objectives will still be met,” said Dato’ Dr. Sharifah Zarah Syed Ahmad, Deputy Secretary-General (Policy), Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MOSTI).

“With the amount of support that is expected from IT, businesses will continue to invest, be it in the area of network, storage, hardware, software, servers, operating systems, portals, data warehouses, etc. and as IT forms the operations framework of the business, it pays to manage the allocation of resources wisely, especially at this point of time.

THE inaugural SME Solutions Expo 2009 at the Mid Valley Exhibition Centre from 9 to 11 July was a both a showcase of information technology (IT) solutions for small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs) and at the same time a showcase IT and non-IT related products and services by SMEs and for SMEs. It was held in conjunction with the fourth Entrepreneurship Expo 2009 which offered a wide range of ideas, opportunities, products and services for entrepreneurs, and the MIRC e-SME Week 2009.

Amongst the over 100 exhibitors of high-technology products, Asia Biofueltech based in the SIRIM Incubator in Shah Alam, showcased its biodiesel reactors used to produce biodiesel from raw oil from the jatropha plant which are one time was regarded as a weed. The choice of oil from the jatropha plant as raw the raw material is favoured by environmentalists because it's non-edible and is believed to not  impact upon the food chain.

Based on British and American technologies, the crude jatropha oil is mixed with chemicals, then moved to a settling tank where methyl ester (the biodiesel) floats to the top, whilst glycerine sinks to the bottom and is removed.

Glycerine, also known as glycerol is an organic chemical compound which has many uses as a raw material in the medical, pharmaceutical, plastics, food explosives and munitions industry. For example, nitroglycerin or glycerol-trinitrate is an explosive which forms the basis of smokeless gunpowder, dynamite, gelignite and cordite. Nitroglycerine is also used as a medicine to relieve heart conditions such as angina.

The crude methyl ester (biodiesel) is then heated to remove the methanol (methyl alcohol), after which it's passed through Eco2Pur dry wash system which uses the Magnesol branded artificial magnesium silicate to remove impurities such as soaps, catalyst traces, residual methanol, moisture and other production residues from the biodiesel to assist them to attain EN14214 & ASTM-D6751 quality standards.

Malaysian company Smart Surface Sdn Bhd announced its SmartWall multi-touch surface computing platform on on 25 August.

We got glimpse of the first SmartWall under construction but still under wraps, when we dropped by its modest office in the Taipan area of USJ Subang Jaya on 13 August to see its award-winning SmartSurface multi-touch surface computing table.

SmartSurface made its debut at ITEX 2009, where it won managing director Faysal Abdulaziz and executive director Homam Alghorani the ITEX 2009 Best Inventions Winner in the Corporate category and the ITEX Gold Medal awards at the 20th International Invention, Innovation & Technology Exhibition (ITEX) at the KL Convention Centre from 15 to 17 May.

Smart Surface had about five corporate customers for SmartSurface when we visited, including a major tobacco company which  which  uses it to promote their products and services in an enjoyable and interactive ways through relavant multi-player games.

Held annually and organised by MINDS (Malaysian Invention & Design Society), ITEX is the region's leading exhibition of new inventions, new technologies and products by individuals, universities and companies from across ASEAN, the rest of Asia, Europe and elsewhere, with the aim to secure investment, manufacturing and commercialisation prospects and partners.

Another Malaysian company, Kreateevee Sdn Bhd launched its own version of a multi-touch table interactive kiosk on 29 July, also at the KL Convention Centre in conjunction with the MSC Malaysia Great ICT Sale 2009.

A long time in gestation

“Surface computing has been around as a concept since the 1980s but the unavailability of sufficient computing power was its main hindrance, whilst the the number of LCD displays available then was insufficient and very expensive,” said Faysal.

The concept basically holds that instead of humans adapting their natural ways to enter data in ways which fit in with the limited constraints of a keyboard and a mouse, with multi-touch surface computing, the computer adapts itself to the natural ways of humans, such as their gestures, hand sweeps, handling of objects and so on for its input.

For example, medical doctors can use it to explain their patient's medical contition by showing them their X'Ray and MRI scan images on SmartSurface, show them third-party results of a search engine search on their condition, type out a prescription on a virtual keyboard and post it electronically to the dispensary for the patient to collect his medicine, all with the sweep of their hands.

Doctors can also use it in online consultations with colleagues and fellow professionals elsewhere.

In education, studens can use SmartSurface to interact with their own research within simulated windows. Both SmartSurface and SmartWall can also be used in advertising and at exhibitions; in airports, malls and shops; in banking, businesses and by telcommunications operators; cafes; in teleconferencing; by the military; by manufacturers and so on.

Raising children and keeping them out of trouble has been a challenge for parents since time immemorial,

The challenges were less in the days before the population explosion and urban sprawl, where people lived in villages and small towns where there were few distractions and most people knew each other and could be parents’ eyes and ears on what their children were up to. This was so too in the larger cities where lower mobility back then kept children and parents within the same community.

For example, parenting challenges in a town like Ipoh back in the mid-1960s were mostly to ensure that their children did not get into bad company, did not get involved in gangsterism, smoke cigarettes, loaf around with friends, watch too much TV or spend too much time in the cinemas – about the only distraction back then -- when they should be studying.

The popularisation of the drug culture and of a more permissive lifestyle due to the youth rebellion, the sexual revolution, the availability of discos and greater mobility since the mid-60s presented newer more serious challenges to parents but at least they could still keep tabs on the company their children kept, since they could still see them and their companions.

Today the wide and growing availability of the Internet, which children know more about than their parents, with easy access to pornography, hundreds of their invisible online acquaintances scattered round the globe and faceless online stalkers hiding behind the anonymity the Net provides presents even bigger challenges for parents today, so how should parents cope?

 Just be a good parent

Parents should cope by continue to be good parents, according to Effendy Ibrahim, Symantec Asia Pacific consumer business lead, Asia South Region.

“Talk to you children and stay connected with them through regular conversation,” said Effendy, himself a parent, who presented findings of the Norton Online Living Report 09 to the media in Kuala Lumpur on 26 March.

The inaugural MSC Malaysia Open Source Conference 2009 was a real eye opener to the advances which Open Source software has made, especially on end-user desktop PCs in the past few years.

Technology may be an enabler of career success, according to results of a survey, Untapped Potential: Stretching toward the Future, released in conjunction with International Women’s Day 2009 by global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company Accenture.

In November and December 2008, Accenture interviewed 3,600 men and woman professionals from medium and large organisations across 14 countries – namely Australia, Austria, Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, Russia, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States with a margin of error of +/- 2%.

However while Malaysia was not included in the survey, Accenture feels these results apply to Malaysia as well.

Malaysian company the Asiastream Group is a diversified entity that focuses on information & communications technology (ICT), WebTV, and events/communications.

Its team is experienced in handling each of the industries and also has the capability to cross integrate  services for maximum value impact to clients, and  provide end-to-end services together with business partners.

The group currently includes Aleph One, a full service event management company; Catz Maya which does web portal development, e-commerce applications, workflow applications, customized systems development, consultancy – usability, e-branding, e-marketing and search engine optimization; and ADTV which develops, produces, transmits, manages and distributes for terrestrial tv, satellite tv, IP-TV, the Web, narrowcast networks, mobile networks, and wireless networks.

Multimedia Development Corporation (MDeC), the custodian of MSC Malaysia, honoured 47 MSC Malaysia status companies which had earned various international standards certifications in 2008 at a gala dinner at the Hotel Imperial in Kuala Lumpur on 2 December.

Through the MSC Malaysia Capability Development Programme (CDP), 15 of them received one of the five levels of CMMI (Capability Maturity Model Integration) certification, 19 achieved certification in software testing, 4 received ISO 27001 certification, 4 earned ISO 9001 certification and 4 more were honoured for sending their personnel to earn individual professional certification through the MSC Malaysia Professional Development Programme (CDP PD).

British Telecom (BT) disruptive futurist Ian Neild, and Ian Pearson, co-wrote and edited the 2005 BT Technology Timeline published in August 2005 which lists a series of new technologies, breakthroughs, developments and trends in many technology and social areas which are expected to happen in a five-year window within the following 60 years.

Their list of predictions is enormous, so we picked some which we found especially interesting and asked Ian Neild how he and Pearson arrived at these predictions.

Our questions are in bold italic, while Neild's statements and responses are in normal script.

The whole of the 2005 BT Technology Timeline follows after that.