Generally available since 1 September, 2009, Oracle Database 11g Release 2 (DB 11g Rel 2) helps organisations reduce their IT costs, according to Mark Townsend, Oracle Server Technology Division vice-president of Product Management.

Its new features include Real Application testing and Active Data Guard which are a boon to database administrators.

“DB 11g Rel 2 reduces hardware capital costs by a factor of five times, storage costs by 10 times, upgrade costs by four times, on the other hand it improves performance by 10 times, database administrator productivity by at least twice, eliminates downtime and unused redundancy, and considerably simplifies customers' software portfolio,” said Townsend in Kuala Lumpur on 3 November.

Firstly, it reduces hardware costs by consolidating all the disparate e-mail, applications, data warehousing and other servers and storage within an enterprise's data centre into a grid comprising an in-memory database cache, a bank of real application clusters and an automatically managed storage farm, all managed from a single location by an enterprise manager.

KUALA LUMPUR, DECEMBER 4 - In a strange bid to make itself more appealing to young Malaysians as well as local stamp collectors, Kaspersky has decided to market itself by bundling its products with their own 1Malaysia stamps.

Encased in a green booklet with Jackie Chan in a white helmet on the cover, the stamps depict blankly-smiling oval-shaped cartoon characters with the 1Malaysia logo. The stamps are valued at 30 cents each, and are represented as a joint effort between Kaspersky and POS Malaysia.

BUKIT JALIL, DECEMBER 3 - Astro has confirmed its intention in making High-Definition Television (HDTV) available to its viewers. Although it has not given a time-frame as to when it will release the service, Astro has confirmed that its intention in providing HD-quality television in Malaysia, which will be known as Astro 2.0. The current implementation that Astro is currently operating on is known as Astro 1.0.

Residents of Kuala Lumpur and its southern outskirts will have a new one-stop centre dedicated to all home-related products and services, entertainment, lifestyle, great accessibility and ample parking when Viva Home mall opens its doors for business in October 2010.

Located along Jalan Loke Yew at the old location of the Uncang Emas 3 (UE3) mall, Viva Home will be accessible via overhead bridges and a walkway linking it to the Taman Miharja light rail transit station.

“We sought out an excellent location. Somewhere visible. Somewhere accessible. Somewhere close to homes,” Yee Ia Howe, chief executive officer of Viva Mall Sdn Bhd said at the Viva Home Retailers’ Launch on 1st December 2009 at the Maya Hotel in Kuala Lumpur.

“Jalan Loke Yew is an ideal location in the city, with access to major arteries and the catchment area of Cheras. Better than that, we are creating more access roads in and out of Viva Home so as to make it easier for everyone to get to us. All these pull factors appeal to the end consumer and that benefits you. It is our job to bring the traffic to you and we are confident we will do so," Yee added.

SUNWAY, 17 OCTOBER - Cyber-criminals have stepped up the frequency in attacks across the globe, particularly within the Asia-Pacific region, say officials from Fortinet, a network security and unified threat management solutions provider.

IAP recommendations in a nutshell

PUTRAJAYA, 10 November, 2009: The ten members and representatives of the 12th MSC Malaysia International Advisory Panel (IAP) meeting at the Putrajaya International Convention Centre (PICC) noted MSC Malaysia's growth, according to Malaysian Prime minister, Dato' Sri Najib bi Tun Abdul Razak.

In 2008, companies with MSC Malaysia – status had generated RM21.7 billion in revenue and 7.09 billion in exports of their information and communication technology (ICT)-related products and services.

Malaysia's goal is to achieve developed nation status by the year 2020, with a per-capital gross national income (GNI) equivalent to US$17,000 with the help of ICT and a knowledge-based economy, compared to a GNI of US$7,000 today.

IAP members, all of whom are corporate heads, heads of non-profit organisations, academics, visionaries and others from overseas had advised the prime minister on what Malaysia should do in the area of ICT to achieve its objectives.

Among their recommendations was that Malaysia must increase its broadband penetration on a massive scale.

Through the High Speed Broadband (HSBB) project, a public/private partnership between the government and telephone network operator Telekom Malaysia, the government has contributed RM2.9 billion, while Telekom contributed over RM9 billion to help achieve the government's target of 50% broadband penetration by household by the end of 2010.

By Khaw Chia Hooi

Kuala Lumpur, 15 October, 2009: According to a report on Slashdot, cyber crime profits have surpassed the drug trade. Cyber crime and other technology-related crimes have reached USD105 billion per year. Most of these scams are attributed to poor PC security and security breaches at financial services companies.

In 2008, Symantec blocked an average of more than 245 million attempted malicious code attacks across the globe each month. Among the frauds are phony emails, fake websites and online ads that trick Internet users into divulging personal data like social security and credit card numbers. Cyber criminals then sell the information to the highest bidder on the online black market.

Norton Internet Security 2010 and Norton AntiVirus 2010 introduces a new model of security, codenamed Quorum, to detect new malware and advance beyond traditional signature and behavior-based detection. 

Today, cyber criminals are furiously writing and then rewriting new and unique pieces of malware, hoping to stay under the radar of threat signatures for as long as possible. With Quorum, the very uniqueness of a file and its attributes is what helps us identify it as new malware. Quorum tracks files and applications and dozens of their attributes such as their age, download source, digital signature and prevalence. These attributes are then combined using complex algorithms to determine a reputation. As a file is distributed across the Internet and these attributes change, Quorum updates the reputation of the file.