Author: Karamjit Singh
1337 Bus makes rousing debut
The inaugural 1337 Bus Hackathon got off to a great start, with close to 30 participants involved. DNA founder and CEO Karamjit Singh spent some time with the programming geeks to get a glimpse into what the community can do and reports from it.
Opportunity wasted (to send a message)
The Prime Minister of Malaysia missed out on driving home important messages when a foreign company announced RM4 billion worth of investments. As "CEO" of Mlaaysia, what Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak can do more of is to speak about innovation and doing things better. This is after all the year of the National Science and Innovation Movement Year 2012. He should infuse all his speeches with works such as innovation, not being afraid to fail, dare to be different.
A virtual marketplace for travel
virtualmalaysia has rebranded its B2B search engine to Smart Online Travel Assistant (SOTA), not the decidedly awkward Standard Online Tourism Architecture, as part of a move to help consumers get to information more effectively.
Friendster gets its game on
Friendster, acquired by Asia’s leading e-payment and e-lifestyle provider MOL Global Pte Ltd in 2009, has been officially re-launched as ‘South-East Asia’s social discovery and gaming platform.’
IT grads: Time to raise the bar
Computer Science used to be a four-year program in all our public universities, but was changed in the late 1990s under the mistaken belief that cutting one year off university education was the answer to the industry’s need for talent. It was a recipe for disaster, and USM is intent on turning the ride.
Talent Corp tries to meet industry's ravenous appetite
The various professional development initiatives in Malaysia have seen the number of people taking part in up-skilling and training programs rising to 133,566 in 2010 versus the 39,606 in 2000, the majority of which were from the engineering and ICT sectors. But this is not enough to satiate the hunger of the tech industry for more talent.
ICON driving developers to think big
The 2nd Integrated Content Development Program (ICON2) gave funding of between RM50,000 and RM200,000 to successful applicants and saw 69 apps introduced to the iTunes and Android App Store. More than that, it has encouraged Malaysian app developers to be more bold in their thinking and grand in their ambitions when creating apps.
Interesting insights into smartphone behavior
GfK says that smartphone penetration in Malaysia has already reached a high of 88%, while Nielsen estimates it at 27%. Disparate figures, but both agree that we Malaysians love our smartphones.
Preferred destination for finance, accounting services
MDeC to collaborate with ACCA to raise the profile of Malaysia as the preferred destination for finance and accounting shared services and outsourcing centres.
Tonton sees strong mobile growth
The rising popularity of Media Prima Berhad’s online video property, www.tonton.com.my, is validating the company’s decision to go in with both feet into the digital space and not with a gradual approach where investment is justified by market traction. Furthermore, its entry into the mobile space is bearing fruit -- today, out of the 400,000 daily weekday page views, 100,000 originate from mobile devices.
