January 1, 1970
Toshiba will make the device for Microsoft; it will have a built-in wireless networking antenna and an FM radio tuner; it will have a 30-gigabyte hard drive and a 3-inch screen. Zune users will be able to send songs, photos, playlists and albums to other Zune devices. And users will be able to act as a virtual disc jockey using a feature that allows them to stream music to up to four other Zune devices. MOre ...
Dec 2005 Over the holidays, it was time to catch up on some reading. Among the books I took up was The Search, a book by john Battelle about the growth of Google. Google went from obscurity to almost international fame is just seven years. Google use to mean the number 1 followed by a hundred zeroes, meaning a very large number. Now, Google is almost synonymous to search, and to google means to search it on the internet. From just a search engine started in the dormitory room of ...
Dec 2005 Last December 15, the HP Media Center PC was launched in Cielo Restaurant here in Cebu. Helen Tan, the business development manager of HP MCPC ( as it is known) for SouthEast Asia was here. What was timely is that this was launched ahead of Manila! I have written about the great cool things this computer ( running a special windows version called Media Center Edition, and equipped with special remote control) can do, which is to become a radio, a tv set, a video player, a DVD ...
Dec 2005 If you want to know more about how information and communications technology is changing the way we live and do business, one of the excellent books I can give to you is “ The World is Flat: a Brief History of the 21st Century” by New York Times correspondent Thomas Friedman. This book is not only reaching over one million copies in sales and on top of the best seller list, but most important, is that who is reading it? This book is being read by heads of ...
Dec 2005 The cell phone industry seems to be going from strength to strength. According to a report by Reuters, 810 million mobile phones will be sold this year, which is almost 20% more than the 680 million phones sold last year. Still, phone set makers are optimistic that they can sell more. According to their projections, 3.5 billion people now live in areas with cell phone coverage who still don’t have cell phones, so the potential market is still big, and affordability is one of the reasons why they ...
Nov 2005 One of the things I am constantly amazed is how we perceive companies and how media has the ability to change perceptions. It is not infrequent when two newspaper reporters went to the same event, and got the same data, and make different conclusions. For instance, there was this company who just reported a 25% growth in sales, and one newspaper said that he has had outstanding growth as the headline, while another paper reported that the company has disappointed shareholders and recommended selling out. For the last ...
Nov 2005 I recently delivered a talk on a national conference on e-commerce, and I was told to inform the audience what are the new technologies that would be applicable to small and medium size businesses. While I do understand that there are some businesses that are always on the lookout for the hottest and new technologies, the point is that at the end there are many technologies that are 'hot' but hardly practical- at its current stage or application, some just might not be that help. What is important for ...
Nov 2005 Communication costs are constantly going down. You can now get good broadband internet for less than a thousand per month, and you can now call many major countries for less than 10 cents a minute. There are now plans that allow you to text or call unlimited. Are the telecommunication companies making money? Yes, they are, and that is why you have to know what you are paying for. While the cost of using it locally are going down, the cost of roaming is going up, and you ...
Nov 2005 Here are 12 of the best business sellers books I have been reading over the last 10 years. It emphasizes importance of staying on your feet, proper utilization of information that will aide in the planning and eventual execution designed to preserve the company's competitiveness during the ever-changing business environment. The asterisks is ranking from 1 to 5 with 5 as the best. 1.) Gerstner, Louis ( 2002), Who Says Elephants Can't Dance, New York: Harper Business- **** Gerstner, IBM's CEO from 1992 to 2002 shares the insights ...
Oct 2005 I think most readers will know that I have two passions in life that have continued to support me as I go into my 11th year of writing for Sunstar. You can discern that this is business management and technology. Underpinning these 2 passions is actually also a lifelong interest in logic, and whodunit mysteries. I grew up reading detective books, and the twists and turns, as well as the logic that they have brought into the discipline stayed with me, and inspired a continuing interest in ...
Oct 2005 I was recently talking to a customer who is concerned whether what he should do to improve his operations. He wants to get a software solution, but believes that his company does not have the culture or the people who were ready to improve or change the ways of the way their company does things. He may have a point -- introduction of new technology means you have to be willing to change the way you work, and that the organizational attitude should be right. If that is ...
Oct 5, 2005 I was on a plane going over some movie selections when I chanced upon a really nice movie. It is a Japanese movie called TrainMan, and some of my friends who know about it says that it is quite a popular movie that was just recently released. They say this story come from a web board, then a book, then a play then a movie. So it was a popular story that hit a lot of fans, especially the Japanese. The movie stars Takayuki Yamada and ...
Sept 28, 2005 Last week, one of the bigger news in the tech industry was that two archrivals, Palm and Microsoft has teamed up, and Palm would soon be licensing Windows Mobile for its future Treo Cell phones. Thus the end of the intense rivalry between these two companies which has been running for nearly 8 years. I have used more than 7 PDAs going back a few years, and feel qualified to tell you my version of this colorful story which I have closely followed… Ever since I ...
Sept 2005 What is the purpose of maintaining a website? Normally, for a business site, to enhance your business. Nobody wants to be a webmaster of a website where there are no visitors. Much like opening a store, the more people who visit the better. Even if it is a personal website, or a personal blog page, you want more people to visit. That, after all, is the promise of the internet. With almost a billion paper now surfing daily, why can't we even get a hundred visitors to visit ...
Sep 2005 As you read this, today is probably the last day in which Business Software Alliance or BSA said they would extend the amnesty, and they would start a campaign to crack down piracy. For the last 2 weeks, every computer reseller have received a frenzy of calls about what software piracy is, and a good number of companies have started to look around to buy software licenses. Among the many questions that I always been asked, there are 2 that are very important. First, is that if you ...
Sep 2005 In its latest revised report, IDC ( or International DataCorporation, a leading international research group) has revealed that IT spending in the Philippines broke the billion dollar barrier. According to their study, IT spending grew by 12 percent in 2004 to total 1,070 million dollars. It is expected to continue to grow at 12.5 percent compounded every year from 2004 to 2009. Computer hardware purchases continue to account for a large chunk of the expenditures, which is estimated to be at around 60 percent of the total. Services, ...
Aug 2005 This week, I am going to ask for an indulgence from my editor, and instead of talking about technology, I'll talk about another subject that I am also equally passionate about – entrepreneurship. For the last 20 years, ever since I took up a course of business management for my bachelors, I have been a keen observer of the way we Filipinos do business and also how people of different countries and cultures do business. One of the observations that is immediately glaring is how entrepreneurs ...
August 2005 I got this mail from a friend yesterday, and this sounds very encouraging. This is about a competition called World Challenge that is sponsored by BBC, Shell, and Newsweek, which rewards enterprising members who have shown innovation. The winner gets votes over the internet. The website is at http: http://www.theworldchallenge.co.uk/index.html One of the finalists is a Filipino company called Juboken Enterprise. What they do is they use wasted coconut husk to product fiber that would prevent soil erosion. They make nets from coconut husks that acts as surrogate ...
August 17, 2005 For the last few days, I have been traveling around, yet accessing my email and internet through WeRoam. I have been able to find the experience liberating, and I am actually writing this article while at the back of a seminar in one of the uptown restaurant. I attend a lot of meetings all over town, and I find now one very good way to be productive if the discussion is not something that needs my attention. The PLDT WeRoam is not new , but there ...
August 11, 2005 I am currently attending the Sunstar Economic Forum as I write this and I would particularly want to just share some of the figures that impressed me. At any rate, I am sure the other facts are more than adequately covered by my other colleagues in Sunstar. Two statistics stand out quite well –in tourism and trade. There were more than 1 million domestic and foreign tourists that visited Cebu in 2004, and more than 15 percent of all foreign tourists to the Philippines actually come ...