On Slideshare.net

Here are some of the interesting presentations available at slideshare.net:

Social Media

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: networking network)

Social network websites: best practices from leading services

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: web2.0 socialplatform)

Improving Interface Design

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: interface design)

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your map. your world.

"Product marketing manager of Google Asia-Pacific Jason Chuck explains to INQUIRER.net production specialist Janie Christine Octia how the Google Map Maker application works. The application is moderated and modified by the users who are allowed to input their local knowledge, data and information of the area, and or establishments. In this video, Chuck also shows how users can operate the application."

According to Google, this "allows you to contribute, share and edit map information for certain regions around the world. Once you understand the basics, you can locate, draw, label, describe and moderate local map features, including:

Borders and regions (states/provinces, districts/administrative regions, cities, neighborhoods, etc.)
Roads
Points of interest

And many more map features like railways, waterways, events and reviews. With Google Map Maker, you can become a citizen cartographer and help improve the quality of maps and local information in your region.

You are invited to map the world with us!"

This will definitely open new opportunities not just for learning new places, but also for entrepreneurs to promote and market better their products and services globally.

It will also be useful for us as we feature experts in different places here in the Philippines. Not just presenting their experiences and insights, but also for us to show where they can be reached.

source: http://www.inquirer.net/, http://www.google.com/mapmaker

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disruptive innovations

Last October 26, 2007, Forbes.com had this article on "A Decade of Disruption" and it's really interesting because of the the impact of these innovations in our lives in the last 10 years.

The latest post can now be found in our social media, by clicking on the gallery above.

Also, as part of our "disruption", we will transition our blog into a social media for the Filipino innovation community.

This is also in response to (UP Vice Chancellor for Research and Development) Dr. Luis Sison's advice to open our initiative to more technology groups, competitions and projects that will cater not just one sector, but for us to encourage more who are into the fields of research, inventions, collaborations, technology and innovations.

In turn, we believe that this niche will be able to reach out to more Filipinos worldwide with the convergence of new ideas and collaborations of various initiatives with the participation of more sectors in our social media.

It's also very encouraging to note that more are responding to our invitation for interviews from the different sectors such as the government agencies, academe, etc.

More on this "disruptive development" in the coming weeks...

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More about the great Guy!

In a recent event, SAS Premiere Business Leadership conference, held at the Trident Hotel in India, INQUIRER.net multimedia reporter Lawrence Casiraya was able to interview one of the most popular Silicon Valley VCs and is also a well-known technology author - Mr. Guy Kawasaki.

source: http://www.inquirer.net/

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Our Country's S&T Today

In a recent interview by Inquirer.net with our two key personalities in the field of Science and Technology, I found it interesting to note that despite of our country's limitation to become at par with the rest of our neighboring countries, the Department of Science and Technology is still doing its best to produce the experts which our country really need.


As indicated by DOST Sec. Estrella Alabastro, our national government is in need of more support for our various S&T programs to flourish.

On the other hand...


On the state of Physics in the country, just imagine that we only have around 70-80 physicists out of almost 90 million Filipinos right now.

I myself dreamt of being one in my childhood days, but at least, seeing my sister Rubilyn Diane finished her Physics Major with a scholarship provided by the DOST and is now teaching this knowledge in a government secondary school in Quezon City, is already an accomplishment for my family. Also, Michael Andrew, a brother of mine, is presently a DOST scholar taking up his computer engineering at the Polytechnic University of the Philippines.

As for its 5B budget...

I've noticed in a TV news that the DOST is in need of roughly 5.4 billion to support and finance its programs. I agree with some of our lawmakers that this is not enough and for me, we can possibly increase their finances through allocation from the E-VAT revenue.

Let's continue to support our DOST and our country's scientists and engineers!


source: www.inquirer.net

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Solar in Nueva Ecija

It was just around 2 weeks ago when I first noticed the solar initiative by the Nueva Ecija Provincial Government. From the poster that I saw, this was made possible by both Gov. Aurelio Umali and his wife, Cong. Cherry Umali.

It's indeed an example of good governance in terms of providing basic services while helping our environment.

This interview was conducted by Inquirer.net multimedia reporter Izah Morales and video was taken by production specialist Edzelle Pena.

Is there any other province in the Philippines who have already made the same initiative?

source: inquirer.net

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A Great Loss to the Filipino IT Community

This came as a surprise to me when I just received this afternoon an email from Sir Paco Sandejas of the Brain Gain Network about the demise of one of the most successful Filipino IT entrepreneur, Mr. Peter Valdes.

In behalf of my family, we are in prayers with the family of Mr. Valdes.

source: http://www.bgn.org/

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Digital Rights, anyone?

In a recent post by Erick Schonfeld of Techcrunch.com, it is interesting to note that despite the pervasiveness of online lifestyle that we enjoy now, there are concerns which we need to look deeper at, such as...

"The Right to Use and Reuse Content: Consumers know that digital copies of songs, words, and videos are qualitatively different than physical copies, yet copyright law treats them the same way. When the economics of scarcity no longer apply, consumers start to behave differently. They copy and reuse content in unforeseen ways. The pendulum has swung so far that normal consumer behavior has now been criminalized. The concept of fair use needs to be updated and clarified, while still balancing the fundamental right of copyright holders to profit from their creations.

The Right To Control Digital Property On Your Own Device: Possession may be nine tenths of the law, but digital devices don’t follow that rule. When it comes to digital property, who owns what is ill-defined. This can become especially complicated when content is tied to a specific device. If I download a digital book to my Kindle or an app to my iPhone, Amazon or Apple (to pick on them again) have the ability to pull any content from my device without notice or permission. Even if I’ve paid for the content in question. Copyright law and DRM technologies are so intertwined and confused that both consumers and companies could benefit from clearer rules of the road.

The Right To The Free Flow Of Information: Internet service providers, especially those who benefit from public rights of way, should not be allowed to discriminate against information by data type. Debates about Net Neutrality can get bogged down in discussions about content filtering, packet prioritization, and backbone peering rules. But the issue here is basic access to the Internet and all the data that it contains. Data is information and artificial limits on what kinds of data can flow through the Internet’s pipes can amount to a form of censorship.

The Right To (Some) Privacy: For the most part, the expectation of privacy is dead on the Web. But the privacy of certain types of information (health, financial) will always need to be protected. Federal guidelines for how to protect consumer data is preferable to a hodgepodge of industry and state regulations that are currently failing us. (Who wants to book a room at the Best Western?) Privacy laws are also inconsistent in the physical and digital worlds. The Bork law, for instance, makes it illegal for physical video stores to share my rental records, but iTunes or Amazon could sell my digital video or music purchases without running afoul of the law.

The Right to Control Your Digital Identity: And what happens when the “content” in question is your own digital identity. Who owns that? The answer should be that you do. Congress is certainly interested in this issue, and wants to make sure that online advertising networks don’t abuse their possession of your identity data to bombard you with ads. In fact, Google and Yahoo, have been making preemptive moves in an attempt to stave off regulation. But politicians may want to take a closer look at the EU’s privacy directive, which has been in effect for more than decade. Citizens should be able certify that the digital identity associated with their name in a given database is in fact theirs and to revoke access to that identity information on a case-by-case basis."

Will this be possible in the Philippines? If our legislation was able to make E-Commerce Bill into a law, why not something like this. Of course, with the proliferation of the many so-called "scandals" I believe that this will be helpful to provide more protection to our online life.

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Big Leap in our Elections

According to the Commission on Elections recent announcement and I quote,

"As of August 12, sixty percent (60%) of 5170 precincts in the entire Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) has already transmitted results of the elections.

For Maguindanao, 95.2% of the total number of precincts has already transmitted poll results. It was followed by Shariff Kabunsuan with 91.01% and Basilan, 69.53%. The other provinces have slower transmission namely Lanao del Sur (52.67%), Tawi-Tawi, (39%) and Sulu with 27.07%.

Vince Dizon, Spokesperson of Smartmatic-Sahi added that we are almost complete with the transmission of the elections results from Maguindanao. Transmission in 17 municipalities has already been 100% completed while the rest have already reached the 95% level. The speed has accelerated significantly after a few hours after the closing of the polls.

Definitely, there are still many areas where we can improve the automated system as we prepare for the 2010 elections."

This, despite the on-going conflict in nearby areas in Mindanao, we can now look forward that the 2010 elections will have a major improvement than our previous elections. That instead of waiting for the result for months, we can hopefully expect the results much faster.

Whether the cha-cha will push through or not, I believe that the computerization will help us to lessen the frauds and other malpractices.

More importantly, like all Filipinos, we need to be vigilant as this 2010 election will be critical if any form of our government will be successful or not.

reference: http://www.comelec.gov.ph/

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On Online Ads

Last August 19, 2008, Josh Chasin of comScore.com, amplified the impact of online advertising these days and I quote:

"Online display advertising works. At my company, we have done hundreds of studies demonstrating the ROI of different kinds of online advertising. In one case study recently presented, we found that, among consumers exposed to a campaign, click-through accounted for only 10% of subsequent site visits and 14% of incremental dollar sales volume; view-through — consumers exposed to the campaign but who did not click on the ads — accounted for 90% of eventual site visits and 86% of incremental dollar sales. In other words, gauging the effectiveness of this campaign based solely on clicks would have missed 90% of the sales impact.

Online advertising drives offline sales. Sometimes people forget that the Internet is not a self-contained ecosystem. We can’t ignore the extent to which online advertising can drive offline sales, something else that can’t be counted with clicks. Using our panel and our ability to link it to offline databases, we have been able, time and again, to quantify the impact of online advertising on offline sales. Even for search advertising, wherein one might be tempted to believe the majority of effectiveness accrues in-session and via click, we have observed that 83% of the advertising impact on sales is either latent (sales on subsequent user sessions; 20%) or offline (63%.)

Search and display work better together. Another thing we’ve found is that when an advertiser runs a search and a display campaign simultaneously, the impact (as measured by lift versus a control group) of exposure to both search and display is greater than the impact of search alone or of display alone; in fact, impact of search and display together exceeds the sum of the effects of search and display impact individually. In other words, there is a synergistic effect; add two and two and you get five. And not surprisingly, much of the incremental sales generated by the combined exposure group occurs offline.

Display ads online are at least as valuable as display ads offline. Television still commands a significantly greater share of ad dollars than the Internet, at higher CPMs. In my last column, I noted that online ads that can be empirically tied to conversion tend to have greater perceived value than ads whose primary impact is measured by awareness, recall and other brand-building metrics. So let me make this point: the impression generated by one consumer watching a given spot presented within long form online video, in full screen mode, is at least as valuable as an impression delivering the same spot to the same consumer on traditional TV. (I would argue that the online impression is probably more valuable because it is likely to also reach the kind of younger, more tech-savvy and harder-to-reach consumer that is increasingly difficult for traditional TV to deliver.)

As we develop new ways to dedicate on-screen real estate to delivering captivating, engaging ads, whether via banner, rich media or emerging formats, I fully expect online display advertising to become an increasingly important component of the media mix. We don’t require a click-through from a magazine ad or a TV ad or a newspaper ad or a radio ad, and all these impressions are valued by advertisers. Impressions online should have at least the same value, wholly independent of the direct linkage to a click. The opportunity to generate that action online is a profound value-add, but let’s make sure that we properly value the ad before we overlay the value-add. Advertising can have immediate effect, but it can also have quantifiable mid-term effect, and profoundly valuable long-term branding effect. And that is as true for online advertising as for any other medium."

Though as indicated by yugatech.com in his recent post, online ads here in the Philippines is still in its infancy and only the biggest names such as inquirer.net got the biggest chunks of this revenue.

I just hope that as more and more bloggers come to mature and gain prominence, our local companies will look into this as a medium to reach more tech-savvy customers.

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Innovation According to Sir Kawasaki

This is a very interesting topic about innovation, according to Sir Guy Kawasaki who is a VC based in California and has the following ventures: Nononina and Garage Technology Ventures.

Just take note that this is almost an hour presentation, but is a worthwhile topic!

Please check out on his site, http://www.guykawasaki.com/, and definitely, you will learn a lot from the Guy!

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Square Watermelon, Anyone?

In a recent blog by Dave Knox, "Lessons of the Square Watermelon", it is quite interesting to learn that sometimes we can still think out-of-the-box to improve on something which we normally considered as normal or something that we take for granted already.

Like in the case of the watermelon which some people in Japan were able to make this into square shape. And that's really great!

I'd also like to share the following which Dave noted in his blog and I quote:

There are a five lessons that you can take away from this story which will help you in all parts of your life. Here are a few of them:

1. Don’t Assume: The major problem was that most people had always seen round watermelons so they automatically assumed that square watermelons were impossible before even thinking about the question. Things that you have been doing a certain way your entire life have taken on the aura of the round watermelon and you likely don’t even take the time to consider if there is another way to do it. Breaking yourself from assuming this way can greatly improve your overall life as you are constantly looking for new and better ways to do things.
2. Question Habits: The best way to tackle these assumptions is to question your habits. If you can make an effort to question the way you do things on a consistent basis, you will find that you can continually improve the way that you live your life. Forming habits when they have been well thought out is usually a positive thing, but most of us have adopted our habits from various people and places without even thinking about them.
3. Be Creative: When faced with a problem, be creative in looking for a solution. This often requires thinking outside the box. Most people who viewed this question likely thought they were being asked how they could genetically alter water melons to grow square which would be a much more difficult process to accomplish. By looking at the question from an alternative perspective, however, the solution was quite simple. Being creative and looking at things in different ways in all portions of your live will help you find solutions to many problems where others can’t see them.
4. Look for a Better Way: The square watermelon question was simply seeking a better and more convenient way to do something. The stores had flagged a problem they were having and asked if a solution was possible. It’s impossible to find a better way if you are never asking the question in the first place. Always ask if there is a better way of doing the things that you do and constantly write down the things you wish you could do (but currently can’t) since these are usually hints about steps you need to change. Get into the habit of asking yourself, “Is there a better way I could be doing this?” and you will find there often is.
5. Impossibilities Often Aren’t: If you begin with the notion that something is impossible, then it obviously will be for you. If, on the other hand, you decide to see if something is possible or not, you will find out through trial and error.

I hope this will inspire all of us!

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Childhood Inspiration

Now that Bill Gates had officially transferred all his functions to his successors in Microsoft recently, it is indeed a new chapter in his life with focus more on philanthropy and a new vision to change the world.

I then realize that his success story was such an inspiration to me. How he lived his geek life at an early age, how he started with his pals Paul Allen and Steve Ballmer, and how they were able to change our world through software.

I remember...

I was 13 when I first dreamed to have my own computer. In that year, my father bought us a Casio computer which you have to connect to a television (as your monitor) and can program using BASIC language. I did some basic programs such as password and simple graphics. Also, you need to connect it to a cassette player to save and retrieve the program.

At 15, I studied COBOL programming (the youngest in that class).

At 16, my father bought us a PC-AT 286 with 5' 1/4" disk drive, a small harddisk and a colored monitor. This helped me learn more about this technology and the opportunities it can give to someone like me.

At 17, I took up Information Technology course in a state university and dreamed of having my own software company. During college, I was given the opportunity to compete in a graphics competition and was invited to lecture this technology to a graduating class.

At night, I had a teaching job in a computer school in Manila, where some of my students were already twice my age.

In my early 20s, I became involved in computer training, in putting up a technology events startup, in putting up a computer service business, and now into technology blogging.

I may never became someone like Bill, at the very least, I am still involved in something where my passion leads me.

Like Bill, it was my choice to pursue a little different path than most of my peers.

Like him, I will never stop dreaming.

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From Cagayan Valley to Silicon Valley

His World-Class Recognition

For the past few years, he has been consistently in Forbes’ Midas List and has been praised for having “developed advanced chip designs that helped put Silicon Valley on the map.”

In 1997, he received the prestigious Master Entrepreneur of the Year (in the US) award from Ernst & Young.

His Entrepreneurial Achievements

He is the managing partner and founder of Tallwood Venture Capital, a venture capital firm in Silicon Valley with $500M+ under management. With his past experiences as an entrepreneur, he provides Tallwood with a unique perspective in technology investments. Tallwood invests in unique and hard-to-do semiconductor technology solutions for computing, communication, and consumer platforms.

Prior to forming Tallwood, he was a venture partner at the Mayfield Fund. He co-founded three technology startups: S3 (SBLU), Chips & Technologies (INTC) and Mostron. He also held positions in engineering and general management at National Semiconductor, Seeq Technologies, Intersil and Commodore International. He pioneered the PC chip set and graphics acceleration architecture that continue to be two of the foundation technologies in every PC today. As an engineer, he is credited with developing several key semiconductor technologies and is regarded as a Silicon Valley visionary.

He serves as Chairman of SiRF Technology (SIRF), InPhi Corporation, Quintic Corporation, Peleton, and Sequoia Communications and is on the boards of directors of Alphion Corporation, Redfern Integrated Optics, and T-RAM Semiconductor. He also served as Chairman and led investments in Marvell Technology Group (MRVL); Acclaim Communications, acquired by Level One (INTC); Newport Communications, acquired by Broadcom (BRCM); Cyras Systems, acquired by Ciena (CIEN); and Stream Machine, acquired by Cirrus Logic (CRUS).

He holds a B.S.E.E., cum laude, from the Mapua Institute of Technology in the Philippines and an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.

His Early Days

He was born May 23, 1946 in Bo. Malabbac, Iguig, Cagayan and is popularly known by his nickname Dado. His hometown is about an eight-hour drive from Manila. His late father was a small rice farmer and was a humble family. The whole town was a farming community and so simple.

He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from Mapua Institute of Technology in the Philippines and a Master of Science degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Stanford University.

First of the Firsts

He spearheaded on the following technologies:

• First single-chip, 16-bit microprocessor-based calculator (while at Commodore in 1976)
• First 10-Mbit Ethernet CMOS with silicon coupler data-link control and transreceiver chip; got 3Com into the Ethernet PC add-in card business (while at Seeq in early 1980s)
• First system logic chip set for the PC-XT and the PC-AT (while at Mostron in 1984 and Chips and Technologies in 1985)
• First enhanced graphics adapter chip set (while at Chips and Technologies in 1985)
  Pioneered local bus concept for PC (while at S3 in 1989)
• First Windows accelerator chip (while at S3 in 1990)
  Chips and Technologies - initially acquired by Intel, now an Asilent Telechnologies brand

His Insight for the Philippines

"For the Philippines to advance economically, the country should be capable of creating a lot of technologies and globally competitive products. The Philippines has to go back to basics, make sure kids are being educated well in sciences and engineering. We cannot keep on blaming others. We Filipinos should change our educational emphasis, our cultural outlook."

He is...

Diosdado "Dado" Banato - considered as the "Bill Gates of the Philippines" and it was Ayala CEO Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala who had said that "Dado has a tremendous mind."

Truly, he is an inspiring story for all Filipinos!

sources: ey.com, tallwoodvc.com, wikipedia.org, newsflash.org

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"Fresh New Ideas"

"I get a lot of fresh ideas and these are very enriching."

This is one of the best things that I have learned from my recent interview with Mr. Federico "Dickie" Gonzales. As one of the leading personalities in the area of technopreneurship and innovation in the country, Dickie is someone who:

• * is very active in leading the annual Philippine Emerging Start-ups Open (PESO Challenge) as President/CEO,
• * is providing consultancy on the design of technopreneurship training programs, workshops and business plan competitions,
• * is a prolific mentor and advisor to technology start-ups,
• * is also active in the cultivation of entrepeneurship in the country as the Executive Director of the Philippine Center for Entrepreneurship

He took up Mechanical Engineering at the De La Salle College and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology through a grant by the Ayala Foundation. His 2-year MIT background gave Dickie the engineering and technology foundations for his current passion in technopreneurship.

Upon his return in 1972, he became founding chair of the IE Department, Dean of the Graduate School of Business and as EVP of the Professional Schools, all within the DLSU community.

Some of his recent collaborations and activities are:

• * Morphlabs' Morph Code - this is to help Filipino entrepreneurs and technologists bring their innovative Web 2.0 ideas to life,
• * Ayala Tech BootCamp - to address society's problems and opportunities by developing new and innovative technologies,
• * BusinessWorld - has a column called "Jumping the Curve"

With his love for sharing ideas, he is now involved with the following institutions:

• * DLSU - College of Computer Studies (on Technopreneurship)
• * UP - College of Computer Studies (on Technopreneurship)
• * Asian Institute of Management (on Innovation Management)

For Dickie, his contributions is to "excite people to bring out upfront their ideas." Like he wants to see the winners of the PESO Challenge to make it big in their respective markets and also assists those who are in need of mentoring.

Indeed, his experience and passion of bringing technopreneurship in our country to the next level is very valuable. Especially for those who aspire of making it big.

additional information: http://www.morphlabs.com/, http://www.ayalatbi.org/

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SocNets 2 B Connected!

The last few days generated more excitement for the social networking world. MySpace and Facebook recently announced their respective tools to become more open and connected to other social networking sites. Others such as Friendster, Orkut and Bebo are expected to follow this development.

And now comes Google Friend Connect - a service that helps website owners grow traffic by enabling any site on the web to easily provide social features for its visitors.

In their preview release this May 12, "Google Friend Connect has been developed to lower two barriers to the spread of social features across the web. First, many website owners want to add features that enable their visitors to do things with their friends, but the technology and resource hurdles have been too high. Second, people are tiring of needing to create new logins and profiles and recreate their friends lists wherever they go on the web. Google Friend Connect offers a solution to both these issues."

Here's a diagram of what Friend Connect wants to achieve:

So instead of doing so much legwork from the many available sites, this will greatly benefit the millions of social users and also those developers and companies doing business in this space. This will also lessen the need to re-create your profiles should you become interested in other social networking sites.

More on this in the coming posts...

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Doing More Online

With so many productivity tools now available online such as email, it is worth your while if you will have your PC-based documents become online too.

Not just long ago, the Big G launched its own online productivity tools - the Google Docs. It has wordprocessing and spreadsheet, somewhat similar to MS Office and OpenOffice.

And just this May 6, there's a new kid on the block which can help one doing more online these days.

The Google Docs Presentation

Aside from preparing presentations similar to having it on a computer, this is somewhat unique because this can be embedded in a blog or in a website.

Here's a snapshot of how to include your presentation using this tool:

Another interesting feature which you may consider is that "Google Docs enables multiple users in different locations to collaborate simultaneously on the same project."

I guess is that anytime soon, the Big G will also launch industry-specific online tools such as accounting, human-resource, manufacturing, etc.

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It's a Numbers Game!

Now that Microsoft had walked away with its almost 4-month old $ 47.5 billion acquisition bid on Yahoo, its stocks had risen today (10:27AM ET) by almost a dollar (or $ 29.88) while Yahoo had stumbled to $ 24.24 compared from $ 28.67 last Friday.

And the real winner for this acquisition game is the Big G (Google), wherein, its stocks rose from $ 581.29 last Friday to $ 593.75 today. Though the Big G was not part of the negotiation, but they were the real reason and target of Microsoft.

For one to understand more of the developments beyond the noise, here's an interesting numbers game which is the based on a 10-year comparative stock market value between the three tech giants:

The highest value that Microsoft (MSFT) got was $ 58.72 in December 24, 1999. It took them almost 21 years to reach this since they were founded in 1978.

The highest value that Yahoo (YHOO) got was $101 in January 7, 2000. It took them almost 6 years to reach this since they were founded in 1994.

The highest value that Google (GOOG) got was $ 715 last December 7, 2007. It took them almost 9 years to reach this since they were founded in 1998.

From another perspective, I'd like to share the most recent ranking which the 3 giants got from Alexa.com now and as follows:
* Yahoo.com - 1
* Google.com - 2
* Microsoft.com - 14

Interestingly, Google.com was # 4 the last time I checked it, while Yahoo.com was # 1, Youtube.com (of Google) was # 2, Live.com (of Microsoft) was #3.

Now, my best guess is that Google can replace Yahoo as the number 1 website in the world anytime soon - in terms of traffic rank, pageviews and market reach.

More on this in our succeeding posts.

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The Next Stage

After having the popularity of blogging and social networks, there are new things happening in the Web 2.0. A lot more experience, more visual and making us more connected to our colleagues, friends and families.

Some of these are now what we are testing which we can eventually build upon and integrate in our blog. We believe that these will help us provide more exciting functionalities and features for our readers and eventually, as our community members.

Recently, we have added newsreel, slide.com and twitter.com to add spice in the blog. Another major improvement was changing the layout to a 3-column format.

As for our feature stories and profile of tech personalities, I know that more of our technopreneurs, researchers, inventors, innovators, etc. will have an impact to all Filipinos through the blog.

More features and integration will be soon announced. So hopefully, you too will be interested to be part of our community and portal.

Indeed, this is an exciting year for Convergex Asia!

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Mobile Ads: The Next Frontier

Among the latest developments in the tech sector today which got my interest is from Ben Kunz of BusinessWeek.com entitled "The Real Threat to Google".

From his article, I would like to emphasize one main point - that Google's biggest threat may not be Microsoft or Yahoo, but may be Apple!

As the on-going takeover bid by Microsoft on Yahoo seems to be taking forever, Google is doing everything to further dominate the web advertising and making its OpenSocial as a standard platform for social networking sites.

Aside from this, the Big G "wants a say in what fits on that tiny screen" when it launched Android late last year. Many thought that Big G is preparing to launch its own mobile phone, somewhat similar to the iPhone of Apple.

Now it's much clearer that the next frontier for web advertising will come from mobile devices. As Ben pointed out and I quote,

"It was Apple (AAPL), a frequent Google collaborator, that tipped the trend. Consumer use of mobile Internet in the U.S. has longed trailed Asia and Europe, where standardized cell networks made it easier for handset makers to produce gadgets that tap the Web at blazingly fast speeds. But in the summer of 2007, Apple rocked America by launching the iPhone. The computer maker wasn't the first to put the Web on phones, but for many consumers, the iPhone made the experience more robust.

Almost two-thirds of Americans have had some experience with mobile Internet use, and the adoption trend is most pronounced among teens and young adults, according to Pew Research Center. About 60% of adults 18 to 29 use text messaging every day, compared with only 14% of their parents. Nearly one-third of young adults use mobile Internet. This is the future, because people take their media habits with them as they age."

It may really be the next thing about the Internet. That more and more devices will have more of the Web - news, email, chat, social network and even web apps. And definitely, mobile ads will also be there!

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"Starts from a Simple Idea"

For our second feature of our personalities in the technology sector, I'd like to share with you someone who is one of the luminaries in the academic community and he is also involved with one of the biggest computer organizations in the Philippines.

His specializations are into computer technology, geographic information systems and database.

He has doctorate, masters and undergraduate degrees in Computer Science at the De La Salle University in Manila.

Some of research works made by him and/or his team were published in various publications.

He is no other than Dr. Caslon Chua, Dean of Computer Studies at the De La Salle University.

Herewith is my interview with him about his work, his projects and accomplishments and his insights for our future innovators.

Melvin: What is your vision for the College of Computer Studies?

Dr. Chua: My vision for the college is that it will keep on doing researches that contribute to the field of computer science. It will continue to come up with innovative ideas and not simply focus on developing applications.

One has to understand that software development is only a small part of the research process. It always starts with an idea no matter how small or simple; then it continues to grow ensuring its contribution to the scientific community. This may be a long process, but we are committed to be creative, patient and enduring.

Melvin: Can you share some of the latest researches being done at the College?

Dr. Chua: Currently the college has been doing substantial researches in the field of natural language processing (NLP) specifically on the Filipino language. Work on NLP ranges from the ability to automatically evaluate essays to detecting plagiarism among students submitted computer programs. Technical work includes the analysis of the Filipino language for subsequent processing by computers.

We also have researches done in the field of artificial intelligence and digital signal processing among others.

Melvin: Can you share some of the scientific papers that were published both locally and internationally?

Dr. Chua: Please find below some of the recently presented scientific papers from our college

• Cheng, C. et al 2008. e-Wika: Philippine Connectivity Through Language. In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Filipino as a Global Language. University of Hawaii, March 17-19, 2008.


• Chua, C. et al 2008. Three Dimensional Model Graph Derivation for Path Traversal. In Proceedings of the 8th Philippine Computing Society Congress (PCSC 2008). UP Diliman, February 23-24, 2008.


• Cu, J. 2008. A Text-to-Speech System for Counting in Filipino. ADD-3 School of Applied Natural Language Processing for Linguistics Diversity and Language Resource Development. Bangkok, Thailand, Feb 25 – March 1, 2008.


• Pantola, A. 2008. Epsilon: Information Security. In Proceedings of the 8th Philippine Computing Society Congress (PCSC 2008). UP Diliman, February 23-24, 2008.


• Pineda, M. 2008. Promoting Innovative Technology-based Class Projects Using a Knowledge Sharing Mindset. In Proceedings of the Amazing e-Learning II Conference. Bangkok, Thailand. March 7-10, 2008.


• Cabredo, R. 2008. Extending Shape-based Similarity Measures for 3D Models. In Proceedings of the 8th Philippine Computing Society Congress (PCSC 2008). UP Diliman, February 23-24, 2008.


• Suarez, M. 2008. Design and Use of an Open Individual and Group Student Model for Learning Object-Oriented Design Using UML. In Proceedings of the 8th Philippine Computing Society Congress (PCSC 2008). UP Diliman, February 23-24, 2008.

Melvin: How do you see the impact of having Microsoft Innovation Center under the College?

Dr. Chua: The Microsoft Innovation Center provided a venue for both faculty and students to work together on creative projects. We see it as a commitment from the industry to assist the academe in providing a venue to generate and cultivate new ideas. It is also a venue where industry can find out what the academe is doing in generating new ideas.

Melvin: In your collaborations with other industry players such as CA Philippines and Microsoft, what do you consider some of the outputs of such partnerships?

Dr. Chua: Currently, partnerships with industries are still limited to the on-the-job training for the students. To some extent, we are able to invite industry experts to handle portions of the courses as guest lecturers with or without a partner faculty member. This way, we are able to provide students with a different perspective in some of the courses in the curriculum.

Melvin: As one of the stakeholders in the Computing Society of the Philippines, how will it be of help to the current state of our ICT education? Especially in the provinces?

Dr. Chua: As one of the stakeholders in the Computing Society of the Philippines, we are committed to bring about the culture of scientific research into our educational institutions doing ICT education. This is currently proving to be a challenging task, as many institutions accept any work on application development as research. Works that focus on the development of an accounting system, payroll system and enrollment system are sometimes being termed as research. But we have to start from somewhere. Today we are seeing faculty members from different institution realizing the importance of scientific research and its meaning.

In the Computing Society of the Philippines, we provide a local venue for faculty members to learn and share researches from different parts of the country. We hope this will encourage the faculty members to be pro-active in initiating a culture of doing research in their respective institution.

Melvin: What are the emerging local innovations that can be valuable this year?

Dr. Chua: For now, I can not mention any.

Melvin: How does the Web 2.0 technology evolving in the academic community? Particularly, is it now being utilized by the College?

Dr. Chua: Personally I don’t have a direct experience in developing applications using Web 2.0 technology. Therefore I cannot comment on how it is evolving in the academic community. To date, it is currently the technology we discuss and introduce it in some of our courses, however we do not have courses that specifically teach it.

Melvin: Your thoughts and insights for our future innovators?

Dr. Chua: Often times the best innovations starts from a simple idea, who would have thought that a single mouse click process used in a website can be patented?

The key idea would be to make the use of ICT easy and intuitive for people. It is to be noted that people who uses ICT are varied, thus we have to target only specific group. In order to be successful, one has to have creativity and patience.

Many success stories come from those who love to create new things and are committed to take care and improve on the things that they created. Many people takes the first step to create, but loses out on commitment. Like preparing a garden, it is always fun to start it out, being creative to get the right landscaping. But it takes patience to care for the plants, in order to enjoy the blossoming of the flowers and bearing of the fruits later on.

The first step to success is the feeling of being appreciated by the community given the knowledge that you freely share.

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Philippines' Top Websites

As part of our compilation of ranking (based on Alexa.com) the most popular destinations on the Net, here are the top 25 Filipino websites well-known in the technology, academe, media and government sectors (list is by ranking, domain, Alexa.com rank, location):

1. levelupgames.ph - 1,806. Makati City
2. e-games.com.ph - 2,613. Makati City
3. inquirer.net - 2,619. Makati City
4. tipidpc.com - 2,701. Pasig City
5. sulit.com.ph - 3,203.
6. gmanews.tv - 4,432. Quezon City
7. philstar.com - 5,335. Mandaluyong City
8. yehey.com - 6,688. Pasig City
9. pinoypsp.com - 8,210.
10. abs-cbn.com - 8,416. Quezon City
11. mb.com.ph - 16,419. Manila
12. dlsu.edu.ph - 16,457. Manila
13. sunstar.com.ph - 16,585. Cebu City
14. chikka.com - 17,326. Pasig City
15. smart.com.ph - 22,333. Makati City
16. philmusic.com - 26,769. Pasig City
17. up.edu.ph - 27,294. Quezon City
18. dost.gov.ph - 44,955. Taguig City
19. globe.com.ph - 48,092. Mandaluyong City
20. mapua.edu.ph - 56,632. Manila
21. admu.edu.ph - 76,645. Quezon City
22. villman.com - 80,048. Quezon City
23. pldt.com.ph - 112,974. Makati City
24. tesda.gov.ph - 137,971. Taguig City
25. amaes.edu.ph - 140,901. Quezon City

Out of the 25 websites, schools are 5 or 20%, online sites are 8 or 32%, news/media sites - 6 or 24%, ICT and ITES - 4 or 16%, and government sites are 2 or 8%.

In terms of location, Makati City has 5 or 20%, Quezon City has 6 or 24%, Pasig City has 4 or 16%, Manila has 3 or 12%, Cebu City has 1 or 4%, Taguig City has 2 or 8%, Mandaluyong City has 2 or 8% and the undetermined location has 2 or 8%.

In terms of popularity:

• 10 sites made it at the Global Top 10,000
• 12 sites made it from 10,001 to 99,000 rank
• 3 sites made it from 100,000 to 150,000 rank

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Goog + Virg = Mars

In 2004, Pres. Bush announced that man will go back to the moon and beyond in the coming decades. Within that year, NASA was successful in landing robots in Mars.

As I can recall, it was also in that year when SpaceShipOne was able to travel in space and won in a competition. For its breakthrough, I later learned that Virgin Group had invested in it and had that ambitious plan of creating space tourism in the near future.

And now, Sir Richard Branson (of Virgin Group), Larry Page and Sergey Brin (of Google) had joined together in a joint-venture, with a mission: "the establishment of a permanent human settlement on Mars".

The newly launched Virgle Inc. believes that...

"contemporary technology is sufficiently advanced to make such an effort both successful and economical, and that it's high time that humanity moved beyond Earth and began our great, long journey to explore the stars and establish our first lasting foothold on another world."

Timeline

2010. The Virgle team will plan to use the Lunae planum area of the north side of Kasei Valles as the Plymouth Rock of the new New World.

2014. The 550-million-mile journey to Mars will begin with 550,000 1/500th-of-a-mile steps, as the LSE3, a multi-stage heavy lifter now under construction using the World War II-era Liberty Ship philosophy and launches the staging components into low earth orbit.

2015. When the Virgle 1 lands, teams of autonomous rovers and assembly platforms will leap into action, building the facilities such as nuclear reactors, Martian Positioning System, Earth return vehicles, Hab modules, production plants, assembly platforms, robotic vehicles, and greenhouses.

2016. The program will begin a synchronized semiannual schedule with human crews. In the five-month voyage to Mars, Virgle Pioneers will experience the same way they enjoy on Earth.

2108. Building the Virgle City.

"We feel that ensuring the survival of the human race by helping it colonize a new planet is both a moral good in and of itself and also the most likely method of ensuring the survival of our best... So, you know, it's, like, win-win." says Google co-founder Larry Page.

This is indeed an exciting milestone in our lifetime. Investments will really be huge, but of course, the founders have already considered the risks involved in this project.

And if one will consider the potential benefits, I don't see any limitations for this project not to push through.

reference: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/04/announcing-project-virgle.html

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"Go For It"

“Go for it - astronomy and astrophysics are rich and exciting fields that offer plenty of opportunities for young scientists to contribute. Master the basics, keep up with the latest discoveries, don't stop asking questions - and finding answers."

When I recently learned about this whiz kid, I became truly amazed with her achievements as a student and as a young scientist.

She was a consistent honors student since elementary, a Valedictorian at the Philippine Science High School in 2001 and a Summa Cum Laude, Physics major at the Ateneo De Manila University in 2005.

Immediately after graduating in college, she took up the High Energy Physics masters-level course at the Abdus Salam International Center for Theoretical Physics, Trieste, Italy and graduated in 2006.

And presently, she is taking up her doctorate course in Astrophysics at the prestigious Princeton University in New Jersey.

As for her accomplishments as a scholar, she has the following:

• Honorable Mention, Chambliss Astronomy Achievement Student Award, American Astronomical Society (January 2008)
• Centennial Fellowship, Princeton University Graduate School (2006-2010)
• Merit Prize Fellowship Grant, Princeton University Graduate School (2006-2010)
• Martin Schwarschild Graduate Fellowship, Princeton University (2006-2007)
• Academic Scholarship, Ateneo de Manila University (2001-2005)
• Merit Science Scholarship, Department of Science and Technology (2001-2005)

Another interesting work of her is the culmination of a 5-year long campaign to find particular types of black holes and I quote,

"This is like searching for a "needle in a haystack" since the objects we are targeting are very rare and are not immensely bright. We searched through a million objects and found 900 of these ones. My work is focused on figuring out how rare these objects really are. This is not as simple as it sounds because one has to carefully figure out the difference between *how many objects we have found* versus *how many objects there really are.* For example, the telescopes will miss those objects that are too faint to be detected, so those have to be taken into account."

This whiz kid is no other than 24-year old Reinabelle Co Reyes, a second year PhD student at the Princeton University.

You can also visit her site at http://www.astro.princeton.edu/~rreyes/ to know more about her.

May her story become an inspiration to all of us!

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Asia's Power Bloc

As we continue to feature the best of the best in the field of technology, this time we will feature the biggest names around Asia, Japan and India.

This is ranked according to company name, market value ($bil), sales ($bil) and country:

I. Semiconductor

• MediaTek. 17.2. 1.7. Taiwan.
• Taiwan Semiconductor Mfg. 48.4. 9.7. Taiwan.

II. Software and Services

• Infosys Technologies. 27.4. 3.2. India.
• Satyam Computer Services. 7.9. 3.2. India.
• Tata Consultancy Services. 27.6. 4.3. India.
• Wipro. 17.2. 3.5. India.
• Yahoo Japan. 20.5. 1.8. Japan.

III. Technology Hardware and Equipment

• Lenovo Group. 5.1. 14.5. China.
• Ibiden. 12.4. 3.4. Japan.
• Nintendo. 63.0. 8.2. Japan.
• Chi Mei Optoelectronics. 7.5. 5.9. Taiwan.
• Compal Electronics. 4.0. 11.7. Taiwan.
• Delta Electronics. 7.6. 3.2. Taiwan.
• Acer. 4.6. 11.3. Taiwan.
• Wistron. 2.4. 6.8. Taiwan.
• Hon Hai Precision Ind. 42.1. 40.5. Taiwan.

IV. Telecommunications Services

• China Mobile. 216.5. 37.1. China.
• Bharti Airtel. 39.2. 4.3. India.
• Telkomunikasi Indonesia. 23.5. 5.7. Indonesia.

V. Conglomerate

• LG Group. 9.6. 70.9. South Korea.

Out of the 20 technology players, it is interesting to note of the following:

• 40% of the companies came from Taiwan while India has 25%
• 45% are in the technology hardware and equipment sector
• 50% has more than US $ 10-49 billion in market value
• 10% has more than US $ 50 billion in market value
• 30% generated more than US $ 10 billion in sales last year

Other interesting developments are:

• Lenovo is now one of the biggest names in the computer sector with its acquisition of the IBM Personal Computer unit
• Infosys, Satyam and Tata are some of the biggest names in the global BPO sector

reference: Forbes.com. "The Asian Fab 50", Deborah Orr and Scott DeCarlo, Sep. 06, 2007.

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In Support for a Partner

As our way of supporting one of our Institutional Partners, the Philippine-Sino Center for Agricultural Technology (PhilSCAT) in particular, we would like to share with you that they will be having their 5th Anniversary tomorrow, March 25.

At their headquarters in CLSU campus, Science City of Muñoz, Nueva Ecija, this year's celebration shall be graced by Agriculture Asst. Secretary Dr. Josyline Chio-Javelosa as the Guest of Honor.

This year's program highlights the awarding of Plaque of Recognition to PhilSCAT Director Dr. Romeo B. Gavino and his Chinese counterpart co-Director Mr. Cheng Liangji for their excellent and continuous services rendered to PhilSCAT and their contributions in alleviating the condition of Filipino farmers through research, development and extension activities on hybrid rice and agricultural mechanization technologies.

With the theme, "Paving the Way to a Modern Agriculture thru Mechanized Hybrid Rice Farming System", the opening ceremonies shall be composed of a morning Mass, a Motorcade, Field visit and a short program. During the opening program, 16 PhilSCAT staff who rendered 5 years or above of service to the project will also be accorded a Service Award.

In the afternoon, there will be a technical symposium where results of selected recent PhilSCAT R & D studies will be presented. This symposium aims to bring awareness to various PhilSCAT clientele the new undertakings of the Center including technologies developed and research studies completed.

A demonstration of PhilSCAT technologies at the Center's demo-farm such as the actual operation of the PhilSCAT Rice Combine where participants will be encouraged to personally operate the machine.

On the following day (March 26), there will be an Employees Day featuring sports festival among PhilSCAT staff. The celebration shall be capped by a retreat cum workshop which shall be held in San Fernando, La Union.

Overview of the Center

The Philippine-Sino Center for Agricultural Technology (PhilSCAT) is a special R and D agency under the Department of Agriculture. It implements the collaborative program in agriculture and related fields between the Philippines and the People's Republic of China, with Central Luzon State University (CLSU) as the lead implementor and the Bureau of Postharvest Research and Extension (BPRE), Philippine Rice Research Institute (PhilRice) and Agricultural Training Institute (ATI) as partners.

PhilSCAT's current technology scope under Phase I (2003-2008) is Hybrid Rice and Agri-mechanization.


reference:

Josue S. Falla, Ph.D, CESO V, Director II, BPRE, & Concurrent Chief, TPPD, Philippine-Sino Center for Agricultural Technology (PhilSCAT), Department of Agriculture CLSU, Munoz Science City 3120 Nueva Ecija, Philippines.

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On Global Tech Ranking

After "The Power of 2", I will continue with presenting 15 of the American's richest personalities in the field of technology by Forbes.com last March 5 (by company, global rank, name, age and worth in US $ billion):

• Microsoft. 3 - William Gates III, 52, 58.0
• Microsoft. 41 - Paul Allen, 55, 16.0
• Microsoft. 43 - Steve Ballmer, 52, 15.0
• Oracle. 14 - Larry Ellison, 63, 25.0
• Google. 32 - Sergey Brin, 34, 18.7
• Google. 33 - Larry Page, 35, 18.6
• Google. 142 - Eric Schmidt, 52, 6.6
• Dell. 40 - Michael Dell, 43, 16.4
• Ebay. 120 - Pierre Omidyar, 40, 7.7
• Apple. 189 - Steve Jobs, 53, 5.4
• Intel. 288 - Gordon Moore, 79, 3.7
• Yahoo. 462 - David Filo, 41, 2.5
• Yahoo. 524 - Jerry Yang, 39, 2.3
• Siebel Systems. 652 - Thomas Siebel, 55, 1.9
• Facebook. 785 - Mark Zuckerberg, 23, 1.5

It's worth to note that the youngest in the Billionaire's Club now is the 23-year old Mark Zuckerberg who founded Facebook.com.

Another interesting fact is that all of them are self-made.

Other things that we can learn from them:

• 7 are more than 50 years of age
• 7 have more than US $ 10 billion in worth
• 7 are in the top 100 richest people
• 3 companies have 2 or more billionaires

How I wish we will have a Filipino company who will make it in the list...

Excerpt from March 5, 2008, "The World's Billionaires" issue of Forbes.com.

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"The Road Ahead"

When we launched this initiative in November, 2007, it was our dream to slowly make it mainstream within the year 2008.

Now, in less than 5 months of the blog's existence, we're happy to share our progress in terms of (as of March 13):

• Ads Impressions has 834 in March while February has 764
• Visitors Per Day in March is 6.58 while February has 1.24
• Pageviews in March is 207 while February has 81
• Pages/Visit in March is 2.62 while February has 2.25
• Bounce Rate in March is 60% while February has 53%
• Ave Time on Site (mins) in March is 7:32 while February has 6:09
• Absolute Unique Visitors in March is 13 while February has 4
• Loyalty of Visitors in March is 10.13% while February has 2.78%
• Visitors from different countries is 6 in March while 3 in February

And out of the hundreds of millions of websites globally, Alexa.com now ranks us at 9.3M in March, compared to 12.4M when we started. That's an increase of almost 25% in just within a month.

These very encouraging developments will give us more motivation to feature more topics for our readers and partners this year.

Especially the big leap that we have experienced with Alexa.com is an indication that the road ahead for an Innovative Collaboration Ecosystem in the Philippines is still wide and open for all of us.

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The Power of 2

Using the ranking made by Alexa.com, I'd like to share with you some interesting bits of information on the world's most popular Internet and technology companies of today.

This is listed by global rank, company name, founder/s and the year their companies were founded/established:

• 1 Yahoo - David Filo and Jerry Yang, 1994
• 2 Youtube - Steve Chen and Chad Hurley, 2005
• 4 Google - Larry Page and Sergey Brin, 1995
• 5 Myspace - Brad Greenspan and Chris DeWolfe, 1999
• 7 Facebook - Mark Zuckerberg and Andrew McCollum, 2004
• 8 Hi5 - Ramu Yalamanchi and Akash Garg, 2003
• 9 Wikipedia - Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger, 2000
• 17 Friendster - Jonathan Abrams, 2002
• 18 Microsoft - Bill Gates and Paul Allen, 1975
• 23 Ebay - Pierre Omidyar and Jeff Skoll, 1995
• 39 Amazon - Jeff Bezos, 1994
• 51 Wordpress - Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little, 2003
• 89 Apple - Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, 1974
• 162 Digg - Kevin Rose, 2004
• 196 Dell - Michael Dell, 1984
• 217 Linkedin - Reid Hoffman, 2002
• 233 HP - William Hewlett and David Packard, 1939
• 240 DoubleClick - Kevin O'Connor and Dwight Merriman, 1996
• 348 StumbleUpon - Gary Camp et. al, 2001
• 436 Skype - Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, 2003

Out of the list that I have compiled, we can see the following:

• 70% were founded by 2 persons
• 25% were founded by an individual
• 5% were founded by more than 3 persons
• 50% were established only from the year 2000 until 2005
• 30% were established from 1990 until 1999
• 5% were established in the 1980's
• 15% were established earlier than 1980
• 80% are Internet companies
• 40% are in the Global Top 20 Companies

Other interesting facts are:

• a handful of them started their companies in their early 20s
• a handful of them either started their companies in their garage or school dorm
• Youtube is one of the most successful startups in just less than 5 years of its existence
• Google is now the most dominant Internet company having more than 50% of the internet advertising market
• Myspace is the leading social networking site in the US, while Friendster is for the Filipinos
• Microsoft recently offered US $40B to buy Yahoo in its bid to compete with Google
• Apple made another wave because of its iPod line of products

How about our local technology companies? When can we see that we have some Filipino technology companies who will make it to the Global Top 500?

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Search > Google

In case you may be wondering how in the world did Google started, how it became one of the most success stories on the Internet and how will it continue to dominate the search technology, then check this brief history on how search technology evolved since the 1950s and the role Google played in it.

The history of document search dates back to the 1950s.

Search engines existed in those ancient times, but their primary use was to search a static collection of documents. In the early 60s, the research community gathered new data by digitizing abstracts of articles, enabling rapid progress in the field in the 60s and 70s. But by the late 80s, progress in this area had slowed down considerably.

In order to stimulate research in information retrieval, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) launched the Text Retrieval Conference (TREC) in 1992. TREC introduced new data in the form of full-text documents and used human judges to classify whether or not particular documents were relevant to a set of queries. They released a sample of this data to researchers, who used it to train and improve their systems to find the documents relevant to a new set of queries and compare their results to TREC's human judgments and other researchers' algorithms.

The TREC data revitalized research on information retrieval. Having a standard, widely available, and carefully constructed set of data laid the groundwork for further innovation in this field. The yearly TREC conference fostered collaboration, innovation, and a measured dose of competition (and bragging rights) that led to better information retrieval.

New ideas spread rapidly, and the algorithms improved. But with each new improvement, it became harder and harder to improve on last year's techniques, and progress eventually slowed down again.

And then came the web.

In its beginning stages, researchers used industry-standard algorithms based on the TREC research to find documents on the web. But the need for better search was apparent - now not just for researchers, but also for everyday users - and the web gave us lots of new data in the form of links that offered the possibility of new advances. There were developments on two fronts. On the commercial side, a few companies started offering web search engines, but no one was quite sure what business models would work. On the academic side, the National Science Foundation started a "Digital Library Project" which made grants to several universities.

Two Stanford grad students in computer science named Larry Page and Sergey Brin worked on this project. Their insight was to recognize that existing search algorithms could be dramatically improved by using the special linking structure of web documents. Thus PageRank was born.

Larry and Sergey initially tried to license their algorithm to some of the newly formed web search engines, but none were interested. Since they couldn't sell their algorithm, they decided to start a search engine themselves. The rest of the story is well-known.

This is an excerpt from "Why Data Matters" by Hal Varian, Chief Economist of Google.

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Innovation in the Philippines

"Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower." Steve Jobs, Apple Inc.

When we decided to focus on promoting our local innovations through the web last year, we believed that this will allow us to reach more people and share that there are so many things that our researchers, inventors and innovators have already created or developed.

Personally, in the many technology-focused events that we have initiated since 2000, I have observed that many of our partners such as research institutions and universities can do compete internationally, despite their limited funds.

Institutions and organizations have the following:

• DOST - Advanced Science and Technology Institute has Bayanihan Linux
• Philippine Carabao Center has started cloning researches on our buffalos
• CLIERDEC has research collaborations among its member-institutions
• DLSU - College of Computing Studies has some advanced researches like robotics
• Technological University of the Philippines has outputs ready for patents

Other developments that can push innovation to a new level:

• The national government, along with some partners, have launched the fist National Innovation Summit last November, 2007
• Cebu, for one, will stage the Cebu Business Month ICT Conference this June and will include the first Cebu International Open Source Summit with the objective of catapulting Cebu as an “Innovation Island”

In the coming months, we will feature our local innovators from different sectors such as academe, ICT, agriculture, government research, energy, telecommunications, etc.

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Carefully and Promptly

This is just the start of the year, yet, the atmosphere is already heating up.

In the online advertising market, in particular, it is growing at a very fast pace from over $40 billion in 2007 to a projected $80 billion by 2010. Expectedly, advertisers around the world will double their spending on the Internet during the next three years as more people get their news and entertainment on the Web and mobile devices instead of television, radio, newspapers and magazine.

But there is another recent story which can probably change the technology landscape of the future - Microsoft and Yahoo! versus Google.

With the recent $44.6 billion unsolicited takeover bid of Yahoo! by Microsoft, both icons in the technology world but are losing much in the arena of online search, it is indeed a bold step to challenge Google in the Internet universe with more than 50% global leadership and market share.

As stated by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in his letter to Yahoo! last January 31, "We believe this proposal represents a unique opportunity to create significant value for Yahoo!'s shareholders and employees, and the combined company will be better positioned to provide an enhanced value proposition to users and advertisers".

Sure, they can maximize all the benefits of this merger or I would rather say an acquisition, but this sort of urgency on the part of Microsoft seems to indicate that the once-puny online search engine called Google, is still unbeatable and taking more profits than what they both can generate from Internet search and advertising.

In terms of figures, Microsoft had online revenue of $863 million, compared with $4.8 billion at Google. Yahoo and Microsoft together had more than $2.6 billion in revenue, still trailing well behind Google but in a far stronger competitive position.

On the part of Yahoo, "it has been struggling to attract more advertising for quite some time eventhough its Web site attracts one of the biggest audiences, and will have to cut 1,000 jobs early this year." A clear development that co-founder and CEO Jerry Yang really needs to do more and not just to catch up with Google, especially with the reported 23 percent drop in its fourth-quarter profit and a tepid outlook for 2008.

Their reply last February 1 was that they will evaluate this proposal carefully and promptly in the context of Yahoo!'s strategic plans and pursue the best course of action to maximize long-term value for shareholders. It did not specify, however, how long the review process would take and vaguely said “it can take quite a bit of time.”

If this deal will be consummated, it would be by far the largest acquisition in Microsoft's history, eclipsing last year's $6 billion purchase of online ad service aQuantive.

Whether Microsoft with Yahoo! will be successful or not, only time can tell. In the meantime, many believe that Google will continue to dominate the Internet and possibly even in the mobile world with the introduction of their OpenSocial and Android technologies last year.

For me, this will still be an exciting development especially if this will push through. It will also be one of the biggest stories for 2008.

But what's more important is if it will be achieve the following:

• something that will create more innovation and not limiting the competition
• provide better service and competitive to what the others are offering
• lower their costs and integrating their processes, and
• if it will greatly benefit their respective shareholders, employees, partners and clients

So like what an old adage would say, "if you can't beat them, join them."

Expect more developments of this story in the coming weeks...

Sources: Yahoo!, Associated Press, Information Week and NY Times.

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