Berita Harian ! - Apple diramal hadapi era suram tanpa Steve Jobs !

STEVE JOBS menunjukkan iPad baru ketika mengumumkan produk itu di San Francisco, Januari lalu.

Peneraju iPhone, iPad letak jawatan, Tim Cook ambil alih

SAN FRANCISCO: Ketua Pegawai Eksekutif (CEO) Apple, Steve Jobs, meletakkan jawatan itu semalam atas alasan beliau tidak lagi mampu meneruskan tugas tetapi akan terus terbabit dalam mengemudi syarikat, salah sebuah firma teknologi paling berpengaruh dunia.

Tetapi, Trip Chowdhry, penganalisis firma Global Equities Research, menyifatkan pendirian Jobs yang benar-benar memastikan produk dikeluarkan bermutu adalah faktor memisahkan Apple daripada syarikat lain.

Apple adalah Steve Jobs, Steve Jobs adalah Apple. - Trip Chowdhry, Penganalisis firma Global Equities Research

Katanya, operasi pengeluaran Apple tidak akan terjejas buat beberapa tahun akan datang tetapi syarikat itu akan mengalami masalah menghasilkan produk pada masa depan.

“Apple adalah Steve Jobs, Steve Jobs adalah Apple, dan Steve Jobs mewakili inovasi. Anda boleh ajar bagaimana untuk jadi berkesan, upah perunding untuk lakukannya tetapi hanya tuhan mencipta inovasi. Apple tanpa Steve Jobs tidak memberi apa-apa makna,” kata Chowdhry.

Tindakannya dipercayai berpunca daripada masalah kesihatan yang belum diketahui selepas beliau mengambil cuti bagi tempoh yang tidak dinyatakan sejak Januari lalu. Ketua Pegawai Operasi (COO) Apple, Tim Cook, dinamakan sebagai CEO.

Dalam suratnya kepada lembaga pengarah syarikat dan ‘masyarakat Apple,’ Jobs berkata: “Saya selalu berkata, saya akan beritahu jika saya tidak lagi mampu memenuhi tugas dan harapan sebagai CEO Apple. Malang sekali, detiknya sudah tiba.”
Syarikat itu berkata, Jobs memaklumkan peletakan jawatannya dan menyarankan Cook sebagai pengganti dan peneraju utama.
Apple berkata, Jobs dilantik sebagai pengerusi lembaga pengarah dan Cook salah seorang ahlinya.

Pelabur Apple sudah lama bimbang dengan kesihatan Jobs yang dianggap sebagai ‘tukang tilik industri’ kerana seolah-olah tahu apa yang diperlukan pengguna lebih awal daripada orang lain.

Selepas pengumuman itu, nilai saham Apple jatuh 5.4 peratus dalam urus niaga selepas waktu pejabat.

Pengarang Urusan berita online The Mac Observer, Jeff Gamet, berkata peletakan jawatan Jobs lebih bersifat sentimental dan menjangka ia tidak akan menjejaskan Apple.

“Apa yang dilakukan oleh Apple ialah mengesahkannya dan sekarang Tim mengendalikan hala tuju Apple dan Steve masih terbabit memastikan produk dikeluarkan memenuhi taraf Apple.

“Saya jangka meskipun ramai ketika ini bersedih atau takut kerana Steve tidak lagi menjadi CEO, pada akhirnya semuanya kembali seperti biasa,” kata Gamet. – AP

The Star ! - Samsung and other Apple rivals benefit

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LAB 3



HONG KONG: Shares in Samsung jumped yesterday and other competitors also benefited as Apple chief Steve Jobs stepped down, with analysts seeing a window of opportunity for rivals of the trailblazing US firm.
Shares in Samsung Electronics, whose Galaxy tablet is sparring with the iPad, jumped 2.4%, while LG Electronics surged 1.27%.
Greg Roh, analyst at HMC Investment Securities, said the next three to four years would be vital for Apple's rivals as the Jobs era wound down.
“South Korean tech companies should work really hard to race ahead in this crucial period of time to catch up with or outpace Apple,” he said.
Bryan Ma, at Singapore-based research firm IDC, stressed that the influence of Jobs had benefited the entire technology industry for both Apple and its rivals.
“It may be getting their (competitors') hearts pumping but it does not mean it will fall into their laps by default. They still have to work for it,” he said.
“It does not matter who the competitors are, Asian or American, for them to capitalise it's whether they have the ability to captivate the hearts and minds of consumers the way Steve Jobs has.”
Samsung has been embroiled in a series of patent lawsuits with Apple over designs and technologies in their smartphones and tablet computers. Analysts said Jobs's departure would have little impact on the legal rows as Cook was unlikely to make any major change in direction for now.
Japan's struggling electronics giant Sony ended 2.06% higher in a strong Tokyo market. HTC, another smartphone and tablet computer maker, rose 1.4% in Taipei.
Chinese computer giant Lenovo, which has launched its own tablet and smartphone at home to compete in an increasingly crowded market dominated by Apple, rose 1.61% in Hong Kong.
China Unicom, the mainland's second largest mobile operator, did not suffer on the Apple news despite being the sole distributor of the iPhone in China. It soared 6.8% in Shanghai, fuelled by a robust first-half net profit. - AFP
“For handset makers it is a welcome relief their most formidable opponent and nemesis has retired,” said Francis Lun, managing director of Hong Kong financial services firm Lyncean Holdings.
On the other hand, Jobs' resignation as CEO hit Taiwanese firms involved in Apple's huge supply chain.
Hon Hai, which assembles Apple's gadgets in China under the Foxconn name, fell 4.63%. Touchscreen maker Wintek dived 7% and Catcher Technology, which builds casings for Apple gadgets, also lost 7%.
Apple makes up around 35%40% of Hon Hai's revenues.
But Jeff Kang, at Seoul-based Daishin Securities, said new CEO Cook could actually benefit Apple suppliers in South Korea and beyond.
“Cook is known to have communicated well with Asian component suppliers when he was in charge of Apple's global supply chain,” Kang told AFP. “He must be more knowledgeable about South Korea than Jobs, and may be less hostile to South Korean suppliers given his past experiences.” - AFP

The Star ! -Sime shines but warns of challenges!

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( LAB 3 )


By Zaidi Isham Ismail
Kuala Lumpur: Conglomerate Sime Darby Bhd has reported record full-year numbers, driven by its plantation, industrial and auto businesses, but warned of tough times ahead.
It expects to post satisfactory results for the year to June 30 2012, but further weaknesses in the global economies could affect its performance.

"There is still room for further improvement across all business divisions and we will intensify efforts to enhance operational efficiency," president and group chief executive Datuk Mohd Bakke Salleh told reporters and analysts at a briefing here yesterday.

In fiscal 2011, Sime, which was dragged by its troublesome energy and utilities unit last year, also rebounded to a record net profit of RM3.7 billion from RM726.8 million before. Revenue hit an all-time high of RM41.8 billion from RM35.2 billion last year.

The group declared a final dividend of 22 sen per share, which brings the total dividend to 30 sen a share, three times more than 2010.

This was better than what it had expected. Sime had set a net profit target of RM2.5 billion and return on equity (ROE) of 11.5 per cent. Its actual ROE was 16.5 per cent. New key performance indicators will be announced in November.

Bakke said all of the group's six business divisions have emerged on a much stronger footing.

The plantation division achieved an operating profit of RM3.3 billion, an increase of 56 per cent compared to that of last year. This was on the back of higher crude palm oil prices, which averaged RM2,906 per tonne for 2011, against RM2,311 a tonne in 2010.

The industrial division registered its highest ever operating profit of RM1.1 billion. The 41 per cent increase was due mainly to strong sales in Australia/Pacific islands, China and Malaysia, as well as better prices across all regions.

The motor division had an exceptionally strong year with a record operating profit of RM633 million, or a 64 per cent increase.

This was driven by continued strong and sustained demand across all regions, especially for the new BMW, Hyundai and Ford models that were launched during the financial year.

The property division showed a slight decline in operating profit to RM456 million. If not for an impairment provision of RM78 million for overseas properties, the contribution from property development would have been higher than the previous year.

The energy and utilities division turned around when it registered an operating profit of RM313 million.

This was driven by the stronger performance of the ports and utilities businesses in China, coupled with the RM98.5 million write-back of provisions from the Maersk Oil Qatar project.

Meanwhile, on news reports that its chairman Tun Musa Hitam is resigning, Bakke declined to elaborate, only saying: "I don't know about that. He is still our chairman right now."

USM - ICT research platform in USM .

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LAB NO.5

ICT Research Platform is embracing on the idea of integrating science & artswith computing. ICT in the past have driven the changes in sciences, it enables and facilitate scientific discovery that can only be effectively done with the help of computers. In the next twenty to fifty years however, it is anticipated that science will drive changes in computing. Hence, it is apparent thatinterdisciplinary research in ICT is embarked to create innovative and creativity solutions of computational resources to address forefront scientific problems. The ICT research platforms are focusing on developing capabilities that are applicable to multiple disciplines, by undertaking specific, well defined projects, thereby developing tools and approaches that can be generalised and shared. The projects (or clusters) aim to bridge the gap (and thus making contributions in this unaddressed area) that left open by each discipline in their ownright, and hence the focus of the projects undertaken will be on the interdisciplinary applicability of innovative computing across the scientific frontier.

One of such projects is the Grid Services and Application Research Cluster (GSARC), combining expertise from diverse scientific and engineering disciplines the main aims of the project are to grid-enable six seed applications and to train human capital in grid computing. The integration of enhanced grid technology to solve computationally challenging problems (e.g. modeling and predicting the vector borne diseases) on reasonable time scales, and to solve combinatorial explosion of test cases for software testing requires close collaboration between the world of computer science and scientific disciplines. However, the bigger impact of this project is on the fundamental sharing of the experiences gain during the course of integrating grid technologies and applications. GeoHazard Research Mitigation Project (GHRMP) is another example of interdisciplinary research mooted under the ICT Platform. This problem oriented project is focusing on landslide hazard mitigation, it forges deep interdisciplinary collaboration between expertise in School of Physic, Math, Civil Engineering, Distance Education, Education Studies, Mass Communication and Computer Science. What special about this project is the inclusion of social sciences experts in a technical-based research; their role is to study the impacts of landslide events to the community in affected area, while another group look at the mechanism to effectively disseminate vital information to the community in the landslide prone area before, during and after the landslide disaster. Another cross disciplined research project is the Delineation & VRTS project which involves medical experts, pharmacists and computer scientists. The goal is to develop an extensible software platform that could be used by the radiologists to examine medical images and annotate these images, thereby transferring their expertise into a machine-readable format or by computer scientists to develop new image analysis and 3D visualization algorithms that could be helpful in tumor delineation and quantification for clinical research and drug testing.

UKM - Hari ICT PTM UKM 2011 !

Assalamualaikum..

LAB No.5 





Hari ICT PTM 2011 diadakan selari dengan usaha menjadikan Pusat Teknologi Maklumat (PTM) sebagai sebuah pusat perintis ICT di UKM. Tahun 2011 merupakan tahun pertama PTM menganjurkan acara sebegini dengan objektif untuk melebarkan jaringan dengan industri ICT untuk ‘Technology Update’, memantapkan jaringan kerjasama antara IPTA dan stakeholder dan dalam usaha meningkatkan kualiti sistem penyampaian perkhidmatan PTM berdasarkan maklumbalas pelanggan.

Dengan tema ‘ICT Pemacu Transformasi’, Hari ICT PTM juga akan menjadi medan kepada warga kampus, IPTA, pelajar sekolah, jabatan kerajaan, syarikat swasta mahupun masyarakat umum khususnya di sekitar Bandar Baru Bangi mengenali dengan lebih dekat perkhidmatan yang ditawarkan oleh PTM. Selain itu, Hari ICT ini juga dapat memberi pengetahuan tentang perkembangan dalam bidang ICT selain mendapat maklumat terkini serta faedah lain melalui pameran, khidmat nasihat, ceramah ICT dan lain-lain lagi daripada syarikat-syarikat ICT terkemuka.

UPM - Majlis Perasmian Black Cube UPM .

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LAB NO.5

SERDANG, 22 Februari – Universiti Putra Malaysia mengorak langkah ke hadapan dalam penyediaan kemudahan teknologi komunikasi dan maklumat (ICT) kepada pelajar apabila melancarkan kedai konsep ICT ‘Black Cube’ UPM di kampus itu. 

Black Cube yang dibuka pada 1 Februari lalu di pintu 5 bersebelahan Padang Ragbi Fakulti Ekologi Manusia merupakan kedai model francais kerjasama pintar antara Koperasi UPM Berhad dan syarikat My Distributor (M) Sdn. Bhd. 

Kedai Black Cube di UPM adalah yang pertama di Malaysia dan akan diikuti oleh kedai konsep yang sama di lima IPTA lain iaitu di Perlis, Kedah, Kelantan, Pahang dan Sabah. 

Menteri Pengajian Tinggi, Datuk Seri Mohamed Khaled Nordin berkata Black Cube merupakan kedai konsep francais ICT pertama dibuka di IPTA negara ini dan telah dianugerahkan status Authorized Service Provider.

“ Dengan adanya kedai seperti ini, pelajar UPM tidak perlu lagi keluar hingga ke Kuala Lumpur kerana harga yang ditawarkan di sini setanding dengan harga di luar kampus,” katanya ketika merasmikan pembukaan kedai konsep ICT Black Cube di sini. 

Beliau menghargai usaha UPM membenarkan syarikat swasta bekerjasama dengan universiti membuka kedai di kampus kerana akan memberikan banyak kebaikan kepada pelajar dan staf UPM. 

Ketua Pengarah My Distributor Fadzil Hashim berkata kedai itu menawarkan harga yang berpatutan dengan memberi nilai tambah untuk produk, servis dan perkhidmatan. 

“ Kedai ini bukan saja menjual barang ICT, tapi juga mempunyai kafe yang menjual pelbagai makanan dan minuman dengan harga berpatutan,” katanya yang mensasarkan untuk membuka kedainya di kesemua IPTA di negara ini dalam masa 3 tahun lagi.

(http://www.blackcube.asia/myCMS/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=46:blackcubeupm&catid=1:latest-news&Itemid=50)

UTHM - Pelan Tindakan Pembangunan ICT !

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( LAB NO.5 )

Pelan Tindakan Pembangunan ICT

Pelan tindakan Pembangunan ICT Universiti ini dirangka untuk menjadi asas perancangan ICT yang kukuh dala mencapai halatuju ICT yang akan dilaksanakan dalam dua fasa iaitu; Fasa I : 2001-2005 dan Fasa II : 2006-2011.

Sasaran pembangunan ICT adalah untuk menyediakan prasarana pengajaran dan pembelajaran yang kodusif serta menwujudkan urus tadbir yang berkualiti dan cekap seiring dengan halatuju universiti sebagaimana yang digariskan di dalam Blueprint Universiti. Kepercayaan dan kepuasan pelanggan diambilkira dalam menyediakan pelan tindakan ini serta cabaran-cabaran yang perlu ditangani.

Stategi yang digariskan dalam pelan tindakan adalah seperti e-Pengurusan, e-Pembelejaran, K-Universiti, infrastruktur dan komunikasi dan pembudayaan ICT.

Keseluruhan Pelan TIndakan Pembangunan ICT Universiti yang dirangka akan menjadi panduan dalam memastikan Universiti sentiasa cemerlang dan gemilang.

Matlamat

Menyediakan Sistem Pengurusan Kampus Bersepadu bagi menyokong pembangunan dan pentadbiran Universiti ke arah yang lebih kompetitif dengan memberikan perkhidmatan dan pengurusan ICT yang dinamik dan cemerlang serta memenuhi keperluan pelanggan.

Hala Tuju

Menyediakan prasarana ICT terkini, kondusif dan mencukupi kepada seluruh warga universiti untuk meningkatkan mutu pengajaran dan pembelajaran bagi menghasilkan graduan berkualiti, mempertingkatkan kualiti penyelidikan dan pembangunan(R&D), mempertingkatkan kualiti dan kecekapan pentadbiran serta menjadikan masyarakat UTHM sebagai satu masyarakat yang bermaklumat dan berpengetahuan untuk membolehkan mereka melaksanakan tugas dan tanggungjawab dengan cara yang paling berkesan.

(http://ptm.uthm.edu.my/mengenai-kami/8-pelan-tindakan-pembangunan-ict.html)