Getting Ready for IOS 7

Well it's September folks and I've been scanning the web for a clear date of when iOS 7 will be release for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch. So far rumors has it, its going to be on the 10th of September. Its also rumored that Apple's September 10th event will also debut their new iPhone 5s. Something that I am looking forward to.

I hope this new iOS release (which is available starting from iPad 2 and iPhone 4) will not be a big disappointment compared to when they released IOS 6 September last year. Hey, I didn't even notice it's already a year since they released iOS 6. :-)

To all my fellow Apple fans out there (iPhone 5 and iPad owners alike), September 10, 2013 is just around the corner so keep your devices close and get ready for those updates.

iOS 7, we're waiting for you! ;-)

Big Data and Business Intelligance

I was in an important government conference last week which was attended by key ICT Officers coming from both the National and Local Government Organization. I was one of the lead presenter to an Interactive Discussion Table (IDT) together with a former high ranking ICT Officer from the Australian Government. Our topic was on big data and the advantage of having to use Business Intelligence. Although it maybe something new to some, what most of them didn't realize was that in one way or another some have already started making some sort of analysis on information that has been collected for many years.

From simple analysis on gender and age demographics to as complex cross referencing of data across organizations related to spatial information, business analytics is slowly gaining a lot of attention lately. With budgets shrinking year on year and government service delivery exponentially growing due to an ever growing clientele which is very much tied to population by the way, business intelligence will play a key role in analyzing how to rationalize delivery of services to the public.

As a example, imagine being able to cross reference GIS information on road specification and condition to information on traffic, interactively. You will now have a new thought process on what to advise the public and on how to plan and design roads better in the future and what policies to implement and not by just simply guessing but making an intelligent decision backed by real live data. The whole concept on traffic management would be totally be different. Automated data collection coming from crowd sourcing will suddenly make sense and planning would even be more flexible and dynamic.

So going back to big data and business intelligence, of course one has to consider one very key important element here. A person who asks the right questions. Asking the right questions ultimately makes sense on why we collect such information and how we process such information. Until one person asks the right questions and see a clear direction where the organization is going and why, we could be collection petabytes and yottabytes of information with it ending in storage facilities inside the organization or on a cloud facility somewhere and not make sense at all. Well for one, the vendors would love that because the more you collect and store information the more money for them. I'm seeing business intelligence will be one hot topic that will come out from time to time and getting into the mainstream of our country's governance and will be here to stay...

The new Apple IOS 6

A few days ago I made a FB post that Apple will be releasing a new OS for its mobile devices (iPhone, iPad, iPod). Well was able to upgrade my iPad a day after the release date. Network traffic was a bit slow. I guess a lot of people were excited also to try the new operating system.

So far, not so impressed with the new features. The biggest change for me is the Maps. Yes, Apple just kicked google maps out of the iPad and replaced it with its own. The images are the same, the only big differences are the 3D and the route functions (This one has improved a lot!) but still not as good as Google in terms of map updates and information. I guess that will improve in time because I believe they are still trying to update a lot of spatial information on their maps.

I had the impression that they will be incorporating Siri on iPad but it's not there. The Siri is only available in iPhone (plus some enhancements they say) for now and I think it will remain in the iPhone platform. I'm still a Blackberry user and in my opinion, the iPhone still have so many areas of improvement when it come to apps on information collaboration and data interchange as compared to the Blackberry.

Another thing I've noticed in this new release is that the picture importation from the card reader is much slower than before. I bought an accessory card reader and it worked quite well before than now and both are supposed to be apple products.

Well now, I'm swamped with a lot of apps updates and still going. I guess it's going to be like this for a couple of weeks when all app makers will make their apps compatible to IOS 6. ;-)

Information Security and Management

Information security and information management is one very crucial thing nowadays. As the world gets more and more interconnected and information readily available, the need to secure and manage this information is growing.

Mobile devices are even making these even more challenging. Just a few days ago, a friend of mine lost a mobile device with it configured all information to mobile banking, social networking configuration and anything that has something to do with online.

How far would you tighten security or loosen it? Policies are very important then. Policies at all levels and how much information can be given freely or information to be secured is very important. The bigger challenge here is that more executives and middle managers think that it is solely the responsibility of Information Technology experts or worst the Information Technology Departments. Well think again.

Determining value and the importance of information can better be determined by data creators, owners and users. So, the next time you think about information security, it's not solely the responsibility of one department but rather it is an organizational responsibility to management and secure it.

A first taste of internet....

 

Although Internet started in the 1950's and 60's, the first time it landed in the Philippines was in early of 1995 and two schools were the first recipients of  internet. These were the University of San Carlos - Technological Center in Cebu City and University of the Philippines, in Diliman, Quezon City.  The rest followed after that.  

I was one of the more fortune ones to ever first try it out since I was a working scholar of the University of San Carlos assigned to the Computer Lab. It was not until when two years after I graduated when I had the taste of the first popular internet broswer which has a symbol above. Can anyone still remember this logo? :-)

Farewell Steve Jobs...

Today the world mourns the passing of one of the greatest minds in the world. The person who inspired me during my younger years to become who I am. A symbol of innovation, perseverance and intellect. The man behind the company symbol, "the apple with a bite". My idol... Steve Jobs.

Since I was twelve, I already had an experience with the inventions he created, the Apple II computer. Working side by side with my personal TRS-80 computer and Texas Instrument TI/99A, I was able to compare these three and that time, the Apple Computer was already years ahead of the rest. And as I type this blog on the i-Pad 2 loaded with the Blogger+ software, I can't help but think how these things have touched my life and the life of others. We will miss you Steve and we will always remember you...

I dedicate this blog to you... Steve Jobs (1955 - 2011)

Installed blogger for My Android Tablet Phone.

Still up this late. Can't sleep. Got a text from my honey in Bacolod. She just went home from the office. So what do you do when you're up? You tinker around with your devices. One thing I remember was that I haven't posted any new entry on my blog. Too busy and internet at the office is vey slow. Still waiting for my line upgrade.

So, remembering that I had downloaded several useful tool on my android tablet but forgot to download something for my blog. So I went inside the Android market and started to search and found this application called Blogger-droid. I immediately downloaded the apps and configure it. Now I can blog anytime anywhere through my android phone. Pretty cool. I love it. Not that easy to use but adequate for me. Now I have no excuse not updating this blog. Cheers to the maker of this app!

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.8

ABC Fun Monday

Running late again for Fun Monday. I'm preparing for my out of town trip will be gone starting today until Saturday. I gonna miss you Mariposa and of course all of you guys and gals out there. I'm bringing my laptop and hope I can get online while I'm away. ;-)

This weeks Fun Monday host wanted us to post about the ABC's of something. For my ABC's, I was thinking of something else but my adviser (a.k.a. Mariposa) told me to post something related to what I do.

Here it goes. The ABC's of I.T.

ASCII stands for American Standard Code for Information Interchange (read as "askee"). It is the universal standard representing numerical codes computers use such as all upper and lower-case letters, numbers, punctuation and control codes. Without this standard, each computer would have used a different way of representing letters and numbers, causing major chaos for computer programmers and computer systems
Byte is a sequence of 8 bits (1's & 0's) which represents a character of an alphanumeric data processed as a single unit of information. Yeah is sounds the same as "bite" but its a totally different thing. LOL
COBOL (COmmon Business Oriented Language) is the programming language we're using at the office for our IBM iSeries (a.k.a. AS/400) servers which is running our Business Permit Licensing Software and Real Property Tax Systems.
DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) is the medium for transferring data over regular phone lines and can be used to connect to the Internet. However, unlike cable modems, a DSL circuit is much faster than a regular phone connection, even though the wires it uses are copper like a typical phone line
Ethernet is a family of frame-based computer networking technologies for LANS (local area networks).
Fibre Channel is a technology for transmitting data between computer devices at data rates of up to 4 Gbps (and 10 Gbps in the near future). It is especially suited for connecting computer servers to shared storage devices and for interconnecting storage controllers and drives.
Google is now my most widely used internet search engine. Mariposa and I have this common line if ever we need to find something on the net. "Google is a friend" :-)
HTTP (Hypertext Terminal Protocol) is a communication protocol commonly used in Intranet and World Wide Web. HTTP are identified using URLs (see below!)
Internet is short for International Network and is the medium why we can interconnect and interchange information around the world.
Java is an example of a programming language.
Kilobyte is a unit of information or computer storage equal to either 1,000 bytes or 1,024 bytes (210), depending on context. It can be abbreviated a number of ways: kB, K and Kbyte.
Language is not just limited to humans...computers has language too!
Memory is where you store information.
Nanotech is making our existing processors pack in more transistors over the same area of silicon material. How? Imagine arranging molecules to form transistors at that level.
OS or Operating System is the most important program that runs on a computer and manages its resources, and provides programmers with an interface used to access those resources. It processes system data and user input, and responds by allocating and managing tasks and internal system resources as a service to users and programs of the system. The OS performs basic tasks such as controlling and allocating memory, prioritizing system requests, controlling input and output devices, facilitating computer networking and managing files.
Protocol is an agreed set of rules for the communication of information between two or more devices, HTTP is an example of a protocol.
QWERTY is a standard (Latin alphabet-based) keyboard. Why? checkout your keyboard starting from Q in the upper-left part of the keyboard spelling out Q-W-E-R-T-Y. You could call it QWERTYUIOP keyboard, but QWERTY is a lot easier to say. If you're wondering why the keyboard is arranged this way it's because it was to reduce the jamming of type bars in typewriters as they moved to strike the paper.
RAM or Random Access Memory, random because it allows a computer to access any part of the memory directly.
Software is a collection of computer programs, procedures and documentation that perform some tasks on a computer system. It also covers application software such as word processors which perform productive tasks for users, system software such as operating systems, which interface with hardware to provide the necessary services for application software, and middleware which controls and co-ordinates distributed systems.
Terabyte is a unit storage. The value of a terabyte is based upon a decimal radix (base 10) and is defined as one trillion (short scale) bytes, or 1000 gigabytes.
URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator. That is we locate each other's blog!
VB means Visual Basic and is also a programming language!
WWW means World Wide Web but depending on your connection, it can also mean world wide wait...LOL
X86 is the generic name for Intel processors released after the original 8086 processor. These include the 286, 386, 486, and 586 processors. As you can see, the "x" in x86 stands for a range of possible numbers. Technically, x86 is short for 80x86 since the full names of the processors are actually 80286, 80386, 80486, and 80586. The "80" is typically truncated to avoid redundancy.
Yahoo is where I made my first internet e-mail account. This was my most widely used search engine before google came. ;-)
Zip is a lossless data compression and archival file format.

Now, check our lovely HOST for more fun ABC...mine was quite boring I know! LOL

iSelf

Os declared today as "I Love My Mac!" HNT...I learned about it just hours ago (referring to last week) from Mariposa...so these are photos from the archive...not so recent yet not that old! (I did not have the time to change it, I have a trip to another city!)

Happy HNT everyone!!!

Please visit Os, for more Mac madness.

IT in Governance

It's a lazy Saturday and I just woke up with a massive migraine this morning and yeah that really started the day wrong. I went on with my daily routine and then drove back home and slept the entire morning.

Got up around a little past 1pm and still my head is spinning. Drank two tabs of Tylenol and then played my online game (Ogame). Yeah, thanks to Tylenol I feel better. :-)

Anyway, in my previous post, I mentioned about what my occupation is and what this blog is supposed to be about. Yes, I.T. and yes anything that has computers on it is under my job description. (As what most of the department head in the organization would think).

I've been very busy lately and there are currently over 20 major project being worked out by the department. Here is a short list of major projects being undertaken:

1. General Collection System
2. Re-engineering of the existing Business Permit Renewal System
3. Re-engineering of the existing Real Property Tax System
4. Electronic New Government Accounting System
5. Online Taxpayers Portal
6. Online Payment System
7. Human Resources Information System
8. Network Upgrade and Redundancy
9. Orthophoto
10. Treasury Operations Management System

The challenges faced in the implementation of new systems or improvement of existing systems could vary from simple changes in the political climate, budgetary constraints or end-user indifference. I'll discuss some of these projects in details next time.

That's IT for me for now.

Working Hands

Happy HNT!

Visit other HNT participants.

Coffee or Me?

Happy HNT everyone!

Other HNT players.

The Possibilities are Endless...

Check out this cool video. I know some of you must have seen this already but I just want to post this for those who haven't... A new way of computing...

Amazing...

Here is a demo of a software at MIT which I came across a few years back which I believe is worth posting. Enjoy...:-)

My humble beginnings... :-)

Information Technology has been my life since. What started my interest in IT? It all started in a computer game. My dad got a call from one of his friends. The plumbing broke and they wanted it fixed right away. Their house was located in one of the upscale villages in the city. Gosh! The house was huge!

When we got their, my dad's friend introduced me to one of his sons and he brought me to the living room where I saw a keyboard connected to a large TV. It was Commodore VIC20. Back then, computers were so rare and expensive that only the rich could afford one. The computer was loaded with space invaders game but I was more interested on how this machine operate and how it made this images on the TV. That's where my interest in computers begun.

My interest grew even further when one of my dad's friends received several packages from the US containing computers of which he was willing to give one for me experiment on. It was a TRS-80 computer from Radio Shack. My first computer ever. I was so excited that I went to the school library the next day and found tons of information about this machine. I read and tried experimenting with it by creating my first ever program. Nope, it was not printing "hello world!" on the screen. My first program was displaying the sum of two numbers.

So there it was, my first program using the Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code or BASIC for short, my first programming language. Since the computer did not come with a storage device, I wrote my programs on a notebook containing useful codes which made my life easier in my math and science subjects. I guess I was a computer geek but I never minded it. I never had too many friends back then so I spend most of my time on the computer from dusk till dawn. To me, it was the start of a new skill which eventually lead me to where I am today... :-)