TWIS.org March 3, 2009

Justin: Disclaimer! Disclaimer! Disclaimer!

While the following hour of our programming is not intended to be offensive, if you feel yourself in any way provoked, you should be provoked into thinking not to anger.

The content is for mature audiences. Though, by mature audiences, we mean to include five-year olds with the love and interest in science. The show itself well about science and employing scientific means to get science-y news to your ears, does not necessarily represent the views or opinions of the University of California at Davis, KDVS or its sponsors.

And though the world is strange enough as it is, each week here we seem to discover that it can stranger still. “What can be stranger than ants raised by butterflies or see-through frogs?” One might ask. The answers await us in This Week in Science, coming up next.

Good morning, Kirsten!

Kirsten: Oh, great morning.

Justin: Yeah.

Kirsten: Do you know what today is?

Justin: Tuesday, right?

Kirsten: Besides that, what’s the date today?

Justin: No idea.

Kirsten: Today is the third month – the third day of the third month of the ninth year of 2000, whatever.

Justin: What? You’re – now what?

Kirsten: And I’m rambling. No I’m not. Today is Square Root Day.

Justin: Oh yeah, 03-03-09, yeah.

Continue reading “TWIS.org March 3, 2009”

Monitoring Promo at 135 SGD per Device

In keeping with the tough times, Futuregen is offering a promotion on its Global Network Monitoring Service. The benefits are explained on a previous article on Global Network Monitoring Service.

Our service works by polling (talking to) your network devices every 5 minutes using SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol). SNMP gathers data about your device and stores it in our Database. This enables us to do baseline analysis on a daily, weekly, monthly and yearly basis.

Some of the most common causes of downtimes that we can identify and notify include:
– Lease Line disruptions and bit errors
– Network Routing Issues
– Abnormal resource utilization for bandwidth, cpu, memory, disk usage

The details of the promotions are as follows:

1. Affordable per device pricing.
You can avail of the service by enrolling as little as one device (router, server or switch) to our service. The Per Device Per month fee is only 135 SGD.

2. Device attributes monitored:
Each device that is enrolled in the promo will have its cpu, memory, and bandwidth monitored.

For SNMP enabled servers, we can also monitor the disk usage and create alerts if these get past 80% utilized.

For routers with upstream links, we also monitor the bit error rates and create alerts for situations where the line quality deteriorates–even before users feel the ‘sluggishness’ of the line.

3. Notification within 10 minutes
When a device or link goes down, our service level agreement is to contact you or your designated officer to inform you of the event. This proactive alert enables you to accelerate the recovery from downtimes.

The following optional service/deliverables can be added:
1. Syslog server..where network or device events can be posted automatically for review (10 SGD per device per month)
2. Graphs and charts for executive briefing (15 SGD per report)

To enroll in the program, kindly email marketing[at]futuregen.sg. Related documents: Network Offering Brochure Scope of Work , Network Device Details Form

Futuregen President Speaks at APRICOT 2009 in Manila

Futuregen President, Mr Wilson L. Chua has been invited to share his experiences in rolling out green initiatives at his Philippine Data Center. Details of the event at http://meetings.apnic.net/program/igov/index.html.

Mr Chua was the project manager that oversaw the migration of applications to newer high performance, low powered Quad Xeon and 2.5″ Storage drives. The transcript of Going Green is here.

Transcription Feedback From Singapore Corporation

We would like to thank Futuregen for the efficient help and excellent customer service. We found Wilson to be very responsive and helpful throughout the entire period.

We look forward to doing business with you in the future.

Thank you for all the assistance rendered.

Juwita K.
Trainee Producer – Multimedia and Event Support
Singapore

Bus Stops in Singapore

Having Bus Stop locations highlighted on Virtual maps increases the usefulness to people finding a way to get to a particular location.

Here is the problem, No Bus Stops!
The usual maps (google and microsoft) shows you only the location…but NOT the bus stops in a specified area. It would be a lot useful if the map also shows the location of bus stops in the vicinity of the area you are interested in.

The local bus company MAY provide the bus stop info, but these bus stops may not be superimposed on the map! It is not efficient.

Here are our goals:
Wouldn’t it be nice if we could also see the bus stops in and around an area that you were interested in? This is what we plan to provide – maps with bus stop information. You just need to pan a bit to the left or the right to make the bus stops show up.

The second goal is to allow us to find the route a bus is taking. Armed with this info one could then figure out alternative routes to take.

Here is the bus stop info page. We hope YOU can add value to this project by entering other bus stops in your area, and provide us with your feedback.

Credits:
Microsoft–For training us in Bangkok in Microsoft Live! This community based project is written in .Net using Microsoft’s Virtual Earth APIs and windows Live Authentication API.

SinGeO — for the seminal work and the file location of the bus stop info!

HSBC Asian Economic Outlook 2009

Futuregen was fortunate to have been invited to the HSBC Asian Economic Outlook 2009 Breakfast briefing at the Raffles City Convention Center on Jan 16, 2009. The keynote was delivered by Mr Robert Prior-Wandersforde.

Key agenda shared at the breakfast meeting covered :

  • What has gone wrong?
  • How deep will the recession be?
  • Will policy save the day?

    • The bad news at the breakfast meeting was that Singapore’s GDP (Quarter on Quarter% annualized) fell to -12%! The good news is that a V shape recovery is expected. I hope so too! Thanks for the great insights and

    Outsourcing to Maximize Business Efficiency

    Event Date: Feb 12, 2009, 9:0am to 5:00pm
    Location: Hilton Hotel, Singapore,
    Price: 695.00 SGD/ 795.00 After Jan 23, 2009

    With the current economic downturn, many companies are actively reviewing business strategies to reduce costs. Outsourcing is one of the forms in which businesses can leverage to gain efficiency. Learn how your business can increase profits. minimise risk and positively exploit all the advantages of a strategic outsourcing plan. Outsourcing to Maximise Business Efficiency is a full-day conference where leading outsourcing experts share important advice and insights.

  • Get updates on some of the global sourcing best practices
  • Identify and reduce the risks and concerns wl’len outsourcing
  • Evaluate process developments and competitive advantage
  • Learn to Design effective outsourcing agreements
  • Assess the challenges when negotiating outsourcing agreements

    • No additional information was given as to WHERE to register.
    Participating Org: Armstrong, Ernst & Young, Rajah and Tann, Infineon, ALB

    Contingent Workforce Option

    Try our instant, on-demand contact center services that engages anywhere from 2 agents to 20 agents with campaign durations from 1 week to over a year.

    In today’s tough business environment, a contact center or business process outsourcing company COULD be relied upon as potential partner/contingent workforce –one that could be relied upon to provide extra manpower for sudden surges in business activities.

    The availability of contingent workforce providers like outsourcing companies enables companies to hold off on increasing headcount while maintaining a back up plan for hopefully, higher business acitivities. Lower fixed overheads allow companies to be nimble and respond quicker to changes in business environment.

    We want our clients to save on capex (Capital Expenditures) by using our contact center facilities (computers, internet infrastructure). This also saves on space and on rent. Our clients are attracted to our low rates, innovative solutions and flexible resources.  This flexibility to activate contact center services on demand is a key strategy in these times of recession. You reduce your overhead.

    Here is an excerpt from a somewhat similar train of thought from BT as published in Telecoms Asia, December 2008 Edition:

    Outsourcing versus in-house ownership has clearly become more topical given the current developments in the global economy.

    Businesses are actively looking at ways to reduce costs for longer term sustainability. The recent actions of some banks to sell non-strategic business units provide a clear example of how businesses recognize the need to delineate between what are core and what are non-core competencies when delivering to their business objectives.

    Outsourcing should be about realizing assets that do not add value to core competencies but in fact detract or dilute focus from business differentiation. Outsourcing needs to be focused on enabling businesses to leverage the benefits of freeing up these non-core assets to invest back into their core competencies or leverage additional business cost reductions.

    The outsourcing of IT support and communications services will be increasingly common next year in the context of freeing up non-core assets, however, not in the sense of full end-to-end ownership of a business unit, rather the shift to a managed service type outsourcing. The managed service we traditionally know of meant that for a fixed term and a fixed service, there was a fixed price hence a business knew what to expect.

    However, in the current economic climate we are seeing that businesses require greater flexibility or a degree of compromise to grow as and when the business requires it, but also to be able to trim down when business¬es no longer flourish as in the current market context.

    The concept of outsourcing has matured over the years, and its latest evolution will be a non-capex, flexible, scalable solution that is customer specific while leveraging common platforms.

    This allows businesses to increasingly focus on growth or cost reduction requirements relating to business processes rather than what will increasingly be regarded as overhead, such as IT and communications.

    This approach is best defined as a partnership, with shared risk and shared rewards, recognizing the need to balance long-term sustainable growth with short-term profitability.
    Source: Telecom Asia -Nathan Bell, BT’s general manager for portfolio and.partnerships, Asia Pacific

     

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