Integration Paper

At first I was disappointed that EM-TECH had to fall on a Saturday because this term it was just supposed to be a two day a week class. But since it was already my last academic term I sticked with it, and since last term I had IPDIMED with sir Chu, I guess EM-TECH would be fun too. I had somewhat of an idea to what this course was going to be, based from the course name. Emerging technologies, a subject that will not be at all boring because it deals with stuff that has yet to be perfected or invented, unlike other courses that deal with history and the past.  

            The term started of with different reports assigned to certain groups to present in front of class. Topics which of course dealt with different ideas and aspects that has to do with emerging technology.  My favourite ones were the first two ones the Emerging techs on hardware and the one on software on the web. Primarily because these were topics I am interested in and these were new things I could most probably use in the future. Our topic was the last; it was on emerging technology innovative applications in constrained environments. This at first seemed hard to conceptualize, but given time and researched it proved very interesting and we got to make a decent report. But due to conflicts of schedule, we weren’t able to report in front of the class.

            After all the reports, we were assigned to conduct a seminar, to look for our own professional, to reserve and look for a venue and basically handle everything. It was actually pretty cool and challenging at the same time. To be able to meet new people, gain good connections with people in the IT field. All if not most of the seminars were pretty awesome. I really liked most of them especially the Wi-Tribe seminar. This is because it’s something that sparks my interest and probably something that I would be able to use in the future. That seminar really grew in me, it got me to research Wi-Tribe and 4g and learn more about it. Although, some groups were not really “thinking”, of all places to hold a seminar, they picked the ISR, no offense, but it does not look pretty. I felt somewhat embarrassed because of the ugly venue and faulty projector. One of the speakers that spoke in the Yuchengco building even said he was impressed with the room, the hallway and the equipment; I wouldn’t want to think what the speakers in the ISR were thinking. Unfortunately, at the night before our turn to conduct a seminar, we found out that our speaker was not feeling well, he had the flu. This was such a panic for us, of all days to get sick, it had to be this one. He actually pushed for it and said, he’d go anyway, but we said that we would just reschedule. But rescheduling did not work, so what we did was send his materials to our class for them to look at the presentation themselves. This was very disappointing, especially when we saw his presentation; it looked so professionally made and very interesting. I really wished that seminar had pushed through.

            During the term we had to earn “social credits”, to go around Gokongwei building and look for lower class men that needed help in their computer related subjects. This sounded like such a hassle but served as a great opportunity to gain new friends in the same field. With the help of one of my lower class man friend I got to find people and from them I got to find more. That was a very interesting and fulfilling experience.

            To end our term, we had to learn a new programming language, we were hesitant to pick, and we wanted to have the same language as our other half of the group. But we ended up getting Silverlight and they got Android. For our project, I wanted to make something very interactive and new, since for me Silverlight looked like a hybrid of html, flash and java. So I tapped into Silverlight’s use of webcam, I wanted to use microphone as well, but there was not enough time and I had no idea how to incorporate it. But in the end we were successful; other groups commended and really liked our project, trying it out themselves.

            EM-TECH was really interesting and I was glad it was one of my last subjects in my academic life. It was fun, interesting and very fruitful. 

Social Credits

IT Consumer Usage Evolution Mobile Product Trends

This was supposed to be our seminar, but our speaker had the flu on the day of the seminar so we just disseminated the slides of our speaker through email. After viewing the slides, i actually got disappointed that the seminar did not push through. The slides were professionally and awesomely made. It was actually hard to grasp the idea of what our speaker wanted to show but based from the slides, it could've have been very interesting. I didn't really get what most of the graphs had to say, but the other slides were good. That since 2005, there was a huge leap into consumer content creation. Some of the slides were a bit techy because it discussed the new intel mobile core processor. From what i saw, the new processor improved in practically all aspects that it could be used for, graphics, performance, design and others including battery life. Although this looks like the peak of technology, it never is what it seems, there will always be something that surpasses the current, thats the game in the technology world.

IT Infrastructure Library

Our group was supposed to conduct the seminar before this one, but he contacted us the day before saying that he had the flu and could not make it. So there was an hour of lull time before the next seminar.

ITIL was the topic, i really did not get it at first, trying to take down notes whenever i heard something or thought that information was worth note taking. BUT there was a problem. Since the EM-TECH project was already due this day, i had the free time to re-jailbreak my iPod touch which for some reason did not get to back up calendar entries and NOTES. So i'm making this blog out of recollection because i take seminar notes on my iPod Touch. The seminar was actually ok, taking into account IT in general as a business, there were a couple of ideas that stuck to me and i could probably use in the future. But as the discussion progressed, the seminar became somewhat of a drag, there was too much information being transfered to us, it's not that the information was too techy, it was more business-ey. He talked too much, but he gave a good seminar regarding ITIL. I learned that ITIL is very important because it is like a high-tech-recording-problem-solving-customer-service, a virtual library of best practices. I was struck by the fact that this was made in the 1980's and ITIL is just in the 3.0 stage since 2007, it took a long time to upgrade it.

Wi-Tribe

I actually looked forward to this topic. It's very often that i see tents, fliers and tarpaulins with the 4G Wi-Tribe, but always get lazy to ask and learn what it is. Apparently, 4g is this new technology that will be way better than 3g. How much better? She said 10 times better/faster than 3g. With a bandwidth of 40MHz compared to what we have today of  5, 10 and 15. I was really sold to the idea of moving to 4g, the only doubt in my mind was the  fair usage policy or usage allowance. That every month you have an allowance of how much gig you can use then your speed goes done. But from how they discussed it, even if the speed goes down, it will still be faster than your conventional speeds. I even researched on this, an upside to that is that they have this thing called happy hours, where in when you use the internet during this period of time, only 25% of your usage will be deducted to your allowance. Happy Hours is where people could do their heavy downloads and streaming. This really got to me and i'm trying to convince my parents to switch to it. But not yet, i'm still waiting for feedback and comments on it. But sooner or later, a large group of people will switch to 4g technology.

Business Intelligence

Finally, a seminar done in a way better location than ISR. The speaker even said "..i am impressed.." Last week when we had our seminar in the ISR, it was not cool at all, especially when people from outside the school are to come over and conduct a seminar in that old room. Anyway, the topic was Business Intelligence, at first I had no idea what he was talking about. But as the discussion progressed I slowly grasped the idea of it. It was technically an Artificial Intelligence system for business use. That is one big system, to be able to gather and consolidate TONS of data then to analyze and predict information from it is just sick. I liked the example of Wal Mart using RFIDs on their shopping carts to predict and track the customer patterns in the aisles of their stores, it was just ingenious and cool to think of. Another thing that struck me was that business intelligence systems can structure even the most unstructured data just like the ones found in Facebook, these systems can gather useful information from Facebook statuses and wall posts to their advantage. It is as of now just an emerging technology, in the US only a few companies are using/developing and taking into consideration the use of business intelligence, but one day this will be a necessity in the business world, and the IT pull will be massive.

EmergeTech Seminar 3

This seminar got me back to speed. The topic was cloud computing, it wasn't really an emerging technology, but it was a "new" one with still alot of possibilities. But like the previous speaker, this was a good speaker but a semi interesting topic. Cloud computing is something i am really interested in, i've been using it for a long time now, but not like the one she's discussing. I thought cloud computing was when i send emails to people or to myself, post something online or a cloud, use file sharing sites like drop.io. One of my favorite ones was what we used to collaborate when we were doing our thesis, DropBox. This was new to me and seemed very interesting, a desktop folder which was also a cloud folder. It was so cool because now we, my thesismates had one common folder without the use of constantly emailing each other or the hassle of trading flash drives to exchange files. But in this seminar what she was talking about was more advanced.

Ofcourse like any other thing, there are the Why's and Why Nots. Why use cloud computing- very efficient, has value for money because of the Pay-for-what-you-use thing, and it's independence of location and device. Why Nots - Since this is a somewhat new technology, there are some paranoia's of security, people will find it very hard to entrust all their information to some internet thing like iTunes or something. Who's to blame them, stuff like credit card info are very important and if someone were to hack into these would entail something tragic. But as the technology matures, and alot of people trust and use this, it becomes normal and the remaining people will soon follow. Another why not is because since it is new, people-developers will have to learn this and adapt to it. People are "tamad" lazy to change and adapt something new unless they really have to. But sooner or later the herd will follow, or they WILL get left behind.

EmergeTech Seminar 2

I wasn't really a fan of the second topic. It was about NOSQL, at first i thought, hmmm, an alternative to SQL, sounds good. But as the discussion progressed i lost interest. And i knew i was not alone, other people seem to have shared the same notion. The speaker was ok, he presented very casual and would have worked if not for his too technical topic. I barely even got to take notes because i really lost interest in his topic. All i remember was the difference and definition of Horizontal and Vertical scaling. 

Good Speaker, Bad topic... too bad.

EmergeTech Seminar 1

The first seminar was about mobile content and some emerging mobile technologies. To kick things off she talked about the evolution of the cellular phone, how we used to get all boastful when we had the once latest phone the 3310, because it had this new game SPACE IMPACT! Personally i was one of these people, playing snake was not enough, space impact was the new awesome game of that era. I also remember one time i had this wicked Sony Ericsson phone that could change the color of it's back light by toggling the settings with at least 5 different colors, i had one of the coolest phones around! BUT nowadays those phones are considered "obsolete". Some people still do like simple phones that can do just call and text, but hardly do you see those monochrome-non-colored phones. Nowadays phones are "required" to be colored, have decent memory, bluetooth, camera and most often than not it has to have WiFi connectivity. Basically what we want is everything on one single device, a phone, a camera, a video cam, a computer, an mp3 player and a gaming device. True, but not for me since i have two, an awesome phone with no WiFi, and an iPod Touch.

Being said that, Gaming is back in business, just like when the 3310 became a "necessity" because of things like space impact, developers now are wracking their heads to think of addicting games, simple yet really addicting ones that keep the users "glued" to their mobiles. Since people are almost all the time connected to their phone and to the internet because of the famous "I'm mobile" and "I'm on SMS". Like the speaker said, privacy is overrated. People update their status at any given time saying "Eating spaghetti for lunch" and "Going to the mall" just to keep other people updated on your life. Sooner or later, the only gadget we will ever have is an all around mobile handheld device with practically everything on it.