Facebook Report = MASiF

INTRODUCTION

   The Music, Arts, Style International Festival (MASiF) is a unique event specially crafted for a Historical Day to celebrate the richness of music, arts and style (fashion) diversities in Malaysia. MASiF is an event to celebrate Hari 1 Malaysia which falls on the 16th September annually. The uniqueness of MASiF is it’s concept that transcends and synchronizes three genres of art (fine arts, performing arts and fashion) fused together into a masterpiece on one stage. MASiF is organized to promote Malaysia’s Arts, Culture and creative talent to the world.

BODY

    MASiF is an event that are happen once a year, as before this the event was happen in the year 2010. This event required IT for making the event to successfully done and the IT required is not just in equipment but also in social network. On Facebook, MASiF use it in term of exposing and promoting the event as the event are organize and sponsored by many company such as Proton, Petronas, RTM, Kumpulan Utusan and many more to make this event run successfully. In our opinion about their social networking sites that they joined in order to remain seen is by exposing their followers on the latest or upcoming event that they organized and they believed that their followers are their audiences.

    If we are the sales and marketing manager of The Music, Arts, Style International Festival, what gain that we get from having Facebook is that the promotion for the event are easily can be make as they are depending on their followers as their audiences or customers. In their Facebook page, the most attractive thing that we found is that they keep update about the picture of their event it also attract us by the performances and the talent that the contestant have and also the content of the event are clearly stated from the Facebook page.

CONCLUSION

    In our opinion, the main reasons for all that event engaging in Facebook is exposing their followers about the event that are organized and thus will make the event have more visitors for their upcoming event. In other hand, they want to promote the artists that have talent as this event need a support from the audiences to make this event success.

RECOMMENDATION

     Our ideas for improvement is to update more detail news or issues so that the followers that do not have the opportunities to come to the event are more exposed and by this action it will make the unlucky followers to come to their upcoming event. In other hand, they also can make an online donation for the disable person through their followers and this event can also be a charity event instead.

Facebook Report = Fitness Concept

INTRODUCTION

    Fitness Concept is a health and fitness equipment chain store that caters to the development of healthy lifestyle of every Malaysian. Fitness Concept is a member of the Transmark Group of Companies with 28 years of experience in health and fitness industry. With their expansion plan, they have grown steadily to over 35 retail outlets nationwide and have been certified as the "Largest Fitness Specialist Chain Store" by the Malaysia Book of Records. Besides that, they have also been awarded with the prestigious Brand Laureate SMEs Chapter award for the Best Brand in Retailing of Health & Fitness Equipment category as well as became the winner of the 7^th Malaysia 100 Outstanding SMEs Golden Bull award.

BODY

   Fitness Concept is health and fitness equipment chain store that uses IT as one of their strategy to gain customers and also in their sales. Other than websites, Fitness Concept also has their own social network tools like Facebook and Twitter. On Facebook, we can see that they are giving tips to their follower on how to live in a healthy life and also promoting their product through Facebook. In our opinion about their social networking sites that they joined in order to remain seen is by giving tips to their followers as healthy life is one of the priority to their consumer and they also giving tips by using their product.

    If we are the sales and marketing manger of the Fitness Concept, what gain that we get from having Facebook is that we can easily promote the product and also give guidance on how to use the product thus this will create a market for their product. In their Facebook page, the most attractive thing that we found is that they recently giving tips for a healthy life from time to time and keep update about the new ways that they found and also some videos that they uploaded from their Facebook that are to be shown for their followers.

CONCLUSION

    In our opinion, the main reasons for Fitness Concept engaging in Facebook are dedicated to helping people lose unwanted body fat and gain lean muscle tone. They guarantee maximum results in minimum time by just using IT as their medium. By this reasons, automatically Fitness Concept have conducted their selling process without directly meet their coustomers.

RECOMMENDATION

     Our ideas for improvement is to give more valuable tips for their followers, increased their quality in promoting and generating product by using IT and also do a contest for their consumer that follows them recently. In other hand, they can post something fun and catchy at their Facebook wall for attracting their customers and also show a good image for their organization.

Facebook Report = Maybank

 INTRODUCTION 

       Maybank is a trade name for Malayan Banking Berhad is the largest bank and financial group in Malaysia, with significant banking operations in Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines. The bank also has large interests in Islamic banking through Maybank Islamic Berhad and insurance via its Etiqa subsidiary. Maybank is the largest bank in Malaysia with 384 domestic branches and 190 international branches and offices. Maybank is largest listed companies on the Malaysian Stock Exchange, Bursa Malaysia, with a market capitalization of over RM54 billion (USD22 billion) as of end-March 2011.

BODY

      Maybank is a banking system that uses IT in their business and transaction but in term of creating closer relationship with the customer, they are joining the social network websites such as Facebook. From our observation, they keep updating about the company itself and also some of it is a post about the latest issue, contest, latest activity and many more about them. In our opinion about their social networking sites that they joined in order to remain seen is that they are strongly depends on it as their customer are mostly joined and used the social network and most of it are Facebook. They also must post something fun or catchy in attracting their customer for their business.

    If we are the sales and marketing manager of the Maybank, what gain that we get from having Facebook is that the promotion are highly created and the sale can be easily increased as the customers are exposed to the information given by the Facebook. From our observation, their Facebook recently are posting about a contest, discount rate offered and many more. In our observation, we found that the most attractive thing in their Facebook pages is the videos about their event and also the picture also from their event that has been organized.

CONCLUSION

    In our opinion, the main reasons for Maybank engaging in Facebook are to build and get closer with the customer, deliver information for the Maybank customers, easy to communicate, using IT as much as they can and also show the image of Maybank and this can be done without any direct meet within Maybank and their customers.

RECOMMENDTION

    Our idea for improvement is to give more promotion about their company through contest; event and many more in using IT without directly meet up with the customers as IT runs all over the world and also improve their page in Facebook by adding more fun issues, or fun contents in their Facebook. 

Problematic Software Courts Disaster, Says ICT Expert

BANGI, 21 Feb. 2011 – Software with problems can cause disaster if they are not detected, tested and rectified in a framework of quality certification, says an ICT expert here today. Prof Dr Aziz Deraman, who is the Vice Chancellor of Universiti Malaysia Terengganu (UMT), said software’s, like humans, are always exposed to diseases like heart attack which can be prevented if it is detected early.

He cited the case of the “SCUD vs Patriot” missiles during the Gulf War where 20 American soldiers were killed and 100 others injured when their Patriot guided missile missed hitting the Iraqi’s SCUD missile as an example where software with problems had brought about disasters.

An arithmetic rectification found that the time calculated for the Patriot to hit the SCUD was 0.34 seconds late and that even though corrections had been made earlier, it was not done to all its programming codes, said Prof Dr Aziz when delivering his inaugural professorial lecture titled “In Search for Quality Software”.

In the case of the rocket launcher Ariane 5 disaster in June 1996, the rocket exploded 40 seconds after take-off because the software specifications for Ariane 4 were used for Ariane 5 when the specifications of the two rockets were different.

"Pre-launch tests on the software were not conducted until the actual launch,” said Prof Dr Aziz who had served in UKM in various capacities for 28 years, including as Dean of the Faculty of Information Science and Technology before he was appointed Vice Chancellor of UMT last year.

He said with the ever-growing dependence on software, the challenges for research in search of quality software were to safeguard the harmony between the software and users; to detect software “illnesses” before disasters strike and to face the situation of attempting to measure the unmeasurable.

But the biggest challenge in the search for quality software was to try to measure the software because “we cannot control what we cannot measure”.For this reason, several approaches had been developed to try to measure the quality of software such as quantitative values to explain a certain phenomenon; matrix size of the software which is getting less and less relevant and user evaluation that is directed at only external factors and matrix as a measurement of “quality software”.  Prof Aziz, who had held the post of Deputy Director of the UKM Computer Centre, said the approach they had used to evaluate the software quality of the university’s  Centre for Information Technology was based on “Goal/Question/Matrix” or GQM which is a technique to identify the important matrix in the lifespan of the software.

This approach could lead to the certification of the software by a third party similar to ISO certification, said Prof Dr Aziz who was born at di Kampong Tok ku, Cabang Tiga Kuala Terengganu in 1959.

He had his primary education at Sekolah Kebangsaan Pusat Cabang Tiga Kuala Terengganu and secondary education at Sekolah Menengah Sains Pahang before doing his matriculation at Sekolah Alam Shah.

He was offered a place to do medicine at UKM but he switched to Computer Science where he graduated with his first degree in 1982. He obtained his Masters from Glasgow University in 1984 and his PhD from UMIST Manchester in 1992.

Apart from his lectures and research works and publications, Prof Aziz is also active with organisations outside the campus where he had served as advisor, panel member and consultant in ICT. He has to date supervised 37 Master students and 20 PhD candidates.

ICT Research Platform

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 that interdisciplinary 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.

For Details contact :

Assoc. Prof. Bahari Belaton

Research Dean

Information & Communication Technology Platform

Office of Research Platform

Universiti Sains Malaysia

11800 USM, Penang Malaysia

Tel : 604-653 3083 (Office), 019-5521109 (HP)

Fax : 604-658 4149

Email : bahari-at-cs-usm-my

USIM, TV ALHIJRAH TINGKAT IMEJ ISLAM

Kuala Lumpur, 28 April 2011 – Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia (USIM) menjalin kerjasama pintar dengan stesen televisyen Islam pertama negara, TV AlHijrah bagi meningkat kan kembali imej Islam di mata dunia.

Naib Canselor, Profesor Dato’ Dr Muhamad Muda berkata hasrat itu mampu dicapai hasil usaha bersama dalam melahirkan bakat serta modal insan melalui saluran media. 

“Usaha ini tanggungjawab bersama mendidik masyarakat menilai Islam secara positif. 

“USIM akan memberi sumbangan berbentuk kajian bagi mengenal pasti kehendak masyarakat supaya mereka menerima maklumat tepat,” katanya. 

Beliau berkata, televisyen adalah medium paling berkesan mendekati serta mempengaruhi masyarakat. 

“Kerjasama erat ini juga diharap mampu meningkatkan kemampuan umat Islam menghasilkan produk terbaik dan bermutu. 

“Pensyarah serta pelajar USIM juga dapat menimba pendedahan dalam dunia penyiaran kerana TV AlHijrah memiliki prasarana canggih,” katanya dalam sidang media selepas menandatangani perjanjian persefahaman berkenaan di Pusat Penyiaran Digital TV AlHijrah, Kompleks Pusat Islam baru-baru ini. 

Turut hadir dalam majlis berkenaan ialah Pengerusi TV AlHijrah yang juga merupakan Pengerusi Lembaga Pengarah USIM, Tan Sri Dr Mohd Yusof Noor dan Ketua Pegawai Eksekutif TV AlHijrah, Bukhari Che Muda. 

Sementara itu, Bukhari berkata TV AlHijrah memberi peluang kepada Usim menggunakan kepakaran mereka untuk menjalankan kajian terhadap tabiat, minat serta cita rasa penonton dengan lebih meluas.

FSKTM Students Represented UPM in Imagine Cup

Three students from the Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology (FSKTM), Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM), were selected to represent UPM at the 2011 Malaysia Imagine Cup competition recently.

Mohamad Najib Basery, The Green P

The FSKTM team is led by their mentors, Dr. Lili Nurliyana Abdullah, Dr. Razali Yaakob and Dr. Rohaya Latip.

Namely the Green P, they created the 'Botanic Sustainability Smart System', a web based software to identify the type of soil and suitable plants that can be planted with it.

A second year student in Bachelor of Computer Science (Computer Networks), Mohamad Najib said the idea to develop the software was drawn from the famine situation in Africa. Thus we are inspired to help them in identifying suitable crops for their land.

"It took us almost two months to develop this system as well as data collected from the Ministry of Agriculture and Agro-Based Industry (MOA), Institute for Research and Development Institute (MARDI) and assisted by Prof. Dr. Kamaruzaman Joseph from the Faculty of Forestry, "he said at the Malaysia 2011 Imagine Cup competition at the Pullman Hotel, Kuching.

In addition, the system is able to analyze the crop price index, which enables those involved in the agricultural industry to determine their budget in order to initiate agricultural projects.

Meanwhile, WASPending developed software that combines the teaching of general knowledge, science and math, and also a hero character as well as focused history for students aged 10 to 12 years old.

WASPending team leader, Wong Ching Yee said the system called 'Challenge the Difference "was developed in the form of games and educational software.

"I hope that this software will draw attention from the children’s education related industry," he said.

His friend, Tan Wee Chong, a final year student of Bachelor of Computer Science (Software Engineering) from The Frontiers said his group developed 'The 1 Cent Project' a micro donation system that integrates with telecommunication companies to further promote the culture of giving among students.

"Students can donate as low as one cent, and the use of the software can be promoted by the telecommunications company as a community service program (CSR).

"By using this system, users can select their donation to be distributed for non-governmental organizations (NGOs), the amount to be donated and the identification number and the data will be verified by the telecommunication companies after obtaining confirmation," he said.

The 2011 Imagine Cup is a technology competition between the students of the Institution of Higher Education in promoting solutions to global problems.

The competition aims to produce talented students in the world of software designers, programmers, game developers and digital media enthusiasts and simultaneously addressing issues related to humanitarian assistance, poverty, education, disease control, health, environment and global issues.