Sabre 2/3rd Tiger v3

I wondered what’s the current status of the 7 MSC flagships. The official updates status was as of one year ago, I’d guess they’ll update that just in time (JIT) before the next MSC Expo in September 2005. Excerpts of that with some additional notes of mine …

1. Electronic Government – “PMS (Operational System, Managerial Functions and Knowledge Base Repository) is currently operational in all agencies … [HRMIS] 13 out of 15 modules has been rolled out to 10 pilot agencies (JPA, MAMPU, PM’s Office, Jabatan Pengairan & Saliran, MoH, Jab. Perkhidmatan Haiwan, MARA, DBKL, PKNS and Jab. Ketua Menteri Sarawak) … [GOE] Completed roll-out site preparation for 14 agencies with 3,086 users … [EP] Central Contract, Supplier Registration modules and interface with Elektronik Sistem Perancangan dan Kawalan Belanjawan (eSPKB) completed … [E-Services] 27 kiosks have been fully operational – 12 in Klang Valley and 15 outside of Klang Valley … [ELX] Project completed nationwide … [E-Syariah] 83% of Phase 3 have been completed. SPKMS has been rolled-out to 102 locations throughout the nation.” E-Services access either MyEG or Rilek service providers.
2. Multipurpose Card – aka MyKad. “All main [GMPC] deliverables completed (ID, Driving License, Passport, E-cash, ATM, Touch n’ Go, Health Information and Public Key Infrastructure). 9.9 million [GMPC] cards issued. 8.97 million [PMPC] Bankcards have been issued (as of 1 March 2004). 3,422 (84%) ATMs have been upgraded to accept ATM application in MyKad. 3,986 (100%) ATMs for domestic banks have been upgraded to accept Bankcard. 5 Banking institutions in total of 160 branches were available to issue ATM application in MyKad are as follows: Bumiputra-Commerce Bank, Maybank, Public bank, Bank Islam, Citibank.” JPN’s GMPC MyKad main site.
3. Smart School – “Various options for a cost-effective roll-out model leveraging on Computer Lab and SchoolNet projects was presented to the Smart School Steering Committee Meeting on 5 April 2004.“
4. Telehealth – “Read & write Health Data on MyKad: MOH decided to pilot at the Putrajaya Clinic.“. Website www.telehealth.com.my unreachable, domain still active under MDC. Worldcare site regarding Teleconsultation is active.
5. R&D Clusters – “MSC R&D Grant Scheme (MGS) Types of project funded … Awards garnered by MGS-Recipient Companies …“
6. E-Business – “Retail Sector : Efficient Consumer Response – Central Item Repository (ECR-CIR) Project … Letter of Intent issued to the successful RO – Tradenex. com Sdn Bhd.“
7. Technopreneur Development – “National Unipreneur Development Program (NUDP) … National Lead Generation Program (NLGP) … National Incubation Development Program (NIDP) … Centre for Health Innovation & Medical Enterprises (CHIME) … BATIC Technology Labs … MSC Technopreneurship Centre (MSC-TeC) … International Representation Program (IR) … Strategic Partnership Program (SP) …“

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Japanese mobile phonecams users have been using QR Code for some time to scan/enter URLs from newspapers, magazines and business cards. However in the US a competing 2D barcode, Semacode, is a bit more known. The two sample 2D barcodes encode the URL http://www.sabre23t.com in both QR Code and Semacode format.

• O I C U R A QR Code – M Keadle on 4 May 2005 wrote, “the current candidate to take over barcodes looks to be QR Codes“.
• QR Code Chocolate – Gizmodo on 26 April 2005 reported, “QR Code Blog explains (exclusively in QR codes, disturbingly) how one might go about creating a QR Code using white and dark chocolate.“
• QR codes update – Chris Heathcote on 25 April 2005 wrote, “… seeing how QR codes have really become part of life there [Japan]: business cards, adverts, magazines, any printed media will have a QR code, either for the URL, address, phone number, or even little pieces of content themselves (ringtones, pictures) … What I want is an open source QR code reader for Western mobile phones.” He also provided a good summary of the current status of QR Codes apps.
• Forget QR code, here comes the ColorCode – Regine on 22 April 2005 wrote, “While Europe and the US are still wondering what QR codes are (square-like “barcodes” that contains the URL of a website), ColorZip has developed ColorCode to allow mobile phone users to download anything, from text to music, to video, to drinks in vending machines.“
• Phones with eyes – Economist on 10 March 2005 reported, “enable phones to read two-dimensional bar-codes … such bar-codes are already quite common in Japan, where they are known as quick-response (QR) codes … perhaps the most imaginative uses of two-dimensional bar-codes come from Semacode, a firm based in Ontario. Simon Woodside, a graduate student from the University of Waterloo who founded the company, has applied “Semacodesâ€? to bus stops in California.“
• QR Codes & Semacode – David Adams on 12 February 2005 wrote, “The whole barcode thing is a chicken and egg problem. It took off in Japan but only after the technology had been embedded in phones for more than a year. Will it take off in the US? I bet it will. Whether QR Code, Semacode or something else. It just solves so many problems.“

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Fred Vogelstein wrote in 2 May 2005 issue of Fortune the article subtitled “Bill Gates is on a mission to build a Google killer. What got him so riled? The darling of search is moving into software—and that’s Microsoft’s turf.” He goes on to document the difficulty Microsoft is having trying to catchup with Google and why this is not Netscape all over again. Interesting read. Some excerpts …

Microsoft was already months into a massive project [Underdog] aimed at taking down Google when the truth began to dawn on Bill Gates. It was December 2003. He was poking around on the Google company website and came across a help-wanted page with descriptions of all the open jobs at Google … Gates wondered whether Microsoft might be facing much more than a war in search. An e-mail he sent to a handful of execs that day said, in effect, “We have to watch these guys. It looks like they are building something to compete with us.”

He sure got that right. Today Google isn’t just a hugely successful search engine; it has morphed into a software company and is emerging as a major threat to Microsoft’s dominance. You can use Google software with any Internet browser to search the web and your desktop for just about anything; send and store up to two gigabytes of e-mail via Gmail (Hotmail, Microsoft’s rival free e-mail service, offers 250 megabytes, a fraction of that); manage, edit, and send digital photographs using Google’s Picasa software, easily the best PC photo software out there; and, through Google’s Blogger, create, post online, and print formatted documents—all without applications from Microsoft …

Simply put, Google has become a new kind of foe, and that’s what has Gates so riled. It has combined software innovation with a brand-new Internet business model—and it wounds Gates’ pride that he didn’t get there first. Since Google doesn’t sell its search products (it makes its money from the ads that accompany its search results), Microsoft can’t muscle it out of the marketplace the way it did rivals like Netscape. But what really bothers Gates is that Google is gaining the ability to attack the very core of Microsoft’s franchise—control over what users do first when they turn on their computers … The most paranoid people at Microsoft even think “Google Office” is inevitable. Google is taking over operating system features too, like desktop search …
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