"There are about 2.4 billion Internet users [globally], half of them in Asia," Gross said in his keynote. "But yet, the penetration of Internet users here is only about 18 percent of the population, while the rest of the world is about 50 percent. Being here in Asia gives you [the industry] tremendous advantages."

The ambassador, who is now in private practice with Washington D.C.-based law firm Wiley Rein's international telecommunication practice, said the development of certain geo-political issues or technical challenges could potentially stymie this growth.

But by far, his greatest concern is the fact that certain forms of government intervention could affect the ability for Asian companies to innovate and create new markets, and do the things they want to.

"The challenge I faced when I was in government service is that people kept coming to me, asking me to create rules to determine and help certain outcomes for businesses, so that they could predict the future and make money.

"I think that's a fundamental mistake, although all governments make them, naturally. My view is that what all governments ought to do [instead of intervening] is to facilitate and not predetermine or try to guess what the next big thing is going to be," Gross said.

He noted that governments have a role to play by ensuring the rule of law is applied, facilitating the access to funding, and providing a stable political and economic environment for companies to flourish.

These factors are, however, not universally shared, he stressed.

He was referring to an up-and-coming major policy meeting to be held in Dubai in December to decide if the Internet should be regulated by the United Nations under the auspices of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU).

He noted that lobby groups led by certain European-based operators are trying to revise the somewhat-outdated International Telecommunications Regulations.

The multilateral treaty, said to govern international communication traffic, was last updated in 1988, long before the advent of the commercial Internet and the amalgamation of voice and data over the Net's distributed network.

ZDNet Asia's sister site CNET noted that revisions in this treaty will affect all in the Internet ecosystem since they are internationally binding.

This issue is indeed a big one. In the past, many of such issues were dominated by Western nations as so much of the technology was born in the West. But the inflection point for the Internet economy no longer resides in the West as the sheer size of the population and economy resides now in Asia.

What held Asia back 20 years ago was the fact it did not have the economic prowess or the innovation and inventive culture to spearhead the region into a powerhouse--neither economically, politically nor socially.

But the game is afoot now, as balance of power shifts to the East.

This was something Ambassador Gross made very clear at the end of his address.

"So it's important for the industry to work with governments and to try and make clear to them, in quiet and effective ways, what the industry needs governments to do, to help them achieve their goals. "You [the industry] do this not because you're aiming to get governments to do something special for you, but rather to help you set the stage so that both parties can help make nations and their citizens a better place."

So what should Asian governments' and industry players' responses be?

While the issues of Internet governance remain complex, the first thing that needs to be done is to overcome the somewhat tepid and underdog status the region might have of itself.

Governments and industry players within national borders should get together and begin thrashing out what are the critical issues that affect them. Once streamlined, governments should then begin working within the region to bring this up at the international level, so that Asia can be represented with one voice.

Only then will Asia begin to be able to have a seat at the main banquet table of international telecommunication issues, determining what's best for the nations within her borders.

For those uninformed, though, here's a recap. Last week LinkedIn confirmed it suffered a data breach resulting in user passwords being stolen. The company, however, did not reveal how many passwords were stolen but the number was believed to be in the region of over 6 million accounts.

As of the time of this blog post, it has been reported in the media that LinkedIn has not fully gotten to the bottom of the causes of the breach and how it plans to move forward. It did, however, send out e-mail messages to affected users, warning them of the breach and that those affected would have their passwords disabled to prevent any further access by unauthorized parties.

Besides the obvious worry over what unauthorized people could do with these exposed passwords, other larger issues have surfaced that the industry and consumers alike need to ponder over and address sooner rather than later.

The first that comes to my mind is the fact that consumers like us need to be much more vigilant over the number of passwords we use as so much our lives is invested on the Internet.

From serious transactions such online banking to other forms of online databases, social network accounts, multiple e-mail accounts, as well as the many app-centric accounts like iTunes, Dropbox, Evernote, to name a few, all of us are now held mercy to our passwords should they be compromised like in the LinkedIn case.

Without being specific, I think all consumers need to thoroughly review how they manage their passwords and whether they're duplicating passwords for different accounts or services that they use.

Duplication in this case isn't a good idea anymore as having just one or two passwords to access all your online services means that should a compromise happen, you be up a creek without a paddle.

Second, some security experts have commented that the LinkedIn case suggests that the company isn't up to par when it comes to IT security. Reuters reported that some cyber security experts said LinkedIn did not have adequate protections in place and warned that the company could uncover further data losses over the coming days as it tries to figure out what happened.

Others noted that LinkedIn's data security practices were not as sophisticated as one would typically expect from a major Internet company.

Quoting Jeffrey Carr, chief executive of security firm Taia Global, the newswire noted: "There is going to be more to come. As long as they don't know what happened here, there is a good chance that it is more widespread than originally thought."

Whatever the case may be, companies providing service over the Net, or in enterprise parlance, software-as-a-service or cloud computing companies, would need to collectively figure out how to stay ahead in their security implementation.

Which leads me to my final point. This breach clearly shows that the industry will likely need to rethink how it will approach authentication in a macro perspective. Currently, all online services, save the most secure ones, are based on a one-step authentication consisting of a username and password.

The LinkedIn breach issue at the forefront raises a question: Is there a place for the implementation of a two-step or two-factor authentication for Internet services worldwide?

I'm no expert in this but what seems obvious to me is that more must be done to go beyond just having a username and password as the primary way of authenticating the myriads of digital online services that we own.

As technology surges ahead and as more of our lives become so intertwined with the Net, there needs to be a fundamental re-engineering of how we access services over the Net.

But like with most things in life, so much time is spent focusing on the big things that the small things get overlooked.

For a long time, companies like LinkedIn -- not forgetting Facebook, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, as well as smaller companies like Dropbox, Box, and the like -- have been selling us the dreams of their services and what they can bring to our lives.

Don't get me wrong; yes, while these services have simplified and empowered our lives, the stark reality is that we have also become so dependent on them that the ones providing such services must also focus on the basics--that of protecting our data and information while re-thinking about how we access our data through their services in the most secure way possible.

Simply accessing these complex services via simple usernames and passwords can't be the way forward.

Because only when we can do so safely will the power of these services make effectual sense to us all.

In his keynote address, he said: "When we all look at computing the way it has developed over the last 25 years, it's been built on a set of assumptions that is actually dead. The way Citrix is thinking about the future is that the exceptions of the personal computing (PC) era are now the new assumptions of the cloud era."

Going on to explain a concept that he called "life slicing", the 58-year-old, energetic head honcho of Citrix noted that employees are no longer hemmed in by desktops running legacy applications that can only be accessed by fixed terminals.

Today we intersperse our lives with work and personal commitments, he said, noting that unlike years ago, we have the tools today to make this happen. With that stage set, Templeton went on to announce a slew of new products and services created by Citrix to help enterprises decentralize work.

Some of the demonstrations on stage were indeed fascinating as they were impressive. The vendor has been playing in the desktop virtualization and application delivery space for a long time and has had good success doing it.

One of the more interesting demos was the one that featured Danish startup, Podio, which was bought by Citrix just six weeks before the Synergy Conference.

Touting the ability to deliver a cloud-based collaboration platform, Podio can be used for companies of all sizes from as few as three to large companies such as Citrix, which has thousands of users.

Podio brings the power of mobility and social features to team collaboration, making it easy for people to work the way they want in dynamic team work spaces, across any mix of employees, contractors and partners, Citrix claims.

Templeton's thoughts on life slicing got me thinking. For a number of years now, I too have been life slicing work and personal life. As a freelance correspondent for more than a few publications, including ZDNet Asia, I find that I'm not confined to a fixed location, needing a fixed phone line, or fixed software applications to do my work

I've always used my trusty MacBook on the move and my iPhone for work, as I don't even have a fixed line. A year ago, I switched to using a tablet to write most of my stories and conduct my one-on-one interviews with.

Evernote, my trusty cloud-based notepad, is how I get all my files synchronized across all my platforms--Windows desktop, MacBook, iPhone, and Samsung Galaxy Tab. Dropbox is one of my storage facilities, accessible over all those same devices. Skype, my online communication to conduct interviews and conference calls, and MSN, Yahoo or Gtalk, for online messaging.

I've grown so accustomed to all these tools that I hardly think about them anymore. But as the notion of life slicing hit me, I realize that I'm actually neck deep in it. Of course as a small business, I'm able to make such decisions to work and live this way.

But what about larger enterprises, or legacy ones that have a lot of rules and regulations?

Well, I'm glad to report that the software tools and the hardware resources through virtualization and cloud computing are already available and there are some innovative solutions out there, not only from vendors such as Citrix, but others too.

But perhaps the biggest challenge of the adoption of this new work-life paradigm is culture. With such tools on hand, work and personal lives are certainly fused even more closely together.

So the question that begs to be answered is, is this necessarily a good thing?

If work is so accessible via these tools and devices, when will we ever switch off from work? How about the expectations set upon a mobile worker when say an e-mail is sent from a boss to a subordinate; how much time much is allowed to be lapsed before he is expected to answer?

This is something I put to Templeton at the Citrix Asia-Pacific media briefing. While he acknowledged that having the tools does mean work and personal life are more fused together, he was quick to add that it doesn't mean that it's bad.

"If I sent an e-mail, then I shouldn't expect an immediate response," he said. "Of course, I would get worried if I didn't get a response within 24 hours."

Granted. Such a timeframe to respond seems fair. But ultimately, it's not so much about the technology as it is about work culture and processes, and the expectations from bosses to subordinates.

Someone at the conference shared with me: "I've known of a boss who even called his subordinate on a Saturday just to find out about something not urgent, say, a confirmation of an appointment for the following week. Is this necessary?"

At the end of the day technology can only take you so far. Culture, work ethics and expectations are the issues that must be clearly defined before technology helps to make life slicing work for us.

If not, we'll be enslaved to our work, and life slicing won't just be a term to describe work-life balance, but will literally end up "slicing", or ruining, our lives.

However this certainly wasn't the case for a certain Nike shoe designer who created a maelstrom on Twitter with his views that mocked a top athlete in the U.S. on Tuesday this week.

ESPN reported that a Nike shoe designer by the name of Jason Petrie mocked Derrick Rose's season-ending injury on Twitter by saying that Rose should have signed with Nike after the Chicago Bulls superstar tore his ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) in the final minutes of Game 1 of Chicago's Eastern Conference quarterfinals series against the Philadelphia 76ers.

"You got one guy only getting stronger, and one guy breaking down before our very eyes. You chose poorly Pooh... #shouldasignedwithNIKE #GWS"€ read Petrie's tweet, referring also to LeBron James'--a Nike-sponsored star--and the Miami Heat's 33-point Game 1 victory over the New York Knicks.

Rose had signed a long-term deal with rival shoemaker Adidas in February, noted ESPN.

The story goes on to say that Petrie tried to pacify his followers by tweeting: "Y'all take sh#t too serious! Never want to see anyone get hurt - I hope DRose comes back stronger than ever, he's too good..."

But later, ESPN noted that FoxSports.com reported that Petrie then went back on the offensive Saturday, writing, "Just to set the record straight- if you ain't with me you against me, and if that's the case I don't give a F about you!" On Sunday morning, Petrie apologized for his comments.

"Wow! Twitterverse I do apologize. It was really just tongue n cheek! Never meant any harm or disrespect!" he tweeted.

This back-and-forth comments made by Petrie beg the question: should such tweets be made in the first place? And if so, were they done in the heat of the moment? Or was it a calculated move done to spur controversy so that publicity mileage can be gained out of it?

It's impossible to tell the real reason behind those tweets but the fact that we live in an "always on, always ubiquitous" online world certainly fuels such tweets as people are naturally drawn to controversy.

In fact as a practising journalist, I've come to realize that Twitter and other social media tools are the new news wires of today, contrary to what some may think. With the reach and ubiquity that Twitter has, there's just no stopping how it can be turned into a useful tool to disseminate news of public interest and of significance to readers.

But with this power also comes the potential for misuse and misinformation. And with so much at stake, I believe we need basic ground rules for this process. Some may suggest using "common sense" is good enough to judge, but one can argue that common sense isn't so common after all. For me, here are some guidelines that can be used before tweeting:

1. Don't tweet when you're angry and when you're prone to react;

2. If you are uninformed on a particular topic, don't tweet about it and then pretend as if you know what you're talking about, especially if they're about sensitive topics;

3. Keep your tweets personal, interesting, relevant and as civil as possible. Add to that a dash of humor and you will win more fans that way;

4. On retweeting, don't just blindly do it; check the original source and/or multiple sources, whenever possible, before doing so.

Both main LTE operators in the U.S.-- Verizon Wireless and AT&T-- have been pushing the boundaries offering 4G services to potential subscribers by introducing the service in major metropolitan areas and cities.

In the past, the U.S. has been relatively slow in the wireless rollout game compared to operators here in Asia. This was certainly true of the 3G days, where markets such as Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, and to a certain extent Malaysia, led the way in 3G rollouts.

But there's no doubt that the U.S. is once again a leader, or at the very least, much ahead of many other markets worldwide, where LTE rollouts are concerned. Just take a look at how many markets LTE is being rolled out in the U.S.

So what has changed?

Well, for one, the legacy systems that are owned and operated by these U.S-based operators are badly in need of a refresh cycle. This is certainly one of the main impetuses to get operators off their backs and introduce newer technology.

For instance, tech blog GigaOm reported that Sprint will be shuttering its old school iDEN (Integrated Digital Enhanced Network) network to make way for its LTE deployment.

By far the main impetus for operators to transition quickly into LTE, though, must be the rise of the consumerization of IT and its associated ecosystem. With the highly competitive tablet and smartphone market, the U.S. is beginning to lead the way again in the wireless world.

A good example of this is the latest iPad launched last month, which comes ready with LTE support, albeit only in U.S. markets.

Also in the pipeline is the slew of LTE-ready smartphones that will hit the market, such as the Nokia's Lumia 900, which can boast of being one of the few smartphones in the market that can support LTE.

That said, hardware support is only one half of the equation, as the pervasiveness of such devices per se can't be the main reason why the U.S. is witnessing such a tectonic shift.

That honor, in my honest opinion, actually goes to the demand generated by social media and the need to communicate and express oneself in an online world in real time. Journalists having written about such matters for over a decade, including yours truly, have been looking for the "killer app" that will change the wireless landscape like never before.

Over the years, so many predictions have come and gone as to what constitutes the killer app in the wireless world. From voice to SMS, to mobile games, videos and the like, I have come to the conclusion that the need to communicate on a real-time basis is probably what can constitute as the killer app for the mobile world.

If you think about it, the need to communicate is what dominates Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Foursquare or Path, and many other new services coming into play.

As for Malaysia, you can bet that when 4G does eventually come into play, such applications will dominate as consumers will be sure to lap up all the new services operators will have to offer, including LTE.

"Apple's recent promotion of the new 'iPad with WiFi + 4G' is misleading because it represents to Australian consumers that the product can, with a SIM card, connect to a 4G mobile data network in Australia, when this is not the case," Wired quoted the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) as saying in a statement Tuesday.

The story noted that Apple insisted it had been clear about long-term evolution (LTE) availability with the device but conceded to refund iPad owners who felt misled. The report added that other countries like the United Kingdom, Sweden, and Denmark could soon be following Australia's lead.

As an engineer who once delved into such matters a decade ago, I can tell you that the wireless world remains a complex one, especially when it comes to the standardization and harmonization of frequency spectra.

Historically speaking, the digitization of cellular technology aimed to bring standards together. In the old analog days, there were so many different systems for cellular communications that the Europeans were forced to get together in the 1980s and form what is known as Groupe Speciale Mobile to develop a specific set of standards for digital cellular communication in a bid to replace analog systems.

The group, later renamed GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) was chartered to form a set of common standards to ensure that systems would work together and this effectively gave birth to features such as international roaming and the introduction of the SIM card, which ended the subscribers' identities being tied to their phone numbers.

For the most part, this effort was effective in bringing the world closer to a set of common standards with which handset makers, operators and vendors could all strive for. But being in an imperfect world, not all things can be standardized, such as the entire operational frequency bands used by different nations around the world.

The controversy surrounding this Apple debacle centers on the fact that LTE, a next generation standard for wireless transmission, works in different frequency bands for different countries.

In the United States, this happens to be at the 700MHz and 2,100MHz range while for other European and Asian countries, such as Australia, LTE works in one or more of the following bands: 800MHz, 1,800MHz, 2,300MHz or 2,600MHz.

But conventional wisdom would suggest that this fiasco--being a straightforward case of making it clear which countries the new iPad could use LTE in--should not have happened, right?

But this was less than a straightforward case.

Indeed a check with an Apple press release, albeit in a footnote at the bottom, revealed that the new LTE speed of the new iPad only works in the U.S. LTE frequency bands.

Ditto for the official Apple specs sheet.

But hang on--try understanding these specs found on Apple's Web site:

Wi-Fi (802.11a/b/g/n) Bluetooth 4.0 technology Wi-Fi + 4G for AT&T model: 4G LTE (700, 2100 MHz) ; UMTS/HSPA/HSPA+/DC-HSDPA (850, 900, 1900, 2100 MHz); GSM/EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz) Wi-Fi + 4G for Verizon model: 4G LTE (700 MHz) ; CDMA EV-DO Rev. A (800, 1900 MHz); UMTS/HSPA/HSPA+/DC-HSDPA (850, 900, 1900, 2100 MHz); GSM/EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz)

Notwithstanding the fact that it's a spec sheet, man...even as a trained engineer, it took me some time to decipher all that information; imagine Joe Public!

The plain truth is that far too often, vendors, like the savvy and master marketeer that Apple is, seek to peddle their wares to unsuspecting average Joes by putting all the wonderful features about their products front and center, but relegate the finer prints of the device specifications to a not so obvious place.

To make matters worse, vendors also like to make the specs sheets so complicated that average people would not understand the terms being shown.

While the standardization and harmonization of frequency spectra may be out of Apple's control, and while it can be argued that it was just following the specs laid out for LTE in the U.S., it doesn't mean that Apple, or any other vendor for that matter, should obfuscate some very important facts in favor of better marketing.

In fact, rather than emphasizing one feature over another, Apple could have avoided this mess if only it had been totally transparent about the fact that its new iPad will not work as an LTE-enabled device elsewhere around the world outside of the US.

One other point that might muddle the already-complicated issue: Wired reported that some might consider HSPA+, a pre-technology to LTE, as 4G technology, thereby, allowing the new iPad to qualify as a 4G device. Most countries around the world do support HSPA+ frequency bands.

But, again, technology jargon and semantics merely get in the way of how devices like the iPad are being marketed. Technically, HSPA+ is an extension of 3G technology and isn't considered 4G. As such, the new iPad still can't be considered a 4G device outside of the United States.

The U.S. might be Apple's biggest market for the iPad, but the company last week also released the new iPad to 25 other countries worldwide, in addition to the dozen or so in the first wave of launches.

Surely this fact must mean Apple should have come clean from the get-go, and be totally transparent about what features will work (or not), and in which country they will work in (or not work in).

Making the necessary information accessible front and center not only would have spared the computing giant the blushes of being bombarded with worldwide negative PR flak, it would also give consumers the right to exercise caveat emptor in the fairest way possible.

Since then, I've been tracking a number of developments in the enterprise software world but one that caught my eye recently is how two old school giants are going at each other once again.

The suspects? Walldorf, German-based SAP and Redwood Shores, California-based Oracle.

In a weekend story by Reuters, the newswire noted that SAP aimed to become a major database software maker, effectively taking the fight to Oracle's backyard, a company that has been the undisputed leader in database software and systems.

SAP continues to be the number one business applications provider, offering software that runs everything from large payroll systems, to accounting and finance, and to human resource systems.

But as successful as it has been at the top of the software stack, its Achilles' heel is that it has always been dependent on a lowest layer of that same stack -- the database and its associated management systems. Reuters noted that the bulk of today's SAP applications currently run on Oracle database software, and the company is [still] the biggest reseller of that product.

However, this could change if SAP manages to get into the database game with its own technology, bridging that long awaited missing link in its software offerings.

SAP is scheduled to disclose its plans at an Apr. 10 news conference in downtown San Francisco, where it is scheduled to unveil its unified data management portfolio and demonstrate how we will become a leading database vendor, noted Reuters.

Of particular interest is how SAP would bring its industry validated "in-memory" database proposition -- a specialized database technology in which data resides in the main memory of processing systems rather than on hard disks and used to sort out the vast amounts of unstructured data in the world -- into the regular enterprise database world.

SAP's foray into the in-memory world began when one of its founders, Hasso Plattner, began researching into such technology as far back as 2006.

Today, SAP's in-memory technology dubbed Hana, short for Hasso New Architecture, has earned the German giant 160 million euros (US$208 million) in sales in its first two quarters on the market, Reuters noted.

Meanwhile Oracle founder Larry Ellison isn't resting on his laurels either. In an earnings statement released on Mac. 21, the combative 68-year-old chief fired a large warning shot across SAP's bow saying in a statement that Oracle's in-memory offering, Exalytics database technology "is capable of instantaneous big data analysis; questions are answered at the speed of thought."

[And] unlike SAP's Hana in-memory applicance, Oracle's Exalytics runs your existing applications," he was quoted, by PC World as saying.

And as busy as SAP is coming down the stack to the database layer, Oracle is progressing up the stack with its Fusion Applications, ostensibly an attack at SAP's bread and butter.

"In applications, Fusion in the cloud is winning with great success against niche human capital management cloud vendors in the US and worldwide," noted Oracle co-president Mark Hurd as saying in PC World.

But convincing the market of its Fusion applications proposition isn't only a headache Oracle has to deal with. While SAP has the database component as its Achilles heel, sagging sales of Oracle hardware division inherited from the deal that took over Sun Microsystems for US$5.6 billion in 2010 may be Oracle's stumbling block.

Despite beating Wall Street's target on Mac. 20, analysts were still less than optimistic about Oracle's hardware sales, attributing most of the positive earnings to its software component rather than hardware.

That said, while it's easy to get caught up in rhetorical name calling and public relations spin, the more important point is to go beyond the headlines.

After all, if you think about it, such moves by both companies are inevitable because there are only so many business applications or database licenses both companies can sell to the market.

And when both companies reach saturation points, they would then have to outdo the other in each other's traditional strongholds.

But as I've said time-and-time again, this kind of competition is good for the industry, as it essentially breeds seeds of innovation. As companies battle it out to come up tops against the other, more innovative products and services will be born as a result.

May the best company win.

Firstly, very early on at the MWC, the once king of the mobile phone arena, Nokia, went on the offensive when its combative and outspoken CEO Stephen Elop trained the spotlight not on the Apple iOS ecosystem but on Google's Android, reported ZDNet Asia's sister site CNET.

"Our focus is on competing with Android," Elop said during his keynote address at the MWC. "We want to bring them to Lumia," he added.

The former Microsoft executive also noted that there was growing excitement for its products, particularly from the carriers that have seen its full road map. Elop said these carriers, had expressed confidence over the prospects for Windows Phone, noted CNET.

Nokia had said one year ago that it went into a partnership with Microsoft to create a "third force" in the mobile phone software ecosystem. Meanwhile, over the course of the year, Google and Apple both gained greater ground in their respective market shares.

Google's Android was driven by the aggressive push by South Korean mobile gear maker Samsung with its line of Galaxy phones. Apple surged in the last quarter of the year when it reported selling some 37 million smartphones led by its iPhone 4S.

Over here in Southeast Asia, sales of the Lumia series--the 800 and 710--have only taken off last month. Overall, Nokia has said it has sold more than a million Lumia smartphones, and Nokia SEA is quite bullish that it will do well in this region.

Also, the Finnish giant faces an uphill task not the least from rising Chinese players Huawei and ZTE, and to a lesser extent LG and Sony Mobile Communications (formerly known as Sony Ericsson), all of whom plan to make their foray into the mid-tier smartphone market this year in a big way, or are already doing so.

But greater still for Nokia is its battle against the perception that it has lost its edge as a company capable of making quality smartphones that people will desire, much like how Apple and Samsung have been able to do.

To be fair, it's still very early days for Nokia in SEA and the Lumia series of smartphones does show promise insofar as breaking away from its previous platform--Symbian--as its flagship product.

My cursory observation tells me that the Lumia's selling points include a solid body design, reasonable hardware specifications, vivid color choices, and an operating system that is way sleeker than previous Nokia smartphones.

While it's one thing to wax lyrical on stage and pronounce that Nokia has the goods to compete with a field that is already dominated by Google's Android and the Apple's iPhone, it's another thing to be able to actually convince consumers to part with their money and choose Nokia over the other options.

Perception is everything, and like the "proverbial chicken-and-egg, which comes first puzzle?", therein lies the problem: If no one believes that Nokia's Lumias are worthy smartphone alternatives, how will they ramp up sales?

Only time will, and can tell.

Quad-core galore Speaking of new smartphones launched, an old favorite from 2010, HTC, also made a big splash at the MWC. The early adopter of the Android platform was smoking hot in 2010 and early 2011 but has since fallen behind Samsung. In a bid to stop its sliding market share, Taiwanese giant introduced its HTC One X, its first foray into the quad core phone arena.

Sporting a 1.5GHz processor, a 4.7-inch display and a 8 megapixel camera, the firm's CEO Peter Chou said what differentiated HTC from the rest of the field was the way the One X would capture images--in just 0.7 seconds.

"Our goal is to give you a camera that's so good that it has the power of a true digital camera on your phone," he told newswire AFP, pointing out that the second most used function on a phone, after making calls, was the camera.

Again, it's unclear whether this strategy will work. Ovum believes it's a step in the right direction. In a note the analyst firm said: "HTC lacks the resources to easily differentiate itself from rivals such as Sony, Samsung, and Apple in terms of value-added services, so its decision to focus on perfecting core smartphone functionality around camera and music playback is an extremely pragmatic one."

However, this time around, HTC will have a higher mountain to climb as it faces a myriad of other players vying for dominance on the lower spectrum of the smartphone race. Names like LG with its Optimus 4X HD, and new entrants such as Huawei with its Ascend D, touted to be the "world's fastest phone," as well as ZTE Era and even the lesser know Fujitsu--all of which are equipped with quad-core chips--are coming to the fore.

While the battle for high-tech smartphones will continue as these players and new entrants fight for dominance, 2012 will see also the fight happening not only in the high-end market but also in the lower end.

As more people trade in their old feature mobile phones, there will be huge opportunities in this change-out cycle. This is why Nokia introduced the Lumia 610 at about US$250 at the MWC. This is where many of the handset vendors will be focusing their efforts on this year.

Let the battle begin!

I remember first covering this show--organized by the GSM Association--some nine years ago when, I believe, I was the only journalist to do so from Malaysia. Then it was known as the GSM World Congress, and only about 25,000 people attended the event at a much smaller venue, the Palais de Festival, in Cannes, southern France.

And boy, do I remember those events: the topics covered were so technical and would put most people to sleep, let alone worthy of reporting them in the press.

But the mobile world has indeed come a long way since. Thanks to the proliferation of mobile phones around the world, the rapid advancement in technology, the pervasive nature of application and services, and the development of social media, smartphones and the likes, all eyes will be on the MWC next week.

Although I won't be attending this year, I've been tracking some pre-event stories that I found interesting. Not counting the plethora of announcements expected to be made by major handset vendors on the newest devices that'll hit the market, two stories I've tracked so far caught my eye.

The first is Ericsson, which is set to demonstrate how it plans to boost uplink speed (from mobile to base station) without acquiring additional spectrum, or requiring any form of modification to the handset to do so.

Mobile uplink, argue industry pundits in the story, is the reason why much mobile wireless transmissions today are asymmetrical in nature, meaning that download speeds always trump upload speeds. This is due to the inability of the mobile handset to transmit as much power as the base station.

This development will certainly be a boost for mobile operators as more people find the need to have both uplink and downlink at equal speeds as user-generated content increases, especially with the advent of long-term evolution (LTE) this year.

The second is the amalgamation of two widely used wireless technologies, Wi-Fi and cellular wireless. PC World yesterday reported that Wi-Fi specialist Ruckus Wireless will unveil carrier-class Wi-Fi access points that can accommodate 3G/4G radios, as well as a gateway to manage networks of both types.

Ruckus will be taking on this role even as the giants of the cellular world launch forays into Wi-Fi, notes PC World. It's also worthwhile noting that Alcatel-Lucent last week announced a system for users to roam easily between Wi-Fi hotspots and its cellular infrastructure, while Ericsson said Tuesday it would acquire Wi-Fi vendor BelAir Networks.

Last year, I had a chance to interview Ruckus here in Malaysia and the ambitious Silicon Valley startup made it very clear that it planned to break into a domain long held closely guarded by cellular operators.

In the past, such a move would be deemed almost impossible as mobile operators are fiercely protective of their main bread and butter--voice and data traffic.

But the reality is that mobile operators have become victims of their own successes. As they aggressively marketed their wares and services in the past few years, they have not only created an always-on, on-demand mobile consumption culture, but also one that is driven by an insatiable appetite for more data everywhere consumers go.

Doing so was great for business but soon, mobile operators realized that they might possibly have gone up the creek without a paddle, or at the very least, with a paddle so small that they can't keep up anymore.

The timing can't be better for Ruckus, and other similar carrier-grade Wi-Fi players. As mobile operators struggle to keep up with the exponential demand in mobile data, they have little choice but to rely on a cheap, proven, and viable technology--Wi-Fi--to aid them in offloading the burgeoning data traffic.

Here in Malaysia, I know of at least one large cellular operator that is rolling out some kind of Wi-Fi offload, but not in a widely deployed way as yet so the potential is there.

According to Hisyam Halim, COO of local Wi-Fi carrier-grade services provider, Privanet, this trend isn't new, as the more developed nations in the west have long experienced this phenomenon. Privanet is a local managed network service provider, which provides mobile data offload products via Wi-Fi technology, powered by Altai Technologies.

Hisyam said AT&T went through a torrid time managing their mobile data uptake when they first tied up with Apple to introduce the iPhone in the U.S. in 2007.

Citing various U.S. media reports which noted that AT&T resorted to buying a Wi-Fi technology company as a means to keep subscribers happy with its service, he said: "The most successful Wi-Fi offloading of a mobile operator's data network is the one where AT&T bought Wayport for US$275 million in 2008."

Reports indicated the Wayport acquisition gave AT&T access to 80,000 hotspots across the United States. Doing so made it the first commercial implementation of a 3G 'offloading' plan, Hisyam added.

So just how good are these systems exactly?

There is no empirical data to say for sure but Hisyam reckoned that by using today's commercial-grade Wi-Fi offerings, operators that had aggressively embraced 3G offloading such as AT&T and PCCW estimated that about 20 percent of their overall data traffic was riding over Wi-Fi.

Using Wi-Fi offload products does help operators reduce capex. Thus, the business case is clear and companies like Privanet aim to help operators meet the demand for data by lowering their cost, and at the same time, improve their quality of connections.

Certainly, there will be many more announcements made next week, not in the least surrounding up-and-coming technology such as LTE, NFC (Near Field Communications), and a whole gamut of other acronyms.

So stay tuned here as I hope to bring you other announcements in the coming weeks.

The Wall Street Journal chronicled how Hasso Plattner, co-founder of SAP, who 20 years ago designed software that helped placed the company as a world leader in business and enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications space, is beginning to reinvent the German software giant in the new millennium.

The Journal noted that the 68-year-old SAP chairman is trying to take advantage of cheaper memory chips in servers to speed up complex business calculations and allow companies to do in seconds what currently can take hours or days. The aim is to allow executives to quickly access and analyze business data even on hand-held devices.

There were many facets of that story that struck me but the two that stood out for me were: the continuous ingenuity and creativity of the co-founder, and his business acumen and persuasive powers.

At close to 70 years of age, Plattner could easily be enjoying his golden years doing anything he fancied; after all, the Journal noted that he had just a little under 10 percent of SAP stock, or roughly 6 billion euros (US$7.9 billion) in value as of December 2010. But, remarkably though, he is still a driving force in SAP's future technology roadmap.

An engineer by training, Plattner noted how he began looking into the future of the company's survival as early as 2006, when he predicted the future of the computing would inevitably depend on vast processing of data at the database level. As a result, he began the next phase of his research into what he thought was going to be the trend going forward--in-memory databases.

In a nutshell, in-memory databases allow data to be stored in the main memory of processing systems rather than on hard disks. The rationale is that if the data is closer to the computing functions, the speed at which systems can process the data is also increased exponentially, leading to quicker results from computation.

Though relatively a new concept, Plattner pressed on with his vision and as recent as last year, began showing the fruit of his research. His rivals, in particular, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, derided Plattner, openly mocking his ambitious in-memory plans.

"Get me the name of their pharmacist," Ellison reportedly said in January 2010. "I mean, I know a lot about in-memory databases. In fact, we have the leading in-memory database, TimesTen. This is nonsense. There is no in-memory technology anywhere near ready to take the place of a relational database. It's a complete fantasy on their part."

I got a first-hand look at how this development played out at last year's Oracle Open World (OOW), where it became very obvious that Ellison was pushing the in-memory agenda in his own company's products--the Exalytics Business Intelligence Machine--claiming that Oracle had some of the fastest products to run in-memory technology. Potshots were also made about SAP's HANA technology--short for Hasso New Architecture--about its performance or lack thereof vis a vis Oracle's in-memory technology.

While it's customary for such sarcasm to take place at major tech conference (Ellison's main target at OOW 2012 wasn't SAP, though, but reserved for Salesforce.com's Marc Benioff), what's interesting is that the Oracle CEO is beginning to pay more attention to in-memory offerings by touting its benefits more now than ever before, something he didn't do when Plattner introduced HANA in 2010.

Was Ellison late to the in-memory game? Some say so; certainly Plattner thinks so.

Whatever the case, this sector will definitely serve as the new battleground between the two bitter rivals, especially against the backdrop of increasing big data play globally.

I, for one, would be eagerly waiting to see how these two--and not forgetting Big Blue--would slug it out in the enterprise world this year.

On to Plattner's persuasive powers...

Engineers and geeks normally are not regarded as the most business-savvy people around, but what is clear is that Plattner isn't just an engineer but someone who understands business and what business executives want out of his company's products. After all, SAP for years has led the way in the business application sector and is still an acknowledged leader in this area.

From stories of how he convinced large enterprises like Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin, a large university hospital, to drop Oracle software and switch to HANA, to how he talked Erez Yarkoni, CIO of T-Mobile USA, last April to pitch the new wares, it's clear that Plattner has skills more than just any geek who can not only program software but is also able to articulate the business vision to his customers.

The lesson learnt from Plattner's life is simple: in today's fast-paced, globalized world, a leader can't merely be good at one aspect but will need to be multidisciplinary in nature. Tomorrow's leaders need to learn early in their lives how to not only arm themselves with technical skills, but also the business acumen to go along with their skill development.

This is something our own Malaysian would-be entrepreneurs and future CEOs should learn and aspire to imitate if they want to be recognized as innovative technology players of the future.

For if they don't, or should they rest on their laurels, they will face extinction and becoming totally irrelevant.

The first is how traditional retailers in the U.S. have been struggling against their online counterparts during the shopping boom last month. Reuters reported how Tom Nenon, a philosophy professor at the University of Memphis, was vexed with his online shopping experience at Best Buy, a sentiment shared by other U.S. Internet shoppers this holiday season.

According to the news wire, Nenon received an e-mail from the top U.S. consumer electronics chain just days before Christmas, informing him that his online order for a 42-inch Samsung TV would not be fulfilled.

"You can count on me not being a Best Buy customer anymore," Nenon told Reuters, adding that he was disappointed the chain tried to make him buy an older model at the same price as a replacement, rather than trying to make amends for its shortcoming.

According to the report, Best Buy, along with other brick-and-mortar chains including Target, Wal-Mart Stores and Barneys were struggling to keep up with online demand--an indication of poor execution by retailers during the biggest selling season of the year.

Another article by New York Times (NYT) touched on how Salesforce.com, an acknowledged leader in cloud computing, ended the year with its competitors copying its cloud deployment model by acquiring companies playing in the cloud space.

The story noted that three of the largest business software players--IBM, SAP and Oracle--made investments in DemandTec, SuccessFactors and RightNow Technologies, respectively, last year alone.

The NYT report noted that Marc Benioff, who co-founded Salesforce in 1999, said these acquisitions were a vindication of his strategy. "Amazon Web Services is making over US$1 billion in revenue with cloud software," he said. "Google Apps is close to that. We're on track for revenues of US$3 billion in 2012. That is US$5 billion, and that is what has them worried. Where are SAP, Microsoft, Oracle? Why haven't they taken our customers?"

The two stories got me thinking. For years traditional vendors--be they those in the retail sector like Wal-Mart and Best Buy, or software players such as IBM, Oracle and SAP--ruled their respective marketplaces dominantly, and often without little way for rivals, especially smaller ones, to break their hold.

What may seem in the past as a foregone conclusion when these more established players pitched for business is now cloudier than before.

And behind this disruption is the cloud.

Having covered cloud computing for at least two years now, I am often bombarded with the superior benefits of the cloud. For example, how companies can rent everything from compute power to storage to bandwidth and do so in a dynamic fashion, rather than having to pour precious capital expenditure into hardware and software and can instead write it off as operational expenditure.

Or how the cloud's ability to pool the processing resources of many processors together, and to enable their total computational power to act as one virtual supercomputer delivering solutions to customers in an "on demand" way.

But rare is the proposition that the cloud is a leveler, or dare I say, a disruptive force to traditional business models, which many people have come to accept as de facto.

In the case of Best Buy or Wal-Mart, online purchases aren't their bread and butter. So in order to compete with online retailers such as Amazon, they have had to offer their wares in the same way the latter had done during the Christmas season last year.

But Best Buy and Wal-Mart was probably not set up to do so in the way Amazon cloud-based infrastructure is, which severely disadvantages them.

There goes the cloud in leveling the playing field.

Similarly, enterprise software players have long depended on systems being bought and sold via top-level negotiations between vendor and customer. But in a cloud world, this top-level relationship may not be as key as it was in the former paradigm.

With the cloud model, direct value can be immediately seen by all in the company--be it the pay-as-you-go proposition, or the scalability factor of cloud, or even the flexible licensing schemes. And this means that smaller, more nimble players can have a shot at challenging the incumbent players, as long as they are able to execute their products and services well.

This is what the Web 2.0 companies, the likes of Salesforce.com and Amazon, have been able to inflict on old-school companies like IBM, Oracle, SAP, Best Buy and Wal-Mart.

At the end of the day, this development will be good for the industry because I believe that such leveling of the playing field will only spur more competition between vendors and offer more choice to customers--something that was proven over the last Christmas shopping season.

As for old school players, no one would doubt that they are still a force to be reckoned with. But it does mean that 2012, and beyond, is where they need to play the game most legacy players have played before--that of catch up--with smaller, more nimble players.

The story, originally reported by The Wall Street Journal citing sources familiar with the matter, noted that the Internet search leader was in talks with major retailers and shippers including Macy's, Gap and OfficeMax to set up the service.

The wire agency said Google might be casting a wary eye on the popularity of Amazon.com's Prime service--which offers free two-day shipping for US$79 a year in the U.S.--fearing it would entice the Web traffic it depended on away from Google.

Back in the day when I was working in the telco industry, vendors preached that all operators would do well to have what is known as a "walled garden" strategy--a term used to refer to a customized portal developed by an operator to keep its subscribers within its borders, akin to how a garden wall keeps people from looking out.

The rationale behind this, as I remember it, was that the more control the operator had over its subscribers, the more it could directly interact with them, thereby, commanding their loyalty, and ultimately, subscriber revenue...or, so goes the argument.

Using this strategy, operators went all out to make this their mantelpiece in their mobile marketing campaigns, with several big global operators pitching their walled garden as the best in the business.

But as these walled gardens grew, and as subscribers got tired of what was on offer within those walls, frustrated users began "climbing" out of that wall in search of more open content available via the open Web.

This led to a revolt as subscribers began shunning the walled-garden approach in favor of a more open access to Web sites they wanted to visit and the walled-garden approach met with an unfortunate demise.

So it's with interest that I note that Web 2.0 players are trying the same approach with their Web sites in their quest to try to keep consumers--in this case, Web customers, which are far bigger than mobile ones--within their borders.

So what has changed to necessitate this trend?

Well, firstly, in the old days, walled gardens were doable as there was not much content on the Web that was specifically customized for the mobile screen size. Secondly, mobile devices did not have what I term the "3Ps"--power, poise and precision--that today's mobile ecosystem have. Power in terms of processing power and network speeds; poise in terms of elegance of design and the "attractability" of today's smartphones and tablets; and precision in terms of their how advanced the software ecosystem that enables the billion dollar app game to survive has come.

So it's understandable that mobile phones of the yesteryears could be kept within the walled garden and the expectation of consumers could be easily met.

In the new Web 2.0 world, consumers crave, and indeed even demand so much more from their operators and service providers. Things now are pretty much open and there were hardly any walled garden concepts espoused except the few such as Yahoo, which has been trying to be all things to all people via its portal.

But the stakes are also different today. With Amazon Prime, you could pretty much have a total online experience as far as shopping and e-commerce is concerned. I know, because I was using Amazon's Prime services on trial when I made a trip to the U.S. recently.

Anticipating that I would be able to order pretty much everything except big-ticket items like a plasma TV or a fridge, I signed on for Amazon's Prime service for a one-month trial. By doing so, I could have all my orders delivered to my hotel concierge any time of the day, every day, if I wished.

But thankfully for my wife, I didn't.

Still I did find that from the comfort of my own room, I was glued to what Amazon had to offer and bought a considerable amount of items from the online retail giant in the six days I was there.

What's more, I found the e-commerce experience top-notch as I could do everything from tracking my packages right to speaking with a customer care officer over online chat, to clarify some nitty-gritty questions about my order.

I also found out that I could even get a refund should my package arrive at the hotel and I was no longer staying there. Through that experience, I was sold to Amazon and it would be my preferred retailer, if I was living in the United States.

So understandably, Google wants to get into this play.

But here's the thing--can Google come up tops in this service? After all, the story did say that Google will work with retailers and will not be directly in charge of the entire end-to-end service, something that is crucial for a complete and pleasant customer experience.

Will it succeed without the tight control Amazon has over its entire shopping experience? Will it be able to match what Amazon has been doing for years, having successfully optimized everything from its supply chain to customer services to online payment?

That remains to be seen and it will be game on for Google versus Amazon. And don't forget about Facebook and other Web 2.0 providers which will be fighting it out for the world's online loyalty.

In all, one thing though is for sure--the age of a walled garden approach, albeit modified and updated, is beginning to make a comeback, and with a vengeance, I might add.

I had been toying with the idea of getting a tablet since the beginning of the year but had held back because I was waiting for a worthy Android-based tablet, as well as one that would sport the latest Honeycomb operating system. Also, I wanted to avoid getting another Apple product as variety and "tweakability" were important to me.

Another consideration was that I needed a tablet that would basically replace how I was going about as a journalist--to be able to store my data on-the-go, accessible from anywhere, work on it like I can with a full-fledged laptop, and portable enough that I wouldn't get a shoulder-ache while carrying it around.

Some out there may not know that the concept of the tablet computer isn't new. I remember seeing the first iterations of the Windows powered, Compaq tablet, which first came out in the early 2000s. We all know what happened to that device--it basically crashed and burnt due to several reasons, including not being able to distinguish itself from a regular laptop, poor battery life, slow processor performance and unfriendly software to match all these challenges.

Fast forward to today, the tablets--whether the Apple iPads or Androids--have finally met the maturity that they deserve.

In a recent trip overseas to cover a tech conference, I was able to survive only with my tablet, my external hard drive and most crucially, stable connectivity to the Net.

With this setup, I was able to check e-mail, access my online storage files, have unfettered access to all Web sites, conduct online transactions like e-commerce orders, listen to music, watch videos while on long-haul flights and so on.

Thanks to the power of today's hardware, software and services, and aided by the standardization standards, the little tablet that we carry around is itself a powerful tool.

I was initially concerned as to whether I could survive a full working week without my laptop. So before I left, I made sure I backed up my critical files on Dropbox, an online storage utility. I also backed up my other not-so-crucial files into my portable hard drive, which I could access through my USB port on the keyboard dock of my Asus.

I transferred all my video files onto my SD card so that I could view my videos while on the move. I stored my briefing documents and research files on my tablet internal memory. I brought along my portable Bluetooth keyboard so I could type my stories. I ensured I had all the software--for example, Evernote--that I needed for the trip by downloading it from Android Market.

With all this set up, working on the trip was a breeze. Most of the time, I had connection via Wi-Fi at the conference hall or in my hotel room. So access to my data was almost seamless. Even online shopping was a breeze as I sat in the comfort of my hotel room, ordering all the things I would normally have to pay through the roof from online merchants.

This is the kind of power that first Compaq tablet never had in its day. Today's tablets are far more privileged than those in the past, and underpinning this success is one word I can think of--ecosystem.

No longer are today's devices standalone in nature. True computing power comes from hardware, software and services all working in concert with standard-driven protocols that seek to bind all of the above in a tight bond working together. That's the kind of ecosystem that is available to the average user today.

That said, the tablet isn't a tool that will necessarily replace the laptop or desktop. There are still jobs and work tasks that are much more suited to a laptop/desktop--for example, jobs that require a lot of keyboard/mouse interaction and manipulation such as working on a large spreadsheet, or jobs that require a lot of multitasking and switching between programs.

Still, the tablet has come a long way and most of the time, at least for me, I find that to be a boon for me for my work as a journalist.

Now what will they think of next to refine the tablet further, I wonder?

This blog is more personal than usual simply because I was "closer" to the news than I would normally have been. You see, I was on a ho-hum assignment here in downtown San Francisco covering the Oracle Open World (OOW) conference, when news first trickled in that Jobs had passed away.

As I think about it, it's even more ironic, given the fact that Apple just launched its latest iteration of the immensely popular iPhone, dubbed iPhone 4S, the day before he died.

Not that I know the man personally or interviewed him before, but the impact of his passing somehow felt greater. I reckon this is because of the close proximity of San Francisco--about 60 kilometers--to Cupertino, where Apple is headquartered, and probably because much of the brilliant aura of the man was demonstrated on the same stage in the Moscone Center, where OOW was held this week.

Mind you though, I ain't an Apple fanboy to say the least, although I confess to have used a MacBook for about 3 years now, and an iPhone for as many years too.

Being a tech geek, I've always known of Apple brand. My first memories of Apple were, of course, by way of the Apple II computer in the 1980s. Then came the 1990s, when a friend of mine bought the Macintosh, for his work as creative director of his own advertising firm. Though not a user of an Apple machine at that time, I had appreciated the aesthetics of the fine, albeit expensive machine.

But it was only in 2004 that I got more interested in Apple products, courtesy of a former colleague from the publication where I worked. My ex-colleague--let's call him Chris--sat next to me and was an out-and-out fanboy. He used to stay up late into the night just to watch Jobs unveil new product lines, and mind you, this was before sexy iPhones and iPads had come to the market.

I remember really encountering my first taste of Apple's hallmark of simplicity but yet functionality when Chris demonstrated all the new, cool features on Mac Tiger 10.4, which debuted in 2005. Features such as Spotlight come to mind, an incredibly superior search function compared to the then inferior Windows XP search.

That year was also a significant turning point for Jobs too, as he announced that Apple will adopt Intel x86-based chips going forward from 2006, effectively dumping the Power PC chips it had been using all the while. This allowed features such as Boot Camp to exist, a powerful and useful virtualization feature available to those who want to have Windows and Apple OS co-existing on board the same machine.

It was primarily because of this that I made the switch to Apple machines--that, and the growing frustrations I had with Microsoft's Windows, as well as a litany of grouses I had with Redmond.

But I digress.

The move to embrace Intel chips was, IMHO, a masterstroke by the visionary Jobs. So successful was the switch that I remembered Jobs even saying that you could put together Apple bare metal hardware with Windows OS, and it would outperform a Windows-based machine with similar specs.

It also meant that by using commodity x86-based chips, Jobs could negotiate better pricing and make his Macs cheaper than before, and give more consumers access to a premium brand without them having to sell an arm and a leg.

So finally in 2008, after doing a lot of thinking and trials with virtualization software such as Parallels, I decided to move to the MacBook (though I didn't actually use virtualization software as I didn't need Windows on my machine after all).

That move proved significant for me as I realized that there wasn't anything I couldn't really do with my Mac that I would have otherwise been able to do with a Windows machine, save playing games--which I don't anyway.

What impressed me most about Jobs and the products he created was that he was able to spot things that we need, even before we ourselves knew that those features would be useful. Some simple examples: Spaces and Expose in Leopard or Spotlight in Tiger.

This was probably due to the fact that Jobs never sought to find out what the market wants; he eschewed market research, always preferring to depend on his own instincts and just created things he thought the world needs and would want, thereby setting a trend in itself.

The other masterful thing he had, IMHO, was the tenacity for details and his dogged quest for perfection. On Sep. 5, Newsweek reported that the night before the original iPod launch, Jobs made his staff stay behind to replace all the headphones jacks because he didn't feel they were "clicky" enough. 

Of course, Jobs had his fair share of controversies and detractors too, and I personally feel too that some of his strategies for the Apple going forward could be stifling, but now is not the time to discuss such topics.

Whilst his passing at a relatively young age of 56 is truly sad and my thoughts go out to his family and loved ones, today, I've chosen to remember him by celebrating what I believe is the most important thing Jobs has given to the world.

That is, our ability as humans to push the envelope of our God-given gifts of creativity and imagination to greater heights, and to do it with the great tenacity empowered by the human soul everyday of our lives for the betterment of mankind and society at-large.

This is the legacy of Jobs worth embracing amidst this tragic loss.

Thank you Steve Jobs--may you rest in peace.

The PSA, called "Undilah", (which means "Please Vote" in Malay), is an attempt by an independent film maker and musician Pete Teo to highlight the need of all Malaysians above the voting age of 21-years of age to exercise their constitutional right to vote.

Shot in black-and-white, Teo's video begins with a popular politician, Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah narating, among other things, about the problems Malaysians face in the country, and how important it was for citizens to vote in the impending elections because Malaysians should love the country. Malaysia is due to call for election within a year.

The report noted that MCMC had asked two of the largest local broadcasters to pull off the broadcast but at the time of that report, no reasons were given as to why MCMC had been asked to do that.

Since then, several developments have emerged, with MCMC attempting to explain itself as to why it did what it did. Two politicians have also weighed in on the matter, including the minister in charge of communications.

The industry regulator had noted in a press statement that it blocked the broadcast because the four-and-a-half-minute clip had ostensibly "yet to obtain approval from the Film Censorship Board", which is under the purview of the Home Ministry, not the Communications Ministry. "As such, the PSA should not have been aired on TV until approval is obtained," read the MCMC statement.

Later in the week, the Member of Parliament of Kota Belud, a constituency in Sabah, East Malaysia, alleged that the video clip had scenes in which negative innuendos about the government were being shown.

MP Abdul Rahman Dahlan pointed out that certain scenes appeared to be "not so pleasant to BN, the ruling coalition", reported news portal, The Malaysian Insider (TMI). "There are some elements that ridicule the establishment." Finally, the Communications Minister himself commented on, and outright branded the clip as having elements that were against the incumbent government. The video, he said, was unsuitable for broadcast as it contains "subliminal messages" aimed at influencing viewers.

While analyzing these recent developments, one can't help but wonder about the various comical scenarios that have arisen out of this entire debacle.

Firstly, the jurisdictional issue. In Malaysia, the broadcast industry is not regulated by MCMC but by the Home Ministry. So what business does the MCMC has in pulling the broadcast of the clip in the first place is anybody's guess. Perhaps it can be argued that since Teo's clip first came out over the Internet, the MCMC was consulted on the matter.

But even if this were the case, the reasoning doesn't seem to jive with the one given, that is, it's an issue with censorship. If indeed the clip had not yet been given the green light, it isn't within the purview of the MCMC to do anything about it. Should not the Home Ministry be in charge of that?

To make matters worse, Teo, the producer of the video told TMI that he hadn't even applied for approval from the Film Censorship Board in the first place, so why is there a need to overreact? "We haven't got approval because we haven't applied for it. There is no need to apply for it when we haven't even spoken to the broadcasters," he was quoted in local news portal Malaysiakini.

This inconsistency in dealing with the issue shows that the government may have acted hastily and not thought through what should be the appropriate action, thereby, giving the perception that the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. 

Secondly is the alleged negative innuendos that exist in the clip, the most significant of which was brought up by Abdul Rahman. The MP charged that Teo had mischievously included the character of Jabba the Hutt, a fictional character from the Star Wars movie, but allegedly juxtaposed it against the Malaysian prime minister, Najib Razak, implying that the scene mocked him.

"It's just a zany thing I do in all my videos. Does this mean that other people sitting at the bus stop are also mocking the PM? I'd like them to explain to me how it insults him," Teo told TMI, adding that he had pears randomly appearing in previous videos he produced.

To me, these missteps by the government--and its officials--only go to show that it is increasingly worried about the power of Internet-media and the reach and impact it has on the electorate.

But perhaps the most damning thing is the fact that the incumbent government doesn't understand how to deal with the new media except to keep applying a previously tried-and-tested technique of censorship in a bid to curb the impact of such a viral video. Case in point: By vilifying Teo's video and suggesting that it has subliminal messages that have been mischievously inserted into the video, serves only to draw more attention to that scene which might otherwise not have happened in the first place.

It's apparent that the battle for the hearts and minds of Malaysia's next general election will be fought significantly more in cyberspace than it did back in 2008, when the opposition managed to increase the number of seats in Parliament by almost four-fold.

With the democratization of the tools new media has brought to the world, more and more people are being reached through the viral ways of the new and social media. And censoring the media isn't going to win the government any favors.

The faster the government learns this, the better it is for the country.

In a report filed early this month on ZDNet Asia, Canalys' principal analyst Daryl Chiam noted it is no longer sustainable to offer unlimited access as "that is a very costly way of selling spectrum".

Chiam, who was commenting on Singapore telco M1's launch of new mobile broadband plans which no longer included unlimited data, told ZDNet Asia in a phone interview that the new plans were not a "surprise", as many telcos globally have already made the switch, including Verizon and AT&T in the United States.

"Telcos' move away from unlimited data plans should also come as good news to mobile broadband subscribers as they will no longer need to subsidize heavy data users," he pointed out.

Currently, as far as I know, M1's rival, SingTel, doesn't offer unlimited data plans while StarHub, the only player that does, conceded that Singapore operators may have to review current pricing plans and consider introducing usage-based data pricing to ensure network quality for their customers remains optimal.

In Malaysia today, all major operators do impose a data cap on their respective bundled plans, but they're implemented with different twists on offer. For example, Maxis continues to charge a user after his all-you-can-eat data ceiling is reached, causing him to potentially run up his bill without his knowledge, as has happened to one of my friends.

DiGi, on the other hand, lowers your access to EDGE speeds when a user breaches the ceiling data threshold on his package. Essentially, the data usage this way is still unlimited but no one would want to continue surfing at turtle-like speeds.

The ZDNet Asia report also elicited some divided responses from Singaporeans as to how they felt about the termination of M1's unlimited data plan. One customer was very vocal, stating that he did not like the idea of the termination of the unlimited data plan.

"I think there is no valid reason why the telcos should take away unlimited data," said Timothy Yang, a writer. "If [there's] congestion in their networks...it's not my problem--it just shows that the telcos have not done enough to ensure that their capacity matches demand."

While operators in Malaysia have yet to cut off unlimited data packages, I suspect that at some stage they would, and consequently, customers' responses to such a move would be similar to Yang's.

The plain truth is that mobile broadband users are so spoiled for choice, and competition has indeed brought a whole new level or service to them that taking away unlimited data plans could possibly invoke the feeling of their "rights" being taken away--which is what I believe turns people off.

However, to simply continue offering unlimited data packages can't be the way to go for operators. The fact is that while wireless technology is always improving and new standards are a lot more efficient than before, radio spectrum is not an infinite commodity and sooner or later, it will run out--no matter what kind of wireless technology any operator uses.

To me, Yang's solution of getting operators to upgrade their network is over simplistic and while his suggestion seems easy to implement, the reality is far from that.

There are a lot of other considerations that operators need to take into account such as spectrum re-usage, and adding capacity where it makes commercial sense. Upgrading a network is not as easy as just adding new equipment or cell towers.

Also, there is an issue as to whether those who hog the bandwidth should be paying more premium for doing so, while the rest who can live within their given limits pay the same prices. This issue will certainly dominate the industry going forward as Singapore soon, and Malaysia later next year, begin to deploy Long Term Evolution (LTE) networks.

As Ovum analyst Nicole McCormick warned in her recent report, operators should be careful not to repeat the mistakes of some 3G operators that overburdened their networks due to unlimited pricing.

"While LTE delivers video more efficiently than 3G, operators offering flat rates for LTE could quickly overstretch their LTE networks and find themselves having to invest more than expected to alleviate this congestion," said McCormick.

In her study of LTE tariffs of nine markets she noted that "big bucket and unlimited pricing dominate LTE offerings across the globe".

"LTE--as a 'new' service for consumers--gives operators an opportunity to new premium pricing schemes," McCormick said. "But, in general, we were disappointed to find a lack of innovation from these LTE first-mover operators in packaging and pricing LTE tariffs for blue-chip customers."

To deal with the issue, Malaysian mobile operators would need to put significant effort into re-educating its subscribers that unlimited data plans may be a thing of the past and that tiered pricing is probably the way to go forward.

After all, it was these same operators that created the insatiable demand for mobile broadband in the first place as at one point in time, they wanted to ramp up subscriptions.

Unless they do so, and do so quickly, expect more backlash to come from hungry bandwidth users, who may shun the new services that these operators will be trying to launch.

Conveniently coined as technopreneurship, this industry for Malaysia is still fairly nascent, with some tagging it to be about 16 years old, if we were to use the inception of the Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) Malaysia as a reference point.

The MSC Malaysia was the brainchild of former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad, who envisioned a technology hub that will not only bring foreign investment into the country but also the transference of high-tech ICT skills and knowledge to the country.

With the advent of the MSC Malaysia, the nation began focusing its efforts on making the ICT sector one of the cornerstones of its economy, and along with that, quite a few Malaysians began dreaming about making a mark in this sector as technopreneurs.

Then came the dot-com boom of the new millennium where pretty much everyone with an idea tried to get into the ICT game in hopes of making big bucks. Local companies here also got caught up in that chase, but we are all too familiar with what happened when the dot-com bubble finally crashed.

That was almost 10 years ago.

Thankfully, there were some local dot-com survivors which managed to pull through and have managed to grow their businesses beyond the Malaysian shores. Names that come to mind include Jobstreet.com, an online recruitment agency with presence in Southeast Asia, MOL AccessPortal, an online payment service provider, and Pulse Group, an intelligence market research firm.

But according to some industry watchers I spoke to recently, there haven't been many success stories of technopreneurs who have made it big in Malaysia, and in the region, let alone globally, especially after the first wave of dot-com survivors.

V. Sivapalan, chief evangelist of Proficeo, a coaching and mentoring consultancy, notes that despite the existence of the MSC Malaysia, various funding initiatives and government grants as well as the efforts in nurturing startups, the fact remains that Malaysia has not managed to establish and grow regional and global companies. "One of the main challenges is that technopreneurs today have a small worldview of their business with many of them not having a regional or global target market from the outset."

Aziz Ismail, president of the Technopreneurs Association of Malaysia (TeAM), concurs. "We simply can't compare with the west like the U.S., where the domestic market is so big. Our markets are too small and so Malaysians must go global."

Aziz also says that as a fairly new nation involved in technopreneurship, the country is also up against very stiff competition from all over the world. As such, for Malaysians to succeed, they would need to find niche markets to exploit. "For example, the old economy for software is about enterprise resource planning. Today, it's about mobile apps and software-as-a-service (SaaS). Malaysians must be looking at these new areas for it to succeed."

Another challenge, opines Renuka Sena, chief explorer at Proficeo, is that there is a gap that currently exists in the industry which has to do with the "what to do" factor rather than the "how to do it" factor.

"What technopreneurs want is for targeted coaching-style programmes that are customized to their needs and to provide them with the 'show-how'," Renuka says. "Entrepreneurs today do not lack the knowledge as they have access to academic knowledge via education and the Internet. But, what they don't have is access to experience and they're looking for individual coaches and mentors to teach them how to go about doing it."

This view was shared too by government-managed entrepreneur fund, Cradle Fund, which has been tasked to be the overall manager of the Coach and Grow Programe (CGP). A specialized curriculum designed to help non ICT-based entrepreneurs as well as technopreneurs, the CGP helps entrepreneurs of various maturity receive mentorship from other more experienced people who can claim to say: "I've been there, done that."

The CGP was mooted with the intent of overcoming challenges faced by entrepreneurs by looking into the key reasons why they fail to grow or scale during crucial stages of their lifecycle, says Nazrin Hassan, CEO of Cradle Fund. "So we hope that the CGP will help entrepreneurs face the many challenges such as difficulty in securing early adopters, challenges in achieving sustainability, scaling and expansion, and the fear of going regional or global without a strong strategy."

Within the CGP, there are differing mentorship levels designed to aid businesses which are in different stages of maturity. These range from pre-seed (idea stage to late-stage product development), to growth (eight months to two years post development), to global (at least 12 months post commercialization) to pre-IPO (high-growth and potential at regional or global) stages.

Just like a child having reached puberty and needing to be mentored and guided as he or she grows into adolescence, the technopreneurship industry in Malaysia too must receive the right nurturing and guidance in order for it to flourish further.

It's good to see that the government and the private sector coming together to try to help the local entrepreneurship move to the next level.

Such moves not only help budding entrepreneurs and technopreneurs gain access to real experiential know-how, but also puts them in contact with possible angel investors who may end up funding some of the more promising startups, which will help them grow beyond national borders.

However, to see something positive come out of these efforts, technopreneurs would need to realize that these efforts to bridge the gap can only take them so far. At the end of the day, they must ultimately be responsible for their own ambitions and work hard and passionately to ensure they will succeed not just in the domestic market, but overseas too.

With this, it's my hope that when we revisit the Malaysian technopreneurship landscape in 10 years, there will be true regional and global success to fill these pages.

Organized by an independent coalition comprising 62 non-government organizations, the group which calls itself Bersih 2.0 (Coalition for Clean and Fair Elections) claims to be unaffiliated to any political party, and seeks to work for a cleaner, fairer and freer electoral reform in Malaysia.

In the days before the intended rally, the government began clamping down on the Bersih 2.0 movement. It declared the group illegal as it alleged it was not a legal entity registered with the Registrar of Societies.

The government also started harassing the group by showing up at its office to seize what the government deemed as illegal paraphernalia such as T-shirts and Bersih 2.0 communique.

It also warned all citizens to stay away from the intended rally--originally scheduled to be held at the historical Merdeka Stadium [the stadium where Malaysia declared its independence in 1957]--noting that those who came to the rally would be doing so illegally and would, therefore, be arrested.

A day before the rally, the police had locked down Kuala Lumpur, closing off many roads in and around the city center. They also mounted massive roadblocks and began checking people coming and going from various tributaries leading into the city.

But despite the restrictions, thousands of people thronged the city on Saturday, dubbed 7/9, in defiance of the government's warning. Water cannons and teargas were fired at people in the certain sections of the city.

In all, close to 1,700 people were arrested in the melee which lasted from about noon to about 6pm.

In the days running up to 7/9, rumors began circulating that the Internet also would be cut off and that the government was ostensibly bent on blocking Internet access to Web sites, especially social media ones such as Facebook and Twitter.

A check with several of my industry sources on the Friday before the rally thankfully revealed that no such order to censor or cut off the Internet had been given.

The Home Minister also claimed that no such move would be taken, news that was greeted skeptically by Netizens, as moves to block the Web had been carried out by the government before.

But the Internet did work and for much of the day on 7/9, thousands of Netizens were tweeting, streaming and video recording, and updating their Facebook walls and Twitter timelines with what was going on.

Also in the game were alternative online media, and its reporters, who were also feeding the public with up-to-date information of what was going on at the scenes, almost real-time. On the receiving end, people who weren't in the city were able to get blow-by-blow accounts by the minute of what was going on in up to 10 different parts of the city.

And in the days after the rally, a compilation of videos began springing up on YouTube, chronicling what happened on 7/9 for the world to see.

Facebook and Twitter were full of links of these sites and columnists, including myself, wrote in to express what we felt about the events on 7/9.

Thanks to the Internet, and by extension, the participatory nature of the Web, Malaysian citizens now have the power to be truly liberalized from one-sided viewpoints and claims from government-friendly media organizations.

In short, the tools of the Internet have enabled Malaysians to see and judge for themselves what happened on 7/9 in their country. This development is significant in that it places the issue of good governance, or the lack thereof, squarely back at the feet of the ruling government in power.

It also ensures that more people are informed, thereby, going back to the principle that a democratic country's citizens are ultimately the ones who put a sitting government in power in the first place.

A while back, I opined in a column of my uncertainty over whether the Internet and ostensibly, social media, could by itself shape the political landscape of a country.

While I'm still not convinced that it can, I believe the one thing social media has been able to do is to democratize the tools of distribution such that ordinary people can have access to relevant and honest information.

As Bersih 2.0's chairperson, Ambiga Sreenevasan, was quoted to say in news portal Malaysiakini: "No one can tell lies with the social media pictures and videos. The Internet together with social media is an amazing leveler among people when people from all races and communities came together on 7/9."

Along with these developments are signs that things could further change in the near-term. With the government's push to extend the reach of broadband in Malaysia and its agenda to depend on the Internet for everything from education to business to social-economic programs, the battleground for the nation's young minds is going to be fought in the cyber world.

Noting this trend, Jahabar Sadiq, CEO and editor of the popular The Malaysian Insider news portal, noted in a BBC report: "Internet media is changing the way people think, giving them a wider choice between what the government says and what is actually going on. Someone within Facebook or Twitter will capture people's imagination, and he or she will take over leadership of this country, I think, within a decade."

Whether this will happen or not in a decade remains to be seen but one thing is sure--the Malaysian political landscape has changed and will continue to evolve.

And technology is and will continue to be a central cog in this wheel of change.

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This is not the first time I've written about such developments but it certainly is the latest information we journalists have received on record, that the government feels there is no rush to dish out the licenses since the technology is deemed to be still nascent.

In reply to questions as to why the government had taken such a long time to decide on spectrum assignments, Joseph Salang Gandum, deputy minister of the Information, Culture and Communications, said his ministry merely decides on broad guidelines on such matters, and that the actual evaluation as to who gets the LTE spectrum falls under the purview of the regulator, the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC).

Another journalist pressed further on this matter and asked: "Doesn't the MCMC, which is under the purview of the ministry, get reports on the progress of the spectrum assignment?" The deputy minister had no answer to that query, only alluding to the fact that that question must be put to the MCMC directly. Unfortunately, there weren't any MCMC officials at the press conference to field the questions.

I find it strange that the second man in command of the ministry isn't abreast with what's going on in an agency his ministry is supposed to oversee. Perhaps it can be argued that he wasn't briefed on the matter. But then again, this too is strange, since during his speech earlier at the event in question, he alluded to LTE as a future technology that Malaysia at some point will embrace.

Politicians, while not technocrats who can be argued to be more in-the-know, still ought to have a better grasp as to what is really going on, especially one that is in charge of a national commodity such as spectrum. It's simply not acceptable and patently ironic that such questions cannot be answered squarely, especially when the event he is officiating is about that very same theme.

Now coming back to the question at hand: what's holding back MCMC's decision?

Make no mistake about it, I've argued in this blog before against service providers rushing headlong into building LTE networks in Malaysia, noting that not only do service providers in this country still have a lot do with their current spectrum resources but also with the quality of service--everything from customer service to billing discrepancies to poor coverage--before trying to push the limits of higher speeds and selling more bandwidth.

Such warnings have also be validated by industry watchers.

However, while I still stand by that, the fact is that the government, through MCMC, did earlier call for detailed business plans (DBP) to be submitted by nine service providers, detailing how they planned to build a business case for LTE should they be successful in obtaining the spectrum.

Given the fact that the MCMC did indeed ask for DBPs, when will they eventually reveal to the industry and the public its decision?

Industry sources I spoke with said the MCMC was still tweaking the requirements and had in April/May asked service providers to re-submit their plans to include other details that weren't called for earlier.

Is this going to be the order of the day going forward? Is the MCMC going to continue delaying its decision? And for how long?

One source I spoke with, who was familiar with the matter, could only say that MCMC was still busy evaluating things over, and that an announcement will be made "in due course".

While it's the absolute prerogative of the MCMC to release its findings and decisions as and when it deems ready to do so, I do believe what the industry is asking for, that is, a timetable and a semblance of certainty as to when this entire assignment process will see the light of day--to enable them to plan for the future--isn't at all unreasonable.

MCMC should comply with the industry's reasonable request as this not only goes to show that it is an agency that is on top of managing precious commodities like spectrum, but is willing to work with the industry for the betterment of Malaysia.

What's interesting to note is that about three weeks after that posting, one of the most high-profile announcements in the tech world came courtesy of Steve Jobs, who announced at the Apple's Worldwide Developers' Conference that the company will be bringing its version of the cloud to the world this fall.

Dubbed Apple's iCloud, the service is a revamp of an earlier online storage offering which the company called MobileMe and has been tweaked to be able to offer, among other things, music on the move through the cloud.

Unlike its rivals Google and Amazon, both of which launched their version of their cloud offerings a couple of months earlier, iCloud doesn't require users to upload their digital music collection before using it. The reason for this is that Apple has cut deals with all major music record labels, thereby, allowing users to download on any device any song they have ever bought.

Many commentators have since hailed iCloud as the next big thing that Apple is heading into and expect consumers to lap it up.

The New York Times quoted Mike McCue, a veteran Silicon Valley executive who now heads Flipboard, a popular news app for iPhone and iPads as saying: "This is a milestone in computing. The fact that you no longer have to think in terms of files and folders is a big deal."

In that same article, Gartner analyst Mike McGuire was quoted as saying that Apple's service was superior to its competitors. "When you buy something new, it's now automatically on all of your devices. You don't have to think about it."

But for me, the most interesting observation came from a Wired Magazine article. In it, Brian Chen, the author noted that the biggest thing about the iCloud service wasn't about how cloud computing is taking hold in the consumer world, neither was it about how groovy Apple's iCloud music service was but rather that Apple has now achieved vendor and device lock-in like never before.

Chen noted the new feature set introduced by Apple tightens its vertical integration of its software ecosystem by amplifying its "lock-in" goal. "The idea behind this strategy is: If you're an iPhone customer today, how can you resist buying a Mac or an iPad now, and why would you buy a Windows PC or an Android device? And if you're already plugged into Apple's cloud ecosystem, why use a cross-platform solution like Dropbox or Google Docs to store your media, when the Apple-only experience is bound to be more optimized for you?"

An interesting point indeed.

In the battleground for dominance in the next frontier in computing, Apple is setting new bars and throwing down the gauntlet at its competitors, and I must say, doing a good job at it.

By providing an avenue for Apple users to extend its applications onto an online storage service via iCloud, and to do so with the seamless simplicity Apple is known for, Jobs is effectively challenging the paradigm of the day--that computing and multimedia revolve around devices that have been for years localized in homes and offices.

With iCloud and a host of tightly controlled devices [Macs, iPads and iPhones], apps via iTunes and its huge developer ecosystem and iCloud services, Apple is seeking to break that paradigm.

However, while I can understand Jobs' proposition and Apple's strategy going forward, I'm not entirely convinced that it's a good thing for end-users such as you and me.

Being an Apple user for the past four years, including going through three iterations of iPhones, I can tell you that Apple's tightly-controlled ecosystem, while very functional and user friendly, is also extremely rigid.

From how you handle files and move them between devices, managing your applications, to what kind of file formats they play, Apple products can be a real pain if you're not subscribing to the rules set by them.

By acceding to how Jobs is positioning iCloud, users will invariably be subjected to Apple's control of how data is managed and how services are rolled out. Ultimately, such moves limit the choices of consumers, and enforce more lock-in on the part of the consumers, which I believe is not necessarily a good thing.

If the history of computing has taught us anything, it's this: Vendor lock-in became a bane for the industry because such moves only limit the choices consumers' have and this also means that they are at the mercy of everything that a particular vendor--in this case, Apple--dictates.

But thankfully, Apple's iCloud isn't the only way to go for consumers who still want choice. As Times columnist, Verne G. Kopytoff , noted in his blog, the Apple iCloud may not be a threat to online storage services as yet.

Kopytoff argued that there are still some uncertainties over the iCloud promise such as pricing, interoperability with other software formats and other feature sets such as sharing across different platforms.

At the end of the day, Apple's iCloud may turn out to be a paradigm shift in how consumers move away from the PC and laptop as the center of their computing universe.

But the jury's still out on whether Apple will be able to knock a number of innovative companies offering cloud services off their perch yet.

And the good thing is that is that with so much at stake, you can bet that these companies certainly won't be standing on the sidelines but will instead constantly innovate and provide more options for us consumers to turn to.

And what of consumers who do go the way of Apple's iCloud?

They would do well to note that they would need to dance to Apple's every tune and be prepared to face with perhaps the mother of all lock-ins.