Showing posts with label Android. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Android. Show all posts

Sunday, November 29, 2009

Transparency with Maximum Sexual Appeal

Here’s how to maximize the sexual appeal of anything related to the functioning of the government. Do most Malaysians care about functions of the government?

Observing the comments on the Prime Minister’s 1Malaysia blog, there’s a good indication that we care most about those which directly impact us personally. If we go to any magazine stand, there’s almost nothing offered that’s related to the workings of the government. At any display, most of the glossy magazines offer maximum sexual appeal. That’s what people people are attracted to and perhaps care about.

How can maximum sexual appeal be given to MACC’s report that 60% of government allocations for vital infrastructure projects in Sarawak have been misappropriated and diverted elsewhere? The fact that billions of ringgits of taxpayer money have been siphoned off has no appeal, except perhaps to anti-establishment species.

Do we care about why the Minister in-charge, Dr. George Chan, have not owned up and resigned? Do we ask why the minister needs to investigate the MACC report and to find out who is responsible when obviously he is the only one responsible? Many would care if the report was about how many young girls from China the minister is keeping, given that Sarawak is now a haven for China girls.

But it does not have to be sexual to be appealing. The sexual appeal of things related to the functions of the government can be maximized by using augmented reality. A company called Sunlight Labs, has done this by opening up the US government. The US government provides a portal, www.recovery.gov, for anyone to track where government money is being spent, who receives how much. The portal allows for reporting of potential fraud, waste, and abuse.

Sunlight Labs published the marked-up recovery.gov contract data and the results are fascinatingly appealing. You can point your iPhone 3Gs or Android phone in any direction and see the closest recipients to where you are. Some are surprised to see that an auto shop and a Bible college in their neighborhood received a lot more money than the technical college, eco-car company and Native American youth program down the road.

This is a great and sexy example of how government functions can be presented to improve transparency.

The Government’s official data set is published on the Layar Augmented Reality platform. Layar, is an application that overlays your view of the real world with waypoints representing your favorite coffee place, the cinema you're trying to find, or in this case, where some of that $787 billion from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is going.

This is the kind of sexual appeal, similar to recovery.gov, that the new Sarawak state government must adapt. But while the recovery.gov website is beautifully designed, it does not provide raw or bulk data that would allow for open-ended analysis by the community at large. Until a government opens up access to the bulk data for other people to analyze, reporting its own data on its own websites does not equate to transparency.

Source:
Sunlight Labs
The Star

Saturday, November 29, 2008

Women of Mass Influence - Cher Mi Wang




Cher Mi Wang is the dame behind the success of High Tech Computer Corporation (HTC). The daughter of one of the richest man in Taiwan, in 1997, she entered in a partnership with HT Cho and Peter Chou to form HTC.

She invested heavily in the company. The first success came in 2000 with orders from HP. HTC became the big hit in 2002, when the first Pocket PCs based on Microsoft’s Windows Mobile were developed. This attracted the attention of some big wireless providers such as AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless, Sprint Nextel, O2, Vodafone and Orange. HTC began producing units for the various carriers mentioned above and brands like Qtek, Dopod (division of HTC), Dell, Fujitsu-Siemens, HP, i-mate and Sharp.

HTC has brought innovative ideas to the industry. The popular Touch series, models are attractive and employ the finger friendly TouchFLO interface. On top of that, HTC is the creator of the first Android OS phone, the HTC Dream (T-Mobile G1). Today other major carriers are using HTC's smartphones.

About Me

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Cyberjaya, Malaysia
Now if only Playboy hopped on the Augmented Reality bandwagon . . . aahh . . . the possibilities.