D4

Groovetech
By Jun P. Velasco

Technews
Peerless forecast

EVERY MONDAY January 9, 2012

Twitter for BlackBerry updates now available in BlackBerry App World

hope to share some predictions on how existing technologies will evolve and what new technologies can be expected. Peerless Forecast. It is easy to project what the future is for personal data storage. It will obviously become smaller and smaller, and with greater and even greater capacity or maybe not. One of the earliest forms of data storage, if not the first, is the Selectron Tube, which measures 10 inches long and 3 inches wide and can store up to 512 bytes of information. Nowadays, a micro SD memory card, that measures barely over half an inch in width, can store as much as 32GB. That is 33,554,432,000 bytes or 65 million times more data storage capacity than the Selectron Tube developed in 1946. But even with such a high capacity storage in a smaller and easy to lose micro SD package, we still ask for more and more. So it really begs the question, what really is the future for personal data storage? Before getting into answering that question, lets go back a bit through history. And if you happen to know some of these devices by experience, you are probably about my age. Which is really a fine age to be, considering I have personally experienced how this technology has evolved. To make things more relatable, lets just focus our discussion of storage devices in relation to how music has been stored, played back and shared. What I could remember as the first and the most fragile of them all is the vinyl album, that has gone the way of the dinosaur. It came in two size formats, the 12-inch and the 7-inch, which ran in different speeds. The later can only carry two songs back to back but there are versions that have bonus tracks. Yes folks, bonus tracks were around as early as the 60s. In some circles, the vinyl album is gaining some of its popularity, but I think more for its nostalgic value,

since the quality of the music playback will always have that heavy tone to it. Then, the magnetic tape became popular and behold, the era of the cassette tape. More capable and less fragile, the cassette tape became the norm for quite awhile. It plays back music with very little difficulty, but finding a song can be a bit of a challenge. Rewind and fast-forward were verbs created by this storage device. And like any great technology, a new one will surpass it and the compact disk or CD,heralded a new generation. A quick evolution later and we have the DVD or Digital Versatile Disk (formerly Digital Video Disk), which not only stored music, but also videos of the artist/s as bonus. Linkin Parks Meteora DVD album is a good example of music and video in one. It featured the music and the album in the making -- makes for fantastic marketing. And then, I thought it ended there, but not. The creation of a new audio compression called the mp3 created a wave of new storage devices. Requiring less space, the simplest mp3 device can store as much as 1000 music and playback as easily. And with this generation, it is the iPod that stood to define the way we store and listen to music. So after some thought, I realized maybe it really ends here. I can seem to imagine it becoming smaller, and smaller still. With greater and even greater capacity, until the cloud came along. My peerless forecast is that storage devices may disappear all together in favor of simple playback devices, which simply get its information from the cloud. Google cloud along with Apples iCloud, are at the moment the best offsite storage facilities. I have personally experienced the iCloud and I must say it deserves its own feature. But the reality of storage devices disappearing depends on how the wireless world will evolve. The demand will be that it becomes faster and faster, with easier and wider access.

R
World.

IM is pleased to announce an update to Twitter for BlackBerry smartphones v2.1 is now available in BlackBerry App

Twitter for BlackBerry smartphones v2.1 updates include: Multi-Account Support - Have up to five accounts on your Twitter for BlackBerry smartphones app. Switch between accounts and

cross-post Tweets and Retweets from one account to another without switching the current account view. Enhanced Share with BBM functionality - Easily share Tweets with BBM Contacts and Groups. View multiple Twitter accounts in a single timeline - View a stream of Tweets from up to five Twitter accounts in the Social Feeds timeline, or opt to filter individual Twitter accounts. Post a Tweet to multiple Twitter Accounts Publish a Tweet to

one or more Twitter accounts simultaneously using Social Feeds. Quick Links: Download the apps from BlackBerry App World: www.blackberry. com/appworld * The Twitter for BlackBerry smartphones v2.1 app is available for users running BlackBerry OS v5.0 and up. Multi-account support integration with Social Feeds is available for users running BlackBerry 6 OS and up.

Preparing the future IT professional

he SAP University Alliances program is a global endeavor that provides university faculty members with the tools and resources necessary to teach students how technology can enable integrated business processes and strategic thinking. SAP University Alliances program member schools gain access to use SAP software. SAP UAP member schools gain access to the SAP Business Suite family of solutions, including SAP Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). And this comprehensive business software suite supports business, engineering, and information technology programs, enabling students to put classroom theory into practice through demonstrations, problem solving exercises, case studies and research programs. Hands-on experience with SAP

Whos hot and whos not?

Technology and the companies owning it are moving forward to make it better each year. For those who cant go with the flow, theyre doomed to be forgotten; those who can, succeed and earn billions of bucks. Such is life either you keep up with the changing times or be easily forgotten in a single failure even after being the leader for several years. As we say hello to the big year 2012, join me as I look at some of the tech companies from a consumers perspective. HP is once again in its stabilization state, especially with its new CEO Meg Whitman. Though the company is stable per se, its strategies for the technologies used are under transformation. I hope they dont make mistakes anymore such as the introduction and immediate pull out of the Slate. Google has an exciting year ahead as it continues to grow rapidly and transform the technological landscape. Over the last year, it has introduced Google Plus among others, which the public greatly embraced. This year, we look forward to what new things it will launch and how it will utilize Android and Motorola to bring continued growth towards the company. RIM is really struggling to stay alive. The sales of BlackBerry smartphones may be high in Asian countries, but it is not the case in other regions. In 2011, its value as a company has reportedly gone very low shockingly low, in fact. Will they do something WOW this year? I hope so. Samsung has been successful so far in making a buzz from all its products, especially with its smartphones. Throughout 2011, it has launched several products to fit different market segments. It is still not par from Apple and Google, but well see what happens. Nokia is still in the game, but not as big time as it used to be. The Nokia brand continues to be strong in the Philippines as a cellphone brand, but not so much as a smartphone maker. But now that it has partnered with Microsoft and has recently launched new smartphone units, will their brand be able to keep up? Apple has shown so much innovation throughout the past years, upping the smartphone leadership with an ease. Now that Steve Jobs has passed, the company is in a transitional state. It might be able to manage its spot on top, but will definitely face struggles and slowdowns at some points. Globe must work on and prove what it has launched last November to build a bigger, faster and modern network, which will ensure us Filipinos are connected all the time. Its network modernization program will hugely impact the mobile experience of its subscribers. Will they be able to attend to their promises? Smart continues its battle with Globe by offering great deals and promos. Now that Smart and Sun are starting to offer plans as a result of its merger, it will be a defining year to see what may happen to the telco wars. What may happen in 2012 is everybodys ball game. The tech industry is generally strong and vibrant, but companies need to work hard to maintain its ball on the winning side of the fence; else, it might fall. This year will be exciting! (Glenn Richmond Ong)

solutions allows program members to gain insight into how technology can empower a business to optimize key processes. These business processes include, for example, accounting and controlling, human capital management, project planning, plant and materials management, and

sales and distribution. Member schools, Mapa Institute of Technology (MIT) and Technological Institute of the Philippines (TIP), cite the invaluable contribution of the program toward becoming members since 2008. SAP has also been an important tool in businesses.

Software helps identify anonymous writers, helps them stay that way
our writing style is a little like your fingerprint. Your word choice, spelling, punctuation, sentence structure and syntax are all dead giveaways. Stylometry, the study of linguistic style, has been used to out the authors behind some of historys most disputed documents, from Shakespearean sonnets to the Federalist Papers. In the latter, John Madisons penchant for the word "whilst" was a big distinguisher; Alexander Hamilton preferred plain old "while." Now graduate students at Drexel University have released two potentially provocative stylometry tools, which could have larger repercussions for whistleblowers, human rights advocates, hackers and, well, anyone who doesnt want their writing traced back to them down the road. One tool helps identify the author of a disputed document, and another helps authors avoid detection. The students released early, "alpha" versions of their tools on Thursday at a convention of the Chaos Computer Club, a hackers group, in Berlin. The tools, which are still young, imperfect and buggy, build on existing author recognition tools like Signature, a program created by Peter Millican of Oxford University, and the Java Graphical Authorship Attribution Program, or JGAAP, a similar program de-

signed by Patrick Juola of Duquesne University. The researchers said their recognition tool, JStylo, works best within a limited suspect pool (50 people or less), when there are 6,500 words of available writing samples per suspect (Tweets, emails and instant messages will do) and if the disputed document is 500 words or longer. Within those parameters, Drexel researchers said, they can identify an author "with a very high level of accuracy." Practically speaking, that means the tool could be most effective in, say, a corporate whistleblowing case where an employer could narrow a list of suspects to its employees and compare any anonymous documents to employee e-mails or reports. Identifying a human rights advocate would widen the suspect pool and make recognition more difficult, but not impossible. This is partly why researchers say they developed a second tool, Anonymouth, which helps authors disguise their writing. "Authorship recognition can be a legitimate threat to privacy and

anonymity," the researchers said in their presentation on Thursday. Anonymouth builds on JStylos findings to suggest ways to modify documents - by adding more sentences, using more complex words or switching up punctuation - to help authors mask their writing. Both tools are "still a work in progress," Rachel Greenstadt, the faculty adviser for the project, said in an interview on Thursday. But its easy to see how they could be pushed into practical use. An report commissioned by the Federal Bureau of Investigation that was published in 2009 warned of "a growing need to identify writers not by their written script, but by analysis of the typed content." (NYT)