Here are 5 useful tools that I have used in building software. The list is not specific to any language but may be useful to you as a software engineer. It is also not arranged in sequence as in importance or any kind. Here is the list:

I was searching for news and updates over the Internet and I was surprised with this news: Johnny Depp is Dead! Whoah! Is it true? I can’t believe the news so I went on looking for proof. I couldn’t find one. I couldn’t believe the news because he recently had a movie Alice in Wonderland.  Apparently, this was all from celebrity death rumors. Johnny Depp is NOT dead.  You can read the stories from the following URLs:

Marvel.com now has released the first trailer of Iron Man 2. This time, his encounter is with Whiplash.

I happened to be downtown when I went to a place that we call China town. It was quite a while when I last visited the place. As expected, I got surprised and amazed. Gadgets with very known brands were sold. What’s surprising then? Well, it was sold at a far lesser price than what you see normally. A blackberry is sold at P5,300.00 only! I got really curious and went up to see for myself. I asked the sales lady if I can try it. It looked like a blackberry. It was also packed with features. What’s amazing is that it’s only at that place where you can see a DUAL-SIM blackberry. It also has a TV built into it! It has wifi, bluetooth, and many more.  What’s not surprising is the warranty period. They only had one week warranty. Well, it was worth the visit. Sometimes we buy these kinds of gadgets just for prestige. China town is just the right place to get some. The only questionable thing there is the quality. If showing off is the goal, then China town merchandise will fit your need lolz.

This is quite late but I want to share it anyway. I read from Inquirer (October 26, 2009) that BlackBerry introduced its new smartphone — the BlackBerry Curve 8520. What interests me is that they released it at a cheaper price, way lower than the usual P35,000.00. Guess what? It’s P14,995! Let’s take a look at its features (visit their website for more info):

Available Features

• 2.0MP Digital Camera
• Video Camera Capabilities
• Supports BlackBerry App World™
• 256MB Flash Memory
• Wi-Fi® enabled
• BlackBerry® Maps

Home | Events | Workshops

DabaweGNU, Inc.

Software Freedom Day 2009 Celebrating Free/ Open Source Software in Davao! Once again, DabaweGNU is joining the rest of the World in celebrating Software Freedom Day. This year the event will be celebrated on Saturday, September 19, 2009 from 1:00-5:00 PM. It will be held at the Auditorium of the University of Immaculate Conception in Bangkerohan. Various presentations on FOSS technology and issues will be presented by luminaries of the FOSS community in Davao. The Keynote Speaker will be Hon. Councilor Pete Lavina. Presentations: Keynote Speaker: Hon. Councilor Pete Lavina Network Booting and Virtualization – Holden Hao This will be a demo presentation. Holden will present the FOSS technologies that are currently deployed at the DabaweGNU laboratory. This includes network booting (no hard drives required!) and virtualization. The platform has proven to be an affordable and easy to manage setup for a computer laboratory. And Yes, the platform supports Windows too! Free Software and Issue Advocacy – Victor Sapar Vic Sapar, a well known advocate for the use of FOSS among NGO’s will be presenting his experiences in promoting FOSS to NGOs. He will tackle issues that hinder the mass adoption of FOSS and suggest ways to mitigate such problems. Blogging in an Open Source World – Kevin Paquet His talk in last years SFD 2008 was one of the memorable ones. He was still a high school student then. More mature and with more bullets this time, he will be presenting the latest updates and features of his favorite Blogging platform, WordPress. Business Intelligence – Evamay dela Rosa Computer applications and systems are often used to manage operations.  Only a few are being used for business intelligence and decision making.  Evamay will present the importance of business intelligence and available FOSS tools for its implementation. IdeaCamp: Open Sourcing Ideas – Mark Maglana IdeaCamp is an unconference of ideas initiated by Mark Magalana.  In this presentation, Mark will talk about the rational of the project and share his experience in organizing an Ideacamp.  He will also share best practices on how to setup your own ideacamps. Laptops for Education:  The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) Project Last Year, DabaweGNU won in the best event competition together with 2 other organizations.  The prize was a pair of OLPC laptops.  The educational theory and features of the OLPC will be presented  during SFD 2009. Lightning Talks Lightning talks are mini presentations that are open to anyone who would like to share anything about FOSS philosophy, technology, community and issues.  The participants to SFD 2009 is highly encouraged to share their knowledge and skills. *** Giveways will be provided by SFD International, DabaweGNU and IBM Philippines *** What Convention When 09-19-2009 01:00 PM to 09-19-2009 05:00 PM Where Auditorium,  University of Immaculate Concenption, Bangkerohan, Davao City Contact Name Diosanne Senor Contact Email sane.dio@dabawegnu.org Contact Phone +6382 227-5629 Add event to calendar vCal iCal For updated information please visit our project page.

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Earlier this evening, the Digital Filipino Club had its annual Bloggers Networking Event (which was also called Bloggers’ Fellowship) at the Grand Regal Hotel at Lanang. The event was still sponsored by PAGCOR and was still headed by Ms. Janet Toral. This was the second time I attended such event and it was pretty interesting. First, I saw Sir Loi of Philnits. He was invited by my former student Kieven. As expected, he was fascinated and was curious about many things. I’m glad he was invited to this event where he can witness the world of bloggers. The next interesting part is the number of participants from the University of the Immaculate Conception. I’m sure that ours is the largest number because two tables is not enough. The “UIC delegates” were composed of some faculty members, alumni/alumnae, and students. It’s funny also that most of us won freebies. One of us won a flash drive from the bingo game. Another progress was that I was able to talk to Mr. Blogie about a possible blogging venture for a client that I have — Kalinawan: The Ultimate Outdoor Destination. I’ve been promoting the resort and was in search for the best bloggers I could find. Honestly, I wouldn’t have attended the fellowship if it weren’t for this endeavour. I’m glad I did. Finally after the event, we gathered around to see the people playing poker. Well, I was told it was Lucky 9 and I don’t know how to play any of it. What made it interesting is that I saw one of my classmates in high school and the classmate of my sister. Apparently, they have been regular visitors at the hotel. They were very helpful in showing me around and helping me and my students win a round of Lucky 9 with just the free P300 coupons we got from the fellowship event. I think they have been doing that for a while — riding along bets on Lucky 9. They were quite good at it. The only unpleasant thing there was that there were some pickpockets who was able to pick on one of my colleagues. Well, it’s good that it was only the coupon and nothing really big was lost.  Overall, I had a productive night and it was worth the decision of not going to a masters class that I’m currently enrolled.

I have been a subscriber of TechRepublic for a few years now and I liked what they have been posting. One of their publications was this: The industry’s 10 best IT certifications. This can guide students choose among the many certifications. It’s worth sharing. Here’s a list with their links:

1. Microsoft Certified IT Professional
2. Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist
3. CompTIA’s Security+
4. Microsoft Certified Professional Developer
5. Cisco Certified Network Associate
6. CompTIA’s A+
7. The Project Management Professional
8. Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE) and Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator (MCSA)
9. Certified Information Systems Security Professional
10. CompTIA’s Linux+

TechRepublic has released an article about 10 dying IT skills. These skills are believed to be falling out of favor by the ICT industry. These skills are as follows:

1. Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM)
2. Novell Netware
3. Visual J++
4. Wireless Application Protocol
5. Coldfusion
6. RAD/Extreme Programming
7. Siebel
8. SNA
9. HTML
10. COBOL

Details about why these 10 are considered dying IT skills can be seen here.

Is it possible for a web service to accept a client’s data and analyze it without decrypting or seeing its private data? For IBM, it is possible. Unlike the RSA where a public key is given for encryption and your own private key for decryption, IBMs fully homomorphic encryption eliminates the need for private keys since there is no need to decrypt the data. This is a very useful technology specially for those offering Software as a Service (SAAS)  where software do not reside on the client’s site but on the vendor’s site. This improves privacy of client data even if vendors carry them.