by admin | Apr 11, 2016 | National News
The Philippines now has 18 biomass power plants able to produce a combined 241 megawatts (MW) of electricity – enough to energize more than 300,000 homes, former Sen. Juan Miguel Zubiri said Sunday.
“Fired mainly by bagasse and rice husk, 16 of the biomass energy producers are already dispatching power to the grid, while a couple are under project commissioning and ready to supply the grid,” Zubiri, a strong advocate of renewable energy, said.
The 241-MW installed capacity does not include another 166 MW from biomass power generators installed by private firms for their own consumption of electricity, not for grid use, according to the former senator.
“What is great about biomass fuel from energy stored in agricultural waste is that it always available, adds value to farm crops, and is carbon neutral,” Zubiri said.
He said biomass power producers are providing growers additional income from bagasse, the sugarcane fiber waste left after juice extraction, and rice husk, the shell separated from rice grains during the milling process.
Among all renewable energy sources, Zubiri said biomass is the most labor-intensive since it involves the gathering of farm waste – an activity that tends to benefit low-income households.
“Anything that reduces our dependence on foreign oil for electricity is always most welcome,” he said.
Two of the largest biomass power plants are fired by bagasse and were put up in the “sugar bowl” of Negros Occidental by packaged food and beverage producer Universal Robina Corp. (URC) and diversified sugar manufacturer Victorias Milling Co. Inc. (VMC).
URC’s facility in Kabankalan City has an installed capacity of 46 MW, while VMC’s plant in Victorias City has 34 MW, both for grid use.
The Visayas now has an installed capacity of 136 MW from biomass energy, Luzon has 81 MW, and Mindanao, 24 MW.
The Renewable Energy Law of 2008 authored by Zubiri has accelerated the development of the country’s “green” energy resources and is now driving jobs growth in the countryside.
According to the Renewable Energy Management Bureau, more than 2.9 million jobs — mostly in construction and engineering services — have been created by the boom in wind, solar, geothermal, hydro and biomass power projects.
The Renewable Energy Law — Republic Act 9513 — aims to lessen national dependence on electricity generated from imported and highly pollutive fuel oil and coal.
Under the law, the Energy Regulatory Commission can guarantee fixed rate per kilowatt-hour – the FIT rates – for power producers harnessing renewable energy under the FIT system.
A trust fund also provides grants, loans, equity investments, loan guarantees, insurance, counterpart fund or such other financial arrangements to renewable energy developers.
by admin | Apr 9, 2016 | Headlines, Tech Talk
On March 27, 2016, the COMELEC website was defaced by Anonymous Philippines and then a second attack by LulzSec Pilipinas allowed them to leak the entire database of voter information online.
During registration, voters provide to COMELEC their full names, birth day, address, signature, picture and finger prints or their biometrics. These information are what your bank, phone company and credit card company use to verify you. Following the leak of the COMELEC database, malicious persons can theoretically pretend to be you.
An estimated 1.3 million overseas Filipino voters and 15.8 million fingerprint records are included in the leaked database. It is the biggest government related data breach in the world so far.
COMELEC stored the voter registration database without encryption so when the data breach happened, the leaked data is shown in plain text.
Voters should be vigilant in monitoring their bank, credit card and other financial and sensitive transactions. Any unusual activity should be reported to the bank or financial institution for review.
by admin | Apr 9, 2016 | Local News / Bohol Balita, Tech Talk
By: Zion Campo
Startup Weekend Bohol 2 is coming!
Time is almost up and we’re getting pretty pumped up! It’s time for Boholano innovators to volt in. Startup Weekend Bohol 2 will sure be a whirlwind event with startup enthusiasts, aspiring entrepreneurs and established businessmen congregating to celebrate the awesomeness of innovation, tech and entrepreneurship!
Seriously though, a lot of things will happen this Startup Weekend Bohol 2. Ideas will get pitched, teams will argue, some might sizzle and others might triumph. The whole event will be chaotic for the uninitiated so here are some things you need to remember to stay sane this coming Startup Weekend Bohol 2.
1. Prepare. Prepare. Prepare.
Before you drop by this coming April 15, be sure that you are all ready for war. Because it will be a battleground out there. You only have 60 seconds to for the firepitch round so you’ll need to prepare what you’ll say. Those 60 seconds are important to get your idea to the next round and convince others to join you.
Research your idea. BUT DON’T BUILD IT YET. Rehearse your 60 second pitch. Think of something that will make people remember you and your idea.
Don’t forget to book your lodging if you’re out of the area since it will be a long night ahead of you! Assemble your Startup Weekend starter kit a.k.a. whatever you need to do great work. Don’t forget to bring your business cards too!
Startup Weekend Bohol 2 is a great avenue to connect with great people who do extraordinary work.
2. Shed Your Shyness
You’ll get the most of Startup Weekend Bohol 2 if you go out there and mingle. I know you’re scared, a little bit worried that you’ll embarrass yourself but what’s life without a little bit of hiccups.
Honestly, other people around you are probably just as scared as you are. Don’t be afraid to say hi, introduce yourself and connect. Hold a conversation with someone, hold a genuine conversation.
During Startup Weekend Bohol 2, if you’re working with your squad or team, we’ll most likely separate you from your buddies and introduce you to new people. We encourage you to expand your circle of human friends!
3. Listen to Your Customers
One thing you should be doing during Startup Weekend Bohol 2 is to validate your idea. How should you do it? Get out there and talk to your customers!!!
And we don’t mean, ask your friends to like your facebook page and consider that as validation. Ask people offline and do a survey online. Message your Facebook friends list. Leverage your connections. Don’t be squeamish about talking to your customers.
It’s hard to listen when the people you talk to tells you that your idea isn’t something they would use or pay for. But it’s harder if you build it, then nobody’s going to actually use it because you didn’t actually validate your idea. Don’t waste your time building something people don’t want!
Don’t make that mistake. Your customers are your lifeblood if you’re going to do a startup. Make sure you’re building what they want, what they really want. Ask them questions.
4. Work With Your Team
Your idea can only go a long way without a good team. Work with them.
Even though you might be complete strangers in the beginning, you’ll get to know each other much better over the weekend. Know what each member brings to the table. Is it sales experience? Tech development knowledge? Project management skills? Design prowess?
Get to know your people better. You’ll be spending three days with your team. Don’t just tell them to do this and do that just because it’s your idea. Work with them and make good friends.
5. Ask Help From Mentors
Don’t forget we have mentors!
These guys are experienced people who know their stuff. They are there during Startup Weekend Bohol 2 to share their expertise. Listen to them young padawan.
Exercise caution though.
Take advice and consider if it will work for your startup idea. Don’t just gobble up everything they say. Be smart with taking advice. They are there to tell you what they’ve learned with their experience. But what might have gone well for them, might not go well for you.
Ask help from mentors but don’t swallow everything. Consider what they say. Implement what you think will be good for your startup idea.
6. Practice Your Pitch
During the end of the weekend, you’ll get on stage again to pitch your idea in front of judges.
Be sure you’ve practiced your pitch over and over and over again. You’ll be given ample time to practice. It’s your chance to shine and sell your idea so do your best. Don’t worry about messing up.
Everybody is nervous. Just breathe in, calm yourself and get the ball rolling.
7. Enjoy!
Startup Weekend Bohol 2 isn’t just all work, there’s also some having fun here and there. Don’t be so focused on trying to win the first prize that you forget to enjoy working over the weekend.
As they always say, the best thing about going after success is the journey towards it. Be in the NOW! It’s the weekend. Have fun!
by admin | Apr 8, 2016 | Headlines
Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) Secretary Adrian S. Cristobal announced that several manufacturing companies based in Osaka, Japan have expressed interest in embarking on partnerships and investment projects in the Philippines.
The Trade Secretary recently met with top officials of Kansai Economic Federation (Kankeiren) in Osaka to discuss investment opportunities in the Philippines. Secretary Cristobal met with Kankeiren Vice Chairman Masayuki Matsushita during the Philippine mission to Osaka.
“Our country is well positioned to encourage member companies of Kankeiren to see the Philippines as a hub for their operations. The Japanese SMEs can export from the Philippines to other ASEAN-member countries, as well as to Europe and the United states using trade agreements now in place,” Cristobal said.
With the advent of regional integration or the ASEAN Economic Community, the region will see increased free flow of capital and goods among member countries. Likewise, the Philippines is a beneficiary of both the European Union’s Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) Plus and the United States’ GSP which allows for duty free exports.
Cristobal said that the DTI has been working with Kankeiren to encourage Japanese small and medium enterprises to migrate operations to the Philippines.
“Kankeiren businessmen have expressed interest in waste management projects and in promoting disaster and environment management technologies. They can also invest in setting up SME-centric industrial estates on remaining government owned land,” Cristobal added.
Kankeiren is a non-profit organization composed of 1,400 members based in the Kansai area of Japan. Reportedly one of Japan’s largest economic organizations, Kankeiren represents the Kansai business community, educational corporations, and other entities that pursue economic activities in the Kansai region, which covers major cities such as Osaka, Kyoto, Hyogo, Nara, Shiga and Wakayama. It is the home base of some of Japan’s largest industrial corporations such as Panasonic, Corporation, Sharp Corporation, and Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, among others. (The three corporations are active members of Kankeiren.) Total export receipts from Kansai was valued at US$168 billion, cornering 20 percent of Japan’s total export income.
For more information on the services of the DTI, log-on to http://www.dti.gov.ph
by admin | Apr 8, 2016 | Opinion, Tech Talk
By: Jerome Auza
I openly support Rodrigo Duterte to be the next president of the country. Together with my wife, our family, our friends and colleagues, we have come to agree that Duterte is the right leader at this time, to steer the country for the next six years.
We’ve spent quite a sum of time and money campaigning, buying t-shirts and giving them away to people, printing hundreds of stickers and distributing them to the public and frequently promoting Duterte to our friends on Facebook. I may have overdone the Facebook part already and I might be already a “Dutertard” to some of my friends. Who knows some might have already unfollowed, or worse, unfriended me.
As we did our part as volunteers in the past few weeks, I had that feeling of familiarity to what we were doing. Contributions from thousands, if not millions, of volunteers towards a common cause seemed to be something very familiar to me as if I had been doing it for a long time.
And one day, it dawned on me. Duterte’s campaign is like open source software: made of contributions from so many people in different areas of expertise towards a common goal. The best example of a very successful open source software project is the Linux operating system.
Conceived in the early 1990s, Linux made its way into server systems, had difficult time penetrating the PC market but lately, it has become ubiquitous after Google built the Android operating system for mobile devices based on Linux.
Linux and other open source software are released to the public including its source code. Any developer can scrutinize the code, learn from it, improve it and possibly get his improvements accepted into future versions. By making the source code public, more eyes can review and study the code and discover defects or bugs.
Linux and FreeBSD (another open source operating system) have started to dominate the market with Android and Chromebook based on Linux and the MacOS based on FreeBSD. They have become so successful that Microsoft, the company that was the “opposite” of the open source software, has started to embrace open source software and have themselves, released some of their development platforms on Linux and open source.
The one thing, among others, that the open source software licenses guarantee, especially if the software uses the GNU Public License, is the freedom to use the software as you like. But you can’t claim to own it. Violate the license and you will get vilified by the open source community.
Contribute to the open source project and thousands and maybe millions of other users will benefit from your contribution.
Duterte’s volunteers are like the horde of seasoned software developers volunteering their time and expertise for a common good: free software. Free to acquire and give, free to use, free to be scrutinized and free to learn from. Some developers create new features, others fix bugs, others improve existing features and others organize the whole flow of development work from around the world. Other contributors write the documentation, create graphics, promote the software, help other people learn to use the software and many more.
However, instead of free software, the common goal of Duterte’s supporters is to give back to the Filipinos many freedoms it has lost in the past decades. Artists come up with designs for campaign materials. Musicians come up with songs, dancers choreograph dance moves, writers come up with blogs, owners of printing shops allowing the use of their equipment for free, photographers and videographers covering his rallies and many more. All done to help convince the Filipino voters to choose Duterte to be the 16th president of the country.
The Filipinos have lost or about to lose their freedom to walk the streets unharmed, their freedom to to scrutinize public information to help ensure effective use of national resources, their freedom to raise the youth free from drugs and other forms of addiction, their freedom from poor government service due to incompetent and corrupt public servants, their freedom to live in a peaceful environment and many other freedoms the normal Filipino citizen has been gradually losing in the past decades. Heck, we do not even have the freedom to enjoy fast and reliable Internet at a price comparable to western countries.
The Duterte supporters will put in the leader who they believe has the will and capability to give back to the Filipinos the many freedoms it has lost or about to lose. They have seen through the facade of traditional politicians who are backed by oligarchs. They will not be fooled again.
However, Duterte is not the long term solution. He will be running the affairs of the country for just six years. The Dutertards like me, and the rest of the Filipino people, will still be responsible for the long term success of the Filipino nation.
A Duterte presidency will just be like a new Linux version. It will be the 16th version of the Philippines. Hopefully, this time, the bugs of this country will get fixed or at least mitigated significantly. Corruption, incompetence of public servants, too much red tape, loopholes in the law, rising drug trade and crime. They are like persistent software bugs that bother you everyday and prevent you from being productive, from living life in freedom. People who keep creating bugs will get their butts kicked until they behave or leave or die if they violently resist arrest.
Just like the open source software community continuously contributing to Linux, the Filipinos need to continue contributing to the progress of the country, doing their part, disciplining themselves, following the law, paying taxes and staying vigilant in case any public servant tries to enrich himself. Some of us will be scrutinizing our systems looking for bugs and inefficiencies.
Lastly, many of us will keep an eye on Duterte and make sure he performs as mandated. Rest assured, we the Dutertards, will also be the ones to make sure that he delivers. Collectively, we have spent millions, if not billions campaigning for him. We will not let Duterte get away with lackluster performance. We will be a demanding horde of contributors.
All these going towards a much improved next version of the Philippines six years from now.
