Developers hate QA because they point out bugs in the software.

Marketing hates QA because they take up time and hold up releases.

The Execs hate QA because the Developers shouldn’t be creating buggy software to begin with.

Basically, everyone resents QA to a greater or lesser extent. At smaller companies, QA tends to be an entry-level job that people expect to move out of. If you’ve gotten a slot at a mature company with an entrenched QA presence, that will make it much better.

But the question that would arise is whether it’s better that the customers would point out the bugs or a QA to point out the bugs before getting it released to their customers? Well, the latter would be better for any company, but it’s just that most developers can’t help but get annoyed that someone is pinpointing the bugs on their system, or probably they’re getting annoyed that they weren’t able to make a perfect system (It’s theoretically impossible to make a perfect system though).

On my previous post, I already highlighted out the importance of QA on an organization, so let’s cut off the niffnaffs and get to the topic. Is it beneficial for a software company to have a ‘dedicated’ section for Quality Assurance? Here are some points to consider before deciding whether it’s beneficial or not:

• Is the size of the organization large, and the volume of projects is always at it’s peak?
• If yes, then it’s quite important to note that a dedicated team for QA would cut off the burden of the PLs and whoever is in charge of making the project plan. Having a separate process and project plan for Quality Assurance would ensure a better output on the QA’s part and for the project as a whole. Having separate Quality Assurance groups for each section is NOT economically wise for the company that is large, due to the fact that the number of projects per section vary from time to time, it isn’t wise to let QAs standby doing nothing, or have them get burdened by the number of evaluation projects. Having a separate QA section will enable better organizing and manpower allotment for evaluation projects, ensuring minimal indirect manhours, which will make best use of the company’s manpower.
• Can your company profit on an ‘independent’ quality inspection/QA/QE?
• What I mean here is if your company can make money off doing evaluations for products of different companies. That would mean that your QA’s wont only do internal project evaluations, but evaluations for external projects. If your organization/company does offer this services, then it’s important that your company should have a separate section to handle such projects. We won’t like having evaluation projects get mixed up on the list of pending projects for developers right? And the process/project plan of such projects are quite different when compared to the much extensive project plan for development projects (Evaluation project plans are sized down versions of development project plans). Most companies make most of it’s income on such services, and so having a section that is focused on such projects will help the company generate more income by delivering the best possible quality output for such evaluation projects while not sacrificing the speed of delivery of such projects.
• Is your organization/company large that trainings are done by batch?
• If yes, then a separate group/section of QAs will again be a better choice. Instead of mixing up trainings between developers and quality assurance personnel, it’ll be much organized if all QAs are grouped into one. Having a training that will cover on almost all types of evaluation projects will have an extra benefit for the company in case a particular type of project is on demand while other types of project are not (Embedded projects, desktop application projects, etc.)

If your organization/company isn’t that huge, it’s economically wise to have QAs for each section. But as time goes by, opportunities for monetizing evaluation services would arise, and if it does, it’s a wise decision to establish a group/section that specializes on such services.

Anyone can write a great software, but not all can write a “quality” product. That’s when QAs kick in, to save the reputation of a company and to ensure the quality of the products that a particular company sells, that would encourage customers be their “regular customer“. Everyone on an organization/company have their own specific forte and purpose, as the company grows, it should help their employees grow. Having a dedicated group for each people with similar purpose will help them focus more on what they already do best, making their best be perfect

Samsung and Intel are the main technical steering team of the Tizen project, along with Linux Foundation (It seems like Samsung just replaced Nokia’s place), and considering the fact that Samsung does have another operating system that they’re working on, I’m quite unsure about this project. I just can’t figure out why would Samsung start out a new project while they still have Bada OS, or I mean, Bada Platform? We all know that Google made it clear on it’s decision regarding Motorola, but we all do know that businessmen won’t easily fall for such a reason. I find it safe to assume that Samsung is just playing safe, or is preparing for it’s own risk management if ever Google decides to pull out the plug. Samsung gets most of it’s mobile income from Android based devices, and Bada isn’t catching up quickly as was expected when Wave I was released. Could this be the reason why it’s opting to add up another OS on it’s portfolio, preferably an OpenSource OS that would be under their grip (oh sorry about that, but I do know that Samsung wanted to make sure that no one would assume it this way, which is why they, along with Intel, gave the leadership to Linux Foundation)?

Tizen seemed like a great new OS if ever it does materialize, with the fact that it’s gonna allow the use of HTML5 to create applications and services on Tizen. We all do know that Windows 8 is also having similar plans regarding the new niche, HTML5, and Windows would always stay as a “proprietary” software. With something similar to Windows 8, and is OpenSource, it might get most of the developer’s interest upon it’s first release. WebOS had similar objectives years ago, but unfortunately though, HTML wasn’t as powerful as it is today, considering that even Adobe and Microsoft are planning to stop the development of their multimedia platforms (Flash and Silverlight) just because HTML5 can do what their products do, and so we could keep our hopes high on both Tizen OS and Windows 8.

But there are some few points that I would like to share, and one of those is similar to what I do not like about Google’s Android. When we see a lot of devices being built on top of Android, we would find ourselves craving for something premium. Yeah, there are a lot of Android devices that offer great hardware, but their interfaces are all the same. It’s true that we can flash in a new rom or get another launcher, but again, we still would have the same ‘Android’ feel, no matter what brand of phone we got. The bad part is that the big players are releasing tons of new models every year that I can’t even understand why do they do that. Samsung got Galaxy SII, and now they got Galaxy Note, the same goes with HTC, LG, Sony Ericsson, Motorola, ZTE, and another dozen more Android manufactures who keep on making new models 2 to 3 times faster than Apple. Even if they say that it adds up to the customer’s choices, I find it a lot less attractive than companies like Apple who wouldn’t release a ton of new models with similar specifications.

With that in mind, I’m expecting the same with Tizen OS, considering that it is also an OpenSource project. I would rather get a Windows Phone than get an operating system that is being used by more than hundreds of ‘different’ phone models. You might wonder why. The most simplest reason is the fact that not all apps will be compatible with your phone. The only requirements of apps that were written on Android market was the minimum OS version. Crap that, no minimum hardware specifications??? And another thing, come on, if I were to develop on that device, how sure will I be that this particular app that I made would work well on most, if not all, of the android devices out there on the universe? I can’t possible have the funds to buy most of the Android models out there to test out my app before releasing it to the market. Windows Phone on the other hand is quite different. The Operating system itself does have a minimum requirement (I do know that Android does have too, but unfortunately, 3D apps that work on an Froyo device with a 1Ghz or more processor wont work on a Froyo device with a puny 600Mhz), and it’s SDK is quite controlled to what most, if not all, of the Windows phone’s capabilities. If ever Tizen get’s released, I would love to see it have the same approach as Windows Phone regarding it’s hardware specifications that would help the developers tell the customers what devices does their apps work on.

Another point to consider is it’s marketplace. I do know that most marketplaces like apple store/itunes, Android market, Windows Phone marketplace, and BlackBerry appworld requires some sort of fee for the developers to post their apps on the market place (Android is around $25, Windows is around $99) plus having some sort of “tax”, ranging from 20% to 40% of the sales for each application that are placed on the marketplace (I do not know about the freeware apps though), but interestingly, I couldn’t find any ‘clue’ that would point out that Samsungapps charge developers/sellers for a signup fee or a fee to post apps on their marketplace. Aside from royalty fee or “tax” per sale, I wasn’t able to find anything that points out that Samsung charges developers for THEIR apps. And we all know that Bada Platform uses this marketplace (aside from the few Android applications hosted there for a limited Samsung Phone models), which I do really find it attractive. Come on, I was even planning to create apps for Bada instead of Android even though I own an Android device! Hopefully considering that one of Tizen’s technical steering team is Samsung and the Leadership from Linux Foundation, I hope that it’s marketplace will be similar to Samsungapps or the free world of Linux (But my hopes aren’t that high since Tizen OS is an OpenSource OS. I can’t figure out where would Tizen get it’s funds aside from the marketplace).

I just wished that Samsung had payed more attention on it’s own operating system rather than playing with Intel on another OS. Oh well, Tizen would be released around next year (2012), and hopefully, I would get the chance to try it out beforehand. HTML5 to create apps? How cool can that be!

THE HACKERS HAVE ALREADY ENTERED FACEBOOK AND THEY ARE PUTTING SEXUAL VIDEOS FROM YOUR NAME TO THE WALLS OF YOUR FRIENDS WITHOUT YOU KNOWING IT! YOU DON’T SEE IT, BUT OTHER PEOPLE CAN SEE IT AS IF IT WERE A PUBLICATION THAT YOU MADE! SO IF YOU RECEIVEd SOMETHING ABOUT A VIDEO, IT’S NOT MINE! Copy this onto your wall, it’s for THE SECURITYOF YOUR OWN IMAGE

Cool! That status really went viral, and whoever started it must have been happy that his status went noticed throughout the social network. But the question is, “is this all true?”.

To simply put it, it’s not all so true. Though there were reports regarding the ‘porn-spam’ on facebook, it isn’t really a

Image originally from free-tricks.com. Thanks a lot free-tricks!

hack. The only reason why the porn-spam went viral was due to the fact that once you access a specific url, the worm would start spamming on your account. The worm does not steal your username and password, and all it does is just post on your wall. That’s about it.

The other way that such spam would occur is if you access a specific app in facebook that was designed to post on your wall. Fortunately though, facebook would prompt it’s users beforehand regarding access rights of the apps to your account. If you clicked accept, then that effectively means that you are allowing that app to post onto your wall. Again, no user identity theft going on here.

Again, let’s first define hacking. Isn’t hacking an action that pertains to breaking onto a system or networks? Does this spam attack fall onto that category? Yes, yes it does. But the misconception regarding this ‘facebook hacking’ should be cleared. People think that someone or something out there can access your account anytime, and it stole your user identity. In reality, it does not have real access to your account if you did not allow it to access your account, and all it does is post some random spam.

The facebook team had reported that they fixed most of the security hole on their site, and hopefully there would be less XSS vulnerabilities on facebook as time goes by along with better secured web browsers (XSS attacks are usually done using browsers known for it’s weak security, like the outdated browser known as Internet Explorer 5 and 6).

globalization from the wall street journal

Most countries tend to promote their own products over products of foreign countries for a good reason, it’s really beneficial for the country. I thought of writing this topic after hearing some few adverts encouraging people to buy local products over branded ‘foreign’ products, and I had mixed thoughts about it. I remember back at college when I wrote a paper regarding the downfalls of the popular Nationalistic trend going on here at the Philippines. Well, after some few long decades of foreign dependency, it seemed like the government is putting up extra effort on promoting local industries, which was strikingly similar to the agenda of the former Philippine President. Anyways, looking at the global scale, we have to ask ourselves, is it really beneficial to humanity?

Well, given that nationalism isn’t really great due to the fact that it was and always is the major factor of war. I mean, come on, Serbian nationalists sparked up World War I, the Nazis’ idea on Aryan supremacy (some of us might argue that it is racism and not nationalism, but when we look on deeper, we will find out that there are lots of similarities between the two), and many countless wars that nationalistic pride took part on. Let’s stop talking about the obvious parts, let’s talk about the effects that it has on the economy.

Being isolated could make a country immune to a global economic crisis, and that seems great. But is it really great? When we look at the bigger picture, we could see that countries that are isolated tend to lag far behind other countries, and when famine does occur on that particular country, no one would be there to help them. A country embracing globalism on the other hand would gain a lot of benefits despite the downfalls it could get during global economic crisis, and the competition it would get from other countries. Benefits, yes, when we look into it, when a country’s government is having a hard time generating revenues, getting foreign companies to their soil would provide jobs for the people, which then in turn would help the government reap cash through taxes and the exports that the particular country would make.

Let’s take for example the ‘communist’ China. Honestly, they seem less and less of a communist nowadays, with the fact that they seem to embrace capitalism. During the years of Mao Zedong, we could hardly feel the treat of China aside from its nukes. It’s economy is bad, and poverty is rampant. The only ‘rich’ Chinese areas were Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Taiwan (well, China claims that Taiwan is not an independent country, and Taiwan isn’t resisting that claim aggressively either), which is obviously not part of the communist reign during those years of Mao Zedong. But after his death, and with President Hu Jintao up to the power, making changes on his country’s government, he was able to make China into one of the leading economic powerhouse in the world. The Americans never felt this treat since the downfall of Soviet Russia. So what made China into a formidable country that could stand up against the global economic powerhouse? Yes, it’s the opening of foreign trade.

That’s the same story in the case of Japan. After Japan opened up its door to the world, it slowly started to become a country that could take the Pacific, which did happen during World War II. And even after the war, Japan became the one of the richest country in the world. When we look into the list that the IMF organization made, we would notice that none of the country listed on the top 50 are closed countries. Almost all of them are countries that embraces Globalism.

But just what is Globalism? Globalism is a general term that could imply on two very different meaning. One is, just like what USSR wanted, a single nation looking trying to spread it’s influence to the whole world (some of us might again argue that it’s not the USSR alone, but also the western world that tried to do just that. Honestly saying, I do agree with that), while the other term for Globalism is placing the interest of the world above individual nation. So which of the two description are we talking about right now? To be exact, we’re talking about “Globalization“, and wikipedia described it as “the increasing unification of the world’s economic order through reduction of such barriers to international trade as tariffs, export fees, and import quotas”. Globalism, as was proven by much of the world, is by far much more beneficial to any country than isolation. Unfortunately though, someone has to think of a way to reduce the risk of a global depression if ever there comes a global recession. Anyways, everything has it’s own Pros and Cons, and by looking into how things are right now, the Pros that Globalization has to offer out weights the risks that it poses to the whole world.

More global companies popping up on a particular country equal to more jobs. Plus, with the fact that most multinational corporations could hold thousands of employees, and reap billions of profits, it would totally be beneficial to the country. More jobs, more taxes, more exports, more money.

Hutch… It’s given that he gave us some nice information regarding disaster awareness, but what caught my attention is how stupid his feeling of self worth was. He’s one old man full of pride, and I just hate it when he says “I’m that guy on the picture”… For God’s sake, who the heck cares? Boasting should really have a limit especially when on public speaking. Unless you’re out there just to show off your accomplishment, it would have been fine to be a big head. Unfortunately though, he’s having a damn speech regarding ‘disaster awareness’, he should have tried to get other’s attention on the topic rather than on his accomplishments. He’s a flop on the public speaking world. I guess he should have named his dang seminar as ‘HUTCH – THE ALL SO GREAT EX-SOLDIER! LOOK AT MY GLORIOUS ACCOMPLISHMENT!’ with a small footnote ‘and envy me till you die‘.

Okay, yea sure, a developer’s work is quite harder which requires the brain to be used to the fullest. How about a tester? Well, we’re not pertaining to just any tester, but a Quality Assurance (QA) or Quality Engineer (QE) that ensures the quality of a product before releasing it. We’ll also include source code analysts and log analysts (IEBus logs, etc.) on the category of a ‘Tester’.

Almost everyone are familiar with what a developer does. They basically create programs that could generate income for the company, in laymans term, they’re the ones who creates the products to be sold. Considering that, it’s easy to say that it’s just right to make their salary ‘huger’ than a tester, since they’re the ones who are considered as the asset of the company. But wait, we’re all familiar with the value of the developers, but how about the testers?

The word “Tester” seems awkward and sounds really low. Anyone could say that just anybody could test a product without any special skill. Well, it’s true that to be called as a ‘tester’, all you have to do is test out a product if it works well or not. But when we look in deeper on what a ‘Tester’ does within a company (QA, QE, Analysts), they don’t just randomly test out stuffs that the developers made, rather, they follow a strict guideline to ensure the quality of the product. It’s not easy as what others think, but I do agree that the normal tester don’t really need all that logic unlike the developers, but analysts who are also considered as a ‘tester’ do require the same amount of logic, or even more.

Just anyone who knows how to write codes could create a software. But not all could create a ‘quality’ product. No matter what programmers do, there will always be a bug or security hole on their system, and that’s what these petty testers are trying to uncover before the end-user or customer would trip over the hole.

If you try to value the two groups, Developers and Testers, I might not agree with what the person on my first paragraph said. It seemed like he’s trying to devalue the testers, saying that they’re not as ‘important’ to the company. Well if that’s so, I would like to bet if the company could survive without the testers. Let’s consider this:

A company could create a nice car that works. That won’t mean that the company will grow after the first sales, but rather, the first sales is where the company will figure out where it is heading. If the customers loved their cars, they’re on a road to growth, but if their first sales left a bad impression on the customers, then it would be a hard start for the company that could even result into bankruptcy.

Now how about a well established company? Even if the reputation of the company is well above average during it’s past year, a single flop would mean a tarnished reputation. For an established company, it’s not just being ahead that is important, but rather, it’s the reputation. Better reputation, more customers, more money.

If the reputation of the company is ‘tarnished’ with failures, then it would mean less future customers. A bad reputation would scare off potential investors and customers, which would simply mean a hard time for the company. Most of the ‘giant’ companies that failed, failed not only because of bad management, not only because of lagging behind, but also because of their reputation.

So who are the group of people on the company that is responsible of ensuring the quality of the products that the company would sell? Yes, they’re the petty testers. On my point of view, the value of the testers should always be equal to the value of the developers. We’re not here to talk about how hard the work is, but rather, we’re here to talk about the value of a particular group of people within the company.

It’s not fair, we’re having head aches trying to figure out the right logic for these particular project.

Crap that, we’re trying to reverse engineer your works trying to figure out the logic that you used for this project. Come on, you’re not following the damn standards! You did not even provide us any documentation regarding this project, and we’re here to analyze the codes that you wrote? Damn, it’s harder to analyze a source code that someone made than to create a new software from scratch!

I guess we got the picture here ei?

“You take the blue pill, the story ends. You wake up in your bed and you believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in wonderland. And, I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.”

Where do you think was this phrase from? The Matrix.

A fine example of “Simulated Reality”. But what is Simulated Reality?

Simulated Reality is a proposition that reality can be simulated to a degree that we can’t distinguish it from “reality”.

The principles were simple. Everything from this delusional world is simulated through a physics machine that we wont be able to distinguish whether we are “living” on a dream or we are living on the “true” reality.

There are lots of attempts to make this “real”. Though there is a huge difference between “virtual reality” with “simulated reality” (wherein Virtual Reality is something that is easily distinguishable from the real reality). There are huge machines that are used for their processing power, and physics engines (software that contains all formulas that could simulate the laws of physics in a “virtual world”) to try to simulate the “real” world that we are in.

But the problem is that simulating a world through a physics engine always differs according to the processing power of the machine that it is running on. But according to Moore’s Law, Technology is always doubled or develops exponentially. With that fact, we can expect that the future’s cellular/portable handsets would be much more powerful than that of what NASA is using right now on their space missions.

With that said, the future’s super computers might be able to handle programs that could simulate the very laws of physics in this world and be successful on making Delusions into reality. Is that really plausible? I wonder too myself. If holograms are achieved within this decade, we can compute that if Moore’s Laws was correct, then that would mean that the exponential advance of technology ( x = “current technology”; while(x == x) { x = x^2; } ) would result into a jump from simple holograms into realistic “figures”. What ever we want to project from a brain can be turned into reality with just an instant.

“Making Delusions into Reality”, something that is quite a “science fiction” as of now. But we’re advancing rapidly. With neuroscience, with psychology, and physics, making Delusions into reality could be plausible with a limited success. You can’t pop up anything out of nothing right? You can only make illusions of it, but there is a clear difference between something you can see with something you can feel.

You can dream that you are eating an apple right now, but it does not affect the reality that you are not eating, unless you find a way to get that “material”. You can have delusions of being a millionaire, but you cant change the reality that you have to work hard for it to be really “real”.

Making people believe that something is there even though the facts point out the otherwise. That is Delusions. If we can manipulate Delusions, making people believe something that isn’t real would be dangerous, as it is useful.

Alright, let’s quit the technical stuffs. Let’s go to something much more trivial. What if the moment you are reading this now is just a dream? Try hitting yourself, maybe you’re just dreaming. Maybe this note never existed. Even if you comment below, maybe it’s just an “delusion” or a “dream”.

How can you tell apart reality with delusions? If your life is a carefree life, then wake up, slap your face and wash your face =D

Wake Up Dreamer!

Anyways, I have to love my job since I won’t be able to find other opportunities without any experience nowadays, and the fact is that my classmates are having a hard time finding a job till now. Some of them ended up being call center agents or a sales personnel, something that a programmer would hate to do.

I’ve been thinking about creating my own company, a web solutions company. But again, I’ll end up designing web templates for clients rather than focusing on the backend of the system. I peeked to the opensource world to see the latest norms when it comes to content management systems, and was shocked to see that almost all of them got Ajax powering their cores. Honestly, I do think that I have to learn how to develop the front end of websites in order to make a system that complies with the latest norm.

Oh well, JavaScript is more of a designer’s scripting language rather than a programmer’s language. Oh my mistake, I mean it’s more of a web developer’s scripting language. Anyways, the bottom line is that I’m not that much adept when it comes to JavaScript, unlike other scripting language, particularly on the server side.

I have to blame it to my job for me lagging behind the norms of today’s geeky world. I have to admit, I sometimes get frustrated like this little puppy:

rawr….arf arf…

Anyways, aside from the cuteness of this puppy, it isn’t hard to notice how angry this cute puppy is right? Take all the cuteness off, and you could picture how frustrated I get from time to time.

What was it again?

class MyClass {
public void main(String[]...arg? args? huh?

Well it maybe true that I can still program basic stuff without the need to look at other examples to remember what I’ve learned during my school and my previous job, I couldn’t do ‘huge’ systems like what I could do before. I crap up with bugs unless of course, if the language is PHP (I still code PHP during my leisure time) since I could still code hard core PHP till now (MVC, OOP, and all the other norms nowadays… I could still catch up )

I would love to switch to another job if my contract expires on my current job, but that would always depend if I can get another job. It’s really frustrating with the fact that finding a job is actually as hard as everybody said, and now I’m forced to ‘Love’ my job. It’s just like forcing yourself to love a girl that your parents chose for you, but at times it can still work out well. I just hope my job would work out well for me too right now, though I’m not that happy with my work, and at times I find it boring and I even fall asleep at work sometimes.

I just hope I won’t turn out like this sad little guy on the left. Forcing your right brain to work harder than your left brain even though you know that your left brain is naturally more ‘active’ than your right brain could sometimes be nerve-wrecking. (For those who can’t understand what’s with the sides of the brain, the left side of the brain is the logical part whereas the right side is the creative part. For normal humans, or the majority of humankind, once we reach adulthood or at least ‘young adults’, we tend to become more logical than creative unlike kids)

I begin to wonder whether creativeness is in-born, inherited, or created through training and practice. Anyways, it’s a fact that most artists with the most creative and artistic minds do have mental problems. Hopefully, I’m still one of those logical people that make up the majority of humanity. I do believe that logical people could be creative if they want to, just like me. It’s just that it could get frustrating when you see your workmates far more creative than you, and figure out that the best thing that you can do is starting to fade away.

On my previous job as a Web Developer, I had hard time keeping on my focus on the task given to me, specially when I couldn’t figure how to make the script work the way it should work. I tend to surf the net, edit my facebook status, play some flash games, join forum discussions, and read articles. All of such are not good work ethics. I got scolded around twice by my supperior and was pressured to finish the job on a impossible deadline. Anyways, that was my previous job, and I learned a lot with that. Though as a programmer, we usually run into roadblocks, dead ends, that tend to make us stressed and we turn into other possible activities that could release our stress.

The bad part is, if this becomes a habit, then you won’t be able to work at full capacity. Companies hate this, and they can’t blame their employees for lack of focus. They all had focus at the start, but when stress kicks in, they tend to wander off-track. They’re just humans after all. So how do we try to stop this from happening? Or if you’re a person with managerial responsibilities, how to you try to make your men put their focus up straight?

The main culprit for ‘helping’ people loose focus from their jobs are social networking sites like facebook. Yes, social networks can be addictive, specially if you have a bunch of friends online the same time you are working. Reading tweets and status updates rather than spending your time thinking how to get your job done is quite ‘irresponsible’. But sometimes we can’t just help it, so the question is how do we control ourselves?

A good help would be by blocking off social networks through firewall, something that my previous job did to their programming and designing division. That seemed like very effective, and employees slacking off dramatically dropped in numbers.

Checking mails  and chatting is another problem, and that problem could be resolved the same way you stop employees from using their social network accounts during work. But another problem is text messaging.

Just about any job you can find, text messaging could be a problem making your job perfomance drop dramatically. Specailly if you got a mate that does not  have a job, or have a job that is quite much more ‘carefree’ than yours. It’s quite hard to stop your employees other than enforcing strict rules regarding that.

But how about if you are just like me, an ordinary employee? Well, the best answer to that is turning off your cellular phone, or put it in silent and develop a habit of hiding your phone somewhere else that is not  easily visible to you so that if someone messaged you, you won’t be tempted to reply back. Try peeking to your phones during break or after work.

From the start you might be that good ol’ person obeying all company rules, but as time goes by, you might turn out to be more comfortable with your work. Beware of that, since you might loose focus if you are too comfortable with your work. Having ambitions that are quite reasonable but not small and easy would help you stay focus, and as you try to control yourself, you might find out that you just became a better person.

I live at the Philippines and some services here are quite expensive compared to services that you can avail abroad. Well it’s a fact that most of the BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) companies are located here, since the average paycheck here are quite smaller compared to those on the developed countries, on the information technology end however, it’s the other way around.

I’m talking about webspaces, DNS services, ISP, domain names, web designing, custom programming, designing and other virtual products/services. Here on the Philippines, it’s way more expensive compared to those companies that are located on developed nations.

I’d like to give a little example. Domain names, how much does a .com usually cost nowadays? Well, there are lots of ICANN credited/certified companies selling domain names with competitive prices, but the average price of a .com is around $10 – 11/year. Now let’s compare that price to a ccTLD, which is .ph for the Philippines. A .ph domain name costs around $35/yr and you are required to buy it for 2 years which would cost $70. $10 compared to $35?! Come on, the gap is too huge!

How about web spaces? Local hosting companies located here on the Philippines usually sell spaces with high price, usually the cheapest would be half a gigabyte. Actually, prices here on the Philippines are trice the price that you could get on foreign companies. You can actually get a decent shared hosting space for around $10 with unlimited space!

Let’s move to the local ISPs here on the Philippines… Unfortunately though, their services offered does not fare well either. They sell cheap but with low speeds and usually you run into trouble when a storms above this island. Let’s compare it to the US. You could get a 5-10gb connection speed for $25, quite cheap compared here.

Unfortunately though, here are the facts. You can’t get any internet connection without applying one from the local ISPs. ccTLDs are prioritized on search engines like google (if you live on the Philippines and you search for example, example.ph would be placed above example.com). Local Hosting Companies with datacenters located here on the Philippines would allow your site to be connected faster when accessed using local ISPs since most datacenters here on the Philippines would be using local ISP too.

With all that, it would usually depend on the scope of your company’s market. If you want to arrive on the global stage, please do use services that are used globally. Anyways, be remined, set a broader scope of your objective, be far sighted, outsource the right services!