SOPA 2017 Journalism Awards Attract Record Number of Entries

Over 750 entries; gala dinner tickets on sale; speaker ex-HK Governor Chris Patten

HONG KONG, CHINA - Media OutReach - April 18, 2017 - The Society of Publishers in Asia (SOPA), a Hong Kong-based not-for-profit organization, today announced that it has received more than 750 entries in English and Chinese for the SOPA 2017 Awards for Editorial Excellence, a record number for the third consecutive year.

SOPA also announced that the keynote speaker at the SOPA Awards Gala Dinner will be Chris Patten, Hong Kong's last colonial governor, who will be speaking to the gathering by video from London. In an exclusive address just two weeks before the 20th anniversary of the Hong Kong handover, Mr. Patten will talk about his views on the future of Hong Kong and the current worldwide backlash against globalization.  

The awards, widely considered the most prestigious in the Asia Pacific publishing industry and a world-class benchmark of journalistic best practice, are now in their 19^th year. This year's awards include two new categories -- Excellence in Journalistic Innovation and Excellence in Video Reporting -- to better represent the region's evolving media landscape and growing use of digital tools and short-form videos.

The award finalists will be announced in May 2017, with the winners named at the SOPA Awards Gala Dinner, which will take place on June 15 at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre. 

Tickets for the dinner are now available at http://www.sopawards.com. For corporate tables of 12 seats, bookings should be made through the SOPA Secretariat (contact information below).

"The record number of entries once again shows how media value SOPA as a platform for both large and small publications to showcase their best work," said Ms. S.K. Witcher, Deputy Asia Editor, The New York Times, and Chair of the SOPA Editorial Committee. "I am delighted to see an overall increase in submissions from Chinese-language media outlets, underlining a trend in recent years."

For the 2017 Awards there are 17 categories from Excellence in Business Reporting and Excellence in Feature Writing to Excellence in Photography and Journalist of the Year.

The judging panel, appointed by the Journalism & Media Studies Centre of the University of Hong Kong, which is the Awards Administrator for the 7^th consecutive year, comprises more than 100 media professionals from some of the region's most influential publications, along with academics from a number of Asia's leading journalism schools. The panel is led by Jeffrey Timmermans, Associate Professor, Journalism & Media Studies Centre, the University of Hong Kong.

The SOPA 2017 Awards for Editorial Excellence are supported by Invest Hong Kong (Platinum Sponsor), Google and Facebook (both are Gold Sponsors). FleishmanHillard, Media OutReach and High Technology Printing Group Limited provide SOPA with support respectively on public relations, newswire and printing services.

"SOPA's mission to promote excellence in journalism, along with a strong, vibrant and independent media, dovetails with what Hong Kong stands for," said Edith Wong, Chief Marketing Officer at Invest Hong Kong. "A dynamic media that sheds light on the important social, business and public affairs developments and issues is vital for business. We see that in Hong Kong and this is why so many people want to come and work here."

Irene Jay Liu, APAC Lead of Google News Lab, said:  "Journalism is the cornerstone of a well-informed society, and Google is honored to once again celebrate rigorous reporting and innovative storytelling across Asia through our support of the SOPA Awards."

George Chen, Facebook's Head of Public Policy of Hong Kong and Taiwan, commented: "Facebook is a new kind of platform and we want to do our part to enable people to have meaningful conversations, to be informed and to be connected to each other. We are proud to support SOPA Awards for Editorial Excellence to celebrate the best players in the media industry. At a time when we see strong desire by the public for quality content, Facebook will continue to work with SOPA to drive news literacy for the public and develop digital media transformation for publishers."

About SOPA

The Society of Publishers in Asia (SOPA) was founded in 1982 to champion freedom of the press, promote excellence in journalism and endorse best practices for all local and regional publishing platforms in Asia Pacific.  SOPA is a not-for-profit organization based in Hong Kong and representing international, regional and local media companies across the region. The Society of Publishers in Asia is also host to the prestigious annual SOPA Awards for Editorial Excellence which serves as the world-class benchmark for quality journalism in Asia Pacific.www.sopasia.com   

Press release prepared on behalf of The Society of Publishers in Asia by FleishmanHillard.

Distributed on behalf of The Society of Publishers in Asia by newswire partner Media OutReach.

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Scientists discover massive sulfur-eating Shipworm in the Philippines

Scientists have discovered a hellish, sulfur-eating, worm-like relative of clams living in a Philippines bay, a new study reports. Although the giant shipworm was first categorized as a species more than 200 years ago, no living specimen had been examined by scientists and almost nothing had been known about it. That changed when Daniel Distel, a researcher at Northeastern University, and colleagues got their hands on a handful of the creatures during a research trip to the Philippines. Their analysis, in a study published April 17 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows that these creatures are quite bizarre.

Known as the giant shipworm (Kuphus polythalamia) even though they aren’t worms, they’ve never before been described in the scientific literature. But scientists knew that they had to exist, because of the massive, elephant tusk-like shells that stick around even when their horrifying denizens are gone. The shells were first described in the 1700s, and continue to be sold to collectors, but scientists were previously unable to find ones that still contained living shipworms to study.

Relatives of the giant shipworm are known to bore into soggy, submerged wood — digesting the wood particles they churn up with the help of symbiotic bacteria that live in their gills. The giant shipworm, though, is less picky — shacking up in muddy seafloor sediments or rotting wood. So clearly, wood isn’t its only — or even its main — food source.

Watch: Kapuso Mo, Jessica Soho: Giant 'tamilok' in Kalamansig, Sultan Kudarat

Hidden in the depths of Kalamansig, Sultan Kudarat is a unique sea creature. No one knows what they really are but residents consider it as a delicacy. It is also called “tamilok“, as it resembles the tubeworms found in mangroves. But this kind seems bigger and longer than the ordinary tubeworm. Even experts from the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources are baffled with this discovery.

Haywood and her colleagues suspected the giant shipworms might instead be consuming hydrogen sulfide released by decaying vegetation or rotting animal carcasses at the bottom of the bay. But hydrogen sulfide, which gives swamp gas its eau de rotten eggs, isn’t all that nutritious.

This is what a giant shipworm (Kuphus polythalamia) looks like after being removed from its shell. Marvin Altamia

The worms would need symbiotic bacteria to digest down the inorganic compound and release more nutritious carbon for them to eat. Fortunately for the worms, scientists used electron microscopes to discover  microbes that could do just that, living in the giant shipworms’ gills.

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WATCH: Man builds iPhone from market parts bought in China

One guy decided to make his own iPhone from market parts.

Scotty Allen flew all the way to Shenzhen, China where he shopped around for various parts to build his own iPhone.

“I was with people like me, geeks who are fascinated by the electronics manufacturing scene,” said Allen. “Then someone said ‘you know, I see all these cellphone parts in the markets. I wonder if you could build your own phone.’”

While cruising the different market places, Allen made it a point to video his interactions. He also recorded his attempts at putting all the parts together. At one point, he had to go back to a shop he visited to ask for advice on what he was doing wrong doing his assembly.

By Allen’s estimate, he spent around $300 (almost P15,000) for the parts that he used to build the phone. However, he also spent an extra $1000 (almost P50,000) for tools and other items which he ended up not using.

Allen mentioned attempting to personally assemble the logic board by piecing together all the different chips that go into it—an endeavor he eventually abandoned, admitting that he was “way over his head.”Check out the video below.

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WATCH: Dragon Ball Z VR headset lets you shoot a ‘kamehameha’

Modern virtual reality technology will now be bringing this childhood fantasy to life, in a manner of speaking.

Toy company Mega House will soon be releasing a “Capsule Corporation” branded VR headset that works with a Dragon Ball Z VR experience app. The headset works by inserting a smartphone into its front panel. It also comes with a pair of hand sensors, as well as a VR mat.

Apart from firing off a virtual “kamehameha” with Goku himself, the app also comes with a “Scouter” function for AR use.

For those who grew up watching the Dragon Ball Z anime series, admit it, you spent a good time of your childhood pretending to do a “kamehameha” with your friends.

Kotaku reports that the BotsNew Characters VR Dragonball Z bundle will be released in Japan by June for 12,000 yen (roughly P5,500).

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LAZADA PERKS! Samsung Galaxy S8 to Come with A Mystery Freebie!

On April 17, pre-order for the much-awaited Samsung Galaxy S8 starts! Both the Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8+ will be available in Maple Gold, Orchid Grey and Midnight Black. The Galaxy S8 will be priced at P39,990 and the Galaxy S8+ will retail for P45,990. All orders purchased during the pre-selling period will come with afree Samsung Wireless Speaker worth P5,099.

On top for the free Samsung Wireless Speaker, Samsung will also be throwing another FREE MYSTERY FREEBIE which will only be exclusively given to customers buying online.

The Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8+ will be available for Cash on Delivery and Nationwide Free Delivery through Lazada.

Customers can start registering through http://www.lazada.com.ph/samsung-galaxy-s8-2017/ to be the first to receive updates on the availability of the Galaxy S8.

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A Phone Screen Material That Can Heal Itself

Chemists at the University of California at Riverside have invented what could become a third option: a phone screen material that can heal itself.

The researchers conducted several tests on the material, including its ability to repair itself from cuts and scratches. After they tore the material in half, it automatically stitched itself back together in under 24 hours, Chao Wang, a chemist leading the self-healing material research, tells Business Insider.

The material, which can stretch to 50 times its original size, is made of a stretchable polymer and an ionic salt. It features a special type of bond called an ion-dipole interaction, which is a force between charged ions and polar molecules. This means that when the material breaks or has a scratch, the ions and molecules attract to each other to heal the material.

This is the first time scientists have created a self-healing material that can conduct electricity, making it especially useful for use for cellphone screens and batteries, Wang says.

Some LG phones, like the G Flex, already include a similar material on its back covers that can heal scratches. But this material can't conduct electricity, so manufacturers can't use it for screens. Most phone screens have a grid of electrodes underneath, and when you touch it, your finger (which is also conductive) completes a circuit, telling the phone what to do.

Wang predicts that this new self-healing material will be used for phone screens and batteries by 2020.

The team will present its research at a Tuesday meeting of the American Chemical Society, the world's largest scientific organization devoted to the study of chemistry.

"Self-healing materials may seem far away for real application, but I believe they will come out very soon with cellphones," he said. "Within three years, more self-healing products will go to market and change our everyday life. It will make our cell phones achieve much better performance than what they can achieve right now."

Read the original article on Business insider.

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YouTube will no longer allow creators to make money until they reach threshold 10,000 views

YouTube grow into the web’s biggest video platform, but it has also led to some problems. People were creating accounts that uploaded content owned by other people, sometimes big record labels or movie studios, sometimes other popular YouTube creators.

In an effort to combat these bad actors, YouTube has announced a change to its partner program today. From now on, creators won’t be able to turn on monetization until they hit 10,000 lifetime views on their channel. YouTube believes that this threshold will give them a chance to gather enough information on a channel to know if it’s legit. And it won’t be so high as to discourage new independent creators from signing up for the service.

“In a few weeks, we’ll also be adding a review process for new creators who apply to be in the YouTube Partner Program. After a creator hits 10k lifetime views on their channel, we’ll review their activity against our policies,” wrote Ariel Bardin, YouTube’s VP of product management, in a blog post published today. “If everything looks good, we’ll bring this channel into YPP and begin serving ads against their content. Together these new thresholds will help ensure revenue only flows to creators who are playing by the rules.”

Of course, along with protecting the creators on its service whose videos are being re-uploaded by scam artists, these new rules may help YouTube keep offensive videos away from the brands that spend money marketing on their platform. This has been a big problem for YouTube in recent weeks. “This new threshold gives us enough information to determine the validity of a channel,” wrote Bardin. “It also allows us to confirm if a channel is following our community guidelines and advertiser policies.”

As it moves ever closer to parity with the world of prime-time television, YouTube is sensibly taking steps to police how business is done on its service. Time will tell how a rising generation of creators respond to these new limitations.

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Samsung Galaxy S8's Facial Unlocking Feature Can Be Fooled

Samsung launched its new flagship smartphones, the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus, at its Unpacked 2017 event on Wednesday in New York, with both IRIS and Facial Recognition features, making it easier for users to unlock their smartphone and signing into websites.

Biometric technology – that involve person's unique identification (ID), such as Retinal, IRIS, Fingerprint or DNA – is now being integrated into more consumer devices for improved security.

All users need to do is simply hold their Galaxy S8 or S8 Plus in front of their eyes or their entire face, as if they were taking a selfie, in order to unlock their phone.

Biometric technology – that involve person's unique identification (ID), such as Retinal, IRIS, Fingerprint or DNA – is now being integrated into more consumer devices for improved security.

YouTube vlogger iDeviceHelp posted a video on his channel, in which Marcianotech demonstrated that unlocking a Galaxy S8 or Galaxy S8 Plus is as simple as getting the device owner's picture from Facebook and waving that photo at the phone.


How secure is the built-in sensor from Samsung to allow for facial recognition? Not so much...at least for now.

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Samsung unveiled its new Desktop Experience (DeX) during its Galaxy S8 launch

Samsung’s DeX already overshadows Microsoft’s Continuum.

Samsung unveiled its new Desktop Experience (DeX). It’s designed to turn a Galaxy S8 into a PC, with Android apps running in a desktop-like environment. To work well, it will ultimately require apps to support larger displays. But out of the gate Samsung’s DeX already overshadows Microsoft’s Continuum.

DeX will support regular Android apps out of the box, and even companies like Adobe and Microsoft have worked with Samsung directly to optimize their apps for larger displays. That means that Word, Excel, and PowerPoint will all run just as well on DeX as they would on Continuum.

Microsoft Office integration is a key selling point for Continuum, and Samsung now has that exact selling point with Microsoft’s help.



One of the big advantages DeX has over Continuum is fairly basic. Samsung has implemented its own windowing system in parallel to the one found in Android Nougat. That means you can actually multitask with apps in DeX, unlike Continuum which restricts you to one app on screen at any given time.

It’s stunning that Microsoft, the company behind Windows which brought windowed apps to the masses, has still not implemented this basic user interface in Continuum. Samsung even added the ability to unlock the PC-like interface through facial recognition (like Windows Hello) on the Galaxy S8. The angle of the DeX dock means you can simply look at the phone and it will unlock the desktop interface.

Microsoft’s issues aside, DeX isn’t perfect, and will struggle with some of the same problems Continuum does. This isn’t a real desktop experience with powerful desktop apps that you might expect on a Mac or PC, it’s mobile apps stretched out on a bigger screen.

You can use a mouse, keyboard, and monitor, but most of these apps won’t have keyboard shortcuts, the ability to drag and drop, or simply the scale to make use of a bigger screen. Samsung does have the advantage of Android behind it, meaning there will be more apps available, and possibly some developer incentives to optimize apps for the desktop experience.

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Press Release: MSI-ECS Sweeps Dell EMC Awards

MSI-ECS sweeps Dell EMC Awards

One of the most anticipated events IT vendors, distributors and channels look forward to is the annual awards night.

In one roof, all the major distributors and channels are gathered to bear witness to the announcement of sales achievement awards. In the recently concluded Dell EMC Partners’ Appreciation Night held last March 21 at Shangri-La The Fort, MSI-ECS has once again proved its dominance in the consumer, commercial and enterprise segments when it bagged all the major distributor awards namely: Distributor Partner of the Year for Consumer; Distributor Partner of the Year for Overall Business (Commercial); and Distributor Partner of the Year for Enterprise Storage (EMC) segments. 

MSI-ECS bagged the Distributor Partner of the Year awards for Consumer and Commercial segments because it has posted the highest revenue contribution in both segments. Aside from the highest contribution in the enterprise storage segment, MSI-ECS has also posted the highest incremental revenue on Enterprise Storage Solutions in FY17. Apart from sweeping the three major distributor awards, two members of the MSI-ECS Dell-EMC team also brought home the Product Manager of the Year and Overall Sales Champion of the Year awards.

MSI-ECS distributes the complete line-up of Dell-EMC solutions and services.  For product and technology interest, please email marketing@msi-ecs.ph.

About MSI-ECS: MSI-ECS is one of the country's leading providers of innovative and reliable computing solutions. Specializing in IT distribution as its core competence, MSI-ECS has continuously redefined and broadened its portfolio of IT products and services to fully address the evolving needs of the local IT community. More information about MSI-ECS is available at http://www.msi-ecs.com.ph. 

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This Cloud Actually Rains Drops Of Tequila

They have created an indoor cloud that produces raindrops of real tequila

Science has pulled through with the goods once again. Nope, no word yet on an unlimited clean energy source or a phone battery that lasts more than a day. But hold tight, they have created an indoor cloud that produces raindrops of real tequila.

The tequila cloud is part of an installation at Urban Spree art gallery in Berlin, created by the ad agency LAPIZ on behalf of the Mexico Tourism Board. The idea is that the weather sucks in Germany during March, so why not head over to Mexico for a holiday? Sounds good to us.

It works by using specialized humidifiers to vibrate tequila at an ultrasonic frequency that turns it into a thick visible fog. The mist is then able to condense into water and fall as rain drops. They even let guests drink the tequila rain for free.

#tequilacloud Serving free shots of delicious Silver Tequila since 2016. Come to Urban Spree, Revaler Strasse 99 for a taste #mexico #travel #tequila #art #berlin

A post shared by Ernesto Adduci (@eadduci) on Mar 10, 2017 at 7:31am PST

 A more conventional way of creating some steamy fog, such as heat vaporization, would evaporate all the alcohol off because it boils at a much lower temperature than water – and that's definitely not a good idea.

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