After having gained experience with these three devices for a period of time, I have found that they are helping to me to create a lot of professional content in any format, including voice recording, video and photos. And they help to enhance the lifestyle experience as well.

In daily working life, the iPhone XS is not just a device for a phone call or email checking. It is crucial for a journalist’s job, with the device being both a voice recorder and a camera capable of taking high-resolution photos suitable for use as the main picture in a lead story on a broadsheet newspaper. This is thanks to the dual-camera system, smart HDR, adjustable depth of field, and enhanced portrait mode selfies.

The iPhone XS comes with a 5.8-inch super retina custom OLED display with all-screen design. The OLED panels allow for an HDR display with the industry’s best colour accuracy, true blacks, and remarkable brightness and contrast. They are the sharpest displays, with the highest pixel density, on any Apple device.

When needed, the device can be turned into a video camera for Facebook Live sessions with high-definition quality. And sometimes, it helps out when recording videos at press events – again, with high quality.

The iPhone XS shoots the highest-quality video of any smartphone and it comes with better low-light performance and extended dynamic range in videos of up to 30 frames per second. It also has stereo recording and stereo playback with wider sound separation. It also entertains us with the good quality selfies it lets you take of you and your journalist friends when meeting at press conferences and interview sessions.

The advanced Face ID makes the personal security side simple. It is easy to unlock the iPhone and log into the apps, and pay for things with convenience.

With 512 gigabytes of storage, the device enables me to shoot HD photos and video for use on the newspaper and the website without having to worry about storage space.

The 13-inch new MacBook Air comes with an 8-generation Intel Core i5 processor in a beautiful gold colour, and facilitates my routine content creation for work with ease and speed.

I really love the thinner and lighter feel of the MacBook Air and its design is very suitable for journalists’ routine tasks that require it to be carried to many places within a single day. Meanwhile, its battery lasts up to 12 hours, and confirms that MacBook Air is the best companion device for all-day use. This can facilitate me to sit down and write a news story anywhere, anytime – without the need to sit in a coffee shop to keep the machine plugged in.

With the Touch ID feature, it helps me to access any Web application instantly. Its 1.6GHz dual-core processor with turbo boost of up to 3.6GHz lets me type a news story as smoothly as my thoughts come out. Its storage capacity of 128 gigabytes lets me keep a lot of media content without having to worry about carrying an external hard disk on work trips abroad.

Another thing I love is that MacBook Air comes with the Thunderbolt 3, which combines ultra-high bandwidth with the ultra-versatility of the USB-C industry standard to create one revved-up universal port. MacBook Air has two of them. Thunderbolt 3 is reversible, so no matter how I plug it in, it is always the right side up.

One more feature that I like is the Messages function. Since I usually exchange text messages with sources and PR, I can send and receive text messages on MacBook Air as well. All the messages that appear on iPhone appear on the Mac too, so all conversations are always up to date.

The AirPods are not just earphones. They are the best facilitator for work and life activities over a long day. I can even use them as a wireless microphone when doing video interviews with sources. They are very easy to use. I can record video at a suitable distance form the subject and use the iPhone XS as video camera, without worrying about the sound quality. This feature I really appreciate.

AirPods can go seamlessly with iPhone XS, iPhone XR, MacBook Air, and the Apple Watch 4 – and that means work and life activities go together smoothly. I can wear AirPods connected to the iPhoneXR to listen to a voice recording while typing a news story on MacBook Air. Once a phone call comes in, I can switch the AirPods to connect with iPhoneXS to pick up the call instantly and then switch back after call ends.

AirPods are really useful when I am driving. Calling in shown on the Apple Watch 4, so I can pick up that call instantly, even while the iPhoneXS is still in the bag.

Last but not least, I really love the Fine AirPods application that helps me to not miss either one of AirPods. If I dropped the AirPods in the room in my house, I can find them instantly by getting each side of AirPods ringing and then go to where they are instantly.

Although these tasks are set to be completed this year, the World Bank has warned that more needs to be done if Thailand is to catch up with its neighbours such as Malaysia and Singapore. The multilateral lender noted the country’s shortcomings in a report on the digital economy in the Asean region.

“Our goal is to provide internet access to all Thai villages by the end of this year through the Village Broadband Internet Project (Net Pracharat),” the Minister of Digital Economy and Society, Pichet Durongkaveroj, said yesterday at a World bank seminar on Asean’s digital economy.

The project in 2017 identified 75,000 villages in the Kingdom that lacked high-speed internet. So far, 57,000 have been provided with such access and the remaining 18,000 villages will be connected by the end of this year, the minister said in an interview amid the event’s proceedings.

As much as half of Asean’s people lack access to affordable high-speed internet, according to a report titled “The Digital Economy in Southeast Asia: Strengthening the Foundations for Future Growth”, which was published at the beginning of this year by the World Bank.

Natasha Beschorner, the World Bank’s senior ICT policy specialist, commended the Thai government’s efforts to increase internet access in rural areas. However, she said that more needed to be done to make sure that the internet access points in these villages are accessible to those living there.

“The key obstacles for increasing internet access to rural areas are not only availability, but also affordability. One way Thailand can make access to the internet more affordable is through making internet providers share the relevant digital infrastructure to reduce costs,” she said.

The report found that Thailand’s broadband remains much less affordable when compared with the services offered in its Asean neighbours such as Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam – accounting for around 1.7 per cent of gross national income per capita in 2016. The World Bank is urging the incoming government to pass regulatory reforms to promote competition and lower the price of broadband.

Meanwhile, the development of the national digital ID scheme is in the final testing stages, Pichet told reporters. The platform will allow businesses and government agencies to cross-reference their data and verify the identity of their customers and clients online.

As has become standard practice for Thailand’s digital transformation, the implementation of National Digital ID (NDID) will start with the financial sector. The Finance Ministry, Pichet said, is working with 10 banks to allow customers to open their bank accounts online without having to visit a physical branch.

Boonsun Prasitsumrit, chief executive officer of the National Digital ID company, said that the initial testing of the NDID platform had been completed, and the system has now moved on to the sandbox stage, which is expected to be wrapped up by the end of this year.

The World Bank, however, urges more regional cooperation on this issue. In particular, its report contends that without a shared digital ID system throughout the Asean region, the integration of the Asean Economic Community will continue to face barriers that hinder the growth of the e-commerce market.

“This is because the lack of cross-border interoperability can delay shipments in the region, increasing transportation cost for businesses,” Beschorner said.

Governments in the region should work together to pass laws that increase the ease of doing business between borders. This would, in turn, entice small and medium-sized enterprises that are starting to use e-commerce to ship their products abroad, she said. Only Singapore has realised a digital ID system that facilitates online transactions, and it is being upgraded.

Singapore’s digital ID system (SingPass) is limited the accessing of government services, but a new National Digital Identity (NDI) system – built on top of the existing foundational ID system – is being developed for public and private-sector transactions, the report said.

The MoU will see CIMB Bank and CapBridge collaborate to offer the bank’s customers in Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand and Cambodia access to private capital and liquidity through the holistic CapBridge private capital ecosystem, Victor Lee Meng Teck, CEO of group commercial banking for CIMB Group, said yesterday.

The CapBridge Investment platform is a private capital-raising platform for companies needing funding for growth and pre-IPO companies. Meanwhile, 1X is a trading platform which facilitates a buyer-seller match for private securities listed on the exchange by using blockchain to register and track the shareholdings of investors who trade on the platform.

The wide-ranging partnership provides a unique value proposition to CIMB’s SME and mid-sized corporates looking to raise capital |and have part of their shares traded, while also remaining private and in full control of the operations.

The Journal cited unnamed sources close to the matter as saying the department would look into Google practices related to web search and other businesses.

Justice department officials share antitrust oversight with the Federal Trade Commission, which conducted a wide-ranging investigation of its own into Alphabet-owned Google that ended in 2013 with no action taken.

Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A new investigation would come as backlash grows against major tech companies that dominate key segments of the online economy.

Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren has argued that big firms such as Facebook, Google and Apple should be broken up through antitrust enforcement.

Alphabet’s profit in the first three months of this year sagged under the weight of a hefty antitrust fine in the European Union.

Alphabet said profit in the first-quarter fell 29 percent to $6.7 billion on revenue that climbed 17 percent to $36.3 billion.

The earnings took a hit from a European Commission fine that amounted to $1.7 billion at the end of March, according to the quarterly update.

Google’s lucrative advertising platform remained the largest revenue driver for Alphabet, delivering more than $30 billion in revenue, but costs rose sharply as well.

But Google continues to face pressure around the world from regulators, notably in Europe amid multiple investigations over alleged abuse of its dominance in internet search, advertising and its mobile system.

The latest fine imposed by Brussels cited Google’s AdSense advertising service, saying it illegally restricted client websites from displaying messages from ad service rivals.

Google is separately working to satisfy EU regulators investigating its hugely popular Android devices following a $5 billion fine last year.

Google earlier this year said it would offer smartphone users five browsers and search engines as part of the company’s effort to meet EU competition concerns.

Brussels accused Google of using the Android system’s dominance of smartphones and tablets to promote the use of its own Google search engine and Chrome browser and shut out rivals.

In the United States, Google has been a target of President Donald Trump and his allies who have accused the search giant of “bias” and silencing conservative voices, claims denied by the Silicon Valley firm.

The information was released by deputy head of the Government Information Security Commission Nguyen Dang Dao at an international conference themed “Security World 2019” held in Hanoi on Wednesday.

At the conference, participants focused on Vietnam’s cybersecurity and solutions to strengthen data protection in the public and finance-banking sectors.

Major General Dao said that cyber-attacks, espionage and cybercrime had been on the increase resulting in the theft of state secrets and the destruction of information systems.

“There is an increasing number of cyber-crime and reactionary organisations operating in a sophisticated manner, causing serious consequences and threatening social order, safety, political stability and national security,” said Dao.

This situation was set to become even more complicated and the finance-banking sector would continue to be a target for hackers, he added.

Dao also pointed out five risks the country was facing: malware; attacks on e-commerce and finance-banking systems with the aim of extorting, stealing information of organisations and individuals; attacks on infrastructure and IoT equipment; attacks on state agencies and organisations in order to steal state secrets; and distributing harmful and false information online.

Do Anh Tuan, deputy director of the Ministry of Public Security’s Department of Cyber Security and High-tech Crime Prevention, said in recent years, cybercriminals had attacked banks around the world, including ATMs, causing serious consequences.

In Vietnam, he said stealing card information and counterfeiting cards (Skimming) was becoming complicated.

“Vietnam has about 70 million domestic cards. If it is slow to switch from bank cards to chip cards, it could become the focus of card fraud. Skimming is increasing in Vietnam,” Tuan said.

For example, Tuan said in 2018 and early 2019 foreigners had arrived in Vietnam on the pretext of travelling. “They rented houses and installed broadband to conduct fraudulent transactions and make fake bank cards to withdraw money or pay bills/services via point-of-sale (POS) machines, stealing hundreds of millions of dollars.”

From the beginning of this year, the Ministry of Public Security had arrested more than 120 foreigners for this crime, he added.

He also said that groups organising online gambling via bank accounts was common, with millions of dollars per day changing hands. At the end of April, police broke up a gambling ring worth more than VND30 trillion (US$1.28 billion), and arrested 29 people.

According to statistics from the State Bank of Vietnam, there were 26 organisations providing e-wallet services for about 10,000 units in Vietnam. By the end of last year, there were 4.2 million e-wallets linked to bank accounts. The whole banking system handled VND73 quadrillion in 2018, up 25 per cent compared to 2017, averaging VND300 trillion each day.

A report from the Ministry of Public Security showed that there were thousands of Vietnamese websites attacked by hackers annually. In the first months of this year, over 2,500 websites with Vietnamese domain names were attacked and hundreds of thousands of computers were infected with malware.

Gamers now have more chances to monetise their skills and become more popular in the broader community through becoming e-sport athletes.

Apart the competitions hosted by the corporates both locally and internationally, the upcoming 30th SEA Games will be the first time that e-sport will be allowed in that competition and will feature six e-sport medals.

In the attempt to encourage the e-sport ecosystem to push beyond the game industry and the gamer community, and to encourage gamers to become e-sport athletes, the Thailand Esports Federation (TESF) has joined with the private sector to collaborate in hosting the 30th SEA Games Thailand National Qualifiers, for Tekken7.

Pratthana Leelapanang, the chief consumer business officer for Advanced Info Service (AIS) said the telecom wants to become the network of choice for e-sport players and wants to help drive the e-sport ecosystem.

That ecosystem is now quite small in Thailand, especially when compared to the entire Bt22 billion game industry here. Though it is just beginning, e-sport has the potential for double-digit growth annually, said Pratthana.

A variety of businesses stand to benefit from growth in the ecosystem, including gamers and game publishers, but also for related businesses including media, voice actors, graphic designers, organisers and others.

“We would like to leverage games to e-sport as it deserves support. It is a part of our mission to run a sustainable business through promoting the proper use of networks,” said Pratthana.

It is a part of the Cyber Wellness initiative launched by AIS early this year.

E-sport is another dimension of the digital economy, similar to e-commerce and other sectors that can drive the country’s economy, said Pratthana. The emerging new economy will be driven by digital networks and platforms and affect many industries including media, games, sports, and tech sectors. In the process, it will help create the jobs of the digital economy.

“We treat e-sport as one among the emerging businesses. It is healthily growing by double digits every year and also helps to drive other businesses. We will see the e-sport businesses achieve a significant number and size in the next couple of years,” said Pratthana.

Still e-sports will be one among many new businesses to generate future revenue for the company, and the network will remain its main revenue source.

AIS will co-host the 30th SEA Games Thailand national qualifiers along with Thailand Esports Federation (TESF). The qualifiers will be one component of the Thailand Games Expo by AIS eSports.

This is just the beginning of the e-sport ecosystem in Thailand, said Santi Lothong, the president of Thailand Esports Federation (TESF). There is a good potential for it to in future become a national competition league similar to that of football.

It is a good sign that e-sport is becoming more significant in the family of sports, said Santi.

For this SEA Games, TESF will send e-sport athletes to battle in five games – Dota 2, Starcraft II, Tekken7, AOV (Arena of Valour) and Mobile Legends Bang Bang.

“We hope our e-sport athletes will compete in the goal medal round,” he said.

There are now around 500 to 800 e-sport players participating in competitions organised by the companies. TESF would like to leverage this into a national league and transform the players into professional athletes. That could come together within the next four years, he said.

Gamers dream big

At the 30th SEA Games Thailand national qualifiers, Nopparut Hempamorn, 22 (nicknamed “Book”), won over Rachawin Tanasoontorngoon, 35 (“Chin”), to become one of the top Thai e-sport athletes. Nopparut has played Tekken since he was 12, much loves the game – and is good at it.

On the first day he played the game, Book could not dream of one day representing Thai e-port athletes. Like so many other children, he loved playing the game simply to entertain himself. He admitted that in the early years of his gamer life, he had played 10 hours a day and becoming a game addict.

His mother warned him to better manage his time to attain a balance between game playing and studying. He obeyed her, and proved to himself and his mom that game playing can be more than just entertaining yourself, but rather can provide a chance to earn money and be recognised as a top player through success in several competitions.

Book in 2013 transformed from recreational gamer to e-sport athlete when he won the Tekken World Tournament in SEA Major in Singapore.

He went on to participate in the final round of the IeSF World Championship in 2017 hosted by International e-Sports Federation, where a Philippines athlete defeated him. This time, he said, it will be a return match for him.

He spends a lot of time studying the playing style of others, acknowledging that the competitor mindset is important to win the competition.

He said that to be an e-sport player requires good time management. Playing the game must be a part of daily life, not the whole of it. The player’s duty to practice must leave room for other duties, especially studying for students or working.

Rachawin Tanasoontorngoon, 31, who was defeated by Nopparut, shared his story.

Game addiction, he said, leads some to play the game all the time and deny the other duties of daily life. He is not an addict, he added.

Chin has played Tekken for 15 years, usually for an hour or two daily. He played when he is free from study assignments as a students, and when he is now free from his work as an accounting employee. He has quite good time management and discipline around playing the game, said Chin.

Like Book, he began playing without ever dreaming of becoming an e-sport athlete. But the development of the e-sport ecosystem helped him to turn his experience and effort in game-playing over 15 years into something more meaningful.

“I attended almost all competitions hosted in Thailand. I joined three international competitions, one in Singapore [Tekken World Tour] and two others in Japan, Evo Japan 2017 and 2018,” said Chin.

To achieve high performance in the fighting game, an understanding of the player character and other characters is required, and that takes practice playing. Hours of practice are vitally important for him.

“I am being ranked number two or three, so I think I should participate in the 30th SEA Games Thailand national aualifiers to represent the country to beat competitors in the SEA Games,” said Chin.

“I have experience with Book, and he is being ranked number one in Tekken7. Personally, I love Tekken 7, and I will keep attending all competitions in the future,” he said.

Panachit Kittipanya-ngam, president of the Thailand Tech Startup Association, said that more startups turned from B2C to B2B organisations to offer business and service technology services. Those vertical tech startups are growing. especially in the education, travel and health business, Panachit said.

In 2018, more corporate venture capital (CVC) funds were established, and there were more seed and series A investments – with funding mainly from CVCs.

One in three startups in Thailand are using deep tech, including artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), big data, data analysis, biotechnology, and blockchain.

Thai startups have three to four founders on average. The most important factors for the founders are opportunities to commercialise and gain benefit from starting their operations, people’s unmet needs or pain point; and the ability to start a business using their own skills and aptitudes.

Some 82 per cent of founders are males, and their average age upon starting the business is 33. Most of them come from study fields such as business management, engineering and natural science.

The main talent shortages are among technology experts, especially developers, programmers, data scientists, researchers and marketers.

Around half of startups use the government’s support programmes. The top five are startup voucher, innovation coupon and NIV Venture, TED fund, Depa Digital Startup Fund, and 5-year Startup Income Tax Exemption.

Over half of them participate in acceleration programmes hosted by the private and government sectors. They gain networks, mentoring and branding benefits.

Around 80 per cent of startups start with less than Bt5 million. The main current source of funding is personal savings as well as funds from family friends and acquaintances. The top three most-needed financial instruments are prefer-share, crowdfunding, and vesting.

Around 31 per cent of startups earn intentional income. The share of international income is approximately 28 per cent of the total income. Around 19 per cent of startups have overseas operations,

while 91 per cent plan to expand operations abroad.

On average, 64 per cent of startups earn income after six months of operation, while 30 per cent have been making operating profits after one to three years of operations.

Most startups need support in areas of networking, technology knowledge, business training, grants and funding, ease of doing business, and tax reductions and exemptions.

Over half of startups have a long-term goal to sell and cash out of their enterprise, mostly via an IPO. Around 37 per cent aim to expand their enterprise as a long-term business.

These preferences are similar to startups in Singapore. Around 40 per cent of them want to sell and cash out, especially via mergers and acquisitions, while 30 per cent want to expand, and a further 30 per cent do not have a planned exit.

Most startups require one-stop service, investment law and financial instruments, competitive tax incentives and a central knowledge centre. They also need support talent and workforce development especially in creating quality developers and programmers with experience.

While these discussions have proved insightful and, in many cases, improved business knowledge and value – they have overlooked one critical aspect. Our growing dependence on the data around us.

Many of the other aspects of data have been viewed as a choice. A sort of ‘take it or leave it”. That is not the case with dependency. We are all increasingly dependent on data. And as more and more devices become connected to the internet that dependency, and the implications for all of us, will also increase.

First, let’s clarify dependency: Individuals, businesses and governments now rely on storing and accessing data – almost minute by minute, if not more. For the individual, it may be simply email or iCloud photos; for businesses, it’s critical information on public, private and hybrid clouds; and for governments its citizenship and resource data required to ensure smooth, safe running of the country.

The loss of an iCloud account and the associated data could obliterate a lifetime of memories; the inability to retrieve customer information or data on request, could fatally wound any enterprise large or small, and the loss of government data could cause economic turmoil, bringing the country to its knees – with ripples for the global economy.  None of these are insignificant – at any level.

At issue is, as demand and dependency increase, dependency begins to look increasingly unsustainable. Currently only 5 per cent of worldwide data centres have been modernised, meaning 20-year-old legacy architecture is being charged with ensuring our transition into a data dependent world.

Unless we rapidly adopt new technologies designed to reduce the gap between the infrastructure hardware layer and the application software layer, there will be a great number of risks.

Regarding storage, the vast quantity of data available is not a new phenomenon, but quantity has physical limits. We often talk of the cloud as a nebulous, limitless space and have become so used to just “topping up” our storage capacity at will. But limitless it is not. iData is rapidly becoming similar to landfill sites. We add more and more, hour after hour, and we keep everything. Because there is no need to dispose of anything.

As a result, our data centres become even bigger. The world’s largest data centre is The Citadel in Nevada, in the US. It covers a staggering 1.62 square kilometres  – that’s about 250 times the size of the presidential White House.

If the volume of data created continues its current trajectory (quadrupling in size every five  years), how will we manage it?

Then there is access. How and when do we access our data and how quickly do we need it? That varies on the type, location and requirement of the data. As we move to autonomous vehicles, artificial intelligence (AI)  and machine learning,  the demands on data will increase as will the requirement to ensure critical applications receive priority. Which brings us to fragmentation.

As more and more devices centralise and decentralise data consumption, and we separate data across multiple locations for efficiency and cost effectiveness,  how will we ensure all our data is safe, secure, available and accessible when and where we need it?

In terms of environmental impact,  I mentioned the Citadel. While it is the greenest data centre in the world, it still comes with an environmental impact. As do the others.  And let’s not forget cost. We have mentioned the environmental impact from our dependency on data. There is also the physical cost.

I began this discussion highlighting the value of data to the individual, businesses or government. But in a world that quadruples the data created every five years,  how do we ensure the value increases.

And finally there is security. More and more data, from more and more devices, stored in more and more locations increase physical and digital risks to the integrity of the data and the entire connected system.

While this may sound overwhelming, it should not be disheartening. New technologies are narrowing the gap between the physical and virtual world. As that gap shrinks even further, our ability to access, manage and benefit also increases.

Operating systems that simplify the operating environments for the enterprises entrusted with storing and maintaining our data are emerging. This of course does nothing to reduce our growing dependency, but it does help mitigate the risks and challenges associated with the deluge of data and our dependency on it.

Thawipong Anotaisinthawee is the country manager for Nutanix (Thailand).