The Strait Times posted an article on the 10th August that the number of scholarship applicants wanting to study engineering has decreased by more than 10 per cent from 2002 to 2007 (Ref). This article reflects the general sentiment among “pragmatic” Singaporeans that it is tough to pursuit an engineering profession in Singapore. I have seen enough passionate and aspiring fresh engineers withered out or disillusioned after a few years working in the engineering profession. I think there are several reasons contributing to this rather pathetic perception of engineering profession here. Firstly, many people may feel that it is not easy to be an engineer. The technology is changing in an ever accelerating pace, engineers have to constantly put in considerable effort to keep up with the latest technology or feel left behind. This situation is even more acute in Singapore as most of the exciting high tech developments are done elsewhere such as US, Europe, Japan or Korea. Not many high tech companies in Singapore are willing to invest heavily in R&D or even D. Secondly, in most organizations, technical expertise is usually not valued as much as other traits, such as presentation, management and social skills. Most engineering jobs here are also perceived as data crunching and cheap labor jobs. Many feel their jobs are too narrow and specific. Lastly, some people may not see the future of engineering in Singapore as manufacturing sector is facing significant competition and restructuring in recent years.

I feel that the holy grail of an engineer is to become an technopreneur or intrapreneur. If more Singaporean engineers can become technopreneurs or intrapreneurs, then the perception of engineering profession may improve over time. A very good example of indigenous technopreneur is UTAC’s founder, Indergit Singh. Starting as an engineer and pursuing an engineering profession for more than 10 years, he started UTAC in 1998. Recently, he published a book named “The Art and Science of Enterpreneurship”. I bought this book two weeks ago, and was half way through the book. I found the book very inspiring. Click here to read Inderjit Singh’s new book in The Straits Times, 25 May 2007 (Ref). You may also feel inspired to hear from other technopreneurs in Silicon Valley. See video below.

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) has been around for several years since the turn of this century. Although it is now ubiquitous in the internet and quietly influencing the way we receive information from internet, I still find many people are not aware of it or do not know how to use it. I first learned about RSS in 2004 and started to read online blogs and news using rss readers such as Bloglines or Google Reader. In mid 2006, I started to create the SiKOD website based on RSS. The following are the RSS applications employed in SiKOD website:

• Tracking News and Blogs: The original intent of RSS is to publish news and blogs. These days, almost all the major online newspaper and magazines provide RSS news feeds for readers to keep track of the latest news. I believe all the bloggers also provide RSS feeds on their blog sites. So am I.
• Product Updates: Many companies are now taking advantage of RSS technology to flash their latest product news to the market. The semiconductor product news displayed on the SiKOD website are based on these product feeds.
• Journal Content Updates: IEEE provides their journal table of contents feeds. They are also used by SiKOD to display the IEEE TOC.
• Company Press Release: Besides product feeds, more and more companies are providing RSS feeds for publishing their company press release and updates. The company news displayed on SiKOD are based on these company news feeds.
• Filtered Search: Search Engine coupled with RSS is a powerful way to keep track of customized search results. Following Yahoo!, Google and MSN Live now provide RSS to their search engines. SiKOD has used this feature to provide specific semiconductor news from Yahoo, Google and other news providers. This can also be applied to any search engines for example job search engine. SiKOD has also used this to display specific job listings.
• Combining Search Results: By extending the above filtered search idea, SiKOD has improvised a new way to use RSS technology to combine several search results. This has been implemented on the News Search below the header. Try it and see for yourself the power of RSS.

There are many other applications of RSS beyond news and blogs. Basically RSS can used to track anything with constantly updating content, for example prices, stock indexes, emails update, revision of a document. Podcasts and Videocasts are also based on RSS. You can learn 42 applications of RSS from this site. The best book I ever read about RSS is this book Secrets of RSS. I have learned a lot of RSS tips and tricks from this book. The following video gives a pretty good introduction to RSS.