Statement of Secretary Al Cusi on China Trip

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The China trip is borne out of a gracious invitation from the Chinese Ambassador HE Zhao Jianhua. In essence, the Department of Energy (DOE) is being invited to "enhance energy cooperation between our two countries".

The DOE is fortunate to have the opportunity to touch base with our counterparts in China's own ministry of energy. The purpose of the meeting is exclusively to improve our overall energy development efforts, gain knowledge from their best practices, and hopefully attract investments in our local energy projects.

I will be there strictly in my official capacity as DOE Secretary.

This meeting is a clear indication that President Duterte's state visit to China late last year was indeed successful, and is now yielding tangible benefits for our country.

About the PDP's trip to China, I would say that it coincides with the DOE official trip. In any case, it is a simple side trip for pleasantries, sharing and cultural exchange.

ePLDT Launches Visitor Management System for Faster, Easier, and Safer Reception

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Companies that receive many guests face the challenge of monitoring and tracking the people going in and out of their premises. This can be inconvenient to receptionists, employees, and even to visitors especially when traditional recording is used.

ePLDT, Inc., with its continuing initiative to deliver best-in-class digital business solutions, is proud to announce its Enhanced Visitor Experience (EVE) app, a fully digital and interactive visitor registration system designed to help companies process incoming and outgoing traffic.

According to Nico Alcoseba, Vice President and Head of PLDT’s Disruptive Business Group, the app provides a window to what kind of culture exists beyond the reception area.

“With EVE, companies can provide an interactive visitor experience to people coming to the office from the moment they first logged in to the time their host is ready to accommodate them,” Alcoseba said. “It’s a solution that guests, receptionists, and employees will find simple and enjoyable.”

EVE offers a digital end-to-end visitor-reception-host interface system through an automated visitor information recording and extraction.

“EVE addresses real-life enterprise challenges ranging from long queues, mismanagement of guest information when using pen and paper, inaccurate guest reports, and disorganized guest-host relations,” Alcoseba emphasized.

Microsoft Connected Vehicle Platform Helps Automakers Transform Cars

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Renault-Nissan is first auto manufacturer to commit to platform to build connected cars

Traditional automakers, many of whom ushered in an era of incredible disruption nearly a century ago, now face disruption themselves from four modern forces — connected, autonomous, shared and electric cars. The infrastructure and scale required to build a connected car is incredibly complicated, expensive and resource intensive. At its core, it’s a software challenge, and a chief obstacle for these brands is integrating the complex cloud technology required to deliver next-generation driving experiences.

Today at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, we announced the Microsoft Connected Vehicle Platform, a set of services built on the Microsoft Azure cloud and designed to empower auto manufacturers to create custom connected driving experiences. This is not an in-car operating system or a “finished product;” it’s a living, agile platform that starts with the cloud as the foundation and aims to address five core scenarios that our partners have told us are key priorities: predictive maintenance, improved in-car productivity, advanced navigation, customer insights and help building autonomous driving capabilities.

Microsoft’s cloud will do the heavy lifting by ingesting huge volumes of sensor and usage data from connected vehicles, and then helping automakers apply that data in powerful ways.

Available as a public preview later this year, it brings Microsoft's intelligent services from across the company right into the car, including virtual assistants, business applications, office services and productivity tools like Cortana, Dynamics, Office 365, Power BI and Skype for Business.