ViKi Raises Series A Of USD 4.3M

Community-power subtitled video site ViKi just raised a Series A round of USD 4.3M (SGD 5.6M). Investors include VC firms as well as individuals. Singapore-based Neoteny Labs was part of this round. More details in the press release below.

PALO ALTO, Calif. and SINGAPORE, Dec. 8, 2010 /PRNewswire/ — ViKi, a community-powered site that allows anyone to enjoy and discover world TV and movies in their own language, today launched out of beta and is announcing Series A funding of $4.3 million. The funding comes from Greylock Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, Charles River Ventures, and Neoteny Labs, among others, and private investments from media executives, including Rajesh Sawhney, President of Reliance Entertainment of India, and Alex Zubillaga, former global head of digital at Warner Music. The capital will be used to accelerate expansion in global markets and partnerships with content providers.

The site, previously known as ViiKii, is the first and fastest platform for real-time subtitling of video in over 100 languages. ViKi leverages the power of its translator community to both subtitle and share their love of world TV and movies–from Japanese Anime to Spanish Novelas to Korean dramas to Egyptian movies to Bollywood and other genres–with new audiences. Translators subtitle shows into their native languages under a Creative Commons license agreement, via ViKi’s integrated and systematic platform, which includes revision history and user-generated edits.

“ViKi opens new markets for content owners, by finding new audiences and revenue streams. Viki also helps consumers by introducing them to new and unique international video content they may not have found otherwise,” said Reid Hoffman, Partner at Greylock, and investor in key platforms and networks such as Facebook, Zynga and Flickr.

Playful Kiss, a recent Korean drama, became an overnight web sensation with its exclusive 10-day US run on ViKi, and through ViKi’s distribution partner, Hulu. ViKi licensed the content for other regions, and the series was subtitled in over 40 languages, 20 of which were completed in the first 24 hours. Playful Kiss on ViKi reached US cable-sized audiences, and the series received legions of new fans across the globe. The success of the series led to a three way partnership between the drama’s producers, YouTube and ViKi, for a follow-on Special Edition, which played on an exclusive YouTube channel, with subtitles in ten languages contributed by the ViKi community within two days.

“ViKi helped Playful Kiss find its audience” said Song Byung Joon, CEO of Group 8, the production studio behind the series. We’ve partnered with ViKi on several series, and are extremely happy to see how our old and new shows are generating significant new revenues for us from new markets. It is rewarding to see audiences in so many countries fall in love with Playful Kiss and have the opportunity to view the show in their own languages.”

The idea for ViKi, a play on the words video and wiki, was inspired by co-founder Jiwon Moon’s own experience with the language barriers that she dealt with as a Korean student studying education technology at Harvard Graduate School of Education. Giving people a way to learn and improve language both by contributing to the translations and helping bring global entertainment to new fans is at the heart of the ViKi community, and is what has made the site so unique since its inception.

“Together with my co-founders Jiwon Moon and Changseong Ho, and with the support of our passionate translator community, we are removing the major wedge between great entertainment and its audience,” said Razmig Hovaghimian, co-founder and CEO of ViKi. “In the process, we are also unlocking new and additive value for content owners worldwide.”

With over 1 billion streams and 100 million words subtitled in over 143 languages, including Klingonese, ViKi has the most translated global video content available anywhere online.

About ViKi

Founded in 2008 and based in Palo Alto and Singapore, ViKi is a way for people to discover and enjoy the best of world TV and movies in their own language. With over 100 million words subtitled and thousands of hours of licensed videos from around the world, ViKi offers the widest variety of translated global video content available. The company has raised $4.3 million from Greylock Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, Charles River Ventures, Neoteny Labs, 500 Startups, Omidyar Network, The Raine Group and angels from Japan, India, and Silicon Valley.

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China Tech IPOs Soar

Why e-commerce retailer Dangdang, video sharing site Tudou and energy savings producer LatticePower are the talk of Wall Street.
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Review – modu Mobile [World's Lightest Mobile Phone]

modu Mobile is World’s Lightest phone and the toy is probably the most unique mobile we have ever played with.

First of all, quick specification of Micromax modu Phone (Micromax has brought Modu phone in India).

• OS: BREW
• 5 MP Camera
• 2.2” LCD Touch Display, (320*240 pixels) QVGA
• 2 GB Internal memory [expandable upto 32GB]
• Weight : 55 gms

What’s unique about modu?

Well, the phone functionality changes with the jackets. The phone could be inserted into ‘jackets’ – that can camerafy your phone to sportifyyour life. Modu essentially challenges the core concept of mobile design and does take mobile design to a different level, a more modu-lar level (am guessing modular is the core concept behind the name. modu).

And for the context, modu was established in 2007 by Dov Moran inventor of the USB Flash Drive (though the Israel based company seems to be facing financial challenges).

Modu_T_HomeScreen

Review: Micromax Modu

Modu Form Factor

Modu has a bar styled form and to share certain perspective, Modu is the sleekest and slimmest phone I have ever held. The mobile stripped off the jackets fits into your pocket like a cig lighter. A challenge one would often encounter is typing on the phone, given its size.

Gadgethon Rating: 3/5.

Modu Functionality

The phone has an inbuilt keypad, a small screen and only 9 buttons to play with. This results in a bit of messed-up feeling while typing. There certainly is a need for Swype sort of service. Owing to the screen size, there is no QWERTY keypad and you will feel the heat when writing/replying to emails.

Rating: 2.5/5

Modu_Sportify Jacket

Modu Navigation

Majority of navigation is controlled by two buttons (one on the top right sidebar and second below the screen) and I personally found navigation to be a bit clumsy.

In order to call a contact, you need to go thru’ 4 clicks [Home screen/Contacts/Search/ Name/Call). Given the screen size, this may not be the most optimal experience for those who are used to bigger and better screens from Nokia, Apple and Samsung(s) of the world.

Having said that, it’s a matter of getting used to and once you start using the mobile, you won’t feel so much of a pain.

Rating : 2.5/5

Battery Life

The battery life turns out to be an average here – i.e. around 2 days max of ‘normal usage’.

Rating: 2.5/5

Experience

This isn’t one of those mobile phones that will get noticed on its own (think iPhone). You need to tell your friends that you have world’s lightest 3G phone and only then you will get all the attention - and this is precisely a function of modu's brand awareness.

Especially in India, when there are ‘cheap’ smaller phones – you need to really ensure that your Modu stands out from the crowd.

Modu Jackets is a great experience, if you really ask me. The camera is activated only when you insert the phone in ‘Camerafy’ jacket and so on (with Sportify jacket etc)

User Experience Rating: 4/5

Media

Modu is capable of reading MP3, AMR, MIDI and .WAV files. Overall, the audio and video quality is quite good. The phone has built-in FM radio. As far as video formats are concerned, Modu supports 3GP and MPEG4.

Rating: 3/5

Overall?

The mobile essentially brings the concept of minimalistic-yet-powerful design and it takes a lot of guts to launch a phone like this, in the days when mobile phones are stuffed with apps. Infact, the more I use Modu, the more I feel the need for a much simpler interface and a phone that gives just the basic functionality and most importantly, scales up powerfully (bring more jackets!).

Modu - Yes or No?

Can modu be your primary phone? Yes if you need a basic phone and willing to experiment with jacket extensions.

Frankly, what Modu lacks is a brand appeal. Had it been an Apple product, it would have been a different story.

For Modu to flourish, the company needs ‘jacket developers’ (that fit in the ports located at the bottom) and essentially, a jacket economy.

From a consumer point of view, modu is surely a unique and different experience.

[Reproduced from Gadgethon, The Gadget site..]

Next: Video of modu mobile will be uploaded on Gadgethon site.

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Motorola droid X clone arrives

This Motorola droid X clone looks quite nice, but sadly it comes with Window Mobile 6.5, which is quite out of date now. It’s powered by a 416 Mhz MTK6516 chip, so it’s a little confused why the maker didn’t choose Android. Compared to the OS it has now, Android definitely are more popular to consumers. The chip was able to support both Android and Windows Mobile. Hope that in the future we could see Android on this phone. Its other specs include a 4.3 inches 480*800 touchscreen, 216MB RAM, 512 MB ROM, and a 8-megapixel camera. Bluetooth and Wi-Fi also come as standard features. Currently there’s still no information about the price and time of availability.

[Source:M8cool]

• Cheap Motorola Devour clone priced about $70
• Motorola Droid clone HXSD 188 Caught in video
• Motorola Droid clone runs Windows Mobile
• Spy spots of new Motorola Android handsets
• M600 makes Motorola’s Backflip no longer unique
• Motorola Cliq clone named as Rola V19
• Motorola MT710 OPhone for China Mobile
• New MOTOROLA Concept design got cloned

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Google Zeitgeist 2010 Japanese Ranking

Following to Yahoo! Japan 2010 ranking, Google’s Zeitgeist 2010 has been disclosed on all of their languages including Japanese.

The most searched

1. YouTube
2. Yahoo
3. Facebook
4. Mixi (Asiajin)
5. Hotmail
6. Amazon
7. Rakuten (Asiajin)
8. Twitter
9. MSN
10. Gmail

Different from Yahoo! Japan’s ranking, Facebook is ranked at third position. Facebook was ranked at 39th on Yahoo! Japan’s. Instead of Japanese originated 2-channel, Nico Nico Douga, Ameblo and Goo are on Y!J, Google’s ranking has Hotmail, MSN and Gmail. That may be because Japanese Google users are more English-friendly.

Fastest Rising

1. iPad
2. Xperia – Android by Sony & Erricson for NTT Docomo
3. Rakuten Bank – Online bank by Rakuten
4. Gegege no Nyoubou – TV drama
5. AKB48 Election – a popular girls pop unit event
6. Justin Bieber
7. Nico Nico Seiga – Nico Nico Douga(Dwango’s popular video sharing service)’s variation for image sharing with comments
8. Shojo Jidai – popular girls pop unit from Korea
9. Kara – popular girls pop unit from Korea
10. Heart Catch Pricure – 21th century Sailormoon

Web/Technology ranking

All links to Asiajin articles.

1. iPad
2. Xperia
3. Nico Nico Seiga
4. Twitter
5. Ustream
6. Ameba Pigu
7. Facebook
8. Evernote
9. Smartphone
10. Zozotown

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HOT HD9 handset gets dual sim and dual OS

Not  only HTC,  the  Chinese manufacturer HOT also has a HD product line. This HD9 is the company’s newest phone from this series. HOT HD9 has a 4.3 inches 480×800  capacitive touchscreen, 512 MB ROM, 488 MB RAM, a  8-megapixel camera, and a 3.5mm headphone jack. It supports dual sim, and dual OS : the out of day Windows Mobile 6.5 and Android 2.2. People over Chinese website PConline said it gets a 1GB Qualcomm 8250B processor, but I highly doubt that.  It’s most likely coming with a 460 Mhz MTK6516 chip. The design is quite decent, but the price is not cheep also, which is 1980 Yuan( about $290 USD).

[Source: PConline.com.cn]

• Samsung Galaxy S I9000 clone from Shenzhen
• HTC EVO 4G clone V819 runs Android 2.1
• Video:MT6516 powered Tops-A1 runs Windows Mobile and Android
• HTC Desire HD clone boats Windows Mobile and Android dual OS
• Another MTK MT6516 chip powered Android handset K1 spotted
• Video: HTC Legend clone gets Android 2.1, based on MT6516 chip

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Video: People crowded to watch a vagrant playing with his iPad in Beijing

Though the Chinese again and again told its people China now is a most powerful country on the world, and Apple don’t have enough iPhone 4 supply for China market, but for most people in this country, devices like iPhone and iPad are still luxury, and have no extra money to buy them. So when seeing a vagrant was playing games on his iPad at a subway station in Beijing, many people stopped to watch this scene. A Female voice in the video said loudly with surprise “Wow, that beggar has an iPad .” The vagrant payed no attention to the surrounding at all but focused on his games and move the fingers across the screen swiftly.

[Source: Youku]

• Yosion Apple Peel 520 now on sale, priced at 520 Yuan
• Video: HTC Magic runs iPhone OS4?
• Jobs Steve sent three words to confort a China developer that got robbed during WWDC2010
• Apple meets iPad trademark problem in China
• Funny video:Apple’s Beijing store attacked by a Terminator robot
• Apple paid Hanvon $3.65 million in the ‘i-phone’ trademark deal
• Foxconn is building WAPI version iPhone for China Unicom

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2010 in Review – A Look at India’s Local Search Market [Winner Takes it All]

2010 has been a decisive year for India’s local search market. If 2009 witnessed consolidation (Burrp acquired by InfoMedia18), 2010 happens to be the go-it-all year for local search providers.

Justdial, the market leader launched its US service, a toll-free voice search supported by call center execs and interestingly, few months later, Google shut down its voice powered directory search service

, givign Justdial the much needed space in the US market.

As far as other local search search services are concerned, the writing is on the wall. Except for asklaila, nobody else comes closer to Justdial, though the game is more of distribution & monetization (sponsored listings) and Justdial has a huge lead over any other company.

Askme, Infomedia18’s local service had a bad start (was sued by Justdial) and it’d be interesting to see if they can crack their mobile strategy (i.e. distribution).

As far as Yahoo India local is concerned, consider it a harmless competition, as not a single city has been added in the last ~2 years (and not all is well with CallEzee deal).

Do not expect more funding in this space (except in cases where rich gets richer, i.e. only a performing business gets the money). VCs, in my opinion aren’t ready to bet on a new company, unless they bring a lateral shift in data collection/distribution.

What’s your take on local search market in India? Is voice still the most viable platform?

2010 Recap of local search market in India

• Finally, JustDial Launches its US Service

• Yahoo India ‘s Investment in Callezee – (Not) All is Well?

• Better late than never, Google shuts down voice search in India

• JustDial Goes Crowdsourcing For Data, Launches Reseller Program. Rs.15 Per Record

• Why Deap Ubhi quit Infomedia

• The Story of C2C Marketplaces

Recommended Read : Facts & Myths in Indian Local Search Space [Insights from an Insider]

* Note

- Comscore data in India is good for relative ranking (they do not track cybercafe data)

- We haven’t covered Google, Guruji and Sulekha in this roundup, as their local search strategies are integrated within their overall offerings.

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eBay India Census 2010–Delhi sells most dual SIM mobile in India

eBay has released its census guide for 2010 and here are some interesting data points:

- Top 5 ecommerce cities are Delhi, Mumbai, Jaipur, Chennai and Bangalore.

- Top 5 eCommerce states are Maharashtra, Delhi, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat and Karnataka

- Delhi sells most dual SIM mobile in India

- Delhi sells the most Royal Enfield accessories to international customers [Enfield 2.0 – Making of a Cult Brand]

- Delhi leads the diamond buying race!

- Mumbaikars sell the most sewing machines to fellow Indians

- Mumbai exports the most movie DVD to the world.

- Bangalore sells most GPS and Navigational equipment (yeah baby! one-ways are a part of life in Namma Bengaluru).

- Bangalore leads the hard disc buying race.

- Hyderabad sells the most regional movies in India.

- Hyderbad leads the sewing machine buying race.

- Ahmedabad sold the most movie posters to international buyers.

- Kolkata sold the most Zappo lighters (not a surprise!)

- Chandigarh sold the most batteries and chargers to Indians.

- Chandigarh leads the chess board selling race (to international customers).

- The University of Pune sold the most text books in the domestic market.

eBay Census 2010 research findings were based on an analysis of all online buying and selling transactions between July 1, 2009 and June 30, 2010.

More here. | eBay 2009 Census Guide

Recommended Read: Ecommerce in India – Analysis.

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Q&A with user experience designer Dan Wascovich

Dan Wascovich has been designing products since 1996, when he was one of the first designers at Citysearch. Armed with a background in information design, Wascovich has seen design landscape changing over the years.

Wascovich was the head of User Experience Design in Yahoo! Southeast Asia until last year when he went into consulting. He’s  had years of experience in interaction design, usability testing, visual design, information architecture and user experience research for large scale web sites and native/web applications, in both consumer and B2B spaces.

In an interview with e27, Wascovich shares about what user experience design (UXD) actually stands for, how to start designing a product and some pitfalls faced by most products.

What is UXD?

One of the things that I hear is that what is UXD? Is it User interface or visual design? It’s sort of everything. User experience is the product. What people do with what they are making, wherever they are – that’s the user experience. User experience entails what the product does. In terms of user experience, I would like to focus on usefulness, usability and then attractiveness in that order.

How does one get started?

The biggest thing is knowing who the users are and making a product that satisfies what they need. Sometimes you are firmly in that domain. You could be a business manager, event planner or game designer. When you’re not part of the demographic, then it will get difficult.

How do you make a product for a heart surgeon when you’re not going to cut anybody. It’s also useful, when you’re part of domain to go outside, talk to people and not bring so much of your own into it and really spend a lot of time with people whom you want to use your product.

Changing of design landscape

Technology has enabled Rich Internet Applications (RIA) that do more, act more intuitively. Design patterns are changing as people become savvy users — there’s a certain expectation now. With that, developers can look at higher quality designs and patterns are getting widely known and used.

Part of my job at Yahoo! SEA was to build a UX design team and also to get the Singapore office products more user focused. We covered 6 countries, we have representation of all 6 countries in our office. Really good people, very good representation from these countries. Sometimes companies will rely too much on their internal people. And so my goal was to go into the market to learn more about the motivation of the audiences. It really depends on the product you are creating.

It’s interesting though that global products were not meant to be created that way. Facebook’s goal was not to become a huge hit in let’s say Singapore, but they are extremely propular here. There are some commonalities within culture.

On Singapore startups

I think there’s a lot of very exciting things happening in Singapore. From my conversation with startups here, focus on user centred design and mentality or methodology, they are not really far off. I’m seeing some interesting things.

I think that in Singapore because startup arena is still fairly new, I think that startups can look at examples out there, creatively borrow and that will get them pretty far. I think eventually, the space will be crowded where they will have to push the envelope a little bit more. Then it become a talent issue. In terms of uxd are pretty expensive. Even in Silicon Valley, there are not enough.

Best designed products?

I think Apple products are fantastically designed. Another example of fairly ugly but useful product is craigslist. I think they could improve it much better.

I think Facebook is good looking enough. Facebook is very useful in terms of connecting people. But I’m really getting scared by their privacy policies.

In terms of visual design, I like JetSetter and Gilt are pretty good looking. Groupon is a pretty good looking product too.

Designing Mobile applications

I think that in terms of overall design process, there are a lot of presentations on it. It’s sort of the new thing to present on mobile-first design, how you can apply that to your website.

I’ve always designed from the perspective of most useful or critical features first. I think Mobile actually forces that prioritization which is a good thing. Your mobile app, if it’s a companion to the website, mobile app should do the most important things easily. Simply because of less real estate, you are forced to concentrate on the key features. Sometimes it’s a valuable exercise to take that back to the website — are we really focusing on key features?

Pitfalls

In terms of portals or large scale sites, depeneding on the culture, some of them want to see a lot going on.  This is in particular with China and Thailand. They particularly want to see a lot on their page.

But outside of that, sometimes business objectives can get in the way of what you really want people want to do. That can be sort of the pitfall. You start to lose the ability to steer people down the path you want them to go down.

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Chirpstory: Japan’s Best-known Service For Curating Tweets Goes International

Togetter[J], a web service for curating tweets by hashtags or containing keywords, has introduced its English version called Chirpstory on Thursday.   As well as Togetter (Japanese version), Chirpstory allows you to make a “story” curating all tweets about a specific topic only by drag and drop of several tweets for defining the topic.   It’s Twitter OAuth-compatible.

Togetter was developed by system developer Toshiaki Yoshida[J] (@yositosi)last year, it has engaged 2 million unique users per month.  This year it won the Good Design Awards, a comprehensive program for the evaluation and encouragement of design organized by Japan Industrial Design Promotion Organization (JIDPO).

He is currently seeking business partners and developers who have in-depth know-how about advanced technologies and infrastructure management.

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