Mac App Store reaches million download milestone

The Mac App Store is changing the way people buy software for their computers. In just 24 hours after its release, Apple has announced that there have been one million downloads with more than 1000 free and paid Mac apps available. The store was scheduled to open at 1:00 a.m Friday, SGT but Apple let the cat out three hours early.

On its press release, Apple CEO Steve Jobs said, “We’re amazed at the incredible response the Mac App Store is getting. Developers have done a great job bringing apps to the store and users are loving how easy and fun the Mac App Store is.”

By comparison, Macworld noted that the iOS App Store had managed 10 million downloads in its first weekend, the iTunes Store sold one million songs in its first week, and the iBookstore hit the million mark after a couple of weeks.

The Mac App Store is available as part of the Mac OS X 10.6.6 update, which means those still running Leopard, otherwise known as Mac OS X 10.5, will need to upgrade to the latest version.

While the Mac App Store is clearly a standalone application, it is actually linked to your iTunes account. Purchases on the Mac App Store can be made using the same iTunes ID and credit card used to purchase apps for Apple’s mobile devices.

iTunes Gift Cards, for those who hold accounts from countries where Apple issues them, are redeemable on the Mac App Store. If you’re looking for a FAQ, Macworld has compiled a great list.

When looking at the million download mark, it’s difficult to avoid commenting on possibly it’s most popular app, Twitter for Mac. It had been the most awaited app since Twitter hired Tweetie developer Loren Brichter in April 2010 but nothing materialized for months. The once revolutionary app, in the meantime, had become outdated.

In October, company co-founder Evan Williams had stated that they had no plans for a Mac app, leaving Brichter to tweet a hint saying it’s “not not happening”. So it was rather amusing to read on the Twitter blog yesterday that Tweetie for Mac was updated in that very month during Twitter’s hack week and it’s now available for free from the Mac App Store.

Twitter for Mac is easily the top free app in the store across many of its countries, perhaps even surpassing Angry Birds which is the top paid app, a feat that wouldn’t be surprising at all. Out of the million downloads, wouldn’t it be interesting to find out how many of those were Twitter for Mac?

While on the topic, those who own Macs with Intel GMA950 graphics will need to hold on for an update before playing Angry Birds. These are generally consumer Macs from mid 2007 and prior. Apparently Rovio Mobile forgot to test its game with older Macs, leaving those unfortunate Mac owners who have bought the game rather furious.

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Affiliates’ Corner @ SMU – 19 Jan

Join the Singapore Management University for the next Affiliates’ Corner this 19th Jan. SPRING Singapore will be sharing on entrepreneurship schemes available for starting up and Ngee Ann Poly on one of its IPs available for startup licensing.

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Topics

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“Entrepreneurship Development and Promotion” by SPRING Singapore

The presentation will include a brief overview of the Entrepreneurship landscape in Singapore, overview of SPRING Singapore, and the schemes & programmes available to promote entrepreneurship and support start-ups. It will also provide an overview of the Action Community for Entrepreneurship (ACE), a private and public sector movement aimed at creating a more entrepreneurial Singapore.

SPRING Singapore is the enterprise development agency responsible for helping Singapore enterprises grow. As a Manager in the Entrepreneurship Development Division, Ms Chong Hui Wen works with various partners to seed and nurture innovative start-ups and to build a pro-enterprise environment. This includes the administration of YES !Start-ups; YES! Schools; and the Incubator Development Programme (IDP).”

“Software Activation and Copy Protection Method” by Ngee Ann Poly

Ngee Ann Poly, an Academic Affiliates of SMU will share its IP well suited for a start-up company Mr Anand Ravi Deshpande, inventor of “Software Action and Copy Protection Method’, will highlight the advantages and commercial usage of the technology.

Commercially viable prototype through Academic Affiliates’ developed by SMU students stands $10,000 under AAP.

“A Start-ups Experience with government assistance” by Manga Castle

Sylvia Yao, founder of Manga Castle, recipient of SPRING YES! Grant will share her start-ups experience, leveraging on the Innovation & Entrepreneurship ecosystem in Singapore.

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About Affiliates’ Corner

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Affiliates’ Corner brings together, intellectual property owners, innovators and experienced professionals who are interested in entrepreneurships to promote commercialization of innovations through generation of start-ups. Government agencies will also invited to share on schemes available to encourage innovation and entrepreneurship.(AC will start at 6.30 pm on the third Wednesday of every month at the SMU Faculty Lounge (Level 6, SMU Administration Building).

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Event Details

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When: Wednesday 19th January 2011
Time: 6.30 pm – 8.30 pm (Dinner will be provided)
Where: SMU Administration Building, Level 6, University Lounge, 81 Victoria Street, Singapore 188065

Register here.

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Chinamode 2010: 45 Finalists Nominated For China’s Best Web Service Awards (1/3)

Chinamode 2010[C] is a competition to choose the best web services and apps in Mainland China, which is co-organized by 25 tech blogs and 10 tech news media in the country.  Its award-presenting ceremony is scheduled to be held in Beijing on the 24th of this month, where 17 experts from VC firms, tech media and successful tech companies will choose the best in each service category.  Currently 45 finalists are nominated as a result of online votes by Chinese Internet users.   Let’s see them and foresee what will lead Chinese Internet trends in the year of 2011.

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Category 1: Life and Consumer-related Services

Meituan.com[C] (美团网) is China’s first deal of the day service and offers discount coupons for restaurants, bars, karaoke rooms, spa and hair salons in major cities of the country.

Lashou.com[C] (拉手网) is a flash marketing site like a combination of Groupon and Foursquare features.   Their deals of the day are now available in more than 200 cities across the country.

Nuomi.com[C] (糯米网) is also a deal of the day site and intend to target relatively high-end consumers.   The synergy effects made from integration with social network Renren.com[C] (人人网) and entertainment news portal Mop.com[C](猫扑), both of which belong to Nuomi’s parent company Oak Pacific Interactive (千橡互动集团), help them spread the discount deals out more efficiently.

Booksfly.com[C] (书飞网) is an online book rental service.  They provide several types of membership programs for families, colleagues and roommates.

Taotaosou.com[C] (淘淘搜) is an image-based shopping search engine and helps you find a product you want at lowest prices only with a picture of it.   You never need to enter keywords.   Taotaosou aggregates product data including image, price, style and color from a bunch of e-commerce sites such as Taobao[C](淘宝网), and sorts them out in accordance with the attribute similarity, so Taotaosou users can easily compare them in a page.

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Category 2: Social media

Sina Micro-blog [C] (新浪微博) is a Twitter-like service by China’s leading portal site and allows users to publish text and pictures through PC/mobile web access, SMS and MMS.   It has the largest number of micro-blog users in the country.  On the service, more than 250 million tweets are published every day, and 38% of them has come from cellphone handsets.

Mtime [C] (时光网) is a place to find movie related information and to criticize movies.   It is similar to IMDb (The Internet Movie Database) in U.S., and has engaged relatively veteran movie fans.   It has taken several years to achieve a database covering tens of thousand of movies and the world’s latest hits, and tens of thousand of movie fans visit the site every day.

Tencent Micro-blog [C] (腾讯微博) is also a Twitter-like service by China’s leading portal QQ.com[C] of Tencent.   You’re allowed to publish updates in 140 Chinese characters each.

Xianguo.com[C] (鲜果联播) is a popular online RSS reader and a Twitter-like micro-blog by China’s Digg-like Xianguo.  With an API for integrating with popular blog service platforms, you are allowed to share updates with more users by inserting a text in your RSS messages.

Guokr.com [C] (果壳网) is a website focusing on science, wisdom and life tips where users can share their knowledge on many topics and discuss.   I think what they are doing is very similar to something being operated by Gawker Media.   It was founded by Mr. Ji Shi San (姬十三, @jshisan[C]), the president of Songshuhui.net[C] (科学松鼠会), a Chinese collaborative blog focusing on popular science for the general public.

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Category 3: Entertainment Services of  The Year

Beijing-based Ismole.com Game Network Inc.[C] (奇矩互动(北京)科技有限公司) has developed a new social game called Ninja Village that allows you to not only cultivate crops but also design and construct a village as you wish to.   It is promoted in association with major Chinese portal sites.

Douban.fm[C] (豆瓣电台) is an Internet radio service launched by Douban[C](豆瓣), a Chinese website providing user review and recommendation services for movies, books and music.  You may listen to the programs with the FireFox plug-in, the iPhone app and the Android apps.   It’s very similar to Last.fm.   Based on accumulated data records, it lists you a recommendation of what you may be interested in listening to.

Qiyi.com[C] (奇艺网) is an independent online video website launched by China’s search engine tycoon Baidu in January 2010.   In February 2010, Qiyi got an investment of USD 50M from Rhode Island-headquartered Providence Equity Partners.  Then the shareholders of the company invited Dr. Gong Yu[C] (龚宇) as the CEO, and the service was officially launched in April 2010.   By setting up multiple channels such as dramas, movies, cartoon, music and arts, a variety of licensed programming meet the growing needs of Internet video watchers.

Sanguosha[C] (三国杀 , meaning the battles of three kingdoms) is originally a card game of battle, and its online edition was developed for an Internet game platform in June 2009.   Every player plays as an either general of three kingdoms in the game.

Kugou.com[C] (酷狗音乐) is committed to Internet users and digital music industry by providing the best solution.   The company aims to be the largest hub of promoting digital music content in the Asia Pacific region.   It provides a free music player having several features such as recommended song search results, artist ranking and karaoke subtitles.

Via: Social Beta [C]

(To be continued to an upcoming post.)

千橡互动集团

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Copyright Mark May Mean “Miss” For Japanese Teens

You know what copyright mark © means, don’t you?

It should be common for all cultures that young generation try to differentiate themselves by changing their languages from adult. In this case with Japanese teenager girls, they have been using © for totally different purpose since mid 1990′s.

Here is an image from monthly teens’ fashion magazine Loveberry [J]

The model have their name on their side. The letters in braces are nicknames. And their Kanji names followed by ©

This does not mean that they claim copyright on their name. On this magazine, this © means “-chan”, casual form of “-san”, which is a title of respect.

So some young girls who are reading the magazine use © character after their friends’ name on (usually mobile) web, too. It is totally unbelievable even for Japanese adults.

See Also:

“www” has another meaning in Japanese Web

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Digital Media on the Move – 18 Jan

Digital Media On The Move will feature speakers from a government statutory board (Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore), media (Digital Life), and startup (Bits Media). Topics will include “general trends of devices” and “monetizing mobile applications: a reality check on the real opportunities in a crowded ecosystem”.

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Event Details

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When: Tuesday 18th January 2011
Time: starts at 3pm
Where: 67 Ubi Ave 1 #05-01 StarHub Green, Singapore 408942

For fees and registration details, please check this out.

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“Should I Startup or Take up a Job”? The answer is..

“Should I Startup or Take up a Job”?

We are very often asked for suggestions on this question and I personally find it very difficult to answer this without knowing a wannapreneur’s real reason to startup.

But the shortest and most apt answer came from Nilesh (in reply to a question: I am willing to startup, but do not now how to put ideas into action)

““Confusion whether to start up a company or go to work.” Unless you have this question in your mind, you are not ready for start up a company. In other word, When you will be ready to start up a company, you won’t have this confusion.”

Starting up is more than just leaving your job (and staying unemployed!). Starting up a business needs a different mindset and unless you are in a frame of mind to slog your a$$ (i.e. immensely passionate about the idea), do not take the leap.

In fact, most of such queries are driven by the biggest myth surrounding entrepreneurship – i.e. I will be My Boss! [Read: I will be my Boss - Myths About Entrepreneurship].

No doubt that starting up gives you the freedom to choose/decide (and live the consequence), but being one’s own boss is highly overrated. Once you startup, you will realize that you have too many bosses to report to – including investors whose money is at stake, including family who will keep poking with ‘Is all well with your company?”

In short, you are more answerable to the world when you are an entrepreneur vs. when you are an employee.

So if you are still wondering if you should take up a job or startup, simply go for the job. Maybe you do not believe so much in the idea or you still aren’t so passionate to die for it.

Having said that, don’t live in a binary world – i.e. don’t do an either-or.
Even if you take up a job, you should be researching more on the idea, start building the product, start with PoCs (Proof of Concept), start talking to potential customers and do a dip stick check after 6 months.

After 6 months, if you still find yourself working on the same idea and dreaming of making it big, congratulations. It’s time to take a plunge.

Jump.

Recommended Read: Entrepreneurship Myth– It Needs A Lot of Courage To Start Up

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Ajay Devgn to Launch TicketPlease, Entertainment Plus Ticketing Site

Bollywood has embraced digital media and Ajay Devgn is going a step further with the launch of TicketPlease, a ticketing site loaded with filmi gossips, expert film reviews, celebrity news and interviews.

Launching on January 10th , the site will will sell tickets of movies, concerts, plays and sports events; and will host regular social networking features like chatting, blogs, videos, photographs. You will also be able to buy movie CDs/DVDs and merchandise.

Given that this is coming from a Bollywood insider, do you see a potential in this?

If you look at Bollywood related sites, they are mostly around reviews (and mostly, seo play) and monetize via display ads (leaving a lot of money on the table). Except Facebook (and Orkut), none of the sites have become the preferred channel for producers to reach out to the masses.

Can TicketPlease change that? Well, an interesting venture to watch out for.

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Salesforce.com Acquires Dimdim

Salesforce has acquired Dimdim for approximately $31 million in cash. Founded in 2007, Dimdim has created critical real-time communication technologies such as presence, messaging and screen sharing. With the acquisition, salesforce.com gains Dimdim’s real-time communication technologies, along with a team of world-class developers experienced in building cloud-based collaboration services.

Salesforce.com will use the acquisition to bring new real-time communication capabilities to the Chatter collaboration platform, mirroring the proven Facebook model of combining collaboration and communication into an integrated service.

In 2008, Dimdim raised $6mn in Series B from Index Ventures, Nexus India Capital, and Draper Richards; and later from Zimbra cofounder.

Salesforce has been aggressive in collabration space and recently launched Chatter as well as Database.com.

Dimdim has now stopped new registrations and the service will remain active till the acquisition is completed. 

An interesting excerpt from the press release

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Bringing the Proven Facebook Model to the Enterprise

Salesforce.com recognizes that a massive shift is under way in the industry, the shift to Cloud 2. The first phase of cloud computing was about leveraging technologies that were low cost, fast and easy to use. Cloud 2 represents the new generation of cloud computing — one that is inherently social, mobile and real-time.

Facebook initiated this transition by training more than half a billion users worldwide on real time collaboration, including feeds and status updates. Today, Facebook has proven the value of integrated collaboration and communication, with services like presence and messaging, which helped fuel user adoption, making it the world’s most popular Internet site.

Salesforce.com followed a similar path when it introduced the Salesforce Chatter collaboration platform. Today, more than 60,000 customers have deployed Chatter since its release in June — making it the company’s most-popular product. Now with Dimdim, salesforce.com is following Facebook’s lead once again. By offering an integrated collaboration and communication platform, the company believes it will drive greater Chatter adoption, increase customer loyalty and differentiate its entire product portfolio.

Recommended Read : WordPress as Lead Generation Engine – How to Integrate WordPress and Salesforce

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