Facebook Japan Takes Hard Line, Banning Pseudo Names And Requires ID

Today February 8, some Japanese web users who are influential in tech communities like Hatena and Twitter, started reporting they were locked out from Facebook. After trying to log in, they were taken to the form, which title is “Complaints against a ban of your account, identity demanded”.

On the form, following information are asked to provide,

• contact mail address
• name
• date of birth
• mail address for log in if you can use it
• scanned image of your identification paper – keep full name, date of birth and photo clear, you may hide other information

Some of the banned users reported it on Twitter, which are listed on Togetter [J]. There are names including an A-list blogger, popular Hatena users, web users who write not only blogs/tweets but also books and articles under their nickname.

Banning pseudo name users seem not Japan only (thanks Dominic), but many of ‘active’ social network users are using pseudo name and icon in Japan, so it may have a chilling effect on the recent Facebook boom by its movie and media coverages.

Facebook and its Japanese branch show their service’s principle. It seems to tell “If you do not like it Japan, you do not need to use Facebook”.

See Also:

Woman called Yoda blocked from Facebook – Telegraph in 2008

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Ruby coding contest CodeCom 2011 in Singapore

This is a sponsored post

The guys at NUS Hackers, a student-run organization at the National University of Singapore that promotes all things open-source and hacker-y, are running CodeCom, a Ruby coding contest — and you don’t even have to know Ruby to participate. You do, however, have to be a student at either NUS, Nanyang Technological University, or Singapore Management University. Update: Actually, the contest is open to everyone, not just Singapore university students.

Here are the details:
Date: 12 Feb
Venue : NUS Extension
Sign up link : bit.ly/codecom2011

10:30am Registration and Introduction by NUSHackers & NTUOSS
11:00am On Ruby – by Jason Ong from the Singapore Ruby Brigade
11:30am Introduction to the Competition Platform (Singpath) by Chris and Sandra Boesch
12:00pm Competition Commences
2:00pm-3:00pm Winner Emerges!

Prizes: a 1TB hard disc drive, a 19″ LCD screen, and 5 other consolation prizes.

CodeCom 2011 is part of the Developer Series supported by Singapore’s Infocomm Development Authority to grow and support local developers and programmers

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Stream Media Raises Series A of USD 0.8M

Stream Media, the company behind in-app mobile payment platform, MoVend, has raised a Series A round of SGD 1M (USD 0.8M) from Stream Global and Singtel Innov8. Press release follows.

8 February 2011, Singapore – Stream Media Private Limited, a Singapore-based start-up, announced today that it has received S$1 million in Series A funding, led by Stream Global Pte Ltd and SingTel Innov8 Pte Ltd. Stream Media will focus on content acquisition and is working with game studios globally to make use of its payment platform, MoVend.

Launched in July 2010, Stream Media’s flagship product, MoVend, is an in-app commerce platform that allows users to make transactions and payments easily, without exiting the app. Other than collecting payment from established gateways like operator billing and PayPal, the platform provides a complete set of features, including user and license management, sales tracking and analytics; so that the developer can have a ease of mind and focus on building quality mobile content and services.

To encourage more developers to use MoVend, Stream Media will be offering the product to developers and merchants at special promotional rates in 2011.

With this round of investment, Stream Media will focus their efforts on aggregating all major global payment options for mobile in-app transactions, through MoVend. Developers will be able to incorporate the MoVend software development kit (SDK) effortlessly into their mobile applications. The product resolves users’ problems of fragmented payment options and developers’ headaches of monetising their applications. MoVend is currently available for Android phones and will be available on the Apple iPhone, BlackBerry OS and Windows Phone 7 mobile devices within the year.

“We plan for MoVend to become the uniform payment mechanism to enable in-app and virtual goods transactions in all application stores,” said MoVend creator and CEO of Stream Media, Chua Zi Yong. “We have closed app distribution deals with original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and operators to use MoVend for their appstores, and will help developers who use our SDK to publish and market their apps in these channels. We will also preload selected high quality games into devices to boost our developers’ revenue.”

Mr Edgar Hardless, Managing Director (Investments), SingTel Innov8 said, “The mobile space needs more high-quality apps as more users turn to their mobile devices to cater for their entertainment and productivity needs. And the ability to easily monetise apps will certainly help encourage developers to continue to produce innovative mobile apps.”

Since its launch, MoVend has reached out to app and game developers globally. Mobile game publishers like Hyperbees (U.K.) and GoodTeam Studios (China) are the first few that have used the MoVend.

Stream Media was started by Chua Zi Yong, an alumnus of the NUS Overseas Colleges programme, in March 2009. The company is based within the NUS Enterprise Incubator at the National University of Singapore’s Engineering Faculty, where it gained access to business resources, an experienced mentor network and business clinics as well as workshops. It has 12 staff and is expected to grow to 20 by the end of this year. Stream Media has previously raised seed funding from SPRING Singapore’s YES! Startups scheme and the Media Development Authority’s iJAM scheme.

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The Rumored Microsoft Nokia Deal–Making of 1000 Pound Gorilla?

Stephen Elop was considered a super star in Microsoft. He ran one of the most profitable business divisions at Microsoft (apart from the OS group – which screwed up around the same time with Windows Vista). He had an impeccable history at Macromedia, Adobe and then at Juniper. If there was anyone more suited to take Nokia out of this mess, it was the certain someone at Cupertino and who was the person who caused the slide for them in the first place.

In the past few weeks, a lot of people have talked of the impending marriage (or maybe engagement if you want to talk in human relationship analogies) between Nokia and Microsoft. Nokia has already been partnering with Microsoft for having Office Mobile on their phones (incidentally a group belonging to the larger group headed by Elop at Microsoft).

Apart from these, they also have had communicator for Symbian and slowly making applications from MS available on Nokia. In the blogosphere, we have had some interesting comments – the most interesting in this one from ComputerWorld’s Preston Galla which quotes an open letter from the FT –

To Elop

“Announce an EXCLUSIVE deal with your ex-colleague, Steve: you get access to their WP7 intellectual property (IPR) scot-free and access to the US market where your share has dived to the low single-digit level, and in so doing cut your bloated handset business R&D budget by at least €1bn ($1.4 billion), or 30%, which should add 300 bps to your operating margin. Get rid of your own proprietary high-end solution (MEEGO) — it’s the biggest joke in the tech industry right now and will put you even further behind Apple and Google.

“Focus your high-end portfolio around WP7, and over time you can take the cost down (that’s Steve’s job and cost base) to get this into the mid-range market.

To Ballmer

“two million units shipped in the last quarter is not really much to write home about, given $500m in marketing programmes (ouch), but with Nokia on-side, you get access to a potential 20-25 percent global share over time–and exclusivity. You need to tie yourself to a high-volume player to be relevant.”

In the past few days we have also been hearing of major shakeups in Nokia. For good reasons this is the way ahead – Nokia has been a leader at making phones. They have made a lot of iconic phones and have had a huge success in the same. However in the software play, they have had very few and moderate success at best.

This is where a marriage with Microsoft would bring out the best with them we think. Although Apple stole their lunch (and Android is ruling the roost as the trends say), Microsoft knows the application play better than anyone else. The most applications in the in world are written on Windows (OS) today and it is a matter of time till they figure out the game in Mobile. From a Microsoft point of view, Nokia has an existing sales channel (among the best) and huge footprints in many countries.
They also have highly efficient phone making capabilities – with the ability to churn our many different SKUs at the same time. As the open letter in the FT says, Microsoft needs the downstream capability which Nokia has in order to reach the large numbers.

Lastly, on a more generic note, smart phones have a life of 2-3 years. Which is why the winners of the mobile battles for the last 4 years (iPhone) are now behind the Android bandwagon. The need is to not only innovate in technology but in business models, mechanisms of monetization and partnerships. This partnership leverages the best that both these companies have which is why we strongly believe this is the right way to go for Microsoft and definitely for Nokia.

What’s your take?

[img credit]

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Events For The Week – 5-12 Feb

For a one-stop to all events related to or concerning entrepreneurship, certain industry-meets-business forums and seminars in Singapore, check out our Calendar. If not, you can also follow our bite-size updated posts for upcoming events for the week.

Events range from simple get-togethers to full-blown conferences. Get to meet fellow developers, entrepreneurs, startup CEOs & founders, and meet & learn from CEOs of established companies who have seen it all.

Our aim here at SGE is to make it easy for you to pick & choose from the event buffet. Enjoy.

Here are the events for this week. Events are mostly in Singapore (generally 30 minutes drive from anywhere), but we also include key events from around Southeast Asia and beyond.

Wed 9th Feb:

(1) Talk on US Business Opportunities and Market Access

Thurs 10th Feb:

(1) Chillin’ With Scott Rafer (MyBlogLog, Omniar), Christine Songco Lau (Google), Steve Russell (3VR)

(2) The Accidental Entrepreneur

If you’re looking for a real-time Q&A solution for your event, check out PigeonHole Live. The team at PigeonHole has kindly agreed to allow event organisers who quote SGEntrepreneurs to get to use their solution for free till end June 2011.

Image courtesy of joyosity.

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Chillin’ With Scott Rafer, Christine Songco, Steve Russell – 10 Feb

We’ll be chilling this Thursday with serial entrepreneur Scott Rafer of MyBlogLog (sold to Yahoo!), Lookery, Omniar; Google geek/developer relations Christine Songco Lau and video security expert, Steve Russell of 3VR Security.

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Event Details

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When: Thursday 10th February 2011
Time: 7pm
Where: The Merry Men, 86 Robertson Quay, #01-02
(below Robertson Blue condo, opposite river from River View Hotel)

Register here.

View Larger Map

If you’re looking for a real-time Q&A solution for your event, check out PigeonHole Live. The team at PigeonHole has kindly agreed to allow event organisers who quote SGEntrepreneurs to get to use their solution for free till end June 2011.

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The Accidental Entrepreneur From MIT – 10 Feb

This talk describes an academician’s reluctant entry into entrepreneurship, first with the founding of Brontes Technologies (founded in 2003 and sold to 3M in 2006), and, second, Lantos Technologies, (venture funded in September 2010). Meet Dr. Douglas Hart, MIT Professor of Mechanical Engineering. The unique difficulties faced by academics embarking on entrepreneurship will be discussed along with the motivation and rewards for taking on this challenge.

The role of universities is traditionally that of education and basic research: acting as a repository for knowledge and disseminating information through seminars, conferences, and journal papers. However, there is growing interest in entrepreneurship as a central part of the academic paradigm. The unique freedom afforded academics provides an environment where innovation thrives. Unfortunately, most of these innovations are lost as the chasm separating academia and the commercial world is vast. Entrepreneurship provides a highly effective means of bridging this chasm allowing innovations to be pushed from the laboratory into the marketplace where they can help fuel the economy while solving societal problems in areas such as energy, health, communications, and the environment.

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About The Speaker

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Dr. Hart is a Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and a principal investigator in the Hatsopoulos Microfluids Laboratory (HML) at MIT. An inventor, cofounder, and former board member of Brontes Technologies, Inc., a MIT Deshpande Center spinout acquired by 3M in 2006, and Lantos Technologies, a recent MIT Deshpande Center spinout founded in September 2010. Dr. Hart has a long history of successful commercial inventions from within and outside academia. He is an advisor for numerous companies and professional organizations and he has received a number of awards for his research and teaching including the Robert T. Knapp Award for his work in the area of flow diagnostics, the Keenan Award for Innovation in Education, and the Junior Bose Award for Excellence in Teaching. His current interests include instrumentation, image processing, and optical diagnostics relating to health and the environment.

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Event Details

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When: Thursday 10th February 2011
Time: 7:00pm – 8:00pm
Where; NTU@One-North, Auitorium 302, 11 Slim Barracks Rise, Singapore 138664

Register here.

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Multiply staffs up in Philippines and Indonesia, looks to Southeast Asia for growth

Also-ran social network Multiply is trying to staff up in Southeast Asia as it tries to reshape the network into an e-commerce platform following the opening of its offices in Jakarta and Manila late last year.

Multiply, which calls itself a ‘social shopping’ site, is looking to fill a range of vacancies in Indonesia and the Philippines, according to postings on its website. The company is trying to fill full-time positions ranging from sales representatives, software developers, all the way to executive levels.

The Indonesian jobs post says that Multiply hosts 90,000 stores worldwide and has 20,000 unique users. That second figure seems to be a typographical error as Wikipedia puts the number at 20 million users worldwide, with 5 million from the Philippines. It is a far cry however, from Facebook’s 34 million Indonesian users, many of whom use it as a place for social shopping as well.

Thousands of Indonesians use their Facebook profile pages as store fronts for home industries and online shops. While this is no different than what some do at Multiply, Facebook isn’t focused on that particular user behavior and it’s this opportunity that Multiply is hoping to take advantage of. In fact, from the outside it looks to be what local site plasa.com wants to become — a collection of online stores.

Multiply, realizing that it has lost significant global traction, appears to be trying to move in a new direction, with Southeast Asia as a new outpost for future development. Indeed, the site’s ‘about’ page says that it is Southeast Asia’s “biggest marketplace”. Indonesia and The Philippines have been identified as strong regional bases from which Multiply will formulate its strategy for the Southeast Asian region. The company claimed US$124 million in transaction value annually from the Philippines alone, according to a piece in Entrepreneur Philippines magazine (link to a blog that republished the story) last year.

Transactions on Multiply tend to be more traditional in nature, often completed by phone calls, SMS or email. Merchants disclose their bank account numbers and buyers would transfer their payments accordingly, although more tech-savvy merchants may choose to use PayPal.

Multiply offers free listing and use of its general facilities and it also does not collect any fee from any transaction. Instead, it has a three-tiered trusted seller program which is renewable on a yearly basis and an advertising program.

Multiply’s big move in Indonesia has been to hire Daniel Tumiwa from Indonesian BlackBerry app development company 7 Langit as its Indonesia country manager. Tumiwa had previously been involved in the digital space with local tobacco giant Djarum, Universal Music and Soundbuzz, as well as running MTV Indonesia in its early days. He also held consulting positions with Air Asia, Yahoo, and CNBC in the past.

Tumiwa told us about his joining Multiply at the BlackBerry Devcon Asia in Bali last month but requested that it be kept private until now. In late January however, he tweeted that he was looking for executives to join a foreign internet based social shopping company though he wouldn’t name it publicly.

It’s clear that Multiply is looking to Southeast Asia for new growth. The company seems to to be following the steps of fellow early social network Friendster – now owned by Malaysian company MOL – in developing a new base in Southeast Asia, hoping to reinvent itself. With the explosion in social media usage and rapidly growing mobile internet adoption, who could blame them for giving the region a shot?

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Searching Google Docs and Gmail Made Super Fast with CloudMagic

We earlier covered how a Bangalore based startup added a the most natural extension to Gmail, i.e. integrated search. Cloudmagic’s Firefox/Chrome extension, when added indexes your Gmail data locally (not in the cloud) and shows search results as you type(super fast is the best way to describe the behavior).

The team has now launched the 2.0 version of the plugin that goes beyond Gmail – i.e. Google Docs (interestingly, Google docs too announced a new UI, better search last week).

In essence, CloudMagic 2.0 extends search for following services:

• Emails
• Contacts
• Documents
• Spreadsheets
• Presentations
• Forms

With CloudMagic 2.0 you can refer to other emails & docs while composing a message without opening different tab or window. Similarly you can refer to any docs or emails while working on docs.

Watch this demo video

This is a great product for businesses using Google office suite, though I’d recommend the team to look at Zoho suite as well – Zoho “sells” more to enterprises than Google Apps (which does have a huge user number to boast of).

Do give the Clouldmagic a spin and share your comments.
Another product from CloudMagic Team: IssueBurner [Do More with Email – Track Issue, Tasks, Support Tickets]

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Send Voice Messages This Valentine’s Day Using mCupid

Valentine’s day is a week from now and if you really want to do something interesting, add your voice message along with the gift or flowers you are sending.

Newly launched service, mCupid provides service (APIs) to online florist or gift sellers, which allow users to add voice message along with the gifts, as a replacement of regular message cards.

Here is how it works:

• Once the sender opts for Voice Message, the website would ask for the Sender and Receiver phone numbers(if you have not already), to be passed on to mCupid API.
• The sender would call mCupid (01140440011) to record his message.
• The message can be recorded as many times till the sender is satisfied within two hours.
• Upon Delivery of Gift, the receiver would Dial mCupid mentioned on the card to hear the personalized message as many times as she wishes (receiver gets a message “Call: 01140440011 from your mobile to listen to your personal voice message by the <sender>”).

mCupid service essentially adds value to the sites that enable consumers to send online gifts and the APIs are priced based on the number of messages (Rs. 2,000 for 200 messages, 4K for 500), though I am not sure why the positioning has been done keeping cupid in mind (i.e. valentine’s day et al).

A service like this can be used for any online gifting and adds a great amount of value to the end user, as long as ecommerce sites are able to extract more mullahs for this service.

The question is would you pay extra to an ecommerce service for adding voice messaging, while you are sending a gift?

Aside, Voiee was one of a great concept, but has now hit the deadpool.

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Facebook Featured By Media Like Last Year’s Twitter In Japan

Weekly Diamond, Japanese business magazine featured Facebook for over 30 pages.

Weekly Diamond 2011-01-29

As you see, the magazine cover has a lot of Facebook icons which were asked on Facebook by the editors. The first page shows applied readers’ Facebook icons, too.

The sections are “What is Facebook?”, “Facebook Guide to start today” and “How you individual/company should use Facebook”.

How they feature the service, and make icon covers, are exact replay of what they did for Twitter one year ago.

Weekly Diamond 2010-01-23

The rival magazine Weekly Economist took up Facebook as main, similar articles structure with little less pages.

Weekly Economist 2011-02-01

Both magazine have comments from Taro Kodama, Facebook Japan country manager and Kenji Kasahara, Mixi CEO.

According to Socialbakers, the number of Japanese active users on Facebook showed better increase rate this year than before.

“The Social Network”, the Facebook movie released in Japan in January, took a bitter start, but topped at the second week (then 3rd ranked last week), so the movie and these media coverage may affect well.

See Also:

Asiajin » Facebook will possibly fail in Japan

Asiajin » Facebook Sudden Surge In Japan By Notable Web Users – On the chart above, you see 100,000 users increase in October on the chart, but this one did not continue.

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The Global Smartphone Market– Nokia Rules, Samsung and HTC Grows

The global smartphone market is going through a defining phase. Rumors are that Nokia will partner with Microsoft for Windows Mobile operating system and expect some key shakeup in the company (this week), though the good news is that Nokia still is the #1 smartphone seller.

As per the latest data from IDC, Nokia sold 28.3 million smartphones in Q4, 2010 while Apple sold only 16.2 million. In total, Nokia leads the pack for 2010 (sold 100.3 million smartphones) at a y-o-y growth of 48.2%, while Samsung has grown phenomenally well at 318.2%.

Top Five Smartphone Vendors

Nokia noted the positive progress of its new Symbian^3 smartphones during 4Q10: five million units combined from the N8, C7, and C601 worldwide, a strong showing given their recent introduction to the market. At the same time, Nokia’s volumes are largely comprised of older devices, while MeeGo-powered devices have yet to arrive on the market. In addition, Nokia continues to struggle in the North America market. The recent cancellation of the X7 smartphone at AT&T highlights Nokia’s challenges.

Apple‘s iPhone gained more ground in the worldwide smartphone market, with shipment volume growth coming from Asia/Pacific and Japan. In addition, Apple made further inroads into the enterprise market, with more companies adding Apple to their approved smartphone list and increased development of corporate-centered applications. Rumors of an iPhone 5 have begun to heat up the blogosphere, with many expecting a new design and perhaps a mobile wallet.

Research In Motion reached a new shipment volume for a single quarter in 4Q10, and posted nearly identical year-over-year growth for both the quarter and the year. Driving growth was stronger interest from outside North America, with several markets posting double-digit gains. Meanwhile, RIM continued to enjoy market leadership in North America, but nonetheless saw mounting challenges from the competition. Popular devices for the quarter included the BlackBerry Torch and the BlackBerry Curve 3G.

Samsung took top honors for having the largest year-over-year improvement for both the quarter and for the year, an accomplishment largely fueled by its popular Galaxy S series smartphones. New Galaxy devices are expected to launch, including the Galaxy Fit, Ace, and Mini. Not to be overlooked are Samsung’s bada-branded smartphones, as well as its emerging Windows Phone smartphones, both of which received a warm reception. Samsung has set its sights on growing market share at least 40% in 2011.

HTC reaped triple-digit growth for both the quarter and for the year, second only to Samsung. Driving its success were its increased brand awareness, market positioning, and a series of devices that have resonated well with users and carriers alike. Following its success in 2010, the company known for being ‘quietly brilliant’ aims to become a preferred brand for smartphone users in 2011, while leveraging its scalability to drive business in Asia/Pacific and other emerging markets.

Vendor	2010 Units Shipped	2010 Market Share	2009 Units Shipped	2009 Market Share	Year-over-year growth
Nokia	100.3	33.1%	67.7	39.0%	48.2%
Research In Motion	48.8	16.1%	34.5	19.9%	41.4%
Apple	47.5	15.7%	25.1	14.5%	89.2%
Samsung	23	7.6%	5.5	3.2%	318.2%
HTC	21.5	7.1%	8.1	4.7%	165.4%
Others	61.5	20.3%	32.6	18.8%	88.7%
Total	302.6	100.0%	173.5	100.0%	74.4%

By the end of the quarter, Nokia had shipped five million Symbian^3 units while Windows Phone 7 vendors shipped more than 1.5 million units.

If you compare the numbers with 2009 data, Samsung and HTC has shown substantial growth, while Nokia and RIM have witnessed a decline in market share.

Times, they are a changing? Most importantly, Smartphone market is no more about the number of devices – it’s about what can you do with the device that makes it more interesting play (Steve Jobs taught this theory to the world).

What’s your opinion?

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