Samsung-MDA Call-for-Proposal for development of educational smart TV apps

On 16th September 2011, Samsung Electronics and the Interactive Digital Media Programme Office (IDMPO) held a Call-for-Proposal briefing at Genexis Theatre, Fusionopolis.

The briefing is part of a joint call-for-proposal by both companies that looks into the development of educational TV apps for the Samsung Smart TV platform and ecosystem. Both Samsung Electronics and IDMPO want to engage the local developer community by providing opportunities for the innovation and creation of rich and interactive education apps for the Singapore audience.

Details from the press release state that this call-for-proposal has a focus on educational apps, targeted at up to tertiary level. The aims of this call-for-proposal is to increase consumer choices for self-learning at home and promote interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. This initiative is also designed to catalyse the development of interactive digital content for TVs in Singapore, and support new interactive digital media (IDM) R&D projects as well as the commercialization efforts of IDM applications and services.

On the technical side of things, Samsung will provide shortlisted developers with the tools, technical content and support that they require to create rich applications for the Smart TV platform. Excess to both the Samsung Developers’ Forum (SDF) and to MDA’s testing centre – iJAM@Blk71, (located at Block 71, Ayer Rajah Crescent) will be granted for the shortlisted developers.The MDA’s testing centre is an incubation wing that will be equipped with the necessary testing infrastructure for developers to conduct trial runs and tests for their apps on Samsung’s Smart TV platform.

Besides experience gained, shortlisted developers can look forward to attaining funding from MDA by applying for funding schemes from the IDMPO, dependent on the nature of the proposed project, to support R&D and commercialisation of the apps.

The call-for-proposal will increase the choice of educational apps for Samsung’s Smart TV ecosystem and these apps will be made available through the Samsung Apps store, the world’s first application store for the television.

Starting from 26th September, the call-for-proposal will extend over a period of four weeks and will end on 31st October 2011.

For more information, please visit http://www.idm.sg (would be available from 26th September).

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Asia’s premier summit on private equity and venture capital is back

Already 15 years in the running, TechVenture, presented by National Research Foundation (NRF) and Singapore Venture Capital and Private Equity Association (SVCA) has established its name as the  event for high net worth individual investors, business angels, venture capitalists, private equity, limited partners and sovereign wealth funds under one roof to reveal and realize Asia’s hottest investment opportunities. This two-day conference, taking place at Singapore’s Marina Bay Sands on October 13 and 14, will bring international investors from the USA, Europe, India, China, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore together with exciting regional startups looking for business development opportunities.

The venture capital and private equity community will meet up during the event, through interactions, transactions and exchanges, to discuss and identify notable industry innovators in the region. As the promising Asian market is enjoying another decade of growth, the attendants will also be keen to learn about investment and technology trends in Europe, North America and other global regions as well.

TechVenture will hold its cocktail reception, gala dinner and breakfast roundtable at The Sands Expo and Convention Center. Notable members of the private equity and venture capital community such as Chua Sock Koong, Tim Draper, Eduardo Saverin, Henry Nguyen, Arvind Rajan, Steve Leonard, Philip Lee, Michelle Guthrie, Tina Ju and William Ross will be present as speakers to talk about the latest economic trends, regional and international opportunities, venture incubation and adoption, mergers and acquisitions, and investment strategies. Singapore’s Deputy Prime Minister, Teo Chee Hean, will be present as the Guest of Honor. A total of 44 speakers will address the audience at the summit, themed “The New Age of Asian Innovation”.

For interested readers, you can view ticket details here.

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Asia’s Top 50 Apps awards is back again

For the second year running, the online community will pick which app deserves to be on top at the Asia’s Top 50 Apps awards, presented by SingTel Innovation Exchange, Accelerate @ TechVenture, and e27.

Voting has already opened and some apps are racing ahead. But if you think a deserving app is not already on the voting list, you can nominate one. Deadline for voting and nomination is 10th October.

The top 50 apps with the most votes will be evaluated by a panel of judges, to determine which will receive one of five awards: The Most Valuable App award, given to the product with the best technology, business model, design, and innovation, Rookie App of the Year, awarded to the best new app of 2011, Solution of the Year, for the app which provides the simplest solution to a vexing problem, and Design of the Year, given to the app with the best user interface and experience.

Finally, the People’s Choice Award will be awarded to the app which garnered the most votes.

Some of the apps that made the top 10 last year include: buUuk, a food and drinks locator, Creately, a collaborative diagramming software, ShowNearby, a services locator, and Stictok, a social network that recommends new friends to you. Full list of top 10 here.

The winners will be announced and feted on Friday, 14th October at the Accelerate @ TechVenture Forum held at Marina Bay Sands.

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Implant Dental Surgery

Tooth implantation is another implant dental surgery that is performed in patients to improve the bite. In cases where the dental and gum tissues are not aligned properly and may need further reshaping in order to make the jaw bones and gums symmetrical, gum lift cosmetic dental surgery may be performed. Dental surgery center. A dental surgery center needs to be equipped with state of the art equipment, experienced dental care practitioners, precision dental surgeons and support staff. There are many dental care centers that can provide the kind of cosmetic dental surgery you require. Checkdent.com makes it very simple to find all kinds of dental specialists; try out the “find a dentist” feature now and locate the best dental surgery specialists close to you!

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Can New Media Really Aid Disaster Relief in India? [Sikkim Earthquake]

You’ll notice interesting differences if you look at three recent disasters in India in 2011, and the kind of impact new media had on them.

Exhibit A: Mumbai blasts of July 2011. A spreadsheet was set up within hours of the blast. There were offers and requests for help on Twitter and Facebook. There were updates about traffic, taxis, roads, hospitals and helplines all over the internet.

In other words, what you could well call a spontaneous outpouring of empathy and support(I’ll desist from using that much overused term ‘spirit of Mumbai’).

Exhibit B: The Delhi blasts of Sep 2011. Much outrage on Twitter & Facebook, considerable outpouring of sympathies. But nothing quite comparable to what we saw in Exhibit A – no spreadsheet, and not quite as many offers of help.

Exhibit C: Sikkim earthquake of Sep 2011. I’ll just present one data point – there were all of 23 mentions of #Sikkim on 18 Sep on Twitter. On subsequent days, the mentions of the hashtag were in single digits. A damp squib compared to exhibits A and B in new media(and to be fair, traditional media gave far less coverage and showed far less outrage).

So, what gave? Why was there such a major disparity in the reactions to the three events in digital media? Was it that Bombay had far more ‘spirit’? Did people elsewhere not care? Is there a bleeding heart story about the neglect of the North-East?

I have two hypotheses:

[A] A lot of people affected in Mumbai and Delhi were active internet users. If you see data here about state-wise distribution of internet usage in India(and make a couple of assumptions about Mumbai and Sikkim’s internet usage), Mumbai and Delhi would appear to have far more internet users than Sikkim.

In Sikkim, people who lost homes, people who didn’t know whereabouts of family members weren’t internet users. If they were, they didn’t quite believe there would be others online who’d reply.

It’s plausible to conclude that digital media didn’t have an impact in Sikkim because not enough people on the ground were connected on the ‘net.

[B] But given that Mumbai and Delhi have fairly high proportions of internet users, what caused the difference between the two cities?

Well, there were 3 blasts in Mumbai. Traffic was thrown out of gear. Many had no idea if their family members were stuck. In short, there was a pressing need for people to exchange information. Far more than there was in Delhi, where the blast was localized(and people had a far better idea of whether family members were in the court complex or not).

Thus, digital media helped in Mumbai because people wanted to exchange information urgently.

Thus, digital media can help only when people have a need to communicate, and when enough people want to communicate.

Given that new media usage hasn’t matured fully in India yet(only around 8% of Indians are online – and far fewer are active users), it’s best to set realistic expectations from new media – and not assume that it’ll solve India’s problems overnight.

Has new media matured enough in India to have lasting social impact? What do you think?

[Guest article by Shamanth Rao, Image credit]

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Huawei Honor unveiled on EXPO COMM China 2011

EXPO COMM China 2011 is consumer electronics fair hold in China every year. As the Indubitable No.1 in this field in China, Huawei of curse has a booth there to show off its new stuffs, and among which they bring the Honor. Honor was announces month ago, but this is the first time the device to meet the world.

It might be a bit out of you expect that Honor is the most concerned phone from the company in China, and I am not joking. If you’ve been tracking down China’s consumers electronics in the past two month, you must know that an Android phone from the new China phone maker Xiaomi company named Xiaomi M1 has been the hottest phone in China, and Huawei Honor was thought to be the rival to this phone. Currently many Chinese users that are going to buy a middle-level phone are doing their calculations: Xiaomi M1 or Huawei Honor?

Huawei Honor comes with a 1.4Ghz Qualcomm MSM 8255T Scorpion processor, 4 inches 854×480 capacitive touchscreen, 512MB RAM, 4GB ROM, 8-megapixel camera, as well as a front camera, Android 2.3 OS, and a 1930 mAh battery. Beside these hardware, the phone is shipped with Huawei’s Potter UI, and cloud computing service Cloud+.

The price is still not disclose, but some unverified sources said it would be 1888 Yuan. It will be available first in China in November.

[Source:upble.com]

• Huawei Ideos X5 Android handset
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• Huawei C8500 bargain Android phone hands-on video
• Huawei Smakit S7′s most current hands-on video
• Huawei C8600 Android Mobile for China Telecom
• Huawei MID Digicube z8
• Video: Huawei U8230 hands-on
• Huawei U8230 presented at PT & Network Comm China
• Huawei E5 converts 3G signal into Wi-Fi signal
• Huawei U8220 available soon in Europe as T-Mobile Plus

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US Start-up, Bizness Apps Empowers Small Businesses to Create Mobile Apps

I just wrote a story about Qmobao, a start-up that aims to give anyone, especially entertainers, the ability to create their own mobile apps. To lower the barrier of entry for small businesses in America in a similar way, Bizness Apps allows small businesses like hairdressers, restaurants, café’s, gyms or real estate agents to create their own mobile apps and publish them across iPhone, iPad, Android, Blackberry and Windows devices. Mobile apps are the new websites, and services like Qmobao and Bizness Apps are driving the transition.

Using a simple dashboard and by following a step by step process, any small business can create an app to engage with their customers through mobile. For example, if I tried to make an app for TechNode as a blog; I can name the app, and select the features that I want to appear on the app. relevant features to us include a blog scroll, message board and comment board. Some other cool features on offer are, GPS directions, QR code reader and push notifications

I recently had a chat with the founder of Bizness Apps, Andrew Gazdecki to find out more.

Before Bizness Apps

At only 22, Andrew is indeed a young entrepreneur. He graduated from USC Chico and undertook a business degree. He always knew his “goal from the get-go was to make a company,” and “always tried to make money in strange ways that didn’t always make sense.” He was studying for a minor in entrepreneurship, but figured that instead of studying it; he should just jump in and start doing entrepreneurship. So he dropped some classes but managed to complete the course.

His first start-up was a job-board that connected small businesses with local mobile app developers, who would bid for the job. He learnt from that start-up that he was only solving one problem, which was to help app developers and small business connect.  After building it to a certain level of revenue, Andrew sold the business and moved on to start Bizness Apps.

The Creation of Bizness Apps

Bizness App was established a year and a half ago and received some angel investment in November 2010 to kick start it. It was aimed to be a more holistic solution by making the whole process easier, faster and cheaper. Andrew wanted to remove a lot of the frustrating, confusing and time consuming steps to app creation such as mapping out the app, building and testing the app, to deploying the app.

Already they have deployed over 1,000 apps, across 20 countries in over 10 languages.

More affordable mobile app development

Andrew said that some small businesses would spend on average US$10,000- US$30,000 to create and deploy a mobile app which is very expensive. In comparison, a small business can use Bizness Apps and only pay US$39 a month. The monthly service fee allows the small business to maintain the app, make changes and keep it active. Unlike many of his competitors, Andrew says Bizness Apps offers unlimited push notifications and included app publishing.

Simple 5 step process

1. Choose your industry – This will then generate some templates with relevant features you can select or not.
2. Upload content – general information, images, videos, sounds
3. Customize appearance – edit the appearance and style of your content
4. Preview app – see what it will look like
5. Publish app – give app title and description as well as screen shots

To ensure Apple will accept the app, Bizness Apps will review the app and make sure it meets their quality guidelines. They will also help polish the app to make it look nice.

Asia is the number one market of interest

Andrew said “Asia is the number one market of interest.” And they have already started to make in-roads in Singapore, Taiwan and Japan through a reseller program. This allows marketing companies to develop mobile apps for their clients using the Bizness Apps platform.

Bizness apps is looking to break into China through a similar white-label program.

 

 

 

 

Related posts:

1. Qmobao Makes it Easy to Create Your Own Mobile App
2. Are We Creating Apps Just Because They Are “SEXY”?
3. Innovation Work’s Backed Start-up, Tapas Mobile, Does Social Mobile Contacts

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Accel Partners Shelves $400mn India Growth Fund (?)

Accel Partners has shelved its $400 mn India fund due to poor market conditions and and increased competition among private equity investors in the country.

As per ToI,  Accel Partners had roped in prominent fund managers from biggies like DE Shaw, Apax Partners and Goldman Sachs to lead the India growth fund. A senior Accel Partners official confirmed rolling back plans for a larger fund in India. Accel, however, will continue making early stage investments in “category defining” start-up firms in the country.

Accel Partners earlier acquired Erasmic Ventures (in 2008) and closed $60mn in Nov, 2008. The fund has invested in Flipkart, Myntra, Exclusively, enStage, Commonfloor, LetsBuy etc.

We have reached out to Accel for confirmation and we will update the article as soon as we hear back from Accel India.

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Google Ropes In Shahrukh Khan To Promote Google Plus In India [Too Early, Too Soon?]

To me, it seems like Google Plus is turning into a product driven by vanity-metrics (i.e. anything that goes up becomes an important metric) rather than engagement metrics.

What Is Google Plus

We earlier covered why Google+ is Not (Yet) Close to Facebook and though the newly launched social network is able to rope in users, the engagement metrics doesn’t really stand out.
Promoting the social network will surely bring in users, but if you go by engagement metrics – all of these vanity metrics will fade away with time. The quality of engagement in G+ timeline is as good/bad as Orkut and I can bet that yours is no different.

In India, Google has roped in Shahrukh Khan to promote Google Plus and also, Google is promoting SRK’s latest movie, Ra.one on Youtube (just look at the aggressive adwords campaign Ra.one is running).

The only common thing across the two entities (i.e. Google and SRK) is desperation – Google Plus cannot afford to fail (and that’s why the run for Vanity metrics) and SRK needs to ensure that Ra.one breaks all the records (including inspirations derived from Hollywood movies).

In short, I am not really sure if Google needs to promote Google+, unless they hit some meaningful engagement milestones. Right now, everybody (in my network) is joining Google Plus, but still conversing on Facebook. That is, there is hardly any WoM marketing happening for the product.
Bringing SRK to promote Google Plus will surely bring in mainstream adoption, but is Google+ ready for that? Do they have the engagement hooks built inside the product? The answer, so far is in the negative.

Anyways, watch this video (of SRK and Google India head, Rajan Anandan) announcing the partnership (as part of this partnership, SRK will conduct live chat on Google Plus.)

What’s your take on Google Plus’ promotions? Too early, too soon?
Aside, here is SRK’s Google Plus profile.
Also see: Google Brings Youtube Partner Program to India

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5 Indian Startups Made It To Startup Chile Program [Congratulations]

Start-Up Chile is a program created by the Chilean Government that seeks to attract early stage, high-potential entrepreneurs to bootstrap their startups in Chile, using it as a platform to go global. The end goal of the accelerator program is to convert Chile into the definitive innovation and entrepreneurial hub of Latin America.

In 2010, the program, at that point just a pilot, brought 22 startups from 14 countries to Chile,providing them with US$40,000 of equity-free seed capital, and a temporary 1-year visa to develop their projects for six months, along with access to the most potent social and capital networks in the country.

During the six months program, the participants must be in Chile– for which they receive US$40k of equity-free seed capital,  a 1-year work visa, and access to local financial and social networks– the objective is to raise funds, hire talent, create networks, and to launch their businesses from Chile while leveraging and interacting fully with the local entrepreneurship  ecosystem.

The program has announced its list of 154 startups selected for the next batch and of the 154 startups selected (see: pdf) from 33 different countries representing a myriad of industries, the chosen ones from India are:

• Credii
• Cruns
• PriceShred
• RFEyeD, and
• SupportBee

Congratulations to the winners!

One just wishes that Indian government, if not being startup friendly, at least should try not to be unfriendly to entrepreneurs (with mindless rules/regulations).

What’s your opinion?

» Startup Visa And The Impact on Indian Startup Ecosystem [BrainDrain 2.0]

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