Does The Old Republic Threaten World of Warcraft in Asia?

This is an interesting time for online gamers. World of Warcraft, the game that has dominated the MMORPG genre for the better part of the last decade, is starting to show signs of weakness as player subscriptions slip. At the same time, EA has just launched Star Wars: The Old Republic, perhaps the best shot yet at the MMORPG heavyweight crown since WoW first took the field. The Old Republic has done well since its launch, and the game promises to be a big moneymaker for EA (NASDAQ:EA), costing $60 to purchase plus a monthly subscription fee.

As a disclaimer, this whole post is a bit of a thought-experiment. At present, The Old Republic is only available in North America and Europe. Moreover, a few folks who’ve tried to play the game from China report that an IP block on all China-based IP addresses is forcing them to play through VPNs. That said, it’s hard to imagine that EA is just going to ignore the whole continent, especially given the amount of money they’ve spent on developing the game and the amount of money Blizzard (NASDAQ:ATVI) has made operating World of Warcraft in Asia. Moreover, a statement on the game’s official site does suggest that players from additional countries will be allowed to purchase the game at some point:

Details on additional countries are not available at this time, but will be released when available.

That doesn’t mean Asia will be included, but we can’t imagine it will be ignored forever. So, assuming it does come to Asia someday, will people play it? Is this the game that finally dethrones World of Warcraft?

The game has several features that should be enticing for WoW players, but interestingly, those same features may reduce the game’s appeal in Asia. For example:

Star Wars!

Despite the utter disaster that was the Star Wars prequels, Star Wars remains a powerful brand in the West. The universe is familiar to almost everyone, and it will certainly help draw people into the game. In fact, the Star Wars universe is likely more familiar to most Westerners than the Warcraft universe.

The opposite is true in Asia, especially among gaming enthusiasts. Asian gamers have almost all played Warcraft games — at the very least, Warcraft 3, which remains popular to this day — so they know the universe well. As odd as it sounds, “Frostmourne” is probably a more familiar term than “lightsaber” for many Asian gamers. Of course plenty of people have heard of Star Wars, but at least in China, it doesn’t have the sort of mythical cultural presence the brand enjoys in the West. So Asian gamers aren’t likely to try out The Old Republic because they’re big Star Wars geeks, which means the game needs to offer something else.

Fleshed-out Stories!

One of the main selling points of The Old Republic is that the stories it contains are better told than those of World of Warcraft, which makes the world more immersive. More than 260,000 different lines of dialogue were recorded for Old Republic to ensure that players felt immersed in the world. In contrast, most dialogue in World of Warcraft occurs as onscreen text.

However, a really immersive English-language world isn’t going to be that attractive to Asian gamers, and localizing the game thoroughly could cost a fortune, given the expense needed to translate, hire actors, record, and then re-implement 260,000 lines of dialogue in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean (at a bare minimum). It’s likely that EA, which has already spent a massive sum of money developing the game, won’t bother to go all-out and may resort to subtitling the game for some or all of these regions. And subtitles, of course, detract significantly from the “immersive” feeling that has made the game a hit in the West (so far).

Target: Asia

The Old Republic will soon be up against a World of Warcraft expansion that is quite clearly targeted specifically at Asian (especially Chinese) players. The Mists of Pandaria expansion won’t be out until 2012, and likely quite late in 2012, but the promise of an experience designed with them in mind may be enough to keep Asian gamers engaged in WoW and away from The Old Republic.

Questionable Branding!

In China, at least, the game’s title also sounds a little…odd. I’m not sure if this is the official translation or not, but the title Chinese sites are using is 星球大战：旧共和国. That does literally mean “Star Wars: [The] Old Republic,” but the word being used for “old” carries the connotation of “run-down” or “worn-out,” which — to me at least — makes the game sound sort of unappealing. A cooler-sounding term like “ancient” might be called for here, and after all, the game is set 2,500 years before the events depicted in the films. But it’s not clear whether EA has actually picked a Chinese title.

A Future in Asia?

The above issues aside, the main reason people play games is that they’re fun, and The Old Republic is reportedly quite fun. That alone could render the things I describe above more or less irrelevant. Moreover, the game has some other things going for it that will help make it popular in Asia. For one, the graphics are well ahead of the aging visuals of WoW. Even so, like WoW, its system requirements are pretty low, meaning that lower-end consumer computers (and the pieces of junk in most net cafes) will actually be able to run it. That’s important.

Link to full article

Read More

Rocket Internet on aggressive hiring spree, hopes to “revolutionize” Singapore’s retail scene

If you don’t know Rocket Internet, you should. This German incubator, founded by the famous Samwer Brothers, has a knack for copying business models from Silicon Valley and replicating them successfully elsewhere.

Now, they are on an aggressive hiring spree in Singapore, with the aim of building “an online shopping website that will revolutionize the retail landscape in Singapore”, according to a description they put up on the JobStreet website.

They’re looking to hire more than 20 positions in the next two months, and are now seeking an administrative assistant and business development interns.

Here’s the job scope for the interns: “We are looking for Business Development Interns who are willing to play an active role in building our start-up. This is a generalist position and will support activities from strategic planning, business and financial analysis, marketing and human resource operations. A successful intern can be offered a full time position with the company upon graduation. This intern must be able to work at least 4 weeks starting in January 2011.”

We’ve reached out to them for comments on the new online shopping website, and will update this article as more information become available.

Founded in 2007, Rocket Internet’s successful ventures include CityDeal, which was purchased by Groupon for US$126M, short terms rental site 9flats, which has set up an office in Singapore, Alando, an online auction house that was sold to eBay for US$50M, and more.

In November, they announced a plan to start a new ecommerce website in India focusing on fashion and lifestyle products by Indian and international brands.

Link to full article

Read More

Yi Xia: Video-Sharing On-The-Move for iOS and Android

I’ve said before that mobile video-sharing apps – especially ones with lots of filters and special-effects – could be big in 2012, so let’s test out one Chinese startup’s contender. Called Yi Xia Shi Pin – meaning ‘Next Video’ in Chinese – it uses the tagline “life’s for sharing” and comes with new apps for iPhone and Android.

Basically, users can record video on their smartphone and then apply one of 36 filters to give it a certain look and feel, just like photos taken with Instagram. Then, that video can be shared with just a few clicks to friends on either the Tencent (HKG:0700) or Sina (NASDAQ:SINA) version of Weibo.

Testing out the Android version of the Yi Xia app, and uploading a vid.

The Yi Xia app was rather buggy and crashy during my testing, but it’s still a solid service with lots of potential as China sails well past 100 million 3G users. I uploaded a simple video pretty easily, and also found that there’s a whole social network built into Yi Xia that allows you to follow users, download their videos (if they’re set to be ‘public’), and see which shot-on-the-fly videos are trending on the service.

Once the video is uploaded, you just need to hit the ‘share’ button and type out a message to send it to your followers on Weibo. In the microblog’s timeline, people will see your message, a screenshot and a link. Then just click that to watch the shared video on the Yi Xia site (here’s mine).

In the past few weeks we’ve looked at similar services from Chinese startups, such as the Movie 360 and iShehui apps

Snag the mobile app for iPhone and Android via the links on the Yi Xia homepage.

[Hat-tip to Toumingti for spotting this]

Link to full article

Read More

Hatsune Miku Dominates Digital, Stars in New 3DS Game, Google Chrome Ad

Hatsune Miku Project Mirai display at 2011 Tokyo Game Show

About a month back we told you about how CyberAgent America was collaborating with Crypton Future Media to bring the famous virtual star Hatsune Miku into Pico World. And the iconic Vocaloid character hasn’t slowed down since.

During yesterday’s Nintendo Direct broadcast, a trailer for a new game Hatsune Miku and Future Stars Project Mirai was unveiled by Nintendo (TYO:7974) and Sega. Check it out below.

While I can’t claim to be a devoted fan of Hatsune Miku, I’m pretty amazed by how the character has managed to permeate so many aspects of digital culture in Japan and the world over.

Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) recently released a commercial for its Chrome browser in Japan that nicely sums up the creativity and collaboration that has helped Hatsune Miku’s fame spread far and wide. It features fans creating music using Vocaloid software, creating dance clips, uploading videos, and even attending Hatsune Miku concerts (see below).

I’m not sure how the creative spirit shown in this video relates to the Chrome browser, but it certainly is comparable to how folks use Google’s many other services to collaborate online. This was especially evident in the aftermath of the March 11 earthquake as services like Docs, Maps, and Picasa were used to pass along critical information in a collaborative manner. Here on this blog we’re big fans of Google’s suite of tools as well, using them on a daily basis as a part of our workflow.

Link to full article

Read More

The future of Angry Bird – Hello Kitty: Part I

I guess most people have played with the game, Angry Birds. The tremendous popular catapult-puzzle game was developed by a Finland company, called Rovio Entertainment. Since the game was launched iPhone two years ago, it has been one of the most popular app on iPhone. Apart from iPhone, different versions of the game are launched on Android platform, game consoles (such as Playstation) and so on. It also launched many special editions, such as Angry Birds Seasons, Angry Birds Rio, etc. In total, the game and its different editions have been downloaded over 500 million times onto different platforms. Out of which, over 25% were paid download, making it one of the most sold games in the Apple App Store.

Angry Bird, next phase -> Hello Kitty

In a startup conference in Shanghai (ChinaStars), I met one of Rovio’s senior executive, Peter Vesterbacka, who is known as Mighty Eagle in the company and asked him about the future of the company. Surprisingly, he said, “we don’t see ourselves as a game company anymore.” After getting extremely successful with Angry Birds, he thought Rovio’s next phase is to build an entertainment Franchise, just like Disney, but not a game company like EA. In his opinion, the Angry Birds brand can be more than game, but expands to cover other area, such as movies, animations, physical goods, and even theme parks. “Angry Birds can be just like Hello Kitty or Micky Mouse,” said Peter.

Rio: The Movie – an attempt

The Hollywood movie, Rio, is an attempt to expand the Angry Birds brand to other area. Although not very obvious, there are some hints of the Angry Birds characters in the movie. Rovio also launched a special edition, Angry Birds Rio — the Angry Birds characters appear in Rio de Janeiro and interact with characters from the film. Recently, the company also published a cookbook, based on the Angry Birds characters. “We will build everything around the Angry Birds brand,” said Peter.

Angry Birds as a brand – is it possible?

However, not everyone agree Angry Birds as a brand can be a good business. “Many popular games have tried to expand their franchise to other area, but most of them failed. For example, Final Fantasy is popular game, but its movie did not do very well in the box office,” said a venture capitalist.

Peter thought otherwise. “In just two years, Angry Birds have recorded over 500 million downloads. We have 1 billion fan globally. 170 million people play our game each month and 30 million everyday. We are one of the fastest growing brand in the world. We are faster than Google, Twitter or Facebook,” said Peter. And, 10% of Google’s mobile ad comes from the Angry Birds game series, according to Peter.

If we look around, Angry Birds related video clips are everywhere on Youtube. And Angry Birds stuff toys can be easily found in shops, even when the company has licensed no manufacturer to do so. There seems to be a market for Angry Birds products for kids.

Related posts:

1. Angry Birds Wants To Beat Disney in China Within 2 Years
2. Dianping: Mixing the Secret Sauce of Reviews, LBS and Group-buying
3. Tuding User Statistics – Photo, Weibo, LBS. What’s Next?

Link to full article

Read More

Wanbaner: Your Personal Tourist Guide in the Pocket

Like some constant travelers may have noticed, as of now many Chinese scenic areas have been equipped with self-service tour guiding gadget, with this babe, you’ll almost never get lost even it’s your first time being somewhere and could get the most out of every trip, thanks to its navigation and vocal guiding features.

The convenience comes at a price, varied from place to place. Normally you need to pay between 60 and 100 RMB (US$ 9.5 and 15) to rent a gadget like this.

Launched in this May, YHiker, the Jiangsu Prov.-based startup which positioned its app as everyone’s tourist guide in the pocket is trying to help tourists get rid of that money. With its Android app Wanbaner (玩伴儿, or TravelMate) installed, you can hands-down have your very own private guide.

Wanbaner’s key features include:

Accurate GPS Positioning: Locating where you’re through smartphone’s GPS device.

Vocal Guiding: Explaining in great details the scene/historic sites in front you via pre-recorded human voice.

Navigating: Walking you through the scenic area, suggesting best routes.

The app to date supports more than 241 tour attractions in 24 Chinese cities. Some top attractions like the Palace Museum, Beihai Park in Beijing, Gulangwu in Xia Men city of Fujian Prov. and other places in Harbin of Heilongjiang Prov. and Luoyang city of Henan Prov. As of the now the app has more than 5 million users.

You can download it here and try it. Next time when you’re visiting some place for the first time, it might be a great help.

Related posts:

1. Angry Bird’s Goal for 2011 in China: 100 million downloads, To Be The Most Copied
2. Chaopin, Sina Weibo-Tailored Photo Viewer And Fashion Tracker
3. App Flights Manager Raising $15M in Series B from Matrix China and Greylock

Link to full article

Read More

Saving the world, one plastic bag at a time

Long ago on television, a certain Captain Planet rescued our planet by defeating eco-terrorists with his superpowers. In real life, saving the earth requires much more patience.

For Singapore entrepreneur Alan Yeap, he’s doing it by painstakingly building a company from the ground up and making it profitable. He started New Quantum Holdings in 2010, which is in the business of — among other things — developing and selling oxo-degradable and biodegradable plastic bags.

Alan doesn’t have the flamboyance of Captain Planet or environmental activist Al Gore. Quite the opposite. He’s mild-mannered and soft-spoken, but calm and self-confident. He knows plastics well — prior to starting the company, he was in the plastic trading and distribution business in an MNC for 20 years.

I met him twice: The first time was incidental, I bumped into him while reaching for that dim sum platter in between sessions at the recent World Entrepreneurship Forum. Deciding he was interesting enough, I met him again in his office a few weeks ago. Seating in his conference room, Alan begins by showing me some slides from his iPad, through a projector.

New Quantum is doing big business, despite being a young firm. It’s generating an annual revenue of US$10M from selling plastic bags in ten countries, including US, China, and Indonesia. That’s just a fraction of its entire business, which amounts to US$30M in revenue.

The company has its feet in numerous product lines, from providing commodities like chemicals, fertilizers, and polymers to finished products like automotive parts, houseware, and office stationary. Through a subsidiary, they produce authentication labels for items like passports and identity cards.

“We’re doing both a horizontal and vertical business,” he says. And only with a core staff strength of eleven.

Alan added that New Quantum’s strategic partner, investor, and stakeholder is the one that manufactures these goods, leaving his team to do the intangible stuff.

“It’s a mistake to think we’re into manufacturering — we’re not. We’re in the business of researching, branding and marketing our products. That’s exactly what companies like Nike and Apple are doing.”

New Quantum is even getting into the consultancy business. It’s in the midst of seeking clients to engage in CSR work — by developing a program to teach firms how to lower their carbon footprint. By offering these services in addition to their products, it is setting itself apart from competitors.

Our attention returns to the plastic bags. He’s getting a little more excited as the interview wears on, fishing out sample plastic bags from a couple of large files he brought into the  room.

The company offers two kinds of plastic bags: Oxium and Ecoplas. Ecoplas bags are manufactured from scratch out of Tapioca starch. It will biodegrade after one year or less depending on micro-organism activities.

Oxium, on the other hand, is made using an additive to enhance the existing manufacturing process of normal plastic bags, turning them oxo-degradable. Unlike biodegradable products, Oxium will only start disintegrating in a landfill once the additive breaks down the plastic bag after a preset period of time.

While traditional plastic bags take hundreds of years to disintegrate, Oxium plastic bags take only months.

I hold an Ecoplas plastic bag in my hand. It feels thicker than Oxium, weightier and stronger too. It’s something you would use for a luxury product — that indeed is the intent. Brands like Raoul, Billabong, and Club Monaco have taken to using Ecoplas bags.

Oxium feels exactly like a normal plastic bag, and it’s been used by supermarket chain Giant as well as health and beauty chain Guardian.

Concerns have been raised over how using food crops like Cassava, which tapioca is derived from, for purposes other than feeding hunger may lower food security and cause rising food prices.

Alan responds: “Cassava is not a main food staple in many parts of the world. My company also has a strategic plan with farmers to start a replanting program, and we plan to work with governments and NGOs to support these farmers. 200 metric tons of Ecoplas will benefit 2,000 farmers by giving them a revenue stream.”

He adds that since biodegradable bags are costly to produce and consists of only three percent of the total plastic bags market, consumption will not drive cassava costs up and result in a food crisis. The volume of Ecoplas produced will be much less than Oxium since it is aimed at the luxury market, and hence the impact on food supply is minimal.

Both Ecoplas and Oxium are more expensive than traditional plastic bags, although as far as Alan knows, New Quantum is a cost leader amongst green plastic bags of the same quality. Ecoplas is priced 30 to 50 percent more than non-green variants while Oxium costs three to five percent more.

Would potential customers hesitate to take up New Quantum’s products due to the heftier price tag?

Alan doesn’t think so. He says that many companies support sustainability and would accept a minimal cost increase if it means turning greener. Luxury brands, which has high profit margins, also have no trouble switching since many of them use paper bags — which costs about the same as Ecoplas bags. Furthermore, the company is working towards lowering their costs further by engaging plastic raw material producers in the Middle East.

He is optimistic that New Quantum’s plastic bag business has good long-term prospects, especially since other green solutions are not as practical. While some have advocated for the use of reusable bags in supermarkets and retail stores, Alan contends that very few people actually use them more than once.

“I myself have a lot of them in my house, and I don’t touch them. While it’s great to reuse something, remolding consumer behavior takes time.”

Photo: Terence Lee

Link to full article

Read More

CyberAgent Ventures enjoys rapid growth of Internet startups in Vietnam

Nguyen Manh Dung, Director of Ho Chi Minh Office & Ryotaro Nakayama, Director of Hanoi Office

CyberAgent Ventures Inc, a subsidiary of Japanese leading internet group CyberAgent Inc, set up their first office in Vietnam in 2009. First headquartered in the capital city of Hanoi, and then moved to Ho Chi Minh City, last month Hanoi office was re-opened due to the fact that internet business has been showing tremendous growth while number of technopreneurs is growing rapidly. Both offices deliver investment, incubation and operational activities.

The investment made in Vietnam has reached seven companies  focusing on internet service industry: VietNam Price Joint Stock Company (E-Commerce Services), VNG Corp (Online game and Social Networking Service), GMC (Mobile Game Developer), Clever Advertising Corporation (Internet Advertising Agency), VMG Media Joint Stock Company (Mobile Content Provider), BaoKim (Online Payment) and VGame (Browser online game). With the newly re-opened Hanoi office, their investment and incubation activities in Vietnam continue. This month three more deals will be closed and it will bring their portfolio to ten companies.

Fully utilizing experiences and expertise gained from their global operation to help portfolio companies’ businesses expanded and grow further is one of their strengths.

After getting the approval from their legal department and Chief Representative Officer on having further information below disclosed, e27 was able to interview Nguyen Manh Dung, Head of Ho Chi Minh Office who is in charge for companies they invested in (VGame, VietNam Price JSC, GMC, Baokim and CleverAds) as the Director to hear the story about their investment in Vietnam.

Why did CyberAgent Ventures (CAV) decided to expand by investing in Vietnamese companies? What opportunities do you see?

We started investing in Japan since 2004, in China since 2006. So we decided to expand to other Asian countries which have high potential market of internet business, and Vietnam is of such markets. Vietnam has a high population with a higher percentage of young and active citizens. Those citizens make the Vietnamese market a potential market which is likely more open to new Internet services. Moreover, some successful internet business models in the United States, Japan, or China have not existed in Vietnam. Last but not least, Vietnam has a large number of entrepreneurs and well-educated IT engineers. Thus, we strongly believe that good local internet services will emerge, either localizing a success-proven model or basing on a brand new ideal in the coming time. In the long term, some of those startups can even go globally; VNG is one of the cases.

As mentioned earlier, CAV has already invested in seven firms in Vietnam so far. The fields vary ranging from online games, mobile content, mobile games, online payments, online advertisements, to e-Commerce. And the series are too. May we have the details of each investment?

Later investment (Maturing Phase) for VNG, formerly known as Vinagame and VMG, Series B for Vatgia, Series A for GMC, VGame, CleverAds and BaoKim. CleverAds is our latest investment made last May. The company has just set up its branch in Indonesia.

How many staff do you have in each office, Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh (HCMC) in the early stage anad now?

We set up our first office in Hanoi with one representative officer in the end of 2008, then the number increase to two after one year. We set up HCM City office in the beginning of 2010. Now we have four personnel, two at HCM City and two at Hanoi. We outsource legal and admin related activities.

We are actively recruiting new associates for our offices in Vietnam; but finding a competent and enthusiastic-in-Internet one is not easy.

Any specific industries targeted by CyberAgent when investing in Vietnam? Please share the priority from the highest to the lowest.

We have no priority for any specific field as long as the fields are internet related service; among industries that we are interested in such as: e-Commerce, mobile games, social games (for both mobile & PC), online advertising, social network services, online media just to name a few. However, we prefer to invest in the Business-To-Consumer (B2C) business models. This means we highly evaluate the internet service to end-users.

When investing in a company, which valuation method do you implement? Do you use any third-party service provider?

We do not use third party service provider. We use our own methods: the bottom-up and top-down.

In bottom-up approach, we evaluate startups’ values via detail business plans which are built by ourselves with KPI collected from startups, or in reference to startups’ own business plans.

In top-down approach, we evaluate startups values base on the market size of the field those startups operate in or on the value of same-industry listed companies. From the total market size, we estimate the startup value in many scenarios base on how much market share they can take.

Finally, we compare the two results from both approaches to get the most accurate and reasonable values.

Would you mind sharing details of four deals that will be closed in the near future?

We cannot disclose at the moment, but four will be joining our portfolio in the next three months. The investees are operating in E-Commerce, Smartphone Application Development, and Online media.

How about amount of funds allocated for the investment each year? How much it is budgeted for next year? And which industries are you targeting next year?

We do not have either budget limit or number of deals limit. Thus, we will invest in as many firms as possible as they meet our criteria. The targeting industries may be fields that we do not have in our portfolio, but not limit to these fields only.

What are the challenges when targeting, short listing, pitching, approaching and investing in Vietnamese companies, if any?

For targeting & short listing, in a way, there are so many startups. But most of them are just starting up without visions, for fun only, or they just follow a hot trend, or just an individual business. For instance, you may find a lot of E-Commerce sites in Vietnam; let’s say more than 100. Then we must shortlist them to thirty for a first visit, and further talk with even a smaller number of firms. This is a painstaking process as we do not want to leave any good company in that huge pool behind.

Laws governing internet businesses in Vietnam still do not keep up with the development pace of this Industry. Thus, sometimes license and legal issues can be big problem for startup operating in some emerging internet fields that are governed by no direct laws. Consequently, many startups do not disclose their contact information and keep it as confident as possible.

Many startups in Vietnam still do not have any idea about venture capital or what venture capital investment means. Hence, many of them hesitate to talk with us. They do not understand what added values that a venture fund can offer besides financing: mentoring, networking, business strategy. Hence they sometimes prefer financing from individual, their family or relatives.

As Vietnam laws on Venture Investment & Internet Industry are evolving, we sometimes have difficulties and take time in carrying our investment processes. Obstacles, just to name a few, are getting investment license, raising capital registration, and supporting and solving legal issues of our portfolio. But we believe that the matters will be solved in the near future, and we commit to expand our business in Vietnam as we strongly believe in Internet Industry and the potential of Vietnamese Internet Market.

Link to full article

Read More

360Buy Latest Net Giant to Get Hacked

The hits just keep on coming. After CDSN, Tianya, Netease’s email system, and a number of other major sites saw massive leaks of user data, e-commerce giant 360Buy is the latest company to get caught up in what’s now being called Hacker Leak Gate on the Chinese internet.

Specifically, data leak reporting website WooYun, which has broken the news of several of these hacks/leaks, reported yesterday that 360Buy had suffered a leaking of user data thanks to a security flaw that allowed access to users’ names, addresses, phone numbers, and emails, among other things. 360Buy confirmed the leak, labeled it a medium-level security threat, and promised to handle it immediately.

Yesterday, we wrote about a possible motivation for all these attacks and data leaks: they may be an ideological challenge to the increasing prevalence of real-name registration systems that are being implemented on lots of sites, most recently microblogs. Regardless of whether that’s the reason, though, leaks of data from e-commerce sites are particularly concerning because of the amount of sensitive financial information stored on those sites and their integrated services. As yet, the target doesn’t seem to be users’ money, but you’d still be a fool not to change the passwords to any Chinese e-commerce and payment services you use.

It’s also worth noting that because most of these leaks have been publications of username/password combinations, any user who uses the same login credentials for more than one site is especially at risk. If that’s you, change your passwords now. Don’t wait until it’s too late. In fact, even if that’s not you, change your passwords. Better safe than sorry.

[via Sina Tech]

Link to full article

Read More

2011 in Retrospect: Our ‘State of the Blog’ Address

As the end of 2011 draws closer, I can safely say that it has been a fruitful year filled with a mix pain, lessons, and success. Looking back to January of this year, I remember just how lost I was at the time. Penn Olson pivoted so much and my final bet was to focus on tech in asia. And things have worked out well so far, I think.

Just 12 months ago, few who I spoke to believed that Asia needed a media machine to tell the technology and entrepreneurial stories in this continent. They pointed me to competitors A and B who were supposedly already doing what I planned to do. But in my opinion, I believe I can execute this whole media thing better. And I think we have proven my vision right this year. So much so that the big boys from the West are starting to take a more serious look at Asia. And that makes me excited. It is good for all of us in Asia.

We need blogs to tell stories from Asia. And the more influential the collective community becomes, the more vibrant, informed, and well-connected we will all be. We hold our heads high as bloggers because we know we are doing a service for the community.

We were also lucky enough to have East Ventures to back us up on our project. It may not have looked like a sound investment back when I was just an undergrad with no journalistic experience. All I had was a blog with ‘okay’ traffic and a vision. But we’re still here, working hard, and doing better than ever. We’ve made mistakes along the way, but have recovered from them quickly.

I also built an awesome team who could learn quickly with me along the journey. I was never a trained journalist. I always considered myself a business person. So the core blogging team has to be made up of folks who have journalistic experience. Many folks asked me how I managed to find Rick, Steven, and Charlie. It was a mixture of both friends referral and luck. Rick was introduced by friend-of-the-blog Serkan Toto, and Steven was introduced by Rick. We were fortunate to pick up Charlie along the way.

I’m lucky to have them as they turned chaos into an organized daily workflow. We’ve experimented with a lot of low-cost tools so we can communicate better, produce faster, and make our content stand out. There was much trial and error, and we broke things, and argued. But under it all we know we have the best interests of the blog in mind. Minghao was picked up after he sold our first venture. I needed a business development person so the timing was apt. Having worked with him for years, he is a person who I can trust.

After the team stabilized, we got into the events. We had been planning that for a long time. There was a lot of fear and what-ifs but I guess we had reached to a point where we had to stop researching and just start doing. And so we did.

All in all, 2011 has been a pretty exciting year for all of us. We aren’t successful yet, but our Asia tech news start-up will continue to bootstrap, fight, and scrap for every inch of improvement in 2012.

Link to full article

Read More