Blackberry Slashes Playbook Price by 50% in India

Blackberry has slashed its Playbook tablet price in India by 50% (till December 31st). As part of festive offer, the latest prices for BlackBerry PlayBook in India are:

• 16 GB – Rs.13,490
• 32 GB – Rs. 15,990
• 64 GB – Rs.24,490

Blackberry’s Playbook hasn’t really taken off in a big way and RIM shipped only 200,000 units in Q2, 2011 (and only 150,000 in Q3). Due to low market demand, Blackberry reduced the price of Playbook tablet in US to $199 (from $300).

Blackberry Playbook in India

Given its current discounted pricing, the Playbook tablet could be a better bet than others like Reliance’s 3G Tab, though there is already a fear of Blackberry shutting down this unit, as it has failed to live up to company’s expectation (parent company RIM wrote off $485 million to offer discounts).

Game for Playbook?

 

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Mu Sigma Closes $108 Million Investment Round, Led by General Atlantic

Bangalore (and Chicago) based Mu Sigma, a pure-play provider of analytics and decision support services for global enterprise customers has closed $108 million investment round led by General Atlantic. This is believed to be the biggest private-equity investment made to date in the emerging market for analytics services, and follows Mu Sigma’s April 2011 $25 million round led by Sequoia Capital (which also participated in this latest round, raising its stake in the company).

Mu Sigma is already profitable and can finance its own operations, but will use the investment funds to accelerate its growth in the burgeoning analytics services market. A portion of the proceeds are being used to purchase shares held by existing shareholders, all of whom will continue to have stakes in the company.

The company has grown rapidly since its founding in 2004; in fact, its 2008-2010 revenue growth of 886 percent earned Mu Sigma a spot in the Inc. 500 list of America’s fastest-growing private companies.

On the one hand you could think of us as consulting plus applied math minus the high cost. On the other hand, you could think of us as IT plus business plus applied math, [Dhiraj Rajaram, Founder/source]

Is BIG Data the next BIG theme? From Pluggd.in forum [topic: What do you think of Mu Sigma's 150 Million$ Funding?]

Analytics, data mining and other such “big data” efforts are likely to be big in the coming years. The volume of “data” being produced has rapidly outstripped the tools that can make sense of it, and information (and noise) overload is a very real problem. The exact nature of the solutions is still an open question – whether open frameworks, point solutions or service delivery models will be the ones that gain prominence. I would also take a wild shot at creating tools that could be built into apps and other software to enable various aspects of this, rather than an isolated analytics solution.

Recommended Read: What is the Big Fuss about Big Data?

Tool: Hadoop: From Toy Elephant to Jumbo Data Sets [A 101]

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360Buy Hiring Over 25,000 New Staffers in 2012, Not Planning to Acquire Vancl

(Image source: Chinaluxus.com)

The CEO of 360Buy, China’s second-biggest e-commerce site, has announced that his company will create “over 25,000” new jobs next year. That public Weibo message from Liu Qiang-dong (pictured right) led to speculation that 360Buy might be about to buy its rival Vancl, which specializes in only clothing – but 360Buy representatives moved quickly to quash that rumor.

It’s not the first time we’ve heard of hiring plans at 360Buy – also known as Jingdong Mall – as the company said it would hire 20,000 new staffers for 2012 back in October of this year. So it seems Mr. Liu’s company is now even more confident and has raised that figure. It is said that 360Buy currently has 15,000 people on its payroll. Analysts, meanwhile, say the company could double its revenue in 2012.

The rumor that it might acquire Vancl was likely triggered by the latter’s weaker position recently, after missing its planned US IPO schedule – and which is thought to be delayed or cancelled for the time being – and the sudden departure of its VP, who it is rumored might soon resurface at none other than 360Buy.

The B2C e-commerce site has been one of the most aggressive on the Chinese web in the past few years, rising to surpass its older rival Dangdang (NYSE:DANG), and is now second only to Alibaba’s Tmall online store. Just last month it made a move into the luxury retail sector when it opened 360Top. And the company’s purported 25,000 new hires look set to perpetuate that growth in 2012.

[Source: Business China]

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Railway Ministry Website Slow, Broken on First Day of Spring Festival Ticket Sales

This week China’s Railway Ministry is in the news for much graver sins, but yesterday was also the first day in which the Ministry’s website offered pre-sale train tickets for the Spring Festival season. This was an especially important test because this is the first year tickets have been available online for regular (non-high-speed) trains. It did not go well.

Spring Festival, China’s biggest traditional holiday, is best celebrated at home. Since much of China’s population lives in cities but was born or has family connections in the countryside, this urge to return home results in what is literally the world’s largest annual human migration. Since trains are the cheapest and most reliable form of long-distance transportation, China’s train services usually bear the brunt of this migration, experiencing huge ticket lines and massive passenger counts.

The Railway Ministry is also blaming massive numbers for its ticket sale website’s performance yesterday. Users reported that the site was extremely slow and frequently returned errors. A reporter with the Southern Metropolis Daily wrote that it took forty minutes to purchase a ticket (not counting payment) because each additional step of the process took several minutes to load. Moreover, the page returned errors so frequently that it took the reporter multiple tries across a full day before they were finally able to purchase a single ticket. Phone lines were also frequently busy.

According to the report, the site has since returned to normal. Our own attempts to verify this did confirm that the site seems to be loading quickly but, as you can see from the screenshot above, things still aren’t perfect.

(However, many sites in China are designed with no support for any web browsers other than IE6, so it’s possible that I got that error because I’m using Chrome.)

[Southern Metropolis Daily via Sina Tech]

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Hacktivism Spreads to China? Mengniu Hacked in Protest of 2nd Milk Scandal

Click to enlarge: Mengniu website hacked, photo via domain.cn

2011 was the year that we saw ‘hacktivism’ make headline after headline in the west, with organizations like Anonymous and Lolsec leading the way. Will 2012 be the year that we see similar activity springing up in China? It’s looking more and more possible.

We recently looked at the high-profile hacks of CDSN and Tianya, and some think such activity could be a challenge to real-name registration on services like microblogging sites. And while that notion is still just speculation, last night’s hack of Chinese milk company Mengniu’s (HKG:2319) website was a clear example of Chinese hacktivism.

In the wake of the company’s second tainted milk scandal, in which a batch of its milk was found to have contained carcinogens, the Mengniu website (mengniu.com.cn) was vandalized, with a message on the front page (see above) explaining that the company has hurt its own people, and questioning “Do you have a conscience?” It closes on a particularly strong note saying that “this is our national shame.”

Is this kind of hacktivism going to become a kind of protest 2.0 in China? Will we see hackers become sympathetic to uprisings like the one we saw in Wukan, and engage in activities with a more political slant? I’m just pondering out loud here, but it certainly an interesting possibility to consider.

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World Dive Sites

Dhigali Haa is amongst the best world dive sites for scuba enthusiasts looking for a varied balance of spectacular marine life and coral formations. In the past this top diving location used to be busy location for shark hunters, and therefore is now a protected marine area. It remains a good location for sharks and other fish; it is not uncommon to find up to 6 grey reef sharks cruising in the depths at any given time. There is also an abundance of fish in Dhigali Haa – you will find all kinds of Maldives marine life, such as: blue-fin jacks, fusilier, blue-striped and humpback snapper, batfish, barracudas, eagle rays, lionfish, angelfish, basslets, trumpet fish, blackcoral bushes, oyster clams, yellow sea fans, sponges, soft corals, trevally and more. This relatively small dive site is a favorite for divers looking to mingle with sharks, and can be explored in one dive session. Make sure you do not miss out on this stunning dive location on your Maldives holiday; sharks, corals, fish and more, Dhigali Haa has it all!

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Wego caters more to Indonesian travelers through localization and new features

Price-sensitive travelers are always looking to find the lowest fares at their desired dates with plenty options of airlines. For those who have flexible schedule, usually they have several preferred dates when they can travel. Most of them probably don’t have any concerns to have their carriers mixed to reduce the travel costs even further. Claimed as the leading travel search engine in Asia Pacific, Wego has the solution for this. DateWise Fare Finder, which is integrated into their website and developed by their developers in Singapore, offers a great number of choices of airlines to choose from, Garuda Indonesia, Lion Air, Sriwijaya Air, Batavia Air, Citilink, Indonesia Airasia, Merpati Nusantara Airlines, Tiger Airways, and Valuair.

For those who aren’t familiar with Wego, they have been offering search services for flights, hotels, packages, travel deals and travel research across more than 130 travel websites since 2005. Founded by executives from Intercontinental Hotels Group, Yahoo!, Priceline and ZUJI, they merged with HolidayIQ, an India based travel content and community site. News Digital Media and Tiger Global are their investors.

DateWise Fare Finder uses the ‘Best Fares by Airline’ feature to accommodate the needs of their users, who have their own preferred airlines. This feature allows users to see the best fares on that airlines for one or several destinations. They also allow users to search based on ‘Cheap Flights’ where users can find cheap flights listed alphabetically to any destinations around the world. To do the booking and reservations, travellers will be linked through to their partners’ websites such as Yahoo!, eBay, MSN, DetikTravel and Travel+Leisure Southeast Asia.

“The users only need to prepare their flexible schedule, select desired month(s), to have all information of the cheapest flights available in various airlines during that period. If they need a couple of days to seek for this kind of information, in Wego, they can see the graphical information within seconds. This is one of our missions that travellers can save their time in planning their trip, pay less on travel fares, and in the end, travel more frequently,” as stated by Graham Hills, General Manager for Indonesia in a press release.

The other innovation, launched on December 6, is the popular searches aimed for hotels and destinations. Destinations presented regionally on Wego’s home page started from the most popular outbound markets for that country. With its lowest fares, they are provided as references for travelers’ to help in their decision making. In the case of hotels’ popularity, they are sorted in order of relevancy based on the users’ country of origin. Hotel reviews are aggregated from tons of sources to gauge the experience of staying at given hotels. It will broaden the travelers’ perspectives and they will have access to adequate feedback on the hotels listed. Similar like DateWise, this real-time search results generates the relevant results within seconds.

For Indonesia’s market, Wego’s presence is supported by a dedicated team located in Jakarta. A localized country site, delivered by four translators, has also been launched. This is the first wave of localization offered to the market which they perceived is in the midst of a tourism boom, both from domestic and foreign travellers.  “From our own analytics platform, Wegonomics, we see the searches from Indonesian users increasing rapidly as well as the number of users outside of Indonesia searching for destinations like Bali and Jakarta. There are lots of additional supporting evidence: LionAir massively expanding their fleet; AirAsia developing new routes; Hotel chains adding new properties, local online travel agencies launching in Indonesia,” Graham tells e27. He adds, “Indonesia is currently our biggest market and according to October 2011 ComScore data, our direct site and distribution partners are actually the largest site in the travel category in Indonesia.”

Aside from that, they also provide Facebook login mechanism, whereby Indonesian Facebook users can login to their Wego accounts using Facebook credentials. It’s expected to drive the traffic from those social networking sites into their website. Wego users are also able to receive support from the Wego team through Facebook, Twitter, Koprol and Google+.

“This is the first time for Indonesia. Our website has been revamped and localized to meet the standard of global tourism market by relying on local perspectives. Now, Indonesians are able to search for travelling opportunities whether inbound and outbound destinations from a great number of travelling service providers,” said Graham.

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Rakuten’s Virtual Currency Claimed To Be Stolen And Used For Online Game Nexon

There have been consumers complaining that their Rakuten Super Point, virtual currency circulated in Japan's largest online shopping mall Rakuten Ichiba and its affiliated services, had been disappeared, the record said that they had spend it on online game service Nexon.

There are already over 100 Rakuten users reported to Rakuten that their points were spent for Nexon's games, which they did not play. (e.g. a question on Yahoo! Chiebukuro, Japanese Yahoo! Answers, on December 25, gets lots of "me, too!" answers. [J]) Some said that they have ever registered Nexon before, but did not use it recently.

On December 28, some national media (1, 2)started reporting and they say that Rakuten confirmed that they had received over 100 inquiries on similar cases with Nexon service.

Nexon, an company who provides many online games, a subsidiary of South Korean Nexon Corporation, has longer history in online PC games than feature-phone based newcomer Gree and DeNA(Mobage), just IPOed on December 14 at Tokyo Stock Exchange The First Section.

Rakuten’s Virtual Currency Claimed To Be Stolen And Used For Online Game Nexon

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