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China has entered the world of cloud computing. Looking back, it’s hard to distinguish the point when things moved onto the cloud. Nearly everything from email, music, video, file storage, software mysteriously sits on the cloud.

Madeiracloud raised an Angel investment of RMB 1 Million last June to better organize cloud applications.

CEO Dan O’Prey and CTO Zhang Peng call themselves the Microsoft Visio of cloud computing. Their WYSIWYG web GUI enables users to simply drag and drop their cloud resources on to a canvas and connect them visually to configure the ports. Once the architecture has been designed, a template (stack) of the whole set up can be saved for reuse and launched multiply times in to live applications, without having to worry about conflicts in configuration.

Courtesy of Chris Tow

They claim that no other cloud management system has their unique GUI by taking a more holistic approach. Their stack concept is said to allow applications to be reused, shared and demonstrated in minutes rather than hours or days.

The main business case is leveraging the public cloud to take advantage of on demand resources to demo proof of concept (PoC) software to potential clients.

Madeiracloud closest competitor is a small start-up called AppCara. However they don’t see them as a big threat as they “believe that we are a lot further down the development cycle and our product has superior usability and functionality.”

The business model will work like many other SaaS. There is no initial set up fee, but a free package – limited to 2 running applications; a pro package – limited up to 10 running applications for $99/month; and an enterprise package – with pricing depending on requirements

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Rumor: China’s Massive Wanda Group to Enter E-commerce

One of the Wanda Group's many retail centers

The Wanda Group is basically ubiquitous in China. The mega-company, which is itself a subsidiary of the China National United Oil Corporation, has its hands in everything from commercial real estate to cultural industries, chain stores, and hotels. Now, it appears the company may be planning to get into e-commerce.

Specifically, the rumor started last Friday, when an industry insider reportedly tweeted:

Wanda is getting into e-commerce, headhunters are already searching for employees.

Wanda has yet to confirm the news, but they haven’t yet denied it, either. One Wanda rep told a reporter that they “hadn’t been notified” by the company’s GM of any e-commerce plans, but the company’s official spokesman has apparently had his phone switched off.

It might seem late to be entering the increasingly-crowded e-commerce market, but Wanda would have a significant size advantage, and its assets in retail could be a significant advantage. Of course, the whole thing could just be a rumor! We’ll keep an eye out.

[Via Sina Tech, Image Source]

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Diving Liveaboards in the Maldives

Subsequent dive which took us into the house reef north west of Dhigurah delivered another manta ray encounter + a king dimension sting ray hunting to the top rated reef – seriously productive dive again. Seems rays and shark have all five gills. To the way again from dive site towards the diving liveaboards, a number of the fitter divers went snorkeling with two further mantas who ended up cruising the lagoon of Dhigurah island near the evening anchorage.

Subsequent times diving an the Kudarah Thila from the middle of Dhigurah Channel showed a stunning landscape with huge rich fish existence. Herds of trevallies cruising approximately, school of blue stripes, scorpion fish dwelling inside their camouflage in spite of a person who probably failed primary camouflage school, so I found it without Mikey. Good models as they hardly transfer and they have the most characteristic profile.

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Spotted: Orkut’s First Integration with Google+

Orkut is dying, albeit a slow death but there is no denying that the social network is losing mindshare and is on to a slow death.

But, you cannot deny the fact that Orkut still has a (somewhat) active userbase who has stuck to the site and can be a big asset for Google’s new new social network, i.e. Google+.

Over the last few months, we have been wondering why Google is not integrating Google+ and Orkut, a logical step that will also help the company consolidate its position in the social networking space.

But today, we spotted the first integration between Orkut and Google+ : i.e.  Google rewarding a ‘Google+ user’ badge to Orkut users who also have a Google+ account.

Google+ & Orkut Integration

Nothing significant, right? Well, in the future I’d expect Google to quietly integrate (and enable import) one’s Orkut activity with Google+ and hopefully sunset Orkut by end of 2012.

That is, assuming the new CEO is really keen on letting go of the dead trees in the company.

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Are you showing employees as consultants to save tax?

Recently I met a startupper who very happily told me that his employees are very happy because of this recently applied tax scheme, which is “Hire your resources as consultants”

Now here are some advantages of the scheme

1. Employees show their income as ‘Consultancy income’ under the head “Profits and gain of business or profession” and accordingly claim expenses like their telephone expenses, electricity, petrol, driver’s salary and so on, which are not possible to claim if you show your income as salary income.

2. Claim refund of TDS which the company/firm has paid to the government.

3. Regular deductions which salaried employees get like 80C and 80D are also available to consultants.

In a nutshell if I can say – they are able to minimize their tax to a great extent.

But this is just one side of the story and obviously this is the good side. The bad side is

1. While joining as a consultant you have to register yourself with various government authorities like Income Tax deppt, Service Tax deppt (CBEC), PF deppt etc.

2. So, if you are earning more than 10 lakhs you are liable to pay service tax to the government and also comply with various rules and procedures of service tax.

3. And if you are earning even more than 15 lakhs then not only service tax formalities but also you’ll have to comply with Income Tax procedures which are – Tax audit required to be conducted for professionals earning more than 15 lakhs. Moreover you would also be required to deduct TDS on the payments you make and subsequently file TDS returns in every quarter.

Assuming you are able to comply with the above mentioned procedures, still you run a risk of getting caught by Income Tax people since you will have to prove that your relation with the company is of service provider-recipient and not of employer-employee which according to me is quite difficult (almost impossible).

My advice : Don’t mess things up!

» More legal resources for startups.

[Guest article by CA Mayank Kharbanda. He can be reached at mayank.kharbanda@visionkpo.com.]

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China’s Most Popular TV Drama to Be Adapted Into an Online Game

China’s most popular TV serial of all time, the iconic historical costume drama Princess Pearl, will soon get a postmodern twist as it’s reinvented as a computer game.

Now at the stage of being drawn and mapped (pictured below), the game will be an online multiplayer title developed by a small studio called Beijing WuShen Century Network, and will be distributed on 17173.com, the huge gaming portal that was recently acquired by Changyou (NASDAQ:CYOU).

Princess Pearl, when it was first screened, enjoyed the highest viewership in Chinese television history. Seasons one and two received up to 54 percent and 65 percent of audience share respectively during its broadcast. It has become the television series with the most reruns in China from the 1990s to today. It went on to similarly phenomenal popularity in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia and Thailand. The classic TV series was known as My Fair Princess in some nations.

This image, and the three others below, are initial sketches of the game characters from 17173.com.

The drama was actually based on a book by the contemporary author Chuing Yao, who has licensed the rights to the game developer. We are expecting to see the online game go live within this year, launching simultaneously in mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan.

A report from Sina Games says that the online game version will feature some plot elaborations that were not covered directly in the novel or TV series, such as the reason why the Empress and the elderly battleaxe Rong Mo Mo (pictured below) were always displeased with Xiao Yanzi.

The report also states that the licensing fee paid by the game studio to the author, Chuing Yao, is at least one million RMB (US$159,000), though no precise figure was given. Apparently, it took two months to negotiate that. Ms Yao will supervise the game development and can interject at any time for the sake of the quality of the adaptation. Both the developers and Changyou must be hoping for some kind of repeat of the success of the classic TV series once the game goes online.

[Source of news and images: 17173 News [1] and [2], and Sina Games – articles in Chinese]

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Singapore International Foundation: Ideas for a Better World Forum – 29 Feb

On the very last day of February, the Singapore International Foundation will organize the Ideas for a Better World Forum. During the session, Mechai Viravaidya will speak on nurturing future generations of social entrepreneurs. He is a leader in the fields of education, community development and public health, and also a forerunner of Thailand’s social enterprise sector. In addition, there will be a panel of entrepreneurs and social innovators from Singapore that will discuss how youths can be effective social entrepreneurs with ideas and sustainable business models that would make difference.

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Event Details

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When: Wednesday, 29th February 2012
Time: 4pm-6pm
Where: Rooms 303-305, Suntec Singapore International Convention & Exhibition Centre, 1 Raffles Boulevard, Suntec City, Singapore 039593 (Map)
Register here.

 

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Now You Can Input Shanghainese on Your Android

Shanghainese input method, via Sina

Shanghai natives rejoice! Thanks to the efforts of one very dedicated young man from Shanghai, you can now type using Shanghainese (the Shanghai dialect) on your Android phone. The input method release has sparked lots of attention and thrust Wu Wei, its developer, into the spotlight.

Wu has been developing the input method for years and although it has now been released — you can download it here — he is still working to improve it. In fact, he told the IT Times in a recent interview that he hadn’t slept in two days because he was working on perfecting the product.

Although it may seem like a gimmick, the input method could help protect a local dialect that, like many dialects, is vanishing. There are plenty of reasons dialects are disappearing: government promotion of Mandarin, the diversification of cities as people from rural areas move to the city, etc. But one problem many dialects face is that they aren’t particularly easy to use in the digital age. Speakers of Shanghainese would generally be forced to use a Mandarin input method on any digital device, and while that isn’t really a problem because most of them speak Mandarin, it does mean that Shanghainese is less frequently used. Thanks to Wu’s input method, though, Shanghainese speakers should be able to type words the way they actually pronounce them rather than going by the Mandarin pronunciations.

As local dialects fade, integrating them into technology could be one way to protect them. But Shanghainese is a more established, respected, and standardized dialect than most, and less widely-spoken dialects likely won’t attract as much attention. Still, Wu’s new method should be a boon for Shanghainese speakers with Android phones and a hankering to type the way they talk.

[via Sina Tech]

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In the Maldives

When you embark on your Maldives holiday it is possible to in fact be swept away; the men and women currently, the culture, the quite a few activities: diving, swimming, liveaboards, marine life, safaris, spas – make certain that you do not miss out on this unforgettable holiday information of a lifetime.
Maldives Holiday season is what dreams are developed of. Picture everlasting white sandy beaches, crystal clear lagoons, amazing islands, brilliantly dazzling marine life and gorgeous sunsets and night skies. The truth is, the glossy travel magazines and brochures can not replicate the exhilaration of witnessing a amazing tropical sunrise, mainly because the initially rays bounce off the warm water and bathe the islands with that refreshing holiday feeling. Nor can you recreate the expertise of diving in for the shimmering Indian ocean, to glide past a number of manta rays and whale sharks, a genuinely exclusive holiday encounter inside the Maldives.

It genuinely is no surprise that Maldives holidays are quickly expanding in recognition, due to the fact it encompasses each small factor which is often desirable for that great exotic getaway. Breath-taking views in the Maldives nature, brilliant, balmy temperatures all year round (the Maldives holiday weather is just unmatched), a plethora of entertaining activities such as diving, snorkelling, fishing, safari trips, island hopping, revitalizing spas and ideal resorts, and tons much more. No matter for anyone who is searching for a lazy beach holiday, a Maldives diving safari on a luxury yacht, or possibly a romantic honeymoon on a single inside the a lot of isolated islets; Maldives holidays presents it all!

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