Heard of domain squatting? Well we seem to have app squatting as well, developers beware

The offending app vs the real one

Recently, I had the chance to have a lunchtime chat with popular food blogger Dr Leslie Tay of ieatishootipost.sg fame. He relates to me how a developer has brazenly copied his app name in an attempt to mislead potential users.

To his surprise, he found that the name of his app had also been taken on the Android Marketplace, putting a spoke in his future plans to release an Android version of his app.

“If I use the full name of my blog, ieatishootipost, it is just too long, but now I may have no choice as the name is taken on the Android app store.” he laments. He has contacted both Apple and Google and “they basically said they can’t do anything”. On the other hand, in the Apple App store, that same developer had named the app ‘ieat hawker 2′, likely to try and mislead people into thinking it was a newer version of the same app.

This is bad on two levels, firstly- in the food blogging segment, word of mouth is critical to your credibility. Should someone recommend the app to a friend and the friend downloads the wrong app mistakenly, it could lead to lost revenue. Secondly- to be quite frank, the cloned app is pretty darn lousy. It’s full of dodgy advertisements, and the user experience is pretty rough. This is the equivalent of domain squatting. This is app squatting to generate revenue by gullible users tapping on ads. If the users truly believes it is the correct application, this has significant implications for your reputation and brand equity.

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Heard of domain squatting? Well we seem to have app squatting as well, developers beware

The offending app vs the real one

Recently, I had the chance to have a lunchtime chat with popular food blogger Dr Leslie Tay of ieatishootipost.sg fame. He relates to me how a developer has brazenly copied his app name in an attempt to mislead potential users.

To his surprise, he found that the name of his app had also been taken on the Android Marketplace, putting a spoke in his future plans to release an Android version of his app.

“If I use the full name of my blog, ieatishootipost, it is just too long, but now I may have no choice as the name is taken on the Android app store.” he laments. He has contacted both Apple and Google and “they basically said they can’t do anything”. On the other hand, in the Apple App store, that same developer had named the app ‘ieat hawker 2′, likely to try and mislead people into thinking it was a newer version of the same app.

This is bad on two levels, firstly- in the food blogging segment, word of mouth is critical to your credibility. Should someone recommend the app to a friend and the friend downloads the wrong app mistakenly, it could lead to lost revenue. Secondly- to be quite frank, the cloned app is pretty darn lousy. It’s full of dodgy advertisements, and the user experience is pretty rough. This is the equivalent of domain squatting. This is app squatting to generate revenue by gullible users tapping on ads. If the users truly believes it is the correct application, this has significant implications for your reputation and brand equity.

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5 Asian Startups That Caught Our Eye This Week

In the last seven days, we have covered a couple of startups on Tech in Asia, specifically from China, Indonesia, Philippines and Singapore.

For folks who are interested in investing or partnering with these startups, drop us an email — editors[at]techinasia[dot]com – anytime. No promises, but we’ll try our best to be the bridge.

And if you’re a tech startup based in Asia hoping to get featured, please send us your pitch here.

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1. Wodache | China

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Wodache (loose translation means ‘hiring a car’) makes carpooling simple in Beijing. A user can simply log on to the site or iPhone app to search for a carpool ride.

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2. Clault | Singapore

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Most of us are well aware of the risks involved in losing or not protecting sensitive data. That’s why many organizations opt to purchase expensive document collaboration tools equipped with security solutions. The team at Clault basically saw the opportunity and developed an easy-to-use cloud document sharing tool with built-in enterprise-grade security.

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3. FamilyKo | Philippines

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“We’ve given long-distance families something to talk about, something to bond over.” That’s the central part of the pitch for FamilyKo, an interactive video-conferencing platform that will allow families – especially including the kids – to engage with games and storybooks in an online chat.

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4. Apps Foundry | Indonesia

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Apps Foundry has officially released its SCOOP app on the Android platform. SCOOP was initially an iPad-only app that allows users to download and read magazines.

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5. TDWclub | Indonesia

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If you know Udemy, then you should be able to understand TDWclub pretty quickly. TDWClub is an online learning portal where you can find interesting courses to learn, typically on finance, business, property, life management, stock market, or neuro-linguistic programming (NLP).

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Related stories

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• The Startup Ecosystem Here Sucks. Sure…

• Lei Jun Shares Advice for Startups and Entrepreneurs

• This Picture Very Much Summarizes Our Work Culture

• Calling Tech Startups: Chinaccelerator Applications Now Open!

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Online publishing platform, FashionSpace shares their milestone since Echelon 2011

Some of the FashionSpace team members

From exhibting at Echelon 2011, to securing seed funding from Crystal Horse Investments, e27 charts the latest progress of online fashion publishing platform, FashionSpace.

A place where users can discover and curate the latest trends, products and brands from the best retailers and indie designers around the world, FashionSpace is a space where fashion brands and fashionistas create their own social fashion magazine. It is also a performance based advertising system that also matchmakes fashion e-tailers with publishers and shoppers.

To date, more than 200K products, ranging from clothes, shoes, bags to accessories are being featured and uploaded onto the site.

Ever since Echelon 2011, FashionSpace has been investing a lot of time into researching on how their site interfaced can be improved. Based on the feedback that the site was not user-friendly with poor graphic interface, the newly launched website now boasts of a new outlook that allow users greater ease in creating looks and magazines. There is also a vastly improved product search engine where e-tailers can buy visibility, together with an improved affiliate programme where all publishers, like bloggers, can monetise their blogs or websites by creating and sharing products, looks and magazines on their blogs, social media or website.

FashionSpace is also expecting to launch their tablet and mobile version by early 3rd quarter of this year. However, their most immediate plan is to exponentially build traction in all the English-speaking markets since their largest traffic currently comes from US, UK and of course SG. FashionSpace would also like to work more closely with local and regional fashion designers, and retailers to help push them to the international markets.

Nonetheless, these mini milestones are not without challenges. “Finding good developers to support both the technology behind the platform and the team have been one of the greater challenges faced,” recalls Danielle Siauw, co-founder of FashionSpace. Inexperienced developers have resulted in Fashionspace suffering from problems such as inefficient resources allocation and time management.

20 By Two - Fashion Beyond Borders

Fortunately, with supportive merchants, investors and users, FashionSpace quickly rebounded back on track. This year, FashionSpace will hold their first ever event in September, called 20 by Two – Fashion Beyond Borders.

The cross cultural fashion event is a collaboration with fashion portal, Tongue-in-chic and will be held across 2 cities in Singapore and Malaysia, featuring 20 participating fashion brands, 10 from each country.

This fashion shopping event, and probably a first of its kind, will also feature the latest retail technology like POS system from StoreViva, Payment gateways from Smoov, QR technology from Smoov and of course FashionSpace. Part of proceeds from the event will also be donated to SPCA.

Designers that are showcasing at the event include Al & Alicia, WanderWonder, By Invite Only and 17 more.

For more information about the event, head on to https://www.facebook.com/events/279468478804953/

Link to full article

Read More

Online publishing platform, FashionSpace shares their milestone since Echelon 2011

Some of the FashionSpace team members

From exhibting at Echelon 2011, to securing seed funding from Crystal Horse Investments, e27 charts the latest progress of online fashion publishing platform, FashionSpace.

A place where users can discover and curate the latest trends, products and brands from the best retailers and indie designers around the world, FashionSpace is a space where fashion brands and fashionistas create their own social fashion magazine. It is also a performance based advertising system that also matchmakes fashion e-tailers with publishers and shoppers.

To date, more than 200K products, ranging from clothes, shoes, bags to accessories are being featured and uploaded onto the site.

Ever since Echelon 2011, FashionSpace has been investing a lot of time into researching on how their site interfaced can be improved. Based on the feedback that the site was not user-friendly with poor graphic interface, the newly launched website now boasts of a new outlook that allow users greater ease in creating looks and magazines. There is also a vastly improved product search engine where e-tailers can buy visibility, together with an improved affiliate programme where all publishers, like bloggers, can monetise their blogs or websites by creating and sharing products, looks and magazines on their blogs, social media or website.

FashionSpace is also expecting to launch their tablet and mobile version by early 3rd quarter of this year. However, their most immediate plan is to exponentially build traction in all the English-speaking markets since their largest traffic currently comes from US, UK and of course SG. FashionSpace would also like to work more closely with local and regional fashion designers, and retailers to help push them to the international markets.

Nonetheless, these mini milestones are not without challenges. “Finding good developers to support both the technology behind the platform and the team have been one of the greater challenges faced,” recalls Danielle Siauw, co-founder of FashionSpace. Inexperienced developers have resulted in Fashionspace suffering from problems such as inefficient resources allocation and time management.

20 By Two - Fashion Beyond Borders

Fortunately, with supportive merchants, investors and users, FashionSpace quickly rebounded back on track. This year, FashionSpace will hold their first ever event in September, called 20 by Two – Fashion Beyond Borders.

The cross cultural fashion event is a collaboration with fashion portal, Tongue-in-chic and will be held across 2 cities in Singapore and Malaysia, featuring 20 participating fashion brands, 10 from each country.

This fashion shopping event, and probably a first of its kind, will also feature the latest retail technology like POS system from StoreViva, Payment gateways from Smoov, QR technology from Smoov and of course FashionSpace. Part of proceeds from the event will also be donated to SPCA.

Designers that are showcasing at the event include Al & Alicia, WanderWonder, By Invite Only and 17 more.

For more information about the event, head on to https://www.facebook.com/events/279468478804953/

Link to full article

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Taximonger is driving to be the cloud run taxi call centre for Southeast Asia

When we talk about startups operating in the transportation industry, one that pops up recently is Malaysia based TaxiMonger, a taxi booking and review application for mobile and web.

If you have been travelling to Malaysia, you would have heard that Malaysia has quite a bad reputation for its taxi service, marred by the poor conduct of local taxi drivers, who have been known, among others, to refuse using taximeters, overcharging and being extremely selective on which destinations they will travel to, while driving poorly maintained vehicles.

What TaxiMonger does is to allow users to review and rate taxi drivers in order to represent the voice of taxi passengers. With close to 1,000 registered users, the two month old startup which has been in its beta since 6th April 2012 has built up a network of about 50 taxi drivers in Malaysia so far. With full commercialization initiatives to be implemented from June 2012, TaxiMonger is definitely expecting a tremendous growth in their drivers’ network, with the huge ambition of signing up 1,000 taxi-drivers in their network by end of 2012.

One might wonder though, what will be the motivation for users to post taxi reviews onto TaxiMonger? According to Nizran Noordin, cofounder of TaxiMonger, “there are many factors that motivate users including vehicle factor, driver factor and journey experience. And when we analyse each factor, there are many angles that the users will like or dislike that particular factor. Whether it’s good or bad, the need to get it out of his/her system would be a compelling reason for users to post taxi reviews in TaxiMonger.”

TaxiMonger is currently still in its trial run in Malaysia. From June onwards, they will be looking for Channel Partners to operate for their taxi booking business in the rest of the South East Asia region. This means that TaxiMonger will literally be a taxi call-centre that runs on the cloud. Of course, with limitations in terms of team members and resources, operating TaxiMonger across different countries would be challenging, and the market knowledge as well as local business networks would be their main obstacles. Hence, partnering with local partners and operators in these regions would be their key focus in the coming months.

Photo: Taximonger Workspace

When asked about how the startup scene in Malaysia has grown over the last few years, Nizran mentioned that the scene is encouraging. “In Malaysia, the high penetration rate of broadband and phenomenal growth of smartphones have spurred the startup scene for the past 3 years. The buy-outs of several technology companies by Silicon Valley guys have compounded more interest of local entrepreneurs to launch their startups and ground-breaking technologies. More importantly, event by StartupMalaysia.org such as the Silicon Valley Comes To Malaysia that brought in high-profile Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and investors, have also motivated a lot of entrepreneurs to launch their ventures.”

TaxiMonger will be exhibiting at Echelon 2012 Startup Marketplace. The team pitched their product at the Indonesia Satellite in April. The team is looking for funding  to grow as a market leader in Malaysia and expand regionally in South-East Asia. They are also interested to meet with local channel partners to Identify and secure market access to the South-East Asian market by way of tie-ups.

Link to full article

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Taximonger is driving to be the cloud run taxi call centre for Southeast Asia

When we talk about startups operating in the transportation industry, one that pops up recently is Malaysia based TaxiMonger, a taxi booking and review application for mobile and web.

If you have been travelling to Malaysia, you would have heard that Malaysia has quite a bad reputation for its taxi service, marred by the poor conduct of local taxi drivers, who have been known, among others, to refuse using taximeters, overcharging and being extremely selective on which destinations they will travel to, while driving poorly maintained vehicles.

What TaxiMonger does is to allow users to review and rate taxi drivers in order to represent the voice of taxi passengers. With close to 1,000 registered users, the two month old startup which has been in its beta since 6th April 2012 has built up a network of about 50 taxi drivers in Malaysia so far. With full commercialization initiatives to be implemented from June 2012, TaxiMonger is definitely expecting a tremendous growth in their drivers’ network, with the huge ambition of signing up 1,000 taxi-drivers in their network by end of 2012.

One might wonder though, what will be the motivation for users to post taxi reviews onto TaxiMonger? According to Nizran Noordin, cofounder of TaxiMonger, “there are many factors that motivate users including vehicle factor, driver factor and journey experience. And when we analyse each factor, there are many angles that the users will like or dislike that particular factor. Whether it’s good or bad, the need to get it out of his/her system would be a compelling reason for users to post taxi reviews in TaxiMonger.”

TaxiMonger is currently still in its trial run in Malaysia. From June onwards, they will be looking for Channel Partners to operate for their taxi booking business in the rest of the South East Asia region. This means that TaxiMonger will literally be a taxi call-centre that runs on the cloud. Of course, with limitations in terms of team members and resources, operating TaxiMonger across different countries would be challenging, and the market knowledge as well as local business networks would be their main obstacles. Hence, partnering with local partners and operators in these regions would be their key focus in the coming months.

Photo: Taximonger Workspace

When asked about how the startup scene in Malaysia has grown over the last few years, Nizran mentioned that the scene is encouraging. “In Malaysia, the high penetration rate of broadband and phenomenal growth of smartphones have spurred the startup scene for the past 3 years. The buy-outs of several technology companies by Silicon Valley guys have compounded more interest of local entrepreneurs to launch their startups and ground-breaking technologies. More importantly, event by StartupMalaysia.org such as the Silicon Valley Comes To Malaysia that brought in high-profile Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and investors, have also motivated a lot of entrepreneurs to launch their ventures.”

TaxiMonger will be exhibiting at Echelon 2012 Startup Marketplace. The team pitched their product at the Indonesia Satellite in April. The team is looking for funding  to grow as a market leader in Malaysia and expand regionally in South-East Asia. They are also interested to meet with local channel partners to Identify and secure market access to the South-East Asian market by way of tie-ups.

Link to full article

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Angel investor Bart Myers shares tips on how he made SideReel’s US$35 million exit

Bart Myers (Sr. Director Consumer Web Sites at Rovi)

Bart Myers is an advisor and investor to early and mid stage startups as well as founder of SideReel.com. Bart co-founded SideReel.com in 2006 where he was COO and President. SideReel.com is a website that helps people watch and track their favorite TV shows online and was the first site to embrace the, then, emerging trend of cord cutters. He will be part of the panel discussion discussing on Startup Growth and Scaling at Echelon 2012.

As COO of an early to mid stage startup, Bart wore many hats, including: online marketing and SEO, revenue generation through online advertising and affiliate revenue, strategic partnerships, getting out of the way, finance/HR/accounting, as well as doing the dishes.

Bart was a software developer and consultant with IBM Global Services out of college before joining several startups in San Francisco in a variety of roles from Project Management to operations and product management, including: NetSage, Pulse Entertainment and GUBA. Bart has a BA in Int’l Studies from the best university in the US – Evergreen State College in Washington State.

Please tell us more about what you do at Rovi and what are your interests as an angel investor.

At Rovi, I manage a team of 40 delivering compelling entertainment focused experiences online for film, music and tv enthusiasts. His team includes engineering, product management, marketing, ad operations and a world class video production studio, producing editorialized entertainment video and news for distribution online.

As an investor or advisor, I work with early stage, lean, startups as an investor and advisor. I tend to look for opportunities where I the team is open to and responsive to my suggestions and feedback. I find that I can be most helpful, by helping a team to:

- Structure the company correctly for the opportunity and if there’s a raise to raise the right amount
- Hone their product strategy to effectively reach a core market
- Find hints of success and build on that success
- Create a monetization strategy that compliments the product strategy
- Manage costs

Bart Myers (Sr. Director Consumer Web Sites at Rovi)

Please tell us more about Rovi.

Rovi helps people discover and buy movies, TV shows, music and other entertainment. Their technologies help them enjoy that content on virtually any device. Rovi has 1800 employees worldwide and listed on the NASDAQ as “ROVI”.

As a co-founder of SideReel with a $35 million exit, what was the most valuable lesson learnt that has made SideReel so successful and lucrative?

There are too many to list. But here’s a few:

- didn’t over raise ($1.5m angel/seed round)
- spent cautiously and never assumed an A round
- built a product that customers loved and listed to them
- made a lot of mistakes and learned from them
- Focused on testing revenue early, and got to profitability in 24 months
- didn’t focus on an exit, but on building a real business

What do you think are five of the most common mistakes startups make?

There are many. Here’s a few that I’ve seen most early stage startups follow.
[1] Never ship a product / ship a product that no one uses
[2] Wait too long to figure out a revenue model
[3] Improperly issue founder / early employee equity
[4] Raise too much / Don’t raise enough
[5] Don’t listen enough to their “elders”

Bart Myers (Sr. Director Consumer Web Sites at Rovi)

Bart Myers (Sr. Director Consumer Web Sites at Rovi) is one of the awesome speakers at Echelon 2012. This tech conference is a two-day, double-track event on 11 and 12 June 2012 with over 1,100 delegates, a demo pit of up to 50 regional startups per day and various workshops. Get your tickets now!

Link to full article

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Angel investor Bart Myers shares tips on how he made SideReel’s US$35 million exit

Bart Myers (Sr. Director Consumer Web Sites at Rovi)

Bart Myers is an advisor and investor to early and mid stage startups as well as founder of SideReel.com. Bart co-founded SideReel.com in 2006 where he was COO and President. SideReel.com is a website that helps people watch and track their favorite TV shows online and was the first site to embrace the, then, emerging trend of cord cutters. He will be part of the panel discussion discussing on Startup Growth and Scaling at Echelon 2012.

As COO of an early to mid stage startup, Bart wore many hats, including: online marketing and SEO, revenue generation through online advertising and affiliate revenue, strategic partnerships, getting out of the way, finance/HR/accounting, as well as doing the dishes.

Bart was a software developer and consultant with IBM Global Services out of college before joining several startups in San Francisco in a variety of roles from Project Management to operations and product management, including: NetSage, Pulse Entertainment and GUBA. Bart has a BA in Int’l Studies from the best university in the US – Evergreen State College in Washington State.

Please tell us more about what you do at Rovi and what are your interests as an angel investor.

At Rovi, I manage a team of 40 delivering compelling entertainment focused experiences online for film, music and tv enthusiasts. His team includes engineering, product management, marketing, ad operations and a world class video production studio, producing editorialized entertainment video and news for distribution online.

As an investor or advisor, I work with early stage, lean, startups as an investor and advisor. I tend to look for opportunities where I the team is open to and responsive to my suggestions and feedback. I find that I can be most helpful, by helping a team to:

- Structure the company correctly for the opportunity and if there’s a raise to raise the right amount
- Hone their product strategy to effectively reach a core market
- Find hints of success and build on that success
- Create a monetization strategy that compliments the product strategy
- Manage costs

Bart Myers (Sr. Director Consumer Web Sites at Rovi)

Please tell us more about Rovi.

Rovi helps people discover and buy movies, TV shows, music and other entertainment. Their technologies help them enjoy that content on virtually any device. Rovi has 1800 employees worldwide and listed on the NASDAQ as “ROVI”.

As a co-founder of SideReel with a $35 million exit, what was the most valuable lesson learnt that has made SideReel so successful and lucrative?

There are too many to list. But here’s a few:

- didn’t over raise ($1.5m angel/seed round)
- spent cautiously and never assumed an A round
- built a product that customers loved and listed to them
- made a lot of mistakes and learned from them
- Focused on testing revenue early, and got to profitability in 24 months
- didn’t focus on an exit, but on building a real business

What do you think are five of the most common mistakes startups make?

There are many. Here’s a few that I’ve seen most early stage startups follow.
[1] Never ship a product / ship a product that no one uses
[2] Wait too long to figure out a revenue model
[3] Improperly issue founder / early employee equity
[4] Raise too much / Don’t raise enough
[5] Don’t listen enough to their “elders”

Bart Myers (Sr. Director Consumer Web Sites at Rovi)

Bart Myers (Sr. Director Consumer Web Sites at Rovi) is one of the awesome speakers at Echelon 2012. This tech conference is a two-day, double-track event on 11 and 12 June 2012 with over 1,100 delegates, a demo pit of up to 50 regional startups per day and various workshops. Get your tickets now!

Link to full article

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Mumbai Gets Foursquare Badge

Here’s another Asian Foursquare badge launched just yesterday. Checkin to five spots on this list of Mumbai favorites places to earn the badge. Other badges in Asia include Bangkok, Jakarta, Singapore, and Tokyo.

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Govt of India wants to ban HTTPS and SSH? [Updated]

There is a proposal to block access to Internet as we know it in India and if it goes through you can say good bye to Gmail, Facebook and every form of secure communication you have had on the internet.

Here is the proposal. http://www.dot.gov.in/isp/guideinternationalgateway.htm

Please see

II. LEVEL OF ENCRYPTION

Individuals/Groups/Organisations are permitted to use encryption upto 40 bit key length in the RSA algorithms or its equivalent in other algorithms without having to obtain permission. However, if encryption equipments higher than this limit are to be deployed, individuals/groups/organisations shall do so with the permission of the Telecom Authority and deposit the decryption key, split into two parts, with the Telecom Authority.

This proposal means that

1. You can not use HTTPS in its default form. The default for HTTPS keys is 512. Please see http://www.openssl.org/docs/apps/genrsa.html#item_numbits
2. You can not use SSH in its default form. The default key length for SSH is 1024 or 2048. http://www.openssh.org/faq.html#2.6

Why is this bad?

1. Most software companies use SSH as a daily flow of their life. This means that most software which people use daily will break.
2. You use HTTPS everyday. For example Gmail changed default to always use http in 2010. Because they cared about your privacy. Facebook recommends that you always use https. With the default key length of 512, you would be breaking the law.
3. Lets say that everyone changed their defaults to always use key lengths of 40 bit. (Which is not going to happen). This is what wikipedia says about 40 bit key lengthsA typical home computer in 2004 could brute-force a 40-bit key in a little under two weeks, testing a million keys per second; modern computers are able to achieve this much faster. Using free time on a large corporate network or a botnet would reduce the time in proportion to the number of computers available.[1] With dedicated hardware, a 40-bit key can be broken in seconds. The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Deep Crack, built by a group of enthusiasts for US$250,000 in 1998, could break a 56-bit Data Encryption Standard (DES) key in days,[2] and would be able to break 40-bit DES encryption in about two seconds.[3]

So all your banking passwords, your credit cards, your private data is breakable in seconds. I am sure that the internet doesn’t have any crackers who want to steal your passwords.

[image credit: wikipedia]

[Guest article contributed by Shabda. He is cofounder of Agiliq, a company that builds amazing apps. Their blog talks about many technical topics but reading them may be soon illegal as they plan to use HTTPS.]

Update : We did more research and this proposal was proposed in 2001 and not actually implemented. This proposal was from 2001 can be verified using google search with custom date range. However our point stands. It is too easy to propose and get access to internet disabled, as can be seen from ongoing blocking of websites. Had this proposal passed we would not have had the internet revolution we are seeing today as no ecommerce, ticketing, or banking site would have worked with these regulations.

Imagine!

An accident averted?

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