Our Top 35 Teams For Hackathon at Startup Asia Bandung

After 24 hours of coding, designing, and fun, our sponsors have chosen the top 35 teams to pitch on stage to challenge for our list of lucrative prizes.

We have had a total of 600+ developers and designers who together formed 128 teams participating in this year’s Hackathon at Startup Asia Bandung.

To our surprise, about 90 percent of the teams hanged on till the very end of this hackathon. So kudos to these guys. The top 35 teams together with their brief description are listed below. Congrats.

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TheSunnyMag : A journey to the dark side of the Internet

Pluggd.in team is glad to present the sixth edition of TheSunnyMag, a magazine of curated content from around the web.

Inc.

A Google Book Deal Is Good for Everyone—Except Maybe Amazon: It’s possible there was some cheering at Google (GOOG) last week, when the search giant announced a deal with the Association of American Publishers over its book-scanning project. But it’s more likely there was just an overwhelming sense of relief, since the deal amounts to a truce in what has been a grueling seven-year battle. For almost a decade now, Google has been trying to scan and digitize as many books as it can, but it’s been stymied by lawsuits from the AAP and the Authors Guild, who claim the scanning process amounts to copyright infringement. Mathew Ingram of GigaOm gives you the lowdown.

Fate of Silicon Valley bleak, according to silicon CEOs: Silicon Valley has a serious location problem, according to a couple of semiconductor CEOs. Read more on how two of the most powerful CEOs in the tech world came down heavily on the state of California calling it a hostile place to do business. Read here.

So Far, So Good: Fortune 500 CIOs Seem Happy With Cloud Computing: Many organizations are still in the early stages of their cloud computing journeys, and the reports are: so far, so good. No major flaws or “gotchas” have emerged in nascent cloud engagements, and CIOs are saying full steam ahead.  Still needed, however, are more security assurances, and more vendor flexibility. Read more here.

Infosys Q2 profit up 24.3%, provides weak outlook: India’s third largest software exporter announced its results on Friday. The firm lowered revenue growth forecast for the year ending March to 17.3%, down from 19.7% projected earlier. It’s CFO K Balakrishnan also quit the role to take a side seat in the company. Read more here.

New new world

News a Big Draw for Mobile-Device Users: Although mobile devices allow news to be obtained anywhere, a new report from the Pew Research center’s project for excellence in Journalism survey found out that most people get news on tablets and smartphones when they are home. And, while users could get the news anytime, since they are likely to be carrying or near their mobile device most of the time, about half look at news only once a day. Read more here.

Like-A-Hug: Trio design vest that ‘hugs’ upon each Facebook ‘Like”: The virtual world always draws parallels between real life and itself. Recently, Facebook launched ‘Gifts’, a service that lets users send real gifts to loved ones. Now, the Like-A-Hug vest from Melissa Chow, Andy Payne, and Phil Seaton at the MIT Media Lab makes Facebook Likes seem more real.  Read more here.

Gadgetvice

Symbian – a post mortem : Nokia didn’t have a formal bug reporting program (to start with) and no public listings of known issues (this, BTW, is pretty much the same with Apple, but in stark contrast to Microsoft). Read here.

Apple Likely to Introduce Smaller iPad in October Event: People are still having trouble finding Apple’s new iPhone, which is selling out in stores, but the company is already planning to introduce another new product in an event later this month: a smaller, lighter version of the iPad. Read here.

Entrepreneuring

Stop hiding who you are: One critical lesson that we’ve learned the hard way, is that we shouldn’t hide who we are. Today we try to be open and honest about the size of the company and our goals, but things haven’t always been this way, writes Chris Savage, the CEO and Co-founder of Wistia. Read the full post here.

Clayton Christensen: “Disruptive Innovations Create Jobs, Efficiency Innovations Destroy Them” If you get the opportunity to hear Clayton Christensen hold court, seize it. Christensen is a Harvard Business School professor and renowned author and innovation expert, perhaps best known for his book “The Innovator’s Dilemma,” which had a profound influence on many thinkers and business leaders, including Steve Jobs. Read more here.

40 Things To Say Before You Die: Before you’re sprawled on your deathbed, there are some things you really have to say. They’re not complicated. They’re not poetry. They’re just short sentences with big meaning. I hope they get you talking. Read more by Jessica Hagy on the Forbes.

Technicolor

Robotic Luggage Doesn’t Deliver: A 28-year-old Spanish inventor by the name of Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez has been burning up the Internet with a video of his self-propelled, robotic carry-on suitcase, which is called the Hop! The exclamation point is technically part of the name, but as with Yahoo!, this will be the first and last time I use it, writes Sam Grobart in Bloomberg Businessweek. Read here.
This Refrigerator Only Opens if You Smile: If you’re hungry, you better smile. Researchers at the University of Tokyo have developed a smile-activated refrigerator, which requires users to flash a grin before entering. The system, which is called the “The Happiness Counter,” aims to naturally encourage smiling in our everyday lives. Read more here.

/roots

Mail-order drugs, hitmen & child porn: A journey into the dark corners of the deep web: I’ll never forget the time that I came across a huge archive of old BBS text files, back when cell phones were still bricks and dialup was the norm. There were hundreds of them, and these text files captured my attention for months. As a kid, the Internet fascinated me like nothing in my life had before. Read Joel Falconer’s feature as he takes a trip to the other side of the Internet.

Big picture

Behind Robert Vadra’s fortune, a maze of questions: Shalini Singh of The Hindu takes a look at the scandal that shook the first family of India. Vadra, the son in law of congress president Sonia Gandhi has been accused of underhand dealings with real estate companies and amassing wealth disproportionate to his business. Read more here.

Rahul Gandhi’s 70 % problem: Rahul Gandhi swept into Chandigarh on Thursday and declared that the border state of Punjab has a drug crisis. He said that 7 out of every 10 youths in the state suffered from drug problems – a remark that brought swift criticism from several political opponents in the state. Read more here.

European Union’s Nobel peace prize win greeted with joy and derision:  Applause and derision greeted the news that the European Union had won the 2012 Nobel peace prize, with British Eurosceptics dismissing the award as a “farce” and EU leaders rapturously welcoming a boost to the bloc’s sagging self-esteem. Read full story here.

Based on a New York Times story about the “looming financial disaster” for China’s clean energy industry which said “Though worldwide demand for solar panels and wind turbines has grown rapidly over the last five years, China’s manufacturing capacity has soared even faster, creating enormous oversupply and a ferocious price war,” The Energy Collective gives us three important lessons for US clean energy advocates. Read here.

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» TheSunnyMag : A journey to the dark side of the Internet @Pluggd.in.

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7 Startups in Asia That Caught Our Eye

Here at Tech in Asia, we cover startups like a fat man consumes donuts: frequently and with great relish. Here are the ones we got to this week. For tips and stories suggestions, feel free to email us at Editors[at]techinasia[dot]com. Alternatively, you can submit tips here and/or your startup here. Enjoy!

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1. Otaku Mode | Japan

Otaku Mode aims to curate content for the otaku community, but there’s some mixed opinions in the buzz about the company thus far.

2. iBanke | China

Moving is a huge pain in the ass. iBanke wants to make it easier. That should be reason enough for you to click the link, right?

3. AppSpree | China

One of the new crop of Chinaccelerator grads-to-be, this free AdConnect product looks to help apps monetize and grow.

4. Hubbl | India

There’s nothing you can’t turn into a tech startup by putting the word social into it. Hubbl wants to make finding apps better by showing us what apps friends recommend.

5. Pointer.co.id | Indonesia

Look, I don’t know anything about being an Indonesian travel agent. It’s hard for me to assess this one, but apparently it provides Indoneisian travel agents with a B2B solution for flight ticket purchase so that customers don’t have to buy their own tickets directly.

6. Tutor.co.id | Indonesia

Tutor.co.id wants to connect tutors and students. More teachers? That’s always a good thing.

7. BizReach | Japan

Looking for a high-paying job? Willing to pay to find one? BizReach is the site for you.

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That’s all for this week, folks! (See last week’s list here.) For our full coverage of the hottest and most innovative startups in the region, you can click here or subscribe to our Asiastartups RSS feed. For tips and news, sent us a note via editors[at]techinasia.com

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STEAL MY MONEY

[Editor Note: This article is contributed by Jonathan from Brainpage, a startup with focus on Big Data.]

There is turmoil in the Middle East, global economic uncertain and imminent high-stakes political decisions in the world’s two largest economies (the U.S. and China) – but none of these would be more popular than a simple math problem on the New York Times’ website this past week. Yes, nothing beats the magical mathematical fun of The Birthday Problem – the surprising statistical insight that if you have 23 people in a room, there is a 50% chance that two of them have the same birthday.

But perhaps, somehow, its appropriate. This problem – and the basic statistical principles behind it – is an essential ingredient to our digital and increasingly “big data” world. Without having this problem, you can’t securely send information over the internet nor can you instantly access massive amounts of information. We often forget these low-level discoveries that enables our modern lives; and major technical announcements, like the release of a new cryptographic standard called SHA-3 this week, are rarely covered by the news. Thus, in honor of the NY Times’ article and SHA-3 (more on this news from the security industry below), we thought we’d take a moment to explain just why these types of problems are so significant to the technology world.

THE LOSSY CONNECTION:

Imagine I’m sending you a message. But instead of writing the message on paper, I send it as a series of Scrabble blocks. How can we make sure you get the message completely intact – that blocks weren’t switched or missed in transport?

One method might be to send the message twice. In this way you can compare the two messages and see if something got screwed up. But that is too laborious. So instead, I decide on something clever. I’m going to give each character a number (say A is 1 and B is 2 and so on) and I will add up all of the characters in the message. At the end of the message I will also send this sum of the characters. Then, you can do the summation yourself, compare to my sum and know whether you got the message intact. It works!

“But wait”, you say, “couldn’t different combinations of letters have the same sum? For example, if I have the message ‘HI’ (8+9=17) it would be the same as ‘BO’.” This is true. But its a “risk” we are willing to take. More specifically, I could ask: what is the probability that two messages would have the same sum? In fact, this is a very similar question to the birthday problem!

What I described here is nearly exactly what is done when data is transferred across the internet or stored on a hardisk. It is transferred/stored with what is called a “checksum” or hash sum – a number calculated from the data designed to be statistically robust using the birthday problem. Without it, data storage and transmission would be unreliable to the point of being unusable.

THE SECURE CONNECTION:

Let’s take this this one step further. Imagine that instead of sending you a message, I’m sending you an operating system for your computer. While you trust me, its an ugly world out there and we can’t trust how this operating system gets delivered to you. Specifically, we are afraid that someone will insert something in the operating system, while it was being transported to you, that secretly captures what you do on your computer.

“But wait”, you say again, “we can use the method above to see whether someone has messed with this operating system while it was being transported!” You are right – almost. Imagine if this malicious person was really determined and had a lot of computing power at their disposal. They could, in theory, find a way to modify the operating system to their malicious intent while also keeping the checksum exactly the same (called “finding a collision”). Now, you would have no idea that the operating system you received was not what I intended to send.

There is, of course, a solution to this problem. First, using much of the math found in the birthday problem, we need to choose a checksum that is long enough such that it takes a HUGE amount of guesses to have a reasonable chance of finding a collision. This makes the theoretically probability of collisions very small.

Then, we need to calculate the “checksum” using what is called a “cryptographic hash function”. A cryptographic hash function has two very special properties unique to our secure needs. First, it is impossible to use a “mathematical shortcut” to find a collision in a cryptographic hash function. In other words, someone trying to find a collision MUST play the probability game and try to “guess” every combination. Second, it is computationally “expensive” to calculate – based on the way computers process instructions and data it will take a measurable amount of time to compute each checksum.

We can then put these numbers together – we can multiple the number of guesses it would take to have a chance of finding a collision by the amount of time it takes to compute each checksum. The result is the *total* amount of computing power you need to find a collision; and here’s the magic: this number for modern cryptographic hash function, by orders of magnitude, far exceeds the *total* amount of computing power in the entire world. In other words, even if you had ALL of the computing power in the world your chances of find a collision is STIL much, much smaller then winning the lottery. The hash is, practically, secure.

Which brings us to the SHA-3 function. Many “cryptographic hash functions” are internationally recognized standards – allowing different systems to talk to each other. Probably the oldest still in use hash function is called MD5, created in the early 1990s. However, with increased computing power and increased understanding of the math behind hash functions, researchers have found ways to take mathematical shortcuts and quickly find “collisions” in MD5. Indeed, Microsoft Windows’ continued use of MD5 in certain areas was a key enabler of the Flame virus.

Thus, competitions have been held to find the successor. First was SHA-1, then SHA-2 and now SHA-3. Each one successively more robust then the previous. (SHA-1 is still widely in use but has a “theoretical” mathematical shortcut that no one has actually been able to implement yet. This has given rise to the need for SHA-2, and it its broken, SHA-3 as a backup).

One final thought. The awesome and disruptive power of quantum computing is most stark in the context of our above competition. In quantum computing, the rules of classic probability are thrown out in favor of “quantum probability”. The Birthday Problem is irrelevant. The result is it becomes (theoretically) possible to find a collision nearly instantly.

RE-EMERGENCE OF THE ELEGANT:

If you’ve never heard your technology friends talking about hash functions or the birthday problem, you can be forgiven. Many of these low-level concepts have been effectively abstracted under higher-level programming paradigms. However, with the emergence of big-data and ubiquitous computing, engineers are finding these fundamental concepts have new applications and uses (see technologies like Redis, Riak and Hbase) and an understanding of hash functions is critical to building modern secure applications.

I’ve titled this post: steal my money. Below is the password to my bank account, encoded in the new SHA-3 standard. If you can guess it, all my money is yours. Good luck – it will take you approximately 5e153 (5 with 153 zeros after it) guesses to get it right!

My banking password: ee25979a0f91058e6952d09593a4ad6ccdfe2f96b3a35fdba8203c9a4cda3e078b3674530b8bfdda6f369f095b9947f268839c70115ac19f47b9f2e2916681e

Related posts:

1. Tencent VP Sun Zhonghuai: Weibo May Never Make Money
2. [GMIC] Phewtick Gives You Money, Just for Meeting New People
3. Tech Briefings:Mecox Lane Loses $ 3.4 M; Tencent Launches Mobile app Center With Money Incentive

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5 Must-Read Tech Stories in China This Week

What can we say about this week that hasn’t already been been said before? It came, it saw, it conquered, and now it has passed. But fear not, gentle strangers, for the memories remain. Behold:

1. HootSuite Adds Sina Weibo Support For Social Marketing to China

Hoot hoot! Hootsuite added Weibo support this week, apparently as part of a larger plan to enter China? What’s coming next? Stay tuned next week to find out!

2. US Lawmakers Say Huawei and ZTE Are A Threat, Chinese Net Users Not Convinced

A US Congressional report called Chinese telecom equipment companies Huawei and ZTE a threat to US telecom security. But is the threat real or is this a case of protectionism pure and simple?

3. Qihoo Launches Quad-Core Smartphone

Qihoo launched a quad-core smartphone this week, but we were a little distracted by the company’s other antics, like this…

4. Qihoo 360′s Latest War: Duking it Out With “Science Cop” Fang Zhouzi

Qihoo is having it out with Fang Zhouzi over Fang’s claims that the 360 Browser is unsafe and Qihoo’s claims that Fang is being paid by Baidu to say that. It’s ugly.

5. What Would China Be Like if the Internet Wasn’t Censored

I went long-form this week to answer a speculative — but fascinating — question with the help of some internet experts.

BONUS 欢迎欢迎! Tech in Asia Chinese Officially Launched

Oh, so you like China tech news? Now you can read even more of it on Tech in Asia Chinese. Enjoy!

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That’s all for this week, folks! For our full spread of China coverage, you can click here or subscribe to our China RSS.

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Hackathon at Startup Asia Bandung: 600 Developers, 128 teams, 24 Hours of Fun

Our Startup Asia Bandung Hackathon finally kicked off yesterday. More than 600 developers have signed up, forming 128 teams who will code and design at the Landmark Convention Hall in the city for 24 hours. Though we had some problems with the internet connection (which is very common in Indonesia) everyone was still able to code their hearts out to beat the challenges set by our sponsors.

The event started smoothly with a lot of developers coming early to the event. Some developers came with their teammates while others chose to come alone and partner with one of the available teams there. Surprisingly, most of the participants aren’t even from Bandung. There are folks coming from Jakarta, Bogor, and Depok. We even had one participant who flew all the way from Japan to compete in this hackathon. Here are some interesting facts about the participants we’ve gathered so far:

The All Female Team of I-Tech

There are around 50 participants coming from the Jakarta-based I-Tech community. The all-female team from I-Tech said that the high number of participants made the event both fun and intimidating. This is the first hackathon for the girls, and they hope to learn a lot from this competition. They plan to build a banking-related app here. They’re not yet sure what challenge they want to beat.

Keisuke Who Flew All the Way From Japan!

We also have an interesting participant who came all the way from Japan to compete in the hackathon: Keisuke. This guy came to Bandung alone and was looking for a UX designer. He is looking to build an interesting Android game.

Keisuke on the right

Student Developers

We talked to two groups that come from the University of Indonesia. Not only did they share the same table, but they also shared the same enthusiasm for the competition – they all looked very busy with their laptops even before the event had started. The teams are looking to build a traditional mobile game called “Gobak Sodor” and a web-based application to educate children with games. They will go with the flow regarding the challenge they plan to beat.

All-Mac Users Team

This one is interesting, there were two teams whose weapons of choice ran on Macintosh. They were all sitting at the same table, but they came from two different cities: Jakarta and Bogor. The two teams called themselves the “Anargya” and “Flockstarter.”

They both plan to take on the Tiket challenge. Anargya will create an application that enables users to easily invite their friends to watch a movie together. Flockstarter aspires to create a social network for travelers to encourage people to travel more. Anargya and Flockstarter explained that the beautiful user interface, flexibility with Linux web servers, and virus-free features are the reasons they chose to use Macintosh.

Here’s some pics from the hackathon:

And for your information, here’s the list of 128 groups who are competing in this hackathon:

More coming from them later today!

PS: We would like to thank our sponsors and supporters for making this event happen: KotaGames, XL, Biznet, DeNA, Softlayer, Cacoo, Teamie, Sent.ly, Vserv, GEPI, SixReps, Tiket, Lazada, Intel, and East Ventures Alpah. Stay tuned for the highly anticipated demo day later!

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Tech in Asia: Our Picks for News of the Week [Oct. 13, 2012]

What are the haps, my friends? These are the haps. The biggest haps. The most interesting haps. These are our picks for the top Asia tech news stories this week. Feast your eyes upon them:

Steven’s pick: Now with over 1 billion netizens, this is how Asia is social and mobile in 2012 [INFOGRAPHIC]

It’s the weekend, so let’s kick it off with an infographic. Since we looked at this same report source last year, wired internet penetration in Asia is up to 27 percent, and mobile penetration among the populace has rocketed to 82 percent.

Charlie’s pick: What would China be like if the internet wasn’t censored?

Yeah, that’s right, I picked my own story. It’s not really news, but I think it’s interesting so I’m putting it here anyway. But if you must have news, Qihoo getting into a slapfest with Fang Zhouzi is a pretty interesting story. Doubt that’s going to end well for them…

Willis’ pick: WeChat has gone international

WeChat going International is my pick for this week. Steven’s interview with Tencent’s Justin Sun was an interview that we requested to make happen many times before getting finally getting it. Knowing that Tencent’s WeChat is looking at overseas markets – everywhere from the Middle East to the US – I would say it’s an exciting episode for China’s biggest web company to prove that it could also dominate the global stage. Watch out Whatsapp!

Rick’s pick: US says Huawei and ZTE are a threat, Chinese net users not convinced

I’m not certain what evidence the House Intelligence Committee has against Huawei and ZTE, if any, but I think this whole mess is illustrative of an unfortunate, growing trend. ‘Brand China’ is toxic, and is a very hard sell abroad. Unless, as in the case of Tencent’s WeChat for example, you hide it.

Enricko’s pick: Indonesia’s government sites are a favorite target for hackers

I personally find this story amusing. I’m not sure why, but it seems that hacking government websites is a hobby for hackers all around the world. If the hackers are not doing it for bad reasons, then I think the government shouldn’t be too furious. The attachks are helping to make the websites more secure. Isn’t that good?

Thanks for dropping by again this week! For other ways of reading us, perhaps try our tailored RSS feeds, or find us within the Flipboard or Google Currents apps.

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Newsreel [Oct 13]: Apple to launch iPad mini on October 23?

iPad Mini Mockup. Image: Macrumors.com

Is Apple’s iPad mini launching on October 23? According to US based news site AllthingsD, it will launch the shrunk iPad on October 23. The new device is supposed to have a smaller 7.85 inc display and lightning connectors that debuted on iPhone 5. Read the story here. AllthingsD has a reputation of being correct on such things.

iPhone5 beats Samsung Galaxy SIII in web traffic: In just 18 days, the latest phone from Apple has topped Samsung Galaxy S III’s web traffice, according to mobile ad firm Chitika. The findings were based on millions of mobile ad impressions from across US and Canada between October 3- 9. About 56 % of impressions were from Apple’s iPhone 5 while 44 % were from Galaxy S III. Read full story here. Let the nitpicking begin.

Asus Padfone 2 images surface online; to be launched next week: Asus has given more than just hints about its Padfone 2 smartphone Running on a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, the Padfone2 sports a 4.7-inch IPS 720p HD display. The Padfone 2 is set to be showcased in an event in Italy next week but its images are already doing the rounds on the web. Read more here.

Karbonn launches 2 new tablets in Indian market: Karbonn has launched two new Android Ice cream sandwich operating system based tablets for the Indian consumers. This tablet named Smart Tab 3 Blade is a 7.1 inch display tablet and is priced at Rs 5,990. The Smart Tab Marvel is a 9 inch screen tablet placed at a higher price point of Rs 7990. Read more here. Four gadgets stories already? Now were OD’ing on gadgets.

Six billion mobile phone subscribers in the world: There are almost as many mobile phone subscriptions in the world as people, a United Nations telecom agency has said. A report by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) said there were about six billion subscriptions at the end of 2011. There are nearly seven billion people on Earth. Almost one billion subscriptions were in China, the study found. Read more here. No surprise with the China part.

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» Newsreel [Oct 13]: Apple to launch iPad mini on October 23? @Pluggd.in.

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Guruji Search is Dead?

Guruji, which started in 2007 as a search engine for India (read: do we really need a national search engine?) has *almost* killed its search engine.

The search engine retrieves no result, but for 502 gateway error – and importantly this has been the case for the last 5 days or so.

Guruji earlier killed its music search service (after a lawsuit from T-series), but recently pivoted to launch Mobile advertising optimization platform, Adiquity (read : 10+ Indian Startups that pivoted (successfully).

While we don’t know whether Guruji search is officially dead (have reached out to them for more details), but it’s very important for Guruji team to kill it gracefully (unless you want to give an impression that the team was out for vacation for more than 5 days and there isn’t any site monitoring team in place).

After all, there has to be a grace in dying as well. What’s your take?

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» Guruji Search is Dead? @Pluggd.in.

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