Want to know more about location-based marketing in Singapore? Here’s something that you should not miss. Mobile Monday Singapore is having a special session next Monday at the Hub Singapore. The event is entitled “Location, Location, Location – LBMA Launch and IDA Showcase.” Mobile Monday is helping to launch the Asia chapter of the Location...
The post Mobile Monday Singapore to host LBMA Singapore launch and IDA showcase appeared first on e27.
Want to know more about location-based marketing in Singapore? Here’s something that you should not miss. Mobile Monday Singapore is having a special session next Monday at the Hub Singapore. The event is entitled “Location, Location, Location – LBMA Launch and IDA Showcase.” Mobile Monday is helping to launch the Asia chapter of the Location...
The post Mobile Monday Singapore to host LBMA Singapore launch and IDA showcase appeared first on e27.
From The Japan Times:
Internet giant Yahoo Japan Corp. will market to the general public a medical test kit intended to help individuals identify their genetic risk for contracting various diseases, officials said Thursday. […] The test kit, which is priced at 29,800 yen, was developed by Tokyo-based genetic analysis specialist Genesis Healthcare Co. Yahoo Japan projects sales of 300 units a month. Using the kit, consumers are directed to send saliva samples to Genesis Healthcare, which will analyze 68 genes and report back any genetic predispositions to certain ailments, such as stroke or gout.
The Yahoo Japan link is here.
This sounds a lot like California-based 23andMe. And by ‘a lot,’ I mean ‘exactly the same.’
The post Yahoo Japan To Soon Start Selling Genetic Testing Kits appeared first on Tech in Asia.
Grocery, the word used to give me jitters when uttered from my mom as I had to fairly dedicate nothing less than 2-3 hours to take them home (entire grocery & FMCG stuffs). However, now it takes 10 minutes to conclude routine bi-monthly grocery shopping, thanks to the online grocery services like MyGrahak, Aaramshop and Foodmandi, which gives me ease to shop grocery over Internet . While these portals cater the need of NCRites, Bigbasket, Kiranawalla and Zopnow serve Bangalore.
On similar lines, Pune based Punexpress has launched its online grocery store that offers variety of daily needs products spanning across categories such as grocery, baby care, household supplies, personal care and health care amongst others. On grocery front, the website offers lentils (dal), rice, idli rawa, matki, flour, spices, noodles, pasta etc. In the personal care category,Punexpress provides cleaning materials, electronic equipments (CFL, pencil cells) including several others.
Currently, Punexpress is delivering in areas like Kalyani Nagar, Chandan Nagar, Viman Nagar, Koregaon Park, Wagholi, Magarpatta, Shashtri Nagar and Wadgaon Sheri. Consumers residing in these areas can order through Puneexpress’s website as well as on phone with Cash on Delivery as a payment option (all orders exceeding Rs. 499 will be delivered free), however orders below Rs. 500 will be charged Rs. 50 as delivery charge.
At present, the company commits to deliver the product within 24 hours and has morning and evening shifts for delivery. Interestingly, apart from accepting cash, it also offers swipe on delivery service – i.e. customer can swipe their credit/debit card when the delivery person arrives. To ensure delivery, the firm has a fleet of 24 two wheelers and 3 three-wheelers; and has dedicated central warehouse in Wadgaon Sheri.
Punexpress went live on October 24 and as of now claims to have clocked 78 orders with average ticket size per transaction of around Rs. 1200-1300. In terms of future plans, Roshan Desarda, founder, Punexpress mentions “We want to be the top player in Pune and areas we serve for online grocery supplies and we need at least couple of years to gain the confidence and trust of the customers. Currently we are operating in 9 areas of Eastern Pune and will soon expand to other areas and with plans of starting the same service in Nashik and Aurangabad”.
Like other startups, currently Punexpress is being bootstrapped by its founder and has team of 7 people. however the company aims to have teamsize of 15 in coming months. As far as marketing initiatives are concerned, Punexpress has been leveraging offline routes via posters and pamphlets including social media and obviously word of mouth.
If you are in Pune, give a spin to Punexpress’s service and let us know the feedback in comment section.
From Pluggd.in forum: Now Pune has their online grocery store
Cinemacraft restructures and releases Videogram, an app that makes video thumbnails come to life. Japan-based Cinemacraft, had a huge vision of being the broadcast network for mobile devices. However, that did not work out too well. Following their latest announcement of being accepted into the latest 500 Startups accelerator program, Cinemacraft has announced their new pivot:...
The post After joining 500 Startups, Cinemacraft pivots into Videogram, a pictorial summary of videos appeared first on e27.
Cinemacraft restructures and releases Videogram, an app that makes video thumbnails come to life. Japan-based Cinemacraft, had a huge vision of being the broadcast network for mobile devices. However, that did not work out too well. Following their latest announcement of being accepted into the latest 500 Startups accelerator program, Cinemacraft has announced their new pivot:...
The post After joining 500 Startups, Cinemacraft pivots into Videogram, a pictorial summary of videos appeared first on e27.
Chinese web companies have a bad reputation for back-stabbing and skullduggery – but that might be about to change, at least for China’s search engines. The country’s top 12 search engines [1] yesterday signed a code of conduct that aims to stamp out acts of sabotage and unfair competition.
The agreement brought together representatives from 12 web companies in the search engine sector at the behest of a government-backed trade organization. Aside from creating the awkward photo below, it also brought together fierce rivals Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU) and Qihoo (NYSE:QIHU), which have been locked in a tense stand-off after Qihoo launched its own search engine this summer. Indeed, the subsequent Baidu-Qihoo tussle shone a spotlight on some of the shadier shenanigans on the Chinese web, with suspicions of content-scraping and blocking rivals.
Click to enlarge.
The code of conduct focuses on the web spiders that crawl websites to index content. These things should no longer be used “to carry out acts of unfair competition,” says the WSJ translation of the agreement. And although the code is voluntary and not legally binding, the government involvement might make the companies – such as Baidu, Qihoo, Tencent, and Sohu – wary of upsetting authorities.
Web spider usage was a cause of concern just after Qihoo’s 360 Search was launched, with some accusing Qihoo of scraping Baidu’s search results to give its fledgling product a boost. But yesterday, Qihoo’s CFO, Alex Xu, denied the allegation and said his company only indexed Baidu content like its Wikipedia-esque ZhiDao service, and did not in any way steal Baidu’s search results.
As with all government-backed pronouncements like this, we say, Good luck with that!
[Source: WSJ (paywalled); photo: QQ Tech]
All 12 search-invested companies who signed the code of conduct are: Baidu, Jike, Panguso, Qihoo, Shanda Cloudary, Sohu’s Sogou, Tencent’s Soso, Netease, Sina, Easou, Yicha, and Zhongsou. Interestingly, both Jike and Panguso are state-backed search engines. ↩
The post Chinese Search Engines Sign Code of Conduct, Agree to Ease Up on the Back-Stabbing appeared first on Tech in Asia.
Gian Javelona (left) being interviewed by TV5.
Fame has found 19-year-old student Gian Javelona. Soon after launching PUP Mobile Portal, the first mobile app for a school in the Philippines, he transformed from just another enthusiastic app developer, very common these days, into the latest talking point on national news.
The computer engineering management student appeared as a guest on the ABS-CBN News Channel, the CNN of the Philippines, to talk about his app. TV5, a major television channel in the country, has interviewed him as well. His achievement brought great pride to his college, the Polytechnic University of the Philippines. A banner even hangs on the entry gate just outside Gian’s campus, proclaiming, “we are proud of you.”
Score one for the country’s tech startup scene. Ever since a bevy of funds, expertise, events, and passion were injected into the ecosystem this year, Filipino entrepreneurs have increasingly been put into the national spotlight. The media attention will certainly help galvanize a nation that is trying to establish itself as a rising tech startup powerhouse (read: The Philippine startup scene: Asia’s best kept secret?).
But fame has a darker side: Many startups in the United States have felt the giddy ecstasy that comes with media adoration, only to collapse in a heap of ruin later on. High profile examples would include Color, which scored a mind boggling USD41M in venture capital pre-launch, and Diaspora, which was widely touted as a Facebook killer before it even had a product.
The mass media tends to distort reality by highlighting the glamour of entrepreneurship without emphasizing the lows: Countless iterations before finding the right product-market fit, slogging well into the night and on weekends, and working without salary and the comforts of a plush job in a large corporation.
Like many self-starting developers, Gian, who plans to register Orange Apps as a business soon, will have to grapple with these issues. Finding inspiration will help, and for him that is Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.
“I’ve seen ‘The Social Network’ 10 times already and I feel that I can relate to whatever he was going through when he was starting Facebook,” said Gian in an email interview with SGE.
Their stories have another similarity too. Just like how Zuckerberg built Facemash — his pre-Facebook project — by pulling photos from Harvard’s websites without seeking permission from the university, Gian created and released his mobile app without notifying PUP.
The school authorities asked him to shut it down due to security issues.
But he was undeterred. He spent a month to fix the app and then relaunched it. The app became an instant hit among students within 3 days. Now, he has some 2,000 active users out of a school population of 70,000, spread out to over 20 campuses.
“The President of PUP called and asked me to present the platform. Sometimes, you need to break some rules to make big things happen,” he said.
The platform has propelled PUP forward technologically. The Android app, in essence, lets applicants enroll into the school using their smartphones. Students can log in to their student accounts, read news, post announcements, and post to social networks like Facebook and Twitter. Faculty can input student’s grades through the app, while alumni can use it to obtain their transcripts.
However, the app’s user experience is underwhelming. On the Android phone I used, the app crashed often. Also, instead of offering a truly native experience, it is a little more than a mobile browser with a PUP skin.
Gian has big plans for his creation and his startup, and I believe the press mileage will help. He is aiming to push the app out to all universities and colleges in the Philippines before he turns 20 in March next year. He also wants to bake in a feature for students to pay their tuition fees, although he’ll have to speak to the banks. I also think he should work on improving the user experience.
The student entrepreneur aims to emulate his idols in all ways. He has set before himself a lofty vision: To modernize the education system in the Philippines. Through his endeavors, he wants to inspire and encourage Filipino programmers to create new ideas.
“When I was a kid, I’ve always admired Steve Jobs. When I was in high school, I told myself that one day I am going to build my own company, a Filipino version of Apple and will name it Orange Apps. Here I am now living that dream,” he said.
PUP puts up a banner congratulating Gian.
The post 19-year-old student-entrepreneur Gian Javelona catapults to national spotlight in the Philippines appeared first on SGE.
I am a sucker for new online services, specially emails and when AOL announced its new offering Alto Mail, I was really excited as anything coming on the heels of Microsoft’s Outlook.com with a premise of making mail arrangement a more visual affair had to be definitely worth a try. So does it really deliver the goods?
First of all let’s get this straight: Alto Mail is NOT a new Email service, it is just a new web based email client which you can connect to view your Gmail/Yahoo/AOL/iCloud content. (Only Yahoo.com accounts will work, no “.co.in” or “.co.uk” or any of the other Yahoo local domain names work with Alto). Once you login to Alto with any of your above mentioned accounts, give it a few hours (well it will depend on the size of your inbox and folders) to pull in all the emails/contacts from your account. But even before the import is completed, any emails sent from Alto will reflect in your ‘Sent’ folder of your linked mail account.
And let me just slip in a ‘minor’ issue here that Alto Mail has too many issues on Chrome (I tested on Chrome 22) starting from look and feel (see the jarred fonts in below snapshot) to core functionality like viewing a message! To say the least, I was very disappointed when first messages (imported from Gmail) started appearing.
 |
| Note the jarred font on Chrome 22 |
What’s worse is that you can’t even scroll down a long message and even the subject is not displayed.
 |
| Note that the mail subject is not displayed |
Really AOL? You haven’t made your big ticket launch work on one of the most used browsers? Why don’t you just put a disclaimer on your site (like 90s), ”Works only on Internet Explorer 9″ because all these issues were not there on IE9.
 |
| Same text and same font rendered perfectly fine on IE9 |
 |
| Alto Mail landing page. See the stacks on right. |
Self-proclaimed ‘email’s chicest new space’ Alto brings with itself a new metaphor for arranging mails in, what it calls, ‘Stacks’. All messages containing photos are grouped in one stack, with photos in a grid format and you can share, download or see the email in which the photo appears. This is very similar to ‘Quick Views’ feature in Outlook.com where in ‘Photos’ you can see all the messages which have any photo embedded in them. However with photos arranged in a grid like format and endless scrolling it is definitely easier to search the photos and messages associated with them.
 |
| Photos arranged in a grid like fashion in ‘Photos’ stack |
There are other stacks like ’Social Notifications’ which clubs all emails from Facebook/Twitter and other social networks, ’Attachments’ which groups all emails having any sort of attachment not just documents. So an email from Netbeans User Group which had .xml and .java attachments was also listed here and so were the mails having .rar attachments.
Stacks are definitely a new style to arrange the mails but except ‘Photos’ and ‘Attachments’ there is not much differences between them and folders. The mails will still be listed in a vertical list format.
 |
| Social Notifications stack shows a pie-chart sliced by senders. |
You can create a new stack by dragging and dropping any message on stacks UI and all the messages from the sender of that message will be clubbed in that stack. Reminds of Folders/tags in Outlook.com but in a more visual format.
Compose icon is tucked on the top left corner of the page and if you click it, this window with bare minimum options is shown. You can give the recipients’ email IDs, subject and your content along with an attachment. There are no options to add cc/bcc or use any formatting. No problem these options will be shown in a ‘Full Compose Window’ which will be shown once you click on the little compose icon on top right of the window. Only glitch is that, clicking on this icon does nothing! So if you have to send a formatted mail with some recipients in cc and some in bcc please head over to your mail account.
Well you can say that it is a new service and there are bound to bugs but then such features are assumed to be working even in a private beta! Even the ‘Help’ is buried in the ‘Settings’.
There is not too much to complain about but then there is almost nothing to be really excited about too. There are too many loose ends which disappoint. E.g. if you click on any of the slice of the Pie Chart shown on Social Notifications stack, it will show you all the messages from that sender but then you will really have to wonder how to see all the messages again! There is no visual cue for you to go back to your previous view.
Clicking on any email or any stack opens it in a new tab, much like Yahoo mail. But unlike Yahoo Mail, there is no header at the top which cuts a lot of clutter. As a matter of fact, there is not even a logo of Alto on the page. And if you don’t look on the tab to see page title you won’t find any branding of Alto on entire screen!
The page layout is much like Outlook.com with message list on left and reading pane on right. However while Outlook.com gives you an option to move reading pane to bottom or even switch off the reading pane, Alto Mail doesn’t give any such options. As a matter of fact, Alto hardly gives you any settings. You can just select from available Stacks:
Or choose from different Message Display settings which decides how much message snippet is shown in the message list. So Relaxed will show 2 lines, Comfortable 1 line and Compact will just show subject.
One interesting feature is ‘Snooze’ which can be used to receieve a message later. You can select any message from the list and click on snooze icon to set after how many days or hours you want to get the mail again. To quote Alto Help:
Pick 1-2-3-4 or 5 days, or click the dot-dot-dot to get options for 30 minutes, 1 hour, 2 hours, or 6 hours. Click Choose a day to pick a date from the calendar. That’s it. The message compresses in your message list and will re-arrive like a brand-new message after the specified time has elapsed.
I really don’t understand the use of this and that’s why I used ‘interesting’ rather than ‘useful’.
At this point Alto Mail is not something that may lead you to ditch your existing mail interface (except maybe Yahoo! Mail and just for lesser clutter) and switch on to Alto. There are no easy means to arrange emails (like ‘Sweep’ in Outlook.com or even define rules to move it to any particular folder). Yes, you can arrange emails in stacks but that works for only a certain sender. And then no support for messaging or integration of social networks or any of the various features which may even compete with your existing mail service. I don’t see any reason what so ever to ditch my dear Gmail interface.
[Guest article contributed by Abhishek Asthana, who runs a cool initiative DonateYourPC.in]
Recommended Read: Explained : How to turn off the new compose feature on Gmail
What’s better than kick-starting the day with a double-dose of good news? Our friends over at Kickfolio, a Melbourne-based startup that allows you to create kickass portfolios within 30 seconds, has recently closed its seed round of $50,000 from PalGenesis and been selected to join 500 Startups, which brings another $50,000. Both of those happened on the same day.
It all happened when the team was speaking with its new advisor from New York City back in late September. They received a call from Dave McClure that the startup was selected for 500 Startups. I can imagine the level of excitement in the office when they were also offered another US$50,000 from PalGenesis, thanks to the advisor, within that very same day.
Some readers might recall that we covered Kickfolio before. Since then, the team has made two significant improvements to its product. Co-founder Chris Nolet tells us:
[First] is that we’ve refocused the product on a new, incredibly strong pain point. [...] We now help developers distribute ‘test builds’ (or beta releases) to their clients via a web page, with the Kickfolio technology providing an interactive experience, right there on the page. People can test the app, live in their browser. There’s no mucking around with UDIDs or downloading the app. Testers or clients can leave comments. We also record the last 30 seconds of their usage so developers can see how people are using their app. That’s our first strong use-case, and we’ll shortly branch back to marketing once we’re established and bootstrapped.
[Two,] we’ve rebuilt the technology stack from the ground up and it flies. This is easily the smoothest experience we’ve created to date and we’re especially proud of it. We really looking forward to showing it off.
I absolutely adore the Kickfolio team, not only because it’s got a great product, but because it has adopted a “Think Bigger” mindset during its pursuit of great mentorship and opportunities in the United States. The startup’s decision to move to the US was propelled by their visit back in September. In Chris words:
As Australians, we tend to downplay our abilities and successes, and we generally aim lower than American entrepreneurs.
Perhaps another reason driving the move was due the lack of funds available in Australia. Chris elaborates:
We have, for example, noticed the incredible focus here on traction and growth as opposed to revenue and profitability in Australia. Silicon Valley is much more prepared to have a runaway success with millions of users, which then gets acquired – as opposed to VCs in Australia who look at ‘money in, money out’ to judge a company’s viability. We’re lucky enough to be able to switch between those points of view on a whim now and we think we have a wonderful mix of both.
Now that the team is in Silicon Valley, it is not letting any chance of succeeding slip by. Chris tells us:
We want the Kickfolio brand to [be] pervasive at the end of 500 Startups, and synonymous with cutting-edge technology, practically applied to make mobile developers’ lives easier. We intend to be bootstrapped by the end of the program (or close to) and we want to meet more great people with new ideas about how we can our apply our tech.
And no, the team isn’t just stopping there. The boys are intending to sponge as much knowledge as possible from the Silicon Valley startup culture, and contribute back to the Australia startup scene. Chris adds:
The scene in Melbourne is young and emerging and we hope many more people will hit California, learn from people like Dave McClure and Paul Singh, and bring that knowledge back to Australia to feed the next round of Aussie startups.
This is certainly encouraging for the Australia startup scene, especially since most students choose to pursue the comfortable corporate route upon graduation. It definitely takes time to build an ecosystem, but undeniably, there’s a lot of potential in Australian startups with their mindset of “thinking bigger”.
Aside from Kickfolio, another two teams from Asia which have made it into 500 Startups include Japan-based Cinemacraft and Taiwan-based Cubie App.
[Kickfolio team photo from diesellaws.com]
The post Australian Startup Kickfolio Raises $100,000, Enters 500 Startups appeared first on Tech in Asia.