“Get your own office space. Helps build your ‘own’ culture”
“Don’t worry about short term money. Create something bigger.”
These are some of the great startup advice I have received from well wishers and never actually had a chance to share these.
Today, we are announcing an ultra cool twitter contest asking entrepreneurs to share advice they received from friends and well wishers. The idea is to collate all great tactical/strategic advice in one place and make it available for entrepreneurs.
And of course, 5 randomly selected tweets will win you UnPluggd ticket!
Contest Rules
- Contest starts today (Nov 9th) and ends on Nov 10th.
- You can participate any number of times.
- You can also @mention the person who gave you that advice (assuming he/she is on Twitter).
- You need to follow @pluggdin on Twitter. Winners will be DMed (on Nov 11th). In total, there will be 10 winners (5/day).
Tokyo Stock Exchange Mothers section today announced [J] that Colopl, an Tokyo-based IT company who runs the same name Internet location service Colopl, is approved to be listed planned on December 13th, 2012.
The Japanese location service, though its number of user 2.5 million was passed by US Foursquare by number of users recent years, began in 2003 for Japanese feature phones and was the most successful location service in Japan and probably in the world.
Colopl has been cooperating with a lot of transportation companies and local governments/tourism organizations. Its monetization is still ahead of Foursqure and others, I think.
Colopl also are providing several games with its bear mascot character for iOS and Androids.
Prior to the launch, BlackBerry 10 has already received the FIPS 140-2 certification, making it ready to be deployed in government agencies and entreprises. Research In Motion announced yesterday that the BlackBerry 10 platform is now FIPS 140-2 certified. The Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) certificating provides confidence that data stored on smartphones running BlackBerry...
Prior to the launch, BlackBerry 10 has already received the FIPS 140-2 certification, making it ready to be deployed in government agencies and entreprises. Research In Motion announced yesterday that the BlackBerry 10 platform is now FIPS 140-2 certified. The Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) certificating provides confidence that data stored on smartphones running BlackBerry...
ACE, a private-public organization promoting entrepreneurship in Singapore, has unveiled recommendations for a structured entrepreneurial education program in schools. It will be implemented in secondary schools, junior colleges, polytechnics, and Institute of Technical Education (ITEs) colleges.
Broadly speaking, the new program, which will cost the government SGD15M (USD12.3M), combines theory with mentorship and hands-on experience. Internships will be a big part of it too.
It will be implemented within 6 to 9 months’ time in nine secondary schools. These schools were picked because they either were a part of YES! Schools, or already have entrepreneurial programs in place. The program will then be extended to junior colleges, polytechnics and ITEs later on.
The new set of initiatives was hammered out by a task force, consisting of entrepreneurs, educators, and civil servants from the Ministry of Education. It addresses the negative feedback of existing entrepreneurial programs. The new recommendations will replace YES! Schools, an existing government initiative which struggled with limited industry exposure and inconsistencies in implementation.
Existing entrepreneurship programs in schools were also found to be too ad-hoc, garnering little recognition and interest from students.
Teo Ser Luck, Minister-of-State for Trade and Industry and also the minister in charge of entrepreneurship, unveiled these recommendations today after an ACE event in Singapore geared towards students, who set up booths in a shopping mall to pitch their inventions to the public.
Secondary schools and junior colleges
Consisting of students 12 to 18 years old, the program will come in the form of entrepreneurship clubs which students can opt-in. It will be run as a Co-Curricular Activity, and will involve a structured 3-year curriculum consisting of learning modules, projects, workshops, competitions, internships, and company visits.
Every school involved will come under an ‘Entrepreneur-Adopt-a-School’ initiative, which attaches any number of entrepreneurs to an educational institution. Home-grown enterprises that have already come on board include interactive digital publisher Koobits, F&B brands Ya Kun International, Soyato, and Sakae Holdings, interior design firm Goodrich Global, and board game publisher Red Tin Bot.
Tokyo-based startup Nana Music has finally introduced a global version of its iPhone app. It allows users to sing, play songs, and collaborate with other users on their Nana platform. The app was launched two months ago, but has been for Japan only up until now. The service has acquired more than 4,400 users and has seen over 10,000 recorded posts since then.
The new version is designed to fit iPhone 5′s longer screen, and it’s now integrated with Twitter and Facebook. The maximum recording time has also been extended from 60 to 90 seconds.
The startup has introduced some user interviews with some users, including a university student/amateur singer and a karaoke girl. They hope this may motivate you to give their music collaboration service a try.
Readers may recall reading our past coverage about the app, which gives a little more background about the startup’s journey thus far. Get the new global version of Nana app here in the App Store.
Just some of the TechinAsia team, at a recent event in Jakarta.
Our team at Tech in Asia has grown fast over the past year, with writers and contributors all across Asia delivering insights about technology and startups from the region. For us, there is no office and no printing press, no whiteboards and no J. Jonah Jamieson [1]. Our virtual newsroom spans a number of countries, always on the lookout for new ways to communicate what’s happening in the Asia tech scene.
And in keeping with that mission, we’re really excited to be able to work with Quora to bring more Asia-related content to global audiences. Quora is a host to expert opinions about many of the very same topics and themes upon which we focus, and we look forward to highlighting some of those on Tech in Asia.
The first of these posts comes from Grant Prigge, who gave a great overview of some of the challenges that come with operating a startup in China. If you’re a startup with eyes on mainland China, give it a read.
If you happen to be a Quora user, don’t hesitate to give us a heads up at editors@techinasia.com if you see posts about technology and startups in Asia that you think might interest our readership. We won’t republish without the permission of both the author and Quora itself. Indeed, we’re working closely with Quora to bring only the most relevant, hand-picked content.
We’re delighted to be the first Asia-based news outlet to work with Quora in this way, and we’re really looking forward to seeing where this goes!
ACE and MOE is working together to develop student entrepreneurship, by bringing enterprises into schools. The Action Community for Entrepreneurship (ACE) is working with the Ministry of Education (MOE) to cultivate an entrepreneurial mindset among students and support those with good ideas to start their own business, by bringing enterprises into schools. ACE Chairman Mr...
ACE and MOE is working together to develop student entrepreneurship, by bringing enterprises into schools. The Action Community for Entrepreneurship (ACE) is working with the Ministry of Education (MOE) to cultivate an entrepreneurial mindset among students and support those with good ideas to start their own business, by bringing enterprises into schools. ACE Chairman Mr...
A lot of people – and companies – are watching India closely as its citizens get more wired and engage more with social media. And although India produces some amazing stats in these areas, it’s still a very underdeveloped market. Yes, social media users in India grew from 38 million in November 2011 to 60.5 million at present – but that’s just five percent social media penetration among the growing populace as a whole.
It’s the same story in lots of other areas. India added 37 million internet users in the past 12 months, but – at 137 million in total – that’s still just 11 percent penetration, three times below the global average. One fundamental reason behind this might be that 69 percent of Indians live in rural areas, and are often totally off the grid. And so, at present, 72 percent of the country’s web users live in urban areas.
All these updated stats for India have been compiled by Singapore social media agency WeAreSocial in its latest infographic report. This is the updated overview for the country:
India’s young web users – 75 percent of its netizens are below the age of 35 – mean that the social media boom is only just starting. That’s great news for Facebook, which saw 14.8 million new users in India in the past six months. India – in the absence of China, which blocks Facebook – could become the biggest Facebook user-base in the world, but for now it’s the third-largest:
Here’s the full infographic report in the form of a slideshow:
Kerala based mobile startup, Mobme is bringing mobile based digital signatures to India. The company has partnered with Gemalto, the Dutch security leader and Valimo Wireless Oy of Finland to roll out mobile digital signatures for secure logins and transactions.
The deal was announced in Paris at the Cartes 2012 conference earlier this week.
Once a signature is created on a SIM, end users are only 4 digits away from signing up to new services and contracts. The service is being branded as Mobile Express. We think that this is a big deal (Read the quick Q&A with CEO of Mobme’s VAS and Netsol division, Sony Joy below to find out why) but a lot of the non existent partner ecosystem will have to be built before we see end use of this technology.
Here’s how its supposed to work:
We asked MobMe’s Chief Executive Office Sony Joy three questions and here are the edited excerpts
Pi: What is the underlying technology?
Sony Joy: Underlying technology is Wireless PKI. Basically there is an application embedded on the SIM which generates & stores the Key Pair
Sony Joy
of the Digital Signature. The SIM is also different from the normal ones, in fact it has got a Crypto Processor that essentially keeps the environment completely independent of the Mobile Handset. The SIM acts as the secure element. All communication happens over Binary Encrypted text messages that interact directly & only with the SIM. From a user perspective, all you need is a 4 digit personal identification number, to digitally sign anything. And that PIN is stored only on your SIM & not uploaded into the cloud, keeping it out of reach from even the telecom operator, bank, certifying authority, us or any other entity connected to this infra. It is 100% handsets supported & no need of internet. And SIM acts as a hardware secure element. In Estonia, voting is enabled over this & in Finland you can apply for home loans over this.
Pi: What are the use cases?
Sony Joy: Use cases are only limited by your imagination. Essentially anything that you can do or authorize in real world with your signature, we can implement over this. The advantages are non-repudiation & legal validity as per IT acts 2000. In a digital world, everyone needs a digital identity. An average American internet user today has 26 different online accounts & 5.5 different passwords. This is definitely not a scalable model especially when huge central password repositories are getting hacked every other month!
Imagine being able to login into your social networks, your mailbox, your online banking portal, e-commerce websites etc with just your Mobile Number entered on the computer, a signing request comes on your phone & just a 4 digit PIN needs to be entered on your mobile.
This will have applications in mHealth where Doctors can now sign prescriptions digitally & remotely, which was the whole bottleneck for tele-medicine till date, in a country where there is shortage of millions of doctors.
Anything in Government system needs signature, so the possibilities there are endless. Everything from applying for a Passport to filing Birth Certificates in Hospitals to Digital File Management in Offices.
Non-repudiation is the need of the hour for m-trading to take off on tablets/mobile devices. In Banking, signing an e-cheque is as good as NEFT. A mobile handset will double up as the PoS machine capable of receiving payments.
Today RSA Tokens are used to login to Corporate VPNs by all major enterprises. The need to carry around that extra device & additional cost to the employer can be avoided. That too with more security.
The ‘I agree to Terms & Conditions’ check-box on web pages is not exactly legally valid in a court of law. You will need Digital Signatures in this context as well.
For the telecom operator, just like Voice, SMS & Data, a 4th core service is going to open up which is Mobile Identity (Authentication) & Authorization.
Pi: Aren’t there already players providing digital certificates like e-mudhra and others?
Sony Joy: Yes, but not on SIMs. Currently on USB’s the total Digital Signature penetration in India is around 3.5M. Putting it on the SIM is the only scalable way to reach out to 100s of Millions of prospective users. We’ll be partnering with leading Certifying Authorities in India to issue Class-3 Digital Signatures.
The Xiaomi TV teaser photo tweeted out by CEO Lei Jun this morning.
Just six days after we gave you an exclusive peek at a new video app from China’s Xiaomi that suggested it might be working on a TV set-top box, the founder and CEO of the upstart phone-maker has all but confirmed the Apple TV-esque gadget with a teaser photo (above). It shows that the Xiaomi TV streaming video box will launch on November 14th.
Yes, Lei Jun’s photo is just a cardboard box – similar in style to the recycleable ones that carry its phones – but the “box” pun (“This time, we’re just selling a box”) indicates that Xiaomi is taking on Apple with an Android-powered set-top box.
Together with its afore-mentioned video app for Android (which is being added to Xiaomi’s MIUI software in gradual updates), it’ll allow streaming video to be sent across a home network to your TV. Your Xiaomi phone will thereby serve as a remote control. It’ll support all of China’s top video sites, such as Youku and iQiyi. It’s not clear if the Xiaomi video app will launch for other Android devices.
Local rivals to Xiaomi in this space include the video-streaming site LeTV, which launched its own box – albeit tied to its own site’s content – this summer.
Groupon Reports Q3 2012 Earnings Significantly Below Expectations: Groupon just released its Q3 2012 earnings report, marking the company’s first full-year cycle of earnings reports since its IPO in November 2011. The company reported $568.6 million in revenue and a net operating income of $25.4 million. Earnings per share? $0.0. Read more here. The company recently re branded its Indian property. Read here.
Galaxy S3 takes top spot in smartphone market: The phone became the world’s best-selling smartphone model last quarter, pushing aside Apple’s iPhone, which has dominated the chart for more than two years, research firm Strategy Analytics said. Strategy Analytics estimated Samsung sold 18 million S3 models in the third quarter, compared with iPhone 4S sales of 16.2 million. Read more here.
See Everything You’ve Ever Shared With Someone On Facebook’s Redesigned Friendship Pages: Facebook has a little-known feature called Friendship Pages that shows all the wall posts, updates, and photos you’re tagged in with someone. Today it’s getting a redesign, and Facebook is launching the facebook.com/us quick link for couples to see their Friendship Pages. The previous design was stuck on the ugly, old profile format, but now they look like a shared Timeline. Read more here.
Google Ventures Gets 50% More Cash; $300M Pot now: Google is increasing the amount of money it makes available through its venture capital arm, Google Ventures — from $200 million per year to $300 million, according to Reuters. The news agency notes this will push Google Ventures into the “top echelon of corporate venture-capital funds”, putting it on the same footing as more established corporate VC funds like Intel Capital. Read more here.
Twitter resets a “large number” of passwords, says it was a mistake: Twitter said that it mistakenly reset the passwords of “a large number” of its more than 140 million active users while conducting routine security screening to identify accounts that may have been compromised. Read more here.
Priceline Buys Kayak for $1.8 Billion Expanding in Travel: Priceline.com Inc, the most valuable online-travel agency, is buying Kayak Software Corp. billion in cash and stock, adding profitable search tools to its reservation services. Shareholders of Kayak, which held an initial public offering in July, will receive $40 a share, the companies said in a statement. That represents a 29 percent premium over today’s closing price at $31.04 in New York, and includes about $500 million in cash as well as $1.3 billion in equity and assumed stock options, read more here.
- Sencha has updated its Sencha Touch framework that brings beta support for the BlackBerry 10 operating system. Sencha Touch is a JavaScript framework based entirely on HTML5, CSS and JavaScript, and powers developers with set of components to create rich mobile applications. Apart from Blackberry 10 support, Sencha Touch also extends its support to BlackBerry PlayBook tablet. Sencha Touch includes all of the core concepts around controllers, including refs, control and routes as well as Device Profiles, which empowers developers to customize UIs on BlackBerry 10 devices and BlackBerry PlayBook tablet. Sencha Touch supports Forms, DataView, Carousel, List, TabPanel, NestedList and Navigation View, and the BlackBerry 10 specific CrossCut component, read complete post here.
- Microsoft has announced that it is planning to replace its instant message chat tool with Skype’s messaging tool. Microsoft said Windows Live Messenger (WLM) would be turned off by March 2013 worldwide, with the exception of China.The news comes 18 months after the software giant acquired Skype for $ 8.5 billion, read complete post here.
The Mozilla Developer Engagement team is holding a meetup this November 15, where participants can ask anything about web development and Mozilla’s latest platforms. Calling all web developers! This is your chance to engage with Mozilla’s Developer Engagement team, where you get the opportunity to ask burning questions about web development. A not-to-be-missed event, you...
The Mozilla Developer Engagement team is holding a meetup this November 15, where participants can ask anything about web development and Mozilla’s latest platforms. Calling all web developers! This is your chance to engage with Mozilla’s Developer Engagement team, where you get the opportunity to ask burning questions about web development. A not-to-be-missed event, you...
Smartphone users can now bid goodbye to having a thick wallet crammed with cards, vouchers, and cash. Singapore-based Mobile Media Creations (nicknamed M2C) has launched a new product, MOGi Mobile Wallet, which allows users to pay for goods and services using their phone and to store things like discount vouchers and loyalty cards in one convenient, virtual space.
The M2C CEO Rashad Budeiri explains:
There is a stark absence of mobile payment applications available in Singapore. Together with a 72 percent smartphone penetration in the local market – with 68 percent being iOS and Android users – MOGi serves as the perfect tool for partnering merchants to engage with and deliver their latest offerings to the consumers.
Compared to other loyalty-card mobile apps in the region (such as Perx or Squiryl), MOGi sets itself apart by allowing users to engage in cashless transactions with MOGi partner merchants. Users can pay for their goods or services by purchasing the merchant’s vouchers or prepaid cards via credit card or Paypal ahead of time, and store them in their virtual mobile wallet. There is no worrying about insufficient cash in your wallet, or misplacing paper vouchers. Consumers nowadays might also face the problem of forgetting the expiry dates of their vouchers, and so the MOGi app is able to tackle the issue by sending out notifications to alert users before any of their coupons expire.
Furthermore, by purchasing prepaid cards with the listed merchants, users can receive instant rebates and discounts. Payment transactions are made by scanning of a QR code at the merchant’s MOGi terminal. If you have mobile internet connection issues, however, it might not work.
Can’t decide what gifts to get for your friends? MOGi also has social media features that allow users to receive birthday reminders, send or receive messages, and also create their own personal wish lists to share with their friends. Users can also purchase vouchers or prepaid cards for their MOGi friends instantly via the application. However, the wish list items are strictly limited to products and services provided by MOGi merchants.
In the near future, MOGi plans to launch real time payments beyond the current prepaid methods. This will allow users to pay in real time, without having to buy a voucher or top up a prepaid value card in advance. There are also plans to introduce more social features like geo-fencing to allow users to find nearby deals.
Currently MOGi is free for download for iOS and Android. Merchants who wish to integrate MOGi into their business will require a special Point of Sale (POS) tablet that will be offered to merchants at no cost for the time being.
Smartphone users can now bid goodbye to having a thick wallet crammed with cards, vouchers, and cash. Singapore-based 
