Government announces IT agenda for 2013, Wants to develop an Android watch, focus on eGov app stores

The government of India has announced agenda for the Department of Information Technology (DeitY) for the year 2013 (January to December).

The department will undertake initiatives such as National Rollout of Mobile Service Delivery Gateway (MSDG), National Information Infrastructure (NII 2.0), National cloud initiative, setting up academy for egovernance, amongst others.

The MSDG aims to ensure easy availability of Government services to common citizen  by making them services accessible through mobile devices.To scale up MSDG infrastructure , government will develop infrastructure for all delivery channels, mobile app store, wallet and mobile payment gateway.

- Under National Information infrastructure, government will devise an integrated institutional structure for managing NII 2.0. NII 2.0 aims to utilize of core IT infrastructure to enhance cost effectiveness, cyber security and strategic control.

- DeitY’s agenda will focus on creating infrastructure for cloud computing to speed up development and deployment of e-governance. Through national cloud computing initiative, DeitY will seat up institutional structure, National Cloud and centre for excellence (CoE) on cloud computing.

- One e-literate person in l0 lakh households.

- The agenda mentions to have National e-governance Academy or Capacity Building on e-Governance. Besides all these, the agenda includes national policy on electronic initiatives, IT solutions for masses etc. The plan also includes launch of pilot of the e Gov app store.

- The department policy on electronic initiatives include establishment of Electronics Manufacturing Clusters (EMCs), development of electronics via domestic manufacturing chips and constitute Semiconductor Wafer Fabrication (Fab) manufacturing facilities in the country.

Personal Safety Device [Android Watch]

The Indian government plans to developed a prototype device with following features:

• Android watch
• Voice command activation
• Camera
• SOS
• Motion Sensor (Shock sensor)
• Live GPS Tracking
• Emergency Response System: Should work in no network area
• Automatic call to several pre-defined numbers
• All incoming outgoing calls in Conference Call Mode
• Alert button

While we don’t have the details of these devices, this is surely a big hairy ambitious plan.

What are your thoughts?

Related posts:

1. Indian Government Announces Mobile Governance Framework [App Store, Mobile Friendly Sites, Payment Gateway and more]
2. Indian government appoints Infosys’ Kris Gopalakrishnan to head cloud computing panel
3. Indian Government to embrace cloud computing in a big way, is planning data centres for states

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Viss App Makes it Easier for Fashionistas to Buy

Last fall we told you about Hong Kong-based startup Viss (www.viss.me), which encourages its users to share fashion photos and follow their favorite trends on the Viss network. Since that time, we’ve received an update on how the company and its trendy mobile app are doing. Yesterday the company just pushed new updates for its iOS and Android applications, and this new iteration contains an interesting feature.

The latest version of the app includes a ‘Shop the look’ function, which helps users easily click through on interesting clothes items they seen in photos to product pages where they can buy those items. I’m told that Viss does work with partner merchants in this way, and earns some affiliate payments or commission — which is smart.

The app was recently featured in Apple’s App Store’s fashion section, as well as the What’s Hot section in eight Asian countries. So far the Viss website has about 600,000 unique visitors, and 3.5 million monthly page views.

Since we last looked at it, Viss has also added integration for sharing to WeChat, which is certainly a big plus for users in the Greater China region. As we recently noted, WeChat now boasts 300 million users worldwide.

Viss’s CEO Leo Ku tells me that in 2013 the company hopes to work with more brands and online stores, as well as possibly bring in further rounds of investment to drive expansion of its current operations.

The post Viss App Makes it Easier for Fashionistas to Buy appeared first on Tech in Asia.

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World’s best employer Google opens office in the Philippines

Following a year of speculation, Google has today officially opened its office in the Philippines. The new unit will be located in Makati City.  Narciso Reyes, who had stints in Friendster and Komli, will lead operations as Google’s Sales Head for the country.

“The Philippines is a key country in Southeast Asia in terms of its digital economy and tech-savvy population,” said Julian Persaud, managing director of Google in Southeast Asia.

He adds that the new office will allow the Internet giant to better engage local users, partners, and advertisers. The unit will help local businesses grow through Google’s products — a function similar to Google’s other representative offices in Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia, as well as its regional office in Singapore.

Google, the world’s best company to work for according to Fortune, will be hiring for the Philippines office. Openings will be posted on its jobs page soon. Competition for the positions will be fierce, and Google typically engages in up to 4 interviews with a prospective employee before making a decision.

Besides starting sales offices in the region, Google has also been developing its infrastructure to better serve users by setting up new data centers in Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong. When completed later this year, experts believe they could provide a combined speed boost of 30 percent.

The post World’s best employer Google opens office in the Philippines appeared first on SGE.

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Indonesian E-Commerce Platform Lojai Set to Offer Travel Products

Indonesian e-commerce store Lojai is looking to get into the travel industry as early as March by adding an integrated booking mechanism for airlines, trains, and hotels. This is an interesting move because we don’t usually see B2B e-commerce platforms such as Lojai offering travel products on its site.

Described by CEO Agus Tjandra as an Indonesian online department store with the most complete product offering, with everything from electronics to motorcycles, fashion to books, Lojai is now looking to complement that range with travel products in March. The website will be integrated with 11 airlines, Indonesian trains, and hotels worldwide – plus they plan to sell tour packages as well.

Agus noted that another strong point for Lojai ¹ is that it offers the most complete zero percent online installment payment system with credit cards from 11 local and international banks like UOB, ANZ, HSBC, and CIMB Niaga. They are looking to add Danamon as well. From the looks of things, I think that Lojai’s range of installment payment banking partners could be the most complete in the country, with other e-commerce sites averaging two to three banking partners for the same kind of payment method.

By offering the credit installment payments as far back as 2008, Lojai (then known as PasarKredit.com) was the first to do so in the country. The company has recently used protective measures to combat possible abuses or misuses, including using 3D secure codes. The team says they are one of the first Indonesian e-commerce sites to use such protective measure.

Agus explained that 75 percent of its customers made their payments using credit cards, with 90 percent of them selecting the installment payment method. Only 10 percent made their purchase using the cash-on-delivery method.

2012 was also a good year for the company, as it experienced a traffic increase of around 300 percent. This year, in addition to bringing on travel products, Lojai plans to offer a three-year installment payment option. At the moment, the company offers installments that stretch to just two years. They are preparing to expand to other Southeast Asian countries too in the future, so stay tuned for that as well.

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1. Lojai is Portuguese for “shop”.

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Chinese Train Ticket Web Traffic Hijacked to Push Qihoo’s 360 Browser

China’s 12306 ticket purchase site (run by China’s Railway Ministry), is the only official way to buy train tickets online in China. But with Spring Festival coming and traffic to 12306 spiking, it looks like someone is trying to hijack some of that traffic by tricking users looking for the real 12306 onto a site that pushes Qihoo’s 360 browser.

The trick works like this: 12306 is located at 12306.cn, but somebody purchased 12306.com and has set it to redirect to piao.jiaoman.cc, a very polished looking site that directs users to download the 360 Browser and use its ticket-purchasing plugin.

Neither 12306.com nor jiaoman.cc are officially registered to Qihoo, but the company will certainly benefit from this free advertising. A Qihoo representative told Tech in Asia:

The site you are referring to has nothing to do with Qihoo. Someone tries to use the popularity of 12306 and Qihoo’s name to make some money on embedded advertising on the site.

It appears that whoever registered 12306.com was trying to cover his or her tracks, because the whois contact information for the domain is clearly fake:

renxiansheng
12306
97653790@qq.com
CN guang dong guang zhou shi buxingjie001hao 112233

Additionally, the contact phone numbers listed for both 12306.com and jiaoman.cc don’t actually exist; calling either of them results in an automated response that says ‘the number you have dialed does not exist.’

It’s unclear who registered these domains and is operating the site. It contains several embedded Baidu ads, so someone may be hoping to profit from them while remaining undercover lest the police come calling.

Regardless of who is responsible for the site, though, it’s clearly tricking customers. As one weibo user wrote:

When you type in 12306.com you see ads for [Qihoo] 360 and [its ticket-buying plugin]; I thought that Qihoo and the Railway Ministry had set up a partnership; half a day later I finally realized I should have typed 12306.cn, not .com! It’s really confusing, you [the Railway Ministry] couldn’t just have registered .com to make it easier for everyone? [...] It’s lucky that Qihoo isn’t evil, buying a domain name this good and only advertising their browser with it. Who knows how much money could have been stolen if someone had used [this domain] to make a counterfeit version of the 12306.cn site instead!

Indeed, remaking 12306.com as a fraudulent ticket purchase site would be a goldmine, although likely also a lightning rod for police attention once it was discovered. Whether what’s there instead is really an ad for Qihoo or some other strange thing is going on isn’t clear. But “Brenda” (the weibo user above) does have a point: why didn’t the Railway Ministry just register the 12306.com name itself? After all, it spent $52 million on the damn site; the Ministry couldn’t spare another $10 for the dot com domain, too?

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CityOffers claims to be Vietnam’s first mobile-only location-based daily deals app

CityOffers wants to bring the latest and most-updated discounts and deals to your mobile.

One of the main industries that have showed some of the highest growth numbers last year is the e-commerce industry fueled by the group-buying business model. While there is phenomenal growth in this space, the business model is not without its limitations. While group-buying and daily deals dominated the 2012, with mobile growth exploding, Vietnam based CityOffers wants to combine the best of both worlds.

CityOffers is a real-time location-based daily deals app. It allows merchants create promotions and discounts, with the ability to target only users around the vicinity. The user experience is fairly straightforward: the app displays deals in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh based on your current location. Once you have decided on the deal you are interested in, the app sends a text message query to the main server, which returns the voucher code to you.

CityOffers also shared that unlike the old group-buying model, merchants are able to to create offers and discounts whenever they want without waiting for two or three days. Other than that, merchants would not have to worry about the revenue loss from each sold voucher when most of customers do not come back to use their products or services.

Since its launch few weeks back, there has been 70 business accounts registered, along with “thousands of users accounts” registered. While there is traction, what got me thinking was the question: What’s stopping Groupon or established daily deals site like Zing Deal or NhomMua from launching their own mobile app, if they have not already?

You can download the CityOffers app through the Vietnam App Store or the Apple App Store.

The post CityOffers claims to be Vietnam’s first mobile-only location-based daily deals app appeared first on e27.

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Google Opens Philippines Office Today

Manila has a lot more brightly-colored sofas and foosball tables today with the opening of Google’s Philippines office. Narciso Reyes has been appointed country manager. He commented this morning that Google’s (NASDAQ:GOOG) newest office will help the company provide “better services to our Filipino users” as well as help local “businesses, large and small, grow locally and globally.”

The Manila Google base should also be good news for startups in the country, allowing them to get easier access to advice from the search company. Google is still hiring for this new office.

Julian Persaud, managing director of Google in Southeast Asia, said in today’s announcement:

The Philippines is a key country in Southeast Asia in terms of its digital economy and tech-savvy population. This new office will allow us better engage with our local users, partners and advertisers. Over 33 million Filipinos access the internet regularly to study, shop, search for ideas, opportunities, create news businesses, and connect to each other. And internet use in the Philippines is set to grow exponentially. Research indicates that the number of Filipinos online will have nearly doubled by 2016.

Narciso Reyes, Google Philippines’ new country manager.

Google is already well established in the country. The Philippines was the first large country where Chrome became the most popular web browser, and it was also the first nation where the search giant teamed up with a telco to launch free access to Google products for mobile users. Filipino netizens also made good use of lots of Google stuff to help coordinate after devastation from the recent typhoon Pablo.

Google has some social catching up to do in the nation, where most of its web users are signed up for Facebook – a whopping 27 million of them.

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Startup Roundup: Gyeser, Desisamachar, eShack, and Dogspot

Startup: Gyeser.com

What it does? : Gyeser is an online platform to order food for delivery in Hyderabad. The startup  offers interactive menus over 70 different restaurants from users  can click their order for home delivery.  For deliveries users have to enter their street name and area over internet with facility on payment at the time of delivery.

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Startup: Desisamachar

What it does? : Desisamachar is an online news aggregator, which outsources news from major Indian news agencies and television channels such as Times of India, The Hindu. Indian Express, Economic Times, NDTV, along with several several others.  The Fremont, California based company claims to have steady stream of visitors to its site who spend an average of 7 minutes average on the platform.

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Startup: eShack

What it does?  Eshack is an online store for funky products such as beer tower, beer bong, alcohol dispenser, ice shot glasses amongst others. The Bangalore based startup offers free delivery and claims to deliver the product within 4 days with Cash on Delivery as a payment option.

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Startup: Dogspot

What it does?  DogSpot is an online platform for all the dogs. The Gurgaon based startup  aggregates, organizes information and tries to bring dog community closer. Currently, the platform offers puppies listed by users spanning across various breeds such as Rottweiler, St. Bernard, Boxer, German Shepherd, amongst several others. Apart from dogs, DogSpot provides content around dog’s care and awareness.

Related posts:

1. Startup Roundup: Etable, NEUrOS, Dhitrax and Collectors HERITAGE
2. Startup Roundup: Halabol, Gozocabs, ChangeIndiawithus, Shoplik and DhinchakMumbai
3. StartUp Roundup – Pre-owned Books, Twitter Muvi Reviews And Local Deals

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