Online News Roundup: Google launches Mapathon, Travelocity shuts Indian site

Google launches Mapathon 2013 for the first time in India

To give better and optimized mapping experience, Google has launched an open mapping contest  Mapathon 2013 – for Google Map’s users across the country. Users can register here for the 13 day long event, starting on February 12. The top 1000 mappers will have chance to win Android tablets, smartphones, gift vouchers and Google merchandise.

Conceptualized in India, Mapathon 2013 , Users can use Google Map Maker (link), is a tool that allows users to add more detail to Google Maps through a few simple clicks. Using Google Map Maker, you can select a specific area on Google Maps and add new information based on your own local knowledge or by referencing the satellite imagery on Google Maps.

Recommended read: Geospatial services like mapping generate $3 billion revenues and employs 135,000 people in India

Travelocity shuts down its Indian site

Travelocity’s India focused website has shut down its operation. Currently, the message on its .in domain reads as:

This India-specific site is not operational anymore; however we are re-directing you to our global site, Travelocity.com where you will find all the options you may be looking for!

Besides its Indian operation, Travelocity currently operates in 11 US states and across 10 countries in Europe. Earlier in June, 2012 OTA  major Yatra acquired online hotel distribution network Travelguru from Travelocity in an all cash deal.

SnapDeal partners with FnP for Valentine’s week

Valentine Day fever is around the corner and to cash the business opportunity SnapDeal has partnered with Ferns and Petals for delivery of valentine’s gifts. Customers can pre-book their order on specific dates spanning the entire valentine’s week.

SnapDeal appears to be targeting youngster this valentine through its uniques marketing gimmicks. Earlier this week, it launched a campaign –  My Love Capital, which allows people around the country to select India’s Love Capital for the year 2013.

The campaign allows users to upload photographs and videos denoting the city they associate with love the most across the country, and captures votes of people from dedicated online destination (link).

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2. News Roundup: IRCTC Launches Mobile Site, Pan India Secure Network from DoT
3. Roundup: Snapdeal launches Mylovecapital, Kidloo forays into offline retail format

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UK startup Pouring Pounds brings cash back & coupon site Cashkaro to India

UK based cash back and coupons startup Pouring Pounds made a quite entry to India about 2 months ago. With a new site, Cashkaro.com, the company wants to pass on part of the commission it earns by selling goods to buyers looking for a better deal.

Cashkaro has signed up with nearly 150 ecommerce sites including Yatra, Snapdeal and Myntra. To get a cashback, the buyer needs to go the the shopping site through Cashkaro.

Rohan Bhargava, Co-Founder & partner at Pouring Pounds believes that the Indian market is suited for products like cashback and coupons. The company has a two sided business. One side deals with other businesses. For instance, the company helps newspapers, corporates and large websites to setup and manage cashback and coupons.

“We have recently started providing cashback deals to Rechargeitnow.com, which is amongst the largest online mobile / DTH re-charge website. For Oxigen India, we are integrating our full offering as a new benefit and we are also going live with Paytm.com shortly,” Bhargava told NextBigWhat.

The other side of the company, deals directly with customers where the company offers cashback and coupons to customers directly. In India, the company wants to push its b2b strategy aggressively, Bhargava said.

“We are also working on price comparison with cashback and coupons,” added Bhargava who co-founded Pouring Pounds with his wife Swati Bhargava.

How is it different from the existing coupons sites? When a coupon is used, the retailer pays a commission to Cashkaro which is passed on to the buyer. Traditional coupon sites keep the commission.

“We are building a smart cash back / coupon reminder tool. This tool gets installed within your web browser like Chrome and as you are browsing it automatically informs you of the cash back or coupon discounts available,” he added.  This is much like Makkhichoose, a price comparison browser plugin we wrote about last month. The chrome plugin works in the background and alerts you of lower prices when you are about to buy a product. Recently, Couponrani also launched a new chrome extension.

There are more than 150 coupon aggregation sites in India and in the last couple of years, the space has seen significant traction as ecommerce grows in the country.

Recommended Read: All about Online coupon sales and eCommerce in India

Related posts:

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3. German startup Mein Gutscheincode expands to India by launching coupon site CouponHero.in

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Agate Studio Launches an RPG Game for Nokia Feature Phones

Indonesian game developer Agate Studio said today that it has launched an RPG game for Nokia feature phones called Valthirian Arc: Side of Story. The game tells the story about a Valthirian Academy graduate as he fights away the monsters that are attacking the Valthirian people.

Agate Studio highlighted the game’s battle system which uses the familiar “match three” gameplay where users have to match three items of the same kind. It’s similar to playing PopCap’s Bejeweled. Deny Tjahjono, the game’s producer, said that they hope this game can prove to Indonesian users that local products such as theirs can be as unique and good as any other games.

Valthirian Arc: Side of Story can be played on Nokia Asha 311 Full Touch and Nokia C3-00. Its free version allows the game to be played for five minutes, and the full version costs IDR 5,000 (52 US cents). You can download the game here.

Side of Story is actually the third installment of the Valthirian Arc series, and it is set between the timeline of the first and second games. You can play those web-based Valthirian Arc Flash-based games here and here.

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Canalys: China’s Huawei, ZTE, and Lenovo Now Among Global Top 5 Smartphone Makers

The research firm Canalys has unveiled new data for Android shipments in Q4 2012. With Android now powering a third of all mobile phones shipped in that quarter, it’s especially notable that Android has helped China’s Huawei, ZTE (HKG:0763; SHE:000063), and Lenovo (HKG:0992) move into the top five among global smartphone makers.

Canalys tracked smartphone shipments in over 50 countries to conclude that the smartphone market grew 37 percent compared to the same time in 2011. Android is on 34 percent of all such phones around the world, with iOS on 11 percent of them.

There are actually four Chinese brands to look out for, as Canalys notes that Huawei, ZTE, Lenovo, and Coolpad (though the researchers used the “Yulong” (HKG:2369) parent company name) “all grew by triple-digit percentages.” As we noted recently, figures from Gartner have already told us that Coolpad (and Lenovo, ZTE, and Huawei) is outselling Apple’s iPhone within China. But that’s just within China. So CoolPad is mostly restricted to domestic sales, and is not in the worldwide top five.

Samsung still grew 78 percent globally according to today’s stats. Samsung was China’s top smartphone brand in 2012 as its Galaxy phone series, particularly the large-screen ones like the Note II, sold well. But Lenovo has plans to topple Samsung’s statue in China, with CEO Yang Yuanqing having recently declared that intention.

While Coolpad’s success is almost exclusively within China, its compatriot brands have successful overseas sales as well. Today’s report notes:

Huawei took third place for the first time in Q4 and ZTE fourth. As well as their home markets, they have been relatively successful in the US, where ZTE was fourth and Huawei fifth, driven by their portfolios of low-cost LTE smart phones. Even so, both vendors took less than 5 percent share each there.

Lenovo pushed out Sony to get into the top five. Here are the Q4 2012 global stats:

(Source: Canalys)

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Vice President of Skype, Dan Neary, joins Facebook Asia Pacific

Facebook hires former Skype Vice President, Dan Neary, to head its global marketing solutions team in Asia Pacific.

Facebook announced that Dan Neary will be joining the social network giant as Vice President of Asia Pacific. Starting from early March, Dan will take over the leadership from Erik Johnson, who will be returning to the US.

Prior to joining Facebook, Dan was the Vice President and General Manager of Global Market Development at Skype. He was also the Vice President of Emerging Markets eBay where he focused on building the company’s business in South Asia, India, Middle East and Hong Kong.

Joining Facebook, Dan will lead the global marketing solutions teams across Asia Pacific and will play a key role in building and maintaining strategic relationships with top regional agencies and clients. Dan will be reporting directly to Carolyn Everson, Vice President of Global Marketing Solutions in London.

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Symantec releases System Recovery 2013, recovers your lost data in minutes

Symantec System Recovery 2013 provides faster recovery within minutes.

Losing important data is everyone’s nightmare, especially for those who have toiled day and night for an important document or presentation. Sometimes system crashes come unknowingly, and that’s when disaster strike. In recent announcement, Symantec Corp has released System Recovery 2013, which provides round the clock system protection for various platforms, including Windows 8, Windows Server 2012 and vSphere 5.1.

This new system recovery suite highlights efficiency and simplicity. All you need to do is install this software and let it do the rest. With Symantec System Recovery 2013, companies can restore physical and virtual systems in minutes. This new release emphasizes Symantec’s focus on providing backup solutions for businesses of all sizes. Symantec System Recovery 2013 includes support for the latest applications and operating systems, a new management solution for large scale deployments, and faster backup by up to 750% over previous versions.

Philip Routley, Head of SMB Product Marketing, Asia Pacific and Japan cites a recent cloud survey, in which companies are found to be considering new technologies to achieve greater efficiency and productivity gains. He also said that almost all organizations in Singapore are at least discussing the cloud. Many have reported losing data, and Symantec takes into consideration such problems, and says System Recovery 2013 will help resolve these.

System recovery works by delivering backup and disaster recovery for servers, desktops, laptops, and virtual machines that enables businesses to recover from downtime or disasters in minutes. The patented Restore Anyware technology allows IT administrators to restore exactly what they need, when and where they need it. Symantec System Recovery also provides cross-platform Physical-to-Virtual (P2V), Virtual-to-Virtual (V2V), and Virtual to-Physical (V2P) recoveries, an important complement to physical and virtual environments.

Additionally, users only need to set the files, backup schedule and backup destination for Symantec System Recovery to work automatically. Backing up data takes merely minutes for this system as it integrates image-backup technology to capture a snapshot of the entire system, back-up and recovery tasks. As aforementioned, it supports various platforms and a new monitoring tool known as System Recovery Monitor can monitor the backup of several servers centrally with one system running Windows. It makes backup progress visible with a user-friendly interface — perfect for non-IT savvy users.

Symantec System Recovery 2013 also includes UEFI support, 64 bit support, smart reconciliation, and updated Symantec System Recovery Linux Edition. Visit its Symantec’s product website for more information.

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Nokia Lumia 620 Coming to Indonesia Tomorrow

The latest Nokia Lumia series, the 620, will be launched tomorrow in Indonesia. The Lumia 620 will become the cheapest Windows Phone 8 (WP8) handset in the country, sold at IDR 2,850,000 ($294). BNI credit card users will receive a IDR 300,000 ($31) discount for any Lumia 620s bought during this weekend. The promotion also offers free 7.2GB of 3G data for six months while stocks last.

You can check here (PDF link) for more information.

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Poin Web Offers Japan’s Point Reward System to Indonesian Users

Another Japanese company is eyeing a few slices of the Indonesian market, this time in the form of online points provider Poin Web. The site now offers users in Indonesia free points, redeemable for prizes from the site’s list of merchants, by undergoing certain online activities.

This is similar to the business model of another Japanese reward website, Excite Point. And while this model is still quite new to Indonesia, the ambitious Poin Web team is aiming to gather one million users and 300 merchant partners by the end of this year.

There’s no such thing as a free lunch, of course, so the real reason behind this is advertising. Looking over the Poin Web site, there are currently 17 activities from which users can earn points. Those include looking for a hidden cute ninja inside the website, filling questionnaires, playing simple games, clicking merchants’ websites, and promoting merchants’ Facebook or Twitter pages. Some of the activities also act as ‘lucky draw’ contests which promise vouchers to some lucky clickers. Users will earn points from doing those activities, which mostly can be done without spending a dime.

The collected points can then be redeemed as vouchers for Poin Web’s merchant partners like Starbucks, Rakuten, and PayPal.

The site’s aforementioned activities act as an alternative to online advertising channels for brands and merchants. Poin Web earns money from CPA (click per acquisition) according to the merchants’ requests, such as making users visit to a designated website.

Point hunters?

Poin Web is a joint venture between Japan’s RealWorld Asia and Indonesian financial group Corfina. Poin Web COO Tatsuhito Muramatsu admitted to TechinAsia that there’s the “point hunters” problem with such services. Point hunters are users whose personal aim is to garner as many points as possible, but without giving any tangible benefits to the merchants. For example, such point hunters are people creating extra accounts to multiply their points, and so merchants get little value out of zombie accounts.

Muramatsu said that though RealWorld has had seven years of experience in this field, and has implemented solutions to improve the quality of users for corporate advertisers, the point hunters issue cannot be avoided completely. He explained that a lot of RealWorld’s clients actually come back for repeat collaborations, so this can only mean that the point reward business model works for them.

At the moment, Muramatsu believes that gathering new users in Indonesia won’t be an issue for them. He added that his main concern is adding more activities on Poin Web. Among those are crowdsourcing, and doing micro tasks like writing simple articles for users to earn points (1). Several foreign companies are also interested to deploy its business in Indonesia by utilizing Poin Web’s services.

We need more points!

The point reward system looks good. But maybe this model appeals more to younger or poorer web users due to the low amount of points awarded. Take for example the fact that users need to exchange 52,500 points to receive a IDR 50,000 (US$5) voucher from PayPal, which means one point is equivalent to around IDR 1 (just one-hundredth of a US cent). And most activities reward users in the range of one to two points only. That means the effort results in little reward.

Granted, there are activities which can get 1,000 to 2,500 points for each friend referred, but in the long run, I don’t think referrals can be the main weapon when someone wants to collect the points on a regular basis. Sometimes the activities also offer lucky draw of vouchers valued between IDR 50,000 ($5) and IDR 100,000 ($10), but unfortunately the voucher is given to only one winner for now.

The points reward system is attractive to some advertisers, as users can receive prizes through points gathered from online activities. But I think its success lies in the feasibility of each user winning the prizes there. Or greater real-world rewards than a miserly one-hundredth of a cent.

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1. Ed: Don’t give our boss any ideas!  ↩

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Become a virtual fashion intern with Teen Vogue Me Girl mobile game

Frenzoo has partnered with magazine publisher Condé Nast to launch Teen Vogue Me Girl, a branded smartphone and tablet game aimed at millenials interested in the fashion industry.

The Millenial generation seems to be the biggest audience these days, and game developers and publishers are taking heed. With mobile devices popular among the young crowd, Condé Nast publication Teen Vogue has just co-released a game that focuses on young ladies (and young men) keen on the fashion scene.

Game developer Frenzoo has launched a branded version of its Me Girl fashion role-playing game for Android and iOS, which simulates experiences of real-life fashion interns. “Our mission with Me Girl™ is to create personal, playful and inspirational experiences,” says Frenzoo CEO Simon Newstead. Teen Vogue Me Girl bills itself as the first 3D fashion role-playing game from Teen Vogue.

“The growing trend of young female gamers is exploding, especially on mobile devices, and the timing was finally right for us to expand into the space” says Teen Vogue Editor-In-Chief, Amy Astley, noting that the game highlights elements both from the fashion industry and the career growth of the in-game character.

In Games.com’s review of Teen Vogue Me Girl, Joe Osborne agrees with the focus on career, noting that it has a more practical goal than games that feature adventurous female leads like Tomb Raider. “Teen Vogue Me Girl isn’t for the girl or boy seeking courageous adventure, it’s for the one working toward his or her dream job.”

The Teen Vogue Me Girl smartphone app has the following features:

• SEE the actual Teen Vogue Fashion Closet
• STYLE your own avatar for realistic Teen Vogue assignments.
• SHOP virtual fashions in the latest trends curated by Teen Vogueeditors.
• SHARE photo shoot images on Facebook and Twitter.
• SHOW OFF styling skills with players around the world.
• SEASONS updated regularly – every month new assignments to play.

Based in Hong Kong, Frenzoo is the company behind the Style Me Girl mobile game, and is backed by Ambient Sound Investments, an early-stage venture firm supported by the founding engineers of Skype. Frenzoo is also supported by Siemer Ventures, K5 Ventures, Metaverse Services and other firms.

The game is a free download from the iTunes App Store for iOS devices and Google Play Store for Android devices.

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