Microsoft’s new Outlook is live. URL still ugly.

Microsoft’s new Outlook is live. URL still ugly.

Startup Mamak 2nd August 2012

Attend a monthly gathering of startups entrepreneurs around Malaysia where they share ideas over coffee. StartupMamak happens on the first Thursday every month and this month it will be happening on the 2nd August at Cafe SXT Floor, 6th Floor, Suasana Sentral Condominium. Time 6pm-8pm.

Special Guest
Come connect with Janny Paul, the man behind Mobile Monday Malaysia and seek for first hand advice for your startup!

StartupAttack
We’ll allocate time slots for anyone to pitch about their startup/ideas, the condition is he/she shall willingly receive feedback from the floor. The floor shall “attack” the pitch/ideas with valuable comments.

Why attend?
This is a 2-hour session for startups/industrial reps./entrepreneur ecosystem stakeholders to connect, collaborate and create.

Venue: https://foursquare.com/v/sxt-floor/4b3330b4f964a520071825e3 (It’s within walking distance from KL Sentral)
When you’re there: Tell the security guards you’re here for “StartupMamak” at Cafe SXT @ 6th Floor. Ask for visitor parking.
Please RSVP to heislyc@gmail.com (+60122856387), with subject “StartupMamak – August 2012″

Play Game On Spreadsheet! Japanese Coffee-Soda Promotion

Japan’s beverage vendor Suntory’s new promotion site [J] for its carbonated coffee drink Espressoda [J] is an action game on web browser, which you can play at office, as the game looks like your are working on spreadsheets.

Horizontal scrolling game with jump and obstacles, such like Super Mario, is built on financial tables and charts on Microsoft Excel-like pages.

After a teaser screen, Excel-like menu and grids are displayed. Clicking the bottom tab “Game” takes you to the game page.

Press “Start” then a small comic man appeared and the tables and charts are going to be scrolled. You need to let him jump by the left-mouse click.

When you take a bottle of Espressoda in the game, or enter the product code on the Espressoda’s bottle, your man will be able to do double-jumps, jump during a jump, which may make your play better.

When you fail, it asks you if you would like to tell your score to your Twitter or Facebook friends, then you can get a right to continue the game from the point you failed. Now Japanese Twitter have those players’ reporting tweets [J].

Of course, annoying character on the bottom-right on the screen is imitated.

via Hatena Bookmark [J]

Play Game On Spreadsheet! Japanese Coffee-Soda Promotion

Generating Ideas Conference to Inspire Entrepreneurs to Design Innovative Work Processes

Malaysia’s aspiring and budding creative entrepreneurs are invited to gather alongside with industry practitioners in Kuala Lumpur on August 2 at PJ Live Arts for Generating Ideas @ Kuala Lumpur, a programme that enable participants to generate new ideas and explore creative business opportunities in Malaysia whilst networking.

A workshop will be conducted to provide entrepreneurs useful information on the must-haves in pitching proposals and tips on what venture capitalists look. Participants will also be introduced to jargons often used by investors.

The programme will feature a one-of-a-kind idea generation networking platform, Discovery Café, which stimulates an average of 100 creative ideas from participants. Discovery Café was held in Generating Ideas, Creative Cebu and Generating Ideas @ Jakarta in March and July this year respectively.

Shelda Alni, 26, aspiring entrepreneur from Jakarta, commented, “This is a very interesting platform especially for those in the creative industries or those who is planning to start one. Love the Discovery Café because we are able to explore new ideas whilst interacting with other attendees.”

Diyson Ezer Kharisma, 28, Creative Director of Kare Indonesia, commented, “Generating Ideas @ Jakarta is a well-conceputalised programme that is interesting, fun, inspiring and interactive. It stimulates our creativity and helps expand our network concurrently.”

Generating Ideas @Kuala Lumpur is a lead up to Asia on the Edge held annually in Singapore that aims to aggregate creative entrepreneurs and arts practitioners with the aim of incubating new ideas and trends from Asia and of Asian origins.

Generating Ideas @ Asia on the Edge 2012 will feature breakout sessions that will highlight the development of creative hotspots sectors and industries in Asia, and expound on possible business collaborations amongst the creative industries in Asia. It also includes a pitching platform – Pitch It! –  which looks for ideas from Asia’s creative industries that have yet to be realised or are in the early development stage and have the potential for further development. Entrepreneurs and practitioners from the design, culture and media industries in Asia who have avant-garde ideas can pitch to win SGD$10,000 and get the chance to be incubated by investors.

For more information about Generating Ideas and Asia on the Edge, visit the official website at www.asiaontheedge.com.

Use Cyfler to create an online presence on a B2B social platform

Business brands nowadays leverage on social media networks such as Facebook and LinkedIn to connect with potential clients and customers. While these channels are very effective in reaching out to users, it might not be effective for B2B brands which aim to reach out to other businesses and brands. 

Cyfler, a B2B social network based in Singapore, aims to fill in that gap.

With Cyfler, you can create a profile page for your business, inputing information such as what your company does and what are the products and services you offer. The Cyfler platform also has an “Intelligent Discovery Engine” that links your company’s needs to others that can meet them. You’ll be able to see and bookmark businesses that can address an unmet need in your startup, effectively bridging businesses to businesses.

Here’s an introductory video of Cyfler:

On top of that, we also spoke to cofounder Anton Widodo to find out more about the B2B site:

Could you share with us some stats and number of listings which you have right now?

Total registrants now since official launch on 11th November last year stands at 3,182. (at the time I write). We have the highest number of listings from Indonesia, the United States, Spain, India, Singapore and many more.

How does Cyfler fair in terms of user reach and effectiveness as compared to other online directories and search engines?

How Cyfler differentiates from the other search engine is: we allow users to initiate contacts to others. When buyers are looking for what they sell, we inform the seller too. Search engines and conventional business directories have failed in doing this, resulting in each business profile becoming a passive entity, creating the idea of “nobody reaches out to me, and I have no idea who is looking for me too”.

Are you familiar with Facebook where you can post update and everyone in your network will see? With Cyfler, our users can do that too. If they post an offer and broadcast it to different industries,they can instantly reach out to everyone in that particular industry. For instance, if they choose to broadcast their messages to users from the retail industry, all the other users from that industry will be notified instantly.

Could you run through the steps of how Cyfler works?

We have a dashboard to allow users to manage their business contacts, accessing opportunities, dropping messages to others, posting needs/offers, etc. You can find the slides here:

Is Cyfler available for free?

Yes, it’s free and we intend to keep it free forever. However, we allow users to upgrade their membership, something similar to LinkedIn’s premium membership. Users can also create ads for their businesses to get extra exposure.

What Cyfler users say about the platform

While some might be skeptical about whether Cyfler actually works or not, Anton referred us to Terence, founder of Acelines Resources whom managed to leverage on Cyfler to get more business leads. Terence shared that they are a trading company and he personally find the Cyfler to have given them the opportunity to expose their products and services world wide and connecting both potential buyers and suppliers. “Under Cyfler’s “My clan” section, I find it extremely useful as it helps to zoom into our target audience which we have the choice who we would like to connect. This is very useful as it eliminate unnecessary links and at one glance we have an idea where they from and what they do. Currently we are getting 8-10 responds per week and we are happy with it.”

Tencent Might Shop Social Ecommerce Site Meilishuo?

Words has been whirling lately that Tencent is in talks with Meilishuo, one of the most popular social shopping site over here, about a potential acquisition. Meilihsuo later on denied the rumor though.

Launched in March 2010, the Beijing-based startup raised a US$ 20 million round of Series C last November at a valuation of $150 million. The company claimed more than 150 million registered users and 3.2 million daily active users. Being two of the hottest stars (another one is Mogujie) in the rising and promising social ecommerce area – think how hot Pinterest is now in the States – it’s reasonable that people are speculating some big guys might’ve kept an eye on it and are waiting to snag it up if possible. Some while ago people were just speculating that Baidu is interested in buying the company.

In April, Melishuo got started partnering with Tencent’s star product Weixin, becoming one of the first adopters of the Weixin open platform. Through this collaboration, users can share shopping contents to their friends on Weixin.

Tencent is revamping its e-commerce arm after the recent restructure that consolidate the company’s ‘sophisticated’ B2B2C business, buying Meilishuo seems a nice move since the service claimed to bring huge amount of traffic and transactions to Taobao. According to the company, it contributed RMB 700 million worth of orders to Taobao. That said, don’t forget that Tencent enjoys a user pool of more than 700 million users in China and itself is one of the largest portal site in China with heavy traffic, it might not need a Meilihsuo a Mogujie to route traffic at all.

Related posts:

1. Baidu’s Microblogging Service Added Timeline, Just Like Plurk
2. Ushi – the making Chinese Linkedin
3. Three More Reasons Why Renren Is Not Facebook of China

Nokia Announced the Best Ideas in Apps on Demand Challenge

Last April, Nokia held Nokia Lumia Apps on Demand. The competition invited idea submissions from users and chose the best one to then be presented as a challenge to developers to transform the idea into an app. Three best ideas from the users were announced last Friday on Nokia’s Facebook page.

The first best idea comes from I Putu Jaka Krisna Anugrah. He wanted a Nokia Lumia app to get updates of news from his K-Pop idols. With the app which he called K-Pop Pocket, the user is provided with daily news without having to open the websites that provide the news of the idols and be more practical.

Meanwhile, a user called Sepri Salim suggested an idea for an app which he called KaraokeAn. The idea of this app is to enable user to karaoke. With songs provided in a playlist, the app will look for the lyrics. The app will also play the song in minus one (without vocal) hence, the karaoke.

The last idea, called WP Pet Breeding, was sent by Mohammad Zaki. The concept of this app is similar to Tamagochi where user can keep a pet. But instead of common animals, Zaki wanted cute and unique monsters as pets. Zaki explained his idea thoroughly complete with the features he wanted.

Those who sent the best three ideas are to be rewarded a Lumia 610 phone each.

Nokia will then announce the winner for developer category, along with the availability of those apps in the Marketplace in September.

When Your Hobby Requires You to Travel, Flamingo Travel Site Gives the Solution

A short while ago, a new travel site called Flamingo was launched. I commented earlier that it has an interesting look about it and I can’t help but keep thinking what is so different about this site compared to other travel sites. As it turns out I discovered that Flamingo brings together people with similar interests and to find what we are looking for, we need to travel to the location.

Initially, Flamingo focuses on the experience when traveling rather than the travel and mere merriment. Pempek connoisseur, for example, who has tasted every pempek vendors in Jakarta, will be moved to taste the real pempek in Palembang. Other than pempek, Palembang certainly has many culinary varieties worth tasting.

Another example is Raja Ampat. This tourist attraction that’s already well known overseas has a rich land and sea biodiversity. The main attraction is diving, but not everyone wants to or is willing to dive. So, these people may want to visit Raja Ampat, not to dive, but to go on expeditions to look for the rare Cendrawasih birds. This the kind of market that Flamingo aims to serve.

Flamingo does not provide plane tickets because ticket reservation is very easy nowadays. It focuses more on providing transportation and lodgings at the location as well as meals and things related to the core of the travel, i.e. museum entrance fee.

To provide the best experience, Flamingo hires local guides because according to Flamingo’s CEO, Bernardus Sumartok, locals tend have more knowledge on their own culture and attraction. The most complete experience certainly isn’t cheap and that’s why Flamingo does not claim to provide cheapest holiday package.

For the launch, Flamingo is having a T-shirt design competition in cooperation with Gantibaju under the theme “Pengalaman Seru si Kotamu – Exciting Experience in Your City”. The winners will get a chance to travel for free to Sabang, Aceh. This is to introduce Sabang as marine tourism location that offers no less value compared to other destinations.

BlackBerry Mobile Fusion rides on BYOD trend, increases support to Android and iOS devices for enterprise customers

(L) Ian Gardner, Director, Enterprise Sales, RIM and (R) Charles Dufourcq, Director, Singapore, RIM. (Credit: Research In Motion)

Research In Motion (RIM) brings Android and iOS device support to their enterprise solutions through BlackBerry Mobile Fusion to cater to rising BYOD demands.

Research In Motion’s enterprise solutions has been a strong product for the Canadian tech company. With about 90 percent of Fortune 500 companies and also government agencies as Blackberry customers, the BlackBerry Enterprise Server has been delivering solid experiences to the enterprise world.

Recently, with the rising trend of bring-your-own-device (BYOD),  RIM has continued to improve their enterprise offerings to keep up with the surge of more consumer devices being used in the workplace. With the launch of the new BlackBerry Mobile Fusion, enterprise customers will now be able to manage muli-platforms and multi-devices with the same level of security, manageability  and ease of use as before. This includes iOS and Android device support, on top of BlackBerry 10 devices and the PlayBook.

“For businesses and government, managing a mix of mobile devices on any scale is chaotic. Organizations face pressure to allow employees to bring their own devices into the workplace, and they are looking to RIM as the global leader in the enterprise mobility space to solve that problem,” said Charles Dufourcq, Director for Singapore at Research In Motion. “BlackBerry Mobile Fusion allows organizations to manage a mixed environment of devices in the most secure, simple, and cost efficient manner possible.

By refocusing on enterprise, RIM introduces the BlackBerry Mobile Fusion to complement products such as BlackBerry Balance and BlackBerry Business Cloud Services. BlackBerry Balance helps demarcate personal and work life, ensuring employees’ freedom to maintain a personal space outside of work.

RIM’s key enterprise markets in Asia are Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, South Korea, Japan and India. By providing support for devices beyond the BlackBerry platform, RIM will be offering their enterprise customers the flexibility to cater to their employees’ demands as the BYOD trend continues to grow. For potential enterprise customers, RIM is offering a 60-day free trial for the BlackBerry Mobile Fusion.

Read the full press release below.

****

Singapore, 20 July 2012 – BlackBerry® Mobile Fusion, RIM’s next-generation mobile device management (MDM) solution is now available for enterprise customers in Singapore. Built on the foundation that has established BlackBerry® Enterprise Server as the gold standard for government and businesses, BlackBerry Mobile Fusion delivers a cost-efficient, secure, reliable and scalable solution that consolidates the management of smartphones and tablets running BlackBerry® OS (including support for BlackBerry PlayBook™ and future BlackBerry® 10 devices) as well as Android™ and iOS®*, and provides a single, unified, web-based console for easily managing all devices.

 “For businesses and government, managing a mix of mobile devices on any scale is chaotic. Organizations face pressure to allow employees to bring their own devices into the workplace, and they are looking to RIM as the global leader in the enterprise mobility space to solve that problem,” said Charles Dufourcq, Director for Singapore at Research In Motion. “BlackBerry Mobile Fusion allows organizations to manage a mixed environment of devices in the most secure, simple, and cost efficient manner possible.

It also means that businesses and government do not have to move to the lowest common denominator on security for all the devices they need to manage.”

BlackBerry Mobile Fusion integrates the market-leading features and security architecture of BlackBerry Enterprise Server (version 5.0.3), providing advanced IT management and controls, a single outbound security connection (256-bit AES encrypted “BlackBerry VPN”), enforceable IT policies, support for BlackBerry® Balance technology, and over-the-air app and software installation capabilities for the management of BlackBerry smartphones and PlayBook tablets (as well as future BlackBerry 10 devices).

For the wide range of government workers around the world and approximately 90 percent of Fortune 500 companies using BlackBerry smartphones today, BlackBerry Mobile Fusion allows them to leverage their current end-to-end BlackBerry security infrastructure and have flexible options for individually liable devices while keeping costs low.

In addition to providing unmatched functionality for BlackBerry devices, BlackBerry Mobile Fusion also provides comprehensive mobile device management capabilities for iOS and Android devices including:

•       Support for multiple devices per user

•       Application and software management

•       Connectivity management (Wi-Fi®, VPN, certificates)

•       Centralized, easy to use, unified web-based console

•       Security and policy definition and management

•       Asset management

•       Configuration management

•       Security and protection for lost or stolen devices (remote lock, wipe)

•       User- and group-based administration

•       High scalability

BlackBerry Mobile Fusion software is available as a free download and is priced by the number of devices being managed. Client access licenses (CALs) are available for purchase from are available for purchase from local Wireless Operators or RIM System Integrators. In addition, RIM is offering a 60 day free trial, so customers can deploy apilot before purchasing a single CAL. The 60 day free trial is available at sg.blackberry.com/mobilefusion.

For more information on BlackBerry Mobile Fusion, please visit:

•       http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_8fD7Y0M-w 

•       http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AecH1yhHWpI 

•       http://devblog.blackberry.com/2012/03/enterprise-app-development/  

The industry today:

The BYOD trend is building up in Asia Pacific after gaining traction in the US and European markets.

“The consumerisation of IT is significantly changing how organisations approach their mobility and devicestrategies,” said Tim Dillon, Associate Vice President of Asia Pacific End User & Mobility Research at IDC. “One consequence of this – companies are increasingly faced with a multi-OS, multi-device environments. IDC’s research in Asia-Pacific also indicates that approximately 60% of organisations surveyed have plans in the next 12 months to move to an employee-bought phone and cease providing corporate phones directly for the majority of employees. With tablets, the percentage of organisations planning to enable their employees to bring their own device is approximately 70%.”

“In this context, overwhelmingly, almost 60% of surveyed organisations cited employee productivity as the primary reason for allowing employees to bring their own devices to work.” Tim added. “Not surprisingly with the use of employee-purchased devices growing, organisations have concerns in supporting their employees in this changing environment. The top issues? Managing personal usage on devices, particularly gaining greater visibility of usage costs and security.”

* iOS and Android devices require the Mobile Fusion Client app to enable the BlackBerry Mobile Fusion management services, which is available as a free download for iOS and Android devices from their respective app stores. Device security, manageability and controls vary according to the inherent capabilities of the individual device operating systems.

###

The BlackBerry and RIM families of related marks, images and symbols are the exclusive properties and trademarks of Research In Motion Limited. RIM assumes no obligations or liability and makes no representation, warranty, endorsement or guarantee in relation to any aspect of any third party products or services.

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Q: Are GREE’s Japanese Games Successful In The US So Far? A: Not At All. [Social Games]

I summarized my personal prediction on both GREE‘s and DeNA‘s chances of becoming the leading platform providers for mobile social games in the US (and globally) back in March.

I was actually pessimistic in September 2011 already. In fact, I was pessimistic since I first started thinking about it.

I can only stress that I hope I will be proven wrong eventually: after all, Japanese mobile and social games are my main area of business. I want to see both DeNA and GREE succeed. I think these are great companies, and it would be in my own best interest to see them succeed outside this country.

But I can say with confidence I am too honest to keep my thoughts to myself and paint a rosy picture just to get consulting gigs (I mean in general: consulting to GREE and DeNA has always been absolutely out of the question for me anyway for a number of reasons).

After flattering myself, here is a look at the status quo of GREE’s plan to bring their platform and games to the US (the first and certainly most important target market outside Japan).

On the platform side, GREE started their offering in English in May this year. Personally, I was disappointed by it for a few reasons, even when taking into account the beta moniker.

But that may just be me, and all of the above is pretty subjective. The good thing is that Apple and Google allow everybody to look at the games themselves in a quantitative way (it’s harder in Japan where the browser is still king for social game distribution).

To keep things simple (and as concise as possible), I focus on the performance of  GREE’s games in the App Store in the US only, using analytics platform App Annie.

I believe this is fair, as

• GREE’s global platform started on both iOS and Android at the same time
• 10 weeks have passed since launch
• all of GREE’s games outside Japan are offered as apps (not mainly through the browser, as in Japan)

So how do things look at this point?

In one word: bad.

According to App Annie, GREE, Inc. published 92 apps in the App Store so far (list). Taking out the Japanese apps, GREE currently offers 7 apps in English in the US App Store (some games are only available in Canada, for example, and I am not counting Funzio’s titles).

This is what the US App Store shows for GREE, Inc.:

Here’s how they performed so far:

Game 1: Driland / Tanken Doliland in Japan (initial release in the US: June 1, 2012)

highest position in the ranking of free apps in the US App Store so far:
#499 (reached on June 15, 2012)

highest position in the ranking of top grossing apps:
- (the game never made it into the ranking/top 1,000)

Game 2: Pirates Age (initial release: May 15, 2012)

highest position in the ranking of free apps in the US App Store so far:
-

highest position in the ranking of top grossing apps:
-

Game 3: Clinoppe (initial release: June 28, 2012)

highest position in the ranking of free apps in the US App Store so far:
-

highest position in the ranking of top grossing apps:
-

Game 4: Fishing Star (initial release:  June 12, 2012)

highest position in the ranking of free apps in the US App Store so far:
#816 (on June 24, 2012)

highest position in the ranking of top grossing apps:
-

Game 5: Cerberus Age (initial release: May 23, 2012) 

highest position in the ranking of free apps in the US App Store so far:
-

highest position in the ranking of top grossing apps:
-

To make things complete, here are the games that were mainly developed by GREE in the US  - and pushed by an undisclosed but undoubtedly high amount of marketing dollars (here’s just one pointer).

Game: Alien Family (initial release: March 22, 2012)

highest position in the ranking of free apps in the US App Store so far:
#3 (on March 31, 2012)

highest position in the ranking of top grossing apps:
#94 (on April 1, 2012)

Game: Zombie Jombie (initial release: March 14, 2012)

highest position in the ranking of free apps in the US App Store so far:
#5 (on March 17, 2012)

highest position in the ranking of top grossing apps:
#7 (on May 18, 2012)

I think with 3 of 5 made-in-Japan games not even making it into the top 1,000 in the American App Store, GREE’s numbers so far speak for themselves. The reaction in the industry in the US to GREE’s initial batch of Japanese games like Driland was disastrous. Worse: a lot of English-language gaming news outlets don’t even bother with GREE’s offering at all.

Now I just hope GREE has a very, very good plan B and that there are some real killer titles in the pipeline for the next months.