Photo: Cnet UK

The BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 is finally out and anticipated features such as a native email client is in, at last. But is the OS 2.0 enough?

Research in Motion (RIM) today announced that the new BlackBerry Playbook OS 2.0 is now available for download. The new OS release is said to deliver an enhanced tablet experienced that allows users to us the PlayBook in new ways.

According to RIM SVP Mobile Computing, David J. Smith in the press release, “Building on the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet’s proven web browsing, multimedia and multitasking strengths, the new BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 introduces a range of new communications and productivity enhancements as well as expanded app and content support.”

New BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 features include:

• Integrated email client with a powerful unified inbox: With BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 you have the option to use a  unified inbox that consolidates all messages in one place, including messages from Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, as well as personal and work email accounts.
• Social Integration with Calendar and Contacts apps: The built-in calendar harnesses information from social networks and makes it available where and when users need it.  Contact cards are also dynamically populated with updated information from Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn to create a consolidated view of contacts.
• Updated BlackBerry Bridge app: BlackBerry Bridge is a unique app that provides a Bluetooth connection between your BlackBerry PlayBook and core apps on your BlackBerry smartphone (including BBM, Email, Contacts, Calendar and Browser) in order to let you view the content on the larger tablet display. With BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0, it’s easier and quicker than ever to take documents, web pages, emails and photos that appear on your BlackBerry smartphone and display them on your BlackBerry PlayBook for an optimized viewing and editing experience. The updated BlackBerry Bridge app also provides a new remote control feature that allows a BlackBerry smartphone to be used as a wireless keyboard and mouse for a BlackBerry PlayBook.
• Improved mobile productivity: Updated document editing functions, the new Print To Go app, and increased control and manageability of corporate data with BlackBerry Balance  allow you to get more out of your BlackBerry PlayBook every day. Plus, an updated virtual keyboard with auto correction and predictive next word completion learns how you type to enable faster, more accurate typing.
• New apps and content: Thousands of new apps are being added to BlackBerry App World today (including a range of Android apps that will run on the BlackBerry PlayBook). A new BlackBerry Video Store is launching today. Enhanced web browsing capabilities are also available with BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0.

Take an interactive tour of the PlayBook OS 2.0 features here.

Also in conjunction with the OS 2.0 release, RIM is making available an initial release of the BlackBerry Mobile Fusion that will include support for managing BlackBerry PlayBook tablets and BlackBerry smartphones in an enterprise. The full release of the BlackBerry Mobile Fusion is planned for late March 2012. More information about BlackBerry Mobile Fusion can be found here.

Photo: The Citrus Report

You might have caught my first post here, http://e27.sg/2012/02/01/tales-from-the-trenches-it-all-began-with/, or maybe you didn’t but my plan for this column is to continue to tell the story of startup life in Singapore as I experience it so it might help to read the first column in case you missed it.

I wanted to use this column to talk about focus. Both focus of the company and/or products and how people building products could focus better. Coming out of Yahoo! – one of my biggest takeaway lessons is how companies lose their ability to focus. I recall when Steve Jobs spoke to Jerry Yang and some top executives back when Yang was taking a shot at being the CEO – Steve said that Yahoo! could do many things but it needed to sort out what things to focus on. No one at Yahoo! ever really took that advice to heart cause even today Yahoo! is in too many product lines which means the people managing those products also have too many things to focus on – in turn leading to a company with way too many average products and only a few market leading products.

But like any startup my focus these past few weeks has been about finding talent. Talent, culture, and product are the lifeblood of any startup or for that matter any successful company. Given this I thought I would talk about our experiences with finding peeps and the silly stuff that goes on when candidates look for jobs at startups. I will revisit the focus topic in a future column.

Finding talent is hard. It is a continual state of being – execs and employees must constantly be on the lookout, networking, evangelizing and spotting talent. Regardless of whether you have a perfect role there are times that you will knab people just because they are great people. Other times you have very specific roles you need filled and will scour the ground till you find a match. For a new company, even yet to be launched, the task is even harder since no ones knows that your company is looking – let alone what your company even does.

In that case I think it is important to start using tools like twitter, the media and the event circuit to get your message out. This is what Spuul has been doing and we are slowly getting a trickle of folks who have been teased enough to be interested and send in a resume. So it is absolutely a must to have someone in your startup trying to get the word out and spread the net as wide as possible. This way someone who is looking might actually reach out to you – otherwise you might never have crossed paths.

Any sort of press or media attention will help to raise your company’s profile enough to lure in a few candidates. I myself have always found events to be a goldmine for candidates and try to take as many speaking gigs, panels and invites to relevant conferences as possible. Back to the focus thing – don’t go overboard since your job is to build a company and a product – not a collection of cheesy bags and ugly lanyards.

With that let me turn my attention to job seekers or folks keen to work at a startup. Let me give you some advice for getting attention.

• Please learn to write a cover letter of some sort. It doesn’t have to be amazing but it should quickly tell me where you are, what you do, what you would love to do and any other meaningful tidbits that would get my attention. Extra bonus points if you even manage to align your talents to the actual job posting. Remember that a company is looking through hundreds of emails and if you have taken no initiative to tailor your information to the job – then why should the company do anything other than trash the email? Most people looking at resumes rarely go past the topsheet as we call it.
• Do not send in your resume repeatedly. This is just a nuisance and leads to your emails going to trash.
• Do not send your resume in for every job listing the company has. Are you seriously thinking that you might make a good system admin, or a ROR lead, or an HTML guru and if none of those hit the mark that you would moonlight as the marketing lead or the social media lead? It’s pretty simple that no one can do all those jobs well so pretending you can is just silly. Trash.
• Take the time to clearly highlight how your experiences might be of benefit to the startup. Either skills that directly match a job listing need or previous business experience that might be useful for the startup’s future. Use the force.
• Show some initiative. Build a demo to highlight some skills. Do something to get some attention – it really does work. One candidate discussed his leap of faith of coming to Singapore to stay until he found a startup job. He has never been to Singapore and hopes to not go home. He showed some guts. Props!

The last thing I want to touch on is some strategies that might help get you hired at a startup. First off, realize that you can’t possible know everything you need to know. Most of what we know we all learned through doing. So if you are a techie and you want to work at an interesting startup – then get some skills that startups need.

Going to school for your masters in whatever, never having interned and never having actually done any work is not a good fit for a startup where people are wearing many hats. Gain some skills as you go via interning, working night jobs or even buiding stuff on your own to learn how to do it. Its practically free these days to build a mobile app or a site. Get busy.

Learn the right tools for the trade. When I see candidates using MSFT certified logos as a tiled watermark for their cover letter, I immediately sense that this is not the right person. Is any startup looking for MSFT certified developers? Cisco networking certified admins? Not last I checked. It is great you have some paper but you still need to be relevant. Most startups are using LAMP, the cloud or an array of other things like Ruby or Python – the list goes on and on. Best to pick a few of these to learn – once again it costs you nothing but time.

If you really want a job then you need to get on a path that gets you that job. It’s not hard – there are more jobs than bodies to fill them so if you can’t seem to find a gig doing something you love – then you are going about it all wrong.

ps. If you send in a photo please make sure you have a mike tyson’esque facial tattoo otherwise don’t bother.

Michael Smith Jr. is the Chief Product Officer at Spuul – yes we are hiring. Prior to Spuul, Michael worked at Yahoo! as the director of Global Tech Initiatives. Michael spends his time between Thailand and Singapore working on putting SEA on the global startup map. You can follow Michael on twitter.

Photo: The Golden Concepts

For coffee with cofounders this week, we are happy to feature a relatively new startup based in Singapore – The Golden Concepts. The Golden Concepts was founded by Vanessa Keng and Lee Changxi and focuses on unique range of gifts and home assistive devices for the golden generation. e27 got in touch with the two energetic ladies and found out about the story behind the startup.

How did you and Chang meet?
Vanessa: We met in the National University of Singapore (NUS) Kent Ridge Hall. Chang Xi was a famous athlete and I was just a rockstar wanna-be.
Changxi: When I went around at 6am waking people up for inter-block games training, Vanessa was the only person who greeted me with an enthusiastic “Hello”.

Why did the two of you decide to take the plunge together?
Vanessa: Yup we know each other’s quirks and we always felt we work well together. Chang Xi works well in the night and I work well in the mornings, so we practically cover all 24 hours.
Changxi: We know each other really well, having gone through so much- working on countless projects during university, undergoing intensive training for inter-hall games, jamming together and also going on student exchange as well as traveling around for six whole months.

Photo: The Golden Concepts

Did any of you feel like quitting at any one point of time?
Vanessa: Sometimes it seems difficult and you wonder why not just quit and get a normal job. But challenging myself is precisely what I like about starting my own business, and I’ve learnt so much since I started. Plus I love the idea of creating something new and something that can create value for others.
Changxi: There are a lot of huge decisions and challenges we face, but somehow we always give each other pep talks and we usually move on to focus on the bigger picture- what we want to achieve for our business.

How supportive is your family towards your entrepreneurial endeavors?
Vanessa: My brother started his own business when he was 20, so my parents are quite used to it. But I guessed they never really thought I would want to start my own business right after graduating. After I told them my reasons and what I was aiming to build, they understood and are behind me 100%.
Changxi: My family is very supportive- since I’m the first entrepreneur in the family and it’s always a great story to tell I guess haha.

Photo: The Golden Concepts

How is the business doing now?
Vanessa: Business is picking up; we are currently looking at new ways and ideas to adopt to ensure our business gets as much opportunity as it should.
Changxi: We’re constantly on the look-out to improve out business model and also to re-invent ourselves. Everyday is exciting.

If you were given a choice to do this all over again, would you and why?
Vanessa: Definitely. It certainly isn’t easy, but passion and drive enables you to overcome all sorts of challenges that are being thrown at you and keeps you going.
Changxi: Of course! It’s a path I have chosen and it is something I am extremely passionate about.

So feel free to check out the cool stuff on The Golden Concepts and we at e27 wishes them all the best!

Photo: Buzzbox

LinkedIn Indonesia hits their one millionth professional member, months after launching their Bahasa Indonesia language offering in December 2011.

LinkedIn announced today that they have surpassed the one million professional member milestone in Indonesia. The world’s largest professional network with more than 150 million members worldwide and over 25 million members in Asia Pacific made the announcement following the launch of LinkedIn’s Bahasa Indonesia language offering in December 2011.

Since the launch of the local language site, the number of LinkedIn groups in Bahasa Indonesia has doubled to over 700 groups. The launch was part of LinkedIn’s ongoing commitment to improving the user experience so that professionals can leverage LinkedIn for the career advancement globally.

In a press release, LinkedIn’s managing director in charge of Australia, New Zealand and Southeast asia said, “Indonesia is an important market for us where we see a huge potential for growth. Two months after the launch of the local language site, this is a significant milestone for us that demonstrate that professionals in Indonesia are interested in building their online brand on LinkedIn.”

Photo: Taufikh.com

Below are some interesting statistics about LinkedIn membership in Indonesia:

• The top three  largest industry sectors with the fastest growing LinkedIn membership are: Oil and Energy,Telecommunications and, IT & Services.
• The three companies in Indonesia with the most employees on LinkedIn are: Ayatama Energi Trisco Nusantara, Bank Internasional Indonesia and Telkomsel
• The top three last names of LinkedIn professionals in Indonesia are Setiawan, Kurniawan and Gunawan

You have probably read the recent news about the new Singapore-based startup accelerator, Golden Gate Ventures, backed by i/o Ventures and Founders Institute. The team behind Golden Gate Ventures – Paul Bragiel, Vincent Lauria and Jeffrey Paine, are moving fast. Today they are announcing a two-hour office hour session with Paul Bragiel on Thursday, 23 February. Paul will be flying back to the States while Vincent, or better know as Vinnie, and Jeffrey are the two full-time mentors of the accelerator in Singapore.

Paul Bragiel is the co-founder of multiple successful ventures, including i/o Ventures, an early stage startup program in Silicon Valley.  Under i/o Ventures, Paul has incubated 11 companies helping 8 access additional investment, and three have been acquired.  Paul is an investor/advisor to over 20 companies. Prior to i/o Ventures, Paul founded three global companies, Lefora, Meetro, and Paragon Five.  At Paragon Five, Paul established offices in the US and Europe.  Paul has a strong background as a liaison for companies looking to establish operations in multiple countries.  Paul is based out of San Francisco and is Golden Gate Ventures’ man on the ground providing the support network from Silicon Valley.

So what happens at Golden Gate Ventures’ office hours with Paul Bragiel? Selected startups in Singapore have a 15 minutes, one-on-one slot, each with Paul. Use this time to pitch your product, get feedback and comments from the experienced entrepreneur.

If you are a startup interested in meeting Paul Bragiel and the rest of the Golden Gate Ventures guys, apply here. The office hour details are as follows:

Date: 23 February, 2012

Time: TBC (Selected startups will be contacted personally, slots are limited to when the 2 hours are filled up)

Venue: JFDI.Asia’s office, 71 Ayer Rajah Crescent #02-22, Singapore 139951

Apply Now! For the startups who are unable to grab their one-on-one slot with Paul, you can catch him at the evening’s e27 Founders Drinks. Tweet @bragiel your startup idea to increase your chances of meeting with him.

The Internet DealBook is a repository of information about internet- and technology-related investments and M&A deals. In 2011, a total of US$ 104 billion worth of investments and acquisitions were made, with 2407 deals tracked from public sources.

The Asia Pacific region had a total of US$ 7.2 billion in deals with an average deal value of US$ 60.38 million. That’s about seven percent of the total global deals. The number of deals made in Asia Pacific, totaled to almost 10 percent of the global deals made, at 230 deals.

China and India came in as  the top Asian countries with the most deals, ranking global fourth and fifth respectively. China saw a total of US$ 3.7 billion in deals with an average of US$ 103.01 million per deal whereas India had a total of US$ 1.8 billion in total deals and an average deal value of US$ 63.26 million.

The total investment value into the Internet industry in Asia Pacific was US$ 4.1 billion in 2011 with an average deal value of US$ 43.86 million. The Asia Pacific region received 128 deals of the 903 global public deals made.

For acquisitions, the Asia Pacific region saw a total acquisition value of US$ 3.1 billion with an average deal value of US$ 104.12 million. The region had a total of 102 acquisitions in the year 2011 out of the 1504 global public acquisitions.

Software and Services was the sector that pulled in the most deal value, US$ 59.8 billion, followed by Hard and Infrastructure and Marketing, US$ 12.6 billion and US$ 9 billion respectively. However, even though the total investments into the Software and Services sector tops the other sectors at US$ 6.7 billion, the average deal value is far behind the e-commerce, transactions, games, hardware & infrastructure and media sectors.

For more information on the investment and acquisition deals made in the Internet industry in 2011, check out the full Internet DealBook report by Right Click Capital below.

Internet DealBook Annual Report 2011
About Right Click Capital
Right Click Capital was established in 2003, as a private group to invest in online opportunities. Since its inception, Right Click Capital has successfully identified, invested in, and helped grow and exit a range of Internet-based businesses.

Right Click Capital has a flexible mandate to work with entrepreneurs, business owners, and investors to craft deals that create long-term value.

Right Click Capital backs extraordinary Internet entrepreneurs who are building remarkable businesses. We help entrepreneurs to craft a bigger vision and work with them to make it a reality. We work with Internet businesses have that have been established for at least 1 year, are profitable, and have at least $1m in revenue.

About Ari Klinger (Partner)
Ari has extensive experience in starting, building and selling Internet-related businesses. He was the co-founder and CEO of iMega, an online media network with over 30 million visitors a month which he sold to a publicly listed marketing services group in 2006.

In 2008 he co-founded and served as CEO of Online Marketing Group (OMG), which quickly grew to become Australia’s largest network of websites and owner of premium domain names. Ari managed the sale of the business to Fairfax Media and now spends his time as a partner at Right Click Capital, helping to find and build great Asia Pacific-based Internet-related businesses.

Ari is a longstanding member of the Entrepreneurs’ Organisation, as well as the Australian Private Equity and Venture Capital Association (AVCAL). Ari is a mentor at the Founder Institute (Sydney) and JFDI (Singapore).

Photo: Facebook

Net-Impact 2012 is a conference that CyberAgent Ventures (CAV) is bringing to Jakarta in hopes of helping to grow the tech startup community through information transfer from more matured communities. The event will happen on 7 March, 2012.

As part of the effort to grow the community that it is in, CyberAgent Ventures will be holding their Net-Impact 2012 in Jakarta on 7 March, 2012. The event is targeted at Indonesia entrepreneurs and is free of charge. To facilitate information transfer, CyberAgent is bringing in experienced entrepreneurs from DeNA, GREE, Sina Weibo, Tencent, NCT Corporation and Teamobi to share with the Indonesian techs startup community.

To find out more about the plans that CyberAgent has for Net-Impact and Indonesia, e27 interview Takahiro Suzuki, the General Manager of CyberAgent Ventures Indonesia. Suzuki has been with the CyberAgent Group for more than six years. He has previously managed a social and mobile gaming company called CyberX where he achieved monthly sales of more than USD $1 million with just one game, Bartown.

Suzuki was also one of the pioneer members of the company CyberBuzz which matches advertisers to blogs with related content and places ads on the corresponding blogs. The Waseda University graduate is responsible for all CyberAgent investment activities in Indonesia through making investment decisions, working with existing partners and providing inputs into strategic planning and management of the company’s portfolio.

Other than Vietnam and Indonesia, is CyberAgent interested in other Southeast Asian countries?

CAV does not limit its attention to Vietnam and Indonesia only, we have been interested with SouthEast Asia all along. However, we chose to focus on Vietnam and Indonesia because of the growing numbers of entrepreneurs in the internet industry in the respective countries.

We would love to explore other SouthEast Asia countries as well in the near future. However, I’m afraid we still can not decide yet right now. We are paying a close attention to Malaysia, Thailand, and Singapore as well.

Fundamentally, how we decide to look at a specific country comes from two important factors. Firstly, is the internet market potential of that country. Secondly, the rate of entrepreneurs that are being born in that country. In other words, the startup environment that surrounds it play an crucial role not only to us, but other investors who are looking at the country as well

From a personal opinion, do you think that Indonesia has enough quality startups to go round and will we be able to see strong exits from these startups in the next 5 – 10 years?

On a concrete level, it is very hard to say, but big market potential business domains such as e-commerce, online games, mobile contents/games, social media and online ad/ad network that come from Indonesia also have a big potential to experience IPO or other form of strong exits in the future.

It is always important to judge startups  from the team. The credibility, quality and ability of the team, how passionate are they towards winning the market and whether they have the execution / implementation skills as well as their planning skill / strategies, will decide who will win the market in the end.

Photo: Facebook

Could you summarize CyberAgent Venture’s short, mid and long term plans for Indonesia?

CyberAgent Ventures long term vision in Indonesia is to work together with the local entrepreneurs to develop the internet market in Indonesia. To do this, you can expect us to be in Indonesia for a long time.

Our short and mid term plans will be to invest in startups from Indonesia, incubate and work together with them not only to to create a successful internet business , but also to create a healthy internet ecosystem for them which links to our long-term vision.

Aligning with CAV mission being, “we contribute to development of the world through discovering, investing and incubating promising services, technologies and entrepreneurs”. As Venture Capitalists, we would like to contribute to entrepreneurs in Indonesia by assisting in developing the internet market of Indonesia.

We are hoping by using China, Japan, Vietnam and other countries success examples as reference, the local entrepreneurs could have some sort of new ideas / inspirations, develop new level of awareness and learnt a new thing or two from Net-Impact.

Event details for Net-Impact

Date: 7 March, 2012

Time: 9.30am – 6.00pm (Registration starts at 9.00am)

Venue: Grand Hyatt Hotel, Jalan M.H.Thamrin, Kav 28-30, Jakarta 10350, Indonesia

Contact number: +62-21-2992-1234

If you are a startup interested to attend, you can register here.

9GAG Reader

For the connoisseur of popular culture.
Beware! This app is a black-hole when time is of concern. A mobile app version of a popular website 9GAG, this app displays all content available on the website sorted according to the sections “Hot”, “Trending”, “Vote” and even a section for posts that you have labelled as “favourite”. Scrolling is a breeze and the loading time is short too. A personal favourite of mine, I have spent many hours snorting at some posts and laughing at the crude but spot-on memes. With memes making their way into the advertising world, knowledge about them gleaned from this handy app might make you sound intelligent the next time someone asks what memes are.

iReddit

For the forum lovers.
The mobile version of the Reddit forum sure sounds like “I read it!” This app is a gem- because the community of Redditors make it so. The active forum participants put up the most recent, outrageous, funny, ridiculous posts about anything and everything under the sky. There is always something new here and the best posts are up-voted so you always get access to the best of the forum on the “hot” page. Join in discussions and even dispense advice to fellow Redditors in the comments section. Some people have said that posts on 9GAG originated from Reddit… that’s up to you to decide. With information that makes for good conversation starters on these forums, you will never run out of things to say ever again!

If reading long wordy posts is not your favourite thing to do, do check out Reddit Pics instead and get your Reddit fix pictorially!

Musée du Louvre

For the sophisticated “high-class” individuals in society.
Musée du Louvre- the most visited museum in the world is halfway across the globe (almost!) but thanks to technology, the various art pieces on display in the Louvre can be appreciated on your iPhone. This stylishly designed app is a pleasure to use. Information about each art piece is made available, including a short write-up and the physical description of the painting. If you do intend to visit the Louvre, each painting’s location is clearly stated and marked out on the map. You have the option of sharing your favourite paintings on Facebook or sending it to a friend. With the iPhone’s retina display, even distance would not stop you from becoming an art lover!

TED

For the intellectuals.
Looking for an inspiration? Look no further than this app where the collection of TED talks are available. What I really like most about this app is the “Inspire Me” tab which takes information such as the category of talk I would like to watch and the amount of time I have, and makes a recommendation to me. Remember to bring your earphones and I guarantee that your journeys would be enriched with each TED talk that you “attend”. Do note that you need good service network for this app to work flawlessly!

TourWrist

For everyone!
If none of the above apps interest you, perhaps this one would! I downloaded this app on a whim and I have not stopped gushing about how great it is. If you are stuck in a monochromatic train, surrounded by listless people as the train ambles through a long dark tunnel, you can be saved with this app and a little imagination. Hold your phone at eye level and sweep it from side to side and be awed by the 360 degree panoramic view of scenery uploaded by users of TourWrist. The boring train can be transformed into a virtual portal, allowing you to travel remotely. With the added panoramic photography feature, you can opt to share your surroundings, shooting and sharing in seconds. The “Featured tours” have the best tours, in my opinion!

Are there any other apps that keep you entertained on long journeys? Share them in the comments below and make our journeys more bearable too!

Photo: mig33

mig33 increases its reach with 12 more regional partnerships with local handset brands in India and Indonesia.

mig33 announced yesterday that is has signed agreements to be pre-installed on 12 more regional and local handset brands in India and Indonesia to distribute Android and Java Apps. The new additions to the mig33′s existing list of partnerships are:

Indonesia: Skybee, TiPhone, Lexus Mobile, HT Mobile, Ktouch, SPC, Polytron and MOVI

India: Lemon Mobile, Beetel , Swingtel, Zen Mobile

mig33 is also working with mobile platform and application framework developer, Generel Mobile (G-Mobi) to develop a version of the popular mobile application to run on the Maui Runtime Environment (MRE) platform.

“Today’s news is all about reach and opportunity,” said Steven Goh, mig33 co-founder and CEO in a press release.  “The next wave of mig33’s growth will come from the relationships we’re forging with Asian handset brands and, to an even greater extent, with the firms that develop the handset architecture.  Just as mig33 went from zero to 50+ million members based primarily on our J2ME app, we expect to see exponential growth based on this emerging position as a ‘must have’ app for Android users all across emerging markets.”

mig33 is also working to promote its alliances with Samsung and SonyEricsson in Indonesia through games and photo competitions. The company launched a miniblog service just weeks ago as a center for it’s community.

The mobile-first social entertainment service, which connects over 55 million registered members, recently announced that it delivered over 300 billions messages and 185 million virtual gifts in 2011. mig33 has also delivered over 300,000 daily active users to developers on their platform.

Calling all game lovers,  here’s an app that will get you putting your android explorer hat on (see image on the left) and discover the world of free and new android game apps.

Applorer, the brainchild of local company, Stream Media, is a free mobile app that aggregates and keeps users updated with the latest android game apps in the marketplace. With over 400,000 apps already uploaded onto the Android Market, finding and being discoverable is a problem for both consumers and developers. Stream Media did a careful research and analysis on the situation and realized that the marketplace’s ‘Top Apps’ list are not very well updated. New and exciting game apps on the market will not gain as much visibility and hence, not downloaded. Applorer was thus created to make discovering new and cool apps easy.

Credits: Stream Media

What’s cool about Applorer?

Surprise Me!

Too spoilt for choices from the array of apps available? First checkout the ‘Top Free” tab that features a list of popular apps and thus, recommended apps in applorer.  Still undecided? Here’s where things gets fun! Select ‘Surprise Me!’ and wait for the app to randomly generate a game app. The anticipation of such surprises never fail to get gamers excited!

Organized layout

The overall layout of the app is clean and neat. Apps are organized into new ones under the ‘New games’ tab, popular ones under the ‘Top Free’ tab and further categorized into different game types: arcade & action, brain & puzzle, sports and many more under ‘Categories’. A search engine is also built into the app to make finding apps easy.

When users find a good game app, they can choose to either download or bookmark it for referencing later. The downloaded or bookmarked app will then be reflected in the user’s ‘My games’ tab.

Free upgrade to Applorer Gamebox

A free upgrade to Applorer Gamebox featuring more known paid game apps like Sims 3 and bejeweled is available in-app. Both versions are more or less similar except for the additional ‘Paid games’ tab that is only available in the upgraded version.

For premium games, users do not have to use their credit card to pay. Using Stream Media’s Movend in-app payment solution, users can purchase using paypal, cherry credits, SMS billing and google checkout (coming soon).

What I think about Applorer

Overall, it’s a pretty cool app (especially for game addicts) for discovering new, cool and most importantly, free game apps that would otherwise be invisible in the market.  The only disappointment though is that games are displayed in a list. There are many games featured in the app. Thus, displaying them in a long list will mean users have to keep scrolling down to view more games. As with most users, scrolling probably ends at the first 10-15 apps. This kind of defeats the purpose of the app’s purpose of making new and interesting apps easily discoverable.

Perhaps, the app can relook into it’s design or limit the number of apps in each tab to 10. In the latter, this helps to keep apps fresh and new by constantly updating the 10 apps to be featured. This will get people coming back to discover more apps.

A suggestion for Applorer will be having a ‘shake’ function to surprise users with a random game instead or in addition to the selection button; adding a fun aspect to it.  I would recommend users to go for the free upgrade to Applorer gamebox after downloading Applorer to get a full list of free and premium games.

Ratings: 4/5 (after upgrading to Applorer Gamebox)

About Stream Media

Credits: Stream Media

Stream Media Pte Ltd is a leading mobile solutions company based in Singapore, the technological hub of South-East Asia. Founded by Mr. Chua Zi Yong in 2009, the company has a vision to help businesses bring their products and services onto mobile as quickly and as easily as possible.

1. Adobe Photoshop Express

If you are expecting the kind of tools that are available in the Photoshop software in this app, you might be a little disappointed. Unlike Photoshop’s amazing editing capabilities, this app offers very minimal editing such as exposure, contrast and brightness adjustments and limited effects to play around with. Don’t expect your favourite PS tools like liquify, clone, lasso tool etc. in here. Overall, an app with very basic editing tools that some of the smartphones’ editing tool out there are offering.

Rating: 2/5

2. Makeup

This is a good app for those days when you are forced to take pictures without makeup/ looking pale.  Choose from more than 50 shades of eye shadows, blush, lipsticks and more to freshen up your look in pictures. It also serves as a very handy app for trying on makeup shades to see which are the ones that best suits your skin color without having to test it on your skin. A great app to have when shopping for cosmetics.

Rating: 4/5

3. PhotoWonder (Highly recommended)

As the name of the app suggests, this app indeed does amazing wonders to your photos. Out of the 4 apps in this review, PhotoWonder provides the most editing tools to address your physical imperfections (sadly, only in pictures).This is a relatively good alternative for people who do not know how to use PS software to edit their photos. A must download app for girls (and guys) ‘photoshopalics’.

Rating: 4.5/ 5

4. Photo Warp

If you’re looking for a mobile app that plays around with the shape and size of objects in images, Photo Warp is the answer. Have fun twisting & turning, expanding & shrinking objects in pictures. With this app, you can make yourself look slimmer even without PS’s liquify tool.- Checkout the Before & After images of e27′s Media & Events Manager!

Rating: 3/5

All of the apps reviewed in this article are free for download from the Android Market. Check them out and have fun playing around with the editing tools. Do leave a comment on what you think of the apps reviewed here or if there are any cooler apps that I have left out.

Disclaimer

All ‘Before’ and ‘After’ images are edited by e27′s writer, Joanna Yeo, who has basic (still learning in progress) photo editing skills. Image of writer’s dog, Yeogurt is used to illustrate editing capabilities of Photoshop Express. Celebrity, Oprah Winfrey for Makeup and PhotoWonder. And finally, e27′s very own Media & Events Manager, Gabriel Yang for Photo Warp.

The second Startup Roots Singapore is now accepting fellow applications and also startups who are looking for interns. Currently, startups that are already committed to the program are  Viki, ImpulseFlyer, Wikinvest, and Playmoolah. Here are what some of last year’s fellows had to say about the program.

“StartupRoots opens doors to not only the local startup community, but more importantly, to the realities of growing a startup. Working closely alongside with founders, I got to experiment under much market uncertainties, to forgo previous sunk costs incurred, and make the call for necessary changes. The term – Pivoting – no longer becomes just a buzzword,” commented Sharon Lourdes Paul, who interned at Docubuzz. View Sharon’s program wrap-up slides here.

“Through working at Chalkboard, I was given a chance to do a wide variety of things, from scaling systems, to working with the business people to come up with the product, to even sitting in meetings with major partners. StartupRootsSG has shown me how fulfilling working in a startup can be,” said Laurence Putra Franslay, who interned at Chalkboard. View Laurence’s program wrap-up slides here.

If you are a student interested in learning the ropes around a tech startup or, if you are a startup looking to hire and inspire student tech entrepreneurs, head on over to the Startup Roots Singapore website for more information.

CUTE (Connective Ubiquitous Technology for Embodiments) is a joint project between NUS in Singapore and Keio University in Japan. Their mission is to develop technologies, demos, and prototypes that would be essential for our future life in network and media era.

3 March 2012
Exhibition: MIRAI: The Story of CUTE – Future Lifestyle Empowered by Media Technology (9:00 – 18:00)
Venue: The Living Room, The ARTS House

CUTE Public Talk (16:00 – 18:00)
Venue: The Play Den, The Art House
Speakers: Norbert Streitz (Scientific Director, Smart Future Initiative)
Horst Hoertner (Director, Air Electronica)
Dan Sandin (Professor Emeritus, University of Inillois)

4 March 2012
Exhibition:  MIRAI: The Story of CUTE – Future Lifestyle Empowered by Media Technology (9:00 – 18:00)
Venue: The Living Room, The ARTS House

CUTE Public Talk (16:00 – 18:00)
Jointly organized with JST (Japan Science and Technology Agency)
Venue: The Play Den, The Art House
Speakers: Masa Inakage (CUTE Co-Director, Professor, Keio University)
Naohito Okude (Professor, Keio University)
Ryohei Nakatsu (Professor, National University of Singapore)

Why text messaging apps? Instead of paying 5 cents per SMS, these apps send text messages using only a tiny amount of your monthly data quota. The group chat feature is also very popular, allowing users to chat with multiple friends in one thread.

Here are my picks for the top three text messaging apps on Windows Phone.

Messaging Hub (built-in)

No, this isn’t a trick entry. Windows Phone is an incredibly integrated platform, and the Messaging Hub is capable of more than just SMS once you add your Facebook and Windows Live accounts to your phone.

The Messaging Hub doubles as Facebook chat and Windows Live Messenger (WLM) client, and is better than individual apps because it threads all your messages from different places together. If you’re chatting with your friend on Facebook or WLM and he/she has to head out, switch easily to text and your messages all remain in the same thread.

However, there is no way to set separate online status for Facebook and WLM: appearing online on one platform means appearing on both. One could even say that the OS is overly integrated, resulting in the potential loss of privacy for those who like to go online selectively.

WhatsApp Messenger (free for first year)

WhatsApp for Windows Phone has neither the polish nor the responsiveness of its iOS and Android, but it is currently the best of the lot due to two main reasons: virtually everyone with a smartphone has WhatsApp, and its push notifications are the most reliable.

A messaging app is useless if none of your friends are using it, and this is WhatsApp’s biggest advantage: the app is available on iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Nokia Symbian, and even Nokia S40. In addition, WhatsApp’s push notification for new messages has the highest rate of arriving on time.

On the downside, the Windows Phone version of WhatsApp has to be the most sluggish of the lot. “Gen 2” devices such the Nokia Lumia 800 probably won’t have any problems, but on my LG Optimus 7, it takes roughly 5 seconds to load the app fully. Opening a message thread takes another 2 seconds.

Plus, somehow your friend’s name does not appear in group chats even if he/she is in your address book, which makes for eye-clawing frustration when trying to figure out who is saying what.

The user interface is, to put it nicely, very rough around the edges, and there is no customization at all to speak of. The message threads will simply use your Windows Phone theme. Plus, sending or saving videos is currently not supported.

Nonetheless, it’s many people’s go-to replacement for SMS, and I’m hopeful that future updates will solve these problems.

Kik Messenger (free)

Kik Messenger debuted on Windows Phone way before WhatsApp, and it’s more polished-looking than the latter. Loading time has significantly improved since the “Mango” version, and its in-app responsiveness is definitely better than WhatsApp.

It’s also available on a good number of platforms, including iOS, Android, Symbian and BlackBerry. I like Kik a lot, but not many people is on the platform, even though it’s completely free. My feeble attempts to convert some of my friends only entrenched them deeper into WhatsApp.

The worst part about Kik is probably its notifications. If you’re lucky, you get notified of new messages half an hour after it was actually sent. And if you’re unlucky, you can wait up till a few hours. If you’re really unlucky, the notifications don’t arrive at all. Needless to say, this is a huge impediment to its user experience, and makes the term “instant messaging” close to meaningless.

Plus, it doesn’t really import your address book like WhatsApp. When the apps discovers a fellow “Kikster” in your contacts, it automatically starts a thread telling you to start chatting by just replying to that thread. Is a list of contacts too much to ask?

eBuddy XMS (free)

Now we come to the newest kid on the block. Not a lot of people round this part of the world know that eBuddy is also into the mobile texting business, and they call it XMS. It’s available on iOS, Android, BlackBerry, and even MeeGo for you Nokia N9 toting folks.

Besides the basic text messaging, which XMS does moderately well, there is currently no support for sending or receiving multimedia.  The user experience, however, is more pleasant than WhatsApp. In fact, this is the only messaging app which lets Windows Phone users view those cute smileys iPhone users smugly send to each other.

While testing the app, the only glitch I could find was how texts have the tendency to get cut off, resulting in only half a message appearing with an ellipsis telling you there’s more to read. This can be fixed by quitting and re-launching the app. Also, group chat is not yet available.

As a newest kid on the block – eBuddy’s website doesn’t even list it as a download yet! – I can certainly be patient with this app. Until it gets more functionality and loses its beta vibe, judgment is reserved!