Wanna be happy? There’s an app for that. Well not exactly, but an app with the ambitious goal of making the world a happier place has just launched: Freehap.

The app, developed in Bangkok by two college buddies from the Faculty of Economics at Thailand’s prestigious Chulalongkorn University, allows users to update their happiness level on a 5-point scale (very happy, happy, so-so, sad, very sad) and broadcast that to other users in their area.

Users can then add “special ones” and be alerted when those people are sad (so they can give them a pick-me-up call or message) and also check the entire country’s happiness level collated with data from Freehap. Right now I see that “Thailand’s happiness level is 58 percent today, up 3 percent from yesterday.”

Besides their happiness levels, users can post citizen news reports with the “I Report” button; make recommendations of books, movies, music, and more with the “I Recommend” feature; and put stuff for sale with the “Selling” button. They can also call for help (whatever the problem may be) with the “Help Me!” icon, and an aspiring Clark Kent in the locality can make himself or herself available by hitting “I Help” within the app. Plus, users must submit their blood types upon registration because there is a function of the app that allows a user to put out a call for blood donations in the event of an emergency.

The app is completely integrated with Facebook – better than nearly any app around, say founders Natee Jarayabhand and Khanit Aramkitpota. You must sign in with Facebook, so all your friends in the social network become your friends on the app, and when, for example, someone likes your happiness update through Freehap, that “like” will show up on a Facebook post.

Natee and Khanit hatched the idea while they were doing unfulfilling office jobs after university and read a study about low happiness levels in developed countries. “We wanted to try to make a platform for people to live a happier life. There’s no other app with the mission of making the world happier,” Natee claims.

The pair took their idea to the Global Social Ventures Competition at UC Berkeley in California in 2010. They didn’t win the contest but they say they got a lot of good feedback, especially from judge Paul Herman, founder of socially responsible Silicon Valley investment firm HIP Investor. “He said that in the future he thinks that the trend will move towards reporting happiness indexes, rather than stock market indexes,” says Natee.

So they came back to Thailand, raised some money from their friends and family, and put a team together to fully develop Freehap. The app finally went live – on Google Play for Android, and in iTunes for iPhone – last week and is currently only available in Thailand, Singapore, and Hong Kong. They plan on testing and tweaking the product with user feedback from these markets before trying to launch it globally. They’re also looking for new funding. In future versions they’d like to launch a real-time map of people’s happiness status updates, amongst other improvements.

Refreshingly for the Asian tech ecosystem where entrepreneurs seem to be too focused on monetization too early, the Freehap team is focusing only on improving the app (and people’s happiness, in theory) for the foreseeable future. They do have some ideas about how to monetize when the time is right, including sponsored “happiness campaigns,” premium emoticons, and advertising. But ultimately, says Natee, “We believe that if we can improve happiness for people, then money will follow.”

Here’s a demo video made by the startup:

[Direct video link for mobile readers]

Korean couples app Between recently crossed the 900,000 download mark and is seeking a new round of funding next month. The app aims to create a one-on-one ‘intimate space’ to share chats, photos, videos, and emoticons between lovers. Users are currently sending roughly 4.9 million messages, sharing 350,000 photos, and spending 10 minutes on the app per day.

How is it different than Pair, another couples-only app that has been getting lots of media love lately? Edward Lee, the ‘value innovator’ at the app’s parent company Value Creators & Company (VCVC), says that Between emphasizes memories much more than its competitors. Lee explains:

Between focuses on organizing and looking back at the memories. We have a solid communication method and a method to stack your memories and look back at them quickly.

Another difference one could glean between Between and Pair is the former’s current focus on Asia. Almost all of Between’s users are in Asia right now – 75 percent in South Korea, 7 to 8 percent in both Japan and China, and about 5 percent in the US, says Lee. But with a new round of investment, VNVC will seek to expand the app in other countries and continents.

Monetization plans for Between are threefold:

• Paid functions like premium emoticons, longer video messages, and data back-up
• Physical commerce: a man could send a latte to his girlfriend through the app, for example, or have a photo-book made of their memories made
• Advertising: Romantic goods and services like travel getaways or flower deliveries could promote their services through an “event box channel” on the application

Between won best mobile app at The Next Web Conference in Amsterdam earlier this year and came in second at the Echelon 2012 Startup Pitch in Singapore.

It should be interesting to watch Between battle it out with Pair for the affections of couples around the world.

Tencent’s (HKG:0700) chatting app WeChat, which went global just a few months ago, has gained particular traction in Southeast Asia, especially in Vietnam and Thailand.
The Chinese internet multinational’s VP of international business Poshu Yeung told a gathering of tech journos in Bangkok this week that he estimates the app has about 200,000 to 300,000 users in Thailand alone, based on download figures.

That pales in comparison to the estimated 100+ million users of Weixin, the original Chinese version of the app, but it’s a nice start for Tencent. Poshu was in town for a board meeting for web portal Sanook.com, Thailand’s most popular website and a local partner with Tencent for three years. He said that Thailand has been particularly important for feedback on the new global version of the chatting app.

We like Thailand a lot because of the Chinese culture here, the Asian culture, and because it’s close to China. […] No one goes international and then goes straight to the US. Southeast Asia is the more obvious choice because its closer.

Poshu said that Tencent isn’t doing any marketing for WeChat in Southeast Asia outside of social media, but they certainly aren’t skimping on Facebook, where TechInAsia noted recently they are advertising heavily in Singapore. In addition to the Facebook ads, they are monitoring responses from Facebook and Twitter closely. “It seems like Thai users are really liking the product from the feedback. That’s what makes this market so exciting,” he said.

WeChat joins a tough field of competitors in Southeast Asia, where WhatsApp and Line are firmly established as favorites. Poshu maintained that WeChat’s advantage is that it plans on customizing the product to local markets, rather than simply translating into local languages.

That seems to be the talking point throughout the company, as Tencent’s regional director of global mobile Suyang Zhang emphasized localization in Indonesia at our Startup Asia Jakarta 2012 event this morning. In India as well, Tencent is teaming up with local gaming company Ibibo to promote WeChat.

As for a monetization model, Poshu said that isn’t even in the picture at the moment.

The mobile app industry will continue to evolve over next three years. We would rather spend three years building a user base and providing nice products than monetizing. […] Our business principle is very straightforward. If you have the hearts of the users, you will be able to figure out a monetization model down the road.

Jiew photographed at work on her site before the ruling today. (Image source: PORNCHAI KITTIWONGSAKUL/AFP/Getty Images)

A landmark ruling on internet freedom in Thailand has caused alarm, with some fearing that it’ll necessitate even more self-censorship for website operators and startups in the country. Webmaster Chiranuch Premchaiporn (known by her nickname Jiew), who manages the political site Prachatai, was found responsible and guilty under Thailand’s Computer Crimes Act for messages left by other people on the site that were deemed insulting to Thailand’s monarchy. The case was unprecedented because Chiranuch did not write the comments herself and maintained that she deleted them as soon as she was aware of them.

Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) was moved to issue a sharp rebuke to the Thai government, saying it would “stifle innovation” on the web in the nation. The search giant opened an office in Thailand last year, and this evening posted a public statement entitled “A threat to the potential of Thailand’s internet economy” in which it harshly criticizes the ruling. The main argument says:

Convicting [Jiew] for something she never wrote sends a clear message to the entrepreneurs and business leaders who run Internet platforms in Thailand that they can and will be penalized for the independent actions of users.

The precedent set by this decision is deeply concerning because Internet platforms, often referred to as ‘intermediaries’ – basically, the tools and sites many of us use every day to connect with friends, family and customers around the world, such as social networks, online marketplaces and web forums – are the foundation of the web.

Telephone companies are not penalized for things people say on the phone and responsible website owners should not be punished for comments users post on their sites. Unfortunately, Thailand’s Computer Crimes Act is being used in this case to do just that.

Jiew was sentenced to a suspended one year sentence but will not do any jail time. The ruling is emblematic of Thailand, some would say, in that it maintains a threatening atmosphere but did not send Jiew to jail, which would have caused an even larger international outcry.

Digital media professionals and bloggers in Thailand, both Thai and international, were abuzz with chatter about the verdict all this afternoon and evening, with most denouncing it. It remains to be seen how much the Thai government will crack down on cases like this – I actually believe not very much – but you can be damn sure that self-censorship, already widely practiced by website owners in Thailand, will increase. And if a webmaster can be convicted for other people’s comments on one’s website, couldn’t Facebook or Twitter be liable for user actions that are deemed illegal? And what punishment would be incurred then? That’s when this issue would really get interesting.

Bangkok-based gaming company Sandbox Global is in the process of launching an English language version of their Facebook fashion game Stylista for markets in Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines.

The game, similar to Mall World or It Girl, is currently featured in Thai language. Sandbox Global is studying the game’s usage in Thailand, where it currently has 56,000 monthly active users, and is compiling data to support expansion.

As I mentioned over on Pando Daily, Sandbox is shooting for one million users by Q3 2012 – when they also plan on releasing the game in Bahasa Indonesia for Indonesia and in Vietnamese for Vietnam. The plans are ambitious, but Sandbox has solid investment backing from Jeff Lapin, former CEO of Atari and Grand Theft Auto developer Take Two, and IDM Venture Capital.

Sandbox Global founder Ferdinand Gutierrez, a Filipino-American raised in New York City, moved to Southeast Asia over a decade ago to work in the region’s nascent digital scene. His major positions included group managing director at pioneering digital advertising agency New Media and then managing director at Neo @ Ogilvy in Singapore, where he specialized in digital media. Gutierrez oversees Sandbox with Peter Theisen, whose role is leading technology and product development. Theisen is well-known for his experience in management training for C-level executives. The third member of the founding group is Jonathan Lor, whose experience includes leading regional digital initiatives with clients including IBM and Yahoo. Gutierrez explains:

The management team has extensive regional experience so we have working knowledge of all of these different markets in Southeast Asia. We were inspired to build this company to create homegrown social games in this region, supplemented by talent from more developed markets in North America and Europe.

In Stylista, users create an avatar, style it out with designer clothes, and shop for shoes and attend cocktail parties in the neighborhoods of Soho in New York, Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, and Bond Street in London. Sandbox Global has plans to expand the game to Siam Square in Bangkok, Ometasando in Tokyo, and Champs-Élysées in Paris soon.

They’re also in talks with a company in Taipei about distributing the Mandarin version of Stylista for distribution inside and outside of Facebook in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Mainland China.

China does not have a monopoly on copying American websites. German company Rocket Internet is literally “cloning the web” as a recent article in Bloomberg Businessweek put it, so far making knock-offs of Groupon, eBay, AirBnB, Pinterest, and Zappos, mainly for European markets. The controversial company makes near replicas of the sites down to the name (the Pinterest clone is Pinspire, their Zappos clone is Zalando) and emulates their business models. And they do it well [1].

They’re now expanding to Southeast Asia in a big way, reportedly hiring in Indonesia and they have launched their Zappos shoe store clone Zalora in Singapore and Malaysia. In February they launched their particularly shameless Pinterest clone Pinspire worldwide, including in Southeast Asia.

And Thailand is next, as Rocket Internet is making a big hiring push in Bangkok. They held a career event at the Asian Institute of Technology outside Bangkok in late February where they professed their ambitious goals, according to a statement on the event website:

Rocket moved to Thailand some weeks ago to build the largest e-commerce website in the region. For this reason, they are looking to hire some local graduate students with a strong entrepreneurial spirit and a genuine interest in the web industry that can immediately join their international team in Bangkok,” .

According to a LinkedIn posting they are also looking for Thai and foreign “entrepreneurs in residence” to add to their team for short term positions also. On local employment sites JobsDB and JobStreet they are hiring for at least 16 positions including head of content and senior SEO manager, and senior SEM manager.

They’re rumored to be planning on expanding to up to 300 employees in the next few months and launching an e-commerce website in Thailand sometime in the next few weeks. No word yet on whether it might be an eBay or Zappos knock-off, like in Singapore and Malaysia. But you can expect it will be a clone of something.

Google Thailand’s Go Online initiative to get small and medium businesses online has far exceeded expectations, country head Ariya Banomyong told me today. The company aimed for 50,000 business to sign up in the first year, but 65,000 had done so at the end of six months in January and 40,000 business websites were live.

Encouragingly, the program -– similar to Google (NASQAQ:GOOG) initiatives in India and Japan – has been extremely popular in rural areas outside the capital. Khon Khaen, in Thailand’s poorer Northeast or Isaan area, has been one the leading cities for SMEs using the service.

Go Online features free website registration, hosting, email, a business listing on Google Maps, and consultation and training. “Thai consumers are already online, but many businesses think that it will be difficult and expensive to go online so we want to educate them,” said Google’s head of communications and public affairs Amy Kunrojpanya. They’ve also spelled out the process in a handy video (in Thai) on YouTube, of course.

Another part of the package for those signing up with Go Online is THB2,000 ($65) to spend on Ad Words. And let’s remember before things get too altruistic here: The more people and businesses online, the more money Google makes from advertising on AdWords and AdSense.

Ariya said that the Google Thailand office in Bangkok was the second to open in Asia Pacific after Australia (before Singapore, India, or Japan), demonstrating the importance of the country to the internet behemoth. Ariya elaborated:

Thailand isn’t tagging behind world trends, it’s right there. There are 30 million people online in Thailand. There’s 109 percent mobile phone penetration and 28 percent smartphone penetration.

Besides getting businesses online, Google is trying to promote Thai people who are already online to produce more Thai language content – and it’s even better if they use Google’s tools like Blogger, Translate, Google Plus, and Google Guru [1]. “Thailand is the 20th biggest country in the world, but less than 1 percent of the total content on the internet is in Thai. We want to change that,” Ariya said.

Ariya would probably be happy to learn that even Bangkok’s motorcycle taxi drivers are producing Thai content online, like Dejchat Puangket, who scooped journalists by uploading photos of the Bangkok Valentine’s Day bombings to his site on Thai blogging platform OKNation.

He’d probably be even happier if the motorcycle taxi driver was using Blogger!

Ensogo CEO Tom Srivorakul

Thailand-based daily deals site Ensogo has revealed that its 2012 goals include maintaining its roughly 90 percent market share in Thailand and expanding its user-base in Southeast Asia beyond 3 million people. That’s what the company’s CEO and co-founder, Tom Srivorakul, told me recently.

The company plans to increase its partnerships with local vendors from 2,000 last year and work more closely with banks, mobile operators, and credit card companies to facilitate deal payment. Tom also wants to integrate hotel booking and restaurant reservation systems into the site, as hotel and restaurant deals are some of its most important and popular – something we see on group-buy sites across the region.

These goals will be made a whole lot easier by the infusion of the cold, hard cash Ensogo received when it was bought by American deals giant LivingSocial in July 2011. The financials of the acquisition were not disclosed, but were rumored to be in the tens of millions of US dollars. Tom says that LivingSocial won out against several competitors for Ensogo, including global deals giant Groupon (NASDAQ:GRPN).

“LivingSocial matched up with our vision the best. They let us keep our mojo and keep innovating,” said Tom. Another advantage is that LivingSocial can act as a crystal ball to see what trends are happening and what works and what doesn’t in the more advanced market of the US. “We won’t make the same mistakes,” he said.

Ensogo’s rise in the last two years is the stuff of tech-geek-entrepreneur dreams. Tom and his brothers launched the company in June 2010 and quickly grew to dominate Thailand’s daily deals market. Tom estimated his company’s market share at around 90 percent. It then expanded to the Philippines, where it is now the market leader, and then into Indonesia through local subsidiary DealKeren (since rebranded to LivingSocial Indonesia). The big payout came when the Washington D.C.-based LivingSocial bought them last year.

Their success is no accident, though – these guys are successful serial entrepreneurs. In 2004, Tom and his brothers founded New Media, Thailand’s first digital agency, and then went on to found Admax Network, one of the biggest ad networks in Southeast Asia and Facebook’s local partner since April 2011.

Tom applied their background in ad research and trusting data to Ensogo:

We surveyed 4,000 people and asked if they would pre-purchase a deal in order to redeem later, if it was available at a tremendous value. A large percentage said ‘yes’. But what really stood out to use was that most people also said ‘Why do I have to wait for 100 people to purchase this deal before I get it?’

So Ensogo never incorporated the model of a certain number of people having to buy the deal before it’s activated.

Another thing they learned from their research is that Thai people are very hesitant to use credit cards online. “So we made sure every payment channel was available,” Tom said. “Counter service to credit cards to bank transfers.” In fact, customers can walk into their head office on Bangkok’s busy Rama IV street and pay cash for whatever they purchase.

They can also walk into Ensogo’s newly opened retail store in luxury mall Siam Center and pay there. Tom adds:

The real purpose of the store is to educate more and give consumers the trust that we have a physical location and they can come in and see us. People say ‘wow,’ because we were born online and we went offline.

Suvarnabhumi International Airport (BKK), from Instagram user tanyh

Photo-sharing iPhone app Instagram recently revealed the top 15 most popular places where Instagram photos were taken in 2011 and, surprisingly enough, there were three locations in Bangkok, Thailand on the list.

Coming in at the number two most popular spot in the world for Instagram photos was Bangkok’s Suvarnbhumi International Airport, bested only by the world famous Disneyland in California. Number 11 and 13 were the Siam Paragon and Terminal 21 air-conditioned mega-malls, respectively.

Anyone who’s been to the Thai capital may find this as no surprise perhaps. If there are three things Bangkokians love to do most, it’s to travel, shop, and take silly self-pics whilst doing so. Terminal 21, in fact, offers the best of both worlds as it’s an airport-themed mall, complete with faux departure zones and different floors designated as Tokyo, San Francisco, Istanbul, etc.

The only city in the world with more locations on the list was tech epicenter and home to Instagram, San Francisco. Joining Bangkok with three locations each in the top 15 were the New York and Los Angeles areas. The only other Asian location on the list was Hong Kong International Airport at number six.

Since its launch in the Apple iTunes store October 2010, Instagram has skyrocketed to over 15 million users around the world. In November 2011, it was reportedly adding 100,000 new users a week. That’s even more phenomenal when one considers that it’s still only an iPhone app. An Android version is reportedly in development.

That Bangkok is one of the top cities in the world probably won’t surprise those that follow the tech scene in Thailand. Country-specific statistics from Instagram aren’t currently available, but a look at other known stats on Thailand can give an idea of how gaga for gigabytes the country is. Thailand is the number one early adopter in Southeast Asia, according to a study from audience measurement company Effective Measure, meaning that Thais rush out to buy the latest smartphone or download the latest app ahead of even wealthier Singaporeans. The same study found that Thailand is third in Southeast Asia – after Indonesia
and Singapore – when it comes to using the internet on mobile devices.

Bangkok is also the fifth largest city for Facebook users in the world with about 7.4 million users (see chart below), according to SocialBakers. Interestingly, Jakarta is first in the world with about 17.5 million!

That three locations in Bangkok landed in Instagram’s top 15 demonstrated Thailand’s increased importance as a market for new technology. With millions of gadget and app hungry citizens in Bangkok alone, I reckon companies like Instagram will start paying the country even more attention.

[Photo via tanyh on Instagram]

A wise man once said that necessity is the mother of invention, and indeed The Great Thailand Floods of 2011 have given rise to all sorts of new contraptions to deal with the life in the water – from raised tuk-tuks to water bottle doggy lifejackets.

Online innovation has also flourished during the floods, as people in Thailand have turned to social media for everything from sharing information to comic relief to serious calls for help.

With conflicting and confusing statements coming from Thailand’s politicians, social media has become even more crucial. In fact, a survey last week by Assumption University’s respected ABAC Poll Center found that social media had surpassed newspapers as a source of information with usage increasing from roughly 19 percent to 25 percent during the floods in Thailand.

Twitter has become probably the most used and trusted platform for flood info, with people who may have never heard of the site before signing up. The service reported a 20 percent increase in users in Thailand from 600,000 in September to 720,000 in October, according to the digital media agency McFiva that owns the advertising rights to Twitter in the country. The platform has achieved buzz throughout all sectors of Thai society, and stories are floating around of nervous mothers asking their teenage kids to join for flood updates.

In an interesting look at how Twitter users can govern themselves during a crisis, people came up with separate hash tags for Thai (#thaiflood) and English (#thaifloodeng) information. As the flooding approached Bangkok, influential tweeple like travel blogger Richard Barrow urged users to employ the correct hashtag so people wouldn’t have to sift through tweets in a language they didn’t understand. McFiva managing director Supachai Parchariyanon told the AFP last week that #thaiflood was currently the biggest hashtag in Thailand.

Social media has boosted the popularity of some celebs and made new faces famous during the flooding. Popular singer and jet ski champion (really) Jetrin Wattanasin regularly heads out on his Kawasaki to rescue or deliver food to flood victims – with video running of course – in response to tweets from his 172,00 followers. Environmentalist Sasin Chalermlab has gained a following for providing straightforward and honest information on his Youtube channel, on which the most popular video has been watched more than 440,000 times.

The most out-of-nowhere viral hit has been the Roo Su! Flood (“know and beat the flood”) video series on YouTube, made by two 26-year-old semi-employed filmmakers. The first video in the series aimed to simplify and bring home the billions of cubic-meters of of water that were bearing down on Bangkok in late October by equating them to cute Blue Whales. The whales have since become a popular culture phenomenon in Thailand, showing up everywhere from women’s nail art to Facebook profile pics, and the main video has been watched over a million times.

About Facebook, the platform has served as more of a forum for photo sharing and “we’re all in this together” camaraderie during the floods than real-time information. The community feature – pages “dedicated to a topic or experience that is owned collectively by the community connected to it,” as Facebook puts it – has seen the most use.

Probably the biggest community, the name of which can be loosely translated to “When the waters rise, we post”, launched on Oct. 6 and now has over 290,000 members sharing photos of their flooded backyards (sometimes with crocodiles loose in them), advice for house cleaning after the floods, and motivational messages.

Misinformation on social media has sometimes been a problem during the flooding, as alarming posts can quickly go viral and be passed around as fact. But there have been no reports of major false panics. Generally misinformation has involved photos on Facebook – like this one of another crocodile – that have proven to be somewhere other than Thailand.

For comic relief during the flooding, Tumblr has become the platform of choice for English speakers for its quick and easy functionality. The Crisis Chic photo blog was created by a group of fashion-minded expats with the motto “style shouldn’t go out the window, just ‘cause water’s coming in”, while Thai Flood Hacks celebrates the clever and funny inventions people have come up with to deal with floodwater.

English-speakers have also shared important phone numbers, volunteering opportunities, and health and safety info (like how to purify tap water) on an open source Google Doc created by language researcher and Twitter persona Rikker Dockum.

Google itself has contributed to the effort with a Crisis Response map created by the company’s philanthropic Google.org division. On the fully interactive Google map, geographical information related to the flooding submitted by official sources and users is aggregated in location pinpoints. There’s also recent satellite imagery.

All of these resources have proved to be vital in the face of the fractured Thai government’s poor messaging during the crisis. Prime Minster Yingluck Shinawatra has a Twitter account and Facebook page as does Bangkok Governor MR Sukhumbhand Paribatra (here and here). But as the two leaders hail from rival political parties, they’ve clashed often over flood management and sometimes used social media for promotional photo ops and “listen to me only” statements rather than real information.

Despite the poor showing from the politicians, it has been fascinating to watch how ordinary people have used social media to communicate and survive through Thailand’s worst flooding in decades.

[Images via Thai Flood Hacks]

The disaster has displaced millions and killed dozens this past week in Thailand.

In the market for a new hard drive? Better buy it sooner rather than later, as a global shortage will probably jack up prices on the devices soon.

That’s because the once-in-a-lifetime floods that have inundated a third of Thailand and displaced nine million people are also causing major disruptions in the hard disk drive (HDD) industry supply chain.

Most notable is the massive hit that the world’s top HDD producer Western Digital (NYSE:WDC) took when floodwaters burst into its two Thailand factories at Navanakorn and Bang Pa-in industrial estates outside Bangkok. The company has had to close indefinitely both factories, where it produces 60 percent of all its hard drives. Western Digital CEO Timothy Leyden told reporters in a conference call this week that they estimate capacity will be affected for several quarters.

Thailand is the second-largest country for production of hard drives after China, according to market research firm UHS iSuppli. Indeed, Toshiba (TYO:6502), the world’s fourth largest hard drive producer with a 10 percent market share, has halted all of its production in Thailand due to flooding. Number two hard drive producer Seagate (NASDAQ:STX) has extensive operations in Thailand, but has not had to stop production because its factories are in the northeast where flooding has been less severe.

iSuppli stats for Q2 2011 showing world's top HDD producers.

Worse for PC Industry than Japanese Tsunami?

One key component in the supply chain of hard drives has also been majorly affected: the motor. Japanese company Nidec (TYO:6594), which produces a whopping 70 percent of hard drive motors in the world, has had to close all of its factories in Ayutthaya, the ancient former capital which got inundated earliest in this ongoing disaster.

Inside a Western Digital hard disk drive.

These combined kinks are having an effect on the worldwide supply chain that’s making even Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) CEO Tim Cook nervous. Cook warned this week that he’s “virtually certain there will be an overall industry shortage of disk drives,” according to the AP. The shortage of HD components would only affect some Mac computers, but not Apple’s ultra-lucrative iPhones and iPads, which use more modern solid state drives (SSDs) – aka: flash memory – which don’t need motors.

In fact, the Thai floods could have an even worse impact on the PC industry than the Japanese tsunami, according to tech analyst Jason Nyoland, as quoted in the Financial Times.

It’s unclear at this time how much the price of the stoppages will be passed on to consumers. But if you need more space or an external HDD for back-ups, it’d be prudent to buy that new hard drive now.