This rumor comes to us, as many do, from Sina Tech’s “knowledgable” sources, and should be taken with a grain of salt until it has been announced by Alibaba (the company does not comment on rumors). Supposedly, the idea is, among other things, that the box could lead to TV-based e-commerce. But as Xiaomi learned last fall, offering a set-top box requires a government license that can only come through a mandatory partnership with a few state-approved media providers, so if Alibaba is serious about the project it will need to partner up with one of them.

But the bigger hurdle might be Aliyun OS itself, which despite massive investment from Alibaba hasn’t really taken off as the Android competitor the company hoped it could become. At present, it’s not really clear what consumers would get out of Alibaba’s set-top box that they couldn’t get from many of the other available offerings, and I’m skeptical that people really want to do much shopping on their TV sets. But I’ve been known to be wrong, and betting against Alibaba often proves unwise, so who knows. If Ali really is working on a set-top box, it’s definitely something to watch for.

(via Sina Tech)

Using a smartphone is a very sensual and immersive experience, but so far our sense of smell has been left out of the fun. Not any more. A Japanese startup has created and is looking to launch ChatPerf, a hardware add-on for your iPhone that can emit smells.

The ChatPerk gadget (see the video below) could be synced up with various apps or games to emit specific odors at a certain time – such as the smell of burning rubber in a racing game, the scent of coffee to wake you up in conjunction with an alarm app, or to blast some soothing incense as you use a yoga app. I’m sure we can imagine some cruder smells that could be honked out as well.

ChatPerk is just a prototype for now, and the demo video below reveals that it looks very different to the conceptual designs on the startup’s homepage, so perhaps it’s all far from finalized. The biggest barrier to this being used extensively it that it cannot, inevitably, create scents magically from the ether, and so it requires the use of miniature plastic tanks of perfumes. That sounds a bit fiddly and troublesome.

A version of ChatPerk for Android is in the works, but there’s no indicated launch time or price yet for either that or the iPhone add-on. Check out the demo video shot by Diginfo.tv over the weekend:

(Source: Diginfo.tv)

A new report in the Beijing Times quotes police as saying that in their investigation of Silu HD following its takedown, they found not only 22,296 instances of IP violation, but also that the site was hosting what the article calls “obscene pornographic films.” We’re not sure whether those are any worse than regular pornographic films, but since any kind of porn is illegal in China, the folks behind the site are likely in a lot more trouble for this than the piracy aspect.

Interestingly, it seems the site was mostly hosting quasi-historical-themed pornography from the 1970s, as the two titles mentioned specifically in the article are The Opening of Misty Beethoven (1976) and Caligula (1979). These films and a few others were deemed to be pornographic “after police appraisal,” and we imagine that police are currently combing through the rest of Silu HD’s catalogue in search of other films to, ahem, appraise.

Double-entendres aside, the news that Silu HD was hosting pornography ensures that “China’s first HD video portal” (as the site billed itself) is dead for good. YYeTs may have survived the crackdown, but apparently Silu HD’s apparent affinity for 1970s pornography has ensured the site will definitely not be coming back online.

(Beijing Times via Sina Tech)

LeTV SuperTVs at the launch event, displaying the screen of a smartphone that is connected to them via wifi.

Chinese video and television company LeTV has been talking about its SuperTV (a smart TV) for quite a while. In fact, you may remember that last fall Kaifu Lee’s Innovation Works invested in the LeTV subsidiary that does its television hardware and software. Yesterday, LeTV CEO Jia Yueting announced the final details about the SuperTV at a press event in Beijing.

The SuperTV comes in two models, a 39 inch model called the S40 that will cost 1999 RMB ($317), and a 60 inch model called the X60 that will cost 6999 RMB ($1,111). The TVs both feature 3D 1080p HD displays, and come installed with a LeTV operating system, app store, and streaming video platform that have all been designed specifically for a big-screen ecosystem. They both support wifi, and have some other cool features like the ability to be controlled via mobile phones. They also apparently feature a front-facing camera with some Kinect-like motion sensing capabilities. The televisions are being manufactured by Foxconn.

Taking a page out of Xiaomi’s book, the televisions will only be available directly through LeTV’s online shop when they go on sale sometime near the end of June. Jia says that even the expensive X60 has twice the features of competing products at only half the price, so the company is clearly expecting the TVs to do well. So, presumably, is Kaifu Lee and the rest of Innovation Works.

As with most products, though, it’s hard to forecast what the future might hold for the SuperTV until its out in the world being used every day by people who don’t work for LeTV. Will the apps fly or fizzle? Will the picture quality and color be as good as competing brands? We’ll have to wait until June to find out.

(via Sina Tech)

Well, the rumors are true. Chinese search company Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU) announced today that it has acquired PPS.tv’s streaming video service for $370 million. The acquisition bolsters Baidu’s video offerings (it already owns iQiyi) and puts it in a position to challenge market leader Youku-Tudou (NYSE:YOKU) for a bigger share of China’s web video marketplace. By some user counts, this acquisition makes Baidu the proud new owner of China’s biggest video platform. (UPDATE: Unsurprisingly, representatives from Youku-Tudou dispute the claim that Baidu is now China’s largest video platform. Baidu’s official press release states that the acquisition “create[s] China’s largest online video platform” but does not cite specific numbers; however, Tech in Asia believes this claim to be based on data collected by a domestic market research firm.)

PPS.tv will continue to operate as a sub-brand of iQiyi, according to the release, but current iQiyi CEO Gong Yu will also be CEO of the new PPS sub-brand. Current PPS president Xu Weifeng and CEO Zhang Hongyu will remain onboard as co-presidents.

In a TechWeb poll from before the news became official, respondents were split on whether Baidu’s newest acquisition could help it win the video market, but the massive move to mobile is complicating the question further. Chinese net users watch billions of hours of video each month, but increasingly they’re doing it from mobile devices, and on that front Baidu’s iQiyi is already closing in on Youku-Tudou. (iQiyi claims 200 million monthly mobile users to Youku-Tudou’s 150 million daily users).

Even so, Youku-Tudou president Dele Liu says he welcomes the competition. Responding to rumors of the merger two weeks ago, Liu told reporters:

After the success and synergy created by the Youku-Tudou merger, increasing consolidation was inevitable throughout the video industry. We are happy to see this purchase go forward; we expect this acquisition will further rationalize the industry and help reduce piracy in the sector.

Nevertheless, the news poses serious questions for Youku-Tudou, and puts Baidu in a better position than ever to challenge for dominance of the streaming video market, especially on mobile devices.

UPDATE: Updated 11:38 to add “monthly” and “daily” to better clarify the Youku and iQiyi mobile numbers.

It’s worth pointing out that for some reason TechWeb didn’t offer a straight-up “no” option, but even so, it seems pretty clear readers are split on this. Frankly, I agree with them — it’s very hard to say. On the one hand, Youku-Tudou has been holding the number one spot for a while and even with PPS’s market share in hand, Baidu’s services wouldn’t surpass it. On the other hand, though, Baidu has a lot more money, and a much more diverse platform it can use to integrate video in a number of ways that might tempt viewers away from Youku-Tudou, assuming that it can match that site for quality of content.

This is one where I think we’re all just going to have to wait and see.

(via TechWeb)

The TV commercial (video above)  will feature WeChat’s so-called Super-Duo Ambassadors, Alan Luo Zhi-Xiang and Rainie Yang (pictured right), who are renowned artistes from Taiwan. The ad will include the duo acting as a couple while introducing the functions of WeChat to the audience. For our readers in Singapore, you will be able to catch the TV ad on Channel 8, Channel U, W drama, and E-City starting this week. It seems that the same video used for promotional purposes in Taiwan will be used in Singapore too.

Speaking about this launch, Louis Song, country manager of Tencent’s International Business Group (Malaysia and Singapore), said the Chinese web giant hopes to strengthen its market position and increase its user adoption within Asia:

Singapore is a very strong market like Hong Kong, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Thailand – we are witnessing a sturdy growth in mobile application platforms.

As we mentioned recently, WeChat currently boasts 300 million users worldwide, with 40 million overseas users.

On the Alexa traffic rank, Zing Video is the fifth highest ranked site in Vietnam. But that number piggybacks on the strength of Zing Me, VNG’s flagship Facebook-like site. They’ll be allowing users to download individual videos they want to keep starting on April 9th; and from April 19th to June 1st, users can download their own videos en masse. It’ll all be over officially on the June 2nd when the service goes completely offline.

Taking down the service falls in line with two main factors for VNG, a general shift in strategy and a disinclination to compete head on with Youtube. In terms of strategy, VNG has been going heavy into mobile with new products like mobile chat app Zalo and mobile social games like Giai Dieu Vui while maintaining its strong strategic advantage with web real estate like Zing MP3, Zing News, Laban (a web and mobile browser), Zing TV (which allows users to broadcast Vietnamese television onto their web browser or mobile), Zini (a new Weibo or Twitter-like service released earlier this month), and Baomoi (the leading news portal that VNG acquired). In terms of foreign competition, Youtube currently holds the number four Alexa traffic ranking in Vietnam just behind Google and Facebook.

On one side, VNG is obviously shifting its resources into new projects like Zalo and Zini, but it also brings up a scary thought: can Vietnamese companies handle competition from mega companies like Google and Facebook? Certainly, VNG’s Zing Me has maintained a strong domestic growth rate of 12 million users compared to Facebook’s 12 million – though Facebook’s aggressive one million new users per month growth rate in Vietnam makes it look like it’ll win in the end. But can this growth be maintained for long as Facebook gets more aggressive about how users can access its platform with apps like Facebook Home?

In China, Youtube has been blocked since 2007 effectively allowing local competitors to dominate the space without resistance. In Japan, Youtube has faced an innovative competitor in Niconico-douga which in addition to streaming videos, allows users to comment on top of the video. Up until now, VNG’s Zing Video was the only one that could take on Youtube in Vietnam.

This underlines a current of unease in the Vietnamese consumer domestic market. Effectively, VNG is competing with Google and Facebook on multiple fronts, and it’s having to pick its battles more wisely in order to stake out a secure market advantage. Zalo makes a lot of sense because both Google and Facebook are weak in chat apps. But with Google rumored to acquire Whatsapp soon (and Google Talk rebranding as Google Babel to be more like a new-style group messaging app), how will Vietnam’s Zalo fare if Google puts all of its engineering weight behind one chat app competitor that is already incumbent in the space? And how will Zing Me do up against a Facebook that is even more aggressive about innovating its interface. On the other hand, Zing MP3 is bound to remain untouchable with the American music industry holding back services like Spotify and Pandora from going global.

All of this, although fascinating and telling of VNG’s prowess in the consumer space, does not bear much weight on VNG’s central business: gaming.

(Source: Zing’s Blog)

Vietnam just might be the first Asian nation to legalize gay marriage later this year. The upper echelons have been discussing legalizing since mid-2012 and the gay community has been waiting with bated breath with gay pride demonstrations and literature.

And the internet has been heating up with support for the LGBT movement in Vietnam too. My Best Gay Friends, a series of nine Youtube videos made in Ho Chi Minh city, has gone viral in Vietnam – the eighth episode garnering over 1.4 million views so far. The number may seem small in contrast to PSY’s Gangnam Style, but to put it in context, Vietnam’s top music videos rarely break three million views. So, it’s a huge step in the direction of getting the mainstream Vietnamese population on board with gay rights.

My Best Gay Friends – a hit-tip to the Bangkok Post for spotting this – humorously follows the lives of various people in the LGBT community as they celebrate birthdays, hanging out with each other in the city, and go through the trials of life in Ho Chi Minh city. The issues range from mundane topics to serious things like marriage and perception in modern society. Bonus, it’s absolutely hilarious. The channel that’s been posting the series has been doing videos in support of gay pride since 2007. My Best Gay Friends started last year and the most recent episode came out three weeks ago, and the popularity hasn’t abated. Each episode has broken a million views.

Last year, Vietnam had its first ever Gay Pride parade in Hanoi, the country’s capital, where parents came out in support of their children who had come out of the closet. This is particularly inspiring in a country where being gay is generally laughed at and scorned. Families have been known to disown their children upon discovering their sexuality, and the words “bị bi đê”, from the French, literally implies that being LGBT is a disease. So the video going viral underlines growing support for the Vietnamese LGBT community and a possible counter to common misconceptions.

You can check out the first episode here and then you might get into the whole series as well:

Here’s what the thing looks like plugged in in front of a big HDTV.

A closer shot of the plugged-in Xiaomi TV.

A selection of streaming movie options from iCN TV, including Painted Skin 2 and some older films.

A close-up of the screen during HD streaming from the web. Not bad!

You can also connect a USB thumb drive to the Xiaomi TV box, and even stream content to other devices locally via DLNA.

Setting up local streaming for a dubious digital copy of Django Unchained. Looks like the Xiaomi TV could be a nice way to play pirated films, too.

The settings menu.

There’s not really much here we didn’t already know about, but it’s still interesting to see the box finally in action in the wild. Does this look like the sort of thing you’d buy?

(Sohu Digital via TechWeb)

China’s top video-streaming company Youku Tudou (NYSE: YOKU) has signed an exclusive two-year deal with Hong Kong channel TVB. If you’re Chinese, you’ve most likely watched at least one or two popular dramas from TVB. The deal allows Youku Tudou and its two sites to serve over 2,500 hours worth of TVB’s new and classic Chinese dramas.

The agreement also notes that TVB and Youku Tudou will explore partnerships to co-produce original content. The statement also revealed that Youku Tudou has a whopping combined audience of over 100 million daily video views from mobile devices.

Youku Tudou President Dele Liu commented this evening:

This strategic and cooperative partnership combines the strength of Youku Tudou’s internet platform and apps with TVB’s wonderful repertoire of shows. It’s an invaluable combination that will help Youku Tudou achieve its goal of being the go-to source for high-quality internet television in China.

The Youku and Tudou sites are in a spending war with rivals like Sohu Video, Baidu’s iQiyi, and Tencent Video, to secure the rights to popular TV series and major movies.

If anything, this deal strengthens Youku Tudou’s dominance in the internet TV segment in China. Before Youku and Tudou merged, both video stream sites have had working relationships with TVB – though they were previously rivals before last year’s merger. But with combined efforts, resource, and audience, tying up exclusive deals should be easier for the company.

Getting tied up by a girl who’s into Fifty Shades of Grey, losing a kidney, getting an STD, ending up on the front page of a tabloid. Such are the dangers of modern day dating to be seen in a new music video from Chinese startup Guanxi.me. The video (embedded below) is called ‘Don’t Hook Up’ and, perhaps ironically, comes from the makers of a location-based dating app. Yes, its own app could be used for hook-ups, but the idea is that it’ll help you find a better class of dinner date.

The slickly-made music video also serves to point out that the Guanxi.me app (pictured) has pivoted in the months since it took series A funding from Singapore-based SingTel Innov8. Back then it was a straight-laced business networking app, but now it looks more like a local dating app in the mold of the wildly successful Momo. (UPDATED: Luc Micaelli from Guanxi.me tells us that it has expanded, but it’s not just a dating app: “Users can select what they want to do with the app among five categories: common interests, dating, new friends, close friends, and networking. So networking is as important as dating for us.”).

While there might be more potential users in being a dating app, it’s also much more crowded a market than the app’s previous domain.

Anyway, check out the ‘Don’t Hook Up’ music video and let us know in the comments if you think it’s a good sell for the social app:

Grab the app for iPhone or Android from the Guanxi.me homepage.

China’s Xiaomi has proven itself to be pretty great at selling phones, but the company surprised a lot of people when it announced it would be selling a set-top box last fall. Unfortunately, shortly after that announcement came the news that the box wouldn’t be going on sale after all as it had run afoul of China’s rather strict regulations about television. Now, according to a Sina Tech report, the device is finally back in business and is head for its first limited sales on April 9th.

Insiders told Sina Tech that the device had been formally approved for sale, and that it will go on sale for the first time on April 9th, a day Xiaomi has designated “Mi Fans day” and on which it will also be selling its smartphones. That sale is likely to be quite limited, however, and it’s not clear when the box might be available for sale again after that.

The real question, though, is whether or not the service has been weakened as a result of the regulatory intervention. By law, Xiaomi was forced to partner with one of a few state-approved operators for online TV, and the company went with CNTV, CCTV’s online arm. It’s not yet clear what the effect on content has been, but an insider told Sina Tech that Sohu’s video content had disappeared from the platform but other video content like Tencent’s video library was still accessible. Music features like Douban also appeared to still be available, but we’ll probably have to wait until April to be sure of what the final picture looks like.

We have contacted Xiaomi for comment on this story and will update this post when we hear back.

(via Sina Tech)

The China-based messaging app WeChat is seeing explosive growth in Indonesia right now. WeChat has reached the number one overall position on the country’s iOS and Android charts a few days ago. The WeChat team then said that its number of downloads increased by a factor of 30 since the TV advertising campaign began a couple of weeks ago.

WeChat is also quite popular on the nation’s number one smartphone platform, Blackberry. The app recently reached the second overall position over there as well. Back then the Tencent WeChat team told us that the app is adding 90,000 new users per day thanks to its TV ads. If the growth number is still consistent, then according to our math, WeChat should have at least one million users in Indonesia by now.

WeChat’s number one position on Android effectively kicked rival Line into second place in the overall app category. The Japan-based app is now placed at sixth in the country’s iOS apps rankings. The only messaging app rival that hasn’t launched any TV ads yet, the Korean-based company KakaoTalk, is positioned in the top 50 and top 80 in the Android and iOS app charts respectively.

Note that Line or WhatsApp could be the country’s number one messaging app due to their earlier pushes into the market here.

WeChat’s partnership with media giant MNC Media seems to be paying off in Indonesia so far – especially with its TV ads. And through the newly formed joint-venture company, MNC Tencent, the Chinese company might be able outgun Line when it comes to TV ads and public visibility in the long run. Indonesians who are looking forward to the new Blackberry 10 platform will also get a chance to use WeChat there in the near future.

Here is WeChat’s TV ad in Indonesia:

From the left – Willis Wee (blogger at Tech in Asia), Andi S. Boediman (director of Ideosource), and Ryu Kawano (CEO of Veritrans Indonesia)

Last week we held our second Meetup in Jakarta to discuss the country’s tech trends in 2013. Moderated by Tech in Asia blogger Willis, Ideosource director Andi S. Boediman, and Veritrans Indonesia CEO Ryu Kawano all shared their perspectives on what’s going on in Indonesia’s mobile and e-commerce industries. The two speakers then talked about the country’s investment scene, prompted by a question from the audience of assembled entrepreneurs and investors.

Here are a few highlights (or jump to the video below) from the Jakarta Meetup:

• Willis set the scene with a summary of what happened in Indonesia’s tech scene in 2012. This included data on internet user numbers, credit card penetration, and pointed out that there was much more investment in the first half of 2012. This data came from Andy Zain, DailySocial, and Veritrans.

• Derived from his experience with portfolio company game developer Touchten, Andi recommended developers to build for the iOS platform so as to earn more money from users. But if the business model is about reaching the masses in cooperation with Indonesian brands, developers should build apps for Android instead.

• Ryu believes in focusing his effort and business plan on the 22 million residents of Jakarta rather than the 250 million Indonesian population. That’s because these Jakarta folks represent the biggest market and money – but of course you will use the 250 million figure when speaking to investors.

• There was an interesting argument going on from the two speakers about whether the e-payment industry will be able to solve itself. Andi believes that if e-commerce companies have exceptional business advantages like having an exclusive product, then customers won’t mind taking more steps to pay for those products. Ryu however believes that those extra steps – eg: making ATM transfers being more hassle than paying by credit card – would drive away potential sales as customers would then have more thinking time about their impulsive buying decision.

• At the end of the Meetup, Andi said that the problem in the Indonesian startup scene isn’t one of investors, but the lack of quality in Indonesian startups. He suggested that bigger foreign investors should only make follow-up investments, while local, smaller investors like himself will take care of the early stage funding.

Of course there were lots more interesting points delivered during the Jakarta Meetup, which is why we made a video of the whole thing. This Jakarta Meetup was initially scheduled for January, but was postponed due to the major flood in the city. Here’s the video below.

Stay tuned for the highlights from our other Meetups soon!

Thank you to our Awesome Sponsors | Ethics statement for events:

Corporate sponsors

VC sponsors

Startup sponsors

Now that everyone is over a certain horse-riding dance, the next music meme all over the internet is the Harlem Shake. It’s already taking off in China in terms of both being shared over social networks like Weibo, as well as some recreations of the easy-to-replicate, freak-out dance.

Dubbed “Ha Lin yao” in Chinese, we’ve found three versions of the Harlem Shake made by Chinese netizens. As you can see: it’s the same simple formula the world over: one lone dancer gyrates to the building intro, and when the bass drops that’s when everyone else gets down and dirty. Masks or helmets are encouraged, but optional. Unlike a certain Korean pop sensation, there’s no set dance routine, making this the perfect meme for the reality TV attitude-is-more-important-than-talent generation.

[UPDATED two days later with video from Oppo]. There are not yet many Chinese reworkings of the Harlem Shake, but these three four stand out:

Startup shakin’

The perfect place for us to start is with the Shanghai-based startup NeoNan, a sort of GQ-like portal for men, which got its office pumping to the Harlem Shake. Look out for some nice horse-ridin’ meme-mixing going on in here:

Oppo Harlem style

We’ve updated the post with this one from phone-maker Oppo:

Gyrating grans

Next, some rocking grandmothers, one of whom throws some renegade nose-picking into the mix:

On drugs

Lastly, what looks to be a pharmacy is turned into a dancefloor by these Chinese students. Also, who left students to run a drugs store?

(Image via deepbluehorizon.blogspot.com)

There’s a lot of concern around the world about hack attacks emanating from China, especially after the attempted hacks on the New York Times recently. The newspaper got an early preview of a new report from security company Mandiant that claims to have tracked down a group of Chinese hackers – and, even more shockingly, says it can link them to China’s military.

Mandiant says that, in a previous report a few years ago, it could not verify the source of the numerous hack attacks from China that seemed to be coming from ordinary citizens. But that’s changed:

Now, three years later, we have the evidence required to change our assessment. The details we have analyzed during hundreds of investigations convince us that the groups conducting these activities are based primarily in China and that the Chinese government is aware of them. [...]

From our unique vantage point responding to victims, we tracked APT1 (Advanced Persistent Threats) back to four large networks in Shanghai [...] Our analysis has led us to conclude that APT1 is likely government-sponsored and one of the most persistent of China’s cyber threat actors. We believe that APT1 is able to wage such a long-running and extensive cyber espionage campaign in large part because it receives direct government support. In seeking to identify the organization behind this activity, our research found that People’s Liberation Army (PLA’s) Unit 61398 is similar to APT1 in its mission capabilities, and resources. PLA Unit 61398 is also located in precisely the same area from which APT1 activity appears to originate.

The security team and the NYT even pinpointed Unit 61398′s 12-storey building in Shanghai, from which Mandiant alleges many top-secret hacks on western targets are operated.

As spotted on TheNextWeb, the researchers have made a five-minute video showing some of the tactics and the workflow of these hackers:

Mandiant was the firm brought in by the NYT to investigate the paper’s own digital break-in, which saw hackers access the email inboxes of all its journalists, though the paper maintains that its database and articles were not accessed or tampered with.

The report says that the “soldiers” on Unit 61398 need to be proficient in English for their overseas-oriented attacks, and says that China Telecom installed “special fiber optic communications infrastructure for the unit in the name of national defense.”

As well as hack attacks, it says that “large-scale thefts of intellectual property” are also going on via these digital backdoors.

Chinese authorities insist that the nation suffers from these kinds of attacks too, and recently said that 10.5 million hacks originating from the US were detected in 2012.

The full Mandiant report is a 76-page PDF which can be found here.

A clip from a TV report about the hidden cameras

Spring Festival is usually a time of celebration, but this year it was also a time of embarrassment for some government officials in Hunan province. According to a Xinhua report, local governments across the province used webcams and other small “pinhole” cameras to secretly record lazy government cadres sleeping, playing browser games, and watching online videos during work hours. The secretly-recorded videos were edited together as part of a new propaganda production on how officials should behave, and there are already calls for some more permanent form of supervision to keep officials from wasting time at work.

The proliferation of the internet in China has made work faster and easier in many ways, but it also provides ample opportunities for time-wasting. Many popular games and videos can be played from any computer with a connection, and at a job I once held working for a state-owned company in China it was not at all unusual to see employees casually watching soaps on Youku or playing browser games in the middle of a work day.

This, of course, is a problem that employers everywhere face, but Hunan’s new movement to stamp out laziness in government workers could prove to be a strong deterrent if the officials caught wasting time are actually punished in a meaningful way. Web cameras and other recording devices are almost everywhere now; in cities, many Chinese people are carrying phones capable of recording HD video. If Hunan’s approach catches on, being a lazy official could become an awful lot harder to get away with.

That’s a good thing, and in fact, I’d like to suggest that Hunan and other provinces take things a step further by setting up web cams with publicly-accessible feeds in government offices so that the people can observe what public servants are doing with their tax dollars. Surely it wouldn’t be too difficult to set up a dedicated site, or perhaps a streaming partnership with a web video company, that users could log on to and watch over government offices. Call it crowdsourced supervision.

In fact, perhaps these web feeds could also be accompanied by a button that, when clicked, would sound a loud klaxon alarm in the office to wake up anyone who was sleeping. I’m sure that internet trolls would abuse that kind of system mercilessly, but you have to admit, it would resolve the problem of officials sleeping on the job!

OK, that’s not a realistic suggestion, and although it would be technically possible, I doubt many local governments would ever make public feeds of their offices available online either. Still, they really should consider it. In addition to cutting down on time-stealing, it would also be a great step forward in the direction of government transparency and it could even help cut down on corruption (although most of that happens outside the office).

The technology is there; all that’s needed is a government with the guts and vision to implement it. Someday, I hope I’ll be able to go online and waste time during my workday by supervising local government officials online.

(Xinhua via QQ Games)

Back in December we got word that Cinemacraft had raised a new round of funding. Its Videogram service, as you may recall, is a handy service that gives users a paneled, comic book style preview of online videos.

The startup recently moved from Tokyo to Silicon Valley to join the 500 Startups accelerator program, and since then it has made some progress with its HTML5 Videogram site. This latest iteration lets users start videos on the panel or frame which they find most appealing, skipping over parts that might be boring.

Under the ‘share’ function, there’s also now a new feature that lets you pin that particular frame to Pinterest, or you can share the clip to social networks or send it by email.

The company is working on native mobile apps as well for iOS, Android, and Windows Phone, and those should be coming soon.

If you’d like to get an idea for how the new Videogram functions work, you can check out the embedded video below, or head over to the site to create a Videogram of your own.

Television is still the dominant medium in Vietnam. 90 percent of all Vietnamese citizens own a television set, and for ad spending, television dominates with over 70 percent of the market. Compare this to the Internet, the online population is closing in on 35 percent and internet advertising spending is just below four percent of the total ad spending in 2012. TV is still the biggest medium and mobile-oriented folks realize this.

With mobile on the rise, is it any surprise that mobile apps in Vietnam have been moving in the direction of providing television? That’s where VTV Plus comes in, a mobile app that streams live television. The state-owned television media provider, VTV, built its own Android app and released it on the Google Play store yesterday.

The app provides 28 channels from VTV and with just one click users are immediately able to see what is happening on those channels live. Users can watch sports, news, business reports, and entertainment across all of VTV’s channel offerings.

VTV Plus enters a pretty crowded space where many apps on Android are already making a play for mobile television using VTV’s content. But with VTV making its own app, it not only provides better and faster streaming than its competitors but it also shows us that state-owned media companies are not ignoring mobile, and are actually very involved in shaping mobile’s future. With state-owned companies creating their own social network where users need to provide their social security numbers, and large corporations like FPT under semi-state control, we can expect to see more services like VTV Plus coming out of state-owned companies.

Of course, this also means private competitors like Viet Mobi TV Free and weTV, which already claims to have over half a million users, will have to step up their game.

Find the VTV Plus app for Android in the Google Play.

While the holiday season has arrived for many of us, one Indonesian startup decided to tap into the holiday spirit by doing a charity campaign. That startup is Indonesian creative network Kreavi.com. Co-founder Benny Fajarai said that social projects such as this can help connect Indonesian creative talents and show the public that good designs can also have a significant impact on people’s lives.

Kreavi is selling New Year’s greeting cards (pictured right and below) designed by its members in a special Kreavi Challenge. Each greeting card is sold for IDR 20,000 ($2) and all of the profit will be donated to three schools in Jakarta. The 24 card designs were selected by experienced creative professionals acting as judges. The greeting cards are printed by Indonesian greeting card printing service Kartumuu.com.

In the Kreavi project video below, we can get a glimpse of the students’ lifestyle at the Tanah Abang kindergarten, one of the three to be helped by this campaign. The students live in a slum area, just next to a railroad. 35 students in that school are living below the poverty line, forcing their parents to make their children prioritize working as street beggars rather than studying at school. The teachers there are all volunteers as well, with little support from the government yet. The money collected will be used according to each school’s needs.

Benny said that Kreavi will hold more social events like this whenever possible in 2013. The money generated so far has totaled IDR 7.5 million ($781). Companies and individuals can also help donate over on berbagi.kreavi.com. The deadline for greeting card purchases is Sunday, December 30th.

Christmas is only four days away and to help celebrate the holiday season, Indonesian developer Hompimplay has put its premium version of Jolly Jingle iOS app for sale at a 30 percent discount through to December 29th. The team describes Jolly Jingle as an educational and interactive sing-along app to teach children timeless Christmas carols at their own pace.

There are 21 songs available in the app including the ever-popular Christmas carols Jingle Bells, Frosty the Snowman, and Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Each song is performed by children and has highlighted lyrics on-screen. There are also interactive objects inside the app which can be tapped while the children are singing along to it.

The team explained that they were inspired to build a Christmas carols sing-along game after watching the Jim Carrey movie, A Christmas Carol. Then the Hompimplay team connected with other talents that made the app possible – with Aaron Randy as the illustrator, Bruno Valenti as the composer, Ashley Burns as the singer, Johan as the kids’ choir manager, and Scott Singer who is the programmer.

Jolly Jingle is available on three platforms – iOS, Blackberry Playbook, and Android – but only the iOS version is for sale right now. Since its launch back in November, the app has impressively garnered around 80,000 downloads with most of the downloads on the iOS platform. Besides getting a good response on crowd-sourcing site AppBackr before the product release, the app also has had great reviews as well from numerous websites and users.

Jolly Jingle is a premium app that normally costs $2.99, but that’s now down to $1.99 for its iOS version. There’s also a freemium version here. Or get the paid app here in iTunes, the PlayBook AppWorld, or the Amazon App Store.

Hompimplay also has an educational app called ABCDay which we reviewed before.

Relocating from one country to another is never an easy task. For some, the decision would probably mean sacrificing friendships, family, and other things you enjoy in your pursuits.

Adriana Gascoigne, the CEO and founder of both Girls in Tech and HelpLearn.Asia, initially moved from the United States to Singapore for personal reasons. When things fell through, she quickly picked up the pieces, and secured a position in startup within a couple of months. After eight months in sunny Singapore, she decided to embark on her own venture, HelpLearn.Asia, while continuing the expansion efforts of Girls in Tech throughout Southeast Asia. She is also currently working on a social enterprise, which will also be revealed in the upcoming months.

Prior to starting up, Adriana had a taste of both corporate and startup life. She was the vice president of marketing at SecondMarket, where she was responsible for marketing, branding strategy, event production, and digital media efforts. Adriana has also worked at various technology startups, such as ImpulseFlyer, hi5, SocialGamingNetwork (SGN), Jambool’s SocialGold, and GUBA, where she spearheaded marketing, communications, and analytics. Her background as the vice president of 360 Digital Influence at Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide and vice president of the digital group at Edelman has also reinforced her experience, which proved essential in the setup of HelpLearn.Asia, an e-learning platform providing tutorials on online and digital marketing tools.

With regard to the Girls in Tech Singapore chapter, that initiative grew to over 600 members in just a couple of months. Managing a non-profit organization virtually poses two challenges: How does Adriana(pictured right) motivate the managing directors of each chapter? And how does she manage to grow her member base so quickly?

In the video interview above, Adriana tells us that she leads by example. Regardless of the circumstances or challenges posed to her, she continues to work hard and is dedicated to build her passion around technology startups. She hopes to empower, engage, and educate women in technology, and is driven to make Girls in Tech succeed.

Was the move to Singapore worth it? Does Adriana miss her family and her friends?

She admits, yes, but communication tools like Skype have helped her to stay connected to her loved ones back home. In Adriana’s words:

It is a sacrifice but also an opportunity. I’m learning a lot about doing business in another part of the world, [where] the economy is thriving and people are eager to learn from those of us who have lived in Silicon Valley for many years. I most likely won’t be here forever, but for the time being – I’m living everyday as if it was my last – enjoying what I do, the people who I surround myself with, and focusing on the things that make me smile.

What’s her advice to fellow female entrepreneurs? Take risks.

If you would like to find out more about her entrepreneurial journey, challenges faced, and how she overcame them, check out the video above.

And for those who are keen to find out more about the HelpLearn.Asia seminar series, check out the website here. There are also early bird discounts for those who register before December 28!

This is part of Tech in Asia’s series on female entrepreneurship.

Photo: from Kompas

Nokia Indonesia’s Windows Phone apps competition, the Lumia Apps Olympiad, found its 20 gold medalists yesterday from a field of 428 competing developers. Here are four interesting apps from the event that stood out in particular:

PATION

From the Nokia Maps and Navigation API category, this app helps you look for hospitals and infirmaries in the country using keywords like names of hospitals, illnesses, or health services.

RumahSedap

The RumahSedap app comes from the fresh food e-commerce company, eRumahSegar. The app uses Nova magazine’s API to showcase cooking recipes for its users. It also allow users living in Jakarta area to also buy ingredients from RumahSegar.

Sakera Math

Solite Studio’s Sakera Math was originally a Nokia S40 game which recently won the Rookie Game of the Year 2012 at Mobile Games Developer War 4. Just as its name implies, players have to save 20 tourism spots in Indonesia from imminent danger by solving math questions on each dropping fireball.

DragManArds

DragManArds is a strategy game where you control swordsmen, magicians, archers, and other characters to fend off a swarm of enemies. The game is built by Own Games, which was also one of the winners in Ancol’s Coding on the Beach competition a few months ago.

Of course, there are other interesting apps that emerged from the competition as well. You can check all the winning apps’ pitch videos here.

[Source: Kompas]

Korean pop star PSY’s smash-hit Gangnam Style video (sorry if I just got it stuck in your head) has more than 943 million views on Youtube, and that number is only climbing. PSY doesn’t represent the entirety of Korean culture, of course — not even close — but the success of PSY and artists like him in Youtube is part of why the Korean Ministry of Culture gave Google a special achievement award yesterday for helping to spread Korean culture.

Of course, K-Pop is just one aspect of Korean culture available on Youtube; the service also hosts Korean films and TV shows, too. But K-pop has been increasingly popular outside of Korea and its success on Youtube is probably a big part of why Google was given this award. According to Google, the number of Youtube users viewing K-pop music videos has risen rapidly over the past three years.

In a post on its Korea blog, Google responded to the award:

We are greatly honored to receive this meaningful award. But this award is not really about YouTube — we’re just the platform. This is a reflection of the incredible creativity and ingenuity of Korean content creators who have captured the imagination of the world.

That’s very modest of the company, but we shouldn’t underestimate the value of a platform like Youtube when it comes to spreading culture globally. After all, millions of people around the world are already on Youtube; what better way is there to quickly export your culture?

[via Google Korea Blog]

The9 is one of China’s biggest gaming companies. ZTE is one of its biggest handset and telecom equipment makers. So what do you get when you put those two things together? No, seriously, take a second and think of a guess! Got one? OK, here’s what they’re working on: an internet television company. Wait, what?

It’s certainly not what I was expecting, but it’s true: ZTE and The9 have announced the establishment of a new joint subsidiary company (to be not-so-creatively called ZTE The9) based in Wuxi that will work on value-added services for the internet television industry. The ultimate goal is to create products that will support the web, mobile phones, and televisions, to get into 90 percent of Chinese households with internet TVs, and to create a high-quality internet TV entertainment platform. The new company’s CEO Zhao Jingyi said that the goal is to do all of that within two or three years, which certainly sounds ambitious.

The9 does have content partnerships with a number of mobile and TV companies to bring gaming videos to their platforms, so the partnership isn’t quite as weird as it sounds at first, although I have no idea what ZTE is bringing to the table. But it may just be that the companies see an opening for smart TVs in China. If that’s the case, they certainly wouldn’t be alone; there has been a lot of talk about the future development of China’s internet and smart TV sector recently (fueled in part by all the Xiaomi TV news).

Personally, I do think there could be an opening for smart TVs and an internet TV platform to explode in China. Although the concept hasn’t really caught on in the West, where people who want to access the internet services via TVs often do so via gaming consoles or HTPC setups, both of those things are far less common in China, and set-top boxes seem like a very short-term solution that is destined to ultimately be replaced by services and platforms that come pre-installed on the televisions themselves. My guess is that ZTE The9′s two to three year timeframe is a bit overly ambitious, but I could certainly be wrong. The tech industry in China is developing very quickly, and in another couple of years, things might really look totally different. My guess is that ZTE The9 will also be up against a lot of competition, though. It’s clear that Xiaomi is interested in the internet TV sector, and I expect a lot of other internet and tech companies to head in similar directions over the next year or two, especially if Xiaomi is able to resolve its regulatory issues.

[via Sina Tech]

Here’s what we think the new Xiaomi set-top box might look like after a few weeks on its hot new SARFT content diet!

Mobile phone makers Xiaomi recently branched out into the world of entertainment, announcing a set-top box that looked ready for an interesting run at the Chinese market until regulatory bureau SARFT got involved and shut things down because the gadget violated several regulations about streaming video content. Now, according to an article in Yicai, the set-top box may be on its way back, minus the offending content and with a possible rebranding of sorts.

Yicai’s article is based almost entirely on information from one or more anonymous sources at Xiaomi, which means this entire story should be taken with a grain of salt. That said, supposedly Xiaomi has cut access to all offending content from the device — any content that Xiaomi itself did not have the rights to stream — and will have the device back on the market soon. If true, that would also imply that Xiaomi has partnered with one of the seven media organizations SARFT requires companies making set-top boxes to partner with. That could mean the set-top box is also coming back with some new content courtesy of that new partner, but in all likelihood the device has lost a lot of its most desirable content: popular TV dramas that viewers demand by Xiaomi hasn’t purchased the rights to.

The Yicai acticle also speculates that the device may be repositioned somewhat as a mobile accessory to the Xiaomi phone, rather than as a standalone set-top box. Although this is not an entirely uncommon tactic for avoiding regulation — think eedoo’s iSec game console that was going to be branded a “home entertainment device” to circumvent the console ban — it’s not likely Xiaomi is trying to throw regulators of the trail here; rather, such a move would likely be aimed at shifting consumer expectations and lowering the hype surrounding the device.

Since Yicai is already speculating, though, let me throw in some speculation of my own: Xiaomi could also consider launching the set-top box outside the Chinese mainland. I’m no legal expert, but I suspect the regulatory environment would be a bit more relaxed in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and perhaps even Singapore — all markets where some consumers might be interested in a device that streams the latest and greatest in Chinese television. We knew Xiaomi has been toying with the idea of launching its smartphone handset in Taiwan, and a company like this does seem destined to make moves internationally sometime, so why not now? I certainly don’t expect Xiaomi will concede its Xiaomi TV dreams in China, but it may find a more receptive regulatory audience for selling its original version of the device overseas.

[Yicai via Sina Tech]

It was about a month ago when we first heard that Cinemacraft would be joining the 500 Startups Accelerator program. At the time it had just released Videogram, a clever service that gives users a comic book style preview or summary of a given video.

The company had previously raised $780,000 from 500 Startups and angel investors in Japan and Singapore, and now we have been told that it has closed another round from 500 Startups. CEO and founder Sandeep Casi couldn’t disclose the amount, but says “the bridge money will be used to deploy pilots in US and Japan and release native version of iOS and Android app to market.”

The service also recently got an update that allows Videograms to be shared, liked or commented upon just by right clicking on the video [1]. You see an example of how this works in the Videogram below.

The company recently moved from its base in Tokyo to Silicon Valley to participate in the 500 Startups program. And it will be interesting to see how well they execute this service on a mobile device. In terms of viewing, I’m not quite sure how easily a paneled video can be seen and manipulated unless the screen is fairly large. But let’s wait and see how it turns out.

Rocket Internet’s fashion e-commerce company Zalora Indonesia has laid out its plans for the upcoming Christmas holiday season. Zalora Indonesia has five new features for Indonesian customers in the coming months:

• A gift wrapping service, which will be made available starting December 1st.
• Phone orders
• A mobile version of its website to be ready in January 2013.
• Express delivery service for an additional charge between IDR 20,000 ($2) to IDR 50,000 ($5) depending on delivery locations. To be launched in January 2013.
• An installment payment system with banks to be launched sometime soon.

Zalora Indonesia is also selling Christmas-themed items such as clothes, accessories, and home decorations. These are available on Zalora Indonesia until December 25th.

In addition to its ads which have been aired on cable TV since September, the fashion e-commerce site also launched another ad campaign on national TV station SCTV in November, which you can see below. Zalora Indonesia claims it has had a big impact, increasing the site’s traffic to a rate of 150,000 visits every day. Orders also increased by a factor of two to three times.

As for brand recognition among Indonesians online, Zalora Indonesia’s Facebook page now has 160,000 fans, with 6,000 Twitter followers.

The Xiaomi set-top box: just the beginning?

We’ve written a lot about Xiaomi’s set-top box, which readers may recall has recently become tangled in a regulatory mess. That nightmare is far from over, but according to anonymous sources cited in a report in the Southern Metropolis Daily, Xiaomi is already looking past the set-top box, which it sees as just a stepping stone to producing an actual Xiaomi television.

The sources are vague, but the basic idea is a logical one: even with massive sales, Xiaomi isn’t going to be able to generate much revenue with the relatively cheap set-top box as compared to the sales of its first and second generation phones. Stepping back even further, the set-top box is, by its very nature, a temporary solution — a stopgap to help us get internet video onto our televisions until the time when everyone’s television supports all kinds of internet video apps natively. Smart TV manufacturers thusfar have done a rather clunky job of it, but that day is coming, and certainly Xiaomi can generate a lot more revenue selling TVs than it could seeing set-top boxes or low-cost smartphones.

So is an actual Xiaomi television coming in the near future? Probably not. Especially given the regulatory issues the set-top box has run into, it seems likely it will be quite a while before we see any traces of an actual Xiaomi television. But regardless of the veracity of this particular rumor, it does seem likely that a television is a part of the company’s long-term strategy.

[Southern Metropolis Daily via Sina Tech]

Travel website Wego Indonesia won an award for best social marketing strategy at the social media-oriented Eye For Travel Awards Asia in Hong Kong on Tuesday. Shashank Nigam, the CEO of Singapore-based aviation marketing strategy company SimpliFlying, who is a member of the judging panel for the awards, commented on the choice:

Wego Indonesia tackled a very basic challenge in the Indonesian travellers’ mindset – that there are more destinations than just Bali and Lombok.

We talked with Graham Hills, the managing director of Wego Indonesia, about how the team’s social media strategy won them this award. He said that Wego’s localization effort in the country was an essential part of it. The company hired two community managers who are very well connected in social media, and also an editorial team comprised of four writers for the website’s travel blog called Travel Editor’s Desk.

He explained three particular social media campaigns that the team implemented.

1. Travel Photo Contest – Ini Indonesia!

Meaning “This is Indonesia!”, for this Wego Indonesia campaign, the startup asked fans to upload their best photos of Indonesia that they personally took. Over 6,500 photos were submitted and a gallery was created and integrated into Wego’s social media channels for future use, to further promote destinations within Indonesia. Five winners accompanied by Wego Indonesia’s community manager experienced a five-day trip to Wakatobi on a photo assignment.

2. Vaastu Video

Together with Hifatlobrain Travel Institute in Jakarta, Wego Indonesia created a travel video called Vaastu to inspire exploration and travel within the country. Vaastu is Sanskrit for ‘direction,’ and the video was promoted on social media channels and on the team’s travel group pages on Vimeo and YouTube. The video notched up thousands of views and got good feedback from Wego’s fans.

3. Facebook Milestone Campaign

To celebrate Wego Indonesia’s achieving 250,000 fans on its Facebook page, the team held a campaign to ask fans to share their most unusual experiences on an aircraft. The prize was a fully paid trip to Bali. Those entries can further be used for PR purposes and Travel Editor’s Desk stories.

Currently, Wego Indonesia’s Facebook page has around 280,000 fans. The company’s Twitter page has 10,000 followers.

You might want to check out Wego Indonesia’s video, made a few months ago, which explains about the team’s social media strategies. It was made for the WITovation Awards’ ‘uber social’ category. The team was a finalist at that event.

This is a big day for Singaporean game developers Red Hare Studios as the team will release a Playstation 3 game called Page Chronica today. It was scheduled to hit the stores on November 1st, but due to unforeseen technical issues with the Playstation Network, the release date was delayed until today. The game is touted to be the first ever original concept game made in Singapore, while Straits Times reported that Page Chronica as Singapore’s first Playstation 3 game title to hit the stores.

Wee Lit Koh, the producer of Red Hare Studios, described the Page Chronica’s gameplay as a mix between Scrabble and Mario Bros. You will play as a librarian, Topez, who accidentally released an evil entity called The Big Bad that corrupted the world. The game plot then centers on Topez cleansing the world from the evil menace.

Interestingly, Page Chronica’s side-scrolling gameplay allows players to create words from the letters spread across the game to make various kinds of attacks. The longer or more complex the word is, the attacks become more powerful and can allow players to use more skill sets. Wee explained that the game uses a “word tree” which was constructed by collecting common words in British and American English with length of between two to seven letters. He estimated that there are around 10,000 words which are available to be used on the game.

Page Chronica targets several types of players: core gamers, platform gamers, and word puzzle gamers. The team’s main target is primary and secondary schools kids, emphasizing that children with such exposure to English vocabulary will help reinforce their command of the language. He explains his reason for including a local two-player mode:

With this feature, we hope that it will be kids who first introduce this game into the living room. Once this critical breakthrough is achieved, we will expect more people including [more mature] word puzzle lovers to embrace the game.

The team had great fun developing Page Chronica for the PSN platform, and they are looking to build more titles on the console moving forwards. Wee adds:

Engaging the media and the gaming community is our top priority, so that we can develop even better games in the future.

Page Chronica is available now for Asia, while gamers from the US need to wait until December 4th to get their hands on the game. For more information about Page Chronica, you can check out pagechronica.com.

In actuality, Innovation Works is investing in one of LeTV’s subsidiary companies. The company, called LeTV Zhixin, is responsible for the hardware and software for all of LeTV’s television operations (meaning the building of the LeTV super TV itself, not the operations of LeTV’s video streaming site). It’s not clear what percentage of that company is now owned by Innovation Works because both sides signed a confidentiality agreement, but LeTV Zhixin reps confirmed that the investment funds were already in hand and that the deal was totally finalized.

LeTV has been pivoting towards television hardware and software for some time now, and the company’s COO says that it hopes to do for the smart TV market what Apple did for the the smartphone market. We’ve yet to see any LeTV Super TV hardware, so it’s not clear whether the device has that kind of revolutionary potential, but the attention and investment from Kaifu Lee are certainly an indication that LeTV Zhixin is working on something interesting. We hope we get a chance to see it soon.

[Beijing News via Sina Tech]

Singaporean game dev PD Design Studio has launched a 2D hack-and-slash game called Dusty Revenge on online gaming platform Steam Greenlight recently, and they are looking for your votes to make the game available on Steam’s online store.

Keng Jin (aka: KJ), the co-founder of PD Design Studio, describes Dusty Revenge as a 2D side-scrolling beat-’em-up game. As the name implies, it tells the story of the main character exacting his revenge throughout the Wild West-themed game. KJ said that it took the studio two years to develop Dusty Revenge, which has seen the game’s graphics change from having cute animals into the serious-looking and bloodspattering creatures you see today. He explained further:

We wanted lots of good, old-fashion action and thus the revenge theme came in. Additionally, the idea came when we were watching lots of revenge-themed movies.

KJ believes that the special thing about the game is its supporting character mechanics, which allows the player to control three types of characters – a fighter bunny, a heavy arms wielding bear, and a sharpshooter dog. These characters play particular roles – for example, you’d want to call the artillery bear’s help when faced with a huge cluster of enemies, or the sharpshooter dog when you need help taking out pesky enemies in some inaccessible places.

Dusty Revenge will be made available for PC and Mac. The 10-man team is also looking to release the game for Playstation 3 and PS Vita, which will have a two-player mode, in the future. KJ said that he is still unsure about the game’s age/suitability rating, but he definitely wouldn’t recommend it to kids under the age of 12, as you’d see by all the blood in the game trailer.

PD Design Studio actually started as a multimedia company back in 2006. KJ explained that incidentally, the company’s first job was on a Flash-based game and they happened to do lots of them over the next few years. After changing the company’s focus to solely games development, they’ve also made two iOS games, Alien Masher and Move Caster – besides the current Dusty Revenge.

You can check out Dusty Revenge over at Steam here, and if you think the game’s worth your money, be sure to vote for it there.

Related:

• Malaysian-Built Japanese Game Up For Voting at Steam Greenlight

• Another Game Seeks Your Vote on Steam Greenlight, as Malaysian Game Devs Look to Penetrate Global Market

Playing around with Windows 8 at yesterday’s launch event (see the demo video below) in Singapore’s Esplanade Mall, the whole OS looks impressive. It’ll take any tech-oriented early adopter and a minimal amount of time and effort to understand the new tiles UI – even on a conventional laptop with no touchscreen. Of course, Windows 8 also blurs the line between a laptop and a tablet. Speaking at the launch event, Tracey Fellows, president of Microsoft Asia Pacific, emphasizes that with Windows 8, it is unveiling a reimagined Windows to the world:

Whether you want to consume or create, whether you want to work or play, Windows 8 delivers a no-compromise computing experience. You no longer need to choose between the fun and convenience of a tablet and the power and productivity of a PC.

But not all early reviews have been positive, and some charge the new OS with being clumsy and confusing.

Being someone who is constantly on-the-go but prefers to type on a keyboard for serious work, I appreciate the flexibility that Windows 8 offers. The UX is pretty fast and fluid. On the ‘start’ screen, one can have easy access to apps that can be customized to your own preference. We also had the privilege of Barrie Ooi, product manager of Windows 8 for Microsoft Asia Pacific, giving us all a run through in the video below.

Also in attendance was Todd Cione, chief marketing and operating officer for Microsoft Asia Pacific, who revealed that there are 600 million Windows 7 users globally. A total of 16 million people were selected to test Windows 8, going back to one year ago. Todd claims there are a total of 185 million Windows users in Asia Pacific out of 1.4 billion Windows worldwide, and he firmly believes that there is a lot of room for Windows 8 in terms of adoption in the region.

For users who currently have Windows XP, Windows Vista, or Windows 7 installed on their PCs, they’re able to download Windows 8 Pro at $39.99 (if their computer meets the minimum requirement) through the end of January 2013. As for those Windows 7 PCs purchased between June 2, 2012 and January 31, 2013, those users can download Windows 8 at $14.99 via the Windows upgrade offer available here.

Fashionably Bold, a fashion competition held by Blackberry and fashion e-commerce Zalora Singapore, reached its climax yesterday at 72-13 Gallery, as the eight winners showed off their stylish Blackberry-themed fashions on the runway. The winners also received their own photo-shoot prior to the event.

The fashion looks that were showcased during the event were developed by four online fashion personalities (pictured above) – Wardrobe Trends Fashion, Moonberry, Model Schmodel, and Sophie Willocq. Terence Pang, the head of marketing of Zalora Singapore says:

As an e-tailer known for marrying the convenience of the internet with a variety of worldwide styles, Zalora is happy to be collaborating with BlackBerry to further demonstrate how fashion and technology complement one another.

This is an interesting move by Blackberry, who hopes to make its handset a little more fashionable, hopefully giving it a fighting chance in the smartphone wars. You can check out and purchase the various fashion styles showcased during the event here. Zalora Singapore will also offer a 15 percent discount for any Blackberry phones purchased through M1, Singtel, or Starhub.

You can find video and pictures from the event below:

Last Tuesday, an Indonesian military Air Force jet crashed at a housing complex in Riau. Ironically, the injuries from that incident weren’t caused by the crashed plane, but by violent conduct from military who were securing the premise. This made headlines all over Indonesia after it was recorded and published on YouTube.

The video shows a soldier doing a judo-style take down and choking a journalist. There were other abuses which took place as well, to both local residents and other journalists who were taking pictures of the plane crash.

In the soldiers’ defence, they were securing the premise for public safety and also protecting classified information that could be leaked from the combat aircraft. But in the journalists’ defence, they were just doing their job – reporting a plane crash that took place in a civilian neighborhood, and that they were protected by the Press Preedom Act [1].

The incident also spurred quite a debate on the YouTube. Some people defended soldiers’ rights, considering their orders to secure the premise, but regretted that they used violence to do it. Some were equally displeased with both parties by calling them both arrogant; including the journalist who persisted on taking pictures. Others expressed disappointment that this violence happened in front of so many children. But the majority of those enraged by the incident blamed the soldiers.

In the end, The Jakarta Post cited Indonesian military commander admiral Agus Suhartono today as saying that he apologized for the assaults conducted by his subordinates. This is after numerous journalism associations across the country subsequently staged protests. The military promises to officially investigate the matter.

This is not the only moment that the Indonesian military displayed more arrogance than it ought to. The recent “Palmerah Koboy” incident saw a soldier use his gun and baton to intimidate and assault a biker at Palmerah area, over a routine traffic dispute. It was captured and published on YouTube, and has been viewed more than 685,000 times.

Now that Kompas is also promoting citizen journalism with its K-Report app for Blackberry, any arrogance and violence by the authorities can now be easily reported and published for the world to see. Authorities will likely (and hopefully) think twice before acting in this manner in the future.

[Source: Jakarta Globe via Sidomi, image: atjehpost.com]

This isn't a real photo of the device. But it might look like this. Hooray for groundless speculation!

The Chinese tech scene is full of rumors, but boy, this one is interesting. Sina Tech says that according to numerous sources it is in contact with, Xiaomi — the company that kicked off China’s cheap smartphone revolution last year with its M1 phone — has been working on a set-top box much like the Apple TV. Sources say the device is developed enough that it’s already in limited internal testing around the office. Video content for the device will reportedly come from China’s major internet video services, which I have to assume means Youku Tudou, among others.

An anonymous source at Xiaomi told Sina Tech:

Xiaomi is an internet company, and TV set-top-boxes will be using the internet [streaming] as a main selling point. As far as integration with the Xiaomi phone is concerned, it will have a feature like Apple’s Airplay.

We have contacted Xiaomi for confirmation or any comment they might have on this rumor, and will update if we hear back, although we don’t expect to hear anything conclusive. When you think about it, though, a set-top box would make a lot of sense, especially if Xiaomi could make one that relied primarily on 3G (or 4G) technology. Wireless service costs in China are quite low, and while not everyone has a computer or the internet in their homes, most people do have televisions. And if it had access to the vast streaming libraries of Youku Tudou and other major video players, an inexpensive Xiaomi set-top box could have a hugely disruptive impact on the market and accelerate the extent to which Chinese people are streaming their TV from the net rather than tuning in via satellite.

On the other hand, Apple — clearly one of Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun’s inspirations and a pretty successful tech company in its own right — still hasn’t really seen the kind of success with its Apple TV that most of its other products enjoy.

Then again, China is a very different market, and Xiaomi has proven with its smartphones that it knows how to sell here. Is a Xiaomi set-top box really coming, and if it is, can it really catch on? We’ll have to wait and see. But cynical though I am about some of what he says, I really wouldn’t advise anyone to bet against Lei Jun.

[via Sina Tech]

Last weekend, while we had our Startup Asia Bandung Hackathon, there was another interesting event taking place in over in Jakarta: the Indonesia Game Show. The event showcased numerous local games and also had its own competitions for both the gamers and game developers there. Here’s the list of the winning game developers across eight categories:

In the 3D game category, Garuda Games, which recently was one of the winners at Sparxup 2012, snatched first place with Steampunk Deathmatch. Agate Studio’s Vindicta, a robot first-person-shooting game earned second place.

In the 2D game category, Toge Productions, which also made the zombie-virus mobile game Infectonator that we reviewed recently, is still a force to be reckoned with on the PC gaming platform. The game developer received the first place for Relic of War, a strategy game taking place in 1940s war scene. Divine Kids’ very fun first-person-fighting game Campus Fighter in the second place.

Agate Studio’s flagship game Football Saga 2 made it to first place among Flash-based browser games. The developers recently told us it was created to help inspire and motivate the national football team. Ulin Gameworks’ game to promote awareness of Indonesia’s Orangutan, The Utans was awarded second place in this category.

The Komodo Island-inspired Save Komo game earned Creacle Studio the first place in the non-flash based category. Glass Finger’s Groovy Grape went on to become the runner-up.

Mobile games

Touchten’s smash-hit mobile game Infinite Sky, which is a fun fighter pilot shoot-out game, took the top spot in the smartphone category. Maximize’s Push the Box, which tells a story of a piggie who wants to save his friends from the big bad wolf, earned the second-place award.

There are more players in the featurephone gaming industry to look out for. Mintsphere’s Trigger Knight. Tinker Games also won this category with Backyard Madness, where you play the grandma in shooting away the mutated piggies at the backyard. Interestingly, both games are also available on smartphone platforms such as iOS and Android.

Indosat’s Tamagochi-like mobile game Planet Monstar earned the award for ‘Innovative Mobile Game.’ Here’s a video of the gameplay:

Choco Arts, which featured in CompFest 2012, won the ‘Favorite Local Game Developer’ award, while Dismal Happiness earned the second spot. I’m not too sure how they judged this particular category, but it’s a great boost for these two companies.

[Source: Techno.Ghiboo.com, image: DailySocial]

Last Friday we brought you an assortment of alternative interpretations of PSY’s ‘Gangnam Style.’ Well, here’s another one that’s could have easily made that list. It’s from a very creative American living in Beijing, and its called ‘Laowai Style.’

This may very well be my favorite laowai/foreigner performance since the days of the legendary Hong Laowai. At first I thought it might be John Pasden in some bad sunglasses, but a little Googling tells me that this is Fullbright Scholar Jesse Appell who has recently come to Beijing to undertake a sort of China comedy research project. He’s certainly off to a good start.

I also stumbled across his excellent Who’s on First routine, which I recommend you check out as well.

You can watch the ‘Laowai Style’ video below and let us know what you think. For readers in China, there’s a Youku version of the video here.

Steam Greenlight is the Kickstarter for game developers, but instead of pledges, the developers need to get people’s support so as to earn a spot at the Steam online store. We previously talked about a Malaysian-built, Japanese game which is up for voting called Alpha Kimori. This time around, there is another interesting Malaysian-built game at the site, called “Hoodwink: The Brute, the Babe, and the Bogey” created by E1 Studio. We talked to Amir Irwan, the executive producer of E1 Studio about the game’s prospects on Steam.

Hoodwink tells the story of a Michael Bezelle, who prefers to call himself an ‘acquisition expert’ rather than a ‘thief,’ in his adventure to outwit the last surviving corporate giant called ‘UniCorp.’ The game uses cell shaded art with a post-apocalyptic atmosphere setting. The graphics, music, and sound are all quite good.

Amir explained that the inspiration behind the game is the classic adventure games like Monkey Island, Grim Fandago and Full Throttle. He also said that the movie Blade Runner was the inspiration behind the architectural environment. He adds:

The game was 100 percent developed in Malaysia from all aspect (tech, art, and design). The music was scored by an award winning music composer, Leon Willett, who has offered himself to work with us.

Steam has the sole discretion to choose 10 games every month. Amir told me that Hoodwink has received good feedback and is currently sitting at number 66 [1] on Greenlight out of 3,000 submitted games there.

You can check the Hoodwink game here. If you like the game, be sure to support them there.

The Gangnam Style video by Psy has been viewed more than 359 million times and has inspired thousands of people across the world to remake the iconic dance by performing their own version of Gangnam Style.

Here’s a collection of the neatest Gangnam Style-inspired tribute/parody videos from around Asia to help kick start the weekend ahead of you:

1. Philippines

Here is a very well organized flash mob dance performed by around one thousand inmates of a Philippines jail. Yes, this is the same bunch of Cebu cellmates who hit global headlines back in 2010 with their Michael Jackson dance performances. I wonder if they get reduced sentences for these flash mob dances?

Plus, this video nicely showcases just how viral and influential the Gangnam Style song/dance is, as the prisoners’ video has been viewed close to 2.6 million times since it was uploaded just over one week ago.

2. Indonesia

This is a daring attempt by 1,000 Indonesians performing an illegal Gangnam Style flash mob at an Indonesian landmark called Bundaran HI. They did a pretty convincing job and even encouraged passers-by to join the mass dance. This video has been viewed around 1.9 million times so far.

3. Malaysia

Malaysians do not lose out when making their own Gangnam-themed music videos. This funny video is called “Orang Sabah Style.” Orang Sabah means Sahabans, and is made both to promote tourism on the Malaysian state of Sabah and to celebrate Malaysian Independence Day. Though the lyrics are in Mandarin Chinese, they provide English subtitles for more people to understand. The video has garnered around 3.6 million views so far.

4. Thailand

This is Thailand’s version of the Gangnam Style video – though it keeps the original’s Korean lyrics and just focuses on changing the visuals. Nonetheless, they’ve done a great job of keeping the humor of Psy’s video. Impressively, this video has close to 4.6 million views.

5. South Korea

This Korean-made video is called “Hongdae Style.” I don’t understand Korean but I think that is the only word changed from the original Gangnam Style lyrics. The cinematography of Hongdae Style closely resembles the original video. This one has an impressive 4.8 million views to date.

6. Singapore

Here’s a quirky video titled “Singaporean Style.” The music’s lyrics satirize aspects of life in the city state – but ultimately it’s about how they’re proud to be Singaporeans. This video has around 2.1 million views so far. Though we notice it is also getting quite a few dislikes, even from Singaporean commenters, perhaps because the performers have riskily changed the lyrics.

Bonus

This hilarious “Pyeonyang Style” video appears to be made by a Canadian, and is pretty hilarious. Although I’m not sure what Kim Jong Un would make of this particular Gangnam Style reboot. This video has 4.1 million views with lots of commenters joking that this video might instigate a nuclear war.

[Image source: HollywoodReporter.com]

Indonesian game publisher Qeon Interactive officially released its second online game called “Heva Online” recently in Indonesia. Korean gamers might be familiar with the game already as it is the same Heva Online title that was published three years ago by Korean game publisher Windysoft in South Korea.

Heva Online is dubbed by Qeon Interactive as today’s cutest 3D adventure MMORPG. To back that up the game publisher has chosen Indonesian all-girl pop group Cherrybelle as the game’s ambassadors. Andrian Pauline Husen, the director of marketing and sales at Qeon Interactive, believes that the collaboration with the cutesy Cherrybelle is the first of its kind in Indonesia. He hopes that this collaboration will bring a whole new dimension in the online game industry as well as the country’s music industry.

Heva Online has features such as a “clone battle” where the players’ pets can battle against each other, and a “burning mode” where players can transform themselves with tough superpowers. You can start playing the game for free starting tomorrow, October 6th.

The game looks really fun and engaging, definitely worth a try for online gamers out there. For more information, you can check it out here.

Malaysian game developer Sherman3D is reaching out to get more votes for its flagship Japanese RPG, Alpha Kimori, over at at online gaming platform Steam Greenlight. Sherman Chin of Sherman3D told me that they have reached nearly a thousand favorites at the moment, but the game still need a lot more votes to earn its way onto the Steam Greenlight online game store.

Sherman3D was one of three Malaysian game developers present at the recent Tokyo Game Show’s “Asia New Stars Area.” According to Sherman, Alpha Kimori is the only classic Japanese RPG at TGS that received acknowledgement by the Japanese media as a tribute to the JRPG genre.

Alpha Kimori is also the first official commercial game that uses the RPG Maker game engine, chosen by its engine distributor Degica. Sherman explained that they didn’t use the RPG Maker’s ready-made graphics and game resources, instead they used only custom-made ones. He added:

Sherman3D is working closely with Degica and Enterbrain (the creators of the RPG Maker engine) to create even more commercial classic Japanese Role Playing Games that are more than the amateur RPGs created with RPG Maker, showcasing the power of the RPG Maker game engine for professional purposes.

You can check out Alpha Kimori here, and if you like it, be sure to show it some love.

After the launch of YouTube Indonesia, country marketing manager for Indonesia, Krishna Zulkarnain, says that an opportunity is now available for new video content partners on the local YouTube Indonesia. And so Google will open the content partners position for Indonesia.

Anyone can apply as this will be the latest roadmap for YouTube Indonesia. But Google hasn’t set any date now. He stated that the Google Indonesia team will have to prepare the technical side of that.

To apply as an new content partners and producer, Krishna said that there is one main requirement: all of the videos’ rights must be in the partner’s hands. Therefore the proposed content partners should be the original owner even of the master recordings.

The content partners will get the benefit of a national and global audience and will of course also earn more money. You will also get exclusive development programs, video equipment, and other tools to improve your skills in video making.

Building brands on YouTube

Aside from that good news, Krishna was busy inspiring the attendees at today’s Google Day event in Jakarta. He opened the seminar by talking about building brands using YouTube, giving the example of the successful campaign by Lady Gaga in building her personal brand.

Krishna said that business leaders should be able to maximize the function of all screens. From laptops to cellphones, all of the screens can be used as an extension for TV commercials. Google data stated that there is a 24 percent increase in brand recall on YouTube compared to conventional TV ads. YouTube’s ad products, dubbed Masthead and TruView, are said to drive a million hits in a single day.

YouTube Masthead gives an interactive experience to click on products, play games, and even play TV commercials. Krishna said that it can help your business to engage with your consumers in a richer way.

As for TruView, it lets the audience choose to watch your ad. If they don’t want it, they can just skip ad. This first five seconds will be the time for consumers to make that decision. Krishna explained why YouTube allows its viewers to skip the add:

You only pay when users choose to watch your video ad. You can measure the engagement.

With the ability to choose to watch, TrueView could tell that 85 percent of the people who choose to are highly engaged with the content. Brands don’t need to pay if the viewers just opt to skip your ad. This feature makes your investment more measureable, he says. If you don’t like this kind of feature, Instream will make sure the viewers can’t escape from your ad. Krishna adds:

We enable the technology. The limit is your creativity and imagination in driving your business in the digital age.

CEO Victor Koo explained the reason for the differentiation campaign thusly:

The Chinese online video industry has been characterized by fierce competition for the past several years. Now that Youku and Tudou are no longer competing with one another, it’s time to let both sites be themselves. Tudou’s new design and identity position it to appeal to younger, more independent audiences than the more general audience served by Youku.

Tudou's new frontpage look: slicker presentation, much bigger video player.

So what does the new Tudou look like? The design is cleaner, and features a larger video player. It also features a new discussion feature — called “Doupao” — that supposedly makes video more social by making real-time comments pop up while you’re watching a video so you see what other people are saying. I wasn’t able to see this in action on the couple videos I checked, but frankly, I’m not sure what this really adds to the experience, as (like any video website) most of the comments on Tudou are inane and a decent percentage of them are gibberish. But a Pop-up Video approach to web commenting could work with the right commenters; perhaps Tudou users will take to the new system.

Tudou will also be featuring new content, including Animation and Entertainment channels with Tudou-only programs as well as a Tudou Originals channel that will feature Tudou original programming. Youku has had quite a bit of success with its own Youku Originals programs, and is presumably looking to repeat that with Tudou. The channel will launch with the show Yif Magic (an entertainment program) and soon after add Tudou Surfin’ and Tudou Groovin’ (newsmagazine-style pop culture news shows)

Not everything about Youku and Tudou has stayed separate since the merger, though. Searches on Tudou are now being run through Youku’s Soku video search platform, albeit with an orange-colored Soku logo to match the Tudou color scheme.

Full disclosure: For a brief period of time in the past, I worked for Youku. Now I don’t, and I have no interests in the company (or any of its competitors, or any other Chinese tech company at all.)

Youku representatives have responded to questions about the selloff by saying that is Mr. Liu’s personal financial decision, and does not violate any company rules.

It’s not clear whether the timing of the stock sales was a coincidence, but the whole thing does seem a little odd, especially on the heels of Youku’s successful merger with Tudou. Youku’s stock wasn’t at an especially high point before the sale, and it’s difficult not to speculate that Liu and Brookside might be privy to some internal information that influenced their decision, even though there’s absolutely no evidence of that.

Full disclosure: I previously worked for Youku, but have no current interests in it or any other tech company.

[via Sina Tech]

Photo: Businessinsider.com

The California-made video The Innocence of Muslims, the anti-Islam film behind violent and deadly protests in several countries, is all over YouTube. This has led to the Indonesian government asking Google-owned YouTube to restrict access to the video which portrays the Prophet Mohammed as immoral.

The Ministry of Communications and Information Technology spokesman, Gatot S. Dewa Broto, said that Google as the parent company of YouTube had emailed them on Thursday evening to say it had blocked Indonesia’s access to 16 URLs related to the “Innocence of Muslims” videos on the site. But the video remained online until Friday noon until access was restricted.

The minister of Communications and Information Technology, Tifatul Sembiring, stated on Friday afternoon that ministry has coordinated with YouTube to take down the videos in question. Extracts of the film were still available with the help of video-sharing websites up until Sunday. Even though Google was making special efforts, it still takes time to block everything due to file sharing. When Indonesians try to access the video now, they will see “This content is not available in your country due to a legal complaint.”

Widespread Protests

Around 250 people from Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia protested in Apsari Park, Surabaya, regarding the film. This was followed by around 50 Indonesian students who trampled the US flag and threw eggs at a US diplomatic mission American Presence Post, which is part of the US Embassy in Jakarta, in Medan today. This afternoon, thousands of people from Muslim organizations like Gerakan Reformis Islam (Islamic Reformist Movement), Gerakan Pembela Islam (the Islamic Defenders Movement), dan Front Pembela Islam (the Islamic Defenders Front) held a march from Hotel Indonesia to the US Embassy Jakarta to condemn the film. They all demand the same thing: hard punishment for the filmmaker, Sam Bacile. Some even demanded the death penalty.

Muslim protests also occurred in other parts of the world since the film originally appeared on Youtube. Today, Sam Bacile been arrested and questioned by the United States police, but due to illegal drugs possession, not the film.

Broto also said that the government wrote a notification to mobile phone maker RIM to ask for a content filter on its smartphone services. Broto said:

We could access the videos on Blackberry too so we wrote to RIM to ask that it filter them, and RIM has been very co-operative [and filtered it].

The video is also blocked in Libya, Egypt, and India. Minister of Information in Malaysia, Rais Yatim on Sunday also asked Google to remove the video from YouTube from the country as it may trigger violence. Google has begun blocking the video access in Malaysia as a respond to the official complaint. But Google refused a White House request Friday to take it down.

US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, said that the video is disgusting and reprehensible. She emphasized religious freedom and tolerance. Clinton added:

The United States government has no connection to the film and absolutely rejects its content and message.

This film was hardly noticed before anti-Muslim activists in Virginia, America, reposted it and sent the links to activists and journalists in Egypt. It doesn’t take a genius with a high budget (or any directing skills) to spread religious hatred online and get instant attention.

University can be a tough time for students from all over Indonesia, living in rented rooms and missing their families. Sometimes overseas students are craving home-cooked meals. The founders of the cooking show startup, Masak.TV, had the same feelings when they were at college.

Masak.TV presents a cooking tutorial video podcast with young chefs Faisal Lanin and Tirta Pane. It also features chef Alvin Maulana – aka Mr. Ribet (meaning ‘busy’) – who shares simple tips for preparing cooking ingredients. They share the same culinary passion, and carry Masak.TV’s mission to make cooking look easy and fun. The target audience is young people overseas who might be missing simple home-cooked meals.

Alvin once worked as a head chef at the Madam Kwok restaurant, Epicentrum Kuningan mall, Jakarta. But for now, he works as an executive chef in Cabal Dining and Lounge, Manado, North Sulawesi. Alvin said that the Masak.TV concept came to life when they met head of production house Bagindo KPS, in Pulomas, Jakarta. They finally launched their cooking show on November 2010. Alvin explains:

We choose this format because online TV is more easily seen by all people no matter where they come from. We make this show look relaxed, because we are all still young. I’m only 24-years old. It’s more cool to make the show not too heavy and stiff. Our mission is to bring “easy cooking and [make it] enjoyable.”

Masak.TV collects donations to fund its website via PayPal, and it uses media spot advertising to attract sponsorship. It’s still growing with 7,528 YouTube viewers and the crew also spreads simple cooking tips on its Twitter account while reaching out to other chefs to share their knowledge. A mobile app is on the way to make content easier to enjoy anytime.

The folks at Masak.TV hope people are not afraid anymore to experiment in the kitchen. You can even bring your iPad to replace your cookbook with cooking videos. Give it a try! Bon appetit!

Don’t be sad if you miss your favourite TV show or football game. Indonesian telco Telkom has a solution with video on demand (VOD) that you can watch anywhere and anytime. At a glance, the new UseeTV looks like local rival MivoTV where you can stream TV channels. The difference is you can pick the program that you missed from up to three days ago and watch them right now.

VOD streamed to TVs is not a new thing. FirstMedia debuted it last year with Showtime for its pay TV service. Telkom also introduced Groovia TV for online viewers. eGM Telkom Multimedia Division representative, Achmad Sugiarto, explained to us that Groovia TV was meant for the high-end market – and now Telkom releases UseeTV for a bigger audience which has unlimited data packages on their gadgets.

UseeTV supports 13 channels including local and national channels, even Al-Jazeera. On the ToVi page within the service, you can watch both Indonesian movies and international movies from the likes of Universal Studios. The video content is provided by Telkomvision, which is part of the Telkom Group. As for audio, by the end of this year there will be 350 radio stations that you can stream on the radio page.

Registering for this is free, but you will have to be a Telkom subscriber for one of its other products, like Speedy (internet provider), KartuHALO, or SimPATI for mobile services. Some of the content is free – though to enjoy most of the movies, you have to sign up for the premium package. Achmad says that they’re giving a special price:

Specially for our Telkom group subscribers, we give a premium package with 50 movies for only Rp 3.500 ($0.37). That is really cheap, and might even rival the price of pirated DVDs for some.

According to deputy eGM Telkom Multimedia Division representative, Bambang Lusmiadi, UseeTV has around 120,000 registrants in its first two months. Perhaps this is a result of the large number of users for its other services. Speedy itself has 2 million subscribers in Indonesia up to this month, and KartuHALO has 2.5 million users. SimPATI is the biggest of its service, bringing in 60 percent of Telkomsel’s income with 54.3 million users.

For the next step of product development, Telkom will maximize all of the company’s resources, even its satellites. Bambang showed me UseeTV’s mobile app running smoothly on an Android smartphone and on an iPhone – and they both look great, I reckon – showing that this kind of service can soon make the leap to mobile.

The show is set during the rise of weibo platforms in China (around 2010) and tells the entirely fictional story of a trade war between two competing weibo companies. If you’re thinking that sounds like a thinly-veiled story about Sina Weibo and Tencent Weibo, it unfortunately isn’t. It’s a good versus evil story of the hip yuppies versus the evil older businessman, and while the show still has a lot of episodes left to go, I have a few guesses as to who is going to win this microblog war and get the pretty girl at the end. If there are any real-world parallels, I didn’t notice them in the bits of the show I watched.

"We must create a new social networking site."

If the first episode is any indication, the show is a pretty typical Chinese drama down to the super-cheesy love story, the completely dubbed dialogue, and the ridiculous special effects (check out the car crash that appears in the opening credits). I’ll be honest; I absolutely hated it, but my tolerance for Chinese TV drama is pretty low. I’m not sure whether the show will be able to find a big audience in China, but if nothing else the show’s appearance is an indication that weibo is now a fully mainstream phenomenon, and big enough that TV producers think they can use the concept to sell TV programming.

(I’m not sure that the concept of microblogging is going to be cool enough to save this show, though. I watched part of the first episode with my wife, who has a much higher Chinese drama tolerance than I do, but she offered the following four words in review of Micro-blog Master: “fake,” “boring,” “stupid,” and “bullshit.”)

[Beijing Evening News via Sina Tech]

Victor Koo, image via TechWeb

Youku-Tudou (hereafter, we’ll just call it Youku) has kept things pretty quiet since the merger went official and former Tudou CEO Gary Wang announced his resignation. Now, in an interview with Caijing, Youku (NYSE:YOKU) CEO Victor Koo has spoken out about the merger and Youku’s future:

Actually, the merger went more smoothly than we had imagined, and the user overlap between the two companies turns out to be fewer than we thought. However, the effects of this merger agreement will become more obvious in 2013 and 2014.

One of the biggest concerns has been the price of copyrighted content, which had skyrocketed over the past few years as the result of a bidding war as China’s video sites moved away from piracy. But Youku CFO Liu Dele now says content prices are coming down, some by nearly fifty percent already.

Of course, none of that has made Youku a profitable company; the firm still reported a net loss for Q2 2012. But with content prices dropping and the merger jitters out of the way, things seem to be looking good. Caijing wrote that Victor Koo seemed more relaxed, and that he didn’t feel the need to make comparisons to Hulu or Netflix or any other Western services anymore.

Youku and Tudou continue to operate as separate sites from a user’s perspective, and it doesn’t seem likely that will change anytime soon. But now that they’re under the same management, and with content prices apparently dropping, could Koo’s implication be that Youku will see profitability sometime in the next couple years? We’ll have to wait and see.

Full disclosure: I have previously worked for Youku. However, I currently do not (obviously) and have no stocks or other interests in it or any other tech company.

Agnes Monica (courtesy of Agnes-monica.com)

Agnes’ engagement on Twitter has landed her more than 5 million followers. Thanks to that, the #dancelikeagnes hashtag reached the number one spot among Indonesia’s Twitter trending topics shortly after the campaign began.

The winner of Dance Like Agnes will become a guest dancer at Agnes’s 20th year anniversary concert to mark her two decades as an artist. There will be 20 winners who each receive a cash prize of IDR 10 million (over $1,000), a Samsung Galaxy SIII, T-Cash balance (e-wallet) of IDR 5 million (over $500), SimPATI top-up credit worth IDR 5 million (over $500), and a 1GB per month SimPATI data package for one year. Total prizes worth IDR 1 billion (over $100,000) will be dished out to lots of winners.

To register, you will have to visit DanceLikeAgnes.com and upload a dance video featuring yourself, up to 60 seconds long. The video submission period is from today, September 5, up until October 31, 2012. Agnes and her dance team will pick 200 contestants. At the end, there will be 20 winners chosen by public voting.

With this competition, SimPATI launched a specially priced IDR 60.000 (over $6) for 2GB internet package with the speed of 7.2 Mbps. This promotion will last for 45 days.

Telkomsel is targeting 66 million mobile data users by the end of this year. This company already leads the Indonesian cellular market with 110 million users. With this campaign, they will push the use of data packages by asking people to upload their video. But actually uploading the video might be an annoying problem here, due to the poor capacity of internet connections here nowadays. Perhaps this is why they have a limit of 60 seconds.

Jack Ma plays to the crowd at an Alibaba event

If China’s Alibaba Group IPOs, as many analysts think it will, in a few years’ time, it’ll be the world’s biggest ever tech IPO. But not too much is known about the e-commerce giant – which runs the country’s top online malls, Taobao and Tmall – outside of China. So a former employee of the company, Porter Erisman, decided to make a film about the rise of the company as it was powered by its founder, Jack Ma.

The result is Crocodile in the Yangtze: A Westerner Inside China’s Alibaba.com, which, Porter tells us, gives a “unique behind-the-scenes look at the eBay-Taobao battle” – the titanic tech tussle in which Jack Ma beat the American competition by better understanding the Chinese market. Taobao went on to become a wildly popular haven for amateur shopkeepers; eBay (NASDAQ:EBAY) became irrelevant except for a few people trying to sell some junk. In the full documentary, of which I’ve seen segments, Porter at one point says in his narration:

To eBay’s western managers, Taobao probably seemed too cute and flashy, but Taobao appealed to a new generation in China, that used the internet with a certain innocence and optimism that eBay failed to appreciate.

And so Mr. Ma’s entreprenurial story (he’s a former English teacher) is one which mirrors the emergence of China as a business superpower. Check out the short trailer below. Crocodile in the Yangtze has not yet been released, but Peter says he’s about to begin a festival tour that will take in the likes of the Palm Beach International Film Festival.

Porter stresses that “the film was 100 percent self-financed with my own savings” and that Alibaba “didn’t help fund it.” He adds:

Before leaving Alibaba I told Jack Ma that I wanted to write an independent memoir (in book form) of my experience at the company, in my own words, warts and all. He let me know that he wouldn’t have any objections. So in my last week at the company I gathered about 100 hours of video archives from the company that I intended to use as a reference for my book’s accuracy.

When I looked at the amount of footage available, I told Jack that I may consider making a film rather than a book and I was fortunate that he gave no objections and the company let me take the footage with no preconditions. Other than that, I had no additional access to Jack Ma or the company because I wanted to preserve the film’s independence.

The film ended up “drawing on 200 hours of footage filmed by more than 30 sources.” While it doesn’t show some of Alibaba’s more recent challenges – because the film was already in the can – such as the protests against new rules for Tmall vendors, the documentary is a sort of China biz 101 for those fascinated with China’s tech scene. And seeing Jack Ma rise from a trapdoor dressed in a manga-punk outfit while thousands of supporters cheer sure does make a Steve Jobs keynote look more like a Catholic Sunday mass.

Here’s the Crocodile in the Yangtze trailer:

On his Sina Weibo account, Wang posted the following message at 12:34 A.M.:

On the eve of the double-sevens festival, after seven years at Tudou, I officially announce tonight that I am retiring. Thanks to all my brothers and sisters, and thats to everyone I met along the road who left a splash of color in my story. I’ll see you all the the next interesting dream.

If that sounds weird, rest assured that it’s slightly less so in Chinese. That last line has caught the attention of a lot of Wang’s fans on Weibo, who are already wondering what the “next interesting dream” will be. Does Wang have plans for another internet startup, or he will be counting his money on a private beach somewhere from here on out? I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

Meanwhile it will be interesting to see how Youku’s (NYSE:YOKU) stock reacts to the news of Wang’s departure. On the one hand, Tudou’s CEO leaving right at this moment probably doesn’t look great. On the other, Wang and Youku’s leadership were not always on the friendliest of terms if some rumors are to be believed, so the loss of Wang could be something of a blessing. Either way, two things are for sure: Tudou is leaving the NASDAQ, and Gary Wang is leaving Tudou.

This is not the first high profile exec to leave Tudou since the merger; Tudou COO Evelyn Wang left the company back in early July.

[via Sina Tech]

Disclosure: Well before the merger was announced, I once worked for Youku. However, I have no stocks or other interests in that or any other Chinese internet company.

The series comes from startup Superboyz.tv, essentially an online production company founded by three guys from Kuala Lumpur who go by the names QuaChee, Arico, and Ben CMX. Talking about the choice to shoot on the iPhone for their first drama series, in a press release on the Superboyz website, Arico says:

We have always wanted to shoot in a simple style, nothing too complicated. We did some research and we thought it was possible and worth [it] to give it a try. Then, we went looking for products like the steadicam and adapters so that we could use the iPhone.

The team says the goal of the series is also to showcase Kuala Lumpur as a cool and unique city, and they plan to make use of some unique local spots as locations as their drama about college romance unfolds.

It’s definitely an interesting concept. But how is the execution? Well…not great. The iPhone 4S produces a clear, sharp image as long as it is given enough light, but it looks very much like video because of the device’s deep depth of field, and it’s not always clear where in the frame viewers are meant to focus. There are also moments in the first episode (emebedded below) where you can see the iPhone automatically adjusting the exposure, which is a bit distracting. The iPhone footage also really stumbles in the few slow-motion shots I watched in the first episode, which look very rough and jerky, in part because the iPhone isn’t actually capable of shooting at high frame rates.

The real problem is the sound, though. Because the iPhone isn’t a particularly good microphone — especially not for recording a whole room — almost all of the dialogue is recorded separately and then dubbed. This can work, of course, but in the case of “Summer Love KL” there are just too many moments where it is distractingly obvious. Transitions between dubbed sound and the few bits recorded live are very awkward, and there’s almost no ambient sound, which gives the impression that the characters live in a world where cars make almost no noise but bubbly synth pop music seems to be perpetually playing in the background.

Of course, like all film and television, the product ultimately lives and dies on the quality of the story and the acting. I can’t say that I enjoyed either of those things through the two episodes of the show that I watched, but as an American male, I’m almost certainly not the target audience for this, so I’ll refrain from commenting further. You can check out the episode below and see if “Summer Love KL” interests you. If it does, there are two more episodes up already, and more should be coming soon.

If it doesn’t interest you, I think it’s still important to recognize the series as a reflection of the fact that these days, anyone can put together a TV series. Personally, I don’t think these guys have done it particularly well, but that doesn’t mean in can’t be done. The iPhone certainly has some limitations as a camera, but they’re mostly things problems that should be surmountable with a skilled team and the right techniques behind them. Even if the Superboyz team aren’t the ones to make Asia’s first popular drama to be shot on a smartphone, I do believe that someday we’ll see something like that happen.

In light of today’s Indonesian 67th Independence Day, we thought it would be cool to remind Indonesians both abroad and at home how fun Indonesia really is. Here is a list of games that should make you feel a bit closer to home:

1. Panjat Pinang (Pole Climbing)

It is a tradition on Indonesian Independence Day to hold pole climbing competitions. Numerous prizes are tied at the top of the pole, and participants must work together to climb and reach the top of the pole to claim the prizes. To make things even more challenging, the poles are usually oiled up!

Should you want to be the hero who climbs up the oiled pole, you can do so from the new Panjat Pinang game, newly brought to you by Indonesian game developer Amikom Games just this month. You can download it for Android here.

2. Tap Tap Ghost

According to DailySocial, this is the first Indonesian game made for full touch Nokia Asha phones, developed by Aksara Studio. You can check out the fun Indonesian ghosts such as Pocong, Nyi Roro Kidul, and even Suster Ngesot (the “crawling nurse”) in this game.

How do you play the game? Tap the ghosts! The game is available on Windows Phone, you can download it free here.

3. Jumping Granny

This is another Android game made by Amikom. It was released in July and it is also another Indonesian cultural game because the granny is wearing Javanese traditional clothes like the kemben and sarong.

How to play this game? You jump, and make sure the granny doesn’t fall flat to the ground. The story is about the granny trying to rescue her grandson who was abducted by aliens, that explains the jumping part. You can download the game here.

4. Raid the Rats

This is an interesting game for iOS with a corruption-fighting theme made by a 13-year old Indonesian boy Fahma Waluya Rosmansyah. That would explain the quirky game graphics and the drawing style like a child’s. But come on, a 13-year old boy from a developing country building a game? That’s awesome!

The Indonesian Garuda symbol acts as the game’s hero while the so-called “corruptors” are depicted as rats in the game. The Garuda will shoot away all the pests with its awesome bazooka – nice! In between, the game will teach users about ‘corruption’ in the school environment, such as cheating and giving gifts to teachers.

Finishing the game should be quite quick, however as it only has three stages. It is available free to download here.

5. Selamatkan Jakarta (Save Jakarta)

Selamatkan Jakarta is a unique game made to support a candidate for the next Jakarta governor election to be held in September. It’s made by Metric Design. As we mentioned yesterday in our brief review, the Angry Bird-like game has been played over 50,000 times since its release last week. It uses Jakarta-themed backgrounds such as Tugu Pancoran and Monas. You can also bomb any Indonesian corrupt officials. The Flash-based browser game can be played here.

6. Mad Warrior

This game might remind Indonesian people of the classic Wiro Sableng with his fire dragon axe 212 back in the 90’s (pictured left). Mad Warrior’s hero wears the exact same clothing and has a very similar weapon with the Indonesian folklore hero. It is made by Nightspade and is available for iOS.

The game is quite wacky. We control and help the mad warrior kick some enemies’ ass in a linear running mode. It was released last year, but it still looks fun and would make a good holiday time-suck. You need to pay $0.99 to download it though, and you can get it here. But if you don’t fancy paying, you might want to at least check out the video below.

7. Komodo Island Newborn Wonders

This particular game is for children. It’s really simple. This is an edutainment card-matching game made by Nightspade to teach children about Komodo Island which we have talked about before. The island is a natural habitat for Komodo dragons, which is the largest lizard on earth. Indonesia is also proud of the island because it is one of the New Seven Wonders of Nature.

The game is available free on iOS and on Android. Of course, adults who are interested to learn a thing or two about Indonesia’s great wonder of nature can also give this a try.

8. Football Saga 2

My colleague looked into this game in detail earlier this evening. Football Saga 2 is a football management simulation game. Users will need to train the player based on the desired position, whether it is a midfielder, striker, or even a goalkeeper.

The player can then can sign for football clubs in Indonesia such as Bandung Grizzlies, Denpasar Wave, and Jayapura Pearls. Agate Studio, the game developer, said that it’s going to provide as many as 320 clubs for the open beta version in the future. You can play the game with your Facebook account here.

Indonesia is a great country with diverse cultural heritage ready to be showcased to the world. We hope the such culture-oriented game development continues stronger than ever in future, and thank you Google for reminding the world about Indonesia’s national holiday today. Happy 67th Independence Day, Indonesia!

[Sources: Detik (inc. picture), DailySocial, and Kompas #1, #2; Pictures: Sethskim.com, JalanSutera.com, nnranma.wordpress.com, Cengir-Kuda.blogspot.com]

Reddit user Fragsworth (who we have confirmed is indeed a developer of Cloudstone) writes of the copycat game, which is called ‘QQ Sky City and Warriors’:

It’s pretty clear that they blatantly, seriously ripped us off. They took our files, reverse-engineered the server, and hosted the game themselves with Chinese translations. They stole years of our hard work. We have no idea how many users they have or how much money they’re making, but they have a pretty high rating on that site and they might be profiting off the stolen game more than we are.

[UPDATE 2: Added quote from Tencent's international head of PR, who tells us]:

Our legal department is monitoring the situation and, if found to be a case of infringement, will act on it.

Tencent’s rep also pointed out that their own brand “QQ” is not in the pirate game’s title, as we had stated above.

As for whether or not the game is copied, well, look for yourself at this image Fragsworth posted:

Lest you think Fragsworth has cooked this up as promotion for his own game, it’s pretty clear when you compare Cloudstone’s site with the Chinese copy’s that this is a very real case of pretty blatant copying.

That’s a shame, because this isn’t a case of stealing from some multi-billion dollar company; Chinese “developers” Baofeng Dongman are stealing from indie developers who, to hear Fragsworth tell it, slaved away on this game for two years without pay, and still aren’t making much money off of it. That’s lame. [UPDATE 1: Added quote]. Speaking to Tech in Asia, Fragsworth said:

I’m not happy that there are people who do this. It’s not like they even attempted to re-make the game, they just made a direct fucking copy. As in they dragged and dropped the files from our website to their own servers so they could make money off of it. I always heard about how companies would do this kind of crap but never thought it’d happen to us.

Redditors are already suggesting ways the original developers might deal with this issue, like leaving lots of Chinese comments about how the game is a fraud. Fragsworth told Tech in Asia that the Cloudstone team has talked to lawyers — though no lawyers in China yet — but that the attention his post is getting on Reddit might help lead to some kind of resolution.

We have contacted Tencent and Baofeng Dongman for comment, and will update this story once we hear back.

[via Reddit]

[UPDATE 1: 3 hours after posting, added comments given to us by Fragsworth. It was updated again shortly after to correct the name of the developer, which is actually Baofeng Dongman].

[UPDATE 2: 10 hours after publishing we have an official response from Tencent to TiA, added above].

Chinese video streaming site 56.com announced an open platform strategy yesterday that the company hopes will help expand its user base. The platform, which can be found at dev.56.com, gives pro users and developers easy access to 56.com’s API as well as an SDK and other features that should make it easier for companies and developers to make use of 56′s video technology in apps and on their own sites.

The open platform is 56′s latest push in the direction of a UGC (user-generated content) focused site. In China’s crowded and highly expensive online video marketplace, 56.com has clearly decided it’s better to try to position itself as the home of UGC and as an easy platform for developers with video needs rather than attempting to compete directly with the big guys in buying up the rights to expensive TV shows or paying to produce original programming

But the open strategy doesn’t really set 56.com apart from Youku and Tudou. Both companies have their own developer sites that provide access to similar tools (dev.youku.com and dev.tudou.com respectively), although neither of those sites are as slickly-designed as 56.com’s new one is.

56′s new platform has already attracted some big partners during its internal beta, including social networking giant RenRen. But those partners are not exclusive, and 56.com is still a long way from the lead when it comes to online video in China:

[via Sina Tech]

PPTV is one of China’s leading internet video players, but it has always been less web-based and more client-based than most of its competitors. In Microsoft, PPTV is getting a partner that could help it expand internationally and also one that offers a robust, reliable, and mature platform in Azure. In PPTV, Microsoft gets local expertise and an entry point into China’s internet video market.

It’s not entirely clear exactly what ATN is going to offer for users — the strategic agreement between the two companies was just signed today (pictured) and the service hasn’t launched yet. But it’s quite clear that Microsoft is working to make further inroads in China. Zhang Yaqin, Microsoft’s corporate VP and chairman of the company’s Asia-Pacific R&D, is quoted in the press release as saying:

Microsoft is making solid progress of bringing Windows Azure to China through collaboration with local partners. We are very pleased to see that Windows Azure enables PPTV to deliver a global online TV service platform. It’s a great example of how Microsoft supports China internet companies’ innovation, efficiency and sustainable growth in the global market.

But will ATN bring users to Microsoft’s Azure? We’ll have to wait and see. There doesn’t seem to be much ATN-related discussion on Sina Weibo just yet, but it’s definitely a bit early for users to be getting excited about something like this, so PPTV and Microsoft will be looking to build buzz as the platform moves toward an actual launch.

However, a number of expenses have also jumped significantly compared to Q2 2011. Operating expenses have nearly doubled, sales expenses have increased, product development expenses have more than doubled, and general and administrative expenses have tripled. Youku stressed in a separate communication with media that the Q2 numbers look better when compared to Q1 2012, though: “Sales costs increased by only 6 percent quarter-on-quarter in Q2, while operating expenses increased by 11 percent and revenues grew by 43 percent.” Youku says it expects this trend to continue into Q3 as its merger with Tudou goes into effect and content prices drop.

Youku’s announcement also reports that the merger is going forward smoothly, with the next step being annual general meetings for each company on August 20. In a communication with media, Youku representatives wrote:

We have completed integration planning efforts with Tudou and have agreed on the new organizational structure, and on the roles and responsibilities of core executives in the new company. The new organizational structure will be implemented immediately after closing, and we are on track for the integrated management team to be fully effective in Q4 2012.

In the conference call following the announcement, Youku executives also addressed the recent SARFT announcement that some have suggested (OK, I have suggested) could have a big impact on Youku’s business. The company is apparently not worried, though, saying the regulation will “not have a material impact” on Youku’s traffic.

Full disclosure: I used to work for Youku. I don’t now, and I don’t have any stock or any other interests in the company.

In a blog post, Google India announced that it will have a YouTube bus touring around nine cities in India. The YouTube bus will live stream Olympic Games and at the same time allow folks to learn more about India’s history at the Olympics. Of course, if you have a decent internet speed, you can always catch the live action of the London 2012 Olympic Games via YouTube here.

I admire initiatives like this a lot. It’s super localized and bring great content right up to people’s doorsteps. Sure, not the entire Indians’ doorsteps but kudos to Google for having its YouTube bus touring across nine cities.

Details of the Bus Journey:

• July 26th – 27th: Gurgaon
• July 28th – 29th: Sonipat
• July 30th – 31st: Bhiwani
• August 1st – 2nd: Hissar
• August 4th – 5th: Kurukshetra
• August 6th – 7th: Dera Basi
• August 8th – 9th: Patiala
• August 11th – 12th: Faridkot
• August 13th – 14th: Jalandhar

[Image credit: Flickr]

Here’s some fun news from Japan today. Gokiraji 2.0 is a robot cockroach (roachbot) that can be controlled using your iPhone and/or iPad. You download the app to your phone and then link the control app to the roachbot. It can also be controlled using gyro controls. It’s pretty gross, I know, but it’s also a fun toy to have. And of course there could be far more applications in the future knowing how well a phone can now control robots.

We previously told you about Japan’s smartphone-controlled robot dog, but there even more high-tech items out there like Parrot’s AR Drone for example.

This cockroach is just a start, of course. Maybe soldiers can start to control robot fighters in the future. Some soldiers already have iPads, so I’m sure many would be delighted to have something to control!

Each cockroach costs about $37 but unfortunately only ships in Japan for now. Catch the video below to see the robot cockroach in action. [Jtt.ne.jp via Weirdasianews]

Evelyn Wang, image via Sina Tech

Chinese media is reporting today that according to “inside sources,” Tudou COO Evelyn Wang (no relation to Tudou CEO Gary Wang) has resigned. This makes her the first high-level executive to leave Tudou since that company’s high-profile merger with Youku.

Both Tudou and Youku have been very quiet since the announcement of their merger, mostly because they have to be quiet while the deal is being approved by the SEC. Perhaps needless to say, a Youku-Tudou rep declined to comment on this story. But actually, the lack of scandalous leaks and high-profile departures (Wang’s is the first) would seem to indicate that things are running rather smoothly at Youku-Tudou Inc. A change this big resulting in so little management-level turnover would seem to be, if anything, a sign of health.

That makes sense, as Sina Tech is also reporting its sources say that overall the merger is going well and the two companies are integrating quite smoothly with each other. That’s good news since the video giant still faces some still competition from competitors in the same market as well as government regulation that threatens to injure its business.

Full disclosure: A year ago, I briefly worked for Youku. However, I currently have no professional connection to, or interests in, the company or any of its competitors.

[via Sina Tech, h/t to @niubi]

Here come the fun police.

Grab another drink, everyone, because it sounds like the party is nearly over. SARFT, China’s fun police film censorship bureau is finally extending its black, dead hand warm embrace to online video sites, wrapping up their heretofore-uncensored films and series in a fun-smothering bearhug of censorship an embrace of harmony.

A SARFT spokesman announced yesterday that original drama series and films on video websites like Youku and Tudou are mostly great, but that some don’t live up to government quality standards, citing violations such as repeated curse words, violence, sexuality, and excessive enjoyability (OK, they didn’t really say that last one). SARFT will thus step in and begin to regulate original productions that are broadcast online. In the future, original productions destined for the internet will need to be approved by SARFT before they can be broadcast just like everything else.

SARFT explained the move as response to “outcry from internet users” and “industry needs.” I have a feeling the latter played a larger role than the former, primarily because the former doesn’t seem to exist. (Yes, I’m sure there a few crazies out there, but there’s certainly no great love for SARFT on China’s internet, nor any deep-seated desire to see even more of the internet censored).

This is bad news for all video sites, but it’s potentially especially bad news for Youku (NYSE:YOKU), which has had thus far had more success than any of its competitors in producing interesting original programming. Presumably this SARFT announcement means we can look forward to online programming quickly becoming as dull and lifeless as most television programming, which SARFT has been doing its damnedest to suck the fun out of for quite some time now.

We contacted Youku for this story; the company declined to comment.

The only possible silver lining is that it’s not entirely clear how SARFT plans to evaluate the productions. There’s some chance it will merely be tweaking the existant self-review system, and it also could implement different standards for online productions that allow a little more leeway. I wouldn’t hold my breath, though.

It’s also not clear exactly how far SARFT could eventually take this. Obviously original productions from all the major video sites will be affected immediately, but what about user-submitted content? At what level of production will videos officially need to be cleared with SARFT before they can be broadcast? It doesn’t seem like SARFT has its eye on user-generated content just yet, but that seems like the next step in SARFT’s eternal quest to suck the joy out of clean up Chinese entertainment.

Full disclosure: A year ago, I briefly worked for Youku. However, I currently have no professional connection to, or interests in, the company or any of its competitors.

[QQ News via Sinocism]

This article was updated on July 10 at 17:00 to append the disclosure statement I originally forgot to add. Fail! Sorry, folks.

Surprised? While most of us believe that Youku or Tudou is the top dog for video streaming in China, iResearch’s findings seem to suggest otherwise. iResearch tracked users — both on web and clients — across the major video streaming service companies for the month of May based on a 200,000 sample size.

The results suggest that PPTV came out on top for May with 34 million unique daily users. Youku and PPStream came in second and third, recording 33 and 32 million daily unique users respectively. Those numbers are pretty close…but I would certainly take these results with a grain of salt. Here’s why.

The statement explains that the boost in traffic is due to PPTV’s having the Euro 2012 soccer tournament streamed on its platform. But since the results come from tracking done in May, the tournament couldn’t explain the traffic spike experienced because Euro 2012 didn’t start until June. So the explanation given in the findings statement is seriously flawed. The soccer tournament began on June 8, but iResearch stated on its chart that the survey was done from May 28 to June 3.

We have reached out to PPTV and will update if we hear from them.

I do agree that PPTV is pretty popular and perhaps one of the iPad apps that I find myself frequently using. It has great content, thanks to the $250 million funding it received from Softbank last February.

Amid all the controversy that has surrounded Chinese electronics manufacturing in recent years, it’s always insightful when we get an inside look at how such factories. Readers may recall when Marketplace’s Rob Schmitz put together a video tour of Apple’s assembly line, giving a dose of reality after he exposed Mike Daisey’s embellishments.

Similarly, these two videos below give us a look at the factory and the assembly line for a low-cost, 7-inch Android tablet. This is the Boxchip A13, which is apparently going to sell for 350 RMB, or about $55 dollars. There’s an interesting discussion with the makers here if you’d like to find out more details.

For those of you who have never seen the inside of a Chinese factory, this is another interesting glimpse not just at how the work is done, but a look at the faces of the people who build our electronics. Most of the ones in this first clip are young girls, performing a range of tasks and tests as they put together the Boxchip A13.

Give it a look below and let us know what you think. Thanks to the folks over on Reddit for digging this up.

It’s been a week since we concluded our Startup Asia Jakarta 2012 event. It was really an awesome experience for us, and a million thanks go to the local Indonesian tech/startup community which has given the Tech in Asia team great support for the past couple of months. We wouldn’t have pulled this off if not for you guys. So cheers!

And yes, we’ve been receiving requests for video footage of our Startup Arena segment, and we’ve put them together using Storify below, like we previously did for Startup Arena Singapore. The videos come thanks to our fellow blogger, Masaru Ikeda, who helped record and upload to YouTube for those who weren’t present. He didn’t bring professional gear – he was rocking his iPhone again – but we still think they’re great, and we thought we’d share.

The pitches improved leading up to the event, from the first submission many weeks ago to the competition day finale. I think the teams participating and our own Willis Wee did a great job on this. Kudos to all 16 startup teams! So much effort was well worth it!

]]> http://www.techinasia.com/startup-arena-jakarta-2012-startup-pitches/feed/ 0 http://placehold.it/350x150 http://www.techinasia.com/apple-siri-chinese-screenshots/ http://www.techinasia.com/apple-siri-chinese-screenshots/#comments Wed, 13 Jun 2012 05:37:21 +0000 Steven Millward http://www.techinasia.com/?p=80739 Read more »]]> Apple’s voice assistant Siri now speaks Chinese, which is quite a feat. It’s one of many new China-oriented features that Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) unveiled yesterday. The update to Siri requires the latest iPhone 4S or new iPad, and the iOS 6 beta that has just rolled out.

Weibo user ‘amycc’ has been playing with Siri in Chinese and posted all the screenshots you see here (and more at the source link below). Her tests reveal that Siri retains its sass even in Mandarin Chinese, but that the beta version was also confused by some vague queries and returned an odd error message rather than an answer or a wise-crack. Here are screenshots of the virtual assistant in action:

• Setting tasks and alarms:

• Sending an email (Netease’s 186.com service), but then getting confused by a question about what to eat for dinner and, for some reason, showing a contact’s details. I hope it’s not endorsing cannibalism! Note that Apple’s tie-up with Yelp for restaurant recommendations will be useless in China.

• But Siri often failed, perhaps because it’s in its early beta stage and not just released to the public. In these two screenshots, teasing Siri about loving you caused the weird error message; that again appeared when asking about some good drinking songs:

[Source: @大元宝MM on Weibo, via 36kr - article in Chinese]

BONUS: To get a better feel of Siri speaking in Chinese and to actually hear its voice, here’s a two-minute video of the assistant being tested out. Personally, I’m not fond of the bland and over-bossy accent it has in Chinese, reminding me of the tedious announcements on trains and subways: