Category: Singapore

Singapore – the ecosystem

~ michael_msft ~ 1 Comment

There are times I sour on the sing scene or get skeptical.

However this has been one of those weeks where I feel the vibe that could be the Singapore startup scene.

Slowly but surely more and more people who matter are focusing on the series A problem. Will it get solved? I don’t know but there are people thinking it might and I want to believe.

There are huge markets surrounding Singapore and Singapore is a great place to attack them – safely. I see this more and more.

Random, but important people, keep dropping in on Singapore to check out the scene and judge if it makes sense for them to be here in some way. To me this is the most important part cause this idea that the scene will be made up of locals just won’t happen. It needs to be as internationally influenced as possible – similar to Silicon Valley. Every week that goes by I see the inflow of people looking into the sing tech scene grow. This is positive.

There is much for Singapore to get right before it really takes off but I feel confident it will get there.

carry on…

spuul

~ michael_msft ~ 3 Comments

Yes.

www.spuul.com has launched. I would consider a beta and we have a long ways to go.

However as small as it is – it is still fun to see users signing up, people enjoying the service, people having problems with it and even 1 week in our first paid subscriber. Pretty awesome to work on an internet startup with revenue capability from day 1.

Hats off to the founders and the team – nice work but we have much to do!

If anyone wants to talk to me about spuul, startups in SEA or the scene – you can always email me.

more soon…

To the Doers…

~ michael_msft ~ Leave a comment

Been a busy couple of weeks with work, events and some good old-fashioned networking. Say what you will about social networking, great tool – the real meat of networking is meeting real people, bonding and discussing things – yes things.

I covered some of my activity here.

Hats off to viki for their huge round of funding: http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/20/andreessen-horowitz-bbc-greylock-put-20m-in-international-video-site-viki/

Heard about this site today – looks cool: http://chope.com.sg/

I attended this last night and met some folks from Ubisoft – I didn’t realize they were so big in Singapore.

Did you know that this is engineered in Singapore? Was cool to meet Steve from Chumby last night as well.

All in all – a lot of activity in Singapore but you have to dig past the headlines and the events to find the real doers – the folks building companies, heading up multi-national operations and the other peeps running around to ensure the ecosystem takes off. I have every faith that it will – just a matter of time.

Back to work..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TechVenture2011, Accelerate, FoundersDrinks & Tim Draper Singing in Singapore…

~ michael_msft ~ 1 Comment

Had an action packed Friday this past week with lots of events going on.

First up was accelerate day at TechVenture2011. I attended the full conference at TV2010 and was even at some of the VIP events but this year I was too late getting back from the states so was only able to make the accelerate part of the event.

The main thrust of accelerate besides the speakers is the pitches from various startups in the region looking for cash.

You can check twitter #techventure and #accel2011 for the stream. Some good info in there…

I can’t say I saw something drop dead cool or must have but there was a number of solid offerings. In general though you can see how Singapore keeps evolving and is becoming quite the hotbed of startup and venture activity for Asia. I still feel that apart from China and India – Singapore and SEA is the other main place in the APAC to get it going  on.

Probably my highlight for the day was getting to hear Tim Draper of dfj.com speak twice. Once during the day at accelerate and once at night during FoundersDrinks. I was very impressed with his down to earth style, his poignant examples of business, and his gracious openness with the crowds. He answered a lot of questions and stuck around to talk to pretty much anyone who wanted to chat with him. It was not what I was expecting and I was pleasantly surprised. He shared a few Steve Jobs stories which was very cool. He made some interesting points about how powerful Steve was about changing the world and how is passing will leave a big hole to be filled within the industry.

I must say I was totally shocked during the evening event when Tim performed a song he had written about the venture industry.

I happened to record it with my iPhone – you can catch it here on Vimeo. I have not seen someone this famous from the tech industry belt out in song like that. Props.

Tim had some great points about how this is the best time ever to get started building something – he adamantly encouraged folks to ignore the downturn, the pessimism and to launch full in into building things and changing the world. It was welcome advice given the state of the world these days.

Thanks Tim for coming to Singapore and imparting your wisdom, positive attitude and your song on us!

Tim shared some book suggestions – one was “the startup game” – I would link to it from amazon but I can’t get logged in. 😉

Tomorrow I hope to check Startup Weekend Singapore and JFDI.

laterz

iOS 5 spotted in Singapore

~ michael_msft ~ 2 Comments

I arrived at 1am this morning and  with plenty of jet lag on tap I decided to get going on the new iOS 5 download.

Download was about 90 mins from Singapore – kind of long. Apple needs to host some bits around here.

Sync. Backup. New OS and then restore. Wait – it says my restore needs a password for the encryption. I never encrypted it. Damn.

Did a freshie – no restore. Pain in the ass but I have had no issues. Just took some time to get everything set up again. Kind of a nice way to start over though.

Love the notifications. So much cleaner and easier to deal with.

iMessage is awesome.

Things feel snappier.

Not sure on iCloud yet. Need more testing.

Love the camera from lock screen access.

Battery life looks good.

Need to play more.

Maybe upgrade the iPad tonight.

Macbook Air upgraded but have yet to play with it.

more soon…

I want an iPhone 4S I think…

Avalon Singapore :: F1 afterparty :: Chemical Brothers :: Boy George :: Singapore’s new worst club

~ michael_msft ~ 6 Comments

I remember watching the building going up and marveling at how cool it was – yes a casino, I don’t gamble much, but still an amazing building that has permanently altered the landscape of Singapore in a good way. Then the two glass pyramid looking things were constructed and we were all left wondering what they would be. At first I suspected a high-tech hawker center for one and the other would house all the mobile phone companies. Food and mobile phones dominate Singapore so it would only be fitting that to cap of the spectacle of the new casino – foreigners and locals alike could get the best hawker food and grab a mobile phone in the two coolest buildings in town.

Then the news hit – one building would house another, yes we need more, LV shop and the other would house two world famous clubs. I could care less about the LV shop but was mildly interested in a real international club hitting the Singapore scene. God knows the city needs it.

So when @groovemonkey mentioned that the Chemical Brothers were coming to town to play the new venue – we decided it was time to properly check out http://avalon.sg/

Could it be too much?

Far more than giving people what they want we want to be delivering what they will want, I hope to hear people say “I first heard that at Avalon”.

Reading a snippet like that from an interview with Steve Adelman one can assume that experiencing Avalon could be well – nothing short of amazing. So let me answer the interview question for Steve – yes it is too much. Too much pomp, circumstance, attitude, lousy service, smoke, and arrogance to probably last me a life time. Hell – if I get re-incarted I might just find that it is even too much for my second life as well.

So before I dig in, let me start with the good stuff.

  • The venue is amazing. I think the external part of the venue was designed without Avalon in mind but I will give this one to the Avalon crew cause they need every bit of positive news they can get at this point.
  • The internal design is super cool too but given the over abundance of cheap Thai smoke machines – it is hard to totally grok how amazing the place looks.  I suggest they run daytime tours with the lights on in hopes of maximizing the chances of making money.
  • The sound system sounds stunningly good but since all I heard was an iPod running some genius techo playlist it was tough for me to fully appreciate the capabilities of it.
  • The hiring of many international servers, female, wearing hot outfits is definitely different that most places in Singapore but it might be helpful if they were taught to smile, fake a slight bit of politeness and pull the stick out of their ass prior to coming to work.
  • The view looking out from the club is also amazing and the internal design clearly shows this off but once again the internal haze made it mostly mute after about an hour of the club being open.

Enough of the good. Let’s get to the not so good.

  • When one buys VIP tickets once expects some sort of treatment that the minions buying general tickets would not get. Maybe a special line, a free drink or at the very least a sticker that says VIP with a powerful enough glow to be seen through the internal micro-climate that produces pollution thicker than the haze on a bad day in Beijing. The door people/glorious ticket checkers also could not explain what the VIP tickets were for either. Nice.
  • Upon entering the club, pre-haze, we found out that the VIP tickets offered us access to a top floor balcony with good views and seating. Wait – the seating could only be used if one bought about 2000 SGD worth of booze. Okay. Can we stand here then, seats with a small drink rail, and order some booze? Sure. But once people come who buy bottles we have to move you cause you have not bought a bottle. Great. So the VIP tickets don’t really offer us anything more than standing in the hallowed area while those buying bottles get better service. Awesome.
  • We head to the bar to go singles on the booze and the bartender, nicest guy working in the place, offers us some F1 bottle specials. Perfect. Of course then he is interrupted by the manager wench, the one with the biggest stick, who informs him that one can only order a bottle if one is sitting in the areas that accommodate a bottle and to sit in those area one has to order a big huge bottle that cost an enormous amount of money. So in other words the specials don’t mean anything at all. Precisely.
  • Enough of the deplorable drinking issues – by the way when we ordered our three singles drinks, 65 SGD, I had to go through yet another hazing because I had the gall to pay with my credit card. Yes – we locals like to use credits cards and most places take every credit ever invented, but the upper bar in Avalon was setup for cash – my bad again. So I hard to endure dirty looks and the service guy having to go somewhere else to run the card. I felt bad for putting them out having to pay for my overpriced drinks with my AMEX.
  • Let’s get to the show stuff. The event used to be listed here – and this was the only place showing anything remotely looking like a schedule. It actually said the show was 9pm-2am. Given that the F1 was not over till after 9 and that linkin park was playing in the field – we figured the show wouldn’t get going to 11 or later. We decided to get there before 11 just in case seating/standing was a pain. The bar boy told us that some opening act wast around 12 and that the Chemical Brother was around 1:30am. Late but what can you do. Let’s just say that by 2am the club was so full of the fake smoke that even if you were standing on the DJ platform you still couldn’t see the DJ’s. There were no announcements, no lighting changes and zero visual cues as to who was spinning. For all we know there was no one spinning – just some music playing, some smoke smoking and the lights lighting.
  • By 2:30am we decided to give it up. Pack our VIP tickets, our booze card (oh wait they dont have booze cards and are somewhat confused as to how to explain the process for coming back to get your booze) and our inhaled smoked and head home.

Disappointed? Just slightly. Appalled? More than a little bit.

Avalon needs their over payed developers/management to get actually show up to the office and fix the place before the word of mouth kills it.

One could buy some booze at the 7, hang on the clarke quay bridge and have a similar experience but for a lot less money and attitude.

Anyone know if the chemical brothers actually played last night?

Spotify Singapore

~ michael_msft ~ 1 Comment

Information overload happens a ton these days so I tend to focus on just a few sites and/or podcasts. For information on the mobile markets – I am loving Horace over at Asymco.com. Detailed analysis, candid commentary and the willingness to make some bets as to where things will go. Also been listening to his podcast over at 5×5 – the critical path. It is detailed stuff and worth the listen.

On to Spotify.

I had the first Apple iPod about  a week after it came out. Loved it. Ripped all my legally bought CD’s, had tons of them, and synced and enjoyed my catalog. Awesome stuff. For the time it seemed like the best option.

Then iTunes hit where I could buy CD’s online rather than physically buy them and RIP them. Sure MP3 music stealing, file downloading, was going on but I normally would buy. I just felt like I should do the right thing – pay for my music. I was not happy with the pricing models or the lack of evolution but I stuck with it. However I was making money and willing to buy my music – a lot of people only wanted to steal it – I mean download MP3s.

I went through a time of living in Thailand and not making a lot of cash. So what  happened? I largely stopped buying anything on iTunes and resorted to buying copy CD’s on the streets of Bangkok. Yes – the street. Full of stalls selling illegal shit. Even entire DVDs packed with pre-ripped MP3s so I could forgo the RIP step. It was what I could afford to be honest.

Then I got back to making a living and started pushing the buy button on iTunes quite a bit. However I must admit I was bummed that over the 4-5 years nothing had changed much. iTunes wasn’t streaming, the prices had not changed and the music was trapped on whatever hard drive I had downloaded it to. I had probably 3-4 machines plus extra hard drives full of music I had either bought, ripped or downloaded.

Listening to the new Sublime album right now. #FYI. I didn’t even know there was a new album until I saw it on Spotify what’s new.

I was mildly pleased with Apple’s latest release of iTunes that allowed me to see all the music I had purchased legally and download it. Which I did. I did not take the other option of letting it find music on my drives and get legal copies – why? Well I was figuring something better would come. I had heard about Pandora but was unable to get it to work in Singapore. Also from playing with it in the States – it still felt not like not quite what I wanted.

I still think Apple is doing the right thing and has helped me to explore, buy and listen to legally bought music. To be honest they kept me buying music – the music industry should be grateful.

Then I got an invite for Spotify. I played with it for an hour on my Mac and was hooked. New songs, old stuff and the playlists. Then I saw the pay 10 bucks and then I could sync it offline and to my iPhone. Done. I paid for the year right away. I mean in pure comparison terms it is like if I bought one real CD a month. Since I am prone to buy more than one this was like saving me money to be honest. I love saving money!

Now I search, make a playlist and sync it offline. It is essentially all you can eat music for 10 bucks a month. Sick.

I have a few nits.

I keep getting iPhone errors. Like when I search from the phone and find a CD and then want to make a playlist out of it. My app just crashes.

Or like when I download a newer version of Spotify – it wants to re-download all my lists. That’s insane. Someone fix that ASAP.

But mostly I can’t complain. I keep finding new music, making more playlists and gorging on the catalog. For 10 bucks a month.

I am legally stuffing myself on more music than I can possibly consume. Awesome.

Will Spotify kill iTunes? Some think so : http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/07/why_spotify_will_kill_itunes.html

I am not sure it will kill it but it will make a dent – it has to. Problem is Apple is so strong right now maybe they won’t notice but I can assure you that I will be buying less on iTunes – maybe none at all. That has to hurt a little no?

My suggestion for Apple to remain on top?

Buy Spotify.

Playing with my new toy…

~ michael_msft ~ Leave a comment

Picked this up today at this place in Singapore –

http://peek-ture.com/

36 Armenian Street – cool little alternative photo place. They even carry the new Impossible polaroid film.

More info on this camera is here –

http://www.superheadz.com/digi2triple/

I was looking at those polaroid mini-s cameras but I felt I should not add to the world’s pollution by actually making prints at random. So this looked more fun in that it is digital, super simple, small and uses weird filters.

I just uploaded to flickr and then used their share tool to post to my blog – that was cool!

http://www.nokpis.com/2011/05/22/zumi-2/

 

On the road again…

~ michael_msft ~ Leave a comment

I have not been blogging much – I think it was mostly out of respect for the japanese tragedy. Blogging or writing anything about myself or what I was doing paled in comparison to the real world and what people in Japan were contending with. Blogging was silly.

On top of that been super busy at work, traveling like a mad man and working on lots of little interesting projects. All good – just slammed.

Koprol team been rocking – check the blog.

Been on a string of speaking gigs lately – The Mobile Marketing Conference. Also been lucky to get some nice quotes – Abs-Cbn Article. Hats off to all the hard working yahoo! folks who make it possible for me to enjoy the limelight.

Have another trip to the USA coming and some more speaking gigs – work is just a super fun place right now. Feeling amazingly fortunate.

Just a side note – why does it take me longer to enter America as a US Citizen then it takes to me enter Singapore where all I possess is a lowly employment pass? America needs some help but I feel totally at a loss to decide in which ways I can assist. Singapore might feel small and boring at times but I am stunned by how progressive the place is with the net connectivity, the ease of dealing with taxes and the growth – stunning.

I picked up an iPad in sing just after the iPad 2 was released. My gf is using it like mad now since my bro, @groovemonkey, picked up an iPad 2 for me in SXSW. I hardly used the iPad 1 but I can’t get enough of the iPad 2. Writing this column on it now using iA writer. Love this freaking app. I am also on a plane, in economy, drinking a Jim beam black and ginger ale (sing air rocks for having this booze), but I feel comfortable flipping open my smart cover and banging away on the fake keyboard. I never opened my laptop in economy since it is just too much a pain in the ass.

I have tried the galaxy tab, the xoom (doomed), and some of the clones. Nice if you want the notion of what a cheap pc clone was in the 90’s but just not that elegant. I can’t get emotionally invested.

Apple set the bar high – good luck to the others trying to beat it. Competition is amazing but it stuns me how msft has no play in tablets. Poor Balmer.

And yes – I used to have a newton.

I thought it was amazing.

Peace