Singapore does do interesting infotech R&D. But it doesn’t get the publicity it deserves, which is such a waste.

Take for example the recent Techfest ’09, which was held at Fusionpolis last week from October 8th to 9th. Techfest, which A*Star I2R (Institute of Infocomm Research) started in 2005, is an open-to-public exhibition showcase of emerging technology research in Singapore. A*Star, for those of our readers who are not familiar with the brand, is a government institution dedicated to charting Singapore’s science and technology future.

Now A*Star has interesting research projects that make for great tech stories, but Techfest ’09 was a bland colourless event. It’s open to the public, but most of the attendees were government folks, and it felt as if many exhibitors — all A*Star folks — were there more because they were “arrowed” into showcasing their work instead of wanting to show off their work to a good audience.

It could have been so much more. For example, Unconference, which is a similar technology showcase type of event, had far more passion and buzz. Unconference effectively engaged student volunteers and social media, and put together great content in their lectures. The sad thing is that Unconference is run by a bunch of young Singapore entrepreneurs, whereas I’m sure A*Star has more budget and clout as part of Singapore Inc.

But I digress from my main point, which is that many of the research projects that A*Star does is quite interesting. It’s a pity, because these are stories that can capture the public’s imagination.

From talking robot butlers to using brainwaves to move objects (no, this is not science fiction but actually true!), there were quite a few projects that piqued the interest of a science geek like myself.

For example, at the brain-computer interface (BCI) research booth, attendees were invited to strap three diodes (attached with a sticky pad) to their foreheads. By concentrating hard, they could get a radio controlled toy car to move and hit a ball. BCI is done by measuring changes in brain waves, and although finely tuned control is difficult, it was definitely a fun experience to use psychic “thought power” to get objects to move.

On a more serious note, BCI can be used to help kids with ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) to concentrate for short spurts and effectively measure progress. It can also be used in the healthcare field for people with physical disability or brain impairments, and trials have been underway with local hospitals for the last two years, according to Dr Fabien Lotte, one of the research fellows I talked to at the BCI booth.

There were lots of other interesting booths that showcased intriguing technology ideas. Green sensor networks that were solely powered by ambient energy sources like heat and light, a Gesture Software Development Kit (SDK) that allows developers to use hand gestures for applications like games and interactive advertising, and an all-in-one RF (Radio Frequency) tuner that can distinguish between white noise and signal for any wireless frequency (e.g. Wi-Fi, 3G, commercial radio) are just some examples.

There is raw potential in many of the research projects. Some will even translate into great products like iTwin(an A*Star product), which was showcased at Unconference and at the recent Silicon Valley TechCrunch50 startup conference.

This is the kind of publicity our homegrown R&D needs. I’m sorry, but events like TechFest aren’t good enough.

Techgoondu had the chance to be at unConference 2009 held yesterday at the Biopolis, thanks to the kind folks at e27 who had put together an excellent program that brought together some of the top forward-thinkers in the region. Here’s a recap of what I felt were the highlights of the event:

Panel discussion: Innovation in Asia and where is it heading?

The panel was chaired by Benjamin Joffe, founder and CEO of +8* (Plus Eight Star). Participants included Scott Rafer, CEO at Lookery, Dr Gang Lu, co-founder of OpenWeb Asia, Dr Lai Kok Fung, co-founder and CEO of Buzzcity, and Wong Hoong Ann, founder of HungryGoWhere.com.

Each panelist was asked to share how he spotted the opportunity that led them to start their companies. Scott, who started MyBlogLog and sold it Yahoo later, noted that his venture was “almost accidental”, while Hoong Ann of HungryGoWhere identified the need for a marketing channel catered to F&B establishments, particularly among small restaurants. His business and ad model was changed many times, because “you need the flexibility to start a business.”

Dr Lai of Buzzcity, which started as as dotcom company specializing in WAP mobile communications, said his company did not plan for the company’s current successes in South Africa and Indonesia. It was only after the rapid rise in the number of users accessing the Web on the cellphone some time later that spearheaded Buzzcity’s business in the two countries.

Dr Gang Lu, shared his experience with start-ups in China, which comprises three groups. The first are the copycats who will copy successful products and business models, but “the problem is everyone else will be doing the same thing”. It will be hard for copycats to stand out from the pack. He noted that at one point, there were over 150 YouTube clones in China, but only 10 are surviving today.

The second group will take successful products and localize them accordingly in their target markets – an example would be Xiaonei.com, which is now more popular than Facebook in China. Finally, the last group of entrepreneurs would chart their own path through innovation that would eventually lead to their own unique products.

The panelists largely agreed that selling to businesses is always more profitable than selling to consumers, since consumers are typically unwilling to pay for Internet services – advertising is thus the most common way of monetizing their services. In some market segments, selling virtual goods has proven to be a viable as exemplified by Xiaonei.com and Kaixin001.com.

Panelists were also quizzed on what they were doing to mitigate the dependency on search engines, particularly Google, for their site traffic. Hoong Ann of HungryGoWhere.com shared his company’s brush with Google which reduced his business by half in a single day after his website was placed on page 945 in the search results. Dr Lai suggested that start-ups should grow their organic traffic, while Dr Gang added that they try to grow traffic from social media platforms, which allow them to seed communities and build their brands without Google.

Techgoondu also checked out some promising products and start-ups, and these caught our eye.

iTwin was born out of Singapore’s Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*Star) and will be commercialized by Exploit Technologies, A*Star’s marketing and commercialization arm. Essentially, it is a device that can be split into two halves. By plugging each half via a USB port into a home and remote PC respectively, a secured communication channel is established to allow the remote PC to access files on the home PC. In fact, the solution is so elegant that no password is required. The communication is encrypted and authentication is provided through a random key generated by the home PC’s device.

The folks behind iTwin expect the device to be launched by Fall 2009 at a price of between US$40 and US$50. Work is for the device’s software for Windows XP is almost completed, and there are plans to support Windows Vista and Mac OS X. The product roadmap also includes video conferencing applications and even mobile device file transfer.

Fusion Garage was founded by R. Chandrasekar, a familiar face in the Singapore tech circle. Chandra was the founder of Radixs, which previously developed the Motion Experience Interface (MXI) operating system and the Velvet Puffin integrated online service that marries social networking and instant messaging.

The company is currently developing the software for the CrunchPad, a web tablet hardware device conceived by the folks at Techcrunch:

The idea is to get a new type of device into people’s hands for as cheap as possible (we were aiming for $200, it looks like $299 is more realistic). It fits perfectly on your lap while you are sitting in front of the TV, so you can look up stuff on Wikipedia or IMDB as you channel surf. It plays Flash video flawlessly so you can watch movies and TV shows on Hulu or Joost or wherever. Or listen to music on MySpace Music. Or use TokBox to have a video chat with your parents. Then check email and call it a day. Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Hulu, Wikipedia, Google Docs and Gmail are the killer apps for this device.

Because the device skips the resource-sucking parts of the operating system and focuses on one application – the browser – very low end hardware can be used and still give users a desktop-like Internet browsing experience.

The team from Fusion Garage did not show off any working prototypes of the Crunchpad at the event. For more information, check out this video:

I’m really glad that the Gothere.sg folks got their 90 seconds of fame when Minister of Finance Tharman Shanmugaratnam mentioned them in the recent unveiling of the Singapore budget.

Gothere has built a darn heck of a great transport site in Singapore, and the guys have both passion and great ideas. Hopefully their S$100K project with LTA will allow them to grow into something more robust.

Caught up with them recently at Garag3, the NUS incubator for “mad geniuses”. When I was there chatting with them, they showcased their streetlevel views function to me, which I thought was pretty darn cool. Similar to Google’s StreetViews (available in US, Australia, Japan and parts of Europe), Gothere is first Singapore street directory site to incorporate such a function.

Although it was announced quietly on their website somewhere in December a month or so back, it is a function worth highlighting. Basically, it allows users to look at a visual snapshot of the roads where they are going, which is a great help if you’re unfamiliar with the place.

For example, if you’re unfamiliar with the roads around Plaza Singapura, you can take a look via this function, and the result is as shown below.

The photo can be rotated 360 degrees, allowing you to have a feel of what the place looks like. Photos are not in real-time, and yes, the Gothere crew spent days to snap photos of the roads around Singapore to serve from their site. With the amount of photos approaching the 4TB limit, assuming each photo is several MB each, this amounts to hundreds of thousands of photos. At least.

Founder Dominic Ee mentioned that the photos cover around 70% of Singapore, with some missing parts in the north of the island. For now, this function is going to be as put on the backburner as they have to prioritize on other things right now, like their first project with LTA. They will get back to this when they have more resources or need to do a refresh.

As it is, however, the function is still pretty useful. How it is accessed is via the camera icon in the top right corner of the map (see screen capture on right) when you do a routing search on Gothere.sg. Once the icon is highlighted, you can drag the cursor over the map, and anywhere there is a red dot, you can view a snapshot of the place.

If you live in Singapore and you haven’t heard of or tried Gothere, do yourself a favour and take a look. It’s such a useful resource that I have the URL bookmarked in my brain.

I’ll flat out admit it: I’m a huge fan and user.

Of all the various map, location and road routing sites for Singapore, I feel that Gothere is the best. It trashes the competition out there in terms of usability and function: the incumbent Streetdirectory, StreetDB, and Google Maps.

Don’t even get me started on SLA’s map or Rednano’s one.

Started up in just May 2008 this year, Gothere.sg has generated buzz in the blogosphere but is still under the radar in the mainstream.

Why makes Gothere so good?

It’s fast, it’s easy to use, and it gives great results. And it has a ton of useful functions.

Want to avoid ERP? Check.

Find the best way to get to a location via bus or MRT or a combination of both? Check.

Estimated taxi rates for a route? Check.

Best of all, it is accurate and free. In the beginning, Gothere relied on the default Google map data, which was provided by Teleatlas. Problem is, this data was outdated, and the Gothere founders couldn’t do anything about it.

So what did they do? They drove around around Singapore and GPS mapped all the roads in Singapore. This set of new map data is now the founders’ intellectual property. Their Python backend still uses Google’s API for rendering, but the map data is theirs.

Said co-founder Toh Kian Khai in an interview with Techgoondu: “If there are any changes to Singapore roads, we will try to update the Gothere map within one day.”

Talking to all three founders – Kian Khai, Dominic Ee, and Kuan Chih Yuen, all 26 – one can’t help but feel inspired by their passion for their pet project. All three are drawing no pay and working full-time on their dream.

“We felt we could do a better job than the others out there,” said Dominic. “We have an edge over established companies – they can’t be so nimble.”

Product ≠ Business Model

However, one major downside is that they don’t have a business model yet. Sorta like YouTube or Google in the beginning, Gothere.sg has an excellent product but is lacking a revenue model.

To which I say, it’s fine for a while – it took Google some time to find their advertising model (pioneered by Overture) – but at some point pragmatics will take over: you need to survive as you build your product. I would hate to see Gothere die.

So Gothere folks, here are some ideas from me. Ideas are free — the hard part is finding out what works and implementing them.

• Look for help to grow your business. Think seriously about getting help from VCs, network to acquire mentors, and basically just talk to people. For example, the Singapore government is trying to encourage entrepreneurship, and there are grants being thrown around, from the likes of IDA, MDA, and Spring. It’s worth a look at least, for money or contacts.
• Write a simple business plan. Even if it’s a simple two pager that spells out what you’re doing and hope to achieve. Don’t know how to start? Go get a copy of Business Plan Pro or some other business planning software which guides you into putting together a coherent plan.
• Experiment with business ideas to see what works. Build a widget for companies to embed their location maps (something most about pages need), which will drive even more traffic to the site. Give it them for free, or charge them micropayments when it’s used, limited to a low capped amount to test the market. Build a locality search for ATMs for some bank, etc. I think a freemium model has potential – give it free to end users, but charge corporations and give them service support.
• Partner up with companies. For example, many mobile phones now come with A-GPS and you can bet the phone manufacturers need to include map support that they either build or buy. Build an OEM partnership with Nokia, HTC, Samsung, etc. where you become their map developers for Singapore. Work with a local telco to see if they can bundle this with their phones as a premium service and you get a cut. Or try Google or Yahoo to see if they would be interested as content providers. Partnerships are one good way to drive revenue, and some successful Singaporean examples are Muvee and TenCube.

Here’s wishing Gothere the best of luck!

(Note: This story is part of a series of stories on the web and tech innovation scene in Singapore. Check out the interview with Yebber and Shoplette if you haven’t seen it.)

The idea: you spot a pair of pink hello kitty slippers in a boutique mall in Japan’s trendy Shinjuku shopping district to die for, and you want to let all your friends know. You whip out your phone, snap it, and upload it where all your friends can goggle over your latest purchase.

Except that with Shoplette (beta), the whole world can find out what and where you like to shop.

“Shopping is a very social thing,” said Shoplette founder Shannon Low Shen-Li, 32, in an interview with Techgoondu. “If you spot a good buy, you are often excited to tell others about what you have bought!”

Shoplette’s social media platform allows anybody to “follow” your purchases, and they can even vote on whether they think the buy is a bargain or not. The more highly rated your purchase, the more visible it is on the main page.

Shannon likens Shoplette, whose beta officially started in May 2008, as a “sort of twitter for shopping”, where your friends can find out where you’re shopping in real-time. Photos and content can be submitted via MMS, making the input pretty easy.

Besides user submitted content, business owners can also set-up a virtual shop on Shoplette. A basic account is free (for now), but featured sites – which appear in a column on the right – are charged at the low cost of US$10 a month.

With such low rates and no other appreciable web advertising, it’s a wonder that the founders are making money at all. It turns out that Shannon (together with co-founder Kok Keong, also 32) is not looking at Shoplette as a money spinner, but as a test product to sell such Web 2.0 social platforms to companies who might want to use it as a marketing tool. His corporate site, Mobrick, lists their objective as building “crowdsourcing websites, content-driven social networks, user-generated content platforms” for organizations.

Thus far, their test product has generated fairly decent results.

Shoplette seems to have struck a chord with predominantly female shoppers in the teenage to early twenties range. According to Shannon, from a low user base of 20 testers in May, they have grown to around 1,000 shoplette members via word of mouth now — not bad for a young project.

“It takes time to grow a community,” said Shannon. “People sort of forget that even popular sites like Facebook were around for a few years before it really took off in the last two or so.”

Shoplette is self-funded, but they are on the lookout for VCs who can help them with contacts and experience beyond just the monetary aspect. As for starting a tech business during a downturn, Shannon was sanguine about it.

“If you want to start a company, you do it anyway despite whatever the economy is like,” he said.

(Note: This story is part of a series of stories on the web and tech innovation scene in Singapore. Check out the interview with Yebber if you haven’t seen it.)

Yebber is a Singapore-based website that aggregates reviews by end users and provides a mechanism for users to search for them.

So far, pretty standard. The catch? It pays you to have an opinion.

How does it work? You create an account, hammer out a review, and it pays you Yebber dollars, which can be exchanged for gifts or hard cash.

Started in March 2007, Yebber is the brainchild of Stewart Lau, CEO and owner of the site. What’s interesting is that Stewart is no wet-behind-the-ears youngster out to do his first start-up. The 52-year old veteran businessman has been running his own company, Integrated Software Engineering, for 21 years. Yebber is just one of the many products – ERP software, e-commerce platforms, and surveillance camera software are other examples – that his company has churned out over that period of time.

Stewart started Yebber “not because there’s a big potential in making money now”, but because he wanted a space in which people could throw bouquets and brickbats at vendors in the market.

This idea was born from his own personal experience. In his business past, there were some really scummy deals that he could not find an avenue to warn other customers about, so he built his own platform.

The Yebber dollar was an interesting evolution in this process. In the beginning, it was about giving a few prizes to the best reviews to incentivize people to write, but the Yebber team soon stumbled upon the concept that it’s fairer and more effective to reward all participants. The monthly rates are set by a formula dependent on advertising revenue and the reviews. Yebber dollars are also paid out for photos and videos submitted, and also for checking out reviews – an interesting concept and experiment that is still unfolding.

Besides the Singapore market, Yebber is also trying to branch out into the Malaysia and Indonesia market, and they’re looking for partners in other parts of the world to localize Yebber for their countries.

“Only the people in their home countries understand their needs and culture,” Stewart said. Yebber is also looking to partner with more Singaporean businesses, like this current promotion with the National Heritage Board (NHB).

As an end user, I find Yebber an interesting concept: it crowdsources opinions and pays them with advertising dollars.

Similar to growing a wiki, I feel that it needs to get a sizeable base, have strong moderation and publicity (all of which is hard work!) before it can take off. The content is a little raw, but it’s worth a look.

(Note: This post is part of the research for a spread of stories in Digital Life on the web innovation scene in Singapore. There will be a different slice of news in there, including how the companies are coping with the downturn.)

“There is nothing new in tech coming out of Singapore”, they cry. Singaporeans in IT are nothing but glorified tech sales and marketeers for big name MNCs who have set up shop in this little dot that we call home. Or, they work for GLCs (government linked companies) or statuary boards trying to copy technology from elsewhere. And failing miserably on innovation.

Contrary to the belief that Singapore has no tech innovation and we only have Creative to talk about (and that was before its star started falling), there are lots of interesting small tech start-ups here. We have a bevy of innovators experimenting with business ideas tapping on social media concepts, web-based services that provide useful services to Singaporeans, and a small but growing games and media industry.

One of the biggest problems? Getting publicity.

And here at Techgoondu, we understand that. We really do.

As a ex-reporter, ex-PR, now freelance writer/journalist covering IT, I help set up and run this site because at some level I’m frustrated that some of my tech stories and ideas have difficulty penetrating the mainstream media. I’m sure this sentiment is shared to some extent by the other goondus as well. And we work in the media domain.

Hence, we set up this Techgoondu platform to tell our stories and your stories.

The beauty of an online web-based platform is that we can reach a wide reader audience, and yet have all these readers talk back to us to tell us what they think and feel about certain issues.

There are many Singapore IT blog sites that tell great stories as well – Tech65, TechieLobang, Singapore Gadget Show, KidTechGuru (really cool), amongst others. Check them out. Help build a thriving tech community.

On my end, I’m looking to do more journalism work on the SME tech scene in Singapore. I can’t promise what will get ink or not – that will be decided by my editors at various pubs I write for. But I’ll do what I can, and there’s always Techgoondu. In the following weeks, I will be posting up some stories on some companies that I have talked to.

If you’ve something interesting to showcase, or have comments to make, please do drop us a mail at at contact@techgoondu.com or me at chiloong@techgoondu.com. Thanks!