NoiseStreet is running this game at 313@Somerset. Photo: NoiseStreet
For two years, the founders of NoiseStreet were unable to cause even a whimper.
Bhagaban Behera and Abhineet Yadav, who were among the first batch of Founder Institute Singapore graduates, incorporated the company in August 2010, fervent in their belief that they could disrupt outdoor advertising by adding interactivity and merging it with the digital world.
But things started to go wrong really fast.
They were unable to find any traction for a combination of reasons. According to Bhagaban, their product wasn’t polished, and Internet access wasn’t yet widespread in commercial locations like shopping malls and retail stores.
“Also, smartphones then weren’t really smart and the technology we used wasn’t scalable,” the CEO added. Read more
Bomanbridge, a Singapore-based distributor of television content, has sold the multimedia format for Angel’s Gate to Finland’s Intervisio, a crossmedia production company, reported TBI Vision.
Intervisio has stated that it hopes to produce the show next year. It did not, however, announce a local broadcaster or platform for the program. Read more
If an award were to be handed out to the most avid online video watchers in Asia-Pacific, the Japanese would receive it. That’s according to comScore‘s video measurement tool Video Metrix, which revealed that Japanese Internet users watch 242.5 videos a month on average, or a staggering 8 videos a day.
Hong Kongers are a miserable second with 180.7 videos a month, while Singaporeans, in third place, can only manage a measly 158.1. The global average is 159.4, or just over 5 videos a day. Why the Japanese consume so many videos is a very big mystery to me, which begs the question of: What exactly are they watching? Read more
A celebrity couple, who runs food business Twelve Cupcakes, recently put up articles written about their business on Facebook, Twitter and the company’s website. However, Singapore Press Holdings, a media conglomerate in Singapore, soon demanded payment because they reproduced its articles online.
Daniel Ong, a former radio deejay, wrote a long Facebook note last night to complain about SPH’s actions. He then wrote a follow-up letter expounding on the incident. He said that the payment would add up to “almost S$3,000″ (US$2,360), a claim which SPH later denied.
SPH responded to Daniel in yesterday’s edition of The Straits Times. It reiterated the fact that under copyright law, interviewees and information providers don’t control the distribution rights to a piece of work. Authors do.
But while it said that displaying content on websites is against the law, framing actual articles up and displaying them at physical stores does not constitute copyright infringement.
In Daniel’s first note, he said that his wife, former beauty queen Jaime Teo, received an email from SPH demanding a payment of S$535 (US$422) per story. They were interviewed by the Straits Times, The New Paper, and a couple of magazines. Both newspapers belong to SPH.
He then added that when they took down the stories as a compromise, the couple was asked to pay a S$214 (US$169) “investigation fee”. If they don’t pay, they would still be “liable for infringement” for the next six years.
MyChina Channel (MCC), a Singapore-based media startup that aggregates, produces and distributes China related content for the global market, has announced in a press release yesterday the appointment of new senior management.
Joining Melvin Ang, founder and executive director, is Wayne Chou, board member of the financial committee for the Media Development Authority in Singapore. Wayne has more than a decade of experience in corporate strategy, planning and businesses development, investment, as well as divestiture of businesses. He will be the new CEO. Read more
Like them or not, social media celebrities like Xiaxue, together with their thousands upon thousands of Twitter followers, are here to stay.
Reputations rise or crumble by their tweets. A restaurant’s branding will be hit simply because a waiter offends a superblogger, who then writes about it. With their massive influence, they’re the new rulers of the Internet world.
Perhaps drunk with their newfound power, they can get downright nasty, depending on their mood. So if you piss them off enough to go after you, well good luck.
Several unlucky Singaporean men found that out the hard way, when Xiaxue, a well-known Singapore celebrity blogger, decided to get her revenge. Read more
That’s how wide the gulf between the two worlds are.
Journalists are essentially publicity whores that live in a fast-paced work environment, rushing to and fro to cover scandal after scandal.
Entrepreneurs, on the other hand, often live for years in obscurity before getting their big break — the makers of Draw Something are a good example. A lot of them, unfortunately, will remain forever mired in the bog of insignificance.
And when journalists and entrepreneurs work together, it’s often an uneasy, contentious symbiosis. Entrepreneurs complain of being misquoted and misrepresented by journalists, while journalists gripe about being arm-twisted to write an article a certain way.
But it doesn’t always have to be this way. Having some tension is natural, and a healthy working relationship is attainable.
Entrepreneurs and journalists do need one another, so understanding both sides is an essential first step to making the partnership work.
Having lived and breathed in a newsroom environment in both the print and online world, I thought it’s time I share five things entrepreneurs must know about journalists, but unfortunately, are often clueless about. Read more
So, a few videos interviews I did at DEMO Asia 2012 two weeks ago mysteriously disappeared and now have reappeared on my (i)phone. This short interview with Marc van der Chijs, Dutch founder of Chinese video-sharing site, Tudou, is thus a bit delayed but nevertheless still relevant.
In here, he talks about the diversity of ideas but yet how some of the companies he saw at DEMO Asia — a launchpad for emerging technology – had small visions, but “it’s okay, you can start with a small vision but still build it up to a bigger company eventually”.
Watch out also for his advice to foreign entrepreneurs trying to enter Asia. Read more
Reality shows that feature entrepreneurs are getting popular these days (Angel’s Gate is one example), and these shows provide the perfect opportunity to present your brand and products to a nationwide audience at close to zero costs.
As a young start-up, our appearance on a show called “The Potential” (aired on Channel U earlier this month), which gave entrepreneurs some air time to pitch their products, had a significant impact on our website traffic and revenues.
While the application process, auditions and the actual shoot required days of hard work and rehearsals, the exposure that BoxInBlue.com got out of it was indeed worth the effort.
There is definitely nothing to lose to be on national TV. However, we realized that it is even more important to determine what we want to achieve in that ten minutes of airtime. Just as many of the Angel’s Gate participants have admitted, we do not go into the show expecting a million dollars of sales revenue (or million-dollar funding in the case of Angel’s Gate), but instead be able to maximise this airtime to bring our message across.
Here are five tips and key takeaways that I got from the experience, through the auditions, to the actual show. Read more
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