Jam in the cloud with Angel’s Gate at Amazon Web Services

Angel’s Gate, a 360-degree reality series that gives aspiring entrepreneurs the opportunity of a lifetime to pitch their dream business ideas to some of Asia’s most successful investors, is introducing a whole new series of events for both aspiring & seasoned entrepreneurs! A monthly occurrence, Angel’s Gate Jam Sessions aims to inspire as well as provide an avenue for entrepreneurs to network and learn from one another.

To pump up the excitement, Angel’s Gate is having its first ever Jam session with Amazon Web Services! This session will feature three speakers, namely Pieter Kemps, Principal of Business Development & Venture Capital, Asia at Amazon, who is responsible for establishing and managing relations with the venture capital (VC) community for Amazon Web Services in Asia Pacific; John Fearon, founder at DropMyEmail, whom we have previously interviewed, and lastly Ash Singh, CEO of Angel’s Gate. Read more

Are the Samwer Brothers, a.k.a Rocket Internet really that bad for Southeast Asia?

Many months back, I tweeted about the entrance of Rocket Internet in Southeast Asia with the comment, “Winter is coming.” Not long after, they have gotten off the ground running with an aggressive hiring spree and clones in the e-commerce space.

Rocket Internet is a company that belongs to the Samwer Brothers. They are known for their amazing execution prowess and their ruthlessness in cloning successful US Internet companies. Of course, their tactics and methods have raised the ire of many, including pro-Silicon Valley reporters such as Sarah Lacy who mounted a campaign against them.

But is the company’s impact on the Southeast Asia digital market all bad? I’ll examine this issue in detail and argue that while it may have some impact on innovation, it isn’t bad for the industry as a whole. Read more

LivingSocial acquires three Asian daily deal companies

Groupon rival LivingSocial has acquired DealKeren, a daily deal site in Indonesia, Ensogo, which owns DealKeren and has a presence in the Phillipines and Thailand as well, and GoNabit, a daily deals site operating in five Middle Eastern countries, it announced in a press release on 27 June. Read more

Referral Marketing Startup Anafore Raises Seed Round From BAF Spectrum, Skype Co-Founder Toivo Annus

Referral marketing startup Anafore has just secured their first round of seed financing from BAF Spectrum, engineering co-founder of Skype Toivo Annus, and SPRING SEEDS Capital – a wholly owned subsidiary of SPRING Singapore that co-invests in local start-ups. Read more

TWIA #56: Attack of The Groupon Clones

Yes, Google vs China comes to a stunning conclusion with one side making a kow-tow, and the emergence of Groupon clones taking over Asia springing from China and Singapore. How will all these change the landscape of Asia? With Chew Lin taking the helm as the moderator for the first time, the TWIA crew examines the key issues which dominate Asia, with little quibbles over Microsoft’s dropping of Kin, Huawei putting Froyo onto their Chinese Android phones, Mixi making a minor Linkedin, Amazon’s acquisition of Woot and the major differences between e-commerce in Southeast Asia & East Asia. You can go directly to TWIA website or listen the podcast here in SGEntrepreneurs. Read more

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1st Amazon Web Services Asia Pacific Region Finally Opens

We got the news last November of Amazon setting up “Availability Zones” in Singapore for Amazon Web Services (AWS). Now, it’s finally reality. Developers and businesses can access AWS services from the new “Singapore” Availability Zones beginning today, including Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), Amazon SimpleDB, Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS), Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS), Amazon CloudFront, Amazon CloudWatch and Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS). More details on each of these services and specific pricing for each is available here. Read more

Amazon Web Services Caters to Asia-Pacific Businesses with New Infrastructure in Singapore

If you’ve been fond of Amazon Web Services (AWS) but have found the lack of an Asia-based infrastructure less than appealing, here’s something to rejoice about. Singapore will be first country in the expansion of AWS’ cloud infrastructure into Asia. Read more

65Bits Episode 141: Buy Windows 7, Get Snow Leopard free

Our friends at Tech65 start their weekly podcast on the following issues that dominated the tech landscape last week: [1] Windows 7 has landed in Singapore, [2] Easing XP Netbook owners’ path to Windows 7, [3] Amazon: Windows 7 is ‘the biggest pre-order product of all time, [4] Linus Torvalds Gives Windows 7 a Thumbs Up, [5] Apple Targets Windows 7 With Three New ‘Get a Mac’ Ads, [6] Microsoft partners with Facebook, Twitter on search, [7] Google strikes a Twitter search deal, too, [8] Barnes & Noble Nook dual-screen reader officially announced, [9] Apple redesigns iMac and 13-inch MacBook, revamps Mac Mini, [10] Nokia sues Apple for patent infringement, [11] Dell Adamo XPS Can Only Be Opened By Rubbing It. Do click and check out their latest podcast here.

65Bits Episode 139: Kevin is back, while stocks last

Our friends at Tech65 start their weekly podcast on the following issues that dominated the tech landscape last week with special guest, Kevin Lim: [1] Hotmail passwords leaked online (Gmail, Yahoo Mail affected too), [2] Flash 10.1 Full Flash for Everyone Except iPhone, [3] AT&T Allows VoIP Over 3G for iPhone, [4] Kindle 2 goes to $259, International GSM version coming October 19 (List of countries getting Kindle 2 international), [5] DoubleTwist Unveils An Alternative To The iTunes Music Store, Powered By Amazon MP3, [6] New Ways to Try and Buy Microsoft Office 2010, [7] Norton 2010 Launch, [8] Sony Notebook Launch, [9] Canon Camera Launch, [10] Windows 7 Social Party, and the bonus: Google Wave Is Easier To Understand Than… Do click and check out their latest podcast here.

65Bits Episode 118: Live from The Sail

Our friends at Tech65 start their weekly podcast on the following issues that dominated the tech landscape last week: [1] Exclusive Samsung i7500 Android hands-on (their video got honourable mentions on Engadget and Gizmodo last week), [2] Sony Ericsson’s new Theme Creator, [3] Amazon launches the Kindle DX, [4] DJ Hero, Band Hero and Guitar Hero 5 announced, [5] Windows 7 RC1 given extension well into 2010, but will shut down every two hours after March 2010, [6] iPhone 3.0 to have parental control for apps, [7] CodeXtremeApps 2009 and [8] Nokia’s Developer summit 2009 – (i) Prologue (ii) Day 1 (iii) Nokia N97, N-gage and Symbian and [9] Microsoft Dreamspark – Free Microsoft Developer tools for students and the Byte Of The Week: TokBox.com. Our editor, BL is the guest for this week’s Tech65. Do click and check out their podcast.