Early this quarter, more than 500 active mappers and volunteers joined forces across the Philippines in a series of Google Map Maker events that explored the benefits and fundamental steps toward building even more beautiful country maps.

The events kicked off with a Map Maker workshop in Manila, where Advocates and Regional Expert Reviewers worked alongside budding mappers. Their enthusiasm carried over to three Map Maker Summits: Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao, where the Filipino mapping community focused on the ways an accurate country map can lend itself to improved community planning, disaster preparedness and tourism.

The Google Technology User Group in Philippines (GTUG Philippines) have a very ambitious plan to have MapUps in 80 cities across the Philippines and would like to dedicate this activity for Philippine Tourism. Focus will be given to:

Tourist spots
Airports/Ports/Bus Terminals
Hotels and Resorts
Police Stations
Malls / Business Establishments
Pasalubong Stores
Barangay / City Halls

To kick things up a bit, they will be awarding the top mappers in the country! Please make sure you read the mechanics below for details on how to join the Map Your Town Competition.

For updates, to request for a MapUp or to conduct one in your area, please visit the Mapping the Philippines site.

Mechanics:

Interested individuals must register here.
This contest is only open to individuals based in the Philippines.
The Map Your Town competition shall start on May 16, 2012 and end 2 months later on July 15, 2012. Only approved edits during this timeframe shall be considered eligible.
MapMaker Advocates and Regional Expert Reviewers are disqualified from the individual contest.
The top 10 mappers in the Philippines will be awarded with netbooks.
For the mapper with the most number of contributions in the Philippines, PhP100,000 will be donated to a public school from his/her hometown.

Women Entrepreneurs on the Web (WeOW), an initiative by both organizations, will kick-off in June, with the launch party on 31st May. The event was first started by Google in India and saw over 300 female executives and entrepreneurs participate.

The event will consist of webinars, in-person seminars, networking events, and Google hangouts, all held within a five month period. A Student-Partnership track will also be launched where interested students will be trained in Google products to help businesses with their digital marketing campaigns.

The training program will consist of five circles, and these are:

• Building an online presence
• Collaborating effectively through the cloud
• Connecting with customers
• Promoting your organization
• Tracking and optimizing your online presence

You can find out more information about WeOW in Singapore, or register online.

Will users cheat on Insync?

Technophiles have generally greeted the launch of Google Drive with cheer.

That’s no surprise: It has 5GB of free space, which is more than double the size of what Dropbox offers, but less then Microsoft’s Skydrive (see handy comparison). It is also integrated with Google’s power search functionality.

Eventually, it will have deep integration with Google Apps and Google’s whole range of services, resulting in less friction for user adoption.

Most crucial of all is Google Drive’s ability to automatically sync files with your laptop, smartphone, or tablet. All you need to do is install the app, which is already available on Android, PC, Mac, and coming to the iOS. It functions similarly to Dropbox.

This puts Insync in an awkward position. 

You see, the service was designed as a complement to Google Docs, giving it Dropbox’s file-syncing capability. But with Google’s marketing muscle and sheer omnipresence, there’s every chance that Insync will be eclipsed over time.

A bit of history: The startup was founded in 2008 by Philippine and Singapore-based entrepreneur Terence Pua. It raised a US$800,000 seed round late last year from Neoteny Labs, Reid Hoffman, Skype co-founder Toivo Annus, and Twitter’s ex-COO Santosh Jayaram. That’s some powerful backing.

However, Insync only entered beta in 2011, which leads to the question: “What if they had executed much faster?”

Things might have been different, and they might have been a more attractive acquisition target.

At this point though, Insync is the better app. It has the ability to sync with multiple accounts, although the majority of users won’t need that feature. It also automatically converts Google documents into Office formats, making them available offline.  Google Drive, on the other hand, saves the files on your computer in the .gdoc format, which can only be viewed on their web app.

Insync is also working on their mobile apps, but it is unclear how they would differ from Google’s offerings at this stage.

However, it may only be a matter of time before Google incorporates these features as well. And while I can argue that Drive is complementary to Dropbox since some users would want to use both to take advantage the free storage space, the same cannot be said about Insync and Drive. It just doesn’t make sense topossess two apps that sync with my Google documents.

But I think it is still too early to dig Insync’s graves.

The hype for Google Drive has only just begun building, so it’s unclear how many users will adopt it. Insync’s survival will also depend on how fast Terence and team are able to iterate and pivot if necessary.

With all the rumors swirling about for months, I will be surprised if they haven’t already thought about how to address this looming threat. And it’s not too late: The investment they received gives them a decent runway to work out their next moves. I am curious to see if they are able to build a strong following despite Drive’s launch.

The show is now yours, Insync.

We have contacted Terence Pua from Insync for his thoughts. We’ll update the article when he responds.

Android Market, Google’s official app market for Android, recently celebrated the milestone of ten billion total downloads. To commemorate the achievement, they released an infographic containing a slew of statistics about Android Market and its users.

Singapore, it turns out, is the fifth most app-crazed country in the world by downloads per capita. Asian nations are doing particularly well on this front, with the South Koreans coming out on top, followed by Hong Kong and Taiwan. The United States is the only non-Asian country in the top five.

Its most recent API, released on 4th October, gives developers access to Google+’s search functions, which calls up relevant people and posts based on keywords entered. The feature scans not just the title, but also the body and comments of the post, as well as the people who reshared the content.

Prior to this, Google+ released a developer preview of the Hangouts API. Hangouts is a feature that lets multiple users conduct a video chat and even watch video content together. This API enables developers to run their apps from within Google+ Hangout.

And on 15th September,  Google+ launched its first API which gives developers access to user profiles and their latest posts. Code libraries for developers that code in Java, Python, Ruby or PHP have been released as well.

Google has been rapidly improving its social network to compete with Facebook. Previously invitation-only, the Internet giant soon opened the floodgates to allow anyone to join.

A recent estimate has put the size of the Google+ network at around 50 million users, although nobody but the Googlers themselves know exactly how active these users are. So it’s anybody’s guess whether the social network will flourish or flounder.

As a developer, are you looking to use these APIs for your apps? Do you know of anyone who plans to do so? Share with us in the comments section below!

Here are some interesting startup news around Malaysia, not only in its capital, Kuala Lumpur, but also other startup hubs such as Penang, Malacca, and many more.

(1) Google announced a team up with Tourism Malaysia to poll Malaysians on which national tourist treasures and uniquely Malaysian sites should be featured in Google Street View — the Google Maps feature that allows users to view and navigate 360-degree street-level imagery. Malaysians can vote and suggest their favorite locations at the website maps.google.com.my/svtrike, which will remain open for the rest of the month.

(2) The Retails Shop Transformation Programme with its acronym TUKAR, was introduced by the Ministry of Domestic Trade, Cooperative and Consumerism. TUKAR is the Entry Point Project (EPP) to help modernise traditional neighbourhood stores and provide them a competitive edge in today’s highly competitive retails environment.

(3) Local inventors hoping to make a name for themselves in the industry can look forward to the International Conference and Exposition on Inventions of Institutions of Higher Learning (Pecipta) 2011 later this month. Organised by Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM), the event is a collaboration between the Higher Education Ministry and selected public higher learning institutions. It will showcase new products and inventions from students in Malaysia and other countries.

We thank nordicfactory for the flag image.

If search engine optimization is crucial to your business in terms of visibility and sales leads, then this is something to watch out for. Wired recently reported that Google is now looking into how to use data from its +1 button to rearrange search results.

This news comes hot on the heels of the recent revelation that you can now share content on Google+ directly through the +1 button on a website. This means that if I read an article on New York Times that I like and click on the +1 button, I can now share it on my Google+ Stream through the NYT webpage.

The Internet giant confirmed its latest plan via email: “Google will study the clicks on +1 buttons as a signal that influences the ranking and appearance of websites in search results. The purpose of any ranking signal is to improve overall search quality. For +1’s and other social ranking signals, as with any new ranking signal, we’ll be starting carefully and learning how those signals are related to quality.”

Should the plan be carried out, how far up your company website appears on Google would perhaps depend on the number of +1s you’ve garnered. However, the spokesperson also qualified that the +1 button would be one of over 200 signals used to determine site rankings. Of course, it’s a given that some signals are more significant than others, so it’s still unknown how influential the +1 button will be.

Google would face many tripwires when trying to implement this, the Wired article noted. Factoring social data in search opens the doors for more blackhat operators to manipulate search results in their favor, resulting in unsavory spam content appearing on search pages.

More trouble could come from anti-monopoly legislation, which means courts could potentially view the implementation as an attempt to unfairly use Google’s search prowess to gain an advantage over Facebook in the social network wars.

Previously, readers that click the +1 button will only have the article tucked away in a tab on the profile page, which makes it less useful as a means for businesses and web publishers to spread their content on social media.

With this announcement, it looks like publishers and businesses will have more reason to add the +1 button to their website. So far, the +1 button has crossed 2 billion daily views, although it is still not as widely implemented as the Twitter and Facebook buttons.

If you’re impatient about trying out the new Google+ features, you can sign up for the Google+ Platform Preview here, which lets you to try out new features before they are launched to the general public.

According to Find People on Plus, the new social network is certainly catching on in Asian countries, with India and Indonesia listed among the global top 10 for Google+ users. The development team has also promised Business pages, although that is still some time away.

Singapore
When: Tuesday, 6th Septemeber 2011
Where: Pan Pacific Singapore, Ballroom 1 & 2 (Map)
Register here by 29th August.
Malaysia
When: Thursday, 8th September 2011
Where: Hilton Sentral Hotel, Grand Ballroom A, Level 6 (Map)
Register here by 29th August.