65Bits Episode 160: They sound more cute with Japanese voice

Our friends at Tech65 starts off this week with their weekly podcast on the following issues that dominated the tech landscape: [1] Sony unveils Move, its PS3 motion controller, [2] Final Fantasy XIII English version, [3] Ubisoft on DRM snafu: servers attacked, pirates locked out, [4] X-Mini Happy and [5] YOG launches virtual world to reach out to youths. Do click and check out their latest podcast here. You can now also listen to the Tech65 podcast here as well by coming to the blog post directly. Read more

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Virtual(ly) Thursday – 5 Nov

Hosted by IE Singapore, Virtual(ly) Thursday is a roundtable session on the Virtual Worlds industry. This November’s event would be an informal roundtable discussion for key industry players to discuss about the challenges of commercialisation, as well as explore opportunities for collaboration collectively, through enabling companies to identify potential synergies among themselves. Read more

In Conversation with Jeremy Snyder, Twinity and Metaversum

During Ad-Tech Singapore 2009, I worked together with Jeremy Snyder from Twinity (and Metaversum, the parent company) on a panel about innovation and experimental marketing. So, we thought it will be great for him to share about his experiences on virtual worlds and how it is like for a foreigner to set up shop in Singapore. While this is happening in the midst, Twinity has just announced a partnership with AsiaOne for the upcoming release of Virtual Singapore, where they will launch a virtual Orchard Road and Marina Bay in the third quarter of 2009, in conjunction with a major partner who will be announced closer to the release date. So, with all these interesting happenings in the virtual world space, it will be great to share this quick interview with Jeremy Snyder. Read more

After Virtual Worlds at NUS Entrepreneurship Week

The Virtual Worlds panel brought together speakers who build virtual worlds (Jeremy Snyder, Twinity), financial service provider for virtual worlds (Aileen Sim, First Meta), provider of a virtual mobile technology aimed at enterprises (James Ong, Origami Frontiers), new media and virtual site destination producer (Aroon Tan, Magma Studios), where game characters and films collide (Ho Chee Yue, Association of MACHINIMA Arts and Sciences) and our champion for the marriage of museums and new media (Walter Lim, National Heritage Board). Read more

NUS Entrepreneurship Week – Big Bang Tuesday! 20 January 2009

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News Flash: HiPiHi and Intel enters into a new technology partnership

Something interesting popped up in China today – 22 Nov 2007. Remember HiPiHi (as pronounced High-P-High), the China-based company which is currently involved in the virtual worlds market. Since our last encounter with Xu Hui, CEO of HiPiHi sometime back, we have heard that Intel China and HiPiHi have announced today that they are entering into a technology partnership. The interesting part is that Intel is not entering as just a usual corporate resident but committed towards supporting technical needs of a virtual world platform. They will be setting up a brand experience centre in the Intel island that seeks to enhance the interaction with the consumers (or users), and the details will be announced later. The HiPiHi CEO has remarked that, “As China’s first company to enter into the virtual worlds market, HiPiHi has already attracted Intel and P&G which are well-established multi-national companies. We believe that there are other companies of such stature who will join us in the future and take HiPiHi to the next level such that it will add value and attract more enterprises and consumers to join us.” (Translated from eNet.com.cn). Here’s an interesting perspective to think about. This strategic collaboration between HiPiHi and Intel is reminiscent of the Second Life and IBM one sometime back. (Also check out Wagner James Au’s ‘First Looks at a ‘Chinese 2nd Life‘)

In Conversation with Aileen Sim, First Meta

Overhyped or not, virtual worlds are growing in numbers, as are their users. Whether it turns out to be a fad or not remains to be seen, but here Gwen speaks to the lady behind First Meta, a startup offering you financial services in virtual worlds. First Meta has been featured on international sites and news like TechCrunch, WIRED, BBC, BusinessWeek, London Times Online etc. Also, it was was one of four Singapore companies to win a Red Herring 100 Asia award this year! Aileen gives us her story. Read more