Our friends at Tech65 start their weekly podcast on the following issues that dominated the tech landscape last week: [1]Tech65 conducted a Podcasting workshop at Science Center, [2] Geek Terminal launches new membership scheme “Geek Pass” using RFID and eGrips, [3] A New ‘park and ride and shop’ smartcard to replace CashCard in Singapore, [4] Widgeous launches a Developer network, [5] The Dangers of getting an iPhone without a data plan/pack, [6] Mozilla Labs launches Ubiquity, [7] IE8 Beta is announced and Byte of the Week : Twiddla. Do click and check out their podcast.

Singapore, 22nd August 2008 – Local web startup Widgeous (http://widgeo.us) launches their Developer Network – also known as the Widgeous DevNet – today with the aim of increasing engagement efforts with the international developer community.

Featuring consolidated feeds from a recently integrated forum and their blog, the Widgeous DevNet (http://widgeo.us/devnet) comes equipped with a getting started guide and sample codes to help interested developers have a go at creating applications that enable users to interact across multiple communications channels. In addition to just technical resources, a job board for Widgeous Developers will also be integrated into the DevNet for companies sourcing for developers who are experienced at integrating and building applications with the Widgeous platform.

The DevNet plays a critical role in the development of their ecosystem which involves application developers, web content and services consumers as well as business entities coming together. With applications using Widgeous as a key communications platform, more users will gain the benefit of being able to interact with their applications regardless of where they are.

In line with their goal of increasing developer engagement, Widgeous is also running a hackathon (http://widgeo.us/hackathon) lasting till the end of September 2008. Developers are encouraged to build creative and useful applications that fully utilize the Widgeous cross-channel capabilities.

Widgeous made their debut appearance in the local development scene earlier in the year when they presented their initial version of the platform at Barcamp Singapore on the 25th May 2008. They have since developed several in-house applications and are slated to make several new releases in the next few weeks.

For more information, please visit:
http://widgeo.us
http://blog.widgeo.us
http://widgeo.us/devnet

For enquiries, contact:
Ridzuan Ashim
Chief Executive Officer
Tel : +65 97968124

Of course, the Widgeous Team started the ball rolling with their presentation of the platform. Throughout the day, the event is divided into various tracks. One of the tracks is totally focussed on the content management system, Drupal, where the developers led by Joeri Poesen started from the basics to the advanced, talking first about the platform and how to make use of Drupal to develop more interesting applications.

Another interesting discussion I have gone to is done by Wong Meng Weng (a successful Singaporean entrepreneur based in Silicon Valley). It is a discussion to use the analogy of wizards in fantasy role playing games and try to generate new ideas and insights about technology in the real world. One major lesson that I learned from this session is that the Internet has facilitated not just transactions without face to face, but also a platform to coordinate chaotic activity such that useful and organized output of information helped to create value for people and make their lives better. I thought that this type of ideas generation is sole lacking in our sessions back home, and urged Mohan to get Meng Weng for a session like this in the next E27 Unconference or related event.

The most interesting panel that I have attended is the session where the Malaysian entrepreneurs discussing going global where the issues and challenges they face are not so different from us in Singapore, and discuss about the entrepreneurs in terms of their mindset, and the execution risk as pointed by one of the panelists Vishen Lakhiani, co-founder of MindValley pointed out that the execution risk is a major issue among entrepreneurs in Malaysia. Dr V. Sivapalan, from Venture Partners Sdn Bhd, made this acute observation that there are actually enough talent to build four to five great companies in Malaysia, but the issue is that all the talent wanted to do something for themselves and hence you have 25 small start-ups where that combined strength can do 5 great start-ups. In some sense, it is also very reflective of young Singaporean entrepreneurs, where all of them do their own start-ups and not thinking of combining together to form a bigger start-up. The most interesting lesson is froom Ganesh, the CEO and President of MOL where he pointed out he has to modify the business models of his business to one that is of revenue generation. One thing that all of them agree is that ideas are cheap, and the execution is more important than idea.

For more updates on the event, please look at the Barcamp Malaysia Blog as the bloggers in Malaysia discuss and narrate what happened in the event.

Here are some pictures for the event:

Photo 1: The venue for Barcamp Malaysia

Photo 2: Daniel Cerventus and one of his teammate at the Registration Table

Photo 3: The session on Drupal by Ahmad Najib Habeb and Joeri Poesen

Photo 4: Meng Weng‘s interesting session about technology insights and ideas generation

Photo 5: Panel on “Entrepreneurs Going Global” – (From the left) Dr Sivapalan (Managing Principal of Ventura), Roslan Bakri (GM, MDEC, Technopreneurship Development Division), Ganesh Kumar Bangah (President, CEO of MOL AccessPortal Berhad) and Vishen Lakhiani (Co-founder, MindValley)

Photo 6: Preetam’s talk on interesting web 2.0 companies in Asia

Photo 7: The Singaporean speakers for Barcamp MY: Meng Weng, BL and Preetam Rai

Kudos to the E27 team, the Unconference Singapore 2008 held in Matrix, Biopolis had been a fantastic and well-organized event. It had an overwhelming turnout, hitting between 200-250 people. From a surprising excellent keynote from Daniel Ingitaraj (Director, Developer & Platform Evangelism, Microsoft) to the enthusiastic pitches from many start-ups in the event, it was a gathering of many enthusiastic minds for a growing and emerging Internet industry.

Of course, the event started with registration till lunch. There was an exhibition area where Microsoft had a booth allowing the audience to try out their latest Xbox craze, Guitar Hero II. Other than that, we have the founders from several start-ups, for example, Homespace, ZopIM, Eteract, Widgeous, Phlook, GoThere, Podfire, Hibernater, Yum.sg, PatSnap and many others featured here. Surely with the good food and drinks, we mingled around the area to watch demos from the entrepreneurs about what they have worked on for the past few months.

Following on, the event started with a keynote by Daniel Ingitaraj, (Director, Developer & Platform Evangelism, Microsoft Singapore) entitled ““Innovation: Persevere or Perish”. In the talk, Daniel went from a slow start in defining two important ideas from Ted Levitt’s “Marketing Myopia” article from Harvard Business Review and Christensen’s “Innovator’s Dilemma” about disruptive technologies and talked about how technology has evolved from the past to present. He went to discuss the three major trends that is to come: (i) user experience, (ii) collaboration and (iii) cloud computing. The talk ended with some interesting demos (likely we will get a video soon). After that, the keynote was followed by the start-ups pitching about their products and demos.

Once that ends, the event is followed by the six major breakout sessions split between 2 hours: (i) Enterprise 2.0, (ii) What’s so difficult about valuing and investing in Internet Companies? (iii) Mobile Platforms, (iv) Social Media in Asia Pacific, (v) Web2.0/Mobile Startups in Eastern Europe/Africa/East Asia, and (vi) Interoperability for Startups.

The event has drawn a lot of people together, bring back old friends and new ones to the grassroots movement. Sometime back, Preetam (a well-known web evangelist in Asia) and BL (our editor in SG Entrepreneurs) have expressed a worry that they have been meeting the same people over different events in Singapore. Since the eBay.dev.shack till this event, we are heartened to realize that we are now meeting new and enthusiastic people from all walks of life who come and share their ideas and thoughts on the industry. Of course, we do have interesting photos to share with you for this event. :)

Related Links

• 1. Mohd Hisham, e27 Unconference LIVE Update using Plurk and e27 Unconference Summary.
• 2. Thinking Nectar, Unconference 2008.
• 3. Thinking Nectar, Unconference 2008 – More Start-Up Pitches.
• 4. Young UpStarts, Singapore Startups at the e27 Unconference Singapore 2008 and Photos from the event as well.
• 5. Claudia, E27 Unconference Singapore.
• 6. The Armchair Theorist, The E27 Unconference was Definitely Unboring.
• 7. BL, The IVF Drip – Realities about Raising Capital for Tech Companies in Singapore on the breakout session he conducted for the Unconference 2008.

Photo 1: Unconference Singapore 2008 Exhibition Area.

Photo 2: Peter Du and Michael Cheng at the Podfire booth.

Photo 3: Ridzuan evangelizing about the Widgeous platform at his booth.

Photo 4: Royston pitching Zopim to interesting enthusiasts.

Photo 5: Talk by Daniel Ingitaraj (Director, Developer & Platform Evangelism, Microsoft).

Widgeous is a platform that allows applications and people to communicate via multiple channels like widgets, SMS and Instant Messaging. Co-founded by two young and passionate entrepreneurs, Ridzuan Ashim and Chua U-Zyn, the team recently launched their platform at the Barcamp Singapore II – Maps and Mobile Unconference. So, we took the opportunity to speak to Ridzuan and got him to do an interview with us here in SGE, to tell us more about the story and features of Widgeous together with his thoughts on the trends of building platforms in the Internet.

BL: Thank you for the interview with SG Entrepreneurs. Let’s begin by telling us your story. How did both U-Zyn and you come about starting Widgeous?
Ridzuan: Well it started some time in the middle of last year when U-Zyn came up to me with the idea of building some sort of SMS-applications platform. I bought into the idea because it sounded like a really good way of making some of my own communication practices easier. In two days we shaped up something to present for a Master Class conducted by former Amazon Chief Scientist, Andreas Weigend. Needless to say, the idea was still so ‘infant’ that very few understood what we were doing but it served as a good sounding board for refinement of the idea. Fast forward a few months and we’re here…still a long way to go though.

BL: What were your backgrounds before engaging in your current start-up?
Ridzuan: I’m majoring in Computer Engineering in NTU while running a small web consultancy/development company outfit while Uzyn was, as many probably already know, a freelance developer and also founder of local blog community Ping.sg.

It helps that both of us are somewhat actively involved in the blogosphere because it allows us to understand some of the needs in cyberspace. Aside from that, both of us have a lot of little projects that keep us plugged into various developments in other areas which I feel is essential in understand where innovation and synergy can occur.

BL: As a platform, what are the main problems that Widgeous is trying to solve for the community?
Ridzuan: Fundamentally, we want to achieve 2 things. Firstly, we want to make it easy for people to communicate. We’re inundated with so many communication options like Twitter, Instant Messaging protocol, email, text messages, social networks, etc. This really makes it complicated when we want to deliver a message to another person because we now face that need to deliberate over which channel would best be used. With Widgeous, the platform decides how best to send something across. It even gives the recipient the power to control how he wishes to receive messages from other individuals as well as applications.

Secondly, we want to make it easy for application developers to deploy their applications across communication channels. Traditionally, developers create an application and have to keep up with making sure it supports the various channels. This takes time and in the event that an API changes, many developers would be forced to make modifications. With us, developers can plug into our API and have immediate support for all the various channels. And because we intend to not just consolidate digital communication channels like email and IMs but to also include SMS and social networks, applications plugged into us would follow users wherever they went.

BL: What are the three essential features in Widgeous?
Ridzuan: 1. Cross communication channel support – With Widgeous, you’re plugged to your friends as well to the applications from wherever you are.

2. Central Contact List – A central place where you can store your online and offline information and have this data seamlessly transmitted to your friends. Not entirely new (as compared to existing services) but we’ve got some interesting ways of leveraging on this… We’ll tell you more about this soon. :)

3. A repository of application – once we establish a sizable repository of apps, widgeous users would be able to have access to everything from information-on-demand services all the way to full scale applications like mini-games, event coordination tools and more! The repository will also give exposure to the applications which would be a great way to leverage on our userbase.

BL: How does the developer gain from working with the Widgeous API? Is it difficult to develop from your platform?
Ridzuan: Difficult? Definitely not. We will be providing a REST API for developers to use later next month which will be really useful. Basically, developers would have to request for a developer’s key, build their app and have it listed in our repository. From there, they’re good to go.

BL: Given the trends in the Internet industry are moving towards the “web as a platform” or web 2.5, what is the position of Widgeous in the ecosystem? How does it attract the end-users?
Ridzuan: Well, quite honestly, we see ourselves as that layer that sits between applications and the people. Our platform would connect various websites and various groups of people to each other as easily as possible without sacrificing control.

The traditional strategy of simplifying interaction between people-to-people or people-to-applications is to create a new standard that requires people to leave a service and adopt a new one. Now we all know how difficult it is to convince a friend to leave one social network for another…or perhaps to try out a new Instant Messaging service. What we’ve decided is to not replace anyone but to be that layer that helps to manage the connections…So you could on say gTalk and I could on MSN and we would still be able to get messages to each other.

So how does this translate to something useful for end users? Well, in time to come it wouldn’t matter what services your friends are using or whether someone changed their mobile number because all you have to do is make sure your friend is in your contact list and you can talk to him/her from anywhere! And if you’re the one changing your particulars, you no longer have to update all your 10,000 friends about it.

But that’s only half the benefit. As users of applications that are plugged into our platform, you can also use these applications from wherever you are. You could check the status of the weather or get the movie listings direct from your IM or you could start an event direct from your mobile. It wouldn’t even matter if there’s no WI-FI in the area because you could interact with the application via text messaging too!

BL: Is there a business model behind Widgeous or just another web service that you grow a community and wait to be acquired?
Ridzuan: Yes there is business model behind the company although let’s be honest and practical – if someone named a reasonable price one day, it’s only responsible that we consider it right?

Right now, we’ve adopted several forms of monetization but the immediate one would be the option for companies and organizations to use our platform as a white label solution.

BL: What are the challenges for the team at the moment? How do you all try to overcome them?
Ridzuan: As a platform, we have a chicken and egg issue – we really have little value unless there are applications that realize our capabilities. At the same time, users will have little incentive to sign up if there are no applications. So how do we intend to breach this problem?

We’ll begin by first engaging the developer community and try to convince them as to why they should be plugged into us. In a few weeks, we’ll be opening up our API and start being a bit more liberal with our invitations into the platform. We’re also in the midst of planning a hackathon of sorts for next month (local and overseas) so that we can teach people and at the same time get to know where our API is lacking (and we’ll try to build those shortfalls on the spot). Do check out our blog as we break the news.

BL: Our favourite question to your team: What are the three most important attributes that an entrepreneur must have?

Ridzuan: 1. Perseverance – to ride out the tough times and the naysayers (although please be realistic about one’s idea). Don’t believe all the glamour that the media attaches to the word ‘entrepreneur’.

2. Passion for the idea – It’s the fuel when nothing else motivates you and you’re trying to go through the dip.

3. Faith coupled with a quick feet– If you’ve thought it out and you truly believe it’s going to bring value that people want, then have faith. That said, it’s important to be able to react quickly to changes. Besides, as a startup entrepreneurs, speed is what we have against larger corporations..it’ll be a terrible waste not to capitalize on that.

BL: Given the proliferation of the platforms by the established players (for example, Apple iPhone Apps store, Google Apps Engine and Facebook Developer Platform), what do you think are the key challenges issues faced by small medium enterprises who are also developing platforms to provide essential web and mobile services?
Ridzuan: One challenge I think would have to be marketing and adoption. These bigger players have an existing user and developer base. They have all the resources to help push applications out. But the fundamental question to ask is, “what value would our platform really bring to the participants of our platform?” I say, don’t fight the big boys but instead complement what they have.

And this is where the bigger problem begins…With the industry developments speeding up, keeping up to date with the latest developments become really difficult but still very much crucial. And when it comes to web and mobile services being a field that everyone is trying to go into (the mobile operators are trying to get onto the web and the web players are trying to get into phones!), it’s crucial to know who’s doing what and to react quickly.

Profile of Widgeous founders

Ridzuan Ashim – CEO, Co-Founder and his Widgeous ID : ridz84. Ridzuan is a passionate individual who has been involved in the Web Development scene since early 2000. After using his first computer at the age of 6, he is an avid adopter of technology and believes that while technology should allow us to perform more complex tasks, it should remain as easily usable for the common man on the street.

U-Zyn Chua – CTO, Co-Founder and his Widgeous ID : uzyn. U-Zyn Chua has been actively involved in the Singapore web industry scene since he was still a student in National University of Singapore. He has created various web-based applications for various companies in and outside of Singapore besides being the founder and the sole developer for the online community for Singapore bloggers – Ping.sg.

Finally, the videos for the the Barcamp II – Maps and Mobile Unconference held on 21 May 2008 in NUS Extension, Park Mall are out. The event was organized by the combined team of Singapore PHP User Group, E27 (Garag3) and Barcamp Singapore. The third and final part focus on the Mobile session and the demos presented by Cinepura – iPhone app, TenCube, Widgeous, Mobile Sorcery and VoiceRoute.

Cinepura – iPhone app

From the Tech65 team, here are the highlights of their podcast: Stories this Week: (a) BarcampSingaporeII, (b) Singapore students putting their identities at risk?, (c) StarHub ‘blocking file-share program’ aka BitTorrent, (d) SingTel launches mio TV on Mobile, (e) HTC Touch Diamond launches in Singapore, (f) Asus to embed Linux into all motherboards, (g) MS Office to support outside open formats, (h) Guitar Hero World Tour and finally, byte of The week: Google Browser Sync. Click here for the main podcast of the episode. If you don’t think you have enough, check the additional podcast with the Tech65 interviewing Ridzuan and U-Zyn, the founders of Widgeo.us.

Singapore, 22nd May 2008 – After much anticipation, local startup, Widgeous finally launched during yesterday’s Barcamp Singapore unconference session. Widgeous is a web-based startup focusing on creating a universal cross-medium communications platform.

Inspired to solve the problem of having too many communication choices, the locally funded company aims to provide a central Active Programming Interface(API) for application developers to plug into and achieve immediate support for a wide range of communication channels. Applications and senders would then be able to transmit messages to their intended recipients without the hassle of having to decide which communication channel would be best for delivery. Through Widgeous, the message receivers would be able to decide where they would like to receive their messages, based on several criteria.

Widgeous presently support Twitter, MSN, email and an in-house command line interface called the “Widgeous Device”. Widgeous plans to increase support for more channels in the coming weeks and is presently still under closed-beta. Invitations to participate in their beta program will be released on a periodic basis.

Featuring a series of in-house applications yesterday, the team showcased an application, FloatingRoom, which demonstrated their platform’s ability to operate seamlessly across multiple communication channels. Despite struggling to define themselves to the public, the demonstrations provided a clearer picture of what they are able to do.
Founded by 2 young individuals – Ridzuan Ashim and U-Zyn Chua – both are not new in the web scene. Ridzuan , 24, an undergraduate majoring in Computer Engineering(NTU) and has been involved in web development since he was 15. U-Zyn, 25, a local freelance web developer and a graduate from National University of Singapore, is also the founder and sole developer of the renowned local blog community aggregator Ping.sg. Also in the team are local developer Teng Kah Wee and designer Aen Tan.

For more information, please visit:
http://widgeo.us
http://blog.widgeo.us

# # #
For enquiries, contact:
Ridzuan Ashim
Chief Executive Officer
Tel : +65 97968124
Email: ridzuan.ashim(at)widgeo.us