Here are some interesting startup news from Japan, not only from its capital, Tokyo, but also other startup hubs like Fukuoka, Kyoto, Osaka, and many more.

(1) The popular Japanese social commerce recycle shop and website Pass The Baton has come up with another great concept of turning old, used items into desirable products. Staff uniforms from Tokyo’s popular cafe Soup Stock will be recycled and made into new T-shirts featuring exclusive designs.

(2) Japan’s second biggest telecommunications firm KDDI announced it has acquired an equity stake in French-based Total Immersion S.A., an augmented reality (AR) software maker. Business daily The Nikkei says KDDI paid 100 million yen (US$1.3 million) for a 15% stake in the company.

(3) SoftBank will sell the majority of its 4% holdings in Yahoo Inc, booking a profit of approximately 44.7 Billion yen (US$577 million).

(4) OKI Electric Industry, a Japanese telecommunications manufacturer, has developed Japan’s first 920MHz frequency band wireless multi-hop system.

(5) CyberAgent announced it has created a new division dedicated to mobile marketing for international app developers.

(6) Building on the Wireless Reach Initiative platform launched in mid-2010, Qualcomm is extending services in Japan.

(7) Japanese company M-trix launched its own Android Apps Market “M-trix Market”, which feature Japanese-style bishoujyo (beautiful young girl) games.

(8) DeNA, in collaboration with big electronics chain store Bic Camera, is implementing their marketing campaign for “Kaitou Royal,” a popular social game for mobile phone gaming platform “Mobage,” which DeNA owns.

(9) Crypton Future Media Company has begun offering social game “Hatsune Miku Vocalo×Live!” for the Android version of GREE, one of the most profitable social gaming networks around the world.

(10) Minna no Business Online (business for everyone online) is a newly released web hosting service by Google Japan, It launched on 13th September 2011.

(11) DeNA and GuruNavi have begun collaborating on “GuruNavi NEW Touch Local Recipe ?”, an app which links the social game “Bistro World” for social network Mobage with the gourmet information site “GuruNavi.”

(12) Cie Games Japan has begun offering Mobage’s  service for the feature phone version of social game Car Town. The Facebook version boasts some 8 million active users a month.

(13) Harlem, a long standing club in Shibuya, has produced a hip hop themed social game “Battle HIPHOP!!! HARLEM.”

We thank nordicfactory for the flag image.

Here are some interesting startup news from China, not only in its capital, Beijing, but also other startup hubs such as Shanghai, Hong Kong, Hangzhou, and many more.

(1) Douban, China’s homegrown social network, is rumored to have closed a “third, monster round” of financing for US$50 million. If true, it signals that Douban aims to play in the same league as the big boys. It’s still far behind the largest players (Qzone, Renren, and Pengyou), but probably it’ll continue to rise as Kaixin001 and 51.com declines. Unlike those latter two, Douban is far more than a flash-in-pan social network of games — it’s here to stay.

(2) With the new Sina Weibo version 4.0, users can access to some of their experimental features that are only accessible to beta testers. One noteworthy new feature is Wei Search, which completely overhauls the earlier version. Wei Search has a social-based search algorithm as well as a “Trending Weibos” section that will potentially serve advertising.

(3) According to the 8-K file Yahoo submitted to SEC, Alipay, an electronic payment service provider, will be listed within 10 years.

(4) Baidu, the largest Chinese search engine, acquires 40% of Fanshu.com for RMB over 47.6 million (US$ 7.3 million), a digital publishing platform.

(5) NetEase CEO, Ding Lei recently announced that NetEase will release a light blogging platform called Lofter.com, to directly compete with DianDian, which is the clear market leader.

(6) NetEase, a large web portal and game vendor in China is reported to invest more than RMB 200 million (US$ 31 million) into its online video business, with special focus on copyrighted contents.

(7) Youku’s 2nd Quarter 2011 net revenue was US $30.6 million, a growth of 178% over the same period in 2010. In contrast, Tudou reported US $17.8 million net revenue, and growth of 94.5% over the same period.

(8) Rumors has been spreading about Baidu‘s potential acquisition of Tudou, the online video service which has gone a long and tough trip towards its IPO. Tudou was said to halt its IPO in the wake of Baidu’s proposal.

(9) In May, Tencent invested RMB 84.4 million (US$ 13.1m) in online travel service eLong and RMB 445 million (US$ 69.1m) in film production Huayi Brothers. As for June, Baidu invested RMB 306 million (US$ 47.6m) in another travel services aggregator Qunar. And in July, Alibaba Group led the US$ 50 million funding for group buying service Meituan. These three giants are investing more aggressively than before.

(10) A recent report from Analysis International, shows that for the second quarter of 2011, the Chinese online luxury goods market reached 3.45 billion yuan and is expected to hit 16 billion yuan total for the year. Luxury goods include jewellery, bags, clothes etc.

(11) Analysis International just released data that shows Youku, Tudou and Sohu share the top 3 positions for the online video advertising market for the second quarter of 2011.

(12) According to a report by Analysys International,  Taobao, a Beijing-based market research firm, 360buy and Joyo (Amazon China) sit atop a Q2 2011 B2C transaction volume chart. Suning Yigou, the online shopping initiative by the Chinese appliance franchise, unexpectedly replaced Dangdang, coming in fourth on the same chart.

(13) Lerry Zou, the founder and CEO of Wealink, one of the oldest and leading Chinese versions of Linkedin, has resigned from the company to start a new project.

(14) Jiayuan, the Chinese dating site which just got listed on Nasdaq a couple months ago, released its unaudited financial results for Q2 2011 with net income of over RMB 1.4 million (US$222,000) on net revenue of RMB 83.3 million (US$12.9 million).

(15) A large number of Chinese entrepreneurs are leaving China, representing an increasing outflow of wealth and talent, said Zheng Yongnian, director of the East Asian Institute under the National University of Singapore, after in-depth research in China’s Zhejiang and Guangdong provinces in June.

We thank nordicfactory for the flag image.

Here you can find some interesting startup news from Indonesia, not only in its capital, Jakarta, but also other their tech startup hubs such as Yogyakarta, Medan, Surabaya, and many more. These listed news are taken from our partner, DailySocial, a leading blog on Indonesia’s tech startup scene.

(1) Tasterous, the location-based app that lets you find and share local dishes, has launched an iPhone version. The company officially launched their Blackberry app in April 2011 and their Android app in June 2011 before finally launch their iPhone app.

(2) Google chairman and former CEO Eric Schmidt announced that the company will open their office in Indonesia before 2012. The announcement was made during his meeting with Indonesia’s vice-president Boediono in Jakarta. The vice-president’s spokesman Yopie Hidayat, as quoted by Kompas, explained that Google would like to develop their business by leveraging SMEs from Indonesia with foreign buyers like what Google did in China.

(3) MediaWave, a social media analysis platform, will continue to make improvements in their platforms, especially on the functions and user interface.

(4) StatCounter, an independent agency that tracks Internet access stats, have a web app called GlobalStats. If we look at the data captured by StatCounter in Indonesia, there was a monumental shift in June 2011. For the first time, accessing the Internet via BlackBerry beat Symbian-based phones.

(5) Internet reach in Indonesia has surpassed traditional media and ranks second only to TV according to a recent survey done by Yahoo! and TNS. The survey was conducted in several major and smaller cities across the country.

(6) A very recent report from Akamai, The State of The Internet report, shows that Indonesia holds 7th position as the slowest country in terms of narrowband connectivity.

More about Indonesia tech startup scenes (below excerpts are translated by SGE team, while the full article is in Indonesian)

(7) Freco.com is a site that provide search results on various topics based on other users recommendations. At this site, users can type some keywords to get other users’ recommendations. Users can add their own recommendations on some topics, which could be stuff that Freco.com does not have yet.

(8) Joining the e-commerce industry in Indonesia is Bibli.com, which was officially launched in Jakarta by CEO Kusuma Martanto. Bibli positions themself as an online mall with an easy, fun and free concept.

(9) HackerSpace is now present in Yogyakarta and will be managed by Bancakan 2.0, a community of developers.

(10) Indonesia Communication and Information Ministry will start to block internet access to the websites that provide pirated mp3 download services.

This has been brought to you by SGE and DailySocial. DailySocial is a blog that covers the Indonesian tech startup scene. They publish in both Indonesian and English.

Thank you to nordicfactory for the flag image.

Much of the information on this list is compiled from Famecount, a website that finds out who are the stars of social media. This post is also inspired by a similar list on Malaysian brands that was created by GreyReview.

Star of the month: Justin Ng Photography continues meteoric rise, moving from 24th position in August 22 to 13th position in November.

Fast food battle: Pizza Hut enters the chart at 23rd position, KFC rises two spots, McDonald’s fall two spots.

Outside looking in: Subway Singapore (55,788), CozyCot.com (53,845), Electronic Arts (EA) Singapore(51,028), ShopLah! (50,614)

Front page photo: Denis Dervisevic

Know of a business Facebook page that should be here? Drop us a comment!

Nestled within the F11 incubator space at the gleaming Fusionopolis building, engineers from advertising solutions company ADZ are hard at work refining a product which they hope could change the way advertising campaigns are run.

Walking past the spacey office shared between a few technology startups, we ventured into a meeting room, where ADZ founder/CEO Reza Behnam and systems technologist Thomas Gorissen are sitting. Taking time out of their busy schedules, they explained to SGE how their product works.

“Imagine iTunes, where buyers can search for the music they want and buy it. We’re doing something similar for the advertising industry, where we’re aggregating advertising impressions and allowing buyers to buy from a variety of publishers’ ad inventory,” says Reza.

Here’s what ADZ proposes to do: It is an online, global marketplace where advertisers bid for ad space from publishers. It offers a mixture of proprietary and available best-of-breed tools that help advertisers optimize, analyze, and run their marketing campaigns. On the other side of the ecosystem, publishers can monetize their inventory of ad space and the knowledge of their consumers.

Last but not least, ADZ is an online platform that strives to present these complicated technologies in an easy-to-understand and user-friendly interface for both advertisers and publishers.

In plain speak, ADZ allows, for example, a Singapore Airlines marketing executive to buy ad space in The New York Times and conduct an online advertising campaign from the comfort of an office chair, using a collection of tightly integrated, online software.

In advertising parlance, ADZ combines a variety of ad networks, ad exchanges, and supply-side platforms into one comprehensive, end-to-end product.

Sounds ambitious? It is. The idea came to Reza while he was working at Yahoo! in 2006. He saw how marketers struggled with online advertising, complaining that it’s too complex and difficult to execute.

Furthermore, online advertising is a lucrative gold mine that has not translated into a gold rush. While people spend massive amounts of time online, advertising agencies are not allocating an equally ambitious online marketing expenditure.

“Part of the blame lies with advertising and publishing industries as we have not made display advertising easy enough to execute and buy,” he says. “The search players have done a better job in standardizing the approach to buy search.”

No wonder advertisers are scared of going online. Image: LUMA Partners

He observed that there was room for infrastructural innovations that could make online advertising easier. Also, Asia (excluding Japan), with a much less developed and complex online advertising ecosystem as compared to the United States, was a prime place for such a product to mushroom.

Reza evangelized the idea to advertisers, and he sought an entrepreneur to drive the innovation.

“But I couldn’t find one with sufficient knowledge of the advertising industry to run the show,” he says, smiling.

Which was why he took up the challenge, founding ADZ in 2008.

While the product is in the test phase, it has already amassed a massive inventory of publications. They include the likes of CNN, Sydney Morning Herald, to even online games site Armorgames.com. All this made possible through aggregating publisher inventory from multiple ad exchanges, supply-side platforms, and networks.

“We literally have thousands of publications from around the world,” he says.

Trial campaigns are being run on test budgets by several major companies. They include a number of major advertising agencies, a top handset manufacturer, tourist destinations, airlines, insurance companies, banks, among others.

“We hope to start with real budgets soon, which are one to two orders of magnitude larger in the next month,” hese says.

But already, ADZ has already attracted investment from the National Research Foundation, Joi Ito of Neoteny Labs, Toivo Annus, co-founder of Skype, and many others.

They can now add Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin to the list. ADZ recently announced that Saverin will be appointed to its board of directors and participate in its Series A financing with an undisclosed sum.

So far, the publishers are mainly from international websites with a presence in multiple countries. But Reza hopes to feature localized websites soon.

“Like your Hungrygowheres and Hardwarezones,” he adds.

Besides a marketplace where bidding takes place automatically once the parameters are set, ADZ offers campaign analytics for marketers, allowing them to track how well their efforts are doing and reallocate their budgets on-the-fly if necessary. They may even set parameters like CPM, CPC, or CPA, and allocate maximum bidding prices and campaign budgets.

The ADZ interface. Click image for full-sized screenshot.

If advertisers want to target a specific population segment, they can: Just select a combination of profiles, such as the time they visit a site, their age, or their country of origin. Combining advertising impression from publishers with non-identifiable, anonymous data allows advertisers to buy “audiences” rather than “sites”.  This addition of data also allows publishers to increase the value of their advertising impressions.

ADZ also provides publishers with tools to manage their inventory, such as the ability to sell their ad space to a specific audience segment by matching them with the right advertisers. Publishers will also be able to gain insights about their reader’s behavior using built-in tools.

In a keynote presentation made at the Ad Trading Summit Singapore recently, Reza pointed out that demand-side platforms and ad exchanges could lead to cost savings and higher ROI for both advertisers and publishers. This allows advertisers to maximize their ad spending and publishers to earn more from their ad space.

Efficiency gains could also result from the elimination of arbitrage — where publishers purchase advertising for themselves at a lower price, but charge advertising to clients at a higher price. Such opaque practices could be reduced with the usage of ADZ, which would enable more price transparency between  advertisers and publishers.

When asked about potential obstacles ADZ might face, Reza says it boils down to execution. “In the business world, a good plan is valuable only if executed well.  In fact, execution is biggest determinant of a start-up’s success.”

At this point, systems technologist Thomas got up, craddling his MacBook.

“That’s why I’m going to leave now,” he says, before leaving the room.

Images courtesy of Reza Behnam and ADZ

When: Thursday 10th February 2011
Time: 7pm
Where: The Merry Men, 86 Robertson Quay, #01-02
(below Robertson Blue condo, opposite river from River View Hotel)

Register here.

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If you’re looking for a real-time Q&A solution for your event, check out PigeonHole Live. The team at PigeonHole has kindly agreed to allow event organisers who quote SGEntrepreneurs to get to use their solution for free till end June 2011.

• Google not blocked in China & Yahoo using Google Search in Japan: So, Google and China have come to terms and Yahoo Japan is using Google instead of Bing. Well, what’s going on with Google these days in East Asia? Why are they having difficulties in getting the market share in those regions?
• ComScore’s report on the State of Internet in Asia Pacific: How does these numbers tell us about the web and mobile scene in our region? The crew takes a cut on the issues involved.
• Google vs Baidu now in Mobile Search: With the Android platform being adopted by more Chinese handset vendors, developers and even telcos, Baidu is now seeking to turn Android on its head to Google. Will Google get a big market share for Android in China but not make enough money with the Chinese mobile-web scene making modifications to the Android OS and leaving Google out?
• Zynga gets US$150M from Japan’s Softbank: Yes, SoftBank in Japan has invested into Zynga and no guesses needed on social gaming. How does that impact Japan’s social games market and the strategy for Softbank overall?
• Long Queues for iPad, Starcraft II & iPhone 4: The crew talks about how Southeast Asians get their phones similar to the long queues in US for iPhones. We chatted about the scene in Indonesia, Malaysia & Singapore and the psychology of the consumers in waiting for the product launch that they are willing to pay for.
• TenCube to be acquired by McAfee: The next big news since Yahoo acquired Koprol in southeast Asia, TenCube, a mobile security start-up in Singapore has made the news with an acquisition from McAfee. The crew discuss the history, trials & tribulations and milestones for TenCube in the past few years and as usual, make their own educated guess on the valuation to how much the company is sold with thoughts on the acquisition from James Chan, Neoteny Labs.
• Everyone is talking about where Smithy is these days: Seems that the tech blogs in Singapore and Indonesia is interested in where Smithy is checking in. We get some updates on Koprol and how it is like to be “stalked” by tech pundits
• Foound is officially released in Singapore iTunes Store for now: We look forward to be able to download in other parts of the world, like US and UK. You can download via this link.

Photo credited to Shereen Shah: The panel comprising of (from the left) Bernard Leong, Daniel Cerventus, Serkan Toto, Brian Wong, Michael Smith Jr and Chew Lin Kay.