While there are areas where Google Chrome OS and Android overlap, we believe choice will drive innovation for the benefit of everyone, including Google.

Okay fair enough – if one of my products is being crushed by competition, I’d rather have the competition be one of my other products, rather than something developed by my good buddies at either Cupertino or Seattle.

If interested, please send your CV to resumesg@humannetworklabs.com with the position you are applying as the subject.

OpenSocial, Facebook Open Platform, Friendster Developer Platform Software Engineer

Location: Singapore
Job type: Full Time/Permanent

Responsibilities include:

• Support software development efforts, including the complete requirements analysis, design, development, and testing of information operations tools and applications.
• Invent novel solutions to challenges and problems.
• Contribute to the design of the architecture and the development of the product and services.
• Collaborate with researchers, program managers, and product designers in an open, creative environment.
• Improve performance, scalability, and availability of systems
• Diagnose and debug issues in a production environment.
• Enjoy creating quality interface and experience.

Required qualifications:

• A passion for learning about OpenSocial and creating user centric applications.
• 1-6 years experience developing web based applications and social network site development.
• JavaScript
• SQL
• HTML (XHTML 1.0 & related)
• CSS (style and layout)
• Dynamic HTML / AJAX/ xHTML
• Knowledge of web standards, browser compatibility, quirks for desktop and mobile applications
• A proven track record of execution
• Prefer candidates who are currently in Singapore

Mobile Applications Engineer – 2 positions

Location: Singapore
Job type: Full Time/Permanent

Responsibilities include:

• Developing applications on mobile devices. User platforms include most mobile operating systems to include J2ME, WinCE, Windows Mobile, Android, iPhone, Symbian, Blackberry and others.
• Supporting the design of an intuitive graphical user interface, and interfacing with attached hardware peripherals.
• Developing a back-end data-base, along with programming for website integration and technical support.
• Supporting the software development process, including the complete requirements analysis, design, development and testing.
• Invent novel solutions to challenges and problems.
• Contribute to the design of the architecture and the development of the product and services.
• Collaborate with researchers, program managers, and product designers in an open, creative environment.
• Improve performance, scalability, and availability of systems.
• Diagnose and debug issues in a production environment.

Required qualifications:

• A passion for learning and keeping abreast with mobile technologies and creating user driven applications
• 2-8 years experience working under the above mentioned applications platform for mobile devices.
• Experience developing applications using Java, C and C++.
• Prefer candidates who are currently in Singapore

We had the privilege to meet Jia En Teo, co-founder of Roomorama and got a chance to find out more about her exciting startup.

Q: Can you just briefly explain how did the whole peer to peer rental idea came about and what drove you to do this?

- > My partner Federico and I travel a lot and while it is now relatively cheap to get from one destination to another, once we get to our destinations, the available accommodations are expensive and impersonal. We thought – “Why wouldn’t we pay someone to stay at their place? They make some money, we save some money – we all win”. At the same time, we were trying to rent out our space while traveling and we found that the existing online classifieds were disorganized and unreliable. We wanted to create a platform that streamlines the process of short-term rentals and makes it more secure for both guests and hosts.

Q: The key idea for Roomorama is Peer to Peer rentals over hotels. Can you tell us more about what is the main difference in choosing peer to peer rentals?

-> Hotels are impersonal and cookie-cutter. Staying in an apartment is usually much more comfortable and flexible especially for a small group or a family. It also allows one to live like a local and experience a city from a different perspective.

Q: In a USATODAY article, there is some mention about risks of scams whereby visitors are paying in advance for places that don’t exist. What are your thoughts?

-> Our system actually protects guests against this risk specifically. When a guest pays, they get a 6-digit payment code which they hand over to the host only upon a successful check-in. If the place turns out to be non-existent or completely misrepresented, the guest can withhold the payment code and we will give a full refund or help secure an alternative.

Q: Who are your main target customers? Is there a market in Asia?

-> 25-50 year old well-traveled professionals.  Yes, I believe that there is a huge market in Asia especially because the middle class is gaining affluence and is starting to travel more.

Q: Do you think the Asian cultural will be open to this new concept?

-> It would probably take some time for people to open up to this concept in Asia, but if we provide high quality apartments at a reasonable price, I believe our concept will appeal to some travelers. At the same time, Asian cities are becoming more and more cosmopolitan and I believe the idea of Roomorama will become more welcome.

Q: Any expansion plans ?

-> Yes – we are looking to expand to Italy, France, Spain and the UK.

Real Time Analytics and Buzz
We all know the potential benefits that are being touted by real time search and buzz generating by consumers. While having comments and information being spewed real time is cool, tracking it is a whole different ball game. Understanding what caused certain peaks and troughs in user buzz can make or break a campaign. For example, the buzz tracker here provides a graph that tracks the overall volume of articles over period of time. Nothing special here in terms of the feature, but definitely something useful for understanding the way consumers are reacting to your campaigns.

ThoughtBuzz also takes into account a specified number of the latest mentions of your product/brand/service to give an instant analysis of online conversations. If a user wants more analysis, ThoughtBuzz can combine historical and real time data to provide a big picture overview.

Machine Learning, Social Media Style
Can systems really tell you if the buzz you’re generating is positive? Negative? Or not even relevant to your business? And who’s saying this anyway? Is it some loud mouthed online gaming 14-year old punk who’s got nothing better to do on a Saturday afternoon then to go hunting for trolls and shooting out back comments for products he/she has no clue about. ThoughtBuzz aims to help by using what they call sentiment analysis and topics of discussion. By carefully analyzing information in an article and mapping that information to a comprehensive database of keywords relating to positive, negative and neutral feeling, ThoughtBuzz is able to “calculate” if an article or comment has a positive/negative/neutral effect on your product or brand. They are well aware of the fact that it’s not always right, hence the machine learning part. Users will be able to fine tune this by selecting their own sentiments, which the machine takes into account and learns overtime.

Purely Technology or the Hybrid Approach
While we were discussing the features and technology, the discussion inevitably came towards systems like Brandtology that use a hybrid (software + people) approach versus a purely technology approach. Anshul was very quick to point out that there isn’t one right approach for customers and I totally agree. Sentiment analysis will be a difficult concept for clients to lap up initially, mostly due to the untested nature of the algorithm. Companies would still prefer that the platform be managed with a human touch, but with rapid increases in technology and some acceptance or errors, this expectation will slowly decrease. Furthermore, for smaller companies looking into understanding the impact of their brands in social media, it wont be financially feasible to pay for a hybrid approach. I honestly think that the real value is in providing services to clients after they have used the product and understood the impacts of social media on their brands. Customers would want to know how to improve sentiments or rectify problems rather than just know if they’re brand/product is well received or not. It’s like analytics software. Knowing how much traffic you’re getting and where it’s coming from is good, but what you really want to know is how to improve the traffic numbers and how make the leads more relevant. In my opinion, that will always be a problem with social media monitoring tools and only time can tell which company makes it.

Here is a short pitch about the product from the ThoughtBuzz guys!

Introducing, FAME (Famous Market Exchange) as the NASDAQ of Social Networking!

FAME is the first virtual stock exchange of people where anyone can incorporate their personality as stocks. Users like your friends or yourself can be traded like any other counters in this free-to-play social game with virtual FAME dollars. Popular personalities will rise in price and their share can be owned. The game is also accessible from FameXC.com as an independent website where players can log in via Facebook Connect.
FAME, like other publishers is positioned as social game that enables trading of virtual shares of players, celebrities or even a prediction on the winner of the next F1 race, but only based on real stock exchange features.

FAME’s incentives for players to participate, is an iPod touch which is the top prize in FAME lottery draw, in which players with higher profits have better chances. FAME is also a marketing and publicity enabler for their corporate customers, and functions as a simulation tool that educates the public on stock trading.

FAME Beta was launched in April 2009 after a year of development, and exhibited their product in e27’s annual unConference. They also have close to 3200 beta testers as of July 2009. The beta product was selected as one of the top 50 finalists in Facebook Fund 2009 out of more than 400 applications, and they were Singapore’s first and only startup finalist, besides that, they were also featured on CAN, Digital Life and TODAY. Being in the top 50 is exciting for the Fame folks because it reinforced their belief in themselves and gave them more energy and vigor to make FAME a more exciting and all-encompassing game. Besides, the USD$1000 advertising credit came in very handy for their upcoming marketing campaign.

Encouraged by the success stories from several early movers, FAME thinks its is possible to monetize as a participant on the platform, due to the sheer size of active users on Facebook. Some cynics pointed out that the market is too saturated, but the team believes there is still space for innovating new applications and business models, as well as improvising the existing ones.
The team is also developing games for Friendster, Myspace and XiaoNei soon.

Currently, they are learning more about OpenSocial support and are looking at bringing this games to as many platforms as possible. At the same time, bringing the players back to their independent site, FameXC.com, where their accounts can still be accessed outside of social media site (unless their workplace block certain social media sites). Players from different networks will then be converged into a single platform and can have their accounts merge if they wish to.

The FAME team has their lucky stars to thank despite their disappointments, exhausted resources and family pressure because these guys stuck to their guns and remained faithful to their vision, even when things got challenging . These guys believe that the direction forward now is to simplify the game further without the gist of a stock market. And they will soon explore the waves of Twitter gaming and Mobile platforms. FAME is currently in their 2.5 version, but do look out for the Beta 3.5, which will be more real-time and collaboration-enabling in upcoming weeks; they are also finalizing a dividends payment systems as well as more ‘badges’ for their worthy players.

FAME aside, SOCIALICO Pte Ltd was founded with an aim of becoming a recognized icon in the social networking industry, through creation of interesting social games and applications. Using FAME as their flagship product, SOCIALICO has plans to create complementary games in upcoming months.

Look out for these guys as they will definitely be shining in the gaming world, in the coming years.

What is SG-GTUG?

SG-GTUG stands for Singapore Google Technology User Group. It is a non-profit group which aims to bring together all the die hard Google fans to discuss, share and learn all about Google’s platforms and APIs. Basically if you’re a Googly newbie and you would like to learn more about the Google platforms but don’t have anyone to talk to about it, you’re in luck because SG-GTUG aims to help you with that. Not forgetting the experts. If you’re a kick ass developer and you really want to give back to the community (but only Google stuff please), then SG-GTUG is for you too! Presto, we have here the perfect platform for Google pros and Google newbies to meet, mingle and go crazy over Google related stuff. More details here!

Wow! How can we get in touch with them?

Simple! Just like every other user group out there, the GTUG folks have a handy dandy website up and running. Need updates? There’s more than you can handle with updates on their Facebook fan page, Google Groups and Twitter.

So when’s the event?

Here’s the best part, their first ever meetup! Google Singapore and SocialWok are kindly sponsoring the upcoming event on August 29th 2009 at Google’s Office in Shenton Way. That’s exactly a week after Geekcamp SG, which is taking place on August 22nd at Yahoo’s office. Looks like August is turning out to be one heck of a Geekfest! The theme for this month’s event (YES! It’s going to be a MONTHLY affair. Microsoft better get kicking on this) will be on Google Web Toolkit & Google AppEngine. They are still in the process of looking for startups and speakers who would like to present or talk about their Google Web Kit or AppEngine related applications. Interested parties can apply by sending an email to contact@sg-gtug.org.

Here’s a snapshot of the schedule so far:
2:00-2:10: Announcements by SG-GTUG
2:10-2:40: Talk 1: Intro on GWT & Google APIs
2:40-3:10: Talk 2: Intro on Google AppEngine (Python & Java)
3:10-3:45: Cool Apps Demo for AppEngine + GWT – 4 demos from local SG tech community, 7 mins each
3:45-4:15: Talk 3: GWT & Google AppEngine
4:15-4:30: SG-GTUG matters, prize giving, Q&A
4:30pm onwards: Refreshment & mingle

If you’re keen on attending this (yes we know you are), you can RSVP on the event page. See ya!

With buzz going about how Singapore developers are actively participating in open source community, Infocomm live is fostering more interest in this area by bringing on Jim Whitehurst – CEO of Red Hat Inc.

IDA in collaboration with e27 and TDM conducted an Infocomm Live event with Jim Whitehurst, who shed some light on alternative open-source business models that companies can adopt in these times.

Red Hat is one of the largest open source technology solution providers, mainly known for its Enterprise Linux OS software. Red Hat’s Open Source strategy offers customers a long term plan for building infrastructures that are based on and leverage open source technologies with focus on security and ease of management

Jim talked about how there is a basic assumption ingrained in all of us that no one can make money off free software. Well, not only did Red Hat prove this to be wrong, along with it they are also one of the largest open-source contributors. This business model mainly eliminates the big question that every software solution provider goes through – “Is this needed by the customers?” With open source model the users conceptualise it, build it, test it and use it!

Red Hat earns revenue through a subscription based model. They argue that this model allows them to create a mutually beneficial, cyclical relationship with their customers: where users can benefit from  innovation in the open source software. The subscription entails access to technical support and constant update of software versions which forms the Red hat network – a solution for managing, updating and supporting the systems.

He also mentioned that other companies like Sun mainly has problems with monetization because it protects its codebase and does not have community driven model, which will let more users participate in the code process, and help in fixing bugs and other software issues.

Jim Whitehurst concluded his talk by comparing Red hat model to American Idol where people get to vote for their favorite singer, similarly users get to participate in the creation of software, and like other reality shows, these models can be easily replicated too.

With the advent of platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Yammer etc., it is clear that the landscape of Enterprise 2.0 is vastly changing. We have our very own platform in Singapore: Socialwok, who are trying to bring the ease of Facebook and Twitter to the Enterprise sector. I recently chatted with the CEO, Ming Yong, and got some feel on the industry as well as how SocialWok got started and here are some excerpts :

Paul Graham in his most recent essay talks about the failure of the Segway. While the Segway has always given geeks wet dreams (Did you know it has 15 gyroscopes? Gasp!), it’s never really taken off in the commercial sense. Paul Graham attributes it to the fact that you look dorky; you look elitist; and you look lazy when you use one. This in turn, is caused by the fact that Segway were so well funded right from the start that it did need to be open and did not need to talk to actual users and it did not have to iterate over failed designs.

Which is a decent segue (excuse the pun) to the notion of openness of startups: how open must startups be? Or rather how involved must users be in the evolution of a startup? There are many startups, (especially in the post dot-com-bust phase), who are very open about their design process. FriendFeed even (or rather used to, I just realized they aren’t very active with it now) posts changelogs of their core product source code so that users can get a feel for FriendFeed’s evolution. FriendFeed founders are incredibly approachable people as well and they are always engaging users in constructive discussion over how the product must evolve.

But must that be the golden path for all startups? Apple have taken the opposite path and have cultivated a cult of secrecy to become almost fashionable – Apple being one of the very few technology companies from Silicon Valley to not embrace blogs or Twitter. It took a Senior Editor at Forbes to blog on the Apple CEO’s behalf.

It becomes very easy for entrepreneurs who are a little green behind the ears, to take the user’s word as gospel and change the direction of the product based on the opinions of some users. Or an even more dangerous path for a startup founder to take is to try and please all kinds of users, when the right response must be ‘Sorry, maybe you aren’t our kinda user’.

The best way (as always) seems to be a middle path and to not ape any approach but pick one which suits you best. Paul Buchheit (who created GMail and is one of the founders of FriendFeed) sums it up best, when he says that it’s not just enough to listen to users, but to understand why they are saying it – so I will leave you to watch this video (from Startup School 2008)