Singapore with it’s tiny 4 million population has 402,992 iPhones, 76575 iPod Touch and 1,453 iPad’s  totaling  480,950 iOS devices. Contrast that to its counterpart, Android devices total up to 32,918. While considering the fact that, iPhone had a head-start in the Singapore market for a year before the first Android device was released, the sheer ratio of iPhone to Android is among the highest across countries.

http://eu.techcrunch.com/2010/06/18/guest-post-location-based-services-its-game-on/:

As a parting shot dear reader, if you are thinking about being the next Gowalla or Foursquare, think outside the box. The world is a very large, and spherical place, mapped by a long/lat address.

What about developing countries, where the penetration of mobile data usage far outstrips that of broadband, or even dial up modems?

99% of all location services I have seen are targeted squarely at Early Adopters. If you are looking for the next big thing in location, one that attracts people in the millions, look at the developing markets, because connecting people in disparate locations, and giving those people a way to share information is a great start.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127370598:

Carr admits he’s something of a fatalist when it comes to technology. He views the advent of the Internet as “not just technological progress but a form of human regress.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/07/technology/07brain.html?pagewanted=1:

While he managed to salvage the $1.3 million deal after apologizing to his suitor, Mr. Campbell continues to struggle with the effects of the deluge of data. Even after he unplugs, he craves the stimulation he gets from his electronic gadgets. He forgets things like dinner plans, and he has trouble focusing on his family.

His wife, Brenda, complains, “It seems like he can no longer be fully in the moment.”

This is your brain on computers.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/5e37eb34-74e0-11df-aed7-00144feabdc0.html:

Though other headphones can compete on quality, what sets these ones apart is that they are gaining mass market appeal, reaching beyond audio geeks, thanks in part to the heavyweight talent behind them.

Some events and stuff to be aware of. Today and tomorrow is BarCamp KL – http://barcamp.my/blog/

In Vietnam we were on a MSFT .Net tour showing Yahoo! integration.

See some of that here (Go Jimmi):

http://www.slideshare.net/kembaren/openidoauth-and-yql-with-net

http://yqldemo.codeplex.com/

Next big thing I am working on is Yahoo’s! presence at Echelon – http://echelon2010.com/

Should be an awesome event for the region – I suggest if you are in the area to come.

At BarCamp KL we are also doing TWIA live – should be fun. Stay tuned!

Food for thought: http://gigaom.com/2010/04/23/why-we-need-an-open-like-standard/ – more on that later.

cya

Been crazy travel schedule and this week I am in Vietnam doing a tour with MSFT. Next week back to Sing and then over to KL for BarCamp – and possibly some live version of This Week in Asia!

Well – back to the grindstone – more soon!

http://catpaint.info/

Strange but true – I guess the weird stuff wins in the nascent Vietnamese iPhone market. As far as I know there is still not an official carrier but the hacking on iPhones in Vietnam is legendary. Even hardware based unlocking as shown here. You see a fair amount of iPhones in Vietnam – even stored dedicated to selling, unlocking and servicing them.

Playing with iPhones in Vietnam I have not seen anything real killer but you will see useful apps related to finding places and people. I like this model and think it has legs – one of the ones I have been following is diadiem which has an iPhone version. There is also Thodia but I don’t think they have an iPhone app yet. Something to watch for.

Lots going on in Vietnam. I was just at Barcamp Saigon and met a lot of cool people. Lots of follow up needed. Hope to be back next month.

Tonight I will be at HackerspaceSG and will write more about the local scene soon!

Some photos from Barcamp Saigon:

I was in Manila for a week and did the rounds. Podcast interview here for all the groupies. Manila was an interesting market since it feels like it should be happening more than it is but the startup scene is very small. I think this has to do with the local domination of telecoms, the lack of an angel network and a quiet hacker scene. Very different from being in Singapore or Malaysia where the Government is throwing money all over the place trying to get things going. I need to dig more in Manila and see if we can help get things like Barcamp going.

Speaking of Barcamp – I am in HCMC right now for Barcamp Saigon. Looks to be a cool event! Hoping to dive a little deeper into the Vietnam scene this weekend.

Since I am in Vietnam let’s talk FaceBook – quite the backlash over the new privacy stuff. It is quite the reversal from what FB originally started as. For me, as the site keeps growing, FB is getting less and less useful. The signal to noise ratio just keeps climbing every month. Everyone is trying to use their personal FB accounts to be the next social marketing star. It gets old fast. I think niche networks might start to get more interesting as FB gets less useful.

Seems simpler plays liek Foursquare and gowalla might get more interesting because they help you with what to do and who to do it with. All this could change of course if FB gets more local and makes location based programming easier but for me – I am starting to delete friends on FB more than I am adding them.

Another possible entrant to the location/review game in Singapore. Will be looking it more soon. Seems similar possibly to Koprol. This is an interesting space since the big guys will focus on Europe and Americas while regional guys will try to build something in their home countries. I am waiting for one of the regional guys to try and take the whole region as a defensive play for when the big boys come to town. Question is will they since getting the local info is not easy.

Another possible biz idea for one of these players is rather than being the end user builder there might be a chance to be the pick and shovel dealer for all the various players trying to build social/location/yelp sites. Someone could be the guy offering all the location data and some sort of promo/ad engine around it. Then the other guys concentrate on building the interfaces, social model and grow the user  base. Right now all these guys are struggling with getting local info and building sites. Might be tough.

I think that is it for now. Gotta bunch of work to do but I need to get better with the blog.

cya

ps. Good to see one of the winners from Open Hack Day with his site up and running. If you are into twitter and Indonesia then you will dig this site: http://twiterus.com/

Given freedom of speech issues news type sites are not the order of the day in Vietnam – unlike places in Indonesia where news, community and user generated content are huge.

However there is some cool stuff going on.

For a local map player trying to go the Yelp model check: http://diadiem.com/

For more of a review based site check: http://www.thodia.vn/hcm

Then there is the Moore group building some community stuff and infratructure for other online players: http://moore.vn/en/

For financial stuff there is: Vietstock.com.vn

Football betting: http://www.yeuthethao.com/

Popular women’s site: http://www.webtretho.com/

Leading jobs site: http://www.vietnamworks.com/

Online dictionary: http://vdict.com/

Music and entertainment: http://yeuamnhac.com/cbeta/index_new.php

Also, given the VN FB mess, this local social network site is growing: http://www.zing.vn/

Also – can’t leave out the big kahuna in the online game space: http://www.vinagames.com/

I am sure there are more – was a busy week.

The internet is in pure growth mode but the sites seem to be very locally focused with mostly no English interfaces. I have yet to meet any players who profess to wanting to grow their sites/companies outside of Vietnam. Not sure this is smart or not – it could be the move for now but I think big ideas will need to target the SEA region – not just Vietnam.

In Manila this week, then Thailand and then back to Vietnam.

Location stuff a topic everywhere I go.

carry on!