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SINGAPORE: Downturn be damned. Sure, these might be tough times, but there's no stopping local tech startups from aiming big. Here are some promising ones that you might want to watch out for this year.
buUuk (buuuk.com)
Founders: Jon Peterson, Muh Hon Cheng, Mohan
Expertise: Mobile applications, location-based services
Founded: Oct 2008
As a nation of foodies, we have a perennial problem - finding great places to eat. Enter buUuk.
The company has developed an iPhone application that shares its namesake. Using the device's location-sensing features, buUuk lets you find nearby eateries, and provides a map and directions. Contact details of the eatery are provided so you can book (or should that be 'buUuk'?) seats.
Unsure whether it's a good restaurant? Read reviews written by fellow users or related blog postings conveniently placed along with the restaurant info. You can also review and rate the restaurant using buUuk, and recommend the outlet to a friend via email.
"We wanted to create a service that could show content that's relevant to a user's specific location. We chose food because it's very popular among Singaporeans," said Mr Jon Peterson, co-founder and technical director of buUuk.
The developers are also tying up with outlets to provide discounts - a great example of location-based advertising done right, without spamming consumers.
The application has been downloaded 22,000 times since its launch last November. In upcoming versions, buUuk will allow users to bookmark restaurants and reply to reviews. It will also get more intelligent - with the data mined from ratings and reviews, buUuk will be able to recommend restaurants based on a user's list of bookmarked establishments.
And - you heard it here first - the service will be offered in Sony Ericsson and Nokia phones soon. Nokia smartphone users, in particular, might see buUuk on their devices by the end of February.
JamiQ (www.jamiq.com)
Founders: Benjamin Koe, Lee Jia Yi, Kelvin Quee
Expertise: Social media research and monitoring
Founded: Sept 2008
JamiQ helps companies to gather what consumers are saying about their products by mining websites, blogs and forums.
The startup's sophisticated software goes beyond recognising the keywords and tags that conventional research tools use to gather data for online research.
"What's different about our software and its algorithms is that it can detect sentiment when a consumer talks about a certain feature of a product," explained JamiQ chief executive, Mr Benjamin Koe.
JamiQ's software uses algorithms that can understand the opinions and feelings inferred from phrases and sentences. It processes English words and denotes a positive or negative value to them.
"We can, for example, tell a tech company which features are popular in its mobile phones and how consumers feel about them," said Mr Koe.
Data that the startup gathers is used as a business intelligence tool to help spot trends for strategic decision-making. It can help save companies costly man-hours from manually monitoring the Internet, said Mr Koe.
Garena (www.garena.com)
Founder: Forrest Li
Expertise: Online gaming
Founded: Mar 2007
Garena - which stands for Global Arena - is aiming to improve the online gaming experience with its software that minimises latency (jittery gameplay caused by network lag).
The self-titled Windows-only software, available as a free download, gives gamers access to an online social networking platform where they can chat and find companions to play with. More importantly, Garena optimises their network settings to reduce latency and includes an anti-cheat system that bans accounts when it detects gamers using software cheats or hacks during gameplay.
According to Mr Forrest Li, founder and chief executive of Garena, the software can be adapted for any multi-player game, and third-party developers can create applications for the platform. It supports first-person shooters, real-time strategy games and sports games, including "Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne", "Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare" and "Grand Theft Auto IV".
Garena has already garnered 9.6 million users from 180 countries and attracted US$2.3 million (S$3.4 million) from angel investors, including Skype co-founder Toivo Annus and the Media Development Authority.
Because its software and services are free, Garena relies on advertising in its software as a way to earn revenue. It has partnered with MTV Asia so that users can watch music videos, concerts and TV shows through the multimedia player in its software.
The company also provides a premium service for S$5 a month that offers users priority access to online games, the ability to double their experience points as they compete in Garena and increased capacity for more buddies on their lists. - TODAY/fa
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