East Venture’s Latest Investment: Penn-Olson.com

Penn-Olson officially announced that they are now funded by East Ventures.

The news didn’t come as a surprise for me, because I can say I’ve seen it coming since Jakarta Ventures Night on March 21, 2011.

Along with time, I’ve discussed it with Rama and Aulia, and even though we had no solid evidence at that moment but everyone agreed that East Venture’s (EV) process in funding Penn-Olson.com can be seen from days away.

Finally the news of Penn-Olson being funded by EV appeared few days ago, but still not official. Willis Wee, founder and CEO of Penn-Olson wrote a little disclosure in their article on Tokopedia, and today official release was sent through email to Daily Social, confirming that east Ventures has invested in Penn-Olson.com, and the amount of funding is not disclosed.

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Event Report: JGE Mobile Game Developer War and Winners List

DailySocial was back in Jogja, this time to see Jogja Game Expo (JGE)’s series of event that presented Mobile Game Developer War. The event was held at Grha Sabha Pramana – Gadjah Mada University (UGM), on 19 April 2011.

Like Game Developer War held in Bandung previously, the hall was magically transformed into ‘war zone’, equipped with presentation stage, and booth at the back side for finalists to introduce their mobile game to visitors.

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Event Report: HackathonBDG #1

In the middle of heavy rain last Saturday in Bandung, at a café called Potluck Kitchen, HackerspaceBDG held and event called HackathonBDG.

If Yogya has #YKode, although in different format, Bandung now has this event which is planned to be held routinely. HackathonBDG asks anyone to join and work on their developing project or application.

From their official website, they explained that HackathonBDG is one of programs developed by HackerspaceBDG and aimed for whoever want to gather around and work on developing, completing, or creating personal application / project together. Participants of HackhatonBDG are expected to work on personal project / application.

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Dear Koprol: Please Accept My Place Submission

Note: After this article appeared in DailySocial/IN version, Koprol manually added HackerspaceBDG’s place. See below for additional information.

For me Koprol is more than just status updates and networking. Koprol is about places, public or business ones.

From location facility, one of the things that other services may not have is the Kurators, which is one the strength point where places submitted go through curation process before approved by selected people called Kurator.

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Check-in isn’t dead, it’s just getting started

Thanks to ReadWriteWeb, the attention of the technology inner circles once again is directed at the check-in phenomena that has been making its way around the web. Have we already arrived at the point of check-in fatigue or are we actually just beginning to discover its value? Think of an activity and most likely you’ll find a web service that offers a way to share that experience with every one else.

Before we proceed, let’s look at what a check-in actually does. Checking in involves stamping your presence at a particular location or activity and announcing to the world that you’re doing it, and sometimes, why. It doesn’t actually have to be a location.

Check-in taps into the narcissistic tendency inherent to a lot of people. People don’t just want to be seen, they want to be seen as hip, or for the ironically minded hipsters, anti-hip. Most people check in where everyone else does although a lot of people also check in to certain locations to show how anti-hip they are. Regardless, they’re checking in.

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Event Report: Workshop Coding for Mobile Game Developer

Last Wednesday at Gedung Kompas Gramedia, Jl. Palmerah Barat No.29, Jakarta, there was an event called Workshop Coding for Mobile Game Developer. This event was also part of Mobile Game Developer War series of events which the top event will be held in Jakarta on May 31, 2011.

The series of events sponsored by Nokia included Mobile Game Developer Camp and Mobile Game Developer War held in Bandung awhile ago, and workshops held in Yogyakarta and Surabaya. The event is also supported by CHIP magazine and Agate Studio.

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Product Name Vs. Company Name, Which is More Important?

An interesting discussion is summarized in Twitter yesterday between me, Abangkis Pribadi (MReunion Labs, developers of Android applications), Titi Rusdi (7Langit) and Abul A’la Almaujudy (Better-B). Initially when I saw the talk show ads about “success” developers which will be held by detikInet that will invite 7Langit, Better-B and Komutta. Ok, Komutta. What I know so far Komutta is a product name, an application for the Android platform on Jakarta transportation information. The author is MReunion Labs.

It seems there’s already a “competition” between the product name vs company name here. Komutta is better known than MReunion Labs as its maker. Apparently the confirmation from 7Langit and Better-B itself was surprisingly mentioned that the fact is that not much different. They realized that a number of products are better known than their own company.

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“Hackathon” on HackerspaceBDG

The Bandung atmosphere was quite cold, heavy rain had just flushed the city, leaving a wet soil. However, it was not the case that occurred in a room measuring 10 m x 3 m which contained the developers, who are struggling with their respective deadlines. Some of them were making applications for iOS and some were building a website.

HackerspaceBDG or Hackerspace Bandung is name of the place, and atmosphere of the room is warmed by the spirit of coding to finish the applications that must be completed.

Two of the developers in the HackerspaceBDG room, Yohan dan Asep were two names that may be DailySocial readers are familiar with. Yohan is the founder of Rserve.me and Asep was the founder of Magikube. Despite having their respective studios, now they are working together on a project to develop an application which must be completed within two days.

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Mig33 Partners With Gree, Opens Floodgate for Social Game Developers

One of the first and largest mobile community service, Mig33, today announce that they’re partnering with Japanese social network platform, Gree where Mig33 will adopt Gree’s smartphone platform and also opening Mig33 community for social games developers in Japan and several other countries.

Mig33 now has over 47 million users and is opening the doors for developers to access their userbase, not to mention that all games on Gree now can easily adapted to run on mig33’s platform. This cross-port apps partnership could significantly increase the interest for developers to build apps on mig33’s platform, adding more and more content for mig33 users to tinker with.

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Event Review: Bandung Ventures Night 2011

Bandung Ventures Night 2011 was held last Friday, April 8th, 2011, which is the second Bandung Ventures Night (BVN) event after previously executed last year in August 2010.

This time BVN event was somewhat different, especially the venue of this event. Usually East Ventures (JVN or BVN) events were held in a cafe or hotel ballroom, but this time the event was held at Comlabs ITB Multimedia Room, ITB Campus, Jl. Ganesha no. 10 Bandung.

The event attended by the startup founders, students and other invitees was opened by remarks from Batara Eto as a representative of East Ventures (EV), followed by some welcoming speeches from the representatives of ITB. The event then continued with the presentation of the 3 East Ventures portfolios that is Urbanesia, NightSpade and Tokopedia.

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