By Lai Kok Fung, BuzzCity CEO
John Wanamaker, a US merchant in the late 1800s, famously once said “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don’t know which half.”
We are much closer today to solving Wanamaker’s dilemma. Internet metrics and computer algorithms make it possible to target ads to users who are likely to act on them.
Providing the parameters to computers to analyse the data and filter out the white noise has been a passion of mine since grad school. Back then, I wrote a PhD dissertation on “adaptive learning” with the somewhat clunky title “Deformable contours : modeling, extraction, detection and classification”.
For example, I would feed a database of images into a computer and directed it to locate the ones shaped as keys. The first lesson was that you need to start with some assumptions and a model, otherwise it takes too long for the computer to find what you’re looking for. Second, you have to realise that your initial model is not perfect. You need it to adapt based on experience.
The picture above was taken from my thesis. In clockwise direction, it shows the original "noisy" image, the intermediate processing step called the "edge magnitude", the final and initial boundaries.
We'd like to announce the launch of The Digital Media Forum, a collaborative effort between BuzzCity and NUS to advance the conceptualization and development of digital media products. The Digital Media Forum aims to foster creative and entrepreneurial advancement among developers who work in newly emerging media, particularly mobile media.
By providing a platform for the critical review of emerging digital media tools, applications and practices, we aim to increase the visibility and presence of digital media developers in Singapore. The forum is centred around the NUS Entrepreneurship Centre and features budding technopreneurs and the prototypes they’ve developed from research in the area of Digital Media. The forum also provides industry with a first look at emerging media technologies and services.
This bi-monthly interaction between academics, industry players and researchers is a feedback platform that will act as an early proving grounds for soon to be launched services.
Programme for 2007-2008
17 August 07
Connecting the Unwired
Dr Lai Kok Fung, CEO, BuzzCity
19 October 07
More than Voice at the Bottom of Pyramid?
Professor Rohan Samarajiva, Executive Director, LIRNEasia
25 January 08
"It's an Asian Thing": Cosplay and Singaporean Fan Culture
Dr. Thang Leng Leng and Dr. Elizabeth Maclachlan, Department of Japanese Studies, National University of Singapore
11 April 08
Against All Odds
Steven Gan, Founder & Editor-in-Chief, Malaysiakini
The BuzzCity-NUS Digital Media Forum will provide support for market validation of prototypes via a series of awards to promising start-ups and research teams. Finding the right marketing channel and getting market validation are always challenging for start-ups. With a small domestic market, Singapore companies face additional difficulties to market their products internationally. These awards provide companies with a channel to distribute and charge for mobile content products or services internationally. Companies will receive support in the form of technical assistance, marketing knowledge, cash and advertising credits.
Over a period of a year, 8 awards, each valued at $5,000 will be given away. Panelists from academia and industry will select awards for mobile content related products or services, including:
1. Prototypes that are ready for market testing
2. Business models ready for market validation in order to secure more funding (i.e. validated track record)
3. All start up projects, including but not limited to those from NUS or HOTSpots.
The award is not:
1. Funding of research and development of ideas for new products;
2. A funding scheme in exchange for equity stake in start-ups.
Judging criteria
A panel of judges led by BuzzCity will review all applications submitted for the award. After initial evaluation, short-listed projects will be asked to turn up for presentation and interview. Projects that are sound and promising will be given the award. Schedule for Submission of application:
1) 21 Sept 2007
2) 18 Jan 2008
3) 18 Apr 2008
Please email all applications and enquiries to dma@buzzcity.com . Download application form here
By Clifford Chew, Vice President (Engineering)
Hi. I’m Clifford and I head up BuzzCity’s Engineering team. I’d like to give you a behind-the-scenes look at how we think about technology and at some of the innovations we’ve implemented, both to optimise the myGamma user experience as well as to make it easier and quicker for us to roll out new services.Four years ago when we first conceptualised myGamma, we faced major design decisions. Should we use Linux or Microsoft Windows, Open Source or Oracle, Java or some other platform? While there were advantages to working with the big names, we opted for the cost-effective route and began writing code optimised for Linux.
We also prototyped and built myGamma as a Java-based (J2ME) application. There was a lot of hype surrounding Java at the time and most telecom companies would only partner with us if we were Java-based. However we quickly ran into problems. First, there are no standardised specs for mobile phones. Different makes and models have unique screen sizes, processor speeds, memory capabilities and menu options. When we tried to take account of all these variables using Java, our application became heavy and it took too long for users to download.
We then asked ourselves, what in retrospect seems like an obvious question: “What’s more important: technology or user-uptake?”
We had to make the user experience fast and easy if people were going to sign up and use myGamma. So we went back to the drawing board and redesigned the service to make it as simple as possible. It had to work on all phones, regardless of the operating system or other technical specifications, and it had to run quickly. The best way to do this was to programme for the lowest common denominator – and this meant using WAP technology.
The decision to go with WAP was the one of the most important choices made by BuzzCity. It wasn't an easy choice though. At the time, most people believed WAP was inherently less interactive than Java. However, through an innovative use of WAP and server-side features, we have been able to simulate the interactivity and develop the fast simple user interface we desired.
Today myGamma is accessible in more than 50 countries on almost all GSM mobile phones and virtually every PDA. myGamma automatically detects the handset device and formats the pages accordingly. Users enjoy a personalised experience each time they sign in. More recently, we’ve added an HTML interface so PDA users have a more colourful experience.
The constant challenge is to make the technology transparent to the end user. So before every new product or feature release, we spend a lot of time testing ways of presenting information and choices. Remember that many of our users have never used a PC before. They’re not familiar with Windows and probably wouldn’t have given myGamma a second look if we had given them a Windows-like interface.
After implementing the basics – refining how users can send and receive messages and exchange rich media, such as photos – we turned our attention to other services.
For example, in some of our partner pages, you can click on a link and it triggers a standard mobile phone call to the retail outlet of a store. Once the call is over, the user is returned to the WAP page.
We’ve also recently introduced a mobile version of the popular online encyclopedia Wikipedia. It’s quite a challenge to take so much information – written for display on a computer screen – and adapt it for easy access and viewing on mobile phones.
myGamma members can easily sell products and services or advertise online. Depending on the country, users can be billed through their mobile phone provider (ie the charge will show up on their next phone bill), via SMS or credit card. We're likely the first company in Asia to integrate multiple payment platforms like these into our mobile system.
One of our most important innovations has been a behind-the-scenes initiative to make it easier for engineers to test and roll out new applications. Often, when an engineer has a great idea, he gets bogged down in the setup and programming. The application needs to work on a range of platforms and phones with different screen sizes and device limitations, so the coding becomes a bottleneck. To overcome this, we created a development platform called Gamma 2.0. Our engineers can now quickly express their ideas within this coding skeleton. It takes fewer lines of programming to create a new application and we can test the user experience within just a few days.
Furthermore, since the user and payment features are already online, it takes less than a day to receive feedback as to whether a new service is popular or profitable. In addition, the Gamma 2.0 platform links the new program to all our other applications, so users can enjoy a consistent personalised experience.
At BuzzCity, we know that INNOVATION is key. We need to constantly seek and produce new and better services for our members, which is why our team members are encouraged to dream in our 20 Percent Projects. Our engineers can spend twenty percent of their time – one day a week – working on ideas and new projects of their choice. We provide our engineers with the resources to foster their own creativity and experiment with new ideas. We realise that most 20-Percent Projects will not make it online. But that's fine. Every month we identify promising prototypes that add value to the myGamma experience.
BuzzCity is also partnering with the National University of Singapore (NUS) to advance the conceptualisation and development of digital media products. Kok Fung will kick off the Digital Media Forum on 17 August and over the next year, we will give away eight S$5000 awards to innovators with new mobile ideas.
I enjoy my job. It’s creative, it’s exciting and most of all I know that the programmes and applications we develop are transforming the way people communicate and connect to information around the globe.
