The e27 team at Echelon 2012. Tech Wire Asia was a media partner.

In a statement, Co-founder and CEO Mohan Belani highlighted the company’s goals with this financing round.

We are looking at increasing the editorial team around Southeast Asia and focusing on our key markets (Thailand, Indonesia and Philippines). Our key priorities right now are working closely with our partners and building our Echelon event around the region.

e27′s flagship event is the annual Echelon startup conference, which brings together startup founders, investors and other interested stakeholders. e27 also holds Satellite events in various countries around the region.

Read the press release below.

Disclosure: The author is part of the e27 editorial team.

**** Press release ****

e27 Secures Investment From B Dash Ventures and Regional Investors

[Singapore] 14 February 2013 – Today, e27 announced that it has secured a SGD$760,000 round of funding with B Dash Ventures and regional investors Pinehurst Advisors (Taiwan), Ardent Capital (Thailand), Dan Neary (Singapore) and angel investors. With this investment, e27 will expand its operations in Southeast Asia, including partnerships/joint ventures, grow it’s editorial teams and expand the influence of Echelon, the region’s largest tech startup event, into more cities around Asia..

As a company, e27 was profitable in 2012 with year on year revenue growth of over 20%. The investment in e27 sees an increasing interest in Southeast Asia’s tech industry as a growing market. Through companies like e27, that maintain a regional presence through editorial and conferences like Echelon, the industry is better connected and there are more opportunities within the region and with wider Asia itself.

Hiroyuki Watanabe, CEO, B Dash Ventures said, “B Dash Ventures is very pleased to invest in e27,with its track record of stimulating startup ecosystems across Asia. We are excited to contributefrom Japan to help grow e27 into becoming Asia’s largest and most influential media company. With e27′s involvement in various Asian startupecosystems,it should also become easier for Japanese startups to expand their businesses to Asia, as well as facilitate a greater flow of information between Japan and other regions.”

e27 will increase its focus and operations in Southeast Asia. With editorial teams and contributors around the region, the company will continue to expand its editorial presence in key SEA cities. The news site has also adopted the e27.co domain to mark this regional focus and direction, in lieu of its previous domain, e27.sg

The data was compiled on Google’s Map Maker tool, which allows users to contribute information mainly using satellite images or local knowledge.

Many landmarks are now labelled, as are the notorious prison labour camps and nuclear research sites.

The move comes a few weeks after the head of Google visited North Korea.

In the capital, Pyongyang, schools, theatres, government buildings and underground stops are now marked in Google Maps, as are statues, some embassies, an ice rink and the infamous 105-storey Ryugyong hotel, which has been under construction for more than 25 years.

The Yongbyong nuclear site is labelled, to the north, and a road called Nuclear Test Road, leading to a site north of Punggye-ri which is believed to be where Pyongyang is preparing to test a nuclear device.

There is little detail of much of the country but a number of grey sites are marked as being some of the many prison labour camps in North Korea, which some 200,000 people are thought to be held.

In the largest camp – Camp 22 – near the border with China, the map identifies an armoury, a food factory and a guard’s rest room.

BBC technology correspondent Mark Gregory says the information given by the maps is likely to be of particular interest in South Korea, where many people have ancestral connections or family still living in the North.

But the citizens of North Korea itself will get little benefit from it, he adds, as only a few hundred are allowed access to the internet by their government.

The popularity of mobile devices has rekindled interest in local search apps, which help businesses target customers nearby and users find local establishments. These include apps like Foursquare, Waze, AppLocal, and the like (see app reviews at AppsPirate).

Scant information

Launched in 2008, Map Maker data has been used to build maps in Google Maps for countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan.

The process uses data sent in by members of the public which are then fact-checked. In the case of North Korea, Google said satellite images were the main source.

“For a long time, one of the largest places with limited map data has been North Korea. But today we are changing that,” said Jayanth Mysore, senior product manager at Google Map Maker.

“As a result, the world can access maps of North Korea that offer much more information and detail than before,” he said.

Google said a large number of people in South Korea had contributed information to create usable maps.

Continue reading at BBC News. This article originally appeared on BBC News and was republished under permission.

(Image credit: The Verge)

For iOS users, there is no need to download an upgrade. It is expected that the Android version will come out with this feature soon. At this moment, service is limited to within the U.S., although Facebook had tested the feature in Canada in the recent weeks, too. Given the social network’s popularity worldwide, we can perhaps expect an international rollout in the weeks to come.

To make a voice call, simply open a chat with the contact you wish to call, and then press the “I” information icon. If both you and your friend can do calls, you will see a “free call” button, which you can press to make the VoIP call. Calls can be done through either WiFi or mobile data networks.

One reason why there has not been any news regarding rollouts and updates or other implementation details is because Facebook has not been actively advertising this service. However, the social network has long been implementing video calling on its web interface. After all, the company partnered with Skype and Microsoft in 2010. Microsoft is also actively investing in the social network. You may note that its default search engine is even Bing.

What’s interesting to note is that iPhone users did not even have to upgrade their Messenger app for the feature to appear, giving credence to the idea that the nascent feature had been planned from the start. It’s possible that the feature has actually been included in the last round of downloads, but has been throttled at the server level. Recall that the latest release of Messenger introduced the ability to record voice messages.

VoIP on Facebook has a captive market, which just so happens to be one of the largest in the world. As of end 2012, Facebook reportedly has more than 1 billion active users. This user base can be a big source of income, if not from direct revenue streams, but from big data, which seems to be Facebook’s main line of business right now. With a calling feature, Facebook will be able to keep track of which contacts you are fond of messaging or communicating with, thereby improving the so-called social graph that has become the currency of Facebook’s business.

So far, though, Messenger still does not have video calling, which puts it at a disadvantage compared with Skype, FaceTime and other similar offerings like Asian efforts such as LINE, KakaoTalk and WeChat. However, it’s the captive market that will be important here. Most of your friends are likely on Facebook already, so they will be just a phone call away.

Source: The Verge

Design is yet another field in which crowdsourcing can be effective, as evident in design contests and submissions. With this in mind, Australian company DesignCrowd has announced its launch in the Asia Pacific market.

DesignCrowd basically brings together graphic and web designers and their prospective clients through an innovative way. Unlike the usual freelancer-client setup in which a client screens prospective applicants’ portfolios, DesignCrowd lets clients offer a prize for the best designs. Freelancers can then submit their proposed designs through a contest setup. Instead of the usual job listings, the client will then choose which freelance graphic design work is the best and then award the prize to the top designers.

Aside from websites, DesignCrowd also features design for other items including T-shirts, mugs, logos and the like.

The service is now available to users from the Philippines, India and Singapore, among other Asian and Asia Pacific. My colleague, Jacky Yap featured an interview with the startup founders over at e27.

The answer to both questions is basically “yes.” Sure, the launch was accompanied by a series of gripes and grumbles from people in the know: it was an anti-climax, and no new apps were debuted. All of which goes to show that there’s a certain double standard in the tech market, whereby modest product announcements from Google and Apple send the world into raptures, while a once-in-a-generation overhaul of Windows is seen as anti-climactic. Microsoft has demonstrated the one thing that really matters: Windows 8 works. The core code of the OS is better and quicker than its predecessor; it isn’t shipping half-finished and riddled with bugs. The new modern interface is as intuitive as promised (although its co-existence with the classic set up is slightly awkward).

The emergence of a US opinion poll suggesting that about half of the population hadn’t heard of Windows 8 looks embarrassing on the face of it, but is itself misleading. The point is that most of these people will use (never mind be aware of) Windows. It is like declaring the latest release of Android to be a dud on the basis that only a few people, all told, know that it’s called Jelly Bean, or exactly how it’s different from Ice Cream Sandwich.

And Windows 8 will crack the IT market for no better or worse reason than that Microsoft is tooled up to fight a long war of attrition to make it happen. The best part of $2 billion will be spent on marketing over the next year or two. That is a lot of anyone’s money – or rather, anyone apart from Microsoft, which has enough cash reserves to found its own country.

Initially, still, it will be tough going. In this country, there are several Windows 8-optimised computers out or on the horizon. Indian consumers will be able to pick up new touch-enabled laptops already, with more to come – including eccentric convertible models from Dell, Lenovo and others, which have already raised eyebrows in the US and Europe. It’s these formats, which overlap with tablets and similar devices, which Microsoft hopes will build a buzz in the consumer IT market.

More traditional laptops – especially those in the ultrabook category – will also greatly benefit from the new OS. As well as more efficient start-up times, Windows 8 offers an improved power management system, which is a crucial advance for any portable computer.

That’s just as well, because many of the new touch-screen machines will be expensive, shipping at upwards of $1,000 in the US. This is primarily a technical matter. Getting the most of out Windows 8 requires a touch-screen, and touch-screens are expensive components at present, though we can probably expect them to get cheaper with time. And the flipside of PC makers taking risks with a computer’s form factor is that the consumer has to take the risk, too – until convertibles have a serious base in the market, and thus a presence in popular consciousness, consumers will have to take it on faith that combining different PC types is in any way useful to them. Breaking into the “pure” tablet market, meanwhile, will be a very slow process, such is Apple’s (and Google’s) dominance there.

Still, success will come for Microsoft in the end. The company has a quality product to sell, and a bottomless cache of money to put behind it – not to say long-standing relationships with major IT hardware firms, all of which are just as keen as Microsoft to map out a future beyond the PC. Apple and Google may be confident for now, but before long Microsoft will muscle onto their turf. Now that the product launches are out of the way, we’ll see how well prepared Microsoft is for the long fight ahead.

A couple of weeks ago, Apple finally complied with the court’s decision after it lost an appeal to overturn the decision.

But the apology page was not what everyone expected.

The terms of the apology were already changed during the appeals process. With the duration it should be posted on the Apple site reduced from six months to one month and the location in the site removed from the home page to anywhere Apple wanted to place it.

Apple did put up that apology statement but in a page that is devoid of any Apple branding that it doesn’t even look like the page is within the Apple site unless you look at the URL. But more than the page is the apology – it was mean-spirited, to say the least, and was as far from an apology as anyone can do it.

The court has already rejected this attempt made by Apple and has asked them to try again.

Issuing an apology statement on your own website is a bitter pill to swallow but it should also be a lesson in humility. What Apple has done was just show its ugly side as a company. It has acted like a spoiled brat when things don’t go their way. What they did may not actually affect their bottomline – the iPad is still the industry-leading tablet in the global market and their iPhone is a sought-after status symbol. Their corporate image though will definitely be affected by this, especially within the tech community that faithfully follows the tech industry.