At the beginning of 2009, during a now-famous strategy meeting, Twitter’s executives asked themselves, “Are we building a new Internet?” At the crux of that question was the realization that Twitter “introduced a new form of communication to the world.” Public micro-messages are now everywhere—on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Google, Bing, Yahoo, AIM. They are infiltrating every part of the Web, particularly as the backbone of realtime search.

Yes, status updates (which are a form of micro-message) existed before Twitter, but it is the growing public nature of these messages which makes them exciting. For one thing, they need to be public in order to be visible to search engines. But when Twitter and other companies talk about building a new Internet, they don’t mean that 140-character messages are going to replace web pages. Rather it is that these realtime streams are becoming the center of people’s attention on the Web, and sending them off in all different sorts of directions.

These streams are the new Internet not so much because of the micro-content which they contain, but because they are a more efficient means of communication. Remember, the Internet at its core is a communications system. The battle going on now between Twitter, Facebook, Google, and others is to control this new realtime layer of communications on the Internet. Each one wants to be driving the micro-message bus.

In computer terms, a message bus carries data between different parts of a computer or between different computers. Realtime streams can be thought of as a micro-message bus which carries information instantaneously between people. The power of a micro-message is its ability to carry data, usually in the form of a link. It is a vehicle for passing links and other information. The value of a Tweet or status update or a Yammer or a Wave is not only in what it conveys about the sender, but where it leads to.

Other kinds of data can take a ride on this micro-message bus as well. Geolocation data, photos and videos are among the most popular. Whoever is in the driver’s seat of this micro-message bus will be in an enviable position, which is why everyone is trying to clamor aboard in hopes of taking over the wheel.

Next week, at our Realtime Crunchup (tickets are still available), we’ll be examining how this new communications layer on the Internet is being built and who will be driving the bus. We hope you can join us.

Photo credit: Flickr/Jan Krutisch.

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I am currently in Miyazaki/Japan, attending the Infinity Ventures Summit (IVS), one of Asia’s most prestigious web industry events. Organizing VC company Infinity Venture Partners reserved some hours of the program to give a total of twelve 12 Japanese start-ups the chance to present their services onstage to a panel of judges and an international crowd of over 300 people.

A speech recognition and transcribing service called Moji Moji TV was selected as “Best Startup” of the IVS Fall 2009 Launch Pad (that ended just now). Here are short profiles of all the services that demo’d at the event. (Please note some of the companies have yet to launch homepages in English, but some do offer globalized services, too.)

One Winner and five runners-up:
Moji Moji TV by Catalog (winner of the demo pad)
Best of show went to Moji Moji TV, which appears to be a very powerful speech recognition and transcribing service for videos launched in private alpha last month. The engine supports Japanese only, but English and Chinese versions are in the works. Moji Moji extracts audio from a video (self-made movies, YouTube clips etc.) and automatically displays the spoken words as text, which then can be edited by the users. The text can be used to tag and sub movies, and it’s also possible to search for certain words or expressions within them. There’s also an iPhone app called Shabetter that automatically transcribes what you say into the iPhone mic and posts it to Twitter. More information on Moji Moji TV in English can be found here.

This video (in English) shows how Moji Moji TV works:

V-Sido by Wataru Yoshizaki (runner-up)
Most robots used for entertainment, in research and other areas have one common problem: They can only move in a slow, mechanical and chopping motion. Developed by robot fanatic Wataru Yamazaki, V-Sido is a software-based, real-time control system for humanoids that helps make them move smoother.

Spysee by Ohma (second runner-up)
Spysee is a person search engine whose English version launched at TechCrunch 50 this year (Spysee was a demo pit company). A Chinese version is in the works. The service pulls information and media on individuals from the web and presents them on a person-specific page (example: Barack Obama). Spysee’s original Japanese version went live last year and has gone through several iterations since. One example is the way Spysee monetizes its service now: It allows users to donate real money to individuals who need help in funding their personal goals (Cheering Spysee), getting a cut of the donation in return.

m-police by milog (third runner-up)
m-police is a fully automatized site monitoring system that’s able to detect profanity, insults and “legally problematic” sentences on the web and subdivides relevant expressions into 16 different categories. The company says about 5% of all posts in the Japanese blogosphere can be regarded as being relevant for m-police, and 22% of those can be called potentially dangerous. Some Japanese social networks employ up to 300 “surveillance officers” to keep their sites clean. m-police can push down costs from 6 Yen (7 cent) per post monitored by human beings to 3 Yen.

AEGISGUARD by KLab (fourth runner-up)
AEGISGUARD is anti-virus software that’s not only free to download but also completely available in English. The main purpose of the program is to protect your important files and folders from viruses (of which more than 5 million exist today) and malware by granting only white-listed programs access to them. AEGISGUARD developer KLab says this way, unknown or new viruses are effectively fenced out. The solution can be installed with conventional, blacklist-based antivirus software on the same PC.

Symphonic Motion by AITIA (fourth runner-up)
Symphonic Motion is an augmented reality-based entertainment engine that’s not designed for mobile devices for a change but rather for large-sized displays (that can be several meters in diameter). The technology uses “physical” AR, meaning you can get in front of the camera and move CG elements you see on the screen around by moving your arms, for example. Maker AITIA is marketing the solution as interactive, fun digital signage applications to corporations, exhibitions and event organizers (demo movie).

The six other demo companies:
OpenSocial Host by HeartRails
OpenSocial Host is an integrated platform for developing, distributing and managing OpenSocial applications, e.g. for sites like MySpace, hi5 or Japan’s biggest social network Mixi.(which opened its site for external developers back in September this year). OpenSocial Host supports mobile apps, offers paid and free options, but it’s Japanese only.

Location Amplifier by Koozyt
The key idea behind Location Amplifier is to “amplify” the real world by pushing “rich”, location-based content onto mobile phones, for example location-based games or guides. At IVS, maker Koozyt demonstrated how a person’s movements can be tracked even inside buildings (where GPS regularly fails). It’s also possible to use Location Amp to walk from exhibit to exhibit in a museum and let your mobile device tell you what you’re currently looking at (demo movies). The technology is based on PlaceEngine, a service that relies on Wi-Fi to estimate your location, even when there’s no GPS.

Zeke CMS Social Game Kit by Ubiquitous Entertainment
Ubiquitous Entertainment CEO Ryo Shimizu demo’d Zeke CMS Social Game Kit, a (Japanese-only) platform for developing games to be deployed in social networks like Facebook or Japan’s biggest social network Mixi. One of the games that was built using the system is called “Tokyo Treasure”, a scavenger hunt, which combines AR elements with the real world, using the iPhone camera (”It’s game over when you’re tagged!”).

Droidget AR by GClue
Droidget AR was described as the world’s first widget framework for augmented reality services on Android. These widgets can be “picked up” at the physical place where they’ve been left by other people and used instantly, without the user having to access the web. Example: When you’re in a restaurant, switch on the camera on your Android phone, point it at the door and click on the AR tag you see to instantly access the menu (demo movies).

Jitsu Kuukan Toushi Keitai by KDDI au one Labs
KDDI, Japan’s second biggest telecommunications company, presented an augmented reality application that launched in June this year for a limited number of Japanese cell phones. Their Jitsu Kuukan Toushi Keitai app (which roughly translates to: cell phone that allows real space transparency) works just like many of the other mobile AR apps out there. It uses GPS, the phone’s camera, 6-axis sensor and screen to locate where you are and point you to where you want to go through tags. But if you point the phone to a wall or a human being, you can also “see through” them, meaning the app will display tags located behind them.

This video shows how Toushi Keitai’s “see-through” function works:

Odette Solution by ORSO
Odette Solution lets you create mobile Flash sites (nearly 100% of Japanese mobile phones have Flash Lite installed). The Japanese-only, cloud-based ASP service offers various templates whose elements you can edit in various ways, for example by drag and drop. But you can also create mobile web pages by putting together different elements. Odette Solution will be launched next spring.

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On Sunday November 15th, Said Business School at Oxford University is hosting a one day conference  focusing on the impact of the Global economic crisis on Israel.

It is a good opportunity to hear and meet prominent speakers:

• Prof. Zvi Eckstein: Deputy Governor of the Bank of Israel
• Mr. Sever Plocker and Mr. Guy Rolnik: Israel’s  two premier financial journalists
• Mr. Pinchas Landau: Economic and financial analyst to WSJ, Barron’s and the Economist
• Prof. Joseph Zeira: Professor of Economics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
• Izik Kirshenbaum is Co-Founder, Chairman and CEO of Siklu Inc
• Mr. Saul Klein: Partner at the venture capital firm Index Ventures

• Ehud Levy is a Managing Partner at Vertex Venture Capital with approximately two decades of experience in the high-tech industry. Previously co-founded Ki-Bi Mobile Technologies
• Mr. Aaron Mankovski: Partner at  the venture capital firm Pitango since 2000
• Mr. Gilad Harish: Lawyer and social entrepreneur, founder, chair and CEO of Lasova – a highly respected NGO in Israel ,operating Soup Kitchens, Homeless Shelters, after-school Centers for kids at risk.
• Dr. Osnat Emanuel is the founder of ‘Seriously Kidding’, an invention house specialized in creating innovative products for children. She was co-founder of Comfy and the founder of the Comfy Keyboard, the first computerized toy for toddlers.

The conference will cover both Israeli and UK perspectives on Israel today, addressing macroeconomics, Israel and the global financial crisis, society and the economy, the role of economy in peacemaking, entrepreneurship and the Israeli ‘Silicon Valley’.

To event will run from 9:30 to 5pm at Park End Street, Oxford UK and is free to attend. Register through this link: www.ihps-oxford.co.uk/conference

The TechCrunch Japan TokyoCamp 2009, a demo event for web startups that took place this Friday, was a total blast. No less than 350 people came to the demo pit and meetup, which were co-organized by DESIGN IT!, LLC (a Sociomedia group company that runs TechCrunch Japan) and Nikkei Digital Core (a community under the umbrella of the Nikkei, Japan’s biggest business publication).

This time, TokyoCamp gave a total of 29 startups from three Asian countries (Japan, Singapore and Korea) the chance to present their services to Japan’s leading journalists, fellow entrepreneurs, top-level VCs and TechCrunch readers. Here are thumbnail sketches (of varying depth) of all companies that were present at the event. (Here is my report on the first TokyoCamp that took place in August this year.)

Demos from TechCrunch50 alumni from Singapore, Korea and Japan

iTwin
Singapore-based A*STAR was one of the two non-Japanese startups demoing at TokyoCamp. Their two-part USB drive iTwin, showed to the world at TechCrunch50 in September, is intended to be a “cable-less cable”. After connecting the iTwin to a computer, you can give one part of it to someone else who’ll have remote access (over the web) to the computer via his own computer.

iTwin’s Kal Takru told me his company is currently plans to release the device in five to six months, with the price likely to be $99 including worldwide shipping. Initially, the iTwin will be available online only – even though following TechCrunch50, the company was bombarded with inquiries from retail chains all over the world.

Sealtale
Social widget service Sealtale was Tokyocamp’s guest from South Korea and another TechCrunch50 finalist. Sealtale users can express their interests, preferences or causes via so-called seals (interactive widgets). Once these seals are integrated into your blog or social network page, you can communicate with other people who have the same interests as you within the seal itself (via RSS feeds, comments, posts, audio and video files). Sealtale works across various blog platforms and social networks.

The three members of the six-man company (all of whom are college students) who were invited to Tokyo told me they now feel there’s life before TechCrunch50 and after. Following TC50, Sealtale in South Korea apparently got a boost in terms of user base, massive media attention (the service was even featured on national TV) and increased interest from brands and companies. Just one example: Sealtale was chosen as a partner for a media campaign in Korea’s political space and distributed more than 120,000 seals to users all over the country in the process. Sealtale’s major global roll-out is planned for the middle of next year.

Spysee
Tokyo-based people search engine Spysee launched its English version during TechCrunch50 in September (the service was in the TC50 demopit). You can use it to look for any person on the web, with Spysee scraping various information on that person off the web (bio, news, blog posts, videos, related individuals etc.) and displaying it on a single page (example: Barack Obama’s Spysee entry).

LIFEmee
LIFEmee is a life management service that allows you to store and share the significant aspects and events of your life online (from “the cradle to the crave”). You can keep a diary, list up significant events in your life (career history, places you lived in, hobbies etc.), share your future plans, manage assets, store your last will or compare certain elements of your life with other LIFEmee users.

The service launched at TechCrunch50 (LIFEmee presented at the demo pit) in English. The LIFEmee team has since been working on localizing the service into Japanese and collecting early user feedback for the English version to optimize features and functions.

Demos from Japanese startups

Joker Racer
Joker Racer, a service that just recently won the Grand Prix at another big demo event in Tokyo, lets users from all over the world control Wi-Fi- and GPS-enabled models cars through the browser or iPhone (in real-time). The cars are customized and offered by JokerWorks, the new company behind the service, itself. A bunch of videos can be found here.

But at TokyoCamp, CEO Yoski Akamatsu presented the “Joker Racer R/C Server” for the first time, the world’s first linux server exclusively designed for R/C model cars to be controlled over the web (specs and more pics here). This means you can buy the mini server, connect it with your own R/C car, and then control the car using its standard servo/speed controllers and a mounted standard web camera.

For end users, the server’s final price and release date are yet to be determined. But JokerWorks already accepts inquiries from event organizers and advertising and promotion agencies.

Lang-8
Youyou Ki, CEO of Lang-8, showed a revamped version of his award-winning language learning site whose interface is available in 14 languages. The main idea is to let users write in the language they’re learning and have native speakers of that language correct the text (this video shows how this works). Lang-8 users can get in touch with each other directly through the site, too. The service is free.

Cerevo Cam
I’ve written an extensive article on the Cerevo Cam, a digital camera that automatically uploads pictures to various social media sites via Wi-Fi or 3G, in late August. Now, roughly nine weeks later, the device is finally priced (just under 20,000 Yen/$220) and dated. The Cerevo Cam and Cerevo Life, a photo management site specifically designed for buyers of the camera, will be available at the beginning of next month. CEO Takuma Iwasa is still determined to sell the camera outside Japan but couldn’t give me details.

At TokyoCamp, I tried out a fully working prototype, which instantly uploaded pictures to a nearby panel computer via a 3G modem stick plugged into the camera.

HaaLee
HaaLee isn’t a web startup, but the company, whose team is based out of China, Japan and the US, showed a pretty cool blue-tooth stereo headset that does not plug-up the ears. Instead, users are supposed to place the speakers against the skin just in front of the ears. The idea is to be able to listen to music on your cell phone or portable media player while still being able to hear sounds around you. HaaLee is currently in discussions with various brand companies and carriers to take the headset to market.

Jingoo
Tokyo-based MetaCast presented Jingoo at Tokyo Camp, a Japanese-only add-on for Firefox or the Internet Explorer. Once installed, Jingoo occupies a column on the right of your browser window (”Jingoo Zone”) that allows you to access customized apps that are supposed to make your life on the web easier. These apps (there are 17 at this point) can be anything from games you can directly play in the “Jingoo Zone”, a clock, maps, shopping tools, a tweet stream etc. Jingoo is free.

Pixiv
Launched in September 2007, the Japanese-only “social illustration” service Pixiv broke the one million member mark in June this year (it’s currently ranked at 60 in Alexa Japan). Users (talented amateur artists, pros and art enthusiasts) spend more than 13 minutes on the site per visit, submitting 15,000 drawings per day on average and discussing them in a social network that’s built around the drawings.

Here’s how a typical drawing, submitted by a Pixiv member, looks (each piece gets a dedicated page):

The free site makes money mainly through display ads and premium memberships ($6 per month) but also organizes real life events. Learn more about Pixiv in the excellent English Wikipedia entry.

Patent Bureau
Patent Bureau is a technology media company that aims at automating the process of delivering relevant technology and intellectual properties information in real-time. The company claims their interactive data base, dubbed astamuse (Japanese only), is being used by patent offices in Japan for trial decisions and court precedents for intellectual patent cases. astamuse wants to be the ultimate destination site for anybody involved in creating, using and managing technology and intellectual properties to explore their territory. Patent Bureau is currently working on covering additional languages.

Rigureto
Rigureto is a free community and communication platform through which users can anonymously express and share their negative feelings (i.e. “I just lost my girl friend.”) with other users who can then post messages of comfort (i.e. “Don’t worry, you’ll soon find another one.”). This happens virtually in real-time, as it usually seems to be a matter of a few minutes or even seconds to get a reaction. Think an online, crowdsourced Dear Abby (even though some users post just in order to communicate with other human beings – and it usually works). Rigureto users receiving positive comments can thank other members by sending them “arigatou” points, which can later be redeemed on the site. The service is Japanese only at this point.

UserHeat
UserHeat is an in-page web analytics tool that visualizes user behavior in three different ways (mouse movement tracking, clicking behavior and “gazed” area, an educated guess of which areas of a given page were viewed the most). Install the tool on your web site, wait for a certain period of time to analyze how visitors use it (1,000 to 1,500 page views are apparently the minimum) and let UserHeat display the result via “thermographic” images that are superimposed over your site (sample heat map for a Japanese site selling contact lenses). The service is available in English, Chinese and Japanese, and it’s free.

Notable mentions

Here are the 16 other services demo’d at the TokyoCamp event: fabric video (a video delivery system to be made available next year), MOT (an ASP business tool), Photiva (a digital signage solution), Tabereko (an iPhone app for gourmets), Wombit (a Wi-Fi-enabled touch panel computer currently being developed by Tokyo-based Omnibit), Ataritsuki CM (a solution that links TV commercials to the web), Speeda (a database that users can access to get structured economic data in an SaaS-like model), Orihime (an online shop set up by a college student who sells self-designed and made-in-Japan PC bags and cases), AdLantis (an online ad management system), Cognitive Function Balancer (a piece of interactive software for self-test and training for mild cognitive impairment), Phroni (a Firefox add-on that displays information on keywords you highlight on a web page), RainbowApps (a platform that allows you to list up your iPhone apps and discover which apps other iPhone owners have installed), Conit (an iPhone app developer), Istpika (a social gaming company developing for Facebook, iPhone and other platforms), Pankaku (one of Japan’s most successful iPhone app development companies) and Linkthink (an entertainment content provider).

Many thanks to all attendees, demo companies and Nikkei Digital Core for making TokyoCamp a success. Special thanks to TechCrunch50 finalists and Asian guests iTwin and Sealtale for the journey to Tokyo. Another TokyoCamp might follow very soon!

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The first TechCrunch Japan TokyoCamp that was held in August was a blast, but my guess is the next one will be even bigger and better:

I’m delighted to announce the TechCrunch Japan TokyoCamp 2009, which will be held on Friday, November 6. TokyoCamp 2009 is co-organized by by DESIGN IT!, LLC. (a Sociomedia group company that runs TechCrunch Japan) and Nikkei Digital Core (a community under the umbrella of the Nikkei, Japan’s biggest business publication).

There’s going to be a demo pit (no less than 21 of Japan’s finest startups will demo their wares) and a meetup/networking party afterward.

Registration is required for both events. Here are the details:

TokyoCamp 2009

Demopit
Date: November 6, 2009
Time: Demopit 5:30pm – 7:30pm
Venue: Nikkei Shimbun 2F SPACE NIO*
Fee: Free

Meetup
Date: November 6, 2009
Time: Meetup 8:00pm – 10:00pm
Venue: Manhattan Bleu (B2 floor of Sankei Kaikan, 2 buildings away from Nikkei HQ / Google Maps)
Fee: 6,000 yen

Use this entry form to register.

Please note that we are extremely restricted on numbers this time, so don’t be disappointed if you can’t get on the guest list (TokyoCamp 2009 is strictly an “invitation-only” event). We hope everyone has a great evening and are looking forward to seeing you all on November 6!

*
SPACE NIO, 2nd floor, The Nikkei Head Office
1-3-7, Otemachi, Chiyoda-ku
Tokyo Metro Otemachi station: Take exit C2ba for The Nikkei Head Office

Don’t confuse this new location with the old Nikkei Head Office at 1-9-5 Otemachi.

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Asus, Acer, HTC or BenQ: Taiwan is well-known as a significant player in the global electronics industry, but it’s safe to say the Taiwanese web landscape is still a black box for many of us. Taiwan ranks 10th in Asia in terms of Internet population, with around 15 million people currently online. Add to this an online ad market that grew by 14.9% to $208 million in 2009, and you have a fairly attractive Internet market overall.

As in many parts of Asia, the 800-pound gorilla in the web arena is Yahoo: The company established Yahoo Taiwan as early as 2000 after a buy-out and acquired Wretch, a wildly popular platform for blogging and sharing media, in 2007. Today, these two sites are the biggest in the country, with Facebook following as the No. 3 (Facebook now has 3.9 million users in Taiwan).

But the country does have promising tech start-ups with a global focus, too, some of which I talked with earlier this week during a (private) trip to Taipei. The TechCrunch/Crunchgear meetup on Monday, organized together with partner and co-organizer Chili Consulting (a local innovation strategy firm), was a blast. Over 120 people attended the meetup despite of a typhoon that traveled through Taiwan that day (we actually had to stop registration after a few hours due to space restrictions). Taipei- and San Jose-based hardware maker IPEVO sponsored the event.

A total of six Taiwan-based startups were given the chance to pitch their services (all are available in English) to the audience. Here’s a rundown on all of these companies.

Startup 1:
Swagly
Swagly, which calls itself a word-of-mouth affiliate network, is targeting a multi-billion dollar market: the monetization of social networks and video sharing platforms. The key idea is to let people buy what they see in pictures and videos via a product-tagging widget. This widget is placed right below the pictures or videos, with the social network users tagging products themselves (demo).

If a friend sees a user-tagged Gucci bag in an album photo, for example, the Swagly widget will show details of the bag and where the friend can buy it (Swagly works with a slew of American retailers by integrating with Commission Junction and LinkShare). In the case of a click or sell-through, Swagly shares the revenue with the publisher and the user who tagged the product.

Startup 2:
DragNTalk by Taroko Technology
DragNTalk is what appears to be a quite powerful application that makes it possible to project presentations (and other documents) onto nearby computers just by using drag and drop. The software automatically displays presentation materials as web pages in your browser. And all you need to do to share a presentation is to share a local web address with your listeners in a local network (details).

You can then drag and drop any kind of file into the DragNTalk pane and go through your slides just like you do in Powerpoint, for example. The application lets you take snapshots of materials that are available in unsupported formats to be able to share these, too. Listeners can view the presentation you give in their browser windows.

DragNTalk is currently available as a trial edition, with a USB-powered wallet-size wireless router supporting the application in the works (people connecting through the Wi-Fi network spawned by the router will then be able to see the presentations automatically).

Startup 3:
Ragic
5-man startup Ragic wants to take on big enterprise solution companies like Salesforce with a dead simple database creation tool that’s based on a spreadsheet UI. Ragic claims their users can build a full-scale enterprise application like Salesforce’s account management system by themselves in about an hour – without any coding. Alternatively, users can customize and deploy applications offered by Ragic, i.e. their issue tracking or employee management solutions (Ragic’s own account management system is here).

The six applications Ragic currently offers are free to use for a limited time and are as easy to use as Excel. The company earns money by charging customers on a monthly basis (just like Salesforce in the form of a Platform as a Service model) and selling OEM licenses to web design companies.

Startup 4:
Starmugs
Starmugs was surely the most unusual of the demo companies presenting at the TechCrunch Taipei event. The site sees itself as the primary online destination for all lovers of Starbucks City Mugs, apparently quite popular collectible coffee mugs Starbucks started selling in 1994. If you’re one of these people, Starmugs lets you list up, display, trade and share stories about your mugs. The site even has its own virtual currency (Mug Cash).

Startup 5:
Citiport
Launched at DEMO last year, Citiport can roughly be described as a mix between Yelp and TripAdvisor. The site offers travelers “insider information” on the best places to visit in cities around the world. The idea is to collect recommendations on so-called “hotspots” (restaurants, bars, nightlife, shopping, sightseeing, hotels etc.) from people who live in these cities. These locals can be contacted directly on the site and may be ready to help travelers get around in real life as local tour guides.

Startup 6:
YusReader by Cloudonline Technology
YusReader is a nifty full-content RSS reader and sharing platform. The site encourages you to log in with your Facebook account, as YusReader makes it possible to find blogs read by your Facebook friends and share your own favorite blogs with them. The site is also pre-populated with blogs grouped in several categories (sports, lifestyle etc.), but allows you to add your own RSS feeds, too.

Each blog is displayed as an icon in a customizable grid-view. Click on the icon to view the blog in a full browser window where you’ll find a YusReader bar at the top. You can choose the blog you want to read via a drop-down menu and quickly browse through the articles from that blog by scrolling up and down with your mouse.

Event sponsor:
IPEVO
Founded in Taipei, Taiwan & San Jose, California in July 2007, IPEVO creates devices that expand and enhance the overall Experience over the Internet. Renowned for its iconic line of VoIP and Skype hardware, IPEVO has established a reputation for innovating award-winning designs and affordable products to help make the Internet a better place for what matters most–connecting, communicating, and sharing with the world around us.

IPEVO’s current product line includes the best-selling So20 Wifi phone for Skype and the Kaleido R7, a digital frame that features a unique pivoting display design and comes bundled with EyeStage software to wirelessly stream Flickr, Picasa, Facebook and other Internet contents from a PC or Mac to the frame. Available in late October, the Point 2 View USB Camera (pictured below) is a 2.0 Megapixel, PC & Mac compatible webcam that sits on a versatile swing-arm stand.

Many thanks to all attendees, demo companies, co-organizer Chili Consulting and sponsor IPEVO. xie xie! You can find many more pictures of the event here (courtesy of Chili Consulting).

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I’m in Taiwan now and as announced last week, there will be a TechCrunch/CrunchGear meetup tomorrow (Monday, October 5) in Taipei at 7.30pm (open door at 7pm). We are holding the meetup with our partner and co-organizer Chili Consulting, a Taipei-based innovation strategy firm.

Every guest should have received the invitation by now, and please remember the venue changed (the schedule remains the same though). Thank you very much for the incredible interest in the meetup, which is sponsored by Taipei- and San Jose-based hardware maker IPEVO.

Please note you can’t register for this invitation-only event anymore – sorry.

Special thanks again to Chili Consulting for organizing this meetup. Make sure to follow the company’s Facebook page and blog for any last-minute updates (which are very unlikely to happen).

I’m looking forward to seeing over 100 TechCrunch readers and a handful of selected Taiwanese demo companies tomorrow.

Use the hashtag “#tctaipei” when twittering about this event (although I know Tumblr is quite big in this country).

Taipei 101 picture taken from Flickr

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I’ll be in Taiwan next week and am delighted to announce that TechCrunch / CrunchGear are holding a meetup with our partner and co-organizer Chili Consulting, a local innovation strategy firm. The TechCrunch / Chili Consulting Party will take place in Taipei, on October 5 (Monday) and is invitation-only.

Here are the details (in Chinese):

• Event date: October 05 (Monday), 2009
• Time: 7:30pm – 9:30pm (doors open: 7pm)
• Venue: Mary’s Bistro 2nd. Floor, No.89, Sec 2 Ren-Ai Rd., Taipei City
• Fee: NT$250 per person

Register for the event here. Please note that we are restricted on numbers, so don’t be disappointed if you can’t get on the guest list (this is strictly an “invitations only” event).

Please send an email to service [AT] chiliconsulting.com if you’d like to sponsor the event. Do the same if you have something cool and “made in Taiwan” to pitch (i.e. mobile tech, a web service, gadget etc.). Use the hashtag “#tctaipei” when twittering.

Special thanks to Chili Consulting for organizing this meetup (make sure to follow the company’s Facebook page and blog for updates).

We hope everyone has a great night and are looking forward to seeing you all on October 5 in Taipei!

Update:
Thank you very much for the huge interest in this meetup. Please note you can’t register anymore.

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Nearly 130 million people use the web in Japan and Korea combined, with Japan itself boasting the world’s third biggest Internet population (94 million users). But getting exposure on an international scale is a big problem for globally positioned web startups in these (and many other Asian) markets.

TechCrunch50 has always been very welcoming towards companies from countries other than the US. Last year, for example, a total of five companies from Japan made a showing at the event (three startups presented onstage, two were in the DemoPit).

This year, Korea sent four promising companies to TechCrunch50 (finalist Sealtale, and DemoPit participants UniQube, touchring and FillThat), while Japan had two startups exhibiting in the DemoPit (LIFEmee and Spysee).

These are the four noteworthy Korean services that made it to TechCrunch50 this year:

Sealtale (TechCrunch50 finalist)
Launched by six college students, the Korean version of Sealtale, a social widget service, has attracted 200,000 users in six months (the English version launched Monday on TechCrunch50’s first day). Sealtale lets users express their interests, preferences or causes via so-called seals, which are interactive widgets. You can integrate these seals into your blog or profile page on a social network and interact with other people within the seal itself. The system works across various blog platforms and social networks. The seals can include content like text (RSS feeds, comments, posts), audio and video files.

Sealtale allows you to design and distribute your own seals, too. Companies can create branded seals and use them as viral marketing vehicles. A movie studio, for example, could create a seal for one of its movies and provide trailers and text-based information for users who choose to show that seal on their blog.

Read more about Sealtale in our previous post.

FillThat (DemoPit company)
Monetizing blogs is notoriously difficult. FillThat intends to solve this problem by creating a revenue stream for bloggers within a blog’s commenting space. The way it works is that you buy virtual currency (”Fill Dollars”) with real money and then reward insightful comments with a tip. As a result, the valuable comments will (hopefully) bubble up to the top of the comment thread, at the same time suppressing spam and useless comments. FillThat will go live next month.

Touchring (DemoPit company)
Touchring wants to bring voice communication into the social space. The Flash app makes it possible to call up friends over so-called Touchrings, cell phone-like icons that you can design yourself and integrate into your blog or profile on various social networks. Calls with other Touchring users are free, but you can also make phone calls to landlines and mobile phones (rates). Touchring launched yesterday.

UniQube (DemoPit company)
Seoul-based Solspectrum showcased UniQube in the DemoPit, an in-stream ad placement solution that’s supposed to help video portals monetize their content. The aim is to enhance brand awareness and customer engagement by integrating interactive ads into video clips or movies at the right moment in a non-intrusive way.

When an actor eats a pizza in a certain scene of a movie, for example, an overlay pizza ad could be displayed. Viewers choosing to click on it could then sign up for a competition or get discount coupons directly within the video without navigating away to another page. Snippets containing the interactive ads can be cut out and sent to friends via Twitter, Facebook and other media. UniQube users can track the distribution paths and effectiveness of their video ads in real-time. The solution is built upon Silverlight and still in development.

These are the two services from Japan that were in the TechCrunch 50 DemoPit:

LIFEmee
LIFEmee is a comprehensive life management service that allows you to store and share the significant aspects and events of your life online (from “the cradle to the crave”). Keep a diary, list up and control personal assets, upload a Last Will and Testament, lay out future plans and compare certain elements of your life, i.e. your annual income, with LIFEmee users around the world.

LIFEmee launched at TechCrunch50 (a Japanese version follows soon). Read more about this service in my previous post.

Spysee
The Japanese version of this people search engine went online last year and instantly gained impressive traction. Much like Spock, Spysee is focused on collecting information on individuals and shedding light on their relation with other people. Type in “Michael Arrington”, for example, and you’ll get a mini bio, a diagram displaying people (relatively) close to him, pictures (i.e. this one), relevant news, keywords, blog posts and video clips. Spysee went live Monday (in beta).

Photo credit: Fumi Yamazaki

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Following last week’s startup contest WISH 2009, Japan just got another event that gave twelve selected tech companies the chance to demo their web services, apps and tools (almost all of which are thankfully available in English). This Friday, around 130 guests attended Tokyo Camp [JP], a demo event organized by TechCrunch Japan.

The occasion: The blog, which is one of Japan’s biggest and mainly translates articles from TechCrunch into Japanese, is under new management (by a Tokyo-based company called Sociomedia, Japan’s anwer to Adaptive Path).

Here are my thumbnail sketches of all of the twelve demos I saw at Tokyo Camp.

I’vRead by Akky Akimoto
Officially launched at Tokyo Camp, I’vRead keeps a record of all books you’ve read via your Twitter account and lets you find users with a similar taste in books. All you need to do is to type the title of the book (or its ISBN or Amazon URL), add “@ivread” to the tweet and (as an option) write what you thought of it. Each of these tweets will then be automatically added to your personal user page on the I’vRead site (you don’t need to register at the site itself, being a Twitter user is enough). Look here for an example.

dango
dango wants to empower online game creators worldwide to focus more on the development of content and less on the things they have to deal with after a game is finished, especially the distribution problem. The company of the same name offers a comprehensive, integrated framework called “dango-PLAY”. The system delivers online games to a number of social networks (i.e. Facebook or Japan’s Mixi) and dango’s homepage itself, using a single program and source code (dango is open source [JP]).

dango-Play aims at creating an integrated ecosystem for online games by matching users, linking to other games based on the framework, providing SMS services, managing user ID data, freeing developers from tracking user behavior etc. etc.

One of the first games that’s been released based on the dango system is Facebook app “meromero park”, an ultra-cute mix between a social network, a virtual world and a pet-rearing game (the web version has already gained massive popularity in Japan and Taiwan). The Facebook app is available in English and French.

Jin-Magic TCP Traffic Optimization Technology by Akira Jinzaki
Former Fujitsu employee Akira Jinzaki has single-handedly programmed what appears to be a powerful TCP traffic controller with the potential to change the way Internet traffic is currently being managed (99% of the Internet traffic is TCP-based). Jinzaki says his Jin-Magic software throttles and smoothes bandwith in a cost-effective way, making it possible for providers to service at least 2 to 3 times more customers with the existing infrastructure. Jin-Magic can be ported to smartphones, too.

PeKay’s Little Author
PeKay’s Little Author is a Facebook application that lets users create a graphic story using original characters on-screen and print it out in the form of a picture storybook. Alternatively, the virtual storybook (example) can be shared with others online or turned into a web greeting card.

PeKay’s Little Author is the brainchild of a well-known Japanese artist. The video below shows how the app works:

IxEdit by Sociomedia
Launched at Tokyo Camp, IxEdit is a JavaScript-based “interaction design” tool for web applications that can be used from within the browser. Web designers can use IxEdit to practice DOM-scripting without having to code anything. The tool allows for elements of web pages that require “interaction”, i.e. pull-down menus, to be created with basic knowledge about HTML and CSS (no JavaScript coding is required).

IxEdit can be downloaded for free. View sample elements here.

Mobile Vein Authentication Technology by Universal Robot [JP]
Universal Robot’s compact mobile vein authentication software (40KB core module) can be installed on cell phones, for example, and uses the camera to scan your wrist vein for identification. The technology seems to have many advantages: It works fast (I tried it myself), it’s completely software-based, compatible to a variety of CPUs and operating systems, usable for persons doing hard manual labor (who can’t use fingerprints), and most importantly extremely accurate (the company speaks of a false accept ratio of 0.001% and of a false reject ratio of less than 0.1%). The award-winning software works even with cameras with a 1MP sensor or lower.

Kuchikomi@Sousenkyo [JP] by Hottolink
Tokyo-based Hottolink has shown a self-developed word-of-mouth analysis tool (dubbed “Word Of Mouth@General Election Of The Lower House” in Japanese) that’s supposedly able to predict the results of the general election of Japan’s Lower House (according to CEO Koki Uchiyama) that took place just today.

The prediction tool analyzes what’s being written in Japan’s blogosphere about political topics dynamically (it updates its projected results daily). Uchiyama said internal tests with previous elections proved to be very promising. We’ll know if the prediction model really works on Monday morning Japanese time after the election results are official (I will deliver an update here later).

LogEarth
LogEarth requires a GPS logger or an iPhone GPS logger app to work. The service then records where you move around in the world (provided there’s a GPS signal) and visualizes your route with the help of Google Maps. The log data can be posted on blogs, too.

The 3 Augmented Reality Brothers [JP]
The 3 Augmented Reality Brothers aren’t really brothers, but their augmented reality project certainly had the highest show value at Tokyo Camp. Watch the Japanese video below to get an idea of what these guys are doing (their Vimeo channel is here).

AR3Bros episode-i | twitter & AR from ar3bros on Vimeo.

dodaii by Feynman
dodaii is an in-app purchase management ASP created for iPhone devs. The system handles the payment records for companies offering apps in the App Store for a fee. More information on dodaii can be found in this English PDF. dodaii is currently in closed beta.

Kanshin Kuukan [JP]
Kanshin Kuukan is a community site that helps its members find relevant products, restaurants, movies, songs etc. based on recommendations from users. The company of the same name showed a demo video of an iPhone app that scans the Twittersphere for relevant tweets and is scheduled for release in December (Japanese only).

Manetron
Manetron is an iPhone app that puts a Melletron (an electro-mechanical, vintage keyboard) in your pocket. The app is available in the App Store for $2.99. Watch the video below to see and hear how Manetron works.

Many thanks to all attendees and demo companies who helped making Tokyo Camp a blast. And sorry to everyone who didn’t make it on the guest list this time (just like last time, we were overwhelmed by the response), but another event like this might happen again in the near future. Arigatou gozaimasu!

More pictures from the event were made by alpha blogger Masaki Ishitani and TechCrunch Japan’s translator Umihiko Namekawa.

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