Singapore has long been a digital hub. It's a gadget head's paradise - sadly I've found that the prices here now are higher than in the UK thanks to the collapsed pound, so my credit card will remain unblemished for this visit.
So, technology has long driven the economy here, but has, to date, been somewhat hardware focused. However, there seems to be quite a bit of activity on the Internet TV front. The local daily, The Straits Times has an online video service called Razor TV consumer upload portal Muvee is based here, and there's a lot of 3D and gaming activity. Seesmic is a community based vlogging service – a video based threaded forum – based here and local media giant Mediacorp has launch an internet TV portal called MobTV, which I need to find out more about since it seems to commit the cardinal internet TV sins of requiring registration, requiring payment and being download based.
In a society where there is a somewhat Eastern (or perhaps British) disdain for revealing one’s self, blogging and virtual forms of expression are, apparently, particularly popular.
The city state is interestingly positioned and really feels like a crossroads between east and west more than anywhere else I've ever been; dealing with the UK and the US seems as comfortable as with India or China. Indeed, if anywhere represents the homogeneous global audience, this is probably it.
Perhaps the biggest challenge for Singapore is to reconcile the content creating market with its unrivalled technical base, so it’s good to be involved in events such as DMFest, where I speak tomorrow.
In a society where there is a somewhat Eastern (or perhaps British) disdain for revealing one’s self, blogging and virtual forms of expression are, apparently, particularly popular.
The city state is interestingly positioned and really feels like a crossroads between east and west more than anywhere else I've ever been; dealing with the UK and the US seems as comfortable as with India or China. Indeed, if anywhere represents the homogeneous global audience, this is probably it.
Perhaps the biggest challenge for Singapore is to reconcile the content creating market with its unrivalled technical base, so it’s good to be involved in events such as DMFest, where I speak tomorrow.
I'd love to hear more from local commentators on up and coming companies and developments that I haven't mentioned, or anyone who disagrees with my somewhat snapshot one day assessment of Internet TV in Singapore!
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