TechWatch Caribbean

TechwatchCaribbean is now SILICONCARIBE.COM

2007-09-06T10:51:00.000-05:00

Growth is what happened to us! We've traded in the old name for a new name and we're also getting a site site mobilewatchcaribbean.com.
SILICONCARIBE.COM LAUNCHED on FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 7, 2007. MOBILEWATCHCARIBBEAN.COM WILL BE LAUNCHED ON FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 14, 2007. COME ON OVER AND JOIN US.

Caribbeanchick.com an online women's mag goes live

2007-08-17T09:01:00.000-05:00

Kingston,Jamaica- Caribbeanchick.com an online magazine has gone live and positions itself as being "for every woman." The site states that "it is designed to be informative and entertaining, fun and easy to use. Our content focuses on the themes that are at the core of every woman's life: health, work, relationships, finances, our family, fashion and beauty, the whole well being of a woman." We wish them luck. The intention is great, but the positioning of trying to be all things to all women is a slippery slop,since they seem to not have a unique angle, a focused target. Nonetheless, they've begun their journey. Cheers.

Jamdeal.com just sprung two sister sites..

2007-08-14T15:48:00.000-05:00

Jamaica- JamDeal, which positions itself as "your online markeplace to buy and sell, new and used items, with others in Jamaica, just sprung two new sister sites -trindeal.com for Trinidad and dealwi.com for Barbados.

Caribsingles.com racks up 10,000 members in 60 days

2007-08-14T14:45:00.000-05:00

Jamaica- Leighton Scarlett,the Jamaican behind Caribsingles.com told TechWatchCaribbean that his new dating site has racked up just over 10,000 members,with 40% Jamaicam membership in just 60 days. Caribsingles's pitch is Free Caribbean Dating and positions itself as a fun and discreet dating environment where you can meet singles from around the world who share a common cultural background.

Online Ad Spend To Overtake Newspapers By 2011: Report

2007-08-14T14:37:00.000-05:00

USA-Online advertising will be bigger than newspaper advertising in the U.S. by 2011, according to a new forecast. Veronis Suhler Stevenson's (VSS) annual media research report says money going to online ads will grow by over 21 percent each year for the next four years, when it will reach $62 billion, while newspaper advertising will be worth $60 billion. Web advertising overtook newspapers in the UK in 2006, when spend surged 41 percent against print's 0.2 percent to pass the £2 billion ($4 billion) mark, according to the Internet Advertising Bureau. source:Via FT.com and USA Today.

Jamaican/Caribbean Context: ALready the shift has started in Jamaica. With companies small to large, brands familiar and new seeking more targeted media that assures them full face time with consumers. TV and print ad spend is shifting online. The trick is not many site publishers have been taking the opportunity to put themselves in front of brands to get some of that ad spend. Not even the major newspapers and online mags have taken this super seriously. Even so, there are fresh signs of movements in that area.

1. The ad network BC Ad Group, our of ATL headed by a Jamaican is about launch and at least two others are in the pipeline.

2. Email marketing is going to get more competitive in the next 30 days.

Simple Spark Simplifies my life online

2007-06-21T10:49:00.000-05:00

USA- When you work anywhere like myself and many others you tend to rely heavily on webbased applications to simplify and organise your life. SimpleSpark makes it easy for you to find some that you may have thought didn't exist and matches your needs or maye just wants. Simple Spark tracks and categorises 3000 web applications with screenshots, icons, feeds, reviews and concise summaries. Current applications I use, blinksale and highrisehq.

CaribbeanMassive.com launches V2.0

2007-06-20T10:13:00.000-05:00

St Kitts- CaribbeanMassive.com, one of the pioneering social networks for Caribbean people at home and abroad just upped the ante for number one online Caribbean community. They just launched a version 2 of their site- they took a toops from Facebook, a dash of Youtube and all di Caribbean flavour they could muster. Check it.

Teez Mobile - The Caribbean's first 411 adult mobile service

2007-06-20T09:43:00.000-05:00

Kingston,Jamaica - Teez Mobile,the Caribbean’s first adult mobile alert service, launched on Friday June 15 in Kingston,Jamaica.
Dubbed as The Ultimate Guide to Sex un Your City the 411 information type service launched in response to fast growing up trend of Jamaicans becoming more open to talking about, getting information about, experiencing a great and sexy lifestyle due to increased curiousity, local media and artists, cultural exposure via travel, tourists and cable TV. Add to that a blossoming expatriate, business and pleasure travel tourist market.

"We provide subscribers to the service with information via private and exclusive text messages on the best places, products, services and events that can enhance their sex and sexy lifetyle," Teez Mobile director told TechWatch. To join is simple text the letter T to 444-2440, then sit back to get TeeZed from what is a blossoming adult entertainment industry.

"So we provide to players in the adult entertainment industry and other industries who want to tap into that market like energy drink and excotic food distributors, party promoters a great marketing medium to reach more people,in new discreet, targeted cost effective ways," The Teez Mobile director added.

TechWatch also found out that other spin off services to the TeezMobile service are coming in addition to the service opening up in Trinidad in the next 60 days.

Kingston Beta V2.0 - When CONTENT is KING!!

2007-05-17T17:40:00.000-05:00

Kingston Beta V2.0 in less than two weeks.
The WHO
Our Panel of Experts
- Jamie Ranston,Director Implementation,Jump Tv International,Jamaica
- Alison Troy,NewCom Mobile Platform Providers,Jamaica
- Joseph Herde,Head of Broadband,TSTT,Trinidad
- Christopher Edmonds,President,Rebelmix.com, Jamaica

The TOPIC
CONTENT IS KING!
We're on the brink of a Content Explosion right now in the Caribbean’s Mobile & Broadband markets. -- - How can businesses, brands and tech companies position themselves to grab market share, build brands and make money? Topics to be covered:Internet and Mobile Content Explained, Mobile Marketing, Mobile Content, Online advertising, Social Networks, Digital Content Distribution, Rights Management and Piracy and others. The forum this year will also have product experience booths from companies in the tech industry as well as business card giveaways.
WHEN
Wednesday, May 30, 2007, 6 p.m - 9:30 p.m.

WHERE
The Knustford Court Hotel, Kingston, Jamaica

HOW MUCH

JA$1,200 / US$20

www.kingstonbeta.com

Caribbean Community sites are trending up

2007-05-17T17:33:00.000-05:00

Kingston - It's as usual all of a sudden Caribbean Community sites, social networks are hot - vibesconnect.com out of Jamaica has been around for a while, caribbeanmassive.com out of St Kitts has been out for a while and by month end will be 2.0 to the max. New on the block is idletribes.com, so new they are still in beta and today I just heard of westindiantube.com -yep youtube for Caribbean people worldwide. Then oh yeah there's lyming.com not live right now...so I'm looking to see what else pops up in the next few months.

Venture Capital needed for Jamaican/Caribbean Tech Companies

2007-04-11T11:56:00.000-05:00

They can't wait on the banks, because they are not interested or simply do not understand. Some can do it with Credit Union Loans. Others sell their friends and family on the investability of their ideas. Yet many, many more sit languishing with great ideas and no cash to grease the ideas forward. I know I'm already preaching to the converted, when I say we need a Venture Capital Fund here, the start of a VC culture here in the Caribbean that will invest in bankable technology companies.( And when I say bankable, I mean in other things outside of companies set up to resell cellphones of the existing mobile providers. God knows we have enough of them.)

I know of too many companies that could use an love injection of cash to get their ideas going further, faster. I've spoken to the entrepreneurs who've been in the industry 3, 5,7 years and have had certain level of successes, but none that can rival those of their colleagues in The States or Europe. And that's a pity, as we are dripping with worldclass talent and ideas here.

Maybe this is something that Digicel, Cable & Wireless, The Spanish companies busy building hotel rooms, more of the Irish can look at. Setting up a a Venture Capital Fund that's geared towards helping these many brilliant small, fledgling, talent packed technology companies become money smart, investable, inpactful and profitable. It's hard for many of these entrepreneurs to watch good money, strong money chase crappy ideas in the States when simply half or a quarter of that funding could take Jamaica and the Caribbean's software industry global, take the wicked web apps, mobile games, mobile services out of the underfunded companies and to the world.

Many of these companies have grown weary of the small pool of clients who recognise value for money and are willing to pay well and on time for products and services, especially in Jamaica. Many of these companies are bootstrapped, very clear testimony to their belief these entrepreneurs have in themselves, their teams and their ideas. Many of them have ideas, products, services that are great for the Jamaican/Caribbean market, scaleable and appealing to global markets.

I dare someone to start the first Venture Capital firm geared to making things happen in Jamaica and the Caribbean's tech industry. I dare someone!

Top 10 Emerging Mobile Markets

2007-04-06T12:22:00.000-05:00

Mobile Markets - Developing countries now account for more than half of mobile subscriber growth worldwide, with the top 10 adding around 285 million new subscribers in 2006 alone.

With the exception of the U.S., the world's top 10 mobile growth markets are all in countries considered to be "emerging" in Asia/Pacific, Africa, and Latin America. Mobile growth in these countries has accompanied economic expansion, deregulation, and the need for communications infrastructure where there is a lack of fixed-line connectivity. What I found VERY interesting was this bit of info: Research has found that with every 10 percent increase in mobile phone penetration, a country's GDP increases by 0.6 percent.

As the table below shows, India and China are way ahead of the pack in terms of sheer volume: India added the most, more than 73 million new mobile customers, while China, in second place, added close to 68 million new users. The next country on the list, Pakistan, added 29 million. The U.S. added 23 million subscribers last year, which would have put it in fifth place.

source: unstrung

Jamdeal.com announces change in business model

2007-04-03T14:14:00.000-05:00

Kingston, Jamaica - Jamdeal.com the Jamaican auction site announced a business model change to it's members today.

Jamdeal's newsletter announced: 1. There will be no more sales fees. The company will no longer charge sellers a percentage of items sold on the site, but instead will charge for product feature enhancements on the site. 2. The newsletter also said that the site will now fully become a JA$ site for seller fees and commissions. 3.It's affiliate programe will now pay a comission for every new user that another member refers to the site (using their personal link), and when that refered user buys anything on the site. JamDeal is an online markeplace to buy and sell, new and used items, with others in Jamaica. The site is growing in the trend trail already blazed by ebay.

ezetop and Digicel top up all over my Google search results

2007-04-02T12:04:00.000-05:00

Dublin, Ireland - And in keeping the Irish theme today, here's more news. Been seeing Digicel and the name ezetop popping up ALOT in your google searches. Well it's because a year ago, Digicel signed a distribution deal with ezetop, another Irish based tech company.

The agreement enabled the significant Caribean Diaspora around the world to add credit to Digicel mobiles. This agreement means that Digicel prepaid top ups can now be purchased online at www.ezetop.com and at over 30,000 retail stores across the UK and US. Already thousands of US and UK based Jamaicans are now remitting credit directly and instantly to their loved ones mobiles at www.ezetop.com and from many US and UK retail stores.

The ezetop-Digicel agreement is a Group wide agreement and covers Haiti, Cooperative Republic of Guyana, Suriname, El Salvador, Guatemala, St Kitts & Nevis, St Vincent & the Grenadines, St Lucia, Grenada, Commonwealth of Dominica, Antigua & Barbuda, Barbados, Trinidad & Tobago and Anguilla.

Celtic Tigers, world's largest exporter of software

2007-04-02T11:06:00.000-05:00

Ireland - I read an interesting report on Ireland done by Enterprise Ireland. It reports: Software each year, accounts for about 10% of all exports from the Ireland. In absolute terms, Ireland is now the largest exporter of software in the world, ahead of the USA. 60% of all software sold in Europe originates in Ireland.

Enterprise Ireland counts some 350 Irish-owned software companies among its clients, and there are up to 50 high potential start ups every year. These companies are export-oriented, and sell 70% of their production overseas. The exports grew in the late 90s at an annual rate of more than 60%. There are Irish software companies selling globally in many applications areas, including:

- Banking and Finance
- Telecommunications
- Internet and online tools and applications
- Software Tools
- eLearning and computer/internet based training

Today, a strong cadre of Irish software companies specializing in the financial services sector has become internationally successful serving customers in the Retail Banking, Corporate Banking, Internet Banking, Card Processing, Insurance and Stock Broking areas.

The Irish Financial Services Software Sector now employs some 2,500 people with worldwide sales of €190 million. This success is largely based on a continuing commitment to innovation and product development that is matched to the rapidly changing needs of financial institutions as they move from traditional lending and deposit activities and enter new areas such as asset management and insurance sales and adapt to the demands of global operations.

Irish companies offer world-class solutions in both front and back office administration systems and have built up specified capabilities in customer relationship management (CRM), workflow management, electronic payments, mobile telephony, security, channel management, database marketing and document processing.

Learn more about the Top Irish web apps. Here.

Afghan women renting cell phone minutes for a living

2007-04-02T07:30:00.000-05:00

USA-A pretty interesting article in Forbes magazine, reports on women renting out cell phone minutes or providing tech help in Afghanistan, to feed their families and the abuse they put up with because they are working with men.

The articles begings: For doing her job, Sukhriya Hassani gets hassled by goons, who call her "prostitute" and threaten to shut down her business. Her sin: doing business with men. But the 25-year-old widow needs the $300 a month she earns--a lavish income in Afghanistan--by renting out cellular phone service by the call minute (10 cents for domestic, 45 for international). Her family of eight depends on her. She's willing to put up with thugs and her tiny office (freezing in winter, roasting in summer) on a bustling street in Kabul if it means she can afford to send her 8-year-old son to school and herself to night classes in English and computers.

Hassani is one of 50 Afghan women who earn such commissions by working for a cell company called Roshan ("light" in Dari and Pashto). It is one of Afghanistan's largest private businesses, with 850 employees, 23% of them women. Since its January 2003 launch Roshan has invested $250 million in infrastructure, with another $75 million slated for this year, to spread across 175 cities and villages and provide mobile phone service to 1.2 million customers--half the market. No profits yet, though revenue is climbing, up from $170 million in 2005 to an estimated $200 million last year.

Read more at the source: forbes.com

HOT or NOT for MOBILE PHONES

2007-04-02T07:20:00.000-05:00

USA- Last week,a wireless startup from Seattle called IceBreaker (run by some ex-Microsofties) will launch Crush or Flush - a mobile version of Hot or Not, with an added twist, Business2.0 reports.

"On your cell phone, you can cycle through pictures of men and women and either "crush" them or "flush" them. You can search by location or by some of the self-describing tags people put on their profiles. If two people crush each other, they both get a text message inviting them to chat with each other anonymously (via text, for now—with anonymous voice calling in the works). Hmmmm.

C&W partners with Celltick on mobile content portal 'buzz live!'

2007-04-01T15:28:00.000-05:00

Kingston, Jamaica - Cable & Wireless (C&W) has partnered with Celltick, a provider of technological solutions for mobile marketing, to upgrade its bmobile content portal to create 'buzz live!'.

"The expanded feature will be available by summer. The new service will use Celltick's trademark LiveScreen Media technology to stream interactive teasers across idle mobile screens, directing subscribers to C&W's mobile content portal," said C&W on Thursday.

The messages are 'silent and non-intrusive', the company said, appearing only when the phone is not in use.

Enhanced product From a business perspective, the enhanced product offers a new non-voice revenue stream. C&W says it will charge customers not on the basis of the streams, but per click on teaser content.

"The service is proven to strengthen relationships between customers and content, delivering greater non-voice revenues," said Celltick's CEO Stephen Dunford, quoted in a joint press release. "Add the independent revenue stream from brands and advertisers to the mix and this is an extremely compelling proposition to mobile operators."

LiveScreen Media already has a 40 million subscriber market across 20 mobile operators worldwide in countries such as Russia, Thailand and India, said Cable & Wireless. The partnership will allow the telecoms provider to step up its content offerings to its markets in 13 Caribbean islands.

Content will include sports results, news, weather updates, celebrity gossip and quizzes, which will be streamed to subscribers according to preference.
read more at the source:jamaica-gleaner.com

Digicel makes Sean Paul a US$200,000 offer......

2007-03-30T13:32:00.000-05:00

Kingston,Jamaica-...that he may find it not hard to refuse. What was the offer,Digicel wanted ringtones and songs exclusive etc for US$200,000. When I heard I laughed, as Sean Paul did a nationwide deal with Verizon the other day and ahhh it wasn't exclusive and ahhh it certainly costed more than US$200,000 for this grammy award-winning multiplatinum reggae artist. We'll see if Digicel get their wits about them and make a much better offer.

Who is Fake Steve?

2007-03-29T10:42:00.000-05:00

USA - Ok I'm so late to this. One of my programmers Philip told me about fakesteve.com just yesterday. It's a blog written by, we do not know who. But it has the picture of Steve Jobs, one of my entrepreneurial role models on the site, making it looks like it's him who's writhin this funny as hell stuff. I've just started reading the site and I'm really enjoying it...is it a spoof, is it Steve taking himself much less seriously for a good laugh, I don't know...it's interesting reading though.

GroGoo.com - What are they trying to do, really ?

2007-03-28T09:24:00.000-05:00

Kingston,Jamaica - Grogoo.com has stated their objective "to bring the world's sellers and buyers, small businesses and bread winners in particular,together in a common database." A couple of young Jamaican entrepreneurs have launched it, grogoo.com, what they call a "new approach to online promotions." I call it misguided and without a leg to stand on. I read the first report on them a few weeks ago when they appeared in the Jamaica Gleaner. They got another write up in the Jamaica Observer today. Read it here I was going to play the diplomat and ignore them in my blog and field bitch-with-me calls from industry colleagues by phone, but decided, hell no!

About GroGoo.com
Their concept of creating an "instant advertising facility and job opportunity portal" is in a word - pointless. That's why we have classifieds. The fact that clients can add their own fliers, press ads to the site is nothing new. Again a simple classifieds solution would have served this purpose too. GroGoo.com would have been better served buying an open source solution,tweaking it, brand it and then more time marketing the hell out of it and along the way educating Jamaican businesses and individuals on the true benefits of online advertising.

Hits don't mean sh*t.Web Traffic 101. Yeah I said it. In the Jamaica Observer article today,the company claims that "the site presently averages over 70,000 hits per day. There are some days it goes up to as much 300,000." So What! Here's my reason for saying this. Web Traffic 101. What is a hit? A hit is measured every time a specific unique file (HTML files, image files, script files, frames... the various elements that comprise a single web page) is downloaded. In other words, many people refer to the total number of HTTP requests a user makes as the number of hits the site receives. Since a single web page can be made up of any number of unique files (hundreds even), measuring hits is often meaningless in measuring the success of a website.

In a hypothetical example, say a website’s homepage consists of 24 files, a web analysis software will count 24 hits every time a visitor downloads that home page. As you can see, website hits do not consistently correlate with unique visitors, sessions, or pageviews. Savvy potential online advertisers ignore sites that claim to have thousands of hits. They instead should ask about user sessions( how long they stay on a page, what they clicked on etc), and unique and return visitors.

One of the brilliant things about online advertising is that is measurable (using google analytics, crazy egg, web trends,sitemeter etc) and successful companies (site publishers etc) who are able to demonstrate to potential online advertisers why they should open their purse strings. They must be able to give the basic information about the site traffic, because what an online advertiser requires is a return on their investment and that can only come from giving them traffic(unique daily site visitors and user session info) that is relevant to the product or service. Otherwise you'll just be passing off another throw-mud-at-my-wall solution.

So in my mind, GroGoo.com is another novice company, who have clearly not done their homework about the online industry and are on a journey of misguidinf Jamaican companies about online advertising. But I don’t place that responsibility entirely on them alone.

What business model? According to the newspaper article "Three advertising packages are offered at a high of US$37 where ads are rotated on the home page and in the view-ads page." Huh?! The story has not made the business model, how they plan on making money clear.

Wasted column inches. GroGoo.com have managed to get precious publicity because the journalists that are writing these stories are also NOT doing their homework. The idea of young Jamaicans playing around with a technology may seem novel, cute even, but worthy of filling column inches no. They are too many other success stories about technology companies that are achieving as innovators, that are helping Jamaican and Caribbean companies to become successul using web, mobile and other technologies. But they often go uncovered, because media houses still do not get it - technology news is business news and asigning reporters to the beat for them to go deep and go beyond writing stories on Digicel and Cable & Wireless only will serve them better. It will mean more in terms of advertising dollars and readership. They is sooo much going on here.

MY QUESTIONS FOR GROGOO.com 1. How many unique site visitors users come to the site daily?
2. How long do they stay on the site and where are they spending their time most?
3. What is the business model?

I would love to see GroGoo.com succeed but at this moment it has all the classic elements to become a fabulous failure.

AT&T to launch mobile banking

2007-03-27T11:30:00.000-05:00

AT&T Inc.'s Cingular Wireless plans to introduce mobile banking capabilities with four prominent banks, the biggest such initiative in the U.S. but still shy of the industry's long-discussed goal of turning cell phones into credit cards.

The deals with Wachovia Corp., Regions Financial Corp., SunTrust Banks Inc. and BancorpSouth Inc. will enable AT&T customers who bank with those companies to use their cell phones to check account balances, transfer funds between accounts and pay bills.

The application, developed by Firethorn Holdings LLC, will be available immediately for BancorpSouth customers and later this year for cell users who bank with the other three financial companies. AT&T will not charge customers for the service beyond its data usage fees.

To use the new service on an existing AT&T mobile phone, customers will need to download a program. AT&T plans to begin embedding software on new handsets starting in the second half of 2007.

The application downloads account and bill information to the handset, so users will be able to view account balances, transfer funds, and receive and pay bills when their devices are not connected to AT&T's mobile Internet service. If a device is lost or stolen, the data can be remotely cleared from the device.

The AT&T deployment, announced Tuesday, marks a major step forward in a sector that's taken years longer than predicted to take shape.However, the U.S. market remains a big leap away from the long-discussed goal of embedding small transmitters in handsets for contactless payments similar to the car windshield devices commonly used to pay bridge and highway tolls.

Wireless service providers, device makers and the major credit card providers have remained at a stalemate over a business model for how to share deployment costs and transaction revenues.

High Five for Highrise

2007-03-22T17:07:00.000-05:00

USA-I waited, then when it went live, I signed up. Highrisehq from 37signals, the small (A 7 member team) that's been running di place hot with web-based apps focused on the needs of small businesses.
They are the sucessful example of what Seth Godin meant when he said Small is the New Big.
HighRiseHQ is an online contact manager on steroids. Frankly it was made just for me. It allows you to keep in touch with who you spoke to,vendors, clients,leads etc what was said, what task is to be done by when yadda yadda. What is a wicked thing for me, is that I can set reminders and it comes to me by email or sms(though I'm yet to test the latter). HELLO!!!! Someone give me a high5 for that. 37signals,I'm not worthy!!!
Now the web app went live like 36hours prior to this posting and already they've made adjustments to the app in response to their customer. I particularly like the SOLO PLan for freelancers and independent contractors, now that's thinking. My own regret is- where the hell was 37 signals with like ahhh 5 years ago, I may have been a rich woman now.Cho man!

Two reasons I wake up in the mornings

2007-03-22T10:49:00.000-05:00

Reason 1. A billion people are now online.
Reason 2. This huge online audience actually shops online. In the US, consumers spent more than USD 200 billion online last year (including travel), while Europeans shelled out EUR 100 billion on online goodies and services. Online sales in Asia are in the tens of billions USD, too. (Sources: Forrester, Shop.org and eMarketer.) Now that's I've gotten my morning pick me up. On to make MY millions.

SMS to be US$67bn Industry by 2012

2007-02-26T17:35:00.000-05:00

A report from Portio Research is forecasting SMS revenues to reach US$67 billion. The increase is mostly attributed to an expected increase in mobile subscriber base from 2.61 to 4.81 billion, sending 3.7 trillion messages. The Asian markets are expected to grow the fastest, comprising 50% of the subscriber base by 2008.

SMS accounts for approximately 75-80% of carrier's non-voice plan revenue, with voice plans comprising 80% of worldwide mobile revenue. Competition amongst carriers has been eroding voice margins and mobile content providers for ring tones and wallpapers are on their last legs, with users more easily accessing content over the internet. One of the largest content companies, Moderati, was recently purchased by Bellrock Media, and will be transitioning into mobile applications. Consequently, carriers should be turning their attention to data services.

SMS has been the fastest growing messaging service, but the pricer MMS, e-mail, and mobile IM are expected to grow healthily as well. The report suggests operators must carefully manage rates for these alternatives in order to avoid cannibalizing the SMS market.
Source: mobilecrunch