Thursday, May 10, 2018

Can China’s ‘WeChat Diaspora’ Pioneer Mobile Payment in the US? (Sixth Tone: 5/10/2018 - Ken Chester)


With a birthday that often falls during Chinese New Year, and my WeChat Wallet therefore bulging with a double dose of red envelopes full of virtual cash, this spring I’ve been on the lookout for eateries in New York that accept WeChat Pay — China’s near-ubiquitous mobile payment service.

For the most part, it’s been a wild goose chase. Almost always, those that take payments via WeChat are the little guys — the hole-in-the-wall restaurants that proliferate across the city. Many takeout joints, food trucks, and fruit stands are still cash-only businesses, having eschewed credit cards for decades to avoid transaction fees. Later, when merchant service providers upgraded the payment systems of restaurants with whom they had contracts and enabled customers to conduct transactions via smartphone wallets, small mom-and-pop stores were largely left out in the cold. More...

Monday, January 26, 2015

CultureMesh: Connecting the World's Diasporas (IdEA - International diaspora Engagement Alliance: 1/26/2015 - Ken Chester)


For over two decades, the diasporic Internet experience has mostly consisted of a multitude of web forums.

While these forums have proven useful to a great number of people, there was never a unified platform to tie together the burgeoning web of diaspora websites; in fact, separate websites exist for nearly every combination of national origin and current location. Whether taking a road trip, moving to a new city, or connecting with multiple diasporas in the same city, all of these actions had required signing up for an entirely new website.

However, after spending my college years immersed within Michigan State University’s soaring international student population, and launching a refugee education non-profit shortly after graduation, I became keenly aware that change was long overdue. To put these plans into action, I became a member of the intra-national “Michigan diaspora” and drove to Silicon Valley to build CultureMesh – the first social networking platform to connect all the world’s diasporas. More...

Thursday, December 5, 2013

Tornado spotting and partying: how WeChat is being used by US colleges (Yahoo News/Tech in Asia: 12/5/2013 - Ken Chester)


On November 17, the WeChat account MSU伴侣 (literally “MSU Companion”) warned overseas Chinese students about the possibility of tornadoes and severe winds near Michigan State University’s campus in East Lansing. Earlier this year, the school also used WeChat to calm students’ nerves about a reported shooter on university grounds (pictured below).

While there were fortunately neither tornadoes nor gunmen, WeChat was able to facilitate timely Chinese-language emergency communications in a Midwestern American college town.

Besides urgent notifications, students who subscribe to this particular account (i.e. a brand page, just like Facebook has) can hear about cultural events, group outings, parties, and the occasional post about local car insurance rates.

For an insider’s perspective on using WeChat in this way, I talked to Chinese students and recent graduates at my alma mater, where Chinese students make up roughly 12 percent of this year’s freshman class. More...

Monday, November 25, 2013

Is this the end of AcceleratorHK, Hong Kong’s pioneering startup incubator? (Yahoo News/Tech in Asia: 11/14/2013 - Ken Chester)


AcceleratorHK, the first privately-run startup accelerator in Hong Kong, is in standby mode at the moment. It’s in limbo as its parent company, Telerik, moves on to its next accelerator project across the Pacific in Silicon Valley.

However, if co-founder Stephen Forte has anything to do with it, AcceleratorHK will continue on to welcome its third cohort of startup founders from Hong Kong and around the world. When I first met up with Forte last week, he had just arrived in Silicon Valley to jumpstart Telerik’s new Mach5 mobile startup accelerator, but the “Pearl of the Orient” was still fresh on his mind.

Forte discussed several alternatives that he foresaw for AcceleratorHK’s future, yet he was most enthusiastic about his efforts to entice well-known international investors, such as 500 Startups, to take over the reins in managing the accelerator. More...
Korean startups finally get all the limelight at beGLOBAL event in Silicon Valley (Yahoo News/Tech in Asia: 9/16/2013 - Ken Chester)


This past Friday, Korean startup blog beSUCCESS inaugurated its first beGLOBAL conference in Silicon Valley, bringing Korean startups together with globally-minded investors, incubators, and seasoned entrepreneurs.

For an overview of the event, I talked with John Nahm, a co-host of beGLOBAL and a founding partner at Strong Ventures. Nahm’s firm initially funded beSUCCESS and its series of startup conferences, starting with beLAUNCH in Seoul’s Gangnam district and Friday’s beGLOBAL conference in the US.

“Korean startups don’t have clout in Silicon Valley, so we wanted to create a high quality event with a top-notch group of startups and speakers,” Nahm said. “We’ve not yet arrived like the Israeli startups have in the Valley, since we don’t have a proven track record.” More...

A Bhutan tech primer: early signs of startups and e-commerce (Yahoo News/Tech in Asia: 9/2/2013 - Ken Chester)


In our initial Bhutan tech overview, I provided a brief summary of the country, its unique circumstances, and its increasing openness to technology and startups. In this second article, I’ve reached out to the COO of Thimphu TechPark (pictured above), Tshering Dorji, and several others for an on-the-ground analysis of the Bhutanese tech scene.

Dorji has been with Thimphu TechPark since it opened in May 2012, and prior to that, worked at Bhutan Telecom, where he witnessed the country’s explosive internet and mobile growth firsthand.

In the 14 years since the Bhutanese government first allowed internet access, “people took to the internet almost like a fish to water,” he said. More...

The pain and the passion behind building Asian language keyboard apps (Yahoo News/Tech in Asia: 8/29/2013 - Ken Chester)


This past weekend, I briefly mentioned the Perfect Tibetan Keyboard app, which allows Tibetan text input across a variety of platforms. Also, in December 2011, TechinAsia covered the launch of Phetasarth, a standardized Lao font developed by XY Mobile and adopted by the government of Laos.

Keyboard implementation varies widely across the many languages used in Asia, and even across different orthographies (writing systems) of the same language. So, for some unique insights into the development-side of these keyboard apps, I talked with Todd Kramer of Kramer Apps. Todd is the developer behind iOS keyboards for 16 Asian languages and three more globally. More...