Now Build Your Own Personal Brand With Gradkin

On one hand, we have PR agencies catered towards improving the ‘image’ or perception of corporate companies. We have professional image consultants who specifically help you project a professional image and exude confidence in business and social settings. What do we have for undergraduates or new graduates who will be transitioning from their comfortable, laid back student roles to the confident, hungry corporate roles? Gradkin! The personal branding platform exclusively catered exclusively for students.

You might have seen myriad evidences of employees being fired from their workplace for putting up drunk photos when they were supposed to be on MC. What Gradkin lets you do is to showcase your talents, while eliminating the incriminating photos on Facebook. Gradkin is a professional Branding and Networking platform for students and graduates to connect with employers. Creating a professional looking online brand is so important in today’s age as social media becomes more pervasive.

The Gradkin is currently running a contest to encourage students to cultivate a personal brand online and go in the draw to win an Apple iPod Touch. Details of the contest, here. The contest ends April 16th so do cultivate your personal brand online right away.

2 Days to PayPal X Developer Open House

Editor’s Note: PayPal will be having their PayPal X Singapore Developer Open House on March 18th.

The PayPal X Singapore Developer Open House will be coming up in 2 days. As of now, there are already over 100 RSVPs for the event with more streaming in everyday. One of the highlights of the discussion will be on mobile apps monetization, a hot topic in today’s mobile world. Developers would be keen to know that PayPal has their own iPhone library that will easily allow any application to accept payments for physical items, without the need to collect financial information from the users or make them go through your website to complete the purchase. More details on PayPal’s iPhone library here.

Interestingly, it was just announced this morning how PayPal has upgraded their own iPhone app and partnered with Bump, the app that allows you to share contact information by simply bumping both phone devices together, to allow you to easily transfer money between 2 accounts. While this isn’t mobile payments per se, it is still an interesting look into how PayPal is significantly moving their services into mobile devices. To learn more about what PayPal has to offer developers, head down for the PayPal X Singapore Developer Open House happening this Thursday, March 18th.

Startup Founders Meetup With James Hong, Founder of Hot or Not and Angel Investor

Update – Brad Greenspan, ex CEO of MySpace, will be joining us as well.

Ladies and Gentlemen, e27 is hosting a exclusive meet-up session of Startup founders with James Hong, serial-investor and co-founder of one of the defining dating sites of this era – Hot or Not, which logs about 20 Million page views per day! Am sure none of us need any introduction to this site. Started by two young UC Berkley graduates,  Hot or Not went ahead to sell for a rumored $20 million in 2008. Annual revenue was estimated at $5 million, with net profits of $2 million. He’s also an investor in Slide, Mochi Media, Raptr, Crunchyroll, BitTorrent, Frappr, OneSeason, and multiple other startups.

Meet the man behind this startup and get to hear his stories and insights. Also learn from his perspectives from being on both sides of the spectrum, as an entrepreneurs and as an investor.

Due to venue constraints and to ensure quality conversation, we are limiting the attendance to only 30 founders. If you are a startup founder and interested in attending this meetup, RSVP NOW!

Meetup Details

Date/Time : Thursday, March 11th 2010 / 6pm onwards

Venue: Garag3, NUS

RSVP : First 30 people to RSVP/comment on this post!

Looking forward to free flow of great conversations and loads of fun!

[Picture Courtesy: Wired]

[Video] Yahoo Open Hack Day Southeast Asia

Yahoo held their first ever Southeast Asia Open Hack Day in Jakarta in late November, much to the delight of developers around the region. Apart from the hacking sessions, the developers were introduced to new tools to build better apps and they got plugged into much larger community of developers. For most of the attendees there, it was their first time participating in such an event and many would love to be part of it again in future. Among the 350+ developers present, 4 of them were lucky enough to have been been flown from all over Southeast Asia (Vietnam, Malaysia, Philippines and Singapore) just to attend the event and hack with the rest of the developers. The video showcases these 4 developers, their experiences at the Hack Day and what they got out of it. It was a swell experience for them, and for me as well since I got the opportunity to be at the event and cover it. Enjoy the video and thanks Yahoo for a great Open Hack Day experience!

Great coverage of the event by Yahoo >> Link here

2010 Google Analytics Master Class on Actionable Insights in Singapore and Malaysia

I just got word that Google will be holding their analytics master class on Tuesday, 9th March, at the Meritus Mandarin Orchard, Ballroom 1. Apparently, it’s a must-attend event if you run a web based business and you want to really understand how best to utilize your web analytics data. Sneha and I are definitely attending it and I feel that startups and online business owners out there should do too. They are featuring a range of speakers including the Product Manager for Google Analytics, Beth Liebert, who is flying down just for this.

Interested participants can sign up at the following sites:

Singapore
Date: Tuesday, 9th March 2010
Location: Meritus Mandarin Orchard, Ballroom 1
Details: https://sites.google.com/site/analyticsmasterclass/singapore

Kuala Lumpur:
Date: Thursday, 11th March 2010
Location: Hilton Hotel, Ballroom A, Kuala Lumpur
Details: https://sites.google.com/site/analyticsmasterclass/malaysia

More Details: http://cse-sea.blogspot.com/2010/02/google-analytics-master-class-is-back.html

From what I heard, last years class in Singapore (which was the first in Southeast Asia) was way oversubscribed, hence I think this year’s one will be too. So do sign up early!

The agenda for the Singapore event is attached below for easy reference. See ya there!