Koobits

History

KooBits was founded in 2007 by Prof. Sam Ge Shuzhi, Dr. Chen Xiangdong, and current CEO Stanley Han. The trio saw opportunity in the rapid growth of the ebook industry, and decided to focus on creating software for interactive enhanced ebooks.

Awards

In 2008, KooBits was the winner of the Asia Pacific ICT Awards 2008 (elearning) and the Infocomm Singapore Awards 2008 (elearning).

KooBits received support from the Media Development Authority (MDA) in the development of Future Media and was one of the companies selected to receive funding in Interactive Digital Media projects. MDA also helped Personal e-Motion secure Venture Capital fund from Accel-X Pte Ltd. KooBits is part of the FutureBooks Partner Network initiated by MDA to develop Singapore-based learning from user-generated content to delivery across multiple platforms. PEM raised its first round of Venture Capital investments in July 2009 through NUS Enterprise ’s network of Business Angels and Venture Capitalists.

KooBits provides the platform for the creation of ebooks for Young Reporters Training Camp program of Youth Olympic Games 2010, an initiative by the Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts (MICA), Singapore.

KooBits 4.0

KooBits 4.0 is a place to shelve ebooks. Just as with a physical version, users can organize ebooks in a bookshelf either using the default categories or renaming them. Also, tools are available for highlighting and stamping on ebooks as well as opening PDF, EPUB, interactive KBJ ebooks and more. The software also enables audio and video input on top of animation of characters and game elements.

KooBits Editor

The KooBits Editor is a program that allows users to create multimedia ebooks, ecards, scrap books, photo montages and more. It is currently available in four languages: English, Chinese, Malay, and Tamil. Users can publish their ebooks on their user profile, share them on various social networks, and comment on books created.

The software's proprietary Content-Driven Animation technology allows users to trigger images, videos, and animations by entering or reading key words and phrases in an ebook. An Advanced Resource Pool allocation algorithm allows for high performance with real-time rendering of large-sized, progressively-downloading multimedia files and data encoding. KooBits Editor has also been developed with component-based capability for the application to be embedded in a third-party environments such as Facebook.

The KooBits Editor is being used by elearning companies and organizations in South East Asia, China, Maldives, and Kuwait, and is used by more than 90 schools in Singapore. In 2009, KooBits partnered with Singaporean bookstore Popular Holdings to promote and sell the software.

KooBits EDU

KooBits EDU is intended primarily for schools – including primary and secondary schools, private institutions and international schools – within and outside of Singapore. KooBits EDU comes with a content management system that allows teachers to prepare and archive classroom materials, and track students’ progress. Students engage in interactive lessons and use it as a tool to develop both digital literacy and visual literacy.