CAROLYN ONG in Singapore

One award-winner at last week's Internet World Asia show in Singapore gained not only instant fame but also a cash buyout.

India's Easydiary.com won an award for "Killer Application of the Year", a category showcasing software and Internet technology resulting from original effort and not "me-too" concepts.

InfoCharms, a US-based technology lab that designs and makes computers worn as fashion accessories, must have been impressed - the next day it announced it had bought out Easydiary.com for an undisclosed amount.

"Alex Lightman [InfoCharms] met up with Easydiary the morning after the awards and by noon, the deal was done," said a source at the show.

"I don't know how much money was exchanged but InfoCharms bought Easydiary with cash."

Easydiary.com is a calendar, schedules and events site which alerts users of new events and appointments on their wireless application protocol-enabled phones.

The Internet World Web site used Easydiary.com to power its calendaring functions, thus giving the startup pre-awards publicity.

The second annual Internet World Asia show was almost an all-Singaporean affair, with the island-state's Net startups taking up most of the exhibition floor space and very little representation from the rest of Asia.

Singapore startups also dominated the much-hyped Internet World Asia Awards. More than 80 per cent of nominees were from the island-state.

Well-known Hong Kong startups Tom.com, Pacific Century CyberWorks, OutBlaze and financial portal Boom.com were all nominated. But only Tom.com and Boom.com won awards.

Mainland Internet giants such as Sina.com and Sohu.com were not in the running.

While "China" was the buzzword at the first Internet World show held last year in Hong Kong, the Singapore event was cool about Net opportunities there.

There were only two remotely mainland-related conference sessions, in the afternoon on the final day of the show, when all the excitement was winding down. And one of the sessions was cancelled at the last minute.

If the awards are a good gauge, the hottest Internet company in Asia must be Singapore's Advanced Manufacturing Online, a business-to-business company which won the "Best B2B Internet Site" and "Internet Company of the Year" categories.

Further recognition came when the company's chairman and chief executive Wong Toon King was named "Visionary of the Year".

One nominee in the "Killer Application" category won by Easydiary.com stood out with its concept of providing office collaboration applications over the Web.

Application service provider JustLogin is making available common office administration applications such as on-line surveys, claim and purchase forms, a bulletin board, directories, a leave application service and a resource booking system.

The on-line applications can be shared by everyone in a company.

Users can also message each other instantly, hold meetings in a private chat room or post announcements. A Chinese version will be launched next month in Hong Kong.

"Instead of having 50 pigeonholes for all these leave forms, claim forms, transport claim forms and so on, we have just organised it all on-line, and any company who registers with us can use all these services immediately," said JustLogin chief executive officer and founder Kwa Kim Chiong. "Basically, it's like an intranet site, except that there's no limit to the number of companies or the size of the company which can use this service."

JustLogin already has 10,000 registered users. Singapore's largest hospital, Singapore General Hospital, has signed up 5,000 of its employees.

Future plans for the site include the addition of e-services such as shared documents, time charging, e-commerce and WAP connectivity.