Choon Keat (top) and James Seng (bottom) are the founders of SharedCopy. Visit Choon's blog here, and James' blog here.

Can you tell us a little about yourselves and your backgrounds?

Choon: I've worked for various startups since 2000 doing a variety of stuff ranging from web, to mobile, to TV apps. 2.5 years ago, I'd started RssFwd, a free RSS-to-email service, currently sponsored by Blue Sky Factory. Currently, I'm a full-time Ruby on Rails developer at a local Singapore company and a member of the Singapore Ruby Brigade.

James: Perhaps I am more well-known for my work on Internationalized Domain Names (IDN), where I developed the basic proof-of-concept in 1999, subsequently formed and chaired an IETF Working Group. IDN is now an established Internet Standard currently deployed all around the world.

I did a stint as a dotcom startup as CTO of i-DNS.net, a ventured backed company beside the series of web projects and startups I had before. After the dotcom crashed, I went to joined Infocomm Development Authority (IDA) of Singapore as a technologist looking at the Next Generation Network for 3 years. My work in IDA covers IP Telephony and Antispam. Currently, I still served on board of several non-profit organization, startups, and government committees including a small new media company doing podcasting in Singapore. I also have an investment advisory company where we do due-diligence on technology company in this region.

What is the Web 2.0 scene currently like in Singapore?

Choon: More alive than a year ago. There has been more activity lately, or at least more people attending meetups or conferences like E27, Barcamp, and recently Nexus2007.

James: Definitely more active then a few years back but not the same level of energy as during the dotcom days. But perhaps it is for the better because people are more sensible now unlike during the late 90s.

Nevertheless, doing web 2.0 is tough in Singapore. I was lucky to find a few good web 2.0 developers like Choon Keat to work with me but I am still concerned about subsequent fundings for web 2.0 company.

What gave you the idea for SharedCopy?

Choon: My wife was talking about work, and about sending screenshots in Powerpoint files. That kinda resurfaced an irk I've had for a long while now, that it really shouldn't be so troublesome. Having done RssFwd before, I reached for a bookmarklet and did a proof-of-concept that it could be done.

James: Several months back, I saw a very early proof-of-concept Choon Keat at the GeekOut event organized by The Digital Movement. It was very rough but I can see the potential of what it could be. So after getting together for dinner, we agreed to co-develop it together.

I was on #joiito when Joshua has the idea to developed del.icio.us a few years ago. The group had an interesting discussion but I didn't get it then (my mistake). I learn from that and now put some of those stuff I learn into SharedCopy.

What technologies did you use in developing this service?

Browser bookmarklet (javascript), DOM scripting & CSS are the basic client side technologies used.

Firebug was essential for development. Lighttpd, Mongrel, Ruby on Rails and MySQL manages the server side.

Are there any problems with SharedCopy you're still trying to solve or fix?

Choon: Highlighting of text has a very naive implementation now. It will be beefed up soon. Safari support is not 100% yet and Opera compatibility has to be worked on.

James: We need to figure out how to preserve the images (and others) without killing our servers so you always get exactly as you would want to be seen. I also want to develop features to allow to see what others have commented on their page as well as other group collaboration effort. The APIs need to be improved so we can have better integration with other existing popular services.

What are some current facts and figures? How many users do you have?

There are over 700 users and 2000 comments made. Not a bad start considering we only launch last week.

How is the company currently funded? Are you looking for additional funding?

James: Currently, it is funded by me. It is manageable for now but yes, we will be looking for additional funding. However, it is important to plan ahead and make sure some of the structure are setup right from the beginning so we wont run into issues.

We are also looking to expand the team.