Ninja Camera is a very sneaky iPhone app from Japan which is intended to let the users take photos without anyone noticing. It was released this week, and has been ranked number one in the photo and video category since then [1], so it’s certainly popular with at least a few people.
As you can see in our demo video above, Ninja Camera has three stealthy shooting modes:
Silent camera mode: The normal viewfinder is displayed, but when you take a photo, there isn’t any shutter sound. Note that in Japan, camera phones are required to make this noise, although many apps allow users to get around this.
Hidden camera mode: This is perhaps the most nefarious feature, as your camera’s screen shows fully functioning web browser, with a tiny camera viewfinder in the bottom corner. So even if someone is watching over your shoulder, it appears as though you are innocently browsing the web – when you are actually snapping photos [2].
Dark camera mode: This shooting mode blacks out the entire screen, making it appear as though your phone is off. But there are faintly visible shutter buttons on the bottom, letting you continue to snap off pictures.
Back in 2011 when such photo applications started to become more of a problem, an Apple Japan representative was cited by the Yomiuri Shimbun as saying that “There’s no problem as long as the developer’s stated purpose for the app doesn’t go against social ethics.”
In Ninja Camera’s app description, the developer of Ninja camera lists three example purposes for its stealthy app: shooting a sleeping baby, taking pictures of pets sensitive to sound, and taking photos in a quiet place. Ultimately, I think the responsibility does lie with the user. But in my view, an app like Ninja Camera definitely looks like it was intentionally designed for snapping covert pictures of unsuspecting ladies. If you look at one of the app’s promo photo (below and to the right) it shows a photo taken of a lady from behind — so the intent isn’t really even obscured here — even though it’s not explicitly stated.
I write this post on a Friday, so it has been released for four days now. ↩
A little digging shows that some other applications have this function, including the similarly named Private Ninja Cam. ↩
See also this story in Japanese. Designclue is a service that lets you crowdsource logo creation to freelance designers regardless of their location or nationality. It’s run by the Tokyo-based startup called Purple Cow, which recently announced it had fundraised 14.7 million yen (approximately $157,000) in a seed round from Incubate Fund and East Ventures. We had a chance to interview all the three members of the startup, Kensuke Shibata, the CEO; Kyohei Teshima, the chief global officer; and Akira Kudo, the web developer. What exactly motivated you guys to launch this service? Shibata: I was studying in high school in Canada, and our CGO Kyohei Teshima was studying in the UK. As both he and I were outside Japan, we saw a variety of services for outsourcing tasks to emerging countries. We didn’t really call it ‘crowdsourcing’ in the past, but it was an [early] form of today’s crowdsouricing concepts. Kyohei and I met each other while working at DeNA as interns. We were so inspired by the concept of The World is Flat, the best-selling book by Thomas Friedman, and started working together exploring an innovative project that might disrupt the global market. With the idea of building…
Designclue is a service that lets you crowdsource logo creation to freelance designers regardless of their location or nationality. It’s run by the Tokyo-based startup called Purple Cow, which recently announced it had fundraised 14.7 million yen (approximately $157,000) in a seed round from Incubate Fund and East Ventures. We had a chance to interview all the three members of the startup, Kensuke Shibata, the CEO; Kyohei Teshima, the chief global officer; and Akira Kudo, the web developer.
What exactly motivated you guys to launch this service?
Shibata: I was studying in high school in Canada, and our CGO Kyohei Teshima was studying in the UK. As both he and I were outside Japan, we saw a variety of services for outsourcing tasks to emerging countries. We didn’t really call it ‘crowdsourcing’ in the past, but it was an [early] form of today’s crowdsouricing concepts.
Kyohei and I met each other while working at DeNA as interns. We were so inspired by the concept of The World is Flat, the best-selling book by Thomas Friedman, and started working together exploring an innovative project that might disrupt the global market. With the idea of building up a global project-sharing platform without considering language barriers and cultural gaps, we won a grand prize award plus 3 million yen ($32,000) at an entrepreneur contest from Skylight Consulting. That’s where my colleague Akira Kudo joined the team too.
When thinking about what was the easiest category of crowdsource-able tasks [unlikely to be impeded by] language barriers, we concluded we should focus on a platform specializing in logo design. Since we started working on it, we’re haven’t been interested in business in a specific country but rather one that works in the global market. [1]
Can you tell us how the system works?
When you order logo design here in Japan, it will usually not be very cheap due to high labor costs in the country. And it can also be very hard for most Japanese people to order such work from overseas because of the language barrier. Our service allows users to easily place orders from independent foreign designers.
The website has multilingual interfaces to easily facilitate this. We’ve developed a non-verbal interface that allows users to let the designers know what kind of tastes you like or what kind of additional changes you want by just choosing selective designations or pointing [things] out over the artwork on screen. Users can receive many design proposals at affordable rates from registered designers in emerging markets.
How do you monetize this?
We charge our user almost 20% of the ordering fee as our commission (this can vary according to some order criteria) when the design artwork is delivered to the user. When a user submits the order, we’ll charge our fee including the commission. And after that user then selects one of the design proposals, Designclue will pay the designer. So, Designclue plays a sort of escrow role in terms of money flow. All payments on the platform are processed via PayPal.
What kinds of business are using the service the most?
About 50% of all orders on the platform came from Japanese startups, followed by large-sized IT enterprises which accounted for 30% of orders.
How geographically varied are the designers?
About 30% of registered designers comes from Indonesia, followed by the Philippines, the US, India, Serbia, and the UK (in descending order). There was even a South African freelance designer who could make a living for three months as long as he accomplished a single task.
It seems that in Indonesia the locals are aggressively developing their skills to make a living. Many people are using [similar services] like 99designs.com and are used to submitting their artwork ideas as side jobs. 99designs is an English language site and helps them work with Western countries. But for the Indonesian designers, we are a way to enlarge their business opportunities to non-English-speaking countries, including Japan.
Can you share any interesting metrics about your service so far?
123 design proposals are delivered for an order on average, and 95% of all the order requests are completed with users satisfied with the outcome. We have 800 designers in 60 countries, and more than 85% of all the designers came from outside Japan. We’ve handled more than 100 transactions during the last six months since the site launch.
What do you foresee for Designclue in the future?
We think we’ll be moving towards the realization of a project sharing platform, where users can easily split their tasks to small pieces and outsource to freelancers.
Designclue was chosen as one of the finalists for the SF Japan Night event that will take place in San Francisco in early March.
They’re currently hiring Ruby developers, preferably English speakers. If you are interested in joining them and being a part of a platform that may disrupt the global market, please feel free to contact them.
After this point, all three pitch in to answer various questions. ↩
According to a recent study, the fashion and interior e-commerce market in Japan was about 636 billion yen (about $6.79 billion) in 2012, a 121.5% increase on last year. Many domestic apparel brands join fashion online malls instead of developing and running e-commerce sites on their own. And as a result we’re seeing lots of buzz around these fashion online malls. While it’s likely that brands will have their own e-commerce presences soon enough, the online fashion malls which are currently so popular also have intriguing plans for the future. Let’s take a closer look at a few of the major online fashion malls in Japan (in no particular order), as well as their upcoming plans. 1. Stylife ¶ Rakuten recently acquired Stylife for 1.1 billion yen (about $11,770,000), becoming the biggest shareholder in the company. This is a smart move by Rakuten as it eager to increase its reach into the fashion space. For a long time, what differentiated Stylife from other online fashion malls was its print catalogue, Look!s, that integrated with the online mall, although the company ceased publication of the print version in March of 2012. It is now available online as a web magazine. 2….
According to a recent study, the fashion and interior e-commerce market in Japan was about 636 billion yen (about $6.79 billion) in 2012, a 121.5% increase on last year. Many domestic apparel brands join fashion online malls instead of developing and running e-commerce sites on their own. And as a result we’re seeing lots of buzz around these fashion online malls. While it’s likely that brands will have their own e-commerce presences soon enough, the online fashion malls which are currently so popular also have intriguing plans for the future.
Let’s take a closer look at a few of the major online fashion malls in Japan (in no particular order), as well as their upcoming plans.
Rakuten recently acquired Stylife for 1.1 billion yen (about $11,770,000), becoming the biggest shareholder in the company. This is a smart move by Rakuten as it eager to increase its reach into the fashion space.
For a long time, what differentiated Stylife from other online fashion malls was its print catalogue, Look!s, that integrated with the online mall, although the company ceased publication of the print version in March of 2012. It is now available online as a web magazine.
Just a month or so ago, mobile carrier NTT Docomo snatched up online fashion mall Magaseek, acquiring more than 41.67% of the company’s stock. Magaseek targets female mobile users in their 20s, and its previous owner was general trading company Itochu which still owns 25% of its shares. Similar to Rakuten, NTT Docomo’s plan is to solidify its competitiveness in fashion commerce by cooperating with Itochu, the largest general trade company in the textiles industry.
FashionWalker is another online mall which has aspirations of expanding its business to the Asian market, most notably to Korea and Taiwan. To that end, back in November of 2012 it launched an fashion e-commerce service for Korea. Its parent company is ‘World’.
FashionWalker is more content-focused compared to other online malls, creating dedicated sections for fashion stylists to introduce their latest look-books, under the category of ‘Shibuya Style Village‘.
Another fashion online mall that’s accelerating its business in the Asia region is Zozotown (operated by Start Today) which was founded way back in 2004. In addition to zozotown.jp which serves the Japanese market, the company also runs zozotown.com where items can be delivered to 82 countries. In addition to the global online mall, Zozotown will launch ZozoConnect on Feburary 28 where it will introduce international brands — especially brands from Asia — to the world. At the time of launch, the site will focus on five Korean brands, including Bratson.
This is part of our ‘Japanese internet in-depth’ series (RSS). Stay tuned for more features that aim to explain what makes the internet unique in Japan.
Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe bounced back into the public eye this past December when he became the leader of Japan for the second time after a five-year absence. But I’m not sure if he could have ever foreseen becoming the star of his own iPhone game, but that’s exactly what has happened in a popular new title Jump! Mr. Abe from Riko Design. The game is an extremely simple one, where the user must bounce Mr. Abe on a trampoline as high as possible. He starts off with small jumps in front of the National Diet Building, but if you can time his jumps correctly he flies even higher, beyond Tokyo Tower, and past the newly erected Tokyo Sky Tree. Switch to 20-jump mode, and you can send Mr. Abe to even greater heights, past iconic landmarks like the Statue of Liberty, the Notre Dame Cathedral, and Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia (apparently the game developer isn’t a stickler for accurately representing the scale of the buildings!). What’s interesting about Jump! Mr Abe is that this very casual game appears to have been a simple reinvention of Riko Design’s other recent title Jumping Monkeys, which uses the exact same type of…
Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe bounced back into the public eye this past December when he became the leader of Japan for the second time after a five-year absence. But I’m not sure if he could have ever foreseen becoming the star of his own iPhone game, but that’s exactly what has happened in a popular new title Jump! Mr. Abe from Riko Design.
The game is an extremely simple one, where the user must bounce Mr. Abe on a trampoline as high as possible. He starts off with small jumps in front of the National Diet Building, but if you can time his jumps correctly he flies even higher, beyond Tokyo Tower, and past the newly erected Tokyo Sky Tree.
Switch to 20-jump mode, and you can send Mr. Abe to even greater heights, past iconic landmarks like the Statue of Liberty, the Notre Dame Cathedral, and Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia (apparently the game developer isn’t a stickler for accurately representing the scale of the buildings!).
What’s interesting about Jump! Mr Abe is that this very casual game appears to have been a simple reinvention of Riko Design’s other recent title Jumping Monkeys, which uses the exact same type of game play. I’m not sure if the developer is making any sort of hidden political commentary here by putting Mr. Abe into a role it previously reserved for monkeys — but it’s a fun casual title that many kids might like nonetheless, I think.
Currently the game is the 9th ranked free title on the Japanese app store, and but ranks first in the family category and fifth in gaming. Check it out over on the app store.
Singapore-based startup Intraix has just announced a partnership with a Japanese company, Smart Integration, in the hopes of distributing its smart home energy management system to residential homes in Tokyo, Nara, and Okinawa by June of this year. Intraix’s system lets users monitor their energy consumption in a fun and easy way, keeping tabs on their usage via an iOS app or on the web. Through this partnership they aspire to install the system in 5,000 to 8,000 residential homes in its first year, and 14,000 in the following year. The solution includes energy budgeting and consumption prediction features, collecting data via an installed power meter which then sends information to the company’s proprietary data analysis engine, which it has dubbed its “Green Voices algorithm.” Intraix co-founder Darrell Zhang tells me that he has “much faith and confidence in the ability [of Smart Integration] to push the system to the market” in Japan. The Tokyo-based company, headed by CEO and founder Kazumasa Nomura, has established access to important sales channels and smart home system integrators. In fact, the company has already made partnerships with eight local agent companies in Japan to resell and integrate Intraix’s solution. There are already some…
Singapore-based startup Intraix has just announced a partnership with a Japanese company, Smart Integration, in the hopes of distributing its smart home energy management system to residential homes in Tokyo, Nara, and Okinawa by June of this year. Intraix’s system lets users monitor their energy consumption in a fun and easy way, keeping tabs on their usage via an iOS app or on the web.
Through this partnership they aspire to install the system in 5,000 to 8,000 residential homes in its first year, and 14,000 in the following year. The solution includes energy budgeting and consumption prediction features, collecting data via an installed power meter which then sends information to the company’s proprietary data analysis engine, which it has dubbed its “Green Voices algorithm.”
Intraix co-founder Darrell Zhang tells me that he has “much faith and confidence in the ability [of Smart Integration] to push the system to the market” in Japan. The Tokyo-based company, headed by CEO and founder Kazumasa Nomura, has established access to important sales channels and smart home system integrators. In fact, the company has already made partnerships with eight local agent companies in Japan to resell and integrate Intraix’s solution.
There are already some smart energy competitors in Japan, but Darrell explains that Intraix’s system is different in that it includes a fun social element where its users can accumulate ‘Green Credits’ that can be used for rewards and rebates. There will also be weekly energy challenges as well. He believes that no competing home energy management system has such a rewards system.
Intraix provides smart energy monitor for larger buildings and data centers in Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Any of our readers who attended the Myojo Waraku event in Fukuoka last year will recognize Intraix as one of the 10 startups who pitched.
You can learn more about Intraix’s residential smart home energy management solution in its promo video below.
大きな地図で見る Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) today has announced that it has expanded its Street View coverage in Japan to a number of new areas, including Kochi and Tokushima prefectures [1]. What’s especially cool about this latest addition to Street View is that in Tokushima city, Google cooperated with a local tourist organization so that it could shoot the Awa dance festival, an annual event where musicians and dancers parade through the streets wearing traditional costumes. As you can see in Google’s video below, the company rolled its famous Street View trike through the procession, capturing the spectacle all the way. As fun as the video is, take a moment to explore the Street View map as well, if you want to feel like you’re in the middle of the action. On a more serious note, Google’s Street View has served an important archival purpose in Japan in the past as well, capturing the state of the areas affected by the tragic 2011 earthquake and tsunami. Overall, it’s good to see the company getting involved in all these ways to share and preserve the country’s culture and history. The full list can be found in Google’s blog post here (Japanese). ↩
Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) today has announced that it has expanded its Street View coverage in Japan to a number of new areas, including Kochi and Tokushima prefectures [1].
What’s especially cool about this latest addition to Street View is that in Tokushima city, Google cooperated with a local tourist organization so that it could shoot the Awa dance festival, an annual event where musicians and dancers parade through the streets wearing traditional costumes.
As you can see in Google’s video below, the company rolled its famous Street View trike through the procession, capturing the spectacle all the way. As fun as the video is, take a moment to explore the Street View map as well, if you want to feel like you’re in the middle of the action.
On a more serious note, Google’s Street View has served an important archival purpose in Japan in the past as well, capturing the state of the areas affected by the tragic 2011 earthquake and tsunami. Overall, it’s good to see the company getting involved in all these ways to share and preserve the country’s culture and history.
The full list can be found in Google’s blog post here (Japanese). ↩