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Tomy’s dog-to-human communication toy introduces tots to mobile translation

Yukari Mitsuhashi 2013.03.20

For Japanese parents looking for a toy for their baby girl’s next birthday, Tomy’s Ketai Wanko (roughly translated as “mobile dog”) might be a fun option to consider. It’s a cute stuffed dog accompanied by mobile controller that works as a mock dog-to-human translator. When the toy dog barks, you can bring the cell-phone close to its nose, and the noises are translated into language. The dog can say over 300 different phrases such as “pet me,” “sing to me,” or even “I like your what you’re wearing today.” A toy biscuit is also included, and when you feed your dog it will make happy eating sounds or even ask for more biscuits. You can learn more about how it works over on the Tomy website. Keitai Wanko can be purchased for 3,780 yen (about $40) and is available in three breeds: toy poodle, chihuahua and Shiba Inu. In its announcement, Tomy (TSE:7867) notes that as many as 30% of Japanese people have some kind of pet. But of course there are some families that can not enjoy pets for some reason or another. The company hopes that Keitai Wanko could be an alternaitve for such families to teach children…

For Japanese parents looking for a toy for their baby girl’s next birthday, Tomy’s Ketai Wanko (roughly translated as “mobile dog”) might be a fun option to consider. It’s a cute stuffed dog accompanied by mobile controller that works as a mock dog-to-human translator.

When the toy dog barks, you can bring the cell-phone close to its nose, and the noises are translated into language. The dog can say over 300 different phrases such as “pet me,” “sing to me,” or even “I like your what you’re wearing today.” A toy biscuit is also included, and when you feed your dog it will make happy eating sounds or even ask for more biscuits. You can learn more about how it works over on the Tomy website.

Keitai Wanko can be purchased for 3,780 yen (about $40) and is available in three breeds: toy poodle, chihuahua and Shiba Inu. In its announcement, Tomy (TSE:7867) notes that as many as 30% of Japanese people have some kind of pet. But of course there are some families that can not enjoy pets for some reason or another. The company hopes that Keitai Wanko could be an alternaitve for such families to teach children to take care of animals.

For real dogs

For those with real animals to pet, Tomy has an actual dog-to-human language translator and emotional analyzer called Bow-Lingual. That was released way back in September of 2002, co-developed by Tomy, Index Holdings, and Japan Acoustic Lab.

Bow-Lingual allows owners to communicate with dogs through a wireless mic built into the dog’s collar. The product sold over 300,000 units worldwide and received an Ig Nobel Prize in 2002. There is also a Bow-Lingual iPhone app if anyone wants to give it a try. We’ve not tested it (nor do we actually speak dog) so your mileage may vary!

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Sony TVs through the years [Timeline]

SCORE 2,661

Rick Martin 2013.03.19

Japanese electronics maker Sony (NYSE:SNE) has been seeing more than its fair share of troubles in recent years, leading up to the recent sale of its Tokyo office building a few weeks back. But it’s been a pretty long ride for Sony, and many people don’t realize exactly how far back the company’s history goes. I confess, I was a little surprised when today I saw the company’s first transistor television set on sale over on eBay. It’s an 8-inch model from all the way back in 1960! And it isn’t likely to win any retroactive awards for portability either. I clicked over to the Sony website and found an informative history of its television development, which I thought I’d scrape together and present as a fun timeline. Check it out above. The text is Sony’s so of course they’re going to toot their own horn a little bit here. But in fairness, there are a lot of television ‘firsts’ here, so perhaps it’s well-deserved! Feel free to share the graphic using the embed code below:

Japanese electronics maker Sony (NYSE:SNE) has been seeing more than its fair share of troubles in recent years, leading up to the recent sale of its Tokyo office building a few weeks back.

But it’s been a pretty long ride for Sony, and many people don’t realize exactly how far back the company’s history goes. I confess, I was a little surprised when today I saw the company’s first transistor television set on sale over on eBay. It’s an 8-inch model from all the way back in 1960! And it isn’t likely to win any retroactive awards for portability either.

I clicked over to the Sony website and found an informative history of its television development, which I thought I’d scrape together and present as a fun timeline. Check it out above. The text is Sony’s so of course they’re going to toot their own horn a little bit here. But in fairness, there are a lot of television ‘firsts’ here, so perhaps it’s well-deserved!

Feel free to share the graphic using the embed code below:

</p> <div class="video-container"> <div class="video"><iframe src='http://embed.verite.co/timeline/?source=0Ankqe-fbHOHIdDVwM2VzMTdQMEJ3WG43RzhydDBXSmc&font=PlayfairDisplay-Muli&maptype=toner&lang=en&height=650' width='100%' height='650' frameborder='0'></iframe></div> </div> <p>

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Alpaca bashing game inexplicably popular in Japan with 1 million downloads

SCORE 1,184

Rick Martin 2013.03.19

We’ve featured some strange Japanese mobile games here on SD Japan in the past, but this one ranks way up there among the strangest. Alpaka Evolution [1] is a simple game with simple graphics, but its quirkiness appears to have helped it past a million downloads since the game’s initial release for Android on February 5, and for iOS on February 23. The game starts out peaceful enough, with a herd of alpacas grazing in a meadow. But you control one of these alpaca, and with a tap or a swipe you can deal a knockout blow to one of your many brothers. Now, before we hear from the animal cruelty folks, I should clarify that the objective of the game is actually to not kill alpacas. But rather the goal is to absorb as many of your fallen brothers as you can, and evolve into a bigger, more powerful alpaca. The game was developed by a company called Cocosola, and many of its titles appear to be equally off the wall [2]. The app has been the top casual game on Japan’s Google Play store this week, and it has been a top 25 title for iOS for the…

We’ve featured some strange Japanese mobile games here on SD Japan in the past, but this one ranks way up there among the strangest. Alpaka Evolution [1] is a simple game with simple graphics, but its quirkiness appears to have helped it past a million downloads since the game’s initial release for Android on February 5, and for iOS on February 23.

The game starts out peaceful enough, with a herd of alpacas grazing in a meadow. But you control one of these alpaca, and with a tap or a swipe you can deal a knockout blow to one of your many brothers. Now, before we hear from the animal cruelty folks, I should clarify that the objective of the game is actually to not kill alpacas. But rather the goal is to absorb as many of your fallen brothers as you can, and evolve into a bigger, more powerful alpaca.

The game was developed by a company called Cocosola, and many of its titles appear to be equally off the wall [2]. The app has been the top casual game on Japan’s Google Play store this week, and it has been a top 25 title for iOS for the majority of time since its release on that platform.

I find it pretty fascinating that a game like this can be so popular [3]. There really isn’t anything to drive you to continue than the curiosity of seeing what grotesque shape your alpaca will mutate into. Currently the game is monetized with in-app advertising, but this might be yet another instance where brand merchandising represents a big opportunity. Who wouldn’t buy a plush mutated alpaca?

Check out our short video demo of the game above. If you’d like to try it out, you can get it on the App Store or over on Google Play. (Via Axelgames)

The game’s title literally means ‘Brother Alpaca,’ but the company appears to have used the name ‘Alpaka Evolution’ (yes, with a ‘k’ and not with a ‘c’) for English. ↩
I especially look forward to giving Bikini Cat a try. ↩
Although didn’t that ear-cleaning game also get a million downloads? ↩

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How a Japanese stealth startup plans to push small business accounting to the cloud

Masaru Ikeda 2013.03.19

Tokyo-based startup CFO K.K. today unveiled a cloud-based accounting solution called Freee, a service that aims to set SME owners free from routine accounting. For such business owners to complete tasks that need to be approved by a taxation office, you need knowledge of commercial book-keeping. But this can be time consuming and usually is not possible on tablets or Macintosh laptops [1]. By synchronizing your account on this cloud system with web services provided by banks and credit companies [2], your payments will be transferred to the system with web-scraping technology and sorted into appropriate categories corresponding to the items you’ve purchased. The system also has a feature that allows you to print out a final return form for your income tax, which meets the requirement taxation offices in Japan. The startup is expecting to develop more features, adding an API to connect with third-party services, and optimizing browsing for multiple devices. CFO K.K. was founded in July of 2012 by ex-Googler Daisuke Sasaki and ex-Sony engineer Ryu Yokoji. They’ve been developing the service as a stealth project at their home, and fundraised 50 million yen (about $523,000) from notable US-based VC firm DCM in December. The startup’s CEO…

Tokyo-based startup CFO K.K. today unveiled a cloud-based accounting solution called Freee, a service that aims to set SME owners free from routine accounting. For such business owners to complete tasks that need to be approved by a taxation office, you need knowledge of commercial book-keeping. But this can be time consuming and usually is not possible on tablets or Macintosh laptops [1].

By synchronizing your account on this cloud system with web services provided by banks and credit companies [2], your payments will be transferred to the system with web-scraping technology and sorted into appropriate categories corresponding to the items you’ve purchased. The system also has a feature that allows you to print out a final return form for your income tax, which meets the requirement taxation offices in Japan. The startup is expecting to develop more features, adding an API to connect with third-party services, and optimizing browsing for multiple devices.

CFO K.K. was founded in July of 2012 by ex-Googler Daisuke Sasaki and ex-Sony engineer Ryu Yokoji. They’ve been developing the service as a stealth project at their home, and fundraised 50 million yen (about $523,000) from notable US-based VC firm DCM in December. The startup’s CEO previously served as the CFO of a web company where he witnessed that the company accountants were always tired from time-consuming tasks. This prompted him to launch Free to address this problem.

It’s a freemium service, allowing you to share and manage the accounting records of your company with two other colleagues. All paid plans are available for free until June, as the startup hopes to acquire at least 10,000 SME in its first year. In this field of accounting services for SMEs, freelancers, and consumers, I can think of more than a dozen prominent players. Expect intense competition, and maybe some mergers and acquisitions in the not-so-distant future.

Most of Japanese accounting software packages are intended for use on Windows PCs only. ↩
Regarding account aggregation, Freee can pull passbook or payment records from 15 financial institutions as of the time of its release. ↩

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Language Cloud gets investment boost from CyberAgent Ventures

Yukari Mitsuhashi 2013.03.19

CyberAgent Ventures, the venture capital arm of CyberAgent (TSE:4751), has announced its investment in language education platform Language Cloud. The startup is a graduate of Tokyo-based incubator Open Network Lab, and its previous investors include Digital Garage, 500 Startups, Sunbridge Global Ventures, and Etsuji Otsuka. Since releasing in private beta in April 2012, the language-learning platform provider has been working closely with language teachers and students at 54 institutions across Japan and abroad to build the best platform for language education. Co-founder Billy Kosuke Martyn tells us that later this week the platform plans to release a major interface improvement and some key features at the TESOL International Convention and English Language Expo in Dallas, Texas. Language Cloud has already been used at Tokyo’s Sophia University for the purpose of digitally administering their placement test for students entering Faculty of Liberal Arts this April. Data accumulated from the placement tests (such as homework, quizzes, exams) can be analyzed to make recommendations to students regarding supplemental materials such as content and third-party applications. Besides improvements on the core platform, Language Cloud began building its app center where third party content and applications can be integrated into the platform and made available…

CyberAgent Ventures, the venture capital arm of CyberAgent (TSE:4751), has announced its investment in language education platform Language Cloud. The startup is a graduate of Tokyo-based incubator Open Network Lab, and its previous investors include Digital Garage, 500 Startups, Sunbridge Global Ventures, and Etsuji Otsuka.

Since releasing in private beta in April 2012, the language-learning platform provider has been working closely with language teachers and students at 54 institutions across Japan and abroad to build the best platform for language education. Co-founder Billy Kosuke Martyn tells us that later this week the platform plans to release a major interface improvement and some key features at the TESOL International Convention and English Language Expo in Dallas, Texas.

Language Cloud has already been used at Tokyo’s Sophia University for the purpose of digitally administering their placement test for students entering Faculty of Liberal Arts this April. Data accumulated from the placement tests (such as homework, quizzes, exams) can be analyzed to make recommendations to students regarding supplemental materials such as content and third-party applications.

Besides improvements on the core platform, Language Cloud began building its app center where third party content and applications can be integrated into the platform and made available to users. They have already signed a licensing agreement with major publishers where they will work as content providers in the app center. The site is currently in talks with other content providers as well as e-learning applications to further enhance the learning experience for students.

The two co-founders of Language Cloud, John Martyn and Billy Martyn, are brothers born to American and Japanese parents. They have applied their own experience growing up in a dual-language environment into Language Cloud. Billy elaborates:

There are currently a several hundred teachers on our waiting list excited to try out our product. Learning a language used to be a fragmented process, our aim is to unify the process by becoming the central hub of all learning data.

In addition to Japan, the startup has is looking to go global to markets in the United States, China, and South Korea sometime this year.

Speaking of China, CyberAgent Ventures will establish a yuan-denominated fund this May to invest soley in Chinese companies, this according to Dow Jones & Company.

Japanese fashion e-commerce service Laso raises $2.1M from DCM

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