Ring is a device worn on a finger that gives users the ability to control and interact with other devices. Logbar, the company behind the device, announced that it will start shipping the Ring on October 9.
The company attracted some $880,000 in funding from more than 5,000 backers via a Kickstarter campaign. They had planned to start shipping the device in July, but postponed the date to August. The schedule was postponed once again to September as they changed the device’s design and added a button.
The company’s e-mail to the Kickstarter campaign backers on September 29 states that the shipping date is now set for October 9. However, the date is the actual shipping day, so the Ring will probably reach the backers’ fingers by late October.
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Anydoor, the startup behind crowdsourced translation platform Conyac, unveiled a new translation platform called Conyac Front in beta last week. The platform allows website owners to turn their sites into multilingual versions using crowdsourced translation forces. The fee includes a hosting charge (about $100 a month for each language), a translation charge, and other optional charges when needed. The company is inviting monitor users, where up to 20 companies can use the new platform without paying translation and optional charges until December. Anydoor CEO Naoki Yamada says they will start charging for the service next January. Conyac Front helps companies develop multilingual websites. The localization process, including translation, usually requires a massive workload, where the most difficult part is selecting correct words in translation. We also have the English version, and we know the word picking process in translation for delivering right context is quite difficult. We have to see if translation results are naturally expressed for native speakers and terminology is also common to many people in the industry. So we understand that many startups postponed launching multilingual websites despite the fact that they have typically announced their global expansion. How will…
Tokyo-based Anydoor, the startup behind crowdsourced translation platform Conyac, unveiled a new translation platform called Conyac Front in beta last week. The platform allows website owners to turn their sites into multilingual versions using crowdsourced translation forces.
The fee includes a hosting charge (about $100 a month for each language), a translation charge, and other optional charges when needed. The company is inviting monitor users, where up to 20 companies can use the new platform without paying translation and optional charges until December. Anydoor CEO Naoki Yamada says they will start charging for the service next January.
Conyac Front helps companies develop multilingual websites. The localization process, including translation, usually requires a massive workload, where the most difficult part is selecting correct words in translation.
We also have the English version, and we know the word picking process in translation for delivering right context is quite difficult. We have to see if translation results are naturally expressed for native speakers and terminology is also common to many people in the industry. So we understand that many startups postponed launching multilingual websites despite the fact that they have typically announced their global expansion.
How will the new platform solve this problem? Yamada said that the platform enables the translation of websites dynamically using a proxy server. Conyac Front crawls a website and lists an index of webpages. Website owners can point to the part that is common across these webpages (such as menu or site description) and order a translation.
Website owners do not need to build a multilingual interface. When a user visits a website, the platform will detect their access location. If the access is from outside your language region, the platform will transfer the access to a proxy server and show translated results.
Translated results will be dynamically updated, which will allow website owners to adopt the platform even for websites using content management systems such as WordPress. But the company says that some membership-based websites, which typically require a user login process or a paywall, may not work properly in transferring user access to the proxy server.
The platform is more suited for translating corporate websites rather than news websites like The Bridge, where content is not often updated and very few technical terms are used.
This is the abridged version of our original article in Japanese. In addition to Iemo’s acquisition announcement today, Japanese young women-focused fashion curation site Mery also unveiled it has been acquired by Japanese internet company DeNA. They have avoided media exposure, so this is the first time we have covered the company. Peroli, the company behind Mery, is a new company and their shareholders include founders, East Ventures, Anri, and some other undisclosed investing companies. The company was launched in August of 2012 by Ayataro Nakagawa, who previously co-founded online art collection dictionary site Atokore with Crowdworks‘ managing director Shuzo Narita. Rumor has it that they have shown good growth, and we have learned that they have acquired over 1.2 million monthly unique users as of September. Some 90% of customers are mobile-phone users, indicating that Iemo and Mery successfully rode the wave of smartphone adoption. Typical curated media sites work to boost page views, but Nakagawa has found another way to drive his business, which is in a e-commerce fashion sector crowded with competitors like iQon, Zozotown, Stores.jp, Sumally, and Origami. Nakagawa explained his growth strategy: We want to give users a discovery-based shopping experience rather than one where…
This is the abridged version of our original article in Japanese.
In addition to Iemo’s acquisition announcement today, Japanese young women-focused fashion curation site Mery also unveiled it has been acquired by Japanese internet company DeNA. They have avoided media exposure, so this is the first time we have covered the company.
Peroli, the company behind Mery, is a new company and their shareholders include founders, East Ventures, Anri, and some other undisclosed investing companies.
Peroli’s Ayataro Nakagawa
The company was launched in August of 2012 by Ayataro Nakagawa, who previously co-founded online art collection dictionary site Atokore with Crowdworks‘ managing director Shuzo Narita. Rumor has it that they have shown good growth, and we have learned that they have acquired over 1.2 million monthly unique users as of September. Some 90% of customers are mobile-phone users, indicating that Iemo and Mery successfully rode the wave of smartphone adoption.
Typical curated media sites work to boost page views, but Nakagawa has found another way to drive his business, which is in a e-commerce fashion sector crowded with competitors like iQon, Zozotown, Stores.jp, Sumally, and Origami.
Nakagawa explained his growth strategy:
We want to give users a discovery-based shopping experience rather than one where users find an item by name. What we have learned from our one year of experience is that people choose a product based on their sense of themselves. By strengthening our engineering force in partnership with DeNA, we want to cultivate this space from scratch.
Qualitative search methods for fashion e-commerce require high-level search technology and a tremendous amount of item data. For example, Mery’s competitor Sumally took nearly three years to build a database of over 50 million fashion items. For example, Summaly, Mery’s competitor, took nearly three year to build a database of over 50 million fashion items.
Mery has acquired 1.2 million users, and it will be interesting to see how they progress in such a saturated and highly competitive space.
This is the abridged version of our original article in Japanese. Japanese internet company DeNA announced today that it has acquired Iemo, the Tokyo-based startup behind a curation media focused on home improvement. Acquisition details have not been disclosed but it is understood Iemo raised billions of yen (tens of millions US dollars) from DeNA. See also: Riding a media curation trend, Japanese entrepreneur launches interior design photo service The service was launched back in December and raised an undisclosed amount of investment from B Dash Ventures in April. So they were acquired in less than ten months after the launch. Modeled after US-based Houzz, Iemo allows users to create pages using interior design images from its database of photos provided by homebuilders. As the service is new there is not much data on their business. In an interview in April, they said that almost 90% of their users were females who visit the website via mobile phone, many of them housewives. Iemo founder and CEO Mary Murata is a serial entrepreneur, previously one of the first hires by Japanese Internet giant CyberAgent. Prior to launching Iemo, she founded a startup called Control Plus in 2005 and subsequently sold its…
Iemo founder and CEO Mary Murata
This is the abridged version of our original article in Japanese.
Japanese internet company DeNA announced today that it has acquired Iemo, the Tokyo-based startup behind a curation media focused on home improvement. Acquisition details have not been disclosed but it is understood Iemo raised billions of yen (tens of millions US dollars) from DeNA.
Modeled after US-based Houzz, Iemo allows users to create pages using interior design images from its database of photos provided by homebuilders. As the service is new there is not much data on their business. In an interview in April, they said that almost 90% of their users were females who visit the website via mobile phone, many of them housewives.
Iemo founder and CEO Mary Murata is a serial entrepreneur, previously one of the first hires by Japanese Internet giant CyberAgent. Prior to launching Iemo, she founded a startup called Control Plus in 2005 and subsequently sold its social game development business to Japanese gaming company Gumi. Upon this acquisition by DeNA, Murata joined the management board of DeNA as an operating officer.
Several months ago the company appointed search engine expert Yuji Kumagai as COO, but Yuto Suzuki, former community service developer at CyberAgent, joined to take over that position and former AllAbout.jp editor-at-large, Hisaki Tokushima, also joined the team in July.
Tokyo Otaku Mode, the startup behind the Japanese subculture site of the same name, announced today that it has fundraised from Cool Japan Fund, Japan’s state-backed fund for the promotion of the export of Japanese cultural products and services to the global market. The fund will execute an investment worth up to 1.5 billion yen ($13.7 million) in the startup in three years. In April, the company raised series A funding worth 270 million yen ($2.5 million) from several Japanese companies. See also: Tokyo Otaku Mode has 10 million Facebook fans — But now what? Tokyo Otaku Mode raises additional funds from three VC firms Tokyo Otaku Mode starts selling custom order replica samurai swords for global fans Japanese startup Tokyo Otaku Mode uses Kyary Pamyu Pamyu in mobile promo Tokyo Otaku Mode releases new Otaku news app for iPhone and Android Tokyo Otaku Mode celebrates Facebook ‘like’ landmark with fun commemorative video Since its launch in the form of a Facebook fan page in 2011, the startup has acquired over 16 million likes. They registered a company in the state of Delaware in the US in December 2012, and subsequently joined Silicon valley accelerator 500 Startups. The company also…
Tokyo Otaku Mode, the startup behind the Japanese subculture site of the same name, announced today that it has fundraised from Cool Japan Fund, Japan’s state-backed fund for the promotion of the export of Japanese cultural products and services to the global market. The fund will execute an investment worth up to 1.5 billion yen ($13.7 million) in the startup in three years. In April, the company raised series A funding worth 270 million yen ($2.5 million) from several Japanese companies.
Since its launch in the form of a Facebook fan page in 2011, the startup has acquired over 16 million likes. They registered a company in the state of Delaware in the US in December 2012, and subsequently joined Silicon valley accelerator 500 Startups.
The company also sells the popular Japanese wearable toy Moff globally, and has shipped it to over 85 countries. They will use the fund to hire more engineers to optimize their e-commerce platform for mobile users as well as to strengthen logistics and promotional efforts around the e-commerce business.
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Nana Music, the Japanese startup behind social music app Nana, launched an Android version for the service on Wednesday. This has been anticipated since the company launched its iOS version in August of 2012. CEO Fumihara equates the service with the invention of a musical instrument enabling users to produce new music. Nana Music founder and CEO Akinori Fumihara emphasizes the perspective of creating content with users. With the launch of the Android app at this time, they aim to acquire over 1 million users by this year-end and create the country’s largest online music community. See also: Nana app gets anime theme songs, available globally without location restriction The Nana app allows users to share and mix their audio with other users on the platform, all with voices and sounds recorded through smartphone microphones. The startup aims to bring new users the experience of singing along with someone else. Singers can even team up with a band or a choir in this way, even if your collaborators live on the other side of the world. What’s noteworthy about Nana is their users with a lot of energy and of action. They have…
Tokyo-based Nana Music, the Japanese startup behind social music app Nana, launched an Android version for the service on Wednesday. This has been anticipated since the company launched its iOS version in August of 2012.
CEO Fumihara equates the service with the invention of a musical instrument enabling users to produce new music.
Nana Music founder and CEO Akinori Fumihara emphasizes the perspective of creating content with users. With the launch of the Android app at this time, they aim to acquire over 1 million users by this year-end and create the country’s largest online music community.
The Nana app allows users to share and mix their audio with other users on the platform, all with voices and sounds recorded through smartphone microphones. The startup aims to bring new users the experience of singing along with someone else. Singers can even team up with a band or a choir in this way, even if your collaborators live on the other side of the world.
What’s noteworthy about Nana is their users with a lot of energy and of action. They have developed creative plans by themselves and involved other users. They invented new ways to play the app such as Renga (literally meaning ‘linked singing’) where every user sings a phrase in a song and then passes it on to the next user, and they also sing while mimicking popular anime characters.
Nana Music has given users an offline music experience as well. They recently held a user event celebrating their second anniversary in August that was attended by more than 230 teenage fans of the app. CEO Fumihara says that the service is comparable to the invention of a music instrument that give users a new musical experience. So it will be interesting to see how they will proceed from here.
Yuki Kai
Takeshi Hirano
Masaru Ikeda
Junya Mori
