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This wearable smart-toy from Japan brings limitless play possibilities

Junya Mori 2014.03.03

See the original article in Japanese An intriguing smart-toy dubbed Moff officially launched here in Japan last week, getting attention from several media outlets leading up to its release. It’s a wearable wristband device that lets kids play using physical motion to create sound effects for any object they might be holding. You can get a better idea for how that works in the video below. Moff is developed by a team organized at a local hackathon event in Osaka. The team participated in last year’s SF Japan Night where they pitched their product. At that time, Moff was a toy that attached to other toys, but after making improvements, they turned it into a wearable device. Moff CEO Akinori Takahagi came up with the idea when he was examining the way kids play with toys: Kids get bored with new toys so quickly. And parents just repeat buying and throwing toys away. It’s a waste of money. To solve this issue, I came up with the idea for a device that lets kids play in many ways depending on their imagination. The Moff wristband connects to a smartphone or a tablet device through BLE. When Moff turns on, the…

See the original article in Japanese

An intriguing smart-toy dubbed Moff officially launched here in Japan last week, getting attention from several media outlets leading up to its release. It’s a wearable wristband device that lets kids play using physical motion to create sound effects for any object they might be holding. You can get a better idea for how that works in the video below.

Moff is developed by a team organized at a local hackathon event in Osaka. The team participated in last year’s SF Japan Night where they pitched their product. At that time, Moff was a toy that attached to other toys, but after making improvements, they turned it into a wearable device.

Moff CEO Akinori Takahagi came up with the idea when he was examining the way kids play with toys:

Kids get bored with new toys so quickly. And parents just repeat buying and throwing toys away. It’s a waste of money. To solve this issue, I came up with the idea for a device that lets kids play in many ways depending on their imagination.

The Moff wristband connects to a smartphone or a tablet device through BLE. When Moff turns on, the app on the connected device generates sounds corresponding to the motion of your hand. It could be sound effects, voices, or background music. So for example, it could be the sound of a guitar, a ray gun, or even a even a Star Wars lightsaber.

Moff uses a three-axis accelerometer and gyroscope. These sensors recognize your physical motion and generate sound accordingly. Data is accumulated in the cloud, and the team hopes to utilize this data to improve the device’s precision and complex motion. They are also considering offering a SDK and making a developer´s platform.

The device is covered with silicon and its battery is said to last for about 40 to 50 hours, and can be replaced by the user if it wears out. The wrist band can be adjusted for various sizes.

Takahagi explained about the pricing:

We are thinking to make it around 3000 to 4000 yen (or about $30 to $40). Regarding production, we decided to outsource to a factory that develops BLE equipment in-house. Normal factories purchase BLE equipment and use it to create products, which increases their costs. But we can reduce costs by working with factories that make BLE equipment on their own. We aim to minimize the cost and charge for content like extra sounds within the app.

Moff plans to show their product at events in March and April, such as at Mobile World Congress and SXSW. The company plans to fundraise for development in March through crowdfunding. Their first production lot is scheduled to be available in July or August of this year.

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Translation app Waygo wins HackOsaka pitch contest

Masaru Ikeda 2014.02.28

See the original article in Japanese HackOsaka 2014, held earlier this month in Osaka, featured a pitch contest where 10 startups pitched their services and products. I’d like to introduce the prize winning startups below. Gold Prize: Waygo Awarded 500,000 yen ($5000), a round-trip ticket to London sponsored by British Airways, a Pebble Watch. Waygo is a translation app using that uses OCR technology. When the user scans Chinese sentences with their smartphone camera, the app will translate that sentence into English even without an internet connection. We previously mentioned this app when we covered Echelon 2013 and Innovation Weekend Grand Finale 2013. Last year, the startup took part in 500 Startups’ incubation program, and subsequently raised $900,000. CEO Ryan Rogowski shared two updates at the event. The first is that they are going to release a new version of their app that translates Chinese into Japanese. The other (and perhaps the most interesting one) is that they are now developing a prototype app for Google Glass. Silver Prize: TransferGo Awarded 300,000 yen ($3000), Pebble Watch Many people need to make international money transfers. But service charges at banks can be expensive, as are other transfer services like Western Union….

See the original article in Japanese

HackOsaka 2014, held earlier this month in Osaka, featured a pitch contest where 10 startups pitched their services and products. I’d like to introduce the prize winning startups below.

Gold Prize: Waygo

Awarded 500,000 yen ($5000), a round-trip ticket to London sponsored by British Airways, a Pebble Watch.

hackosaka-2014-competition-waygo — Waygo CEO/founder Ryan Rogowski

Waygo is a translation app using that uses OCR technology. When the user scans Chinese sentences with their smartphone camera, the app will translate that sentence into English even without an internet connection. We previously mentioned this app when we covered Echelon 2013 and Innovation Weekend Grand Finale 2013. Last year, the startup took part in 500 Startups’ incubation program, and subsequently raised $900,000.

CEO Ryan Rogowski shared two updates at the event. The first is that they are going to release a new version of their app that translates Chinese into Japanese. The other (and perhaps the most interesting one) is that they are now developing a prototype app for Google Glass.

Silver Prize: TransferGo

Awarded 300,000 yen ($3000), Pebble Watch

hackosaka-2014-competition-transfergo — TransferGo co-founder/CEO Daumantas Dvilinskas

Many people need to make international money transfers. But service charges at banks can be expensive, as are other transfer services like Western Union.

TransferGo, a startup based in Lithuania and London, offers international money transfers service at reasonable price. The transfer flow goes like this:

A user transfers money to the local TransferGo account, thus paying only a domestic transfer fee
TransferGo will then send the money from the TransferGo’s local account to a TransferGo account in the recipient’s country, and then on to the recipient.

The transfer fee is £2.50 plus 1.5% of the total amount of transferred. The company’s real rate of return is pretty high at 70%, and they have acquired licenses from authorities in the countries where they offer the service.

TransferGo was launched in May of 2013, and the number of the transfers in the first month was 941. But in January of 2014, that number shot up to 6,837. Currently they have 21,000 users and 98% of them said they want to recommend the service to friends. TransferGo is currently only available in Europe, but the startup aims to expand to other areas, including Asia.

Bronze Prize: StudyPact

Awarded 100,000 yen ($1000), Pebble Watch

StudyPact is a service that lets users to set a study goal and monetary stakes as as sort of bet with themselves. For example, you can set a goal of studying English for two hours a week, and then set the target stakes at $5. If you reach that goal, you get $5, but if not, you have to pay $5. In the event that you have to pay, the fee is split in half among users who supported the goal and the rest will go to StudyPact.

To realize more effective learning platforms, the startups plans to tie up with other educational platforms and services like Duolingo, Anki, Memrise, Coursera and Edx. The prototype that implemented Anki is expected to be released in early March, and there are plans develop apps for Android, Chrome, FireFox and iPhone. They’re now participating in an accelerator program hosted by Open Network Lab, so let’s wait and see what they present at the demo day in a few months.

Crosscorp Prize: Slumbor

Awarded 1-year free pass to co-working spaces run by Crosscorp in Singapore, Jakarta, Delhi, and Ho Chi Minh City.

hackosaka-2014-competition-slumbor — AnSing Technology CEO Dr. Hu Junhao

Slumbor is a Singapore-based startup producing a sort of smart mat designed to be put under your pillow. The mat has sensors that acquire various data, which are then transferred to the user’s smartphone via BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy). The startup currently attends a program run by the IoT incubator, HAXLR8R. They plan to raise funds at Kickstarter later on.

In addition to these four prize winners, I’d like to introduce two more startups that stood out for me in the competition.

Ontrox

Ontrox is a startup aspiring to reduce traffic jams by using big data. The CEO says that by using such data, you can see certain patterns of traffic jams in cities. The advantage of Ontrox, he says, lies in their unique technology that can visualize the pattern of traffic jams and shorten the processing time for visualization.

The same technology can be used for other purposes such as analyzing and optimizing computer network data, or analyzing users’ online behavior on e-commerce sites. The startup was selected as one of 10 startups to participate in SVIP (Silicon Valley Innovative Program) hosted by the Japan External Trade Organization, which aims to launch global services from Silicon Valley.

Warrantee

Warrantee, an Osaka-based startup, aims to digitalize product warranties. When you buy a product, you typically have to fill out information on a paper form to validate the warranty. But because this is a time consuming process, many users skip it.

Warrantee proposes a one-stop process, registering personal data in advance on their service. In this way the user can quickly register warranties for different products or from different companies. There are many cases where retail stores offer additional paid warranties, so the startup plans to earn a service charge from retailers by motivating users to opt into such additional warranties. Another business opportunity lies in tying up with retailers, allowing them to utilize user data accumulated on Warrantee for the retailer promotions.

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Japan’s Creww now offering a credit card for startups

Rick Martin 2014.02.27

The folks over at Tokyo-based startup community Creww.me have announced an interesting new addition to their marketplace, with a new credit card offering in cooperation with Credit Saison. A representative explains: Startups often don’t have enough credit to obtain corporate credit cards. So this card was created for startups to be more flexible in this regard. Startups often pay for things like ads or server costs using their personal credits cards, since payment for such services are often by credit card only. So it’s a problem all startups have. We think this credit card should solve this problem.

The folks over at Tokyo-based startup community Creww.me have announced an interesting new addition to their marketplace, with a new credit card offering in cooperation with Credit Saison. A representative explains:

Startups often don’t have enough credit to obtain corporate credit cards. So this card was created for startups to be more flexible in this regard. Startups often pay for things like ads or server costs using their personal credits cards, since payment for such services are often by credit card only. So it’s a problem all startups have. We think this credit card should solve this problem.

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Before the Filter: Improving mobile pics by improving the photographer

Rick Martin 2014.02.27

Earlier this week we told you about the Back to the Future web app, which was the first prize winner at the recent Photo Hack Day Japan event, held by Aviary [1] . The second place winner from the event was perhaps an equally clever idea, shifting the focus from improving your photos with filters and effects to honing the user’s composition skills. It’s called ‘Before the Filter’, and it introduces users to basic photography concepts like the rule of thirds, showing some examples of that technique in use. It then uses a grid or template overlay on your phones’s screen/viewfinder to help you use the same technique yourself, providing editing tips after the picture is taken. Subsequent edits can be made using the Aviary editor, which the team implemented using the Aviary API. The pair of developers who made the app – Ben Watanabe and Antony Tran – managed to get a working app up on Google Play before the hackathon was even finished. I was curious to find out how the two could pull this off so quickly. So I got in touch with them by mail after briefly meeting at the event. Ben explains that it was…

Antony Tran and Ben Watanabe, with Shutterstock VP — Antony Tran and Ben Watanabe, with Wyatt Jenkins of Shutterstock

Earlier this week we told you about the Back to the Future web app, which was the first prize winner at the recent Photo Hack Day Japan event, held by Aviary [1] . The second place winner from the event was perhaps an equally clever idea, shifting the focus from improving your photos with filters and effects to honing the user’s composition skills.

It’s called ‘Before the Filter’, and it introduces users to basic photography concepts like the rule of thirds, showing some examples of that technique in use. It then uses a grid or template overlay on your phones’s screen/viewfinder to help you use the same technique yourself, providing editing tips after the picture is taken. Subsequent edits can be made using the Aviary editor, which the team implemented using the Aviary API.

The pair of developers who made the app – Ben Watanabe and Antony Tran – managed to get a working app up on Google Play before the hackathon was even finished. I was curious to find out how the two could pull this off so quickly. So I got in touch with them by mail after briefly meeting at the event. Ben explains that it was largely because of Antony’s ability to code for a quick paper prototype for Android:

Android is great for hackathons with just hours of review time needed to get on the store, compared to weeks (for iOS). Antony is a wizard with Android and is ridiculously fast at developing a UI. I had trouble designing in Sketch to keep up with his live coding.

Antony is actually an Android developer at Origami, an up-and-coming Japan-based startup that we have covered on this site in the past. As for Ben, has produced his own iOS photo app Cobypic in the past, but he wanted to get more familiar with Android during this hackathon. Update: Ben clarifies he is the founder of a Tokyo startup called TenTen (TenTen Tech Ltd. in Japan with its parent company in Hong Kong.

The two also benefited, says Ben, from great photos contributed by his brother Alex, which Antony says “give [the app] a very polished feel […] that sets us apart from others.” Before the Filter won second place at Photo Hack Day, walking away with 200,000 yen (about $2000) in prize money, as well as $1000 from Aviary awarded for the best use of their API.

The idea of improving pictures at their very root, in the imagination of the photographer, is an intriguing and much overlooked notion in the currently mobile photography landscape packed with filter-stacking and sticker decorations. But now that smartphone cameras have improved to the point where they can produce quality images, it’s certainly a valuable service for any aspiring mobile photographer.

If you’d like to download Before the Filter, it’s available for free on Google Play.

In the interests of disclosure, I should note that I volunteered to be a judge for Photo Hack Day, as a way of lending my support. ↩

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Cinemacraft receives investment from Samsung Ventures, prepping smart TV interface

Rick Martin 2014.02.26

You may recall back in December when I caught up with Cinemacraft CEO Sandeep Casi, whose Videogram solution is gradually turning some heads in the media industry. Their alliance with Turner Broadcasting after their 12-week Turner Media Camp has apparently been a fruitful one, helping them get official embed status for displaying Videograms inline on Twitter [1]. And now today the company announced that it recently closed a $775,000 round of funding from Samsung Venture Investment Corporation and Tyra Banks, who has an investment company called Fierce Capital. Cinemacraft is also launching a new Smart TV interface, a mockup of which can be found over on videogram.com/show/samsung/on-tv.html. Some of you may recognize this as a mockup of Samsung’s On TV panel, though as far as I can tell this doesn’t necessarily mean that Samsung is going to adopt it anytime soon. As we learned the last time we spoke with Casi, his company often whips up such mockups for companies on spec, and that strategy looks to be working. Casi could not elaborate on when or where their new Smart TV interface would launch, but it’s good to see Cinemacraft attract the interest of Samsung Ventures. I had a chance…

You may recall back in December when I caught up with Cinemacraft CEO Sandeep Casi, whose Videogram solution is gradually turning some heads in the media industry. Their alliance with Turner Broadcasting after their 12-week Turner Media Camp has apparently been a fruitful one, helping them get official embed status for displaying Videograms inline on Twitter [1].

And now today the company announced that it recently closed a $775,000 round of funding from Samsung Venture Investment Corporation and Tyra Banks, who has an investment company called Fierce Capital.

Cinemacraft is also launching a new Smart TV interface, a mockup of which can be found over on videogram.com/show/samsung/on-tv.html. Some of you may recognize this as a mockup of Samsung’s On TV panel, though as far as I can tell this doesn’t necessarily mean that Samsung is going to adopt it anytime soon. As we learned the last time we spoke with Casi, his company often whips up such mockups for companies on spec, and that strategy looks to be working.

Casi could not elaborate on when or where their new Smart TV interface would launch, but it’s good to see Cinemacraft attract the interest of Samsung Ventures.

I had a chance to visit the startup’s office here in Tokyo a few weeks back, and developers Alex Wilhelm and Hiroyuki Fukuhara demonstrated Videogram’s Leap Motion integration, and that was really fun to see. If you’d like to try it out for yourself, their Videogram app is available in the Leap Motion Airspace Store for free.

I can’t help but imagine a few years down the road when I’m sitting in my living room, swiping through TV listings Minority Report style.

The Cinemacraft team is a small one, but so far they’ve accomplished quite a lot. The company also announced a new ad unit today, which you can see below. The key feature here is the shoe panel ad placement in the lower right, an interesting alternative to annoying video pre-roll advertising.

My guess is that Facebook support is not too far away. ↩

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Can Osaka be a startup hub?

Masaru Ikeda 2014.02.26

This is an abridged version of the original report in Japanese. The HackOsaka 2014 conference recently took place here in Japan, with the aim of boosting the startup community in Japan’s Kansai region. This year Pebble CEO Eric Migicovsky and Berg CEO Matt Webb were invited as special guests. Pebble, of course, is the smart watch developer that was funded by Y-Combinator. Berg is based in London, offering an ‘Internet of Things’ cloud platform for third-party developers. Together with Masahiko Inada, the CEO of Kabuku [1], they participated in an panel discussion moderated by journalist Tsuruaki Yukawa. While many major companies in Japan have their headquarters in Tokyo, many CEOs are originally from Osaka. Yukawa explained a little about Osaka’s history of entrepreneurship: My father was a merchant. In fact, when I was a kid, all the parents except maybe one were merchants. Even though there are strong entrepreneurship roots in Osaka, the city is not the startup hub in Japan. Everyone goes to Tokyo. What should we do? Matt noted that the situation is similar to what London previously experienced: A lot of startups in London left for the USA. Because we didn’t have funds, there was no way…

This is an abridged version of the original report in Japanese.

The HackOsaka 2014 conference recently took place here in Japan, with the aim of boosting the startup community in Japan’s Kansai region. This year Pebble CEO Eric Migicovsky and Berg CEO Matt Webb were invited as special guests. Pebble, of course, is the smart watch developer that was funded by Y-Combinator. Berg is based in London, offering an ‘Internet of Things’ cloud platform for third-party developers. Together with Masahiko Inada, the CEO of Kabuku [1], they participated in an panel discussion moderated by journalist Tsuruaki Yukawa.

While many major companies in Japan have their headquarters in Tokyo, many CEOs are originally from Osaka. Yukawa explained a little about Osaka’s history of entrepreneurship:

My father was a merchant. In fact, when I was a kid, all the parents except maybe one were merchants. Even though there are strong entrepreneurship roots in Osaka, the city is not the startup hub in Japan. Everyone goes to Tokyo. What should we do?

Matt noted that the situation is similar to what London previously experienced:

A lot of startups in London left for the USA. Because we didn’t have funds, there was no way to tie up with big companies. We didn’t have a community.

Of course, community plays an important role in any startup scene. And Eric stressed the benefits that the startup community provides in Silicon Valley.

When you develop a minimum viable product, you can get both positive and negative feedback from the community. Taking that feedback into account, and continuing development in a constructive manner is important.

At a large company, a CEO can get feedback from his or her board members. But at a startup, a founder often has to rely on himself or herself. Because of this, community support can be just as important as fundraising and market chance.

Matt said it is important to name a community if you want to develop it. The area around Old Street station in East London had been called Silicon Roundabout, but later the UK government named the area TechCity with the intention to invite more startups there. This has helped to raise public awareness. People started thinking about entrepreneurship, getting together in order to create a community.

Matt: Organizing events is important as well. In London, events related to hardware startups are held about twice a month. Job events and networking events are held almost every week.

Eric: People in Osaka have already started doing important things. This event has a pitch contest. This is quite important to help build a community.

TechCity in London took a much different path than Silicon Valley. In the same way, I’m optimistic that Osaka can develop it’s own unique startup culture, something different from Tokyo or Fukuoka.

Kabuku operates 3D printing marketplace Rinkak. ↩

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Japanese payment startup WebPay raises $1.1 million

Junya Mori 2014.02.26

See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based WebPay Holdings [1], a startup providing Stripe-compatible payment processing solutions for web services, announced yesterday that it has raised 110 million yen (approximately $1.1 million) from CyberAgent Ventures and two other undisclosed VC firms. Prior to this round, the company raised an undisclosed amount of funding from CyberAgent Ventures, Architype, and GMO Payment Gateway upon its launch back last year. The company says they plan to use the funds for hiring more engineers to improve their solution’s usability in order to serve their users better. Previously known as FluxFlex. ↩

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based WebPay Holdings [1], a startup providing Stripe-compatible payment processing solutions for web services, announced yesterday that it has raised 110 million yen (approximately $1.1 million) from CyberAgent Ventures and two other undisclosed VC firms. Prior to this round, the company raised an undisclosed amount of funding from CyberAgent Ventures, Architype, and GMO Payment Gateway upon its launch back last year.

The company says they plan to use the funds for hiring more engineers to improve their solution’s usability in order to serve their users better.

Previously known as FluxFlex. ↩

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Back to the Future: Interactive image timeline wins top prize at Photo Hack Day Japan

Rick Martin 2014.02.25

Readers may recall that we have written much about Kyoto-based startup Qooq Inc, whose Yesterscape app provides a new and interesting way to view photos of the past. But viewing old photos according to location is just one way show images of the past. This past weekend at Photo Hack Day Japan [1], hosted by Aviary and Mixi, the winning project for the two-day hackathon was a similar solution to view photos of the past. But instead of narrowing the presentation by location, the ‘Back to the Future’ web app (as it was dubbed) grouped images by topic according to a keyword search. The project was created by Theeraphol Wattanavekin, a developer working here in Japan, and three other team members (Rapee Suveeranont, Yoonjo Shin, and Thiti Luang) who joined him remotely [2]. The app made use of the Getty Images API and used Leap Motion as an interface, in order to create a sort of walk through time experience. As you can see in the picture above, Theeraphol did a search for the term ‘computer’ with image results restricted to a time range of 1972 to 2012. Using Leap Motion, he could walk through the timeline by making a…

Readers may recall that we have written much about Kyoto-based startup Qooq Inc, whose Yesterscape app provides a new and interesting way to view photos of the past. But viewing old photos according to location is just one way show images of the past. This past weekend at Photo Hack Day Japan [1], hosted by Aviary and Mixi, the winning project for the two-day hackathon was a similar solution to view photos of the past. But instead of narrowing the presentation by location, the ‘Back to the Future’ web app (as it was dubbed) grouped images by topic according to a keyword search.

The project was created by Theeraphol Wattanavekin, a developer working here in Japan, and three other team members (Rapee Suveeranont, Yoonjo Shin, and Thiti Luang) who joined him remotely [2]. The app made use of the Getty Images API and used Leap Motion as an interface, in order to create a sort of walk through time experience.

As you can see in the picture above, Theeraphol did a search for the term ‘computer’ with image results restricted to a time range of 1972 to 2012. Using Leap Motion, he could walk through the timeline by making a sort of stepping motion with both hands. Of course, it doesn’t take much to imagine possible applications for such a presentation. Aviary CEO Tobias Peggs mentioned that something like this would be interesting for kids to use in a museum, for example.

backtothefuture-screenshot — *Walk through the history of the computer using ‘Back to the Future’ web app*

I was personally more impressed with the actual design of the timeline (above), and if you think about integrating more photo sources, especially rich sources like museums or historical archives or even news organization, then it could be really exciting. In a way, it looks like a more refined version of Timeline.js from Knight Lab, which has been popular among news organizations (we’ve used it here on The Bridge as well). I hope that the team can keep developing this project, or alternatively make it available in a way that is easy for people to use [3].

Back to the Future was chosen as the winning project out of the 23 projects that were presented, walking away with 300,000 yen as the top prize, the Leap Motion API prize of Leap controllers for all team members and a Unity3D license, and the Gettyimages Connect API prize of a 50,000 yen gift card. There were lots of other fun ideas developed over the weekend, and hopefully we can tell you about more of them soon.

If you’d like to see more photos from event, do check out the album over on our Facebook page.

photo-hack-day-japan-16 — Theeraphol and his team also won the prize for best use of the Leap Motion API.

In the interests of full disclosure, I should note that I volunteered to participate as one of the judges as a way of lending some support for this competition. ↩
I understand the three others are co-founders of Boonmee Lab, though Rapee and Yoonjo have worked in Japan like Theeraphol. ↩
Theeraphol has made his code available on Github (I hope he doesn’t mind me linking to it), and I managed to get it running myself, but not entirely functional due to the Chrome web security issue. (Note that it only runs on Chrome for now.) ↩

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Wantedly releases new iOS app, built by developers hired on Wantedly

Rick Martin 2014.02.24

We spoke to Japan-based startup Wantedly back in December, discussing their online social job platform that leverages your social graph to give you a better chance at the job you love. And as of today, that platform is accessible via a brand new Wantedly iOS app as well. A few weeks back I spoke with the two Wantedly team members who worked on this app, Feras Yasin and Rei Kubonaga [1]. What I found most interesting was that they both come from very different backgrounds – Feras from design and Rei from mathematics – but apparently they found a way to work very well with each other and within their team. The app itself will be familiar to you if you’re accustomed to the web/desktop version of Wantedly. You’ll see a list of projects/jobs, which is just the same as in the PC version. But in the app there is also a “Today’s Pick-up” that features a few selected jobs each day. Feras (pictured right) explained the intention here is to make it seem almost like a news reader here. Initially I thought this section would have to be curated, but he reassured me that they have an algorithm doing…

We spoke to Japan-based startup Wantedly back in December, discussing their online social job platform that leverages your social graph to give you a better chance at the job you love. And as of today, that platform is accessible via a brand new Wantedly iOS app as well.

A few weeks back I spoke with the two Wantedly team members who worked on this app, Feras Yasin and Rei Kubonaga [1]. What I found most interesting was that they both come from very different backgrounds – Feras from design and Rei from mathematics – but apparently they found a way to work very well with each other and within their team.

The app itself will be familiar to you if you’re accustomed to the web/desktop version of Wantedly. You’ll see a list of projects/jobs, which is just the same as in the PC version. But in the app there is also a “Today’s Pick-up” that features a few selected jobs each day. Feras (pictured right) explained the intention here is to make it seem almost like a news reader here. Initially I thought this section would have to be curated, but he reassured me that they have an algorithm doing the dirty work here. He adds:

Visually the app is more like an SNS with the friend-list view. This is one of the features that is unique to the mobile app. It’s a place where you can see who among your friends is using Wantedly [2]. Another button shows the activity of your friends within the app.

Feras tells me that his own development skills are self-taught, having picked up javascript to make the transition from Flash as it became obsolete. This new app was his first foray into Xcode, in fact, so clearly he’s a fast learner.

So why develop a native iOS app, instead of just making their platform into a mobile-friendly web app? Why not make an Android app too? Rei says that they’ve found many Wantedly users access the platform from iOS, and at a rate of about three times that of Android users. But nevertheless, they do hope to make an Android version eventually too.

It’s especially interesting to hear 26-year-old Rei talk about this app, as he confesses he didn’t even use a computer when he studied natural mathematics at the University of Kyoto. But he quickly decided that in order to do more, he wanted to supplement his math skills by learning programming:

In high school I was very good at math, but you can rarely see the impact on society with math. But in business the impact is rapid and easily seen. I wanted to incorporate my math in a way that could be used for business, and that meant learning to code.

Given that Wantedly’s CEO Akiko Naka has some coding background herself, I was curious to hear what kind of development dynamic they had within the team. Often developers are segregated from teams, especially here in Japan – but I had a feeling that wasn’t the case with Wantedly. Their communications rep Nozomi Umenai elaborated on how their meetings typically proceed:

We share the concept of a new project, then Akiko, engineers, and the designer work close together. She knows exactly what she wants, and also what we lack. It’s nice to have someone who has coding background, a more clear vision, and knowledge of the output of the product. […] In Japanese companies, engineers are not often valued as much as they should, and with bosses who have non-coding backgrounds it can be hard to communicate with them.

While their product is currently just for Japan’s domestic market (in Japanese only), I understand they’re hoping to have a version for English or some other language soon. Most of the people I’ve spoken with there display an fluency in English that is regrettably uncommon in the Japanese startup scene, so communication won’t be an issue for them.

In a great show of dogfooding, both Feras and Rei were hired using Wantedly, and as far as I can tell they both look like smart pick-ups. And if the company can continue to hire good talent with diverse talents and backgrounds, they should be able to expand their service well.

Above all else, the Wantedly platform does offer a unique value to both employers and job seekers. So I’m really looking forward to seeing how they grow. If you’d like to give the new app a try, get it here.

I’m told there were some others who helped as well, but my understanding is that the app was primarily made by these two. ↩
You can also see friends that are not using Wantedly, but they are clearly presented with a Facebook icon rather than their own avatar. ↩

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Meet the Japanese startup developing a wearable solution to help the visually impaired

Shintaro Eguchi 2014.02.23

See the original article in Japanese On February 7th, an Osaka-based startup pitch event called Shoot took place. Nine startups pitched in total, and perhaps the most remarkable one was Mimimiru, presenting a wearable device designed for the blind and visually impaired. Mimimiru analyzes image data and lets users know what’s in that image by reading information aloud. Tomoyuki Hisada is a software engineer and the CEO of Another Brain, the startup behind this device. He has been considering how he could support a visually impaired friend of his through IT. Observing a rising trend in wearable devices like Google Glass, he came up with the idea for Mimimiru. He tells us: When I saw wearable devices, I thought this could be a tool for disabled people. If I could inform blind and visually impaired people about what they see in front of them, their everyday lives could be much improved. He presented Mimimiru for the first time at the MA9 Mashup Camp Osaka web development contest, where the device won the top award and moved on to the second stage where it won the NTT docomo Award, KDDI Web Communications Award, and the TechWave Award. At the Docomo Wearable…

See the original article in Japanese

On February 7th, an Osaka-based startup pitch event called Shoot took place. Nine startups pitched in total, and perhaps the most remarkable one was Mimimiru, presenting a wearable device designed for the blind and visually impaired. Mimimiru analyzes image data and lets users know what’s in that image by reading information aloud.

Tomoyuki Hisada is a software engineer and the CEO of Another Brain, the startup behind this device. He has been considering how he could support a visually impaired friend of his through IT. Observing a rising trend in wearable devices like Google Glass, he came up with the idea for Mimimiru. He tells us:

When I saw wearable devices, I thought this could be a tool for disabled people. If I could inform blind and visually impaired people about what they see in front of them, their everyday lives could be much improved.

He presented Mimimiru for the first time at the MA9 Mashup Camp Osaka web development contest, where the device won the top award and moved on to the second stage where it won the NTT docomo Award, KDDI Web Communications Award, and the TechWave Award. At the Docomo Wearable Hackathon held last December, it won the Award for Excellence. The startup is currently developing a prototype using a Docomo character recognition API.

Technology for reading image data aloud is still under development, and it is expected that it will be a few years before it can be really put to use. So Hisada sought and found another solution by turning to crowdsourcing and social media. He explains:

A user takes pictures with a wearable device and post the image(s) to Twitter. And his followers can then reply and tell him information about the picture, which the device will then read aloud. It’s essentially five-second volunteer work that can really help the visually impaired.

He’s receiving support from a volunteer group on Twitter, and he hopes to develop a system by utilizing the activity of social welfare corporations and NPOs who create lists of visually impaired Twitter users and blocks mischievous users. They could also gain support from corporations as part of their corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities.

We’d like to keep our eyes on Mimimiru, one of many interesting wearable tech startups here in Japan.

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