Cookpad 
Yukari Mitsuhashi
Cookpad is the biggest recipe portal in Japan. We mentioned it in our recent post titled 5 internet services Japanese women can’t do without. The company is considered one of the most successful internet business in the nation, with over 30 million monthly users and a profit margin that exceeds 50%. Cookpad is also well-known for its international team, especially it’s development and design departments. With such a background, the company’s hackathons often turn out to be very popular events.
The company held its 24-hour Hackathon Contest back in April. This event aimed to create solutions for everyday problems, with a focus on making the time between waking up and going to the office/school more useful.
The winners of this 24-hour Hackathon Competition included some interesting services. We thought we’d share a few of them here.
1. Decopochi ¶
Decopochi nabbed first place with its DIY design service. It allows users to create their own original pochi-bukuro, or special bags used to give monetary gifts in Japan.
The developer is a designer himself and wanted to develop a service to let older people be more creative. (Pochi-bukuro is often used to give children their allowance.)
2. Workout Relief ¶
Workout Relief is a simple service that aims to assist people with some kind of physical pain. It allows users to do light stretches and exercises, and they can post their original moves as well as vote for the most effective excercises. This product emerged from a real need, as the developer’s father ran into this sort of problem.
3. Shumi Search ¶
Shumi means ‘hobby’ in Japanese. And this service is especially for seniors with more time on their hands after retirement. Shumi Search attempts to solve such problems allowing its users to find hobbies that they can enjoy.
4. Urlife ¶
Time becomes more valuable as we get older. The Urelife app, which won second place at the competition, very conveniently allows you to see how precious the rest of your life is. You can set goals like meeting your parents at least twice a year, and it will then tell you how many times you are projected to meet them in your lifetime. This is a very handy tool for getting a big-picture overview of your life!
5. Journey ¶
There are lots of apps out there that measure how far you have moved or walked in a day. Journey does this too (by connecting to Fitbit), but it will introduces different countries of the world according to your distance travelled. For example, if you have walked 17,785 steps in a given day, the app will take you to Falkland Islands which is 17,785 kilometers away.
6. Okusuri Nonda? ¶
This app’s name can be translated as ‘Have you taken your meds?!’ It adds a gamification element to the mundane task of taking your medecine. Sometimes it can be hard to remember when to take your medicine. By tapping on the medicine drawing on the screen, you can keep track of how many meds you have taken so far.
7. MaybeTodo ¶
MaybeTodo won a special award for its very creative concept. These days everyone is running around to check things off their to do list. But MaybeTodo wants you to forget your tasks so you can truly enjoy life. Enter your task and the due date, and as time passes, the task gets lighter in color and automatically dissapears on the due date.
The winners of the 24-hour Hackathon Competition won a total of 500,000 yen (or about $5,000) in rewards, with the first prize being 300,000 yen.
