Japanese toy camera manufacturer Superheadz has released the world’s first solar-panel enabled digital camera called SUN&CLOUD. In fact, the camera can be charged in three ways. You can place the device in direct sunlight for 12 hrs to get a full-charge, or turning the built-in hand crank (one minute gets you four to eight photos). Or if you’d like to do it the easy way, simply connecting to a computer via USB.
What’s great about this is that on a sunny day the camera will automatically stay powered no matter how many photos you take. Even if the weather isn’t great, turning the hand crank won’t be too much trouble either.
This environmentally friendly camera weighs 190 greams and has a 3 megapixel sensor. You can also enjoy taking short videos, and play with 15 color modes. The specs for SUN&CLOUD aren’t exactly cutting edge, so why should you be interested?
The idea of self-sufficient camera came up over four years ago, and the 2011 Tohoku earthquake pushed the idea into a reality. Omori and Nakamura from Superheadz elaborated in a recent interview with Greenz.jp:
SUN&CLOUD needs to be taken care of. Everyday when you arrive at the office, you want to place it in the sunlight. These little efforts are what makes people feel affection towards things.
The world of photography is now polarized into high-end professional cameras and built-in cameras on mobile phones. But it’s not fun really to have nothing else outside of this hierarchy. That is exactly why we developed SUN&CLOUD. It has a message to tell. We want our users to enjoy and wonder why we made such a camera.
SUN&CLOUD comes in both black and white and is available for 18,900 yen (or about $190). You can learn more over on the HeadsShop website. Check out the video below.
There are no shortage of newsreader apps out there these days, especially as the landscape adjusts in the wake of the announcement of Google Reader’s upcoming retirement. Most of our readership will no doubt already be aware of useful reader apps like Reeder, Feedly, Leaf, or even maybe even SlowFeeds. But it’s also interesting to see what kinds of reader apps are emerging here in Japan [1]. We recently featured the news curation app Gunosy which pulls news that you might like by analyzing your social media accounts, and even emailing you interesting stories every morning. It’s a handy service, although it’s currently for the Japanese language only [2]. But today I stumbled across another handy made-in-Japan reader app called FeedDrop. While it’s not as smart as Gunosy, the app is useful in that it comes with a number of pre-made content categories, each of which can be toggled on or off by the user. You can also search for your own content feeds, and this process works surprisingly well, giving you RSS and XML feeds for just about any search you can muster – in English or Japanese (note, I tried it with English ones, see pictures below). There’s…
There are no shortage of newsreader apps out there these days, especially as the landscape adjusts in the wake of the announcement of Google Reader’s upcoming retirement. Most of our readership will no doubt already be aware of useful reader apps like Reeder, Feedly, Leaf, or even maybe even SlowFeeds. But it’s also interesting to see what kinds of reader apps are emerging here in Japan [1].
We recently featured the news curation app Gunosy which pulls news that you might like by analyzing your social media accounts, and even emailing you interesting stories every morning. It’s a handy service, although it’s currently for the Japanese language only [2].
But today I stumbled across another handy made-in-Japan reader app called FeedDrop. While it’s not as smart as Gunosy, the app is useful in that it comes with a number of pre-made content categories, each of which can be toggled on or off by the user. You can also search for your own content feeds, and this process works surprisingly well, giving you RSS and XML feeds for just about any search you can muster – in English or Japanese (note, I tried it with English ones, see pictures below).
There’s also a ‘read later’ function that allows you to simply tag any article to be sent to your ‘read later’ queue. While this is certainly useful, there isn’t any styling that makes the articles any easier to read within the app, so it’s hard not to just send articles to Pocket each time. However, in terms of integration with applications that typical Japanese users like, FeedDrop excels. Twitter, Facebook, Hatena Bookmarks, Evernote, and Line are all supported, as well as the afore-mentioned Pocket.
But of course, like Gunosy, the app’s interface is in Japanese only, which is disappointing to see [3]. But it’s definitely an app that might be of interest to our readers here in Japan.
I’m curious to hear what news readers you guys are experimenting with these days. If you have any interesting recommendations, particularly anything that might be made in Japan, do let us know in the comments.
The Gunosy app interface looks very much inspired by Reeder, so if you like Reeder, you’ll feel comfortable with this app too. ↩
I can’t help but recall what Atomico’s Niklas Zennström mentioned back during the Japan New Economy Summit, noting that if you’re in the software business, you might as well be making it for the global market. I think an app like FeedDrop would be welcomed by users outside Japan if it ventured beyond just Japanese. ↩
When I first met up with the folks behind DecoAlbum, I thought maybe it was just another photo app. Japanese startups have developed so many photo sharing apps, and most of them hope to hit the South East Asian market. So I was wondering if this space hasn’t already been saturated. However DecoAlbum was one of the standouts at the recent Echelon Tokyo satellite event, and it was also chosen to be included in the first batch of NTT Docomo’s incubation program. So what’s so special about DecoAlbum? We sought out the app’s developer, Prime Again, to find out more. We spoke with the company’s CEO Nobuhiro Abe and his right hand Maiko Kojima. Tell us about you and your team? Nobuhiro: We were teamed up in 2010 when we developed a cloud-based contact sharing app at Breakthrough Camp, a two-month app and business development camp for university students and aspiring entrepreneurs. Then we were incorporated in December of 2010, and subsequently developed the app with students from Waseda University and Digital Hollywood University. We’ve seen many similar photo sharing apps. What makes DecoAlbum different? Maiko: We’re a team of students, and that’s our target user base. That’s why we’ve…
When I first met up with the folks behind DecoAlbum, I thought maybe it was just another photo app. Japanese startups have developed so many photo sharing apps, and most of them hope to hit the South East Asian market. So I was wondering if this space hasn’t already been saturated.
So what’s so special about DecoAlbum? We sought out the app’s developer, Prime Again, to find out more. We spoke with the company’s CEO Nobuhiro Abe and his right hand Maiko Kojima.
Tell us about you and your team?
Nobuhiro: We were teamed up in 2010 when we developed a cloud-based contact sharing app at Breakthrough Camp, a two-month app and business development camp for university students and aspiring entrepreneurs. Then we were incorporated in December of 2010, and subsequently developed the app with students from Waseda University and Digital Hollywood University.
We’ve seen many similar photo sharing apps. What makes DecoAlbum different?
PrimeAgain’s Maiko Kojima pitches at Echelon Tokyo Satellite. (April, 2013)
Maiko: We’re a team of students, and that’s our target user base. That’s why we’ve learned so much about what our users really want to have. When we’re observing our friends using photo apps, they typically use one app for photo collage and another for decoration. So before uploading photos to their walls or timelines, they typically use two photo apps at least. The number of apps capable of both collage and decoration is very few, maybe even zero, because it’s difficult to manage and optimize memory usage for handling photos on smartphones. But we made it.
DecoAlbum allows users to both create collages and decorate with a single app. In terms of differentiation, there is also a storage function. Our app is not only a photo decoration and collage app but features storage on its backend. […] You can create as many albums as you want, and share anything stored photos with your friends or family members via Facebook, Line, or other social media.
Do you have any metrics to share about how your app has performed so far?
Nobuhiro: The app was launched in late June of 2012, and we’ve seen more than 1.2 million downloads in 8 months.
Is your user base different from other photo sharing apps?
Maiko: Our user base ranges from junior high school girls to housewives, especially those who prefer cute or elegant fashions. We’ve been acquiring users from the Southeast Asian market as well, mainly from housewives in their 20s. Our app is now available in Japanese, English, Mandarin, Korean, and Thai.
So are you making any specific marketing efforts elsewhere in Asia?
PrimeAgain CEO Nobuhiro Abe
Nobuhiro: We have never done any paid promotions. So we’re honored to have seen such positive results. The usual acquisition of our user base has been entirely word-of-month, and we will partner with other mobile app developers to take things a step further. One of our strength is providing cute stickers designed from our awesome designers, and that has been very popular with our users, and it can be also used when messaging in other apps. We’ll be providing our specially designed stickers to some partner mobile apps, including Korea’s Between, a mobile photo sharing app for couples. We’re in talks with some other developers about providing stickers, an arrangement we feel benefits both parties.
How will you monetize? Do you have any exit strategy?
Nobuhiro: We’re partnering with Foglio (a photo processing platform run by Fujifilm) and mobile photo-processing company Tolot so that our users can print their pictures [1]. We’re also in talks with Photobook Thailand to give our users a better experience in Southeast Asian regions. Regarding the exit, we have no concrete plan at this moment beyond increasing our user base. We recently fundraised 10 million yen (approximately $100,000) from East Ventures, which might be sufficient to survive for the time being. We don’t want to [target] acquisition by another party, but expect to go straight ahead to an IPO exit.
DecoAlbum is certainly a very powerful app in terms of functions. Combining photo collage and decoration is not an issue that we hear many people complaining about, but based on DecoAlbum’s download numbers it looks to be a surprisingly significant problem. Will DecoAlbum remain the only real solution in this space? Let’s wait and see.
The DecoAlbum development team
Tolot recently fundraised 500 million yen from KDDI Open Innovation Fund. ↩
Crazy Labo and Next Technology, LLC., two startups from Japan’s western city of Fukuoka, have jointly invented a couple of scent detection robots. One is the human-looking Kaori-chan, and the other – Shuntaro – is made to resemble a dog. The lady robot is designed to measure the whether or not your breath smells ok, in the interests of promoting oral hygiene. When you breathe on her, she will respond with one of four different behaviors. If your breathe is ok, you will hear a chime that tells you are okay. If it’s not great, she rings another chime to indicate as much. But if your breath has some serious problems, she will be screaming. And if it really stinks completely, she will look like she’s out of order. As for Shuntaro the dog, he measures how much your socks smell. And similarly, there are four ways that he will react. If he finds your socks smell nice, he will come a little closer to you. If the smell is not so great, he will look at you and bark several times. If you smell really bad, he will snarl. And if you smell especially awful (ru-roh!), he will play dead….
Breath scent detection robot “Kaori-chan” (Photo: RKB Radio Broadcasting’s blog)
Crazy Labo and Next Technology, LLC., two startups from Japan’s western city of Fukuoka, have jointly invented a couple of scent detection robots. One is the human-looking Kaori-chan, and the other – Shuntaro – is made to resemble a dog.
The lady robot is designed to measure the whether or not your breath smells ok, in the interests of promoting oral hygiene. When you breathe on her, she will respond with one of four different behaviors. If your breathe is ok, you will hear a chime that tells you are okay. If it’s not great, she rings another chime to indicate as much. But if your breath has some serious problems, she will be screaming. And if it really stinks completely, she will look like she’s out of order.
Shuntaro (Photo: RKB Radio)
As for Shuntaro the dog, he measures how much your socks smell. And similarly, there are four ways that he will react. If he finds your socks smell nice, he will come a little closer to you.
If the smell is not so great, he will look at you and bark several times. If you smell really bad, he will snarl. And if you smell especially awful (ru-roh!), he will play dead.
The company expects to rent these robots for festivals or exhibitions, helping organizers attract and entertain their attendees.
Tokyo’s Asahi Shimbun newspaper has visited their offices to how the robots behave. Check their video here for more information.
Summer in Japan can be very humid and uncomfortable. Paper fans and parasols are what people usually use to beat the heat, but there might be a better solution. This coming summer, people can try out a battery-free portable fan called Kuru-Kuru Eco Fan, developed by Takaratomy. The first version of this eco-fan was released in April of last year with over 120,000 items shipped. The original fan required the user to turn the handle, but this reworked version is powered when you squeeze the handle which then triggers the fan blade to turn (see picture above). With one squeeze, the fan turns more than 50 times. Suited for both adults and children, the fan’s handle is only 5.5 cm wide (in the open position), and weighs just 51 grams. The three fan blades are made of soft material making it safe for children to use. All it takes is a squeeze of the handle and you can enjoy a nice breeze. Your other hand is, of course, free to use your smartphone. Kuru-Kuru Eco Fan is priced at just 787 yen, or about $8. It comes with a strap to hold it around your neck, and extra design patterns…
Summer in Japan can be very humid and uncomfortable. Paper fans and parasols are what people usually use to beat the heat, but there might be a better solution. This coming summer, people can try out a battery-free portable fan called Kuru-Kuru Eco Fan, developed by Takaratomy.
The first version of this eco-fan was released in April of last year with over 120,000 items shipped. The original fan required the user to turn the handle, but this reworked version is powered when you squeeze the handle which then triggers the fan blade to turn (see picture above). With one squeeze, the fan turns more than 50 times.
Suited for both adults and children, the fan’s handle is only 5.5 cm wide (in the open position), and weighs just 51 grams. The three fan blades are made of soft material making it safe for children to use. All it takes is a squeeze of the handle and you can enjoy a nice breeze. Your other hand is, of course, free to use your smartphone.
Kuru-Kuru Eco Fan is priced at just 787 yen, or about $8. It comes with a strap to hold it around your neck, and extra design patterns which you can use to dress it up a bit. The fan is part of Takaratomy’s Eco Toy initiative, aimed to create toys that are friendly to the enviroment.
Speaking of summer, character goods merchandiser called Runat released a silicon ice cube tray called Manga Gori, or Manga Ice. The tray makes ice cubes that are shaped like onmatopoeic words often seen in manga. The clever ice cube tray is available on Amazon for 1029 yen, or about $10.
It was Golden Week here in Japan, so there wasn’t too much happening from the business world. We took the opportunity to be a little more reflective, spotlighting some interesting companies, apps, and games. For those of you in Japan, we hope you’ve had a good holiday! [1] If you’d like to get this weekly summary plus other bonus content, we hope you’ll check out our shiny new newsletter here. Features Kickstart this: 14 of Japan’s top crowdfunded projects Beauty products portal @Cosme is an internet mainstay among Japanese women Japan’s Weathernews hopes to take the US market by storm Relux: A satisfaction-guaranteed online marketplace for Japanese ryokan Business NTT Docomo to acquire Japan’s largest medical database Gadgets This hard drive will self-destruct: New HDD case from Japan takes security seriously! Line tries to hook kids early, launching toy smartphone with Takaratomy Fun Apps StickerMe: Add your own face to mobile chat stickers, share on Facebook, Line, or Kakaotalk Line’s hockey stick moment: Japanese chat app hits 150 million users Japanese finance app Zaim rolls out slick web version, updates Android app with OCR Kame Camera takes Japanese schoolgirl ‘Dragon Ball’ meme a step further Games With over 5 million…
It was Golden Week here in Japan, so there wasn’t too much happening from the business world. We took the opportunity to be a little more reflective, spotlighting some interesting companies, apps, and games. For those of you in Japan, we hope you’ve had a good holiday! [1]
If you’d like to get this weekly summary plus other bonus content, we hope you’ll check out our shiny new newsletter here.
Yukari Mitsuhashi
Rick Martin
Masaru Ikeda
