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Japan’s Green Funding enables DIY crowdfunding for web publishers

Yukari Mitsuhashi 2013.06.16

This is part of our Crowdfunding in Japan series (RSS). Services like KickStarter have become a global phenomenon with the power to let creative individuals take their ideas to new heights. It’s happening here in Japan too. Below is one example.

Green Funding is a service that can be integrated into websites, allowing anyone to create crowdfunding project pages. Tokyo Calendar is a well-known Japanese lifestyle magazine, and it has recently used the service to launch a website called ‘Tokyo Calender Fund’, which showcases original crowdfunding projects. The most recent project aims to bring back the once famous and now very scarce Sri Lankan coffee bean.

According to the project page, the making of Sri Lankan coffee is a national project and the country plants 20,000 trees per year as part of the production process. Unfortunately the amount exported to Japan is very scarce at 700 kg per year. For this project, Tokyo Calendar plans to develop its own original Sri Lankan coffee blend, collecting funds starting at 1,000 yen (or about $10). The project will run until July 15th, with the target sum being 100,000 yen (or about $1,000).

Other interesting projects from Tokyo Calendar includes things like developing original wine glasses shaped like a flamingo, or importing 20 kinds of tequila to Japan. Green Funding has also been used by a popular fashion magazine Nylon Japan.

Traditional media in Japan has been experiencing decreased readership, but publishers can leverage Green Funding to publish books and magazines on demand, and thus be less dependent on advertisements. It will also allow publishers to support creators or artists that they have interviewed or written about.

Hopefully services like this one can have a positive impact for publishers in the country.

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Japanese news curation app Vingow boasts 250% growth in two months

Takeshi Hirano 2013.06.15

See the original story in Japanese. A recent survey by Japanese ad agency Hakuhodo indicated that consumers in Tokyo have very saturated contact with media these days. So perhaps it’s no wonder that online news curation services are getting lots of attention recently. The technology behind these services seems to be only getting better. Tokyo-based startup JXPress is providing one such service, a news curation app called Vingow. Earlier this week, the startup added an interesting new feature to its iOS app, pulling the lead portion of curated news articles, creating handy abstracts for users. The startup’s founder and CEO Katsuhiro Yoneshige explained: If you look at a service like Summly, they’re doing this pretty easily (creating abstracts from curated articles), because in English and they can detect which part of the article is the lead, by finding key nouns, verbs, and finding the frequency of spaces or finding a period in a sentence. However, this process is very difficult to do in Japanese. To solve this problem, they needed to use natural language processing technology. The team initially thought this would take a lot of time, but things proceeded far better than they expected. Some of our readers may…

See the original story in Japanese.

A recent survey by Japanese ad agency Hakuhodo indicated that consumers in Tokyo have very saturated contact with media these days. So perhaps it’s no wonder that online news curation services are getting lots of attention recently. The technology behind these services seems to be only getting better. Tokyo-based startup JXPress is providing one such service, a news curation app called Vingow.

Earlier this week, the startup added an interesting new feature to its iOS app, pulling the lead portion of curated news articles, creating handy abstracts for users.

The startup’s founder and CEO Katsuhiro Yoneshige explained:

If you look at a service like Summly, they’re doing this pretty easily (creating abstracts from curated articles), because in English and they can detect which part of the article is the lead, by finding key nouns, verbs, and finding the frequency of spaces or finding a period in a sentence. However, this process is very difficult to do in Japanese.

To solve this problem, they needed to use natural language processing technology. The team initially thought this would take a lot of time, but things proceeded far better than they expected.

Some of our readers may recall that Yahoo has recently acquired the aforementioned news curation app Summly, which was developed by a 17-year-old in UK. The Vingow app was developed by students attending Waseda University, and is very similar to the Summly app, not only in function but also in that it was created by young developers.

In order to prevent possible copyright issues (which sometimes occur with news curation apps) the team is discussing with their legal advisor and news media companies.

Since their launch back October of 2012, the app has been growing well, seeing a 250% increase in downloads over the last two months. Their users read as many as 22 articles at a time on average. Yoneshige adds:

In terms of duration of visits, a typical user will stay on general news sites for a few minutes. But on our app they stay for as long as 40 minutes. […] Since our launch last year, we’ve been tagging articles to improve accuracy, giving better recommendations to users. From now, we’ll focus on making it easier to find interesting articles. These two approaches will definitely help our users save their time.

JX Press was founded back in 2008, and introduced the first edition of the Vingow app in 2011. The startup has previously received investments from Cyber Agent, NetAge, Mitsubishi UFJ Capital, and others.

In the Japanese media landscape, they will definitely be one to watch moving forward.

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Fujisoft holds contest to find new uses for its Parlo robot

Yukari Mitsuhashi 2013.06.15

Parlo, photo via Engadget The most famous robot in Japan might very well be Sony’s famous dog robot Aibo. It was first released way back in 1999 but was subsequently retired in 2005. But Aibo paved the way for other robots to invade the consumer market. One such robot is Parlo, a communication-robot developed by Fujisoft. First released back in March of 2010 as a product for educational institutions, the robot is 40 cm tall and weighs 1.6 kg. And since June of 2012, Parlo has been used in over 50 facilities nationwide, especially in nursing homes and day care centers. Parlo can communicate with seniors or even dance or play quizzes or other games. It will even turn when it hears your voice, and greet you as you approach. The company recently announced that it will hold a programming contest to gather ideas to better use robots in our daily lives. There will be two contests (one for ideas, and one for programming), with the themes being: “Parlo brings happiness to elders” and “What if Parlo was at your home?” Ideas will be accepted from June 15th to July 20th, followed by the programming contest which will run from…

Parlo, photo via Engadget

The most famous robot in Japan might very well be Sony’s famous dog robot Aibo. It was first released way back in 1999 but was subsequently retired in 2005. But Aibo paved the way for other robots to invade the consumer market. One such robot is Parlo, a communication-robot developed by Fujisoft.

First released back in March of 2010 as a product for educational institutions, the robot is 40 cm tall and weighs 1.6 kg. And since June of 2012, Parlo has been used in over 50 facilities nationwide, especially in nursing homes and day care centers. Parlo can communicate with seniors or even dance or play quizzes or other games. It will even turn when it hears your voice, and greet you as you approach.

The company recently announced that it will hold a programming contest to gather ideas to better use robots in our daily lives. There will be two contests (one for ideas, and one for programming), with the themes being: “Parlo brings happiness to elders” and “What if Parlo was at your home?” Ideas will be accepted from June 15th to July 20th, followed by the programming contest which will run from August 15th to November 20th.

The winners of the competition will be announced at the 25th National Japan Robot-Sumo Tournament which will be held on December 15th. Parlo is not available for consumers just yet, but the first place winners in the competition will get one, along with a cool 100,000 yen (about $1,000).

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Japan’s TeamLab wins award for ingenious interactive reception area

Yukari Mitsuhashi 2013.06.14

We previously wrote about Team Lab’s 3D iPad app, ‘TeamLabBody‘ back in March. Their creative team recently won the Digital Signage Award 2013 for its project FaceTouch, a next generation reception system that makes appointments at the office much more fun. FaceTouch is very simple. A screen in the company’s reception area displays the many employees by name, accompanied by their photos. All it takes is a simple touch of their photo to page whoever you want. The person on the other end can even reply by sending a message to the display, like “I’ll be right over” for example. TeamLab explains that in our age of information overload, it can be difficult to accurately remember names or departments. Choosing from visual profiles can completely eliminate that hassle and confusion. The registeration of photos and bios for employees can all be done through a dedicated website, so by adding more information about certain employees, it can also reduce some of the awkwardness of meeting someone for the first time. For a demonstration of how it works, check out the fun video below.

FaceTouch is very simple. A screen in the company’s reception area displays the many employees by name, accompanied by their photos. All it takes is a simple touch of their photo to page whoever you want. The person on the other end can even reply by sending a message to the display, like “I’ll be right over” for example.

TeamLab explains that in our age of information overload, it can be difficult to accurately remember names or departments. Choosing from visual profiles can completely eliminate that hassle and confusion.

The registeration of photos and bios for employees can all be done through a dedicated website, so by adding more information about certain employees, it can also reduce some of the awkwardness of meeting someone for the first time.

For a demonstration of how it works, check out the fun video below.

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Aviary knows photos are big in Japan

Rick Martin 2013.06.14

Read a Japanese translation of this piece here Last week we heard that Aviary, an image editing platform provider, would be making its first international expansion by coming to Japan. The company has already seen significant success, especially in recent months, with over 50 million monthly active users in May [1]. The company now boasts more than 4600 partners that have integrated Aviary into their systems. Mixi is perhaps the most prominent ones (that we know of) in Japan, as Aviary has has helped them created and implement their own custom stickers for their app (pictured right). I had a chance to meet with Aviary representative Archie Archibong this week to find out a little more about the why the company is here in Japan. He explained: The demand we were getting from Japan, we get a lot of people reaching out to us asking how they can best leverage our product. And it became very evident that we should put a presence here. Archie noted the importance of meeting partners face-to-face, and trying to find out what kind of things they need. In this way, he explains, it helps Aviary figure out its own roadmap as well. So far…

aviary_archie_small — Aviary’s Japan rep Archie Archibong

Read a Japanese translation of this piece here

Last week we heard that Aviary, an image editing platform provider, would be making its first international expansion by coming to Japan. The company has already seen significant success, especially in recent months, with over 50 million monthly active users in May [1].

The company now boasts more than 4600 partners that have integrated Aviary into their systems. Mixi is perhaps the most prominent ones (that we know of) in Japan, as Aviary has has helped them created and implement their own custom stickers for their app (pictured right).

I had a chance to meet with Aviary representative Archie Archibong this week to find out a little more about the why the company is here in Japan. He explained:

The demand we were getting from Japan, we get a lot of people reaching out to us asking how they can best leverage our product. And it became very evident that we should put a presence here.

Archie noted the importance of meeting partners face-to-face, and trying to find out what kind of things they need. In this way, he explains, it helps Aviary figure out its own roadmap as well. So far meetings in Tokyo tend to result in further introductions and further meetings, and that’s the sort of thing that you just don’t get conducting business from afar over email or Skype, he adds.

The company is planning to hold its fifth Photo Hack Day in Tokyo in the fall, which should be a great event for the community, especially for the many startups involved in photo app development [2]. That kind of event not only helps local developers, but it also raises Aviary’s profile in terms of spreading awareness of the sort of services they offer.

Establishing a presence in the country is a smart move for Aviary, given the abundance of quality photo apps in Japan. A recent report from Flurry Analytics indicated that Japanese mobile users are more likely than any other country to use photo apps, both on iOS and Android (see chart below). If that’s the case, we expect Aviary will find lots of opportunities here.

That figure was announced by Aviary on May 28th, referring to “the last 30 days”. So we can say approximately May. ↩
The previous event (Photo Hack Day 4) was held at Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park back in April. At that event, Archie – who has a computer science background – even made his own iOS app. ↩

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Futuristic new SnanSnap is contactless, scans books without harming them

Yukari Mitsuhashi 2013.06.14

Many of you may already be familiar with ScanSnap, a personal document scanner made by the folks at Fujitsu, letting you scan and digitalize your printed documents. PFU, the Fujitsu subsidiary behind this scanner, has just announced that it will release a new model of scanner, its SV600, starting July 23rd. By using Versatile Imaging Technology, this newest scanner lets people scan books or papers of A3 in size and up to three centimeters thick, without having to cut out pages or excessively flatten the original in any way. This contactless scanner has a sort of futuristic looking desk-lamp design, and by placing the object for scanning on the ‘mattress,’ it reads them from overhead. The scanner has on-board features including book correction, which compensates for the contours of the book, and detects page turns. You can even use this scanner to read multiple things at once (such as business cards) as the SV600 has an auto-dividing feature as well, able to detect up to 10 cards simultaneously. The SV600 is compatible with Windows, but the company plans to support Mac in the fall of this year. The company says that the primary target for the new scanner is public…

By using Versatile Imaging Technology, this newest scanner lets people scan books or papers of A3 in size and up to three centimeters thick, without having to cut out pages or excessively flatten the original in any way. This contactless scanner has a sort of futuristic looking desk-lamp design, and by placing the object for scanning on the ‘mattress,’ it reads them from overhead. The scanner has on-board features including book correction, which compensates for the contours of the book, and detects page turns.

You can even use this scanner to read multiple things at once (such as business cards) as the SV600 has an auto-dividing feature as well, able to detect up to 10 cards simultaneously.

The SV600 is compatible with Windows, but the company plans to support Mac in the fall of this year. The company says that the primary target for the new scanner is public institutions such as university research departments or libraries. But they want users to explore new ways to leverage the product.

The price is expected to be somewhere around 59,800 yen (or about $633). Check out the video below that demonstrates the many ways that the new ScanSnap can be used in everyday life.

Japan’s Green Funding enables DIY crowdfunding for web publishers

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