In the past we have featured Japanese code/knowledge sharing service Qiita. With over 20,000 domestic users (and over 220,000 monthly unique visitors [1]) the platform is an important hub for Japanese programmers.
While many people that I speak to often refer to it as a sort of Japanese Github, sharing on Qiita is more akin to sharing a Gist on Github. As with Gists, any code you share can have nice syntax highlighting, and that’s really handy.
Notes shared on Qiita are written in Markdown format, and the startup has also produced a handy Markdown editor for Mac OSX called Kobito that integrates with its service. So you can compose notes or explanations of code snippets you want to share, and post directly to Qiita for the app. The split screen Markdown preview is somewhat reminiscent of Mou or MultiMarkdown Composer.
When you publish you also have the option to share to Twitter, or publish your note as a Gist as well. This latter option is especially handy since there is likely a huge overlap between Qiita and Github users.
Qiita just published a new 1.7 release of Kobito today if you’d like to give it a try. Or check out our video demo below for more details.
These numbers are from back in May of this year. ↩
See also the story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Coiney, a startup focused on providing mobile payments solutions in Japan, announced today that it has raised 500 million yen (over $5 million) from Credit Saison, one of Japanese top credit card companies. I believe the service is definitely making its way into consumers’ daily lives. Coiney was launched back in March of 2012 and has been providing mobile payments solutions using swipe card readers for smartphones. This, of course, puts them in the same space as Square, Paypal Here, and Rakuten Smartpay. Earlier this year, the startup also invited ex-CyberAgent COO Shinichi Saijo to its board of directors, a significant addition to its growing family. We had a chance to speak with the startup’s CEO Naoko Samata and asked her about how they plan to expand their business. Since our last conversation, the company has been focusing on user-safety systems and stability in rather than business expansion. We asked Naoko how they expect to compete against other big other players. She explained: If you see mobile payments as a disruption to the cash market, the potential is huge. I think every single player will evolve the market in different ways. Of course,…
From the left: Takamasa Matsumoto (software designer), Naoko Samata (CEO/founder), and David Asikin (CTO)
Tokyo-based Coiney, a startup focused on providing mobile payments solutions in Japan, announced today that it has raised 500 million yen (over $5 million) from Credit Saison, one of Japanese top credit card companies.
I believe the service is definitely making its way into consumers’ daily lives.
Coiney was launched back in March of 2012 and has been providing mobile payments solutions using swipe card readers for smartphones. This, of course, puts them in the same space as Square, Paypal Here, and Rakuten Smartpay.
Earlier this year, the startup also invited ex-CyberAgent COO Shinichi Saijo to its board of directors, a significant addition to its growing family.
We had a chance to speak with the startup’s CEO Naoko Samata and asked her about how they plan to expand their business. Since our last conversation, the company has been focusing on user-safety systems and stability in rather than business expansion. We asked Naoko how they expect to compete against other big other players. She explained:
If you see mobile payments as a disruption to the cash market, the potential is huge. I think every single player will evolve the market in different ways. Of course, this business needs a certain amount of a solid financial muscle. For us, it is very important to partner with other companies leveraging our business. By joining forces with appropriate partners, we will be able to reach out to more merchants who typically use our service on a daily basis.
According to Samata, more than a few consumers use mobile payments to buy high-value products or services in Japan, which is definitely different from what we’ve being seeing in the US. She shared some of their use cases and insights.
A big volume of our users are in their 40s, and 80% of them are male users. In terms of geographical metrics, it’s about a 50/50 split between urban and rural areas, which goes against our original hypothesis that Tokyoites in their 30s would be most of our user base. The average price per transaction using the service exceeds 10,000 yen ($100), which is certainly higher than the average credit card payments. […] Our customers (merchants) include outdoor tour guides, street-side butchers, flower shops, and souvenir shops. I believe the service is definitely making its way into consumers’ daily lives.
For Coiney, this may be how they differ most from their competitors. The startup aims to be a platform for solutions around money issues rather than just a payment solutions provider. As a part of their efforts on this front, the company plans to provide its payment services APIs to partnering developers. It might be very similar to what we’ve seen around API-based payment processing services such as Stripe, Braintree, and WebPay. Naoko added:
By the end of September, we’re expecting to announce our partners who will be using the closed alpha version of our SDKs. Subsequently we’ll start providing it to partner developers. We’re ready to provide SDKs for both the iOS and Android platforms. Unlike Stripes or Braintree, what we provide is payment solutions for face-to-face purchases. That’s the focus of our business.
With these new funds, the startup expects to double its engineering and business development forces, which is currently a 15-person team. It also expects to enhance its back-end infrastructure and add new models to its card reader line up.
Let’s keep an eye on Coiney to see how it progresses from here.
One of the cultural developments that Japan can be proud of is its creative illustrations and manga, and the community that has grown around it. There are many communities dedicated to creators such as Pixiv, drawr, and others. We are starting to see communities dedicated to even more specific groups of people. PictBLand is one example, where the target users of the site are ‘Fujoshi’ or so-called ‘rotten girls’. This modern term refers to females who likes novels and manga about male homosexuality (love between two males is often described as ‘boys love’ in Japan, hence the ‘BL’ in the service’s name). On PictBLand users can view other people’s illustrative works, or post their own. There are many original works as well as creations that imitates well-known manga such as One Piece. It’s a good place to showcase all your work as well as a place to find inspiration. The site opened back in April of this year, and in about three months, the total number of registered users surpassed 20,000. This is an impressive number considering the niche purpose of the site. Interestingly this illustrations community was an open website at the very beginning, but it later switched to…
One of the cultural developments that Japan can be proud of is its creative illustrations and manga, and the community that has grown around it. There are many communities dedicated to creators such as Pixiv, drawr, and others. We are starting to see communities dedicated to even more specific groups of people. PictBLand is one example, where the target users of the site are ‘Fujoshi’ or so-called ‘rotten girls’. This modern term refers to females who likes novels and manga about male homosexuality (love between two males is often described as ‘boys love’ in Japan, hence the ‘BL’ in the service’s name).
On PictBLand users can view other people’s illustrative works, or post their own. There are many original works as well as creations that imitates well-known manga such as One Piece. It’s a good place to showcase all your work as well as a place to find inspiration. The site opened back in April of this year, and in about three months, the total number of registered users surpassed 20,000. This is an impressive number considering the niche purpose of the site.
Interestingly this illustrations community was an open website at the very beginning, but it later switched to a closed service a month after its launch (now requiring user-registration to view uploaded works).
There are other features unique to the site, such as Antenna tags and Exclusion tags. The Antenna tag lets users can show off certain works, whereas the exclusion tag eliminates creations that you don’t want to show from the timeline. As a result, all works showing up in a timeline are exactly the ones that they want to be shown. Many can be viewed freely while some require users to join specific threads in order to see the actual works.
Of course the genre of this online community could generate some controversy. But by optimizing the site to a closed space, users can freely express their love for this very specific type of illustrations. The community is slowly growing, gaining more and more fans with time. It will be interesting to see what the site will grow into in the near future.
Fuji Startup Ventures recently announced it has invested an undisclosed sum in Japanese online classifieds service JMTY.jp (pronounced Jimoty). JMTY provides listings in a wide range of categories, including items for sale, job listings, services, and events. JMTY was initially launched by Infinity Venture Partners back in 2011, and subsequently raised funding from KDDI Open Innovation Fund and Mitsubishi UFJ Capital. The web service is optimized for smartphones, and it is available as a native iOS app which has seen some success in the Lifestyle category in the Japanese App Store. It was also announced that JMTY will also be use to power Sankei Living’s Living Web classifieds page, located at mrs.living.jp/tokyo/classified, targeting female audiences. Sankei Living is a subsidiary of Fuji Media Holdings, which of course also is the parent of the aforementioned Fuji Startup Ventures. It’s interesting to see JMTY still doing well, as there has been some skepticism has to whether there is a market for classifieds services in Japan. But recently we have seen more players jumping into Japan’s C2C buy-and-sell market especially, including mobile services like Mercari and Fril.
Fuji Startup Ventures recently announced it has invested an undisclosed sum in Japanese online classifieds service JMTY.jp (pronounced Jimoty). JMTY provides listings in a wide range of categories, including items for sale, job listings, services, and events.
JMTY was initially launched by Infinity Venture Partners back in 2011, and subsequently raised funding from KDDI Open Innovation Fund and Mitsubishi UFJ Capital. The web service is optimized for smartphones, and it is available as a native iOS app which has seen some success in the Lifestyle category in the Japanese App Store.
It was also announced that JMTY will also be use to power Sankei Living’s Living Web classifieds page, located at mrs.living.jp/tokyo/classified, targeting female audiences. Sankei Living is a subsidiary of Fuji Media Holdings, which of course also is the parent of the aforementioned Fuji Startup Ventures.
It’s interesting to see JMTY still doing well, as there has been some skepticism has to whether there is a market for classifieds services in Japan. But recently we have seen more players jumping into Japan’s C2C buy-and-sell market especially, including mobile services like Mercari and Fril.
There are many ways for expecting mothers to prepare for the birth of a child. One can participate in classes to learn about how to better care for a baby, buy baby beds and other necessary items in advance, and even baby-proof the house. Here in Japan, there is one other thing you can do to prepare. You can install a useful mobile app that helps women when they go into labor. It’s called ‘Jintsu-kitakamo‘. Jintsu Kitakamo can roughly be translated as ‘I think my contractions have started’. It lets you count the time that has passed between each contraction. When the pace between contractions shortens and mothers are close to going into labor, they can call pre-programmed phone numbers with a single tap. It could be your husband’s cell phone number, for example, or the number for a taxi company. The time you’ve counted can be sent by email, taking away the hassle of texting on your own to update concerned people such as your mother or your husband. The app also provides tips from ‘senpai’ mothers (those with children already) and lets new mothers ask questions regarding pregnancy in general. In Japan, many taxi companies provide services exclusively…
There are many ways for expecting mothers to prepare for the birth of a child. One can participate in classes to learn about how to better care for a baby, buy baby beds and other necessary items in advance, and even baby-proof the house. Here in Japan, there is one other thing you can do to prepare. You can install a useful mobile app that helps women when they go into labor. It’s called ‘Jintsu-kitakamo‘.
Jintsu Kitakamo can roughly be translated as ‘I think my contractions have started’. It lets you count the time that has passed between each contraction. When the pace between contractions shortens and mothers are close to going into labor, they can call pre-programmed phone numbers with a single tap. It could be your husband’s cell phone number, for example, or the number for a taxi company.
The time you’ve counted can be sent by email, taking away the hassle of texting on your own to update concerned people such as your mother or your husband. The app also provides tips from ‘senpai’ mothers (those with children already) and lets new mothers ask questions regarding pregnancy in general.
In Japan, many taxi companies provide services exclusively for expectant mothers. By registering for the service in advance, these mothers are put on top of wait lists for urgent occasions. One popular service, ‘Jintsu Taxi‘, is provided by major taxi company Nihon Kotsu. A year after its launch, there were around 21,000 registered mothers-to-be, and it has been used 7,710 times. One in five pregnant women have registered to the service.
The birth of your first child can be very stressful, especially when you go into labor. Jintsu Kitakamo may be a very niche service, but it is one that definitely serves a great need.
About a week ago we told you about how Japanese game developer Colopl (seriously, that’s its name) had added popular geo-location restaurant game Boku no restaurant II to its platform. The company is busy this week as well, pushing its Quiz RPG: Wizard & Wiz the Black Cat here in Japan. The quiz/RPG hybrid game (which takes more than a few pages from the playbook of Puzzle & Dragons) has been promoted in a Japanese TV commercial (view it on YouTube) since August 19th, pushing it past the 4 million downloads milestone as of August 23. In the charts below (for iOS and Android rankings) you can see exactly the kind of boost TV promos represent for mobile games in Japan. Meanwhile, the game has just been released in English as well for anyone who wants to give it a try. The official English language title is Quiz RPG: The World of Mystic Wiz [1]. I was curious to check it out and see what quality of questions it has. So far the questions are decent, although it seems to me that there are an unusual amount of ice hockey-related questions for some reason or another [2]. If you’d like…
About a week ago we told you about how Japanese game developer Colopl (seriously, that’s its name) had added popular geo-location restaurant gameBoku no restaurant II to its platform. The company is busy this week as well, pushing its Quiz RPG: Wizard & Wiz the Black Cat here in Japan.
The quiz/RPG hybrid game (which takes more than a few pages from the playbook of Puzzle & Dragons) has been promoted in a Japanese TV commercial (view it on YouTube) since August 19th, pushing it past the 4 million downloads milestone as of August 23. In the charts below (for iOS and Android rankings) you can see exactly the kind of boost TV promos represent for mobile games in Japan.
Meanwhile, the game has just been released in English as well for anyone who wants to give it a try. The official English language title is Quiz RPG: The World of Mystic Wiz[1]. I was curious to check it out and see what quality of questions it has. So far the questions are decent, although it seems to me that there are an unusual amount of ice hockey-related questions for some reason or another [2].
If you’d like quick walk-through of the English version (h/t Serkan Toto), you can check out my video demo above. The battle card mechanics will be familiar to anyone who knows the genre, letting you collect, enhance, and evolve cards as you proceed on your quest.
Overall the game is not a bad one. And I might play it a little more if I didn’t like Puzzle & Dragons so much. If you’d like to try it in English, you can download it for free from the App Store or Google Play.
Colopl has also released a Korean version of the title, and that’s also available for iOS and Android.
iOS rankingsAndroid rankings
Note that when I referred to the Japanese title in English in the first paragraph, I opted to translated the title directly. ↩
Rick Martin
Takeshi Hirano
Yukari Mitsuhashi
