Apps that track and measure your personal data are quite popular these days. Things like Fitbit, Pulse, and Noom [1] are part of a wave of life-logging services that health-conscious folks can use. You can track just about anything these days. But Japan has taken this kind of life-logging to a bit of an extreme, with a service called ‘Unlog’, or ‘Poo Log’ in English.
It’s not easy to write about a service like this with a straight face, but I’ll do my best.
Poo Log is a free iOS app that lets you input details about each poop that you make. You can specify the size, shape, and color of your poops, as well as input how bad it smelled or whether or not you experienced any discomfort. There also a memo if you want to add some more detailed notes. Upon submission, each poop is assigned a ‘poton’ (a sort of dropping sound in Japanese) score as a strange sort of reward. You can learn more about how it works in the AppBank video demo above.
As you input more and more poops, you can then look back on them all dotting your calendar, plotted on a graph, or even marked geographically on a map. This Poo Log app has been around since July of 2012, but version six just dropped (pardon the poop pun) with a range of new features, including cloud data storage and the ability to record logs for multiple users.
It’s a surprisingly popular application too, with over 130,000 downloads to date. If you’d like to try it out, you can get it as a free download for iOS or Android[2]. So far it’s in Japanese only, but lets hope they expand to other languages soon. As funny as it is with it’s cute poop characters, this is actually a useful app, especially for anyone with digestion issues.
See the original story in Japanese. We’ve seen many travel-focused online services from here in Japan. A reason why this space is on the upswing is because travel is a very attractive activity for most people. One of the latest travel-related solutions to spring up is from Tokyo-based startup Wonderlust. It has launched a new travel recording platform called Compathy. This service lets users compose and publish a story about your travel experience simply by uploading snapshots during your travel. When you upload, the platform will place each photo at the appropriate sightseeing spot on a map, in accordance with the picture’s time-stamp and location data. In this way, it helps you sort out travel photos and your memories by routes and timeline [1]. In addition to collecting travel photos, the platform will add a feature that automatically creates sight-seeing spot pages. Photos taken by all users at a particular spot will be associated with that page. This resembles restaurant finder sites where photos give users an idea of what they can expect at a glance. By accumulating photos uploaded by users, the company wants to create a sort of travel-focused buzz site. CEO Kentaro Horie explains: No matter how…
We’ve seen many travel-focused online services from here in Japan. A reason why this space is on the upswing is because travel is a very attractive activity for most people. One of the latest travel-related solutions to spring up is from Tokyo-based startup Wonderlust. It has launched a new travel recording platform called Compathy.
This service lets users compose and publish a story about your travel experience simply by uploading snapshots during your travel. When you upload, the platform will place each photo at the appropriate sightseeing spot on a map, in accordance with the picture’s time-stamp and location data. In this way, it helps you sort out travel photos and your memories by routes and timeline [1].
In addition to collecting travel photos, the platform will add a feature that automatically creates sight-seeing spot pages. Photos taken by all users at a particular spot will be associated with that page. This resembles restaurant finder sites where photos give users an idea of what they can expect at a glance.
By accumulating photos uploaded by users, the company wants to create a sort of travel-focused buzz site. CEO Kentaro Horie explains:
No matter how many more more photos or comments we acquire, it would be pretty difficult to defeat TripAdvisor and its SEO tactics. We will focus on acquiring comments posted under real names.
At this point their strategy is very similar to Retty, which is collection of restaurant reviews and evaluations posted under real names.
The company also plans to add a new feature in January, where users can arrange travel plans using the platform. Horie added:
For our next step, we’d like to add a new feature that encourages users to link up with friends overseas. You will be able to arrange plans and take advantage of their advice.
Wonderlust was a member of Incubate Camp, an incubation program operated by Tokyo-based Incubate Fund. They have been improving their service, and now finally has received investment so they can launch the service.
Their service model resembles Korea’s Tripvi Album. ↩
See the original story in Japanese. Santa Company, an anime production team led by Japanese filmmaker Kenji Itoso, recently met its funding goal of $50,000 goal on Kickstarter. This fundraising effort comes after the team attempted to raise money on Japanese crowdfunding site Anipipo earlier this year, falling short of its target. Itoso has produced animations, films and music videos, and his works have been featured at many international film festivals and won prominent awards from them. With this new project, he hopes to complete a 30 minute anime and present it for children and families in affected areas of the 2011 earthquake. The video below gives a more detailed introduction. Here are a few other Japanese projects that have leverage Kickstarter to raise funds. October 2012 – ‘Kick-Heart’ raised $201,164. Directed by Masaaki Yuasa of Product I.G. June 2013 – ‘Are you enjoying the time of EVE?’ raised $215,433. Directed by Yasuhiro Yoshiura of Studio Rikka and Directions. This project aimed to produce an English-subtitled version of the anime. It raised more than 10 times than its target goal of $18,000. August 2013 – ‘Little Witch Academia’ raised $625,518. Directed by Yo Yoshinari of Trigger. This project reached its…
Santa Company, an anime production team led by Japanese filmmaker Kenji Itoso, recently met its funding goal of $50,000 goal on Kickstarter. This fundraising effort comes after the team attempted to raise money on Japanese crowdfunding site Anipipo earlier this year, falling short of its target.
Itoso has produced animations, films and music videos, and his works have been featured at many international film festivals and won prominent awards from them. With this new project, he hopes to complete a 30 minute anime and present it for children and families in affected areas of the 2011 earthquake. The video below gives a more detailed introduction.
Here are a few other Japanese projects that have leverage Kickstarter to raise funds.
October 2012 – ‘Kick-Heart’ raised $201,164. Directed by Masaaki Yuasa of Product I.G.
June 2013 – ‘Are you enjoying the time of EVE?’ raised $215,433. Directed by Yasuhiro Yoshiura of Studio Rikka and Directions. This project aimed to produce an English-subtitled version of the anime. It raised more than 10 times than its target goal of $18,000.
August 2013 – ‘Little Witch Academia’ raised $625,518. Directed by Yo Yoshinari of Trigger. This project reached its target goal of $150,000 in just five or six hours after launching its project on Kickstarter.
Summing up the three projects above, and this most recent Santa Company project, Kickstarter has helped Japanese filmmakers raise over $110 million in total. We’ll see more Japanese anime projects raising money on Kickstarter, but I still wonder if it’s impossible for them to do so on Japanese crowdfunding sites.
Santa Company is looking for partners to work with them on collaborative businesses. If you are interested, we can encourage you to contact them.
We have previously featured Japan-based developer Kayac, the team behind the Dominos Japan Hatsune Miku augmented reality app among many other fun digital productions. Kayac was founded back in 2005, and has been known for its distinctive creative digital works ever since [1]. Kayac participates in April Fool’s day pranks just like other tech companies in Japan and around the world. But it also holds an interesting end-of-year sale, or ‘Nenmatsu-Sale’. During this sale, many of Kayac’s mobile apps and web services go on sale. It’s not just a discount on apps, but they are selling entire web services to anyone willing to acquire them. This year’s sale began on December 27th, with a total of 12 services are waiting to be acquired. One of the most expensive things up for sale is Kayac’s Q&A based music community service called ‘Ongakusuri’. It is available on iOS, Android, and on the web. Users on the site post their music-related questions, and other users can suggest music using Youtube videos. An example would be ‘Suggest songs that helps me with my long distance relationship’. Ongakusuri comes with a price tag of 15 million yen (or about $142,620). Other services on sale include…
We have previously featured Japan-based developer Kayac, the team behind the Dominos Japan Hatsune Miku augmented reality app among many other fun digital productions. Kayac was founded back in 2005, and has been known for its distinctive creative digital works ever since [1].
Kayac participates in April Fool’s day pranks just like other tech companies in Japan and around the world. But it also holds an interesting end-of-year sale, or ‘Nenmatsu-Sale’. During this sale, many of Kayac’s mobile apps and web services go on sale. It’s not just a discount on apps, but they are selling entire web services to anyone willing to acquire them. This year’s sale began on December 27th, with a total of 12 services are waiting to be acquired.
One of the most expensive things up for sale is Kayac’s Q&A based music community service called ‘Ongakusuri’. It is available on iOS, Android, and on the web. Users on the site post their music-related questions, and other users can suggest music using Youtube videos. An example would be ‘Suggest songs that helps me with my long distance relationship’. Ongakusuri comes with a price tag of 15 million yen (or about $142,620).
Other services on sale include Jsdo.it, a community for front-end engineers using HTML5, JavaScript, or CSS. This community, along with a social network for Flash creators called ‘Wonderfl’, can be purchased for 75 million yen. Fonta, a collaborative community where users upload their hand-written letters to create new fonts, is on sale for 300,000 yen.
Kayac also has nine smartphone apps up for sale for a more affordable price:
Music Party: an app that generates a playlist from playists on friend’s iPhones (1.5 million yen)
Lunch Chokin: lets you record and track your lunch spending (300,000 yen)
Calclock: a game where users try to complete a mathematical formula using the four digits on a clock (100,000 yen)
There are other unique but creepy (or ‘kimoi’ in Japanese) mobile apps such as Oshibori-Ningen and Kameleon Man on sale for 9,800 yen (or about $93). There is also a special offer where you can buy five Kimoi apps for 39,000 yen [2].
If you’re still looking to do some holiday shopping, Kayac’s list of products might be an interesting option.
Happy Holidays!
The company celebrated its 15th anniversary this past August with a neat website. ↩
For this last price, the numbers 3 and 9 read ‘san-kyu’ in Japanese, which sounds like ‘thank you’. ↩
Japan’s Nikkei reported today that Silicon Valley-based investment company WiL (World Innovation Lab) has formed a new fund focused on startups in Japan and the Valley, raising $300 million from a number of Japanese companies: All Nippon Airways, NTT Group, Isetan Mitsukoshi Holdings, Hakuhodo DY Group, Daiwa Securities, JVC Kenwood, Benesse Holdings, and Innovation Network Corporation of Japan [1]. Their potential investees are startups developing new products and services in fields like consumer electronics, e-commerce, or motor vehicles, making the most of smartphone and big data technologies. They expect the size of each investment to be in the range from $5 million to $50 million, with about six to eight investments being made per year. The Nikkei says that $300 million is a figure that equate to 30% of all startup investments in Japan in FY 2012. The investment fund was founded by Japanese venture capitalist Gen Isayama, who previously worked at the investment firm DCM, where he invested in Renren, a social network service in Mainland China. According to his recent Facebook posting, this new effort was made possible by working with co-founding members Shiichi Saijo and Masataka Matsumoto [2]. Innovation Network Corporation of Japan is the country’s state-run…
Japan’s Nikkei reported today that Silicon Valley-based investment company WiL (World Innovation Lab) has formed a new fund focused on startups in Japan and the Valley, raising $300 million from a number of Japanese companies: All Nippon Airways, NTT Group, Isetan Mitsukoshi Holdings, Hakuhodo DY Group, Daiwa Securities, JVC Kenwood, Benesse Holdings, and Innovation Network Corporation of Japan [1].
Their potential investees are startups developing new products and services in fields like consumer electronics, e-commerce, or motor vehicles, making the most of smartphone and big data technologies. They expect the size of each investment to be in the range from $5 million to $50 million, with about six to eight investments being made per year. The Nikkei says that $300 million is a figure that equate to 30% of all startup investments in Japan in FY 2012.
The investment fund was founded by Japanese venture capitalist Gen Isayama, who previously worked at the investment firm DCM, where he invested in Renren, a social network service in Mainland China. According to his recent Facebook posting, this new effort was made possible by working with co-founding members Shiichi Saijo and Masataka Matsumoto [2].
Shinichi Saijo was previously the CEOs of CyberAgent Ventures and CyberAgent America. He was appointed director at Japanese payment startup Coiney earlier this year, and has been helping Japanese startups expand their businesses. Masataka Matsumoto co-founded a web service company called P.I.M. in late 1990 and sold it off to Yahoo Japan back in 2000. He has held several executive posts at the portal company for almost ten years, but quit in 2012. ↩
Dudu Noy is the CMO at Ginger Software. Ginger’s Grammar Checker and Sentence Rephraser are available as desktop software, browser add-ons and Android mobile keyboard. Readers of our Japanese site may recall that we featured the company’s Japan launch back in April. I predict that 2014 will be remembered as the year that CaaS, or “Cognition-as-a-Service” platforms came of age. Cognition is historically a complex biological trait including skills such as decision making, problem solving, learning, reasoning, working memory and not least language, skills that today the computer sciences are chipping away at from various angles. With each major evolutionary step in computing we have seen over the last 30 years, from mainframes to PCs, the internet, cloud and SaaS, and now ubiquitous smart mobile, the new realm has not so much replaced but augmented what was there before. In the same way the promise of CaaS is to allow apps and services to function more intelligently and intuitively, allowing you to converse with them, ask questions, give commands and complete tasks more efficiently and conveniently. Apple’s Siri is one of the most famous cognition-based services in general use today. And now Google’s recent innovations to its search product for…
Dudu Noy is the CMO at Ginger Software. Ginger’s Grammar Checker and Sentence Rephraser are available as desktop software, browser add-ons and Android mobile keyboard. Readers of our Japanese site may recall that we featured the company’s Japan launch back in April.
I predict that 2014 will be remembered as the year that CaaS, or “Cognition-as-a-Service” platforms came of age. Cognition is historically a complex biological trait including skills such as decision making, problem solving, learning, reasoning, working memory and not least language, skills that today the computer sciences are chipping away at from various angles.
With each major evolutionary step in computing we have seen over the last 30 years, from mainframes to PCs, the internet, cloud and SaaS, and now ubiquitous smart mobile, the new realm has not so much replaced but augmented what was there before.
In the same way the promise of CaaS is to allow apps and services to function more intelligently and intuitively, allowing you to converse with them, ask questions, give commands and complete tasks more efficiently and conveniently.
Apple’s Siri is one of the most famous cognition-based services in general use today. And now Google’s recent innovations to its search product for mobile, incorporating more contextual conversation for queries, pits it against Siri in the cognition-augmented search arena. In both cases, the technology itself is in the cloud, even though the device is in the user’s hand. Their main functions only work when there is an internet connection [1].
The reason is that the two necessary tricks to make sense of a user’s speech input – speech recognition and natural language processing (NLP) – require cloud-based servers performing intensive processing of proprietary algorithms that is beyond the capabilities of handheld technology.
When it comes to NLP it is the sheer diversity of languages that makes it such a challenge. Old school NLP solutions were based on rigid rules that map inputs to a big list of known inputs. But the list can never be long enough, and the hard rules can never cover all the edge cases. So the experience of talking to a supposedly “smart assistant” always left the user frustrated.
You need more powerful, agile technologies that can figure out that in a sentence such as: “Yuko wants to eat an apple.”
Yuko is something that can have wants, and can eat things, and that apples are things that can be eaten. The technology needs to be able to do this for the vast majority of sentences the app is likely to encounter. This is incredibly hard, but here at Ginger and a few other places, we are doing it.
It is not just Apple and Google who are eyeing this space. IBM is now also a player with Watson, recently announcing that the same supercomputer-strength software that conquered the quiz show “Jeopardy!”, will be available to app developers through an API and software toolkit. This will allow cognitive apps that leverage cognition to be hosted in the cloud on Watson. This would obviously be a great thing for IBM’s cloud hosting service as well.
This “platform model” in tech business is nothing new of course. In recent years IBM did this with its Websphere application server technology, which went from an internal project to a software community of thousands of developers. Salesforce.com did this with its Force cloud-app development platform, as did Amazon with Amazon Web Services.
But what is different with CaaS platforms is that cognitive powers will be baked in to the operating system, and all the apps that are developed on that platform. That will bring intelligence to a mass public in a wide variety of as yet unimagined contexts.
At Ginger we have not opened up our technology as a platform via an API yet, but we are providing the benefits of its cognitive powers to a mass user base globally. Our technology uses statistical algorithms in conjunction with natural language processing, referencing a vast database of trillions of English sentences that have been scoured from the web. This allows us to work out what the users of our applications are trying to communicate, be it in Microsoft Office apps, Gmail, Facebook or wherever, and correct their mistakes and suggest improvements to their expressions.
One thing is for sure – this is a really interesting space to work, and it will be fun to see where computer based cognition will go in 2014.
As an exception, Siri can be used to control some local apps. ↩