Tokyo-based startup Emet Creation introduced a new mobile app last week, which enables users to browse incessantly trending video clips. The app is called ViMET and now available for iOS on the iTunes AppStore.
Now that mobile broadband internet use is widespread in Japan, more users have come to enjoy video clips during intervals in daily lives such as a break at work or transit time. The most popular type of content among those viewed include seconds-long comedy-variety video clips, typically easygoing rather than movies or dramas that need deep thinking. Yet almost users spend 80% of their browsing time looking for clips that they may like, in contrast to the remaining 20% of the time used to actually watch them.
Playback screen
Emet Creation has developed a platform allowing users to keep browsing videos from YouTube that they may like based on deep learning about their browsing history as well as collaborative filtering with the browsing histories of other ViMET users. When one watches a video clip using the app, one just presses a heart button on screen if one likes the clip, otherwise take no action and then proceed to the next clip. In this way, the app’s engine will learn one’s preference. We were told that the team aims to make it the video version of Japan’s curated news app Gunosy.
Emet Creation CEO Atsufumi Otsuka explained:
Since launch of the app in open beta in March this year, we have been improving its algorithm to better capture the preference of a user while collecting feedback from beta users. With this effort, an average usage time per app launch was overwhelmingly improved from 4 minutes to 27 minutes. We can’t find the demographics of our users but many uses before going asleep.
27 minutes is a very high number, especially compared to an average usage time of typical curated news apps, which is just five minutes. On average, our users launch the ViMET app twice a week, or eight times a month (using four hours a month), meaning that our service is more valuable as a media app because of the longer contact time with users. Looking forward, we want to add a new feature called My ViMET, allowing users to create a channel curating just their favorite video clips.
Diagram provided by Emet Creation. According to a recent report from the Nielsen Company Japan, there are 37 million people using mobile video services in Japan.
According to Emet Creation, there’s no competitor in this space globally, especially in the category focused on a platform for browsing personalized short video clips. The company will start developing an Android version soon, aiming to acquire more users that like mobile video browsing.
Emet Creation was founded in 2014 by its president, Yanagimoto So, holding more than 40,000 Twitter followers together with CEO Atsufumi Otsuka, who used to work for the giant Japanese ad agency Dentsu. They secured a round of angel funding worth 20 million yen (about $170,000 in the exchange rate at the time) from former Intel Japan president Nobuyuki Denda and other angel investors in November of 2014, followed by securing additional funding worth 20 million yen (about $164,000) from another undisclosed angel investor in May this year.
See the original story in Japanese. At first glance this tiny device looks like an ordinary accessory, but this product is a little more specialized than it appears. Ontenna is a device that, when clipped to the user’s hair just like a hair pin, can convey the character of nearby sounds to the wearer using light and vibration. The device is being developed as an aid for people who have lost or were born without their hearing. Sound conveyed through vibration and light to the user’s hair When I was a kid, I had a few classmates at the school in the US I was going to who were deaf. Everyone in the class knew how to say a few things in sign language like “What?” and “Thanks.” One thing I remember particularly well was the disaster drills. The alarm would go off and it was so loud you had to cover your ears, but they couldn’t hear it at all. They only could tell that something was going on by looking around at their surroundings. What if someone was alone in a situation like that? There’s no way to know. Ontenna may be able to fix that problem. The…
Ontenna, a new interface that allows sound to be felt from your hair
At first glance this tiny device looks like an ordinary accessory, but this product is a little more specialized than it appears. Ontenna is a device that, when clipped to the user’s hair just like a hair pin, can convey the character of nearby sounds to the wearer using light and vibration. The device is being developed as an aid for people who have lost or were born without their hearing.
Sound conveyed through vibration and light to the user’s hair
When I was a kid, I had a few classmates at the school in the US I was going to who were deaf. Everyone in the class knew how to say a few things in sign language like “What?” and “Thanks.” One thing I remember particularly well was the disaster drills. The alarm would go off and it was so loud you had to cover your ears, but they couldn’t hear it at all. They only could tell that something was going on by looking around at their surroundings.
What if someone was alone in a situation like that? There’s no way to know. Ontenna may be able to fix that problem. The concept behind Ontenna is a device that can allow the user to feel sound through their hair kind of like how cats can sense movement in the air with their whiskers.
By translation sounds in the 30dB to 90dB range into 256 different levels of vibration and light, the pattern and quality of sounds can be expressed through light and vibration. Through this, the rhythm, pattern, loudness, and other qualities of sounds can be conveyed to the user. Just by clipping the device to your hair, deaf people will now be able to feel the sounds that they couldn’t hear at all before.
Chance encounter at the university culture festival
The developer of Ontenna is Tatsuya Honda, a UI designer who began his first job at a manufacturer. Prior to that, he was majoring in information and security in the School of Systems Information Science at Future University Hakodate in Hokkaido, Japan. Having a strong interest in art and design since from then on, in his graduate thesis research he was a member of the design office aiming to solve problems in society with the power of design and technology.
For Honda, the deciding factor with Ontenna was a chance encounter at his university’s culture festival. He happened to see a deaf person at the festival and decided to show the person around the university campus using gestures. Afterwards, upon parting, Honda was handed a business card, and invited to go to an onsen (public bath and spa) sometime (Hakodate is well-known for its onsen).
Honda explained:
The person I had just met was the president of an NPO called Hakomimi.net, Hakodate Sound Visualization Research Society. I became very interested in deaf communication and I joined the research society. I studied sign language, volunteered as a sign language interpreter, and established a sign language circle at my university.
Thus Honda found himself exploring a new research theme, using technology and design to convey sound to deaf people, and beginning research at a 4th year university student in 2012 on what would become the Ontenna prototype.
With funding from government grants and 3D printing, 200 prototypes were made
Last year, still continuing his research as a graduate student, he was selected by the MITOU Program, a bi-annual software engineering promotion program run by the Governmental IT Promotional Agency of Japan. Using the funding gained through this, and by making use of 3D printing, he has produced over 200 prototypes. The result being an Ontenna that can be worn as a hair clip with very little difficulty or discomfort.
Honda’s project has come this far with cooperation and help from many deaf people. Even now, the most recent prototype is being tested through daily use for the purpose of collecting feedback. Though they have cleared many hurdles to get to this point, they say that still the most difficult problems to solve have been the shape of the device, and where it should be clipped.
The very first prototype of Ontenna was just a simple rectangular box in the shape circuit board. After receiving feedback from users voicing concerns about the angular sharpness of the device, the design has gradually come to the soft rounded form of the latest model. As for how to wear the device, feedback suggested an aversion to attaching the device directly to the skin because of possible irritation or discomfort. The next step was to try and have users attach the Ontenna to their clothes, but the result was that it was sometimes difficult to feel the vibrations.
Honda continued:
Fingertips, arms… we tried a lot of different body parts. Deaf people use their arms and hands to communicate in sign language, so wearing the device in one of those places proved to be cumbersome. Through lots of trial and error, we finally came to the conclusion that wearing the device in your hair, which could easily sense vibration and wouldn’t directly touch the skin, was the best option.
There are two types of Ontenna models one which is worn in the hair like a clip, and the other which is worn as an earring. Originally there was only the hair clip model, but for deaf people who are old and may not have much hair, that model wasn’t practical, so they created another version which when clipped on the ear feels just like wearing a regular earring.
The Ontenna earring model
“I felt like I could hear the sound of cicadas for the first time.”
Another difficulty during the development process was dealing with the strength of the vibration. An experiment was done with both deaf participants and those with normal hearing. With an Ontenna attached to both right and left sides, participants would indicate using a button which side a sound was coming from. In the experiment, it was found that with deaf participants, they could signal immediately which direction the stimulus sound came from and that the vibrations were very well tuned.
If the vibration is too strong it would cause some discomfort, but if it’s too weak it would be difficult to notice. With the current Ontenna model, it is built so that all sounds in the user’s surrounding environment are conveyed, which means if you were to go to a busy, crowded place like Shibuya, the device would constantly be vibrating. Dealing with different environments while still trying to convey sound with the appropriate level of vibration is something they’re still working to solve.
Positive feedback has been coming in from deaf users who wear the device at home or around town in their daily activities. By wearing Ontenna, users have aid they can now tell the difference between the sound of the intercom and the telephone, or realize for example if the cord to vacuum cleaner got pulled out of the outlet (see video above). For these users, by being able to sense sounds, a variety of difficulties are being overcome.
Honda added:
One girl who had tried Ontenna said something that really left a big impression on me. ‘At school I was taught that cicadas make a long buzzing sound, but I never knew what kind of rhythm or pattern that sound had until now. Once I put on Ontenna I felt like I could hear the sound of cicadas for the first time.’ I was really happy to hear that.
Could Ontenna be a part of the 2021 Deaflympics?
Tatsuya Honda, the researcher behind Ontenna
Questions from deaf people as well as the parents of children with hearing disabilities wanting to know when they’ll be able to buy Ontenna have been increasing.
That said, Ontenna is still a project that Tatsuya Honda in a collaborative effort has designed and developed at the research level. He still sees mass production as being a ways off, but while keeping an eye on future business cooperation, hopes to get Ontenna into the hands of as many deaf and hearing disabled people as possible, as soon as possible.
One long term goal with Ontenna has to do with the Deaflympics planned to be held in 2021. Not quite as well known as the Paralympics, the Deaflympics are Olympic Games for deaf people.
Honda concluded:
In the far future, I think it would great if athletes at the 2021 Deaflympics used Ontenna in competition. For example, track and field players could use Ontenna when working on the timing and rhythm of their strides to possibly improve their record. If Ontenna can be a part of these athletes setting new records, that would be so wonderful.
See the original story in Japanese. Dentsu Ventures, a corporate venture capital of giant Japanese ad agency Dentsu (TSE:4324), announced today that it has invested in NYC-based Ninoch in a seed round. Financial details have not been disclosed. For Dentsu Ventures, this is the second investment in startups following the one in Jibo, a robotics startup born out of MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), where the investment company injected about $3 million in the startup in early August. Ninoh was founded by two people who graduated from Columbia University in late 2012, being born out of NYC-based Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator in 2013. The company has developed a curated content publishing platform called Agolo. Using their natural language processing and big data analysis engine, the platform sorts out and reedits an enormous amount of unstructured data including reports, articles, social network posts, news updates, and images. It allows media site owners to change the method of digesting information as well as to automate the article generation process, in addition to handling real-time content-based marketing and contextual advertising. Our readers may recall that BuzzFeed recently announced an upcoming expansion into the Japanese market in partnership with Yahoo Japan, while a number of…
Dentsu Ventures, a corporate venture capital of giant Japanese ad agency Dentsu (TSE:4324), announced today that it has invested in NYC-based Ninoch in a seed round. Financial details have not been disclosed. For Dentsu Ventures, this is the second investment in startups following the one in Jibo, a robotics startup born out of MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), where the investment company injected about $3 million in the startup in early August.
Ninoh was founded by two people who graduated from Columbia University in late 2012, being born out of NYC-based Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator in 2013. The company has developed a curated content publishing platform called Agolo. Using their natural language processing and big data analysis engine, the platform sorts out and reedits an enormous amount of unstructured data including reports, articles, social network posts, news updates, and images. It allows media site owners to change the method of digesting information as well as to automate the article generation process, in addition to handling real-time content-based marketing and contextual advertising.
Our readers may recall that BuzzFeed recently announced an upcoming expansion into the Japanese market in partnership with Yahoo Japan, while a number of new media sites like Vice Media, Contently, NowThis and Upworthy, not to mention Business Insider, are emerging out of the U.S.; as a means of enabling media sites to keep creating popular content pieces at a lower cost, such platforms including Agolo will be in the future spotlight in Japan.
In a past CNN program featuring Israel as a Startup Nation, I saw a startup developing an engine which can generate headlines from news articles based on machine learning. While I unfortunately forgot the name of the startup, I can assume Ninoh may have at least several competitors cultivating similar technology around the world.
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Kabuku, the startup known for its 3D printing service brand Rinkak, announced today that it has fundraised 400 million yen ($3.3 million) from Global Brain. This round is not yet closed but Global Brain leads other investors who have potential business synergy with Kabuku. The funds will be used to develop a cloud-based production management system for 3D printing factories as well as expand partnerships with third-party 3D printing manufacturing services, both of which were recently announced. Launched back in 2013, Kabuku fundraised 20 million yen from angel investors in June of the same year, followed by securing 200 million yen ($1.7 million) funding from CyberAgent Ventures (CAV) and Fuji Startup Ventures (FSV) in June 2014. Originally launched as a showcase and marketplace of 3D printing products, Kabuku has diversified its business to providing other solutions such as Rinkak 3D Printing PPP (Printing Partner Program) that connects orders to relevant printing factories based on manufacturing needs, and Rinkak 3D Printing MMS (Manufacturing Management Service) that provides a cloud-based production management system for 3D printing factories. As part of their open-innovation effort where a startup collaboratively works with corporates, Kabuku provides customized choices of…
Tokyo-based Kabuku, the startup known for its 3D printing service brand Rinkak, announced today that it has fundraised 400 million yen ($3.3 million) from Global Brain. This round is not yet closed but Global Brain leads other investors who have potential business synergy with Kabuku. The funds will be used to develop a cloud-based production management system for 3D printing factories as well as expand partnerships with third-party 3D printing manufacturing services, both of which were recently announced.
Launched back in 2013, Kabuku fundraised 20 million yen from angel investors in June of the same year, followed by securing 200 million yen ($1.7 million) funding from CyberAgent Ventures (CAV) and Fuji Startup Ventures (FSV) in June 2014.
Originally launched as a showcase and marketplace of 3D printing products, Kabuku has diversified its business to providing other solutions such as Rinkak 3D Printing PPP (Printing Partner Program) that connects orders to relevant printing factories based on manufacturing needs, and Rinkak 3D Printing MMS (Manufacturing Management Service) that provides a cloud-based production management system for 3D printing factories.
See the original story in Japanese. Fukuoka-based Maisin & Co. released a new product called Boost in beta on August 27th, as a platform for system developers to save and share their source codes. In March, Maisin was graduated from the second batch of Slogan Viling Ventures, an EduTech-focused acceleration program in Tokyo. Subsequently the company secured an undisclosed amount of funding from Slogan Coant and Viling Venture Partners, in addition to the BonAngels Pacemaker Fund. Based on a series of interviews with some hundred system developers, Maisin CEO Kazumasa Yokomizo found out that they would save pieces of their source codes using various tools. In order to help them put these pieces together and manage them with a tool, Yokomizo and his team developed the Boost app and introduced it as beta this time. The app allows developers to save short codes and snippets as well as markdown files for every module into the cloud then share them with their other team members, while completed source codes are typically shared via GitHub. The Boost app is provided as a Mac App, allowing users to save and retrieve their codes in the app. While the app is available for free to individual users, Maisin is considering a charge fee for team usage after the official release. Looking ahead, the…
Fukuoka-based Maisin & Co. released a new product called Boost in beta on August 27th, as a platform for system developers to save and share their source codes.
In March, Maisin was graduated from the second batch of Slogan Viling Ventures, an EduTech-focused acceleration program in Tokyo. Subsequently the company secured an undisclosed amount of funding from Slogan Coant and Viling Venture Partners, in addition to the BonAngels Pacemaker Fund.
Based on a series of interviews with some hundred system developers, Maisin CEO Kazumasa Yokomizo found out that they would save pieces of their source codes using various tools. In order to help them put these pieces together and manage them with a tool, Yokomizo and his team developed the Boost app and introduced it as beta this time.
The app allows developers to save short codes and snippets as well as markdown files for every module into the cloud then share them with their other team members, while completed source codes are typically shared via GitHub. The Boost app is provided as a Mac App, allowing users to save and retrieve their codes in the app.
Saving source codes.Retrieving source codes.Sharing source codes with other team members.
While the app is available for free to individual users, Maisin is considering a charge fee for team usage after the official release. Looking ahead, the company plans to strengthen functions like real-time update of shared source codes and team-wide communication, trying to make the app available as an open source platform.
The Boost project was launched as part of Yokomizo’s effort to fill the engineering skills gap with his CTO Junyoung Choi, with Yokomizo’s aim being elimination of extraneous programming steps upon developing an app. It will be interesting to see how favorably their concept will be received by other system developers.
Translated by Masaru Ikeda
Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy
See the original story in Japanese. Farmnote is based in Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido and has been developing a cloud-based solution for dairy farmers. The company announced today that it has fundraised 210 million yen (about $1.7 million) from Tokyo-based trading company Kanematsu (TSE:8020), Kanematsu Agritech, Japanese mobile gaming company Gree (TSE:3632), Colopl (TSE:3668) co-founder and executive vice president Kotaro Chiba, Six Apart CTO Daiji Hirata as well as an undisclosed Japanese company. Farmnote will use the funds to strengthen the development of wearable devices and peripherals for monitoring livestock, specifically collecting daily performance data on dairy cows. Incorporated in November 2013, Farmnote has been developing sensor devices and cloud-based systems focused on streamlining dairy and livestock farming operations since June 2014, leveraging a grant from the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, called the Supporting Industry initiative. The company won the top prize at Zenkoku Startup Day (literally meaning “All-Japan Startup Day”) held in Hokkaido in September 2014 despite the fact that it had been only a few months since they started working on the project. Farmnote founder Shinya Kobayashi is also known for managing Skyarc, a Hokkaido-based company providing system integration services using content management system…
Farmnote is based in Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido and has been developing a cloud-based solution for dairy farmers. The company announced today that it has fundraised 210 million yen (about $1.7 million) from Tokyo-based trading company Kanematsu (TSE:8020), Kanematsu Agritech, Japanese mobile gaming company Gree (TSE:3632), Colopl (TSE:3668) co-founder and executive vice president Kotaro Chiba, Six Apart CTO Daiji Hirata as well as an undisclosed Japanese company. Farmnote will use the funds to strengthen the development of wearable devices and peripherals for monitoring livestock, specifically collecting daily performance data on dairy cows.
Incorporated in November 2013, Farmnote has been developing sensor devices and cloud-based systems focused on streamlining dairy and livestock farming operations since June 2014, leveraging a grant from the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, called the Supporting Industry initiative. The company won the top prize at Zenkoku Startup Day (literally meaning “All-Japan Startup Day”) held in Hokkaido in September 2014 despite the fact that it had been only a few months since they started working on the project.
Farmnote founder Shinya Kobayashi is also known for managing Skyarc, a Hokkaido-based company providing system integration services using content management system Movable Type. Paying attention to the fact that 93% of livestock farmers in Japan are small-scale and keep less than 100 heads of cattle, Kobayashi has been providing these farmers with the Farmnote cloud platform for free, allowing them to manage their livestock individually via smartphone. While farmers feeding more than 100 heads of cattle have to subscribe to the premium plan, the freemium business model has made the company successful in attracting farmers. We were told that almost 3% of the entire population of dairy and livestock farmers in Japan are using Farmnote.
Kobayashi explained:
Farmnote CEO Shinya Kobayashi delivers a pitch at Zenkoku Startup Day in Sapporo, Hokkaido. (September 2014)
We are currently developing sensor devices collecting data on the cattle. Unlike typical wearable devices for humans, our unit has to be fault tolerant with a long-lasting battery because it is attached to animals, meaning difficulty attaching and removing them. We are spending our time and money to develop such a device to conduct a field test on an actual ranch.
We will provide dairy and livestock farmers using our cloud service with these sensor devices. We are not yet sure if we can sell it via one-time payment or need to adopt a monthly subscriptions model. However, our device at any rate will be easy to install so that livestock owners can handle them by themselves, without professional set-up.
The wearable devices will transmit behavioral data using radio waves while the company is not yet to announce which wireless technology will be adopted. Users have to place ‘gateway’ station equipment in multiple locations on their ranch so that signals from the devices can be appropriately captured regardless of how much their livestock moves about. While it’s typically difficult to gain access to power supply or internet on a ranch, it seems the company is addressing the issue in developing a signal-collections platform. If they can establish a technology enabling users to collect data from sensors in a field environment like on a ranch at a reasonable price, that can be applied to the entire agricultural industry beyond dairy or livestock farming and bring data-driven approaches to their businesses. Farmnote is focused on developing sensors devices and peripherals, with shipping slated from next Spring.
Kobayashi added:
The Japanese livestock market is larger than rice farming and valued about $20 billion. Consolidated with other businesses like feed producers or distribution channels for livestock, the market can be considered three or four times bigger. Starting with the services for the livestock industry, we want to collect data on animals and crops in the global farming market of the future.
The global population explosion will cause a widespread scarcity of food and farmlands in the future. To avoid this, we need to further streamline the food production process. As the streamlining efforts based on gene modification technologies are being made in the world, we would like to contribute to the improvement of food productivity, by providing methods to better manage livestock and farm products as well as helping farmers keep doing business with less dependency on their intuition.
While Farmnote has been focused on developing the cloud system, they want to hire data scientists as well as software engineers since they have some good prospects on the development of sensor devices. These positions as available not only in Tokyo but also several locations in Hokkaido. If one is interested in serving the livestock and farming industry leveraging IT skills, you can contact them to get hired.