This morning I want to share a little about a really incredible typography initiative from Japan called the Noramoji Project. Ongoing for a few month now, the project’s goal is to capture older, interesting fonts seen in the real world (on store fronts, for example), and then analyze their characteristics to extrapolate a complete font set. Here’s a short (lightly edited) excerpt from the project website: Original fonts used in the signs of local stores may not be sophisticated as a precisely designed commercial font, but have a unique charm. This project’s starting point was to rediscover the appeal of craftsmanship and the aging of the materials. After rediscovering and analysis, fonts are reproduced from them. Distribution of the font will make it possible for people to know about the font. […] Profits from the font will be refunded to the owner of the signs, helping the font and the sign to survive. Why not give it a try? If you like this idea, consider getting behind it buy purchasing some fonts (there’s a donate option that gives back to store owners), or one of the many cool t-shirts from their web store.
This morning I want to share a little about a really incredible typography initiative from Japan called the Noramoji Project. Ongoing for a few month now, the project’s goal is to capture older, interesting fonts seen in the real world (on store fronts, for example), and then analyze their characteristics to extrapolate a complete font set.
Here’s a short (lightly edited) excerpt from the project website:
Original fonts used in the signs of local stores may not be sophisticated as a precisely designed commercial font, but have a unique charm. This project’s starting point was to rediscover the appeal of craftsmanship and the aging of the materials. After rediscovering and analysis, fonts are reproduced from them. Distribution of the font will make it possible for people to know about the font. […] Profits from the font will be refunded to the owner of the signs, helping the font and the sign to survive. Why not give it a try?
If you like this idea, consider getting behind it buy purchasing some fonts (there’s a donate option that gives back to store owners), or one of the many cool t-shirts from their web store.
Back in January we reported that Tokyo-based digital advertising network and game publisher Adways has invested in and partnered with Korean growth hacking startup 5Rocks. At the time we mentioned that Adways planned to integrate 5Rocks segment-specific user behavior analytics into its own app tracking tool Party Track, in an effort to make it a one-stop analytics solution for marketing attribution and insights into in-app user behavior. According to a brief announcement today, that integration has now finally begun. Adways CEO Haruhisa Okamura made a brief statement: Adways is always seeking the way to support our clients to maximize the profit by using our service – last year we released Party Track and realized the need to focus on not only ad-analysis but more detailed analysis on user basis. I believe this business tie-up with 5Rocks will help app developers to solve more issues.
Back in January we reported that Tokyo-based digital advertising network and game publisher Adways has invested in and partnered with Korean growth hacking startup 5Rocks. At the time we mentioned that Adways planned to integrate 5Rocks segment-specific user behavior analytics into its own app tracking tool Party Track, in an effort to make it a one-stop analytics solution for marketing attribution and insights into in-app user behavior.
According to a brief announcement today, that integration has now finally begun. Adways CEO Haruhisa Okamura made a brief statement:
Adways is always seeking the way to support our clients to maximize the profit by using our service – last year we released Party Track and realized the need to focus on not only ad-analysis but more detailed analysis on user basis. I believe this business tie-up with 5Rocks will help app developers to solve more issues.
Cloud storage company Box (box.com) announced its entry into the Japanese market at an event here in Tokyo yesterday. In addition to opening an office with ten staffers here in the Japanese capital, the company also announced a number of local companies that have committed to using their secure file sharing and collaboration solution. These companies include DeNA, famima.com (Family Mart’s online presence), JGC (a global engineering contractor), Mitsubishi Estate (real estate), Sanrio Entertainment Co Ltd, and Waseda University. Box also announced Konica Minolta, NTT Communications, and Cybozu as new platform integration partners joining the Box Partner Network. Box Japan, or K.K. Box Japan, will be led by newly appointed president and managing director Katsunori Furuichi, who previously served as president and CEO of Verisign Japan. It’s good to see such a high profile cloud player moving into Japan and partnering with so many major companies. Thus far Japan has been relatively slow to adopt cloud solutions on the enterprise level, and a step like this one should help accelerate change.
Aaron Lavie, Box co-founder and CEO
Cloud storage company Box (box.com) announced its entry into the Japanese market at an event here in Tokyo yesterday.
In addition to opening an office with ten staffers here in the Japanese capital, the company also announced a number of local companies that have committed to using their secure file sharing and collaboration solution. These companies include DeNA, famima.com (Family Mart’s online presence), JGC (a global engineering contractor), Mitsubishi Estate (real estate), Sanrio Entertainment Co Ltd, and Waseda University. Box also announced Konica Minolta, NTT Communications, and Cybozu as new platform integration partners joining the Box Partner Network.
Box Japan, or K.K. Box Japan, will be led by newly appointed president and managing director Katsunori Furuichi, who previously served as president and CEO of Verisign Japan.
It’s good to see such a high profile cloud player moving into Japan and partnering with so many major companies. Thus far Japan has been relatively slow to adopt cloud solutions on the enterprise level, and a step like this one should help accelerate change.
Hong Kong-based online brokerage 8 Securities has officially launched its localized Japanese website just a few hours ago (8securities.co.jp), which will support its services for Japan when they launch in the coming weeks. The company’s Wealth Management service is scheduled to launch in early June, and its Social Trading Portal will follow in July. With intentions to expand from Hong Kong to cover both Japan and the Greater China area, this step into Japan represents a bold move for the company which looks to be growing well. I understand that currently 8 Securities will be operating profitably in 2014, with its bottom line increasing $4 million from 2012 to 2013. It boasts about 50,000 customers [1], with the average customer holding about $40,000 of investments. About 8% of their users access trading on mobile (the portal is web-based), and that approach will certainly serve them well in Japan where smartphone usage is relatively high. Unique to Japan Regarding the Wealth Management offering, the company’s CEO, Mikaal Abdulla, elaborates on how it works: We are offering Japan customers a simple way to invest in a global portfolio of up to 17 exchange traded funds. Customers complete a 3 minute online survey…
8 Securities’ Japanese page
Hong Kong-based online brokerage 8 Securities has officially launched its localized Japanese website just a few hours ago (8securities.co.jp), which will support its services for Japan when they launch in the coming weeks. The company’s Wealth Management service is scheduled to launch in early June, and its Social Trading Portal will follow in July.
With intentions to expand from Hong Kong to cover both Japan and the Greater China area, this step into Japan represents a bold move for the company which looks to be growing well. I understand that currently 8 Securities will be operating profitably in 2014, with its bottom line increasing $4 million from 2012 to 2013. It boasts about 50,000 customers [1], with the average customer holding about $40,000 of investments.
About 8% of their users access trading on mobile (the portal is web-based), and that approach will certainly serve them well in Japan where smartphone usage is relatively high.
Unique to Japan
Regarding the Wealth Management offering, the company’s CEO, Mikaal Abdulla, elaborates on how it works:
We are offering Japan customers a simple way to invest in a global portfolio of up to 17 exchange traded funds. Customers complete a 3 minute online survey to assess their risk profile and time horizon and we deliver a global portfolio that matches their goals. Its that simple.
8 Securities’ Social Trading Portal is, in my view, its most intriguing technology, a peer-to-peer service that lets users view how the community is trading as a whole, and even get push notifications for activity on watched stocks, traders, geographies, or times. Mikaal adds, “Unlike social trading mobile apps or bulletin boards, we have combined the social interaction and the actual trade. This has not been done before.”
Interestingly, 8 Securities is aiming to eventually offer this particular service via the web at no cost, with the goal of attaining 1 million registered users. That could serve as a great way to bring potential customers in the door who might then might begin investing with a brokerage account. That’s really clever.
Mikaal explains that they are also planning to launch the Social Trading Platform in Mainland China in late 2014. He explains that they develop all their products in English, Chinese (simplified and traditional), and Japanese, so expansion of the tech itself will be more or less a turn-key process.
These services promise to help Japanese individuals to invest in global markets more easily, and Mikaal notes that both product lines “are totally unique in Japan and solve real customer problems.”
To learn more about 8 Securities and its push into Japan, do check out the company’s YouTube Channel which has a number of informative new videos in Japanese, including this brief introduction to the service.
Mikaal explains that this is 50,000 active accounts with assets, which differs slightly from some previous reports (like this one) about 8 Securities because of a redefinition of ‘active’, which I understand is now in line with industry norms. ↩
United Inc, the Japanese maker of smartphone customization app Cocoppa, announced today that their flagship app has surpassed 25 million downloads, as of May 16. Cocoppa is a standout Japan success story in that it has quite successfully won fans in overseas markets, with 84% of their users from outside Japan. The service originally started back in July of 2012, averaging just over a million new downloads a month. As for user engagement, Cocoppa has seen 600,000 screen icons contributed to its platform, as well as 130,000 wallpapers. As you can see in the chart below, Cocoppa’s user base skews towards iOS. The Android version of the app has only been around for about a year (launched in May 2013), so expect this to be a more balanced distribution quite soon. Recently Cocoppa was challenged on its home turf by mobile giant Line, which launched its own homescreen customization app, Line Deco. That application is doing respectably well in major Asian markets, so this could be an interesting battle to watch in the coming months.
United Inc, the Japanese maker of smartphone customization app Cocoppa, announced today that their flagship app has surpassed 25 million downloads, as of May 16.
Cocoppa is a standout Japan success story in that it has quite successfully won fans in overseas markets, with 84% of their users from outside Japan. The service originally started back in July of 2012, averaging just over a million new downloads a month. As for user engagement, Cocoppa has seen 600,000 screen icons contributed to its platform, as well as 130,000 wallpapers.
As you can see in the chart below, Cocoppa’s user base skews towards iOS. The Android version of the app has only been around for about a year (launched in May 2013), so expect this to be a more balanced distribution quite soon.
Recently Cocoppa was challenged on its home turf by mobile giant Line, which launched its own homescreen customization app, Line Deco. That application is doing respectably well in major Asian markets, so this could be an interesting battle to watch in the coming months.
Back in February we briefly introduced the eight startups joining Orange Fab Tokyo, one of the regional accelerator programs from the French telecom Orange. Those startups, if you need a refresher, are: Abeja: An insights solution for retail stores that uses image recognition technology to estimate age and gender of customers. Jin-Magic: Internet traffic optimization technology that aims to stabilize TCP sessions. Livepass: Push notification platform for mobile app developers, enabling better contact with users Locarise: Analytics service for retail stores that makes use of wi-fi signals from smartphones (Related) Mashroom: Developing a telecommunications device for touch-screen devices called FlashTouch, which allows the transmission of data using visible light and capacitive touch. NetLED: Network lighting control system, leveraging the cloud to more efficiently use and monitor wirelessly networked lights. Pigmal: Developing PnPkin, an ID for smartphones that users the audio jack. (Related) sMedio: Lets you share photos, videos, music, or applications using Miracast technology. This past week Orange Fab held a demo day where eight of these startups pitched to an audience of about 100. Five of the startups – Abeja, Jin Magic, LivePass, Locarise, and NetLED – were selected (prior to the event) to move on to Orange’s global…
Back in February we briefly introduced the eight startups joining Orange Fab Tokyo, one of the regional accelerator programs from the French telecom Orange. Those startups, if you need a refresher, are:
Abeja: An insights solution for retail stores that uses image recognition technology to estimate age and gender of customers.
Jin-Magic: Internet traffic optimization technology that aims to stabilize TCP sessions.
Livepass: Push notification platform for mobile app developers, enabling better contact with users
Locarise: Analytics service for retail stores that makes use of wi-fi signals from smartphones (Related)
Mashroom: Developing a telecommunications device for touch-screen devices called FlashTouch, which allows the transmission of data using visible light and capacitive touch.
NetLED: Network lighting control system, leveraging the cloud to more efficiently use and monitor wirelessly networked lights.
Pigmal: Developing PnPkin, an ID for smartphones that users the audio jack. (Related)
sMedio: Lets you share photos, videos, music, or applications using Miracast technology.
This past week Orange Fab held a demo day where eight of these startups pitched to an audience of about 100. Five of the startups – Abeja, Jin Magic, LivePass, Locarise, and NetLED – were selected (prior to the event) to move on to Orange’s global demo day in Paris on June 12. They will join other Orange family startups from the US, France, Poland, and Israel.
It will be especially interesting to see Abeja and Locarise get some global exposure, given that they are both retailer metrics solutions, a sector that is more and more popular of late. NetLED will also be one to watch, considering the recent buzz around the Internet of Things and Google’s recent acquisition of smart thermostat startup Nest.
We understand that Orange Fab has already begun accepting applications for its ‘second season’ here in Tokyo, and they are also accepting interested startups for first batches in Seoul and Taipei. To learn more about those programs, more information can be found here.
A couple of weeks ago Japanese mobile news startup Gunosy launched an English version of their app for the UK. Now today the company has announced that it has released its iOS app in the US as well, with an Android version to follow at the end of the month. The company says that it is targeting 80 million installs outside of Japan, and 100 million worldwide. And while I’m usually encouraged to see Japanese companies venturing abroad, there are three reasons I can think of why this app – in its current form – will fail spectacularly. No ‘readability’ view – I’ve written about why I think so before. Gunosy does not provide news articles in a stripped-down, Readability-style view. Most Western news apps, in contrast, do. Check out the view of the same article below, first on Gunosy, then on Pocket. Which would you prefer to read on mobile? Late mover advantage squandered – As a startup, if you enter a market late as Gunosy is now doing, you benefit from seeing what competitors have done, and you have a chance to do it better. Gunosy, for some reason, seems to think it has a chance against the…
A couple of weeks ago Japanese mobile news startup Gunosy launched an English version of their app for the UK. Now today the company has announced that it has released its iOS app in the US as well, with an Android version to follow at the end of the month.
The company says that it is targeting 80 million installs outside of Japan, and 100 million worldwide. And while I’m usually encouraged to see Japanese companies venturing abroad, there are three reasons I can think of why this app – in its current form – will fail spectacularly.
No ‘readability’ view – I’ve written about why I think so before. Gunosy does not provide news articles in a stripped-down, Readability-style view. Most Western news apps, in contrast, do. Check out the view of the same article below, first on Gunosy, then on Pocket. Which would you prefer to read on mobile?
Late mover advantage squandered – As a startup, if you enter a market late as Gunosy is now doing, you benefit from seeing what competitors have done, and you have a chance to do it better. Gunosy, for some reason, seems to think it has a chance against the competition without bothering to do anything. In my view, their app does not in any way compare with even the 2012 version of Flipboard (for example), let alone the current one.
Doesn’t serve the user first – Just for kicks, I tried to send an article from Gunosy to Pocket. It worked, but the link that Gunosy lets users share not actually the article link, but a Gunosy link of this format: https://gunosy.today/r/gEqFt. At first I thought it might be just a link shortener, but it’s not, as you can see below. It’s pure Gunosy promotion with a download link and the top, and below too if you scroll down. Warning, this mess may induce flashbacks to the Hootsuite toolbar.
So where is Gunosy’s proposed value add? I confess, I have no idea. Perhaps KDDI knows? I can think of 12 million reasons why they should know!
Gunosy’s push notifications/reminders at different times during the day might be touted as a differentiator, but it’s not really a big selling point.
I think if the company hopes to do well beyond Japan, they’ll need to make some serious user-focused iterations on this app first.
GREE Ventures has just announced the initial closing of its second fund. Dubbed the AT-I Investment Limited Partnership, this is a 5 billion yen fund (or about $50 million) which it will use to target tech startups in Japan and South East Asia, mostly series A stage companies at about 100 million yen to 300 million yen per company ($1 million to $3 million). Investors in the fund include GREE Inc, SME Support Japan, Credit Saison, Ateam Inc, and Mizuho Capital. The announcement notes that a second closing will likely come later this summer. GREE Ventures (PDF)
GREE Ventures has just announced the initial closing of its second fund. Dubbed the AT-I Investment Limited Partnership, this is a 5 billion yen fund (or about $50 million) which it will use to target tech startups in Japan and South East Asia, mostly series A stage companies at about 100 million yen to 300 million yen per company ($1 million to $3 million).
Investors in the fund include GREE Inc, SME Support Japan, Credit Saison, Ateam Inc, and Mizuho Capital. The announcement notes that a second closing will likely come later this summer.
The folks over at Tech-On have reported about some clever infrared sensor technology from Fujitsu that visualizes the movements of shoppers in a store. By using the recorded data, a store manager can gain insights into whether or not their product displays are effective or find out information about their in-store queues. The solution sounds somewhat similar to that of startup Locarise, which instead determines foot traffic metrics based on wi-fi signals collected from customers’ smartphones. Our readers may recall that Locarise was a special award winner at last October’s OnLab Demo Day. Via TechOn
Photo via Tech-On
The folks over at Tech-On have reported about some clever infrared sensor technology from Fujitsu that visualizes the movements of shoppers in a store. By using the recorded data, a store manager can gain insights into whether or not their product displays are effective or find out information about their in-store queues.
The solution sounds somewhat similar to that of startup Locarise, which instead determines foot traffic metrics based on wi-fi signals collected from customers’ smartphones. Our readers may recall that Locarise was a special award winner at last October’s OnLab Demo Day.
Yesterday we told you about Mixi’s investment in Taiwanese recruitment site Job178. It turns out that this was not the company’s only recent activity in Taiwan, as it has also just launched a localized version of its hit mobile game Monster Strike. The Chinese name for the game is Guàiwu Dànzhū (or ‘Monster Marbles’) and currently it’s only available on Android, but an iOS version will be coming soon. Mixi is partnering with So-net Entertainment Taiwan to launch and market the game in the region. A Monster Strike homepage has been launched at monster-strike.com.tw along with a ‘how to’ page for new users. Interestingly the company is calling this its first overseas deployment of Monster Strike, so I’m going to interpret that as an indication that Mixi’s efforts to bring Monster Strike to mainland China via a partnership with Tencent have not yet come to fruition yet. I expect that perhaps Taiwan is a dry run of sorts before launching the game on the mainland. Mixi has also announced that Monster Strike now has accumulated over six million downloads. We figure that this is still largely due to heavy TV advertising here in Japan, as we mentioned back in April.
Yesterday we told you about Mixi’s investment in Taiwanese recruitment site Job178. It turns out that this was not the company’s only recent activity in Taiwan, as it has also just launched a localized version of its hit mobile game Monster Strike. The Chinese name for the game is Guàiwu Dànzhū (or ‘Monster Marbles’) and currently it’s only available on Android, but an iOS version will be coming soon.
Mixi is partnering with So-net Entertainment Taiwan to launch and market the game in the region. A Monster Strike homepage has been launched at monster-strike.com.tw along with a ‘how to’ page for new users.
Interestingly the company is calling this its first overseas deployment of Monster Strike, so I’m going to interpret that as an indication that Mixi’s efforts to bring Monster Strike to mainland China via a partnership with Tencent have not yet come to fruition yet. I expect that perhaps Taiwan is a dry run of sorts before launching the game on the mainland.
Mixi has also announced that Monster Strike now has accumulated over six million downloads. We figure that this is still largely due to heavy TV advertising here in Japan, as we mentioned back in April.
