THE BRIDGE

Rick Martin

Rick Martin

Rick Martin is a Canadian living in Japan, and is a writer and editor for The Bridge. For feedback or story pitches, feel free to contact him here.

http://1Rick.com

Articles

Discovering opportunities beyond design: Sacha Greif on ‘Discover Meteor’

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Sacha Greif is a designer and developer born in France, now based in Osaka, Japan. I’ve been interested in his work for some time, as he is also a prolific writer who frequently shares what he’s doing on his blog and on Twitter. Practical side projects of his (like Patternify and Folyo [1]) are valuable assets to the design community. For me, with my rather limited development and design skills, what I like about his output is that he can express the technicalities of development and design as well as he does. It’s all amazingly accessible, for people of all skill levels. Among Sacha’s most recent projects has been a book called Discover Meteor, written with Tom Coleman, devoted to explaining the Meteor web framework. For those not familiar with it, Meteor is a relatively easy-to-use framework built on Node.js. I’m a (perpetually) novice programmer, and even I could get set up with Meteor thanks to a handy tutorial over on the Discover Meteor blog. Incidentally, for anyone who’d like to try Meteor, Sacha and Tom have made the first four chapters of their book available for free online [2], and obviously that’s a great place to get started. For…

Sacha Greif
Sacha Greif during a visit to Tokyo last year

Sacha Greif is a designer and developer born in France, now based in Osaka, Japan. I’ve been interested in his work for some time, as he is also a prolific writer who frequently shares what he’s doing on his blog and on Twitter. Practical side projects of his (like Patternify and Folyo [1]) are valuable assets to the design community. For me, with my rather limited development and design skills, what I like about his output is that he can express the technicalities of development and design as well as he does. It’s all amazingly accessible, for people of all skill levels.

Among Sacha’s most recent projects has been a book called Discover Meteor, written with Tom Coleman, devoted to explaining the Meteor web framework. For those not familiar with it, Meteor is a relatively easy-to-use framework built on Node.js. I’m a (perpetually) novice programmer, and even I could get set up with Meteor thanks to a handy tutorial over on the Discover Meteor blog. Incidentally, for anyone who’d like to try Meteor, Sacha and Tom have made the first four chapters of their book available for free online [2], and obviously that’s a great place to get started. For folks here in Tokyo who want to connect with other Meteor enthusiasts, Sacha is organizing a meetup Thursday night:

Discover Meteor – Tokyo Meetup

When I met with him late last year, Sacha explained to me that the framework and the book are growing side-by-side, right along with the Meteor community:

There is more interest in Meteor, and people are talking about the book, which has sort has become the default book to learn Meteor. And even the guys at Meteor themselves use this as a training material and recommend it to other people.

The book has just recently passed its one year anniversary, and is now being translated into many different languages by the Meteor community. Those translations are being made available for free, which is a great way to help grow the community beyond Meteor’s San Francisco roots [3].

The full edition of the book even comes a couple of screencasts, and in my own learning experience, watching someone go through tasks step by step on the command line in immensely helpful. I like that the Meteor tutorial doesn’t assume much prequisite knowledge on the part of the user, and it provides useful links to further resources to fill the gaps when appropriate.

Sacha noted that while Meteor is a powerful tool, the way that it’s built really helps learners jump in without encountering major problems:

discover-meteor

What’s really cool is that the back and front end are integrated into one environment. It removes a lot of barriers, because, for example if you want to build a Rails app you’ll need to know HTML, CSS, Ruby and Rails, Javascript, and you may need a Javascript framework like Backbone or Angular. With Meteor, you still need HTML or CSS, but it’s much simpler to learn I think.

I understand the book has been selling pretty well, with 313 books sold (including 55 upgrades) during their recent 10-day anniversary sale.

For developers and designers who are leaders in a given field, what Sacha and Tom have done with this book is an interesting example of building a revenue stream while building a community around a growing technology. If you haven’t checked out Meteor or the Discover Meteor book yet, I encourage you to give it a read!


  1. When I mentioned to my brother, a graphic designer, that I’d be speaking with Sacha, he instantly recognized these tools as ones that he has used and loved.  ↩

  2. You can get this in PDF form by signing up for their newsletter.  ↩

  3. Regrettably, no one has stepped up to contribute to a Japanese translation of the book. So if there are any Japanese speaking Meteor enthusiasts out there, it would be great to see some involvement on that front. You can learn more about that here.  ↩

Build a website entirely on your smartphone with Dino

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Here’s a fun free web tool from Japan that lets you create websites using nothing more than your smartphone’s browser. Dino (Dino.vc) is a freemium service from the folks at Revolver Inc. which has been in beta since early this month. According to the folks over at VentureNow.jp, the company has plans to roll out Dino throughout Asia. Currently it is available in Japanese only. Below is a quick walkthrough of how site creation works on a smartphone, as I just took a few minutes to test it out for myself. First fix a title and description for your site. Browse the back-end administration settings (Japanese only currently): Add one of the pre-set photos as your background (left), or upload your own background, as I did (right): Add some content (News updates, or fill our your profile): Publish, and check out the end result! Overall it’s not a bad little service. And assuming that their beta test here in Japan goes well, I think expanding around Asia would be a wise idea. In countries where PC ownership is high, I’m not sure that there’s really much of a need for a smartphone website creation solution. But in regions where people’s…

dino_vc

Here’s a fun free web tool from Japan that lets you create websites using nothing more than your smartphone’s browser. Dino (Dino.vc) is a freemium service from the folks at Revolver Inc. which has been in beta since early this month.

According to the folks over at VentureNow.jp, the company has plans to roll out Dino throughout Asia. Currently it is available in Japanese only.

Below is a quick walkthrough of how site creation works on a smartphone, as I just took a few minutes to test it out for myself.

First fix a title and description for your site. Browse the back-end administration settings (Japanese only currently):

dino01-title-add dino01a-admin-menu

Add one of the pre-set photos as your background (left), or upload your own background, as I did (right):

dino02-background-add-preset dino02a-upload-own-background-2

Add some content (News updates, or fill our your profile):

dino06-add-content

Publish, and check out the end result!

dino11-end-result

Overall it’s not a bad little service. And assuming that their beta test here in Japan goes well, I think expanding around Asia would be a wise idea. In countries where PC ownership is high, I’m not sure that there’s really much of a need for a smartphone website creation solution. But in regions where people’s only computer might be a low-cost smartphone, then a service like Dino would be very much welcome.

As for monetization, you can create your own smartphone optimized site for free as a subdomain of Dino.vc. If you’d to roll your own domain, ad free, with support for multiple admins and Google Analytics, you can enroll in their pro plan which costs 1000 yen (about $10) per month. A business plan is also available for 3000 yen per month, supporting as many as ten administrators.

A missed opportunity for Japan’s startup ecosystem

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From KPCB’s internet trends report released yesterday, comes an interesting factoid: 60% of the top 25 tech companies [were] founded by 1st and 2nd generation Americans. (p.148, see table above) I thought this would be a good time to revisit the question we asked this time last year: As the race for high-skilled immigrants begins, does Japan want to compete? To help address that question, here’s a quote from Japanese PM Shinzo Abe from a recent TV interview, cited/translated by The Japan Times: What are immigrants? The U.S. is a country of immigrants who came from all around the world and formed the (United States). Many people have come to the country and become part of it. We won’t adopt a policy like that. That strategy may prove unwise.

tech-companies-immigrants
from KPCB Internet Trends report (click to enlarge)

From KPCB’s internet trends report released yesterday, comes an interesting factoid:

60% of the top 25 tech companies [were] founded by 1st and 2nd generation Americans. (p.148, see table above)

I thought this would be a good time to revisit the question we asked this time last year:

As the race for high-skilled immigrants begins, does Japan want to compete?

To help address that question, here’s a quote from Japanese PM Shinzo Abe from a recent TV interview, cited/translated by The Japan Times:

What are immigrants? The U.S. is a country of immigrants who came from all around the world and formed the (United States). Many people have come to the country and become part of it. We won’t adopt a policy like that.

That strategy may prove unwise.

shinzo-abe 2
Japanese PM Shinzo Abe

Yahoo Japan’s public transit app surpasses 10M downloads

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Yesterday Yahoo Japan announced that its Yahoo Transit application, which tells you directions and transit times for walking, trains, buses, and planes, has surpassed the 10 million downloads milestone as of May 18th. The app was initially released for iOS way back in 2008, and for Android back in 2011. It consistently ranks among the top tier of apps in iOS’s navigation category and Google Play’s transportation category in Japan. Via Venture Now

yahoo-transit

Yesterday Yahoo Japan announced that its Yahoo Transit application, which tells you directions and transit times for walking, trains, buses, and planes, has surpassed the 10 million downloads milestone as of May 18th.

The app was initially released for iOS way back in 2008, and for Android back in 2011. It consistently ranks among the top tier of apps in iOS’s navigation category and Google Play’s transportation category in Japan.

Via Venture Now

In Japan, Sega Networks hits the pub to promote its mobile soccer game

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Sega Networks will hold a collaboration event in the month of June around its mobile soccer game ‘Saka tsuku shoot’ [1] here in Japan with the British pub franchise The Hub, across its 66 locations in the country. When a customer buys a drink, they’ll receive a card with a serial code, which could mean a rare player addition for gamers if they’re lucky. Also in June, there will be a ‘Hub Cup’ held within the game itself, where players can also get rare ‘gacha’ cards for a chance to get new players for use in the game. With the World Cup starting next month, I assume that the Hub will see lots of customers (the time difference with Brazil is a bit rough), and perhaps these are just the audience that Sega is trying to reach. It’s a smart maneuver on the part of Sega Networks to get their game in front of enthusiastic football fans. The sports title was released by Sega Networks late last year, peaking as the number one iOS sports app in Japan back on May 15th, and as the fourth ranked Android sports game in Japan this past Monday (May 26th). If you’d like…

hub-sega-networks

Sega Networks will hold a collaboration event in the month of June around its mobile soccer game ‘Saka tsuku shoot[1] here in Japan with the British pub franchise The Hub, across its 66 locations in the country.

When a customer buys a drink, they’ll receive a card with a serial code, which could mean a rare player addition for gamers if they’re lucky. Also in June, there will be a ‘Hub Cup’ held within the game itself, where players can also get rare ‘gacha’ cards for a chance to get new players for use in the game.

prizes

With the World Cup starting next month, I assume that the Hub will see lots of customers (the time difference with Brazil is a bit rough), and perhaps these are just the audience that Sega is trying to reach. It’s a smart maneuver on the part of Sega Networks to get their game in front of enthusiastic football fans.

The sports title was released by Sega Networks late last year, peaking as the number one iOS sports app in Japan back on May 15th, and as the fourth ranked Android sports game in Japan this past Monday (May 26th).

If you’d like to try out the game for yourself, it’s a free download for both iOS and Android. Check out the game’s promo trailer below.

Via Gamebiz


  1. This title does not translate well.  ↩

Puzzle & Dragons’ small but enthusiastic North American fan base

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Via Gamebiz.jp, there’s news that the North American version of Gungho Online Entertainment’s hit mobile game Puzzle & Dragons has surpassed 4 million downloads. This isn’t an especially impressive figure, but as someone who has played the English version since it’s release [1], I’m continually surprised by the amount of fan engagement that I see on the game’s English Facebook page, in chat forums, and over on Reddit. Check it out and see for yourself. Puzzle & Dragons may only have a few million English-speaking fans. But they’re pretty hard core. In its home market of Japan, P&D has over 26 million users. I confess, I’m such a fan of the game that I have English and Japanese versions of the game running on my mobile.  ↩

tokyo-game-show-201303
Puzzle & Dragon booth at Tokyo Game Show 2013

Via Gamebiz.jp, there’s news that the North American version of Gungho Online Entertainment’s hit mobile game Puzzle & Dragons has surpassed 4 million downloads.

This isn’t an especially impressive figure, but as someone who has played the English version since it’s release [1], I’m continually surprised by the amount of fan engagement that I see on the game’s English Facebook page, in chat forums, and over on Reddit. Check it out and see for yourself. Puzzle & Dragons may only have a few million English-speaking fans. But they’re pretty hard core.

In its home market of Japan, P&D has over 26 million users.


  1. I confess, I’m such a fan of the game that I have English and Japanese versions of the game running on my mobile.  ↩

Fujitsu to offer mobile health support services to women in Japan

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NTT Docomo recently unveiled its new summer smartphone lineup, and included among its new handsets was the Arrows NX F–05F. Made by Fujitsu, this will be one of many Fujitsu phones that will feature a new Karada Life Pregnancy Support app targeting female users. According to Fujitsu today, the service will be available starting May 30th here in Japan. The application was developed by Fujitsu using APIs from Luna Luna, a service that millions of women in Japan use to be more aware of their menstrual cycles, by recording period timing and body temperature. In short, a range of services will be provided by both Fujitsu and Luna Luna, including estimation of menstruation and ovulation times (based on data from the previous two months) and lifestyle advice. There is also convenient body temperature management that makes use of wireless and automatic transmission of data from a thermometer [1] to smartphones (pictured below). Our readers may recall that we also saw Ateam release an app for women trying to get pregnant late last year. But it’s good to see more companies like Fujitsu get involved to provide more options. It’s interesting to watch more and more companies in Japan strive to…

fujitsu-karada

NTT Docomo recently unveiled its new summer smartphone lineup, and included among its new handsets was the Arrows NX F–05F. Made by Fujitsu, this will be one of many Fujitsu phones that will feature a new Karada Life Pregnancy Support app targeting female users. According to Fujitsu today, the service will be available starting May 30th here in Japan.

The application was developed by Fujitsu using APIs from Luna Luna, a service that millions of women in Japan use to be more aware of their menstrual cycles, by recording period timing and body temperature.

In short, a range of services will be provided by both Fujitsu and Luna Luna, including estimation of menstruation and ovulation times (based on data from the previous two months) and lifestyle advice. There is also convenient body temperature management that makes use of wireless and automatic transmission of data from a thermometer [1] to smartphones (pictured below).

Our readers may recall that we also saw Ateam release an app for women trying to get pregnant late last year. But it’s good to see more companies like Fujitsu get involved to provide more options.

It’s interesting to watch more and more companies in Japan strive to serve female users. Just last month, for example, Amazon Japan launched a new female-focused store front to specifically target women and mothers.

fujitsu-karada-2


  1. Specifically, the Terumo Corporation’s WOMAN °C W520DZ thermometer, which is ostensibly not included.  ↩

Japan-based Wantedly brings its social job platform to Android

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Back in February we told you about the release of a new iOS application from Japan-based Wantedly, allows you to access the startup’s online social job platform on mobile. At the time, the team mentioned to us that they’d like to do a version for Android as well. And just after the iOS launch, it I understand they brought in a new engineer to do just that. Skip to today and Wantedly for Android is now available as a free download from Google Play. I encourage you to check it out.

wantedly-android

Back in February we told you about the release of a new iOS application from Japan-based Wantedly, allows you to access the startup’s online social job platform on mobile.

At the time, the team mentioned to us that they’d like to do a version for Android as well. And just after the iOS launch, it I understand they brought in a new engineer to do just that.

Skip to today and Wantedly for Android is now available as a free download from Google Play. I encourage you to check it out.

wantedly-a wantedly-a

Spark Profit: Fantasy trading game promises rewards with no risk

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A few days ago we told you about Hong Kong-based online brokerage service 8 Securities which just recently made moves to expand its business to Japan. For aspiring traders out there who might need a little practice, or for someone looking to make some money on a slightly smaller scale, you might want to check out the fantasy trading platform Spark Profit. Launched by Tokyo-based Nous back in January, Spark Profit lets you simulate trading in your browser (pictured above), using an iOS or Android app. Just yesterday the company announced that it has added Nikkei 225 support, as well as a new global sentiment indicator for all markets. One of the more interesting claims that Nous makes about Spark Profit is that even if you have never traded before, you can learn and develop strategies to outperform the market. Nous CEO Justin Short explains the advantage of their new indicator in the announcement: The purpose of our new free sentiment indicator is to help market participants improve their trading strategies by showing them the average person’s viewpoint, from right now all the way back to Spark Profit’s launch in January. How does the company pay high-performing fantasy traders? I…

spark-profit

A few days ago we told you about Hong Kong-based online brokerage service 8 Securities which just recently made moves to expand its business to Japan. For aspiring traders out there who might need a little practice, or for someone looking to make some money on a slightly smaller scale, you might want to check out the fantasy trading platform Spark Profit.

Launched by Tokyo-based Nous back in January, Spark Profit lets you simulate trading in your browser (pictured above), using an iOS or Android app. Just yesterday the company announced that it has added Nikkei 225 support, as well as a new global sentiment indicator for all markets.

One of the more interesting claims that Nous makes about Spark Profit is that even if you have never traded before, you can learn and develop strategies to outperform the market. Nous CEO Justin Short explains the advantage of their new indicator in the announcement:

The purpose of our new free sentiment indicator is to help market participants improve their trading strategies by showing them the average person’s viewpoint, from right now all the way back to Spark Profit’s launch in January.

How does the company pay high-performing fantasy traders? I noticed on their site that Nous started out by trading based on player data, essentially copying what the good players do to earn money. But Short tells me that they’ve since moved to a different idea:

We’ve changed the business model slightly since [then]: rather than find and trade on the signal ourselves, we are concentrating on user (= data) growth at this time. Instead we will sell the data to large hedge funds for them to build a signal from.

I’m told they have started trials of this feed, called ‘Spark Data’, with some funds already. I understand that the company previously raised is in process of raising an angel round of about $600,000, and to date $30,000 in prizes have been paid to fantasy traders on Spark Profit.

The platform has 29,000 users spanning 194 countries, with 3,000 new users signing up every month.

Pinterest hopes ad giant Dentsu can make it big in Japan

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Today Pinterest Japan announced that it will ally with Japanese advertising giant Dentsu to expand its business in Japan, as the social image curation service would potentially offer a new marketing alternative to local advertisers. Pinterest recently localized for Japan a few months back, and CEO Ben Silbermann recently expressed a hope that Japanese people can try to express more about their culture (things like art, food, and architecture) through pinned images. Ostensibly, Silbermann has that very same hope for Japanese advertisers, who might more effectively reach global audiences in a more visual manner. Pinterest has tested promoted pins over the past year in the US market, and looks poised to charge top dollar from advertisers. Via Venture News

pinterest

Today Pinterest Japan announced that it will ally with Japanese advertising giant Dentsu to expand its business in Japan, as the social image curation service would potentially offer a new marketing alternative to local advertisers.

Pinterest recently localized for Japan a few months back, and CEO Ben Silbermann recently expressed a hope that Japanese people can try to express more about their culture (things like art, food, and architecture) through pinned images. Ostensibly, Silbermann has that very same hope for Japanese advertisers, who might more effectively reach global audiences in a more visual manner.

Pinterest has tested promoted pins over the past year in the US market, and looks poised to charge top dollar from advertisers.

Via Venture News