As we announced last week, today our team at SD Japan transitions to our new home on the web, TheBridge.jp. We still have a few things to take care of [1], but I thought I’d give you a quick update to let you know where things stand. The new website – as you can see – is now live, and we encourage you to look around and give the tires a kick. It was built with a mobile first approach, not because we’re hippies (we’re not, I swear), but because we’ve noticed that about half of you read on mobile devices. So we hope you like it. As for the formalities, the company name will be ‘The Bridge Co., Ltd’, and I’ll continue to lead the English edition as editor. My colleague Takeshi Hirano, the co-founder of the company (pictured above, bottom left), is the editor of the the Japanese edition. We’ll update our social presences shortly, and our weekly newsletter will remain relatively unchanged. As always, we’d love it if you could tell your friends about us. We’d like to say thanks to everyone who has supported our efforts under the flag of SD Japan, and we thank you…
As we announced last week, today our team at SD Japan transitions to our new home on the web, TheBridge.jp. We still have a few things to take care of [1], but I thought I’d give you a quick update to let you know where things stand.
The new website – as you can see – is now live, and we encourage you to look around and give the tires a kick. It was built with a mobile first approach, not because we’re hippies (we’re not, I swear), but because we’ve noticed that about half of you read on mobile devices. So we hope you like it.
As for the formalities, the company name will be ‘The Bridge Co., Ltd’, and I’ll continue to lead the English edition as editor. My colleague Takeshi Hirano, the co-founder of the company (pictured above, bottom left), is the editor of the the Japanese edition.
We’ll update our social presences shortly, and our weekly newsletter will remain relatively unchanged. As always, we’d love it if you could tell your friends about us.
We’d like to say thanks to everyone who has supported our efforts under the flag of SD Japan, and we thank you in advance for your patience as we step into this new brand.
You’ll notice there are still a few pages we need to translate. We’re working on it, so please bear with us! ↩
Having entered the ranks of fatherhood just this year, I’ve found that I’ve been experimenting with a number of applications that can help with parenting in general, as well as recording the most memorable moments of my baby’s development. As someone who lives in Japan, I’ve found myself using a mix of apps from abroad as well as a few homegrown applications. I thought I’d give a quick rundown of some of the mobile apps that have served me well so far. For any new parents out there, I highly recommend them all. 1. Notabli ¶ This is perhaps by far my most enthusiastic recommendation. Notabli is a private social network for parents with kids, letting you upload photos, short videos, and even audio updates, which are visible only to the people you want to share with. For me, that means my wife, my parents, and some close friends. It also lets you mark media as a milestone (like first tooth, first steps, etc), also another indispensable feature. There are numerous applications that I considered for photo management, but the primary reason why I chose Notabli is that it allows for full-resolution storage of photos, with the option to export…
Having entered the ranks of fatherhood just this year, I’ve found that I’ve been experimenting with a number of applications that can help with parenting in general, as well as recording the most memorable moments of my baby’s development. As someone who lives in Japan, I’ve found myself using a mix of apps from abroad as well as a few homegrown applications.
I thought I’d give a quick rundown of some of the mobile apps that have served me well so far. For any new parents out there, I highly recommend them all.
This is perhaps by far my most enthusiastic recommendation. Notabli is a private social network for parents with kids, letting you upload photos, short videos, and even audio updates, which are visible only to the people you want to share with. For me, that means my wife, my parents, and some close friends. It also lets you mark media as a milestone (like first tooth, first steps, etc), also another indispensable feature.
There are numerous applications that I considered for photo management, but the primary reason why I chose Notabli is that it allows for full-resolution storage of photos, with the option to export them all at any time. This data-liberation feature is the most important function, letting me periodically ensure that I have local copies of moments that I really can’t afford to lose.
This is currently available for free on the App Store, although it is a service that I would happily pay for. I really can’t emphasize enough how great this app is.
Videos on the afore-mentioned Notabli are restricted to 30 seconds in length, which is perhaps my only complaint about the app. But that makes Honda’s Road Movies, which I reviewed back in August, is a wondeful complementary video app.
Road Movies lets you create 24-second composite clips (the perfect length for Notabli) by combining short 1-second, 2-second, or 3-second clips that you record during your day. For me, I typically take 3 seconds of video of my baby in various situations, and then when they are assembled in Road Movies and mixed with the license-free background music, the result is amazing.
Perhaps Honda, the app’s creator, meant for it to be used in your car while on the road, but it’s great for recording moments with family too. You can pick up this made-in-Japan app over on the App Store.
Taking a page from Gabe Weatherhead over at MacDrifter, who says he uses this journaling app to write letters to his daughter. I’ve begun doing the same, taking pictures and adding short notes now and then whenever I think of a message that my infant kid maybe can’t yet understand.
The app lets me write in Markdown, and syncing with Dropbox and/or iCloud assures me that my data is (relatively) safe.
It’s available for both iOS and Mac, for $4.99 and $9.99 respectively – although I have only bought the former, and that works for me just beautifully.
The folks over at BabyCenter have an assortment of great mobile apps, but the one that I’ve really found the most interesting is My Baby Today. After installing, you simply input your baby’s birthdate and it will then notify you with appropriate updates about your baby’s development.
The app has a photo album function, which I haven’t used at all. But the flow of information about caring for babies is incredibly useful for first-time parents, so I encourage you to check it out. It’s available for iOS and Android. (Thanks to D. for the recommendation!)
You’ve all probably heard about people using white noise to sooth a crying baby. Well, this made-in-Japan app is a simple solution that gives you an assortment of white noise sounds whenever you need them. You can choose from things like hair dryer, TV static, running water, and even an unusual ramen slurping sound.
There are lots of apps like this on the market, but this one is free for iOS, and works really well. Try swaddling your baby and tucking your mobile into the folds of the blanket. It works like a charm for me, but it could be because my baby is so awesome. I’m sure your baby is cool too, but your mileage may vary.
I’m appending this app here as a bonus, since it is not available to folks who live outside Japan. But for those of you who do live in Japan, Mixi’s Nohana app is a simply awesome. We’ve written extensively about this mobile photobook printing service as it has developed, but let me sum it up briefly:
You upload photos from your smartphone, and Nohana will send you a free photobook. That’s it. Well, there’s a minor 90 yen shipping charge (about $1), but that’s a miniscule price to pay for the book they send you. Their business model appears to be based on the hopes that you will order additional books that can be shipped to grandparents (a big demographic in Japan) for the additional cost of 500 yen (about $5).
Nohana is available for free for both iOS and Android. Seriously, if you’re a parent in Japan, this is a service you should be using.
If you have any suggested additions for this list, don’t hesitate to let me know in the comments!
This site began in Japanese as Startup Dating back in 2010, since then bringing Asian tech news to readers in Japan. This year, I had to honor of joining the team to create a complementary English version, SD Japan, with the mission of bringing Japanese tech and startup news to the rest of Asia and the world. So now this bilingual site is a bridge that sends news in two directions. And I’m really happy to announce that we have some big plans to make it even better in the next few months. The first step will be a rebrand that reflects what we aspire to be for the tech and startup space. On October 7 we will evolve our work so far into a new media presence known as ‘The Bridge’. Check out our swanky new orange logo on the right. It’s rich in vitamin C. Without going into too many details, let me briefly say that this is far more than a simple rebrand. New features will be rolling out in phases, with a heavier focus on our database as well as a sort of scoring system that will guide our readers towards the hottest startups and trends…
This site began in Japanese as Startup Dating back in 2010, since then bringing Asian tech news to readers in Japan. This year, I had to honor of joining the team to create a complementary English version, SD Japan, with the mission of bringing Japanese tech and startup news to the rest of Asia and the world.
So now this bilingual site is a bridge that sends news in two directions.
And I’m really happy to announce that we have some big plans to make it even better in the next few months.
The first step will be a rebrand that reflects what we aspire to be for the tech and startup space. On October 7 we will evolve our work so far into a new media presence known as ‘The Bridge’. Check out our swanky new orange logo on the right. It’s rich in vitamin C.
Without going into too many details, let me briefly say that this is far more than a simple rebrand. New features will be rolling out in phases, with a heavier focus on our database as well as a sort of scoring system that will guide our readers towards the hottest startups and trends in the industry.
We hope to be more than media, and act as a service to connect startups and investors, not just in Japan but around Asia too.
There will be more updates in our regular weekly newsletter as things develop, so I encourage you to sign up.
In an age where news is information, technology news sites have a responsibility to create more than just a firehose of articles. You deserve better, and we’re going to try our best to deliver. That means more than just text. It means video interviews, timelines, app/game screencasts, and more ambitious big-picture projects like our Japan Internet Map that tie it all together.
If you’re an aspiring writer, media producer, or data nerd looking to develop your digital media chops, do get in touch if you’d like to get involved. And as always, if you are a young startup company or entrepreneur, we’d love to talk with you as well!
If 2012 was the year that mobile exhibitors overtook consoles at the Tokyo Game Show, 2013 was the year consoles rebounded, with Sony and Microsoft dominating the show. But there was still a strong mobile presence this year, perhaps the biggest exhibitor being GREE, once again shelling out for a large floor space. We spoke to their SVP of social games Eiji Araki, who explained why they feel the need to go big every year. But the standout newcomer this year at TGS was GungHo Online Entertainment, the developer of perhaps the world’s most successful game, Puzzle & Dragons, spotlighting their new 3DS version. They also previewed their upcoming title, Divine Gate, which is set for a September 30 release on Android. There were some notable absences from the mobile space however. GREE rival DeNA, as always, chose to skip the event. Colopl had a pretty large booth last year, but they took a pass on showing up this year. Casual game makers Line Corporation and BeeWorks, the creator of the wildly popular (and cute) Nameco franchise, were also no shows. We turned our eyes to the little guys in mobile this year, skipping over consoles entirely [1]. In the…
If 2012 was the year that mobile exhibitors overtook consoles at the Tokyo Game Show, 2013 was the year consoles rebounded, with Sony and Microsoft dominating the show.
But there was still a strong mobile presence this year, perhaps the biggest exhibitor being GREE, once again shelling out for a large floor space. We spoke to their SVP of social games Eiji Araki, who explained why they feel the need to go big every year. But the standout newcomer this year at TGS was GungHo Online Entertainment, the developer of perhaps the world’s most successful game, Puzzle & Dragons, spotlighting their new 3DS version. They also previewed their upcoming title, Divine Gate, which is set for a September 30 release on Android.
There were some notable absences from the mobile space however. GREE rival DeNA, as always, chose to skip the event. Colopl had a pretty large booth last year, but they took a pass on showing up this year.
Casual game makers Line Corporation and BeeWorks, the creator of the wildly popular (and cute) Nameco franchise, were also no shows.
We turned our eyes to the little guys in mobile this year, skipping over consoles entirely [1]. In the indie gaming area it was great to see companies like Okinawa-based SummerTime Studio, who has had a hit with their Ancient Surfer mobile game. We had a short discussion with their president, Hirotsu Takeyasu, which you can check out below.
Set up right next to them was Tokyo-based Link Kit, the maker of Samurai Defender, a game that we reviewed (and loved) earlier this year. Team Martini was also showing off Pechan, a really fun game for iPad where you have to push a juicer around the screen to crush fruit.
The game show also had an area dedicated to romance simulation games, featuring Eitarosoft, Voltage, and the oddly named ZZYZX. We did a short interview with Voltage (see video below), a prolific game publisher with over 50 titles to date. They plan to release one app every month, including some games that men can enjoy as well. This is one of those genres that is unique to Japan, but I imagine we will see more of these kind of titles creep into the global market (as we saw with card battle games), on an experimental basis if nothing else.
They came from beyond
Of course, the game show wasn’t just about Japanese game producers peddling their wares. There were also an abundance of foreign game makers parachuting into the country to show off titles here. As we mentioned yesterday, the one that most impressed us was Israel’s Nordau Creative with its Kazooloo augmented reality dragon fighting title.
But there was also an abundance of exhibitors from the Asia region, representing Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Tawian, Thailand, and Vietnam.
We also were quite impressed by the efforts of Russian developer and publisher Game Insight, who just recently launched a localized version of their Tribez game here in Japan for iOS. They win our unofficial award for the most enthusiastic game demo, corralling me and my colleague into a room and not letting us go until we had seen five of their games. They should get a raise.
And finally, making my naughty list this year is Square Enix, who once again had their “no photos” policy in effect at their booth, demonstrating that they still do not comprehend the concept of a “show”.
The Nordau Creative team, featuring Kazooloo AR game at Tokyo Game Show
There no shortage of coverage over on sites like Tktk and Tktk, so you can check that out there. ↩
It’s opening weekend for Apple’s new iPhone 5C and 5S here in Japan. And I was curious to see that even on a very hot Sunday morning there were perhaps a hundred people lined up at the Apple Store in Shibuya, even though it’s the third day that they’ve been on sale. You can check out more pictures below. Now that the iPhone is on NTT Docomo , Apple’s presence in Japan has significant room to grow. The carrier has 55 million mobile subscribers, and has finally given up on their aspirations to crapwarify the popular handset with their vision of a ‘lifestyle system’. But clearly customers want something different, as Docomo’s flagship Galaxy S4 has disappointed. With a population that is both very health- and fashion- conscious, expect the new iPhone 5S to do especially well in Japan, with the fashionable gold model and the new M7 motion coprocessor bringing new kinds of fitness apps to the platform.
It’s opening weekend for Apple’s new iPhone 5C and 5S here in Japan. And I was curious to see that even on a very hot Sunday morning there were perhaps a hundred people lined up at the Apple Store in Shibuya, even though it’s the third day that they’ve been on sale. You can check out more pictures below.
Now that the iPhone is on NTT Docomo , Apple’s presence in Japan has significant room to grow. The carrier has 55 million mobile subscribers, and has finally given up on their aspirations to crapwarify the popular handset with their vision of a ‘lifestyle system’.
But clearly customers want something different, as Docomo’s flagship Galaxy S4 has disappointed.
With a population that is both very health- and fashion- conscious, expect the new iPhone 5S to do especially well in Japan, with the fashionable gold model and the new M7 motion coprocessor bringing new kinds of fitness apps to the platform.
Back in August, we wrote about Japanese social network Mixi and its Nohana photobook app. The service has seen rapid growth and was recently spun off as a wholly-owned subsidiary.When it comes to mobile apps, Mixi is taking a somewhat experimental approach with its Mixi Lab initiative. So we thought that it might be fun to take a look at the list of apps that the company has in line for us. At first glance, the following list of mobile apps doesn’t seem to indicate any unifying strategy. But having been the dominant social network in Japan for so long before Facebook and Twitter came along, Mixi really has lots of information about online communities. And thus, Mixi is now in a unique position to create many apps around those long established communities. In fact, there are over 2.7 million such communities registered on the social network, and some of its mobile apps can be thought of as being natural extensions of these. Read on to learn more about them! Nohana Nohana is a photo booklet printing service. Users receive one photo booklet for free (90 yen shipping cost not included) every month, and a second booklet on can be…
Back in August, we wrote about Japanese social network Mixi and its Nohana photobook app. The service has seen rapid growth and was recently spun off as a wholly-owned subsidiary.When it comes to mobile apps, Mixi is taking a somewhat experimental approach with its Mixi Lab initiative. So we thought that it might be fun to take a look at the list of apps that the company has in line for us.
At first glance, the following list of mobile apps doesn’t seem to indicate any unifying strategy. But having been the dominant social network in Japan for so long before Facebook and Twitter came along, Mixi really has lots of information about online communities. And thus, Mixi is now in a unique position to create many apps around those long established communities. In fact, there are over 2.7 million such communities registered on the social network, and some of its mobile apps can be thought of as being natural extensions of these. Read on to learn more about them!
Nohana
Nohana is a photo booklet printing service. Users receive one photo booklet for free (90 yen shipping cost not included) every month, and a second booklet on can be purchased for 500 yen per book. Last month, Mixi revealed that the total number of uploaded photos amounts to 3.8 million, and there have been 100,000 photobooks published by 200,000 people.
Spinan
Spinan is the very first game app by Mixi, hitting the market today. It is a simple card game that works very similar to solitaire. In the given time of 90 seconds, your goal is to get rid of as many cards as possible. The results are not measured just by wins and losses, but it calculates the number of mistouches and the amount of time left, making the game more complex and addictive.
Plannah
The most common place that mobile users go to look back on their photos is their photo library. But the more photos you take, more of a mess you make. Plannah can be a convenient app because it allows you to see your photos in albums. They can be organized by dates or themes, or be shared with selected friends.
PiqCole
PiqCole is a neat iOS app that lets you create photo albums as folders on your mobile home screen. The idea here was to create a service for moms that can be used daily. Just tap on the icon on your home screen and you can access your kids photos instantly. You can see how simple the app is in the video below.
Cheering
Cheering is an app that — as the name suggests — encourages you by cheering. Users can chose a photo and a phrase, and every time they open the app, perhaps your dog or a friend or significant other will cheer you up. This was a little playful item that the team at Mixi created, and it was later made into this app. You can learn more about it in this interview on the Mixi blog.
Coscam
Considering that there are many young people on Mixi, it’s only natural for the company to have a large community dedicated to cosplay culture. Coscam is an app made especially for this segment that lets users print name cards on their mobile phones. There are over 30 design themes available and you can print ten cards for 300 yen. The app can be used without user registration.
Minimo
Minimo is Mixi’s most recent app planned for release this fall, serving to match up hairdressers with models. Many hairdressers needs to practice haircutting with real people. Back in the old days, they used to find their models in the streets, since lots of regular people might be willing to get a hair cut for free. This activity of searching for ‘Cut models’ is one of the most actively used communities on Mixi – so popular that it seems that the company decided to spin it off as a standalone app.
This morning I stumbled across M.G. Siegler’s post on the death of Nintendo, which he says has been “greatly under-exaggerated.” Like Siegler, I’m a fan of Nintendo. But I don’t think they’re completely dead. There is one final Hail Mary pass that I think Nintendo has to inevitably throw before completely tossing in the towel. And that’s the Nintendo Phone. Of course, this is the product that they should have launched back in 2009, when the iPod Touch was spared a camera upgrade in favor of positioning it as a gaming machine. I was a huge Nintendo DS fan at the time, and I remember noticing some clever homebrewers running VoIP applications on a Nintendo DS. It seemed to me back then that if Nintendo added phone capabilities to the DS, that in terms of pure function, they would be offering essentially the same device as Apple. Not as cool of course. But it would have been interesting. As we all know, things didn’t turn out that way. But is there still time? I mean, now that casual games have taken over the planet via the smartphone, doesn’t the world’s most experienced maker of casual games even have a chance…
This morning I stumbled across M.G. Siegler’s post on the death of Nintendo, which he says has been “greatly under-exaggerated.” Like Siegler, I’m a fan of Nintendo. But I don’t think they’re completely dead. There is one final Hail Mary pass that I think Nintendo has to inevitably throw before completely tossing in the towel. And that’s the Nintendo Phone.
Of course, this is the product that they should have launched back in 2009, when the iPod Touch was spared a camera upgrade in favor of positioning it as a gaming machine.
I was a huge Nintendo DS fan at the time, and I remember noticing some clever homebrewers running VoIP applications on a Nintendo DS. It seemed to me back then that if Nintendo added phone capabilities to the DS, that in terms of pure function, they would be offering essentially the same device as Apple. Not as cool of course. But it would have been interesting.
But is there still time? I mean, now that casual games have taken over the planet via the smartphone, doesn’t the world’s most experienced maker of casual games even have a chance if they rolled out a phone right now?
And with that in mind, I went and drafted my dream ‘Nintendo phone’ announcement. As you do. In my head. It’s not real, so you’ve all been warned.
Nintendo unveils the DS phone, ‘Nintendo classic’ subscription plan, and Pokemon Glass™
Today Nintendo is proud to announce that it will be releasing the next evolution of its DS lineup, the Nintendo DS Phone™. The product comes via a partnership with Kyocera, a company already experienced in making a dual-screen mobile phone with its Kyocera Echo handset.
Nintendo president Satoru Iwata elaborated:
Both companies are headquartered in Kyoto, Japan, making this a natural partnership. We have heard our fans repeated demands to have our games made available for mobile, and this announcement is proof that we haven’t completely ignored them at all for years and years.
To ensure that fans hit the ground running with plenty of games when they first purchase our DS Phone™, Nintendo are making its entire back catalogue of classic games available for instant download as of today, as part of the ‘Nintendo Classic’ subscription plan. For just $1.99 per month, fans can get iconic games like Super Mario Bros, The Legend of Zelda, Mario Kart, Final Fantasy, Metroid and hundreds more.
Never a company known to sadly stagnate, Nintendo has also completely refreshed its Pokemon franchise to once again take the lead as the world’s premier gaming company. By working with augmented reality pioneer Takehito Iguchi and his new company Telepathy, Nintendo has created Pokemon Glass™, a new geo-location game that lets you collect and train Pokemon that you find at different locations in the real world [1]. Telepathy recently raised $5 million to develop it’s wearable Google Glass-like technology.
Iwata added that he hopes that Pokemon Glass™ can spark tourism in Japan, with super rare localized Pokemon that can only be obtained by traveling to certain regions and cities, starting with the Tohoku region. Nintendo will also work with local travel agencies to develop informative in-game content around local landmarks where rare Pokemon can be obtained.
More games are set to be announced at the Tokyo Game Show this year, an event that Nintendo swears it will not skip this time.
There’s actually a little bit of reality to this notion, as Iguchi-san hypothesized such a game when I interviewed him back in 2009. ↩
Rick Martin
Yukari Mitsuhashi
