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Japan’s Mixi launches minimalist selfie app

Mixi
muuk

Yukari Mitsuhashi 2014.03.10

Originally written in Japanese, in two parts: 1, 2 Japanese social network company Mixi recently launched a photo sharing app named Muuk. What’s so unique about this app? To find out, we spoke with the app’s team leader Yuichi Kawasaki, director Atsushi Osaki, and designer Itsumi Motohara. Muuk’s main target demographic are young women in their teens and early twenties. In short, says the team, it’s a real-time selfie app. It lets you overlay your real-time selfies on top of another photo you might be sending to a friend. Osaki: We aimed to create a user experience that’s like a real conversation, where users can feel like they are actually talking to their friends face-to-face. Users can text additional information about the photo when they share it. But we rather wanted to enable users to share a more genuine atmosphere by adding a real-time portrait shot. Kawasaki: We arrived at Muuk’s current form after many improvements during the short development time. Through many team meetings, we eventually concluded that we didn’t want to make an app that saves photos on the device anymore. People get tired of posing to get the best shot, so we wanted to change this kind…

Originally written in Japanese, in two parts: 1, 2

Japanese social network company Mixi recently launched a photo sharing app named Muuk. What’s so unique about this app? To find out, we spoke with the app’s team leader Yuichi Kawasaki, director Atsushi Osaki, and designer Itsumi Motohara.

Muuk’s main target demographic are young women in their teens and early twenties. In short, says the team, it’s a real-time selfie app. It lets you overlay your real-time selfies on top of another photo you might be sending to a friend.

Osaki: We aimed to create a user experience that’s like a real conversation, where users can feel like they are actually talking to their friends face-to-face. Users can text additional information about the photo when they share it. But we rather wanted to enable users to share a more genuine atmosphere by adding a real-time portrait shot.

Kawasaki: We arrived at Muuk’s current form after many improvements during the short development time. Through many team meetings, we eventually concluded that we didn’t want to make an app that saves photos on the device anymore. People get tired of posing to get the best shot, so we wanted to change this kind of tiring activity back to a more natural human communication.

The app incorporates some key features in order to realize this concept. For example, you only see the shot of your friend’s face only for 3 seconds after you receive it. After that the shot disappears from the device entirely.

To send a photo to your friend, you don’t choose a photo from your camera roll. You just take a photo with the primary/rear-facing camera, and the front-facing camera automatically takes a snapshot of your face and overlays it on top of the main photo.

The team had three values in mind when building this app: simple, minimum, and fast. They decided they could create the greatest user experience by focusing on these aspects. As you can see on the screen, there is just the main screen with a shutter button, as well as an inbox and contacts list.

Motohara: We focused on making it simple, minimum and fast. There are many features that would have been nice to have, but we left them out to make communication as fast as possible. We applied the same idea when designing the app as well.

Kawasaki: We didn’t add things like retaking, and modifying or decorating. If the photo you took is not focused enough, you can simply take another one. And friends whom you have not contacted for more than 30 days will automatically disappear from your contacts list.

The name, Muuk, comes from the Japnese term “muku.” That term has two meanings: being simple, and breaking out of one’s shell. While Mixi is providing this service for just the domestic market, they plan to expand it globally, first expanding to Asian markets after April.

How will the app be received by the users in Japan and (later) around the world? Let’s stay tuned!

For now, if you’d like to give it a try, you can get it as a free download for both iOS and Android.

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Tengami: A stunning Japanese style pop-up paper puzzle game

Rick Martin 2014.03.07

Tengami is one of the most stylish mobile games that I’ve seen in a long time. With a graphic aesthetic that mimics a Japanese pop-up book, it’s a puzzle game with wondrous sights and sounds. It’s a little tricky to understand at first, but there are subtle glowing callout cues that tell you where you should trigger a paper fold. If you find the initial rounds difficult (I confess, I did!) there are some hints over on the official website that will get you through the first few stages. Since the game’s initial release a couple of weeks back, Japanese fans have apparently taken a liking to the title, as the game briefly broke into the top ten overall apps late in February in the Japanese app store. And it was featured in Apple’s spotlighted games section today, which will surely give it some great exposure. Interestingly, the game was developed by the UK-based team, Nyamyam, but they’ve apparently made the extra effort to appeal to Japanese users, and have been featured in various Japanese media like 4gamer and Famitsu. For now Tengami is iOS only, and can be purchased for $4.99 (or 500 yen here in Japan). I’m enjoying…

Tengami is one of the most stylish mobile games that I’ve seen in a long time. With a graphic aesthetic that mimics a Japanese pop-up book, it’s a puzzle game with wondrous sights and sounds.

It’s a little tricky to understand at first, but there are subtle glowing callout cues that tell you where you should trigger a paper fold. If you find the initial rounds difficult (I confess, I did!) there are some hints over on the official website that will get you through the first few stages.

Since the game’s initial release a couple of weeks back, Japanese fans have apparently taken a liking to the title, as the game briefly broke into the top ten overall apps late in February in the Japanese app store. And it was featured in Apple’s spotlighted games section today, which will surely give it some great exposure.

Interestingly, the game was developed by the UK-based team, Nyamyam, but they’ve apparently made the extra effort to appeal to Japanese users, and have been featured in various Japanese media like 4gamer and Famitsu.

For now Tengami is iOS only, and can be purchased for $4.99 (or 500 yen here in Japan). I’m enjoying the game so far, and if you have the patience for puzzle games and a preference for Japanese style art, you might want to check this one out.

The company is planning to release the game for Windows and OSX later on as well, so stay tuned for those. You can check out the trailer for the game, as well as screenshots below.

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Saving the story of your kids: Notabli app launches version 2.0

Rick Martin 2014.03.07

Regular readers of The Bridge will remember that I’ve raved about the Notabli app before. It’s an app that lets parent save their children’s moments, in a space that’s private, shared with only friends and family members of your choosing. When I had my first kid, I really wanted a way to share photos with my family back in Canada – but likely many people these days, I have reservations about sharing too much information about my child on Facebook [1]. After a brief flirtation with Glassboard, I eventually settled on Notabli. It had a very easy data export feature that I can use anytime, which I think is key for any sort of memories archive like this. In addition to photos, Notabli has support for video, audio, and even quotes. When you add a moment to your child’s timeline, you also have the option to mark it as a milestone. Obviously, this is an important feature for parents who want to mark things like baby’s first tooth, first words, or first steps [2]. Version 2.0 of Notabli has launched today with some key new features, including a new audio recorder with a very handy trim tool (pictured below), auto-location…

Regular readers of The Bridge will remember that I’ve raved about the Notabli app before. It’s an app that lets parent save their children’s moments, in a space that’s private, shared with only friends and family members of your choosing. When I had my first kid, I really wanted a way to share photos with my family back in Canada – but likely many people these days, I have reservations about sharing too much information about my child on Facebook [1].

After a brief flirtation with Glassboard, I eventually settled on Notabli. It had a very easy data export feature that I can use anytime, which I think is key for any sort of memories archive like this. In addition to photos, Notabli has support for video, audio, and even quotes. When you add a moment to your child’s timeline, you also have the option to mark it as a milestone. Obviously, this is an important feature for parents who want to mark things like baby’s first tooth, first words, or first steps [2].

Version 2.0 of Notabli has launched today with some key new features, including a new audio recorder with a very handy trim tool (pictured below), auto-location tagging for moments, and a more streamlined video/photo picker. I’ve had a chance to test an early 2.0 beta, and I’m really happy with the new additions – but even more delighted that everything I love about v1 is still there!

Notabli's handy audio trimmer — Notabli’s handy audio trimmer

I got in touch with Jackson Latka, the co-founder of Notabli, who is based in Vermont along with fellow co-founder Jory Raphael. As a new father myself, I started off by asking him about how he manages to balance startup life as a parent, something that I find myself struggling with sometimes. He explains:

What’s worked best for me is to embrace the ebb and flow as much as possible. I don’t feel the traditional take on work-life balance works well for me, so I aim for work-life harmony. Some days require a lot more work than others, but same goes for family. The irony is not lost on me that I often spend my time working on a product to bring families closer together, while spending less time with my own wonderful family. I’m still working on this challenge.

One of the things that has mildly concerned me about Notabli is that it is free. This is one of those rare free services that is so good, you’d gladly pay to help ensure its longevity. So I asked Jackson about their choice to make Notabli a free app instead of a paid one:

We wanted to make sure we built a solid, dependable, and valuable service for Notabli users before monetizing the service. […] We can’t live on free forever. We have some cool things planned for our premium service/purchases.

This is encouraging, because I really want Notabli to be around for a while, hopefully never suffering the same fate as a company like Everpix. As I mentioned above, Notabli’s data-export feature is a godsend, and I really wish more companies would include this. Jackson explained why this feature was so a must-add for them:

It’s important. As parents, we didn’t want our kid-content held hostage by any service, so we made two things a priority while building Notabli:

Parents retain ownership of the content they post about their kids.

The moments you post are always available for download.

He points out that up until now, his company hasn’t done any advertising or PR, and that growth has been entirely organic. Up until this new v2, it has been more or less a public beta for them.

Everything we learned from our first version was used to refine Notabli 2 into an app that is better in almost every way, but maintains the level of simplicity and focus that we think makes Notabli great. In addition to this upcoming release, we also just launched email digests. These have really shown to work well for those friends and family that prefer email, over viewing Notabli moments on the web or in the iOS app.

Given Japan’s enthusiasm for photo apps, I closed by asking Jackson if they have any plans to introduce a localized version of Notabli for Japan. He replies:

We’re definitely exploring localizations and would love to have a Japanese version of Notabli. Any volunteers to help out? Seriously. Email me!

Any readers here who actually are friends with me on Facebook will probably say that I share lots of baby pictures on Facebook. I do share some every once in a while, but when I do, I’m very selective, and visibility is set to a custom group of friends. ↩
I’m happy to say I have all those captured. ↩

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Vocagetty: Helping you remember words with pictures

Rick Martin 2014.03.06

I’ve already mentioned a few of the top ideas that came out of Aviary’s recent Photo Hack Day Japan, including ‘Back to the Future’ and ‘Before the Filter’. But one of the other projects really resonated with me, as I’m a big user of flash card apps for language learning. Vocagetty was a clever sort of dictionary app proposed by the team of Atsushi Onoda, Hiroshi Kanamura, Shinichi Segawa, Yasushi Takemoto. It makes use of the Getty Images API to pull in pictures associated with the vocabulary you’re studying, and the Imagga API to generate smart crops of those pictures. The idea here is that the pictures will reinforce the word or idea, making for more a effective learning process. Overall Vocagetty impressed at the hackathon [1], taking third place and walking away with 100,000 yen (about $1000). I’m told by Atsushi Onoda that the group will continue to develop Vocagetty, with plans for an upcoming release in April. There are lots of similar learning services and apps already on the market. But it’s an interesting space because companies can choose to be either an all purpose study solution that can be used for any subject (see Anki or Memrise…

I’ve already mentioned a few of the top ideas that came out of Aviary’s recent Photo Hack Day Japan, including ‘Back to the Future’ and ‘Before the Filter’. But one of the other projects really resonated with me, as I’m a big user of flash card apps for language learning. Vocagetty was a clever sort of dictionary app proposed by the team of Atsushi Onoda, Hiroshi Kanamura, Shinichi Segawa, Yasushi Takemoto. It makes use of the Getty Images API to pull in pictures associated with the vocabulary you’re studying, and the Imagga API to generate smart crops of those pictures.

The idea here is that the pictures will reinforce the word or idea, making for more a effective learning process. Overall Vocagetty impressed at the hackathon [1], taking third place and walking away with 100,000 yen (about $1000). I’m told by Atsushi Onoda that the group will continue to develop Vocagetty, with plans for an upcoming release in April.

There are lots of similar learning services and apps already on the market. But it’s an interesting space because companies can choose to be either an all purpose study solution that can be used for any subject (see Anki or Memrise for example), or they can target a niche like Japanese language, medical terms, or the periodic table.

I was glad to see Vocagetty incorporate an image solution, because it was a good example of how a flash card or word study service can supplement text-based information.

On a related note, I’ve recently revisited the aforementioned Anki (after a long time away from it) because I wanted to test out its support for automated audio, which can accompany vocabulary by installing one of many add-ons [2]. While many services have a audio for pre-made flash card decks, this capability to bring audio to cards you add yourself is incredibly helpful.

But I think that the one process that many companies in this space overlook is the process of creating cards from vocabulary you find in your travels on the web. This kind of word or sentence mining is a process that I have get to see really well implemented in any flash card system [3]. Ideally it would take the form of a JavaScript bookmarklet (or bookmarklets) for mobile and PC browsers, which you could then use to add new words on the fly as you learn.

It will be interesting to see in what direction Vocagetty takes its service, so stay tuned for more about them later this spring. We’d like to feature comparable services soon as well, so stay tuned.

I should disclose here that I volunteered to act as one of the judges for this competition, as a way to lend some support for a fun community event. ↩
The one that I added was AwesomeTTS. ↩
Except maybe the rather crude but cool Surusu, a SRS project from the guy over at AJATT. ↩

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Dash Labs proposes a sort of FitBit for cars, attracts investment from CyberAgent

Rick Martin 2014.03.05

Japanese internet giant CyberAgent announced today that it has invested in New York-based Dash Labs (Dash.by), a young startup whose service is billed as a sort of FitBit for cars. Details of the investment were not disclosed. Dash works through the installation of a low-cost on-board diagnostic unit that connects your smartphone to your car via Bluetooth. In this way, it enables a range of features, such as giving you a driving score, providing alerts for engine issues or feedback on maintenance issues, or gamified social functions where you can compare your driving to friends. Dash’s Android app was just recently launched, and an iPhone version will follow soon. Even though they are just getting their mobile apps out now, the company claims to have tested its technology for over 18 months, driving a million miles in 30 countries. Dash is part of the 2013 TechStars NYC class of startups. CyberAgent didn’t specify the time of its investment, but it looks like it was part of a $1.2 million financing round from December.

Japanese internet giant CyberAgent announced today that it has invested in New York-based Dash Labs (Dash.by), a young startup whose service is billed as a sort of FitBit for cars. Details of the investment were not disclosed.

Dash works through the installation of a low-cost on-board diagnostic unit that connects your smartphone to your car via Bluetooth. In this way, it enables a range of features, such as giving you a driving score, providing alerts for engine issues or feedback on maintenance issues, or gamified social functions where you can compare your driving to friends.

Dash’s Android app was just recently launched, and an iPhone version will follow soon. Even though they are just getting their mobile apps out now, the company claims to have tested its technology for over 18 months, driving a million miles in 30 countries.

Dash is part of the 2013 TechStars NYC class of startups. CyberAgent didn’t specify the time of its investment, but it looks like it was part of a $1.2 million financing round from December.

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As Ring meets its Kickstarter goal, we wonder — Is it just vaporware?

Rick Martin 2014.03.04

Many of our readers may have read over on TechCrunch recently that ‘Ring,’ a hardware device that ostensibly gives you the ability to control devices when worn on your finger, has been funded via a Kickstarter project. The device previously took top honors at the 2013 TechCrunch Tokyo Startup Battle. But despite that achievement, I continue to encounter skeptics who think that Ring might be little more than vaporware at this stage – or at the very least, that it its makers have a big challenge ahead if they hope to bring it to market. Personally, I really hope that Ring is every bit as good as it looks. But I thought I’d ask the folks at LogBar, the startup behind the device if I could perhaps get a demo of Ring. A representative told me via email that they plan to attend the upcoming Wearable Tech Expo in Tokyo where they will speak on stage, but they’re undecided whether they will do a demo or not. I asked if they could explain more about how their battery works 1, but the company has yet to reply on this point. Our readers may recall that we have previously featured another…

Many of our readers may have read over on TechCrunch recently that ‘Ring,’ a hardware device that ostensibly gives you the ability to control devices when worn on your finger, has been funded via a Kickstarter project.

The device previously took top honors at the 2013 TechCrunch Tokyo Startup Battle. But despite that achievement, I continue to encounter skeptics who think that Ring might be little more than vaporware at this stage – or at the very least, that it its makers have a big challenge ahead if they hope to bring it to market.

Personally, I really hope that Ring is every bit as good as it looks. But I thought I’d ask the folks at LogBar, the startup behind the device if I could perhaps get a demo of Ring. A representative told me via email that they plan to attend the upcoming Wearable Tech Expo in Tokyo where they will speak on stage, but they’re undecided whether they will do a demo or not. I asked if they could explain more about how their battery works 1, but the company has yet to reply on this point.

Our readers may recall that we have previously featured another wearable ring device, Ringu, made by the folks at Keio University’s Mixed Reality Lab. I asked Dr. Adrian Cheok (of Keio University’s MRL and City University London) about the challenges they faced in finding a battery for their ring, and he explained:

From my experience it seems very very tough to fit everything in their ring size and also the battery. We searched almost every manufacturer and we found the minimum size of rechargeable battery was about 1.5 to 2cm for anything that can last for a few hours for our Bluetooth haptic ring.

It’s possible that the folks at LogBar could find some advanced technology that would do the trick, but he remains somewhat doubtful.

The Ring project is a very ambitious one, and I do hope the folks at LogBar can succeed. But ultimately I think that excitement over its potential should be held in check until we see a working demo at least. So far we’ve seen some impressive promotional material, a blurry video, and not too much else.

As for the other Ring project, Ringu, from Keio’s Mixed Reality Lab, they’re gearing up for their own launch event upcoming on April 9th at Sparklabs Global Demo Day, which will be held in Seoul.

I inquired with the company yesterday afternoon. ↩

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Approaching 2M downloads, Japan’s mobile news app Gunosy gets a makeover to attract female users

Takeshi Hirano 2014.03.04

Gunosy CEO Yoshinori Fukushima See the original article in Japanese Japan’s leading news curation app Gunosy has been given an overhaul. To learn more about how it has changed, we caught up with the company’s co-CEOs, Yoshinori Fukushima and Shinji Kimura, at their recently relocated office. Before the renewal, Gunosy served 25 articles to users´ smartphones twice a day, based on topics they are interested in. While many users find this limited curation feature helpful, the company also faced the problem of providing a wide-range of news to its users. Kimura told us: When more people started using the app, we found that it lacked the ability to provide a wide-range of news and more detailed news. […] Many users still use multiple news apps, not just Gunosy. We were aiming to provide a one-stop solution. Personally I use other apps like SmartNews to check news in a specific category (mostly technology), so I think it’s quite helpful that Gunosy has incorporated several categories. The design overhaul, including an icon change, was intended to attract more female users. A simple icon with just the letter of G doesn’t really fit well on more feminine-looking smartphone screens. Here is the a…

Gunosy CEO Yoshinori Fukushima

See the original article in Japanese

Japan’s leading news curation app Gunosy has been given an overhaul. To learn more about how it has changed, we caught up with the company’s co-CEOs, Yoshinori Fukushima and Shinji Kimura, at their recently relocated office.

Before the renewal, Gunosy served 25 articles to users´ smartphones twice a day, based on topics they are interested in. While many users find this limited curation feature helpful, the company also faced the problem of providing a wide-range of news to its users. Kimura told us:

When more people started using the app, we found that it lacked the ability to provide a wide-range of news and more detailed news. […] Many users still use multiple news apps, not just Gunosy. We were aiming to provide a one-stop solution.

Personally I use other apps like SmartNews to check news in a specific category (mostly technology), so I think it’s quite helpful that Gunosy has incorporated several categories.

The design overhaul, including an icon change, was intended to attract more female users. A simple icon with just the letter of G doesn’t really fit well on more feminine-looking smartphone screens.

Here is the a look at Gunosy’s new interface:

The formerly simple icon has been changed one featuring a colorful paper plane. The plane is based on the concept of delivering news to users.

They’ve incorporated flat design, using a color palette that makes a more neutral impression.

This redesign looks to be a remarkable turning point for Gunosy. The service had not let users choose news themselves, but now it lets users to select information by indicating multiple categories.

The new app has now 11 different categories. According to the co-CEOs, the targeted demographic is in their twenties and thirties who don´t read newspapers anymore but still they feel that they should. This answer, in a way, represents the young generation in Japan very well.

We’re told that downloads of the Gunosy app are now around 1.8 million, creeping up on the 2 million downloads milestone. Over twenty employees work in their newly relocated office. I erroneously assumed that most of their members are developers, but actually almost half of them work in the company’s business operations. After the startup began selling ads, they needed to add more operational staff.

Regarding the structure of their team, I asked them if they plan to have an editorial department in the future. Fukushima tells us:

I think it would be interesting to have an editorial team. But if we had one, it would be quite different a general editorial team. It would be a unique team to deal with special tasks. For example, a picture of homicide was shown on the top page the other day. I thought we had to change it, considering the feelings people involved. There are things like this which only a human can edit.

A human hand could play an important role in Gunosy´s engine in the future. But overall I think the team is doing really interesting work in terms of news distribution and content management.

Technology created by a few university students just a few years ago is now making a real difference in news distribution.

Shinji Kimura. He went right back to work after the interview.

Gunosy´s office, which was recently relocated. There was still some vacant space there, perhaps reserved for future members.

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Japan’s Sirok unveils video recording tool to let developers analyze user behavior

Junya Mori 2014.03.03

See the original story in Japanese. CyberAgent subsidiary Sirok, the startup behind the photo app My365 and AB testing service Growth Push, today unveiled a new growth hack tool that enables developers to record video of smartphone user behavior. It’s called Growth Replay. Developed for user testing, for the purpose of the tool is mainly acquiring qualitative rather than quantitative data. By integrating their SDK with your app, you can record videos of how your users behave in that app. Typical analytics tools let you to learn where many users quit. But if you use those tools in combination with Growth Replay, it lets you understand out how users typically quit at that point. The recorded videos can be reviewed using a convenient dashboard, shown below. You can record a 15-minute video for every observed session and store about 100 videos max for an account. According to the company, they are planning to add more features such as video recording on a web browser and heat map. Pricing is not disclosed but available upon request. Sirok plans to introduce more services in this space in the future, so expect to see more services from them later on.

See the original story in Japanese.

CyberAgent subsidiary Sirok, the startup behind the photo app My365 and AB testing service Growth Push, today unveiled a new growth hack tool that enables developers to record video of smartphone user behavior. It’s called Growth Replay.

Developed for user testing, for the purpose of the tool is mainly acquiring qualitative rather than quantitative data. By integrating their SDK with your app, you can record videos of how your users behave in that app.

Typical analytics tools let you to learn where many users quit. But if you use those tools in combination with Growth Replay, it lets you understand out how users typically quit at that point.

The recorded videos can be reviewed using a convenient dashboard, shown below. You can record a 15-minute video for every observed session and store about 100 videos max for an account. According to the company, they are planning to add more features such as video recording on a web browser and heat map. Pricing is not disclosed but available upon request.

Sirok plans to introduce more services in this space in the future, so expect to see more services from them later on.

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Puzzle & Dragons reaches 25 million downloads

Rick Martin 2014.03.03

GungHo Online Entertainment has announced that its hit game Puzzle & Dragons has surpassed 25 million downloads. This comes just shortly after the two year anniversary of its initial launch. The game needed 29 days to acquire its most recent million, which is pretty consistent with its performance over the last six months or so. [Via Gamebiz]

GungHo Online Entertainment has announced that its hit game Puzzle & Dragons has surpassed 25 million downloads. This comes just shortly after the two year anniversary of its initial launch. The game needed 29 days to acquire its most recent million, which is pretty consistent with its performance over the last six months or so.

[Via Gamebiz]

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Japanese news app developer Shiroyagi Corporation raises $490K from Global Brain

Takeshi Hirano 2014.03.03

See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Shiroyagi Corporation [1] recently launched a new curation app called Kamelio. And now just last week the startup announced that it has raised about 50 million yen ($490,000) from Japanese investment firm Global Brain. The money comes from a $150-million fund managed by Global Brain but primarily invested by the country’s state-run investment company, Innovation Network Corporation of Japan. Shiroyagi’s co-representative director Yoshi Watanabe elaborated how his team will be improving on app: We’re currently a eight-person team. In order to build up a solid user base, we’ll keep focusing on improving the interface of our app for the time being, improvising the algorithm on our ‘follow’ engine and speeding up back-end data processing. Kamelio has adopted a new concept that differs slightly from conventional news curation apps. While many apps present selected articles based on what articles are trending on social media or which media you subscribe to, Kamelio picks up articles based on topics you are likely to be interested in, using their unique algorithm to go even beyond the keywords you’ve entered in your preference. As the team is comprised of technology experts, they expect to attract potential co-workers by…

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based Shiroyagi Corporation [1] recently launched a new curation app called Kamelio. And now just last week the startup announced that it has raised about 50 million yen ($490,000) from Japanese investment firm Global Brain. The money comes from a $150-million fund managed by Global Brain but primarily invested by the country’s state-run investment company, Innovation Network Corporation of Japan.

Shiroyagi’s co-representative director Yoshi Watanabe elaborated how his team will be improving on app:

We’re currently a eight-person team. In order to build up a solid user base, we’ll keep focusing on improving the interface of our app for the time being, improvising the algorithm on our ‘follow’ engine and speeding up back-end data processing.

Kamelio has adopted a new concept that differs slightly from conventional news curation apps. While many apps present selected articles based on what articles are trending on social media or which media you subscribe to, Kamelio picks up articles based on topics you are likely to be interested in, using their unique algorithm to go even beyond the keywords you’ve entered in your preference.

As the team is comprised of technology experts, they expect to attract potential co-workers by opening their growth hack knowledge to the public.

The company name ‘Shiroyagi’ is means ‘white goat’ in Japanese, encourages their team members to climb higher and higher. ↩

Article

Japan’s Mixi launches minimalist selfie app

Tengami: A stunning Japanese style pop-up paper puzzle game

Saving the story of your kids: Notabli app launches version 2.0

Vocagetty: Helping you remember words with pictures

Dash Labs proposes a sort of FitBit for cars, attracts investment from CyberAgent

As Ring meets its Kickstarter goal, we wonder — Is it just vaporware?

Approaching 2M downloads, Japan’s mobile news app Gunosy gets a makeover to attract female users

Japan’s Sirok unveils video recording tool to let developers analyze user behavior

Puzzle & Dragons reaches 25 million downloads

Japanese news app developer Shiroyagi Corporation raises $490K from Global Brain

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