THE BRIDGE

Company Profiles

Inspired by small batch whisky, Japanese connected hardware maker to release video switcher

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The last time I met up with Tokyo-based hardware company Cerevo, it was back in 2012 when they were gearing up to release their LiveShell Pro, an affordable hardware solution that enables just about anyone to broadcast live video to the web. That very niche product has been the company’s bread and butter up until now, and I was curious to find out what Cerevo’s CEO Takuma Iwasa has been busy these days. Turns out, Cerevo has been up to quite a lot actually. In addition to the company’s futuristic internet-enabled power strip that is soon going on sale, the company plans to release a completely new connected video switcher next month called LiveWedge. It’s another connected hardware device for Cerevo, with great potential to really make an impact for video producers, priced at just $1000. Their HD video switcher supports four cameras (HDMI connection), integrating with a handy (free) iPad app that lets users easily control what video is displayed. Users can even add transitions (such as dissolves, wipes, or fade to black) or even display picture-in-picture using a simple drag and drop motion. Iwasa-san gave me a brief demo, and I was really surprised by how easy it…

cerevo-livewedge

The last time I met up with Tokyo-based hardware company Cerevo, it was back in 2012 when they were gearing up to release their LiveShell Pro, an affordable hardware solution that enables just about anyone to broadcast live video to the web. That very niche product has been the company’s bread and butter up until now, and I was curious to find out what Cerevo’s CEO Takuma Iwasa has been busy these days.

Turns out, Cerevo has been up to quite a lot actually. In addition to the company’s futuristic internet-enabled power strip that is soon going on sale, the company plans to release a completely new connected video switcher next month called LiveWedge. It’s another connected hardware device for Cerevo, with great potential to really make an impact for video producers, priced at just $1000.

Their HD video switcher supports four cameras (HDMI connection), integrating with a handy (free) iPad app that lets users easily control what video is displayed. Users can even add transitions (such as dissolves, wipes, or fade to black) or even display picture-in-picture using a simple drag and drop motion. Iwasa-san gave me a brief demo, and I was really surprised by how easy it was to control.

cerevo_03
Iwasa showing LiveWedge’s iPad app

And as you might guess from their previous LiveShell product, it lets you livestream video to the internet as well [1].

LiveWedge also features a SD card, which you can use to record you output video (1080/30p), or even store video and pictures that can be used as input.

Iwasa explains that currently video switching solutions typically are big and heavy, often carried around in a suitcase. In contrast, their LiveWedge could easily fit in a laptop case or a purse. He points out that while they were selling their LiveShell Pro, there were a lot of customers were asking them to build a video switcher. So they already have a willing base of customers in place that will be certain to buy.

Cerevo currently has a headcount of just 13 people, and its office is a tiny third floor space packed to the ceiling with electronics components, instructional books, and I think there’s a box of oranges in there somewhere too. But they’re a global hardware manufacturer that appears to be doing well by identifying a narrow but important demand for hardware. In a somewhat unlikely metaphor, Iwasa likened their hardware strategy to that of a small batch whisky maker:

Small batch whisky and bourbon have really enthusiastic fans. Similarly, we are making a niche product, but we have a tight relationship with our fans all over the world. Our product [strategy] is very different than Panasonic or Sony, which is to find a market for a billion dollar product. But our strategy is to make a popular niche product, and that’s very possible.

He pointed out that software makers – in contrast – really have a big challenge these days, and if (for example) he wanted to make a recruiting app for India, there would be lots of competition already in that space. In contrast, their LiveShell Pro video streaming device only has one real competitor globally [2].

If you’re in Austin, they’ll have it on display at the SXSW next week, so be sure to pay them a visit. We really look forward to seeing how LiveWedge is received once it’s released.

cerevo_02_back
LiveWedge rear view

  1. Supports Ustream, YouTube Live, or your own servers.  ↩

  2. This would be Teledek in Canada, says Iwasa. Their target market is more high end serving TV stations, and their hardware is priced around $1500 or $2000 dollars. LiveShell Pro costs only about $500.  ↩

Kamcord localizes SDK to Japanese, Namco Bandai first to use its game recording technology

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Late last year in Kyoto we happened to run into Adi Rathnam, the co-founder of of Kamcord, who at the time was speaking to potential Japanese gaming partners for his company’s game recording platform. As you may recall, Kamcord offers an SDK that enables game developers to put a ‘movie’ button in game, and when it is pressed, they can then share video clips/replays of their game play. These can be shared directly to Kamcord where they can be viewed by other gamers, or they can be shared to places like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, or even email. Back in December Adi informed us of plans to localize their SDK into Japanese, as well as a number of other Asian languages. That localization has now been realized, and Kamcord is also announcing that Namco Bandai’s title Gregg is the first game that takes advantage of that Japanese localization. Kamcord also tells us that they have also localized their SDK into Chinese, with Korean soon to follow. Unreal growth Adi says that they are experiencing huge growth right now, with a new video uploaded once every five seconds, and a total of two billion videos recorded in total. “We’re working hard to…

Late last year in Kyoto we happened to run into Adi Rathnam, the co-founder of of Kamcord, who at the time was speaking to potential Japanese gaming partners for his company’s game recording platform. As you may recall, Kamcord offers an SDK that enables game developers to put a ‘movie’ button in game, and when it is pressed, they can then share video clips/replays of their game play. These can be shared directly to Kamcord where they can be viewed by other gamers, or they can be shared to places like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, or even email.

Back in December Adi informed us of plans to localize their SDK into Japanese, as well as a number of other Asian languages. That localization has now been realized, and Kamcord is also announcing that Namco Bandai’s title Gregg is the first game that takes advantage of that Japanese localization. Kamcord also tells us that they have also localized their SDK into Chinese, with Korean soon to follow.

Unreal growth

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Kamcord’s share tab

Adi says that they are experiencing huge growth right now, with a new video uploaded once every five seconds, and a total of two billion videos recorded in total. “We’re working hard to ensure our servers will scale,” he explains. “Our growth has been pretty exponential.”

Kamcord is also announcing today that it has joined the Unreal Engine 3 Integrated Partners Program. That program includes 25 other leading companies like Oculus VR, NaturalMotion, and Intel. The founder and CEO of Epic, the company behind the Unreal game engine, had this to say about the tie-up with Kamcord:

The Kamcord integration with Unreal Engine 3 provides awesome real-time video recording and social sharing functionality that developers can drop into their mobile games for added appeal. We’re proud that Kamcord has joined Epic’s Integrated Partners Program to bring their technology to Unreal Engine developers as seamlessly as possible.

This is an important step for Kamcord, because games using the Unreal engine typically have pretty stunning graphics (Infinity Blade is one of the best known examples), as well as a tendency to attract more hardcore gamers. It stands to reason that video recordings of such games would be extremely sharable.

Kamcord will also be making an effort to bring independent developers into the fold as well, and to that end they have already landed Limbic’s Tower Madness 2 (shown in the video above) and PennyPop’s Battle Camp as users of their technology.

New Japanese subscription service delivers fresh roasted coffee to your door

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It has been interesting to watch the development of many online subscription commerce services over the past few years. Depending on the product, some of these services have been successful while others have not. I suspect product has a lot to do with it. For example, I’ve subscribed to a number of products using Amazon’s Subscribe and Save program. And one thing I’ve noticed is that if I don’t select the right delivery frequency, some things can build up faster than I can use them. In a case like that, I’m disappointed to see them arrive on my doorstep. But products that have a limited lifespan which would be tailor-made to such subscription commerce. I’d love to have a basket of fruit delivered weekly to my door. Perishable items would not carry over into the next week, and you’d always be delighted to see a new basket arrive. Perhaps following the same logic, US-based Tonx has done well with its subscription roasted coffee service. According to the company, “The full flavor of coffee begins to reveal itself a few days after it’s roasted, and starts to wane after a couple weeks.” They deliver coffee to customers every other week, based…

kawakura

It has been interesting to watch the development of many online subscription commerce services over the past few years. Depending on the product, some of these services have been successful while others have not. I suspect product has a lot to do with it.

For example, I’ve subscribed to a number of products using Amazon’s Subscribe and Save program. And one thing I’ve noticed is that if I don’t select the right delivery frequency, some things can build up faster than I can use them. In a case like that, I’m disappointed to see them arrive on my doorstep.

But products that have a limited lifespan which would be tailor-made to such subscription commerce. I’d love to have a basket of fruit delivered weekly to my door. Perishable items would not carry over into the next week, and you’d always be delighted to see a new basket arrive.

Perhaps following the same logic, US-based Tonx has done well with its subscription roasted coffee service. According to the company, “The full flavor of coffee begins to reveal itself a few days after it’s roasted, and starts to wane after a couple weeks.” They deliver coffee to customers every other week, based on that time frame.

Java for Japan

Regrettably Tonx does not yet deliver to Japan. But thankfully, the folks over at AQ just launched a site that will deliver your java fix twice monthly [1]. It’s called Kawakura, and you can sign up on their teaser page right now to be notified of when they officially start.

I asked AQ’s Chris Palmieri about why they thought something like this would work in Japan. He explained:

Kawakura started as a quest to get the most enjoyment possible from my morning ritual of making coffee. For me this meant always having great beans at home, an understanding of where they come from and how to get the most flavor from them. 

A subscription model obviously solves the first part, the logistics of buying fresh beans every week, but we’re more excited by how Kawakura can facilitate a conversation between the roaster and the customer. Conversation is how we learn from each other, and how simple routines can become the favorite part of our day.

Don’t look now, but I think AQ just made being coffee-sipping hipster designers cool again [2].

I’m told they’ll start off with a small customer base and see what they learn. For now the company is still talking with local roasters, and learning as much as they can before they make their first shipment.

I’m not a big coffee drinker myself, but I’m glad to see someone take a shot at this here in Japan. All you caffeine-dependent Japanese startups out there are encouraged to share this link with your boss. That Red Bull will rot your teeth, I hear.


  1. You may remember AQ from such projects as Hi and their AQ Lift program.  ↩

  2. Who am I gonna make fun of now? Maybe Saskatchewan.  ↩

Japan’s Tabelog hits 5M restaurant reviews, you’d need 13.5 years to read them all

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The Japanese equivalent of Yelp, Tabelog, announced today that its total number of restaurant reviews have surpassed five million. To celebrate this huge milestone, the review site has launched a campaign where 50 couples will be invited to 50 restaurants, all of which have reviews exceeding 4.0. Of all the restaurants listed on the site, 760,000 to be specific, only 0.1% meet this criteria. Tabelog opened way back in March of 2005, and with 50 million monthly visitors it is now the go-to destination for many Japanese people looking for a great place to eat. According to the company, five million reviews add up to roughly 2.3 billion Japanese characters. To understand how impressive this number is, it would take about 13.5 years to read it all out loud, and it would take a daily newspaper 25.2 years to publish as much. The special landing page that Tablog has created for its campaign is convenient even if you’re not going to participate. It showcases 50 top-notch restaurants in Japan by region, information normally restricted to those with premium accounts. A few examples of restaurants that made the cut include: Saeki, a sushi restaurant in the Osaka area Yanagiya, an unagi…

Tabelog-top50

The Japanese equivalent of Yelp, Tabelog, announced today that its total number of restaurant reviews have surpassed five million. To celebrate this huge milestone, the review site has launched a campaign where 50 couples will be invited to 50 restaurants, all of which have reviews exceeding 4.0. Of all the restaurants listed on the site, 760,000 to be specific, only 0.1% meet this criteria.

Tabelog opened way back in March of 2005, and with 50 million monthly visitors it is now the go-to destination for many Japanese people looking for a great place to eat. According to the company, five million reviews add up to roughly 2.3 billion Japanese characters. To understand how impressive this number is, it would take about 13.5 years to read it all out loud, and it would take a daily newspaper 25.2 years to publish as much.

The special landing page that Tablog has created for its campaign is convenient even if you’re not going to participate. It showcases 50 top-notch restaurants in Japan by region, information normally restricted to those with premium accounts. A few examples of restaurants that made the cut include:

  • Saeki, a sushi restaurant in the Osaka area
  • Yanagiya, an unagi restaurant in Gifu prefecture
  • Apicius, a French restaurant in Ginza

If you’d like to give it a browse, you can view the selected restaurants from your computer or from your smartphone.

Chinese online flower shop forces men to choose their favorite girl

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Based on our previous article, in Japanese China is very good at finding business opportunities among the year’s many holidays. Valentine’s Day on February 14th, and Qixi Festival (often referred to as China’s Valentine’s Day), are both good examples of this. But China has one romantic service that you can use at any time of year, including Valentine’s Day. It’s online flower store RoseOnly, which we previously featured on our Japanese site. The online service began in January of 2013, selling roses for 1000 yuan (about $170), a price point that seems to be targeting the upper class. After a user places an order and enters the recipient’s information, a nice-looking guy delivers the roses in a BMW. Very impressive. But there is one very unique part of this service that stands out. When a male user signs up on the site, he has to register with his national identification card and he cannot specify more than one woman as a recipient – nor can he change the recipient at a later date. So if a man has a relationship with more than one woman, he cannot use the service for both. He would have to make a choice. Even…

roseonly

Based on our previous article, in Japanese

China is very good at finding business opportunities among the year’s many holidays. Valentine’s Day on February 14th, and Qixi Festival (often referred to as China’s Valentine’s Day), are both good examples of this. But China has one romantic service that you can use at any time of year, including Valentine’s Day. It’s online flower store RoseOnly, which we previously featured on our Japanese site.

The online service began in January of 2013, selling roses for 1000 yuan (about $170), a price point that seems to be targeting the upper class. After a user places an order and enters the recipient’s information, a nice-looking guy delivers the roses in a BMW. Very impressive.

But there is one very unique part of this service that stands out. When a male user signs up on the site, he has to register with his national identification card and he cannot specify more than one woman as a recipient – nor can he change the recipient at a later date.

So if a man has a relationship with more than one woman, he cannot use the service for both. He would have to make a choice. Even after a user breaks up with his girlfriend, he cannot send RoseOnly roses to a new girlfriend. In a way, that makes them extra special for anyone who receives them.

On Chinese Valentine’s Day, the sales on RoseOnly reached 11 million yuan ($1.8 million). Approximately 11,000 men sent roses using the service. And this success led the company to raise $10 million from Tencent in its series B round, and they opened their first brick-and-mortar stores in September.

The company says that it plans to launch a new service for men to send chocolates to women. I am sure that they are targeting for February 14th with this initiative. For more information, you can check out the RoseOnly promo video below.

Postach.io: Could this be the perfect blog platform for Japan?

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There are so many ways for people to start a blog these days. The recent trend of ‘static’ blog services like Scriptogr.am and Ghost are refreshing, because for a personal or casual blog, there really shouldn’t be any reason that you must have your own server running a database [1]. Dropbox lets is publish to the web, and a solution like Calepin (for example) can take advantage of that, serving your blog’s files from there. The idea behind Postach.io is similar. The brainchild of Vancouver-based Input Logic, it uses Evernote to post content to your blog, letting users choose between a number of wonderful design templates as well. The startup is off to a good start, having joined Evernote’s accelerator class having won the company’s Devcup this year. To date, I’m told there are 21,000 people blogging with Postachio so far. The big advantage for a service like this is that it enlists users by finding them on a platform they already use. They already live in Evernote, and can easily publish to Postachio just by adding a note with the tag ‘published’ to a specified Evernote notebook. Big in Japan About 20% of Evernote’s users (and about 30% of…

postachio-banner

There are so many ways for people to start a blog these days. The recent trend of ‘static’ blog services like Scriptogr.am and Ghost are refreshing, because for a personal or casual blog, there really shouldn’t be any reason that you must have your own server running a database [1]. Dropbox lets is publish to the web, and a solution like Calepin (for example) can take advantage of that, serving your blog’s files from there.

The idea behind Postach.io is similar. The brainchild of Vancouver-based Input Logic, it uses Evernote to post content to your blog, letting users choose between a number of wonderful design templates as well. The startup is off to a good start, having joined Evernote’s accelerator class having won the company’s Devcup this year. To date, I’m told there are 21,000 people blogging with Postachio so far.

The big advantage for a service like this is that it enlists users by finding them on a platform they already use. They already live in Evernote, and can easily publish to Postachio just by adding a note with the tag ‘published’ to a specified Evernote notebook.

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One of Postachio’s many themes, Apex

Big in Japan

Shawn pitches at demo day
Shawn pitches at demo day

About 20% of Evernote’s users (and about 30% of its revenue) come from Japan. Docomo, of course, was an early investor in Evernote [2], and has promoted Evernote Premium to its users. So the ties to Japan are already in place for Postachio to make this sort of overseas jump. So naturally, I was curious to see if the Postachio had any plans to push their blogging service in the country. Co-founder and designer Shawn Adrian explained a little their plans for the next year [3]:

We plan to internationalize, and a Japanese version is in the works. […] We’re going really dig in and improve our themes and the community around them. We’re also launching new social features to help users build their audience, and tools for pro bloggers and companies.

I understand the team has already met some representatives from Docomo Ventures in Silicon Valley, and I expect that whenever a localized version is ready, that it would be very well received here.

The team is also thinking to integrate other platforms too, letting people publish from just about anywhere. For me, I like the possibilities of publishing a Markdown note (Postachio does support Markdown) via Evernote’s publish-over-email function, sending from the mobile Drafts app on iOS.

Evernote's APAC GM Troy Malone users Postachio
Evernote’s APAC GM Troy Malone users Postachio

Static blogs are very trendy these days, but the degree of difficulty for many solutions like Jekyll or Pelican, or even the aforementioned Scriptogram, can be difficult for an average user to wrap their head around. Postachio, for someone who already understands Evernote, is very easy and accessible [4].

I got in touch with some Evernote reps here in Asia just to see how much this Postachio has caught on within the company. While I didn’t get any specific numbers I’m told that APAC general manager Troy Malone is a huge fan, running his own blog on Postachio. Even the Evernote South East Asia blog runs Postachio.

My colleagues here at The Bridge frequently share notes published to the web with Evernote. This interests me, since I myself tend to use Dropbox for that, and I wonder how many other Japanese users also prefer Evernote for web publishing. Perhaps I’m reading too much into a very small difference, but I think this sort of preference could bode well for Postachio.

To learn more about Postachio, check out their video demo below.


  1. Or at least, no reason to pay for a server.  ↩

  2. Or more specifically, Docomo Capital.  ↩

  3. The other co-founder (and coder) is Gavin Vickery, and the third member is programmer Brandon Brown.  ↩

  4. As for my own preference, I’m planning to switch over my personal site to Pelican from Drupal pretty soon. I’d happily use something like Postachio, but because I’m studying Python, I’m going to opt for Pelican. I should also take this opportunity to express how much I really despise WordPress. It started out well, but when the WYSIWYG started randomly injected span and div tags into my code, I decided I had had enough. We still use WordPress on this blog, but for me, it’s not without frequent curse words.  ↩

Tokyo Office Tour: Find your dream job with friends on Wantedly

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We recently featured Tokyo-based startup Wantedly as one of the nominees in last week’s CNet Japan Startup Awards. The company has taken an innovative approach to helping people in their job search, providing a platform that leverages your social graph to ensure you find a better fitting job. The ideas is, that by being introduced to jobs by friends and mutual friends, you have a higher chance if finding a job that you’ll love. So far the platform has over 60,000 users and 1800 clients, which is not bad considering that they are just a year and a half old. Their team is growing, and they like to point out that they have brought on new members using the Wantedly platform. In addition to their multi-talented CEO, Akiko Naka, some of folks that I spoke to seem to have ridiculously impressive pedigrees, many coming from places like Facebook, Google, Yahoo, or Goldman Sachs [1]. Wantedly just recently moved into a new office on Meguro, and they were nice enough to allow me to bring my camera by and take some pictures. The office sits just adjacent to a beautiful park, giving the staff a pretty inspiring view, especially at this…

Wantedly CEO Akiko Naka
Wantedly CEO Akiko Naka

We recently featured Tokyo-based startup Wantedly as one of the nominees in last week’s CNet Japan Startup Awards. The company has taken an innovative approach to helping people in their job search, providing a platform that leverages your social graph to ensure you find a better fitting job. The ideas is, that by being introduced to jobs by friends and mutual friends, you have a higher chance if finding a job that you’ll love.

So far the platform has over 60,000 users and 1800 clients, which is not bad considering that they are just a year and a half old. Their team is growing, and they like to point out that they have brought on new members using the Wantedly platform. In addition to their multi-talented CEO, Akiko Naka, some of folks that I spoke to seem to have ridiculously impressive pedigrees, many coming from places like Facebook, Google, Yahoo, or Goldman Sachs [1].

Wantedly just recently moved into a new office on Meguro, and they were nice enough to allow me to bring my camera by and take some pictures. The office sits just adjacent to a beautiful park, giving the staff a pretty inspiring view, especially at this time of year with all the fall foliage still hanging around.

It will be interesting to see what kind of ideas they hatch from this new space. Given that there’s lots of English on their front page right now, I think we can expect Wantedly to make an overseas push in 2014 (or a push to neighboring Asian markets), although for the time being they aren’t saying much on that point. The team has more than a few fluent English speakers, so I think they’ll be far better prepared to go global than most other Japanese startups.

You can check out some of the photos below for a better idea of the layout of their new space, as well as a short video intro from the CEO [2].

wantedly-01
Wantedly office entrance: Ring the bell to say hi
wantedly-03
lounge space
Engineers at work
Engineers at work
wantedly-02
I’ve seen this dog somewhere before…
Engineers at work
More engineers at work
Engineer's super-keyboard of the future
Engineer’s super-keyboard of the future
Busy in the meeting room
Busy in the meeting room

  1. Akiko herself is ex-Facebook. But overall she’s a pretty remarkable talent, who in addition to being a programmer, has also dabbled with making her own manga. As we talked in her office, one of her paintings was propped against the sofa.  ↩

  2. It was really cool of her to give this video a try in English. Not many Japanese startups have dared to do that so far in our series.  ↩

Cooliris courts photo-crazed Japan with new localization

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Occasionally the folks from Palo Alto-based Cooliris swing through Tokyo as part of efforts to promote their photo sharing service in Asia. Our readers may recall that we spoke with them back in March, when they were making good progress in China with an early partnerships with social service Renren. So I was curious to see how Cooliris has progressed since then, both in China and Japan, and in surrounding Asian regions. CEO Soujanya Bhumkar tells me that China has seen particularly solid growth, with a 30% increase in downloads in the last quarter making the Middle Kingdom their number two install base after the US. They’ve made significant localization efforts in China, now with Sina Weibo on board as a connected service. Users can browse Weibo photos using the slick Cooliris interface, diving deep to explore pictures from various users, as well as those from people they follow or are followed by. Tencent Weibo and Baidu Yun are now also supported Cooliris services, having been added over the past year. Interestingly, India has been a new growth market for them thanks to increased smartphone adoption there, now suddenly a top ten country for Cooliris. Japan, which previously was Cooliris’s…

Occasionally the folks from Palo Alto-based Cooliris swing through Tokyo as part of efforts to promote their photo sharing service in Asia. Our readers may recall that we spoke with them back in March, when they were making good progress in China with an early partnerships with social service Renren. So I was curious to see how Cooliris has progressed since then, both in China and Japan, and in surrounding Asian regions.

CEO Soujanya Bhumkar tells me that China has seen particularly solid growth, with a 30% increase in downloads in the last quarter making the Middle Kingdom their number two install base after the US. They’ve made significant localization efforts in China, now with Sina Weibo on board as a connected service. Users can browse Weibo photos using the slick Cooliris interface, diving deep to explore pictures from various users, as well as those from people they follow or are followed by. Tencent Weibo and Baidu Yun are now also supported Cooliris services, having been added over the past year.

iPad_screenmocks4-japanese
Japanese interface

Interestingly, India has been a new growth market for them thanks to increased smartphone adoption there, now suddenly a top ten country for Cooliris.

Japan, which previously was Cooliris’s second biggest market, still remains one of their top five markets. But with the latest update of the Cooliris iOS app, Japanese localization has been added. I understand that the company isn’t going to be making significant marketing efforts, but the localization at least makes it more accessible here. They’ll continue to try to serve Japanese users in later versions.

Considering that Cooliris now supports integration with so many social services, the missing puzzle piece for the company here in Japan is obviously Line. The team couldn’t tell me too much on this point, but obviously users here would definitely like to see such an integration. So Line users should keep their fingers crossed, and stay tuned [1].

The Cooliris app has a few other significant changes recently, as Soujanya and his VP of business development Sebastian Blum (he’s the guy in the video above) inform me that the app’s group function is now the number one driver of user acquisition and user retention. Groups could be as small as just two people sharing photos privately, or it could be many more. Groups can be based around certain activities like weddings, vacations, with discussion happening on Cooliris even before that event takes place.

As I was speaking with Soujanya, I happened to have Yammer open on my Mac, as that’s one of the collaborative tools that we use here at The Bridge. He pointed out to me that while there are many corporate collaborative tools like this, there are few collaborate options for consumers. People’s photo experience is typically fragmented across multiple service and multiple friends, and Cooliris gives people a chance to bring them together in one place.

In total they have seen over 3 billion photos brought into the Cooliris app, and over 1 billion photo engagements [2]. And for those who share photos in many different online places, it will continue to be a useful service. Whether it can pick up some more steam in photo-crazy Japan remains to be seen, but this new localization is an encouraging first step.

iPad_screenmocks3-japanese

iPad_screenmocks1-japanese

iPad_screenmocks1-japanese


  1. I confess, I used Cooliris for a while this year, but eventually drifted away from it. My mobile photo use is primarily restricted to Notabli, a family-focused photo app. I use Flickr as storage for pictures taken with my DSLR, but the majority of them are private. But I can see the potential of Cooliris for people more social than myself.  ↩

  2. I understand that an engagement is when you tap on a photo and view it in higher resolution.  ↩

From tech startup to media company: Videogram evolves, with smart TV on the horizon

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We’ve written about Cinemacraft’s Videogram solution a few times before here on The Bridge. It is a player that lies of top of existing web video, giving a visual paneled preview of different portions of that video. The startup received investment from 500 Startups, and this year began working with Turner Broadcasting by way of its 12-week Media Camp, and subsequently when it became an investor as well. Founder Sandeep Casi explained to me that although they started out strictly as a technology company, they have now grown to become more of a media company. And not just any media company either. Recently they were one of five TVOT nominees for the best TV and video user interface / user experience, right alongside the likes of Netflix, Dish Network, and Showtime Network. They’re building for the future too, announcing Leap Motion integration today. Much of their recent progress, says Sandeep, has come about thanks to the alliance with Turner. “Turner has been fantastic,” he explains. He says that the connection with Turner really helped them get official embed status for Twitter, their player now white-listed for viewing. What that means is that now Videogram clips can be shared in the…

videogram-leap
Videogram is now Leap Motion enabled

We’ve written about Cinemacraft’s Videogram solution a few times before here on The Bridge. It is a player that lies of top of existing web video, giving a visual paneled preview of different portions of that video. The startup received investment from 500 Startups, and this year began working with Turner Broadcasting by way of its 12-week Media Camp, and subsequently when it became an investor as well. Founder Sandeep Casi explained to me that although they started out strictly as a technology company, they have now grown to become more of a media company.

And not just any media company either. Recently they were one of five TVOT nominees for the best TV and video user interface / user experience, right alongside the likes of Netflix, Dish Network, and Showtime Network. They’re building for the future too, announcing Leap Motion integration today. Much of their recent progress, says Sandeep, has come about thanks to the alliance with Turner.

“Turner has been fantastic,” he explains. He says that the connection with Turner really helped them get official embed status for Twitter, their player now white-listed for viewing. What that means is that now Videogram clips can be shared in the Twitterstream, and function as they normally would.

Having made solid progress with presentation of video on the web, Sandeep is looking ahead to what he says was his vision all along: Television. He’d like to make electronic program guides more interactive, and Videogram can be a pathway to doing that. By integrating their service into smart TVs, not only do you bring the paneled functionality of Videogram, but you also bring the capability to socially share portions of television shows in a more granular manner via the sharing function on those panels. You can check out some Videogram Smart TV interfaces here if you’d like to learn more.

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As for the business side of things, Videogram panels also enable banner ad placement within videos for advertisers. Sandeep showed me an example using an NBA clip (see below), where panels visually previewed highlights of a Knicks game, with one panel showing a banner ad for a basketball shoe. That banner, when clicked, gave an option to buy via the Nike website [1]. Obviously this sort of hyper-relevant product placement holds a lot of potential in the video advertising space, especially for TV. Sandeep explains:

We’re trying to make the industry think about engagement, not views. For advertisers this is important, because they now know their video is being eyeballed.

When I talked with Sandeep, he showed me a number of Videogram mockups and samples for a wide range of notable entertainment properties. To be honest, it was hard to keep up with which companies were already clients, and which ones were just mockups. But it’s hard not to admire Videogram having the confidence to overhaul a given company’s online video presence on spec, and take it to their offices to sell them on its potential. Sandeep adds:

This is our business development scheme. This is what we do. And I really can’t believe that more startups don’t do it. Clients get it immediately. We give them a link, and they can convince internally with that link.

Videogram’s iOS app has come a long was as well, recently getting an upgrade that lets users capture multiple clips, combining them as a composite video. This is a function we see in many video apps these days, but the technique lends itself especially well to Videogram since different clips could be represented by different panel previews.

Cinemacraft has already deployed Videogram across a number of properties, including CBS, ABC, FOX , Sony, and even in India’s Bollywood. I expect NTT group will also be assisting the company to reel in some big fish here in Japan as well. I’m told that their service has grown in popularity in Korea as well, so I look forward to hearing news from that front too.


  1. There’s also a play button, so buy link appears to be not too intrusive.  ↩

Japan’s ‘Creative Survey’ proposes a prettier online questionnaire

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There are more than a few online survey tools on the market these days, including the likes of Survey Monkey and Typeform. But I was curious to discover a new competitor from here in Japan when I attended the recent Techcrunch Tokyo event. It’s called Creative Survey, a name that reflects the services positioning strategy among the competition. There’s currently a four-person team working on Creative Survey, a sort of mini-unit operating within FourDigit, a web solutions and design studio based in Shibuya. The team had been running on a design research product for corporate customers since 2011, but they found they were receiving lots of demand for a lighter, more affordable solution that anyone could use. That prompted them to launch Creative Survey last month, and so far they have 1100 users, experiencing good growth out if the gate. They hope this can continue, with a sort of Dropbox-like referral system among free users, which they hope will kickstart those who can pay. But the challenge ahead will be a difficult one, with stiff competition not only from Survey Monkey, which has about 65,000 users in Japan, but also from market research giant Macromill, which just launched its own…

There are more than a few online survey tools on the market these days, including the likes of Survey Monkey and Typeform. But I was curious to discover a new competitor from here in Japan when I attended the recent Techcrunch Tokyo event. It’s called Creative Survey, a name that reflects the services positioning strategy among the competition.

There’s currently a four-person team working on Creative Survey, a sort of mini-unit operating within FourDigit, a web solutions and design studio based in Shibuya. The team had been running on a design research product for corporate customers since 2011, but they found they were receiving lots of demand for a lighter, more affordable solution that anyone could use. That prompted them to launch Creative Survey last month, and so far they have 1100 users, experiencing good growth out if the gate. They hope this can continue, with a sort of Dropbox-like referral system among free users, which they hope will kickstart those who can pay.

But the challenge ahead will be a difficult one, with stiff competition not only from Survey Monkey, which has about 65,000 users in Japan, but also from market research giant Macromill, which just launched its own online survey tool, Questant, last month.

How does Creative Survey plan to thrive with such stiff competition? The project’s leader Ryo Taguchi emphatically says that they will excel with better design. They showed me some examples of surveys that really made use of their custom background image support, typically with an interface to match. Transitions between questions are really slick, and they are easily viewable on any mobile device.

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Automobile survey, slider response

So how does this differ from Typeform then, I wondered, which is another very eye-catching survey solution. Ryo says that while Typeform is a great tool, it cannot really do the kind of high level question logic that Creative Survey can do. I’m a little skeptical that the demographic for this lighter solution will require such complexity, but for those who do need it, it’s good to know that it’s there.

The Creative Survey team has some interesting things in store for the next year, including plans to push their service overseas, likely in the spring of 2014. So stay tuned for more from them in the coming months!

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