Recently Japan’s Hatena, the operator of the online bookmarking service Hatena Bookmarks (think Delicious, but still relevant), began teasing a news app called Presso [1]. It’s scheduled to be released this spring, so expect it soon. And if you’d like to be notified of it’s release, you can leave your mail address on the teaser page. This is encouraging to see, because I’m frequent user of Hatena’s ‘hot entry’ portal (pictured below), which has categorized popular links into areas like economics, technology, entertainment, anime & games, and video. My hope is that they at least port this sensibly to smartphones, although it’s possible that they have something entirely different in store. The company already has published a number of apps, including a Hatena Bookmark app. That app is largely text based though, and I expect Presso will be far more visual, with a focus on images and video hopefully. As a recovering Delicious user who is currently addicted to Pinboard, I really like the way that these bookmarking sites can be used for discovery. And I hope Hatena sees that, and allows for users to choose certain niche topics to follow. For example, I often check the Pinboard tags for…
Recently Japan’s Hatena, the operator of the online bookmarking service Hatena Bookmarks (think Delicious, but still relevant), began teasing a news app called Presso[1]. It’s scheduled to be released this spring, so expect it soon. And if you’d like to be notified of it’s release, you can leave your mail address on the teaser page.
This is encouraging to see, because I’m frequent user of Hatena’s ‘hot entry’ portal (pictured below), which has categorized popular links into areas like economics, technology, entertainment, anime & games, and video. My hope is that they at least port this sensibly to smartphones, although it’s possible that they have something entirely different in store. The company already has published a number of apps, including a Hatena Bookmark app. That app is largely text based though, and I expect Presso will be far more visual, with a focus on images and video hopefully.
As a recovering Delicious user who is currently addicted to Pinboard, I really like the way that these bookmarking sites can be used for discovery. And I hope Hatena sees that, and allows for users to choose certain niche topics to follow. For example, I often check the Pinboard tags for Japan and Python, which are incredibly useful streams of information on those two topics.
While news apps like SmartNews and Gunosy are dominating the headlines here in Japan these days, I really think that Hatena is sitting on some untapped potential in its bookmarking site if it plays its cards right.
My only concern is that it has taken Hatena so long for the company to try a mobile news app, so realistically speaking, that I expect they don’t share my own enthusiasm for a bookmarks-based news service. Nevertheless, I have I hopes that they can at least produce a decent challenger for the likes of Gunosy and Smartnews.
Let’s wait and see what Presso looks like when it actually comes out, and hopefully at that time, we’ll have some good news to report.
Hatena also runs Hatena Blog, Hatena Diary, and a Q&A site. ↩
The Puzzle & Dragons X Evangelion collaboration that began in Japan back on February 24 has now extended to global versions of the hit mobile game, including the US. It will likely be a smart tie-up for GungHo Online Entertainment, since the intricate artwork that helped make Puzzle & Dragons such a big hit at home will certainly be appreciated by anime fans abroad. You can read more about the collaboration on the P&D Facebook page.
The Puzzle & Dragons X Evangelion collaboration that began in Japan back on February 24 has now extended to global versions of the hit mobile game, including the US.
It will likely be a smart tie-up for GungHo Online Entertainment, since the intricate artwork that helped make Puzzle & Dragons such a big hit at home will certainly be appreciated by anime fans abroad.
You can read more about the collaboration on the P&DFacebook page.
Here’s a fun app for any freelancers or homeworkers based in Japan. Dengen Cafe, released this past December, gives you a mapped view of cafes in your area that have a power outlet, so if you’re running low on juice, you can stop and plug in. It’s in Japanese (and is focused on Japan) but is pretty easy to navigate. Check out Dengen Cafe on the App Store.
Here’s a fun app for any freelancers or homeworkers based in Japan. Dengen Cafe, released this past December, gives you a mapped view of cafes in your area that have a power outlet, so if you’re running low on juice, you can stop and plug in. It’s in Japanese (and is focused on Japan) but is pretty easy to navigate.
Filmmaker and famous YouTuber Freddie Wong has just released a fun short film over on his RocketJump channel called Cave Quest. The video puts him in the role of a cave explorer, who encounters one of the baddies from GungHo Online Entertainment’s Puzzle and Dragons along the way. Interestingly it’s shot at Bronson Caves, a location used for the old 1950s Adam West Batman series. This looks to be part of a GungHo promotional effort for Puzzle & Dragons, and given that Freddie has nearly seven million subscribers on that particular channel, it’s a smart tie-up for GungHo with over 160,000 views in just a day [1]. Check out the clip below, or the accompanying behind-the-scenes video. Puzzle & Dragons recently surpassed 3 million downloads in the North American market, and GungHo no doubt wants to grow that number further through efforts such as this one. ) Freddie thanks GungHo “for making the video possible.” ↩
Filmmaker and famous YouTuber Freddie Wong has just released a fun short film over on his RocketJump channel called Cave Quest. The video puts him in the role of a cave explorer, who encounters one of the baddies from GungHo Online Entertainment’sPuzzle and Dragons along the way. Interestingly it’s shot at Bronson Caves, a location used for the old 1950s Adam West Batman series.
This looks to be part of a GungHo promotional effort for Puzzle & Dragons, and given that Freddie has nearly seven million subscribers on that particular channel, it’s a smart tie-up for GungHo with over 160,000 views in just a day [1]. Check out the clip below, or the accompanying behind-the-scenes video.
Puzzle & Dragons recently surpassed 3 million downloads in the North American market, and GungHo no doubt wants to grow that number further through efforts such as this one.
)
Freddie thanks GungHo “for making the video possible.” ↩
SlideStory is a movie and slides how creation application from Japan-based nanameue [1]. That developer has previously done some photo application development for the likes of Line and WeChat, as well as the uber-strange Kenstagram photo app. Our readers may recall that the company raised funds from Skyland Ventures last year. According to an interview over on Typemag (in Japanese), the app has seen more than 800,000 downloads since its release back in October, which is a pretty good start for an application in this genre. In addition to its home market of Japan, SlideStory appears to be getting some downloads in Thailand and Taiwan as well. We have previously looked at similar apps like Honda’s RoadMovies or Glue-th Inc’s Mechika Boola which can be used to create similar kinds of short movies. SlideStory’s ability to create movies from still images on your camera roll or from your social network is really great though, and I hope to follow up with a full review once I’ve spent more time with it. If you’d like to try out SlideStory, it’s available as a free download for iOS. An example of one a video slideshow produced with the app can be found…
SlideStory is a movie and slides how creation application from Japan-based nanameue [1]. That developer has previously done some photo application development for the likes of Line and WeChat, as well as the uber-strange Kenstagram photo app. Our readers may recall that the company raised funds from Skyland Ventures last year.
According to an interview over on Typemag (in Japanese), the app has seen more than 800,000 downloads since its release back in October, which is a pretty good start for an application in this genre. In addition to its home market of Japan, SlideStory appears to be getting some downloads in Thailand and Taiwan as well.
We have previously looked at similar apps like Honda’s RoadMovies or Glue-th Inc’s Mechika Boola which can be used to create similar kinds of short movies. SlideStory’s ability to create movies from still images on your camera roll or from your social network is really great though, and I hope to follow up with a full review once I’ve spent more time with it.
If you’d like to try out SlideStory, it’s available as a free download for iOS. An example of one a video slideshow produced with the app can be found below.
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.
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.
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
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’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. ↩
Japan’s Line continues to impress in the gaming space, with its recent title Cookie Run accumulating 10 million downloads in its first 30 days. But personally, I was more interested to try out the company’s latest game Line Rangers, which features the company’s own repertoire of characters. I’ve only spent a little time with this game so far, but I really like it a lot. Yet at the same time I’m a little conflicted. Line has completely ripped off one of my favorite tower defense games, Battle Cats, made by another Japanese company Ponos, based in Kyoto. So on the one hand, I’m really disappointed in Line for its “me too” approach. The similarities between the games are especially apparent if you compare the interface/controls in the pictures below. But on the other hand, two cool games are better than one cool game! Get Line Rangers as a free download for iOS or Google Play. I’ll hopefully have more to say about it after I’ve spent a week or so playing with it.
Japan’s Line continues to impress in the gaming space, with its recent title Cookie Run accumulating 10 million downloads in its first 30 days. But personally, I was more interested to try out the company’s latest game Line Rangers, which features the company’s own repertoire of characters. I’ve only spent a little time with this game so far, but I really like it a lot.
Yet at the same time I’m a little conflicted. Line has completely ripped off one of my favorite tower defense games, Battle Cats, made by another Japanese company Ponos, based in Kyoto.
So on the one hand, I’m really disappointed in Line for its “me too” approach. The similarities between the games are especially apparent if you compare the interface/controls in the pictures below. But on the other hand, two cool games are better than one cool game!
Get Line Rangers as a free download for iOS or Google Play. I’ll hopefully have more to say about it after I’ve spent a week or so playing with it.
Rick Martin
Yukari Mitsuhashi
