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Japanese makeup tips and tutorials prove popular online

Yukari Mitsuhashi 2013.06.21

We’ve written about the popular cosmetics and makeup review portal @Cosme on a few occasions. i-Style, the company behind the giant portal announces its most popular cosmetic products twice a year. The award-winning cosmetics are selected purely from generated user-reviews on the portal, and also factors in @Cosme’s own metrics [1]. @Cosme also has some hair and make-up video tips on its Cawaii Channel where they give out specific how-tos on products that rank well — tips like how to make cat-eyes, or how to put on fake eye-lashes. Many Japanese women prefer to buy cosmetics at stores — at least the first time, since they can get good advice on how to use the products. Cawaii channel is simple but serves a similar purpose. But other Japanese companies are trying to meet the demands in this market as well. There is another make-up video portal called Minna no Make, (roughly translated as Everyone’s makeup) which is a close equivalent to Beautylish. The site provides make-up tips by popular professional makeup artists for makeup as well as nails. Users can get advice or post their own tips and make friends around makeup and nail products. The most popular video on…

We’ve written about the popular cosmetics and makeup review portal @Cosme on a few occasions. i-Style, the company behind the giant portal announces its most popular cosmetic products twice a year. The award-winning cosmetics are selected purely from generated user-reviews on the portal, and also factors in @Cosme’s own metrics [1].

@Cosme also has some hair and make-up video tips on its Cawaii Channel where they give out specific how-tos on products that rank well — tips like how to make cat-eyes, or how to put on fake eye-lashes. Many Japanese women prefer to buy cosmetics at stores — at least the first time, since they can get good advice on how to use the products. Cawaii channel is simple but serves a similar purpose.

But other Japanese companies are trying to meet the demands in this market as well. There is another make-up video portal called Minna no Make, (roughly translated as Everyone’s makeup) which is a close equivalent to Beautylish. The site provides make-up tips by popular professional makeup artists for makeup as well as nails. Users can get advice or post their own tips and make friends around makeup and nail products. The most popular video on the site (as we write this) is how to put on red eyeliner (see video below).

Minna no Make is interesting in that users can find the makeup or nail products of their choice, and then find videos that show how to use those products. There is also a premium membership where members work as ambassadors of the site, and are given dedicated pages with more designs, original name cards to hand out to friends, and invites to exclusive events.

If you would like to see the list of winning products, you can check it out on their website in Japanese or Chinese. ↩

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First Hacker News Nagoya meetup to take place this Saturday, June 22

Rick Martin 2013.06.21

There are lots of fun tech-focused community events springing up around Japan. Of course, for us here in Tokyo it’s sometimes easy to overlook what’s happening beyond the capital. Hacker News events have been held in various cities around Japan (and of course, the world), and tomorrow Nagoya will be added to that list, with the city’s first Hacker News meetup being held in the afternoon [1]. The venue will be Adea (find a detailed map over on the Doorkeeper.jp page), and the time has been set for 2pm to 6pm, so that anyone who visits from out of town can catch a train back home. If you can’t make it, you can follow the discussion on Twitter on the #hnnagoya hashtag. For more details about the Hacker News events, check out Hacker News Tokyo or Hacker News Kansai. I shamefully have to confess that I’ve not attended one of these events yet. But I hope to do so soon. ↩

There are lots of fun tech-focused community events springing up around Japan. Of course, for us here in Tokyo it’s sometimes easy to overlook what’s happening beyond the capital.

Hacker News events have been held in various cities around Japan (and of course, the world), and tomorrow Nagoya will be added to that list, with the city’s first Hacker News meetup being held in the afternoon [1].

The venue will be Adea (find a detailed map over on the Doorkeeper.jp page), and the time has been set for 2pm to 6pm, so that anyone who visits from out of town can catch a train back home. If you can’t make it, you can follow the discussion on Twitter on the #hnnagoya hashtag.

For more details about the Hacker News events, check out Hacker News Tokyo or Hacker News Kansai.

I shamefully have to confess that I’ve not attended one of these events yet. But I hope to do so soon. ↩

news

Cinemacraft admitted into Turner Broadcasting’s Media Camp

Rick Martin 2013.06.20

Cinemacraft, the Tokyo/Silicon Valley-based startup which was recently admitted to the 500 Startups incubator program in San Francisco, will now also get a boost from Turner Broadcasting. The young company was one of five technology companies admitted into Turner’s 2013 Media Camp, a 12-week program that helps entrepreneurs build media businesses. As you may recall, Cinemacraft has been developing its Videogram technology, which is a new way of presenting videos with attractive thumbnailed panels. The platform was recently used by pop star Jennifer Lopez to release her new single Live It Up. But Cinemacraft has been working on other new technologies as well, including a picture presentation that uses a similar approach. Its recently released Qixshr platform displays user photos in a sort of stained glass presentation. You can check out an example of that sort of layout below. The other startups admitted to the media camp are Tomorrowish, ChannelMeter, Meograph, and Plumzi. They’ll all get to work with experienced television and film executives, and “get an opportunity to commercialize their business” to Turner’s many properties. Turner Broadcasting’s VP of Emerging Technology, Balaji Gopinath, noted in the announcement: We see great underlying technologies and unique business models with these five…

Cinemacraft, the Tokyo/Silicon Valley-based startup which was recently admitted to the 500 Startups incubator program in San Francisco, will now also get a boost from Turner Broadcasting. The young company was one of five technology companies admitted into Turner’s 2013 Media Camp, a 12-week program that helps entrepreneurs build media businesses.

As you may recall, Cinemacraft has been developing its Videogram technology, which is a new way of presenting videos with attractive thumbnailed panels. The platform was recently used by pop star Jennifer Lopez to release her new single Live It Up.

But Cinemacraft has been working on other new technologies as well, including a picture presentation that uses a similar approach. Its recently released Qixshr platform displays user photos in a sort of stained glass presentation. You can check out an example of that sort of layout below.

The other startups admitted to the media camp are Tomorrowish, ChannelMeter, Meograph, and Plumzi. They’ll all get to work with experienced television and film executives, and “get an opportunity to commercialize their business” to Turner’s many properties. Turner Broadcasting’s VP of Emerging Technology, Balaji Gopinath, noted in the announcement:

We see great underlying technologies and unique business models with these five early-stage companies and look forward to working with them on defining how technology is continuing to evolve the entertainment industry.

It’s another big step for Sandeep Casi and Cinemacraft, who have been making very solid progress over the past six months.

qishr-athletes — Championship athletes on Qixshr

news

A Unique View: Soko Aoki of PanoPlaza on the Opportunities in Panoramas

Rick Martin 2013.06.19

We’ve previously featured PanoPlaza, a fun panoramic photo tool operated by Japan-based Kadinche Corporation that has functioned as a useful tool for retailers to create virtual online stores. The company’s CEO, Soko Aoki, recently had a chance to attend the International Panoramic Photography Conference this year in Iceland. This event is the biggest of its kind in the world, and it featured 30 talks and 150 participants. Soko was the only speaker from Japan at the event. As we have noted on this site more than a few times, Japan is a country that’s very enthusiastic about photo apps. But Soko says that use of panoramic photographs has not really hit the Japanese or Asian markets just yet. He explained this at the conference, and noted that many companies in attendance showed interest in coming to the Japanese market. He adds: Most Japanese panoramic photography companies only shoot panoramas and simply put them on their websites. But in Europe and America, there are many companies and individuals who are working on more advanced features such as panoramic movies, aerial panoramas, and panoramic camera hardware. Seeing all this, I have learned a lot from being at the event. It’s interesting to…

We’ve previously featured PanoPlaza, a fun panoramic photo tool operated by Japan-based Kadinche Corporation that has functioned as a useful tool for retailers to create virtual online stores. The company’s CEO, Soko Aoki, recently had a chance to attend the International Panoramic Photography Conference this year in Iceland. This event is the biggest of its kind in the world, and it featured 30 talks and 150 participants.

Soko was the only speaker from Japan at the event.

As we have noted on this site more than a few times, Japan is a country that’s very enthusiastic about photo apps. But Soko says that use of panoramic photographs has not really hit the Japanese or Asian markets just yet. He explained this at the conference, and noted that many companies in attendance showed interest in coming to the Japanese market. He adds:

Most Japanese panoramic photography companies only shoot panoramas and simply put them on their websites. But in Europe and America, there are many companies and individuals who are working on more advanced features such as panoramic movies, aerial panoramas, and panoramic camera hardware. Seeing all this, I have learned a lot from being at the event.

It’s interesting to note that while Japan is so enthusiastic about mobile photography and photography in general, that companies are not yet exploring the opportunities that lie in panoramic photography as much as they are in other regions.

While Soka says that one of his main goals in attending was to find out cutting edge panoramic photo technology being used elsewhere, I’m sure that the event provided a good chance for him to spread the word about his PanoPlaza service as well.

Readers may recall when we reported about PanoPlaza’s tie-up with Japanese retail giant Don Quijote, providing a solution for employees to virtually visit stores in remote locations to visually manage their merchandise. That’s just one example of how the technology can be used, and it will be interesting to see what other ones emerge in the future.

Don Quijote using Panoplaza for merchandise management

news

Japan-based design site Creatty launches e-commerce channels

Takeshi Hirano 2013.06.18

See the original story in Japanese. Creatty is a website that allows creators to show off their work online. Connehito, the Japan-based startup that operates the service, recently announced an e-commerce channel called Creatty Store, where creators can sell their works online without inventory. Since its launch back in April of 2012, the website has acquired more than 20,000 fine arts and crafts items from creators. The service is available to access for free on PC, iOS, and Android platforms. On this new e-commerce channel, the startup plans to feature standout designs posted on the platform and help creators to manufacture them for sale. At the time of launch, items available include skins for smartphone handsets and t-shirts only. The startup will take care of manufacturing and shipping, and pay a commission (upon sale) to those who have designed the products. This is a somewhat unusual approach to its business scheme. For many C2C market sites dealing in handmade crafts (such as Etsy), users sell their works online and the platform will take a commission afterwards. The startup originally considered a concept similar to what other C2C services are doing, but instead they stand in the middle between creators and…

See the original story in Japanese.

Creatty is a website that allows creators to show off their work online. Connehito, the Japan-based startup that operates the service, recently announced an e-commerce channel called Creatty Store, where creators can sell their works online without inventory.

Since its launch back in April of 2012, the website has acquired more than 20,000 fine arts and crafts items from creators. The service is available to access for free on PC, iOS, and Android platforms. On this new e-commerce channel, the startup plans to feature standout designs posted on the platform and help creators to manufacture them for sale. At the time of launch, items available include skins for smartphone handsets and t-shirts only.

The startup will take care of manufacturing and shipping, and pay a commission (upon sale) to those who have designed the products. This is a somewhat unusual approach to its business scheme. For many C2C market sites dealing in handmade crafts (such as Etsy), users sell their works online and the platform will take a commission afterwards. The startup originally considered a concept similar to what other C2C services are doing, but instead they stand in the middle between creators and buyers. We asked CEO Shunsuke Oyu about why he chose this scheme. He explained:

For craft creators, we thought it would be very simple to photograph the works they produce and simply sell them online. That was our original concept. We developed a web app for selling them online, but very few people used it. We learned the market was not quite mature [enough]. And it was probably hard for them to make goods by themselves.

Typical creators using the service are generally folks into fine arts. And it’s likely difficult for them to manage an inventory of products like experienced e-commerce merchandisers.

Mr. Oyu explains that the startup will add more creators on e-commerce channels with plans to have up to 50 creators in the coming months. They are expecting to start dealing with canvas prints and fashion items as well.

news

Japan’s Street Academy raises $420,000

Takeshi Hirano 2013.06.18

See the original story in Japanese. IntheStreet, the startup behind private lesson marketplace Street Academy, announced today that it has raised 40 million yen (approximately $420,000) from CyberAgent Ventures, Genuine Startups [1], and other angel investors. The service gives users an opportunity to teach something to someone else. By listing the topic that you can teach, you can then easily create a page announcing your lecture. When you teach your lesson, you will receive a fee from the student, and pay 15% as a commission to the startup. The startup’s CEO Takashi Fujimoto started his carrier as an engineer, and he was involved in major projects at an investment fund company. As AirBnB-like offline services have emerged, he wanted to launch a long-tail C2C business by himself. As he started exploring how he could execute his business, the learning community site Skillshare was launched in the US in 2011. Mr. Fujimoto explains: I thought this is it. We are told that the private lesson market is worth 2 trillion yen ($21 billon) in Japan. My wife provides a lesson where she’s teaching how to bake a cake, but she has a problem in terms of acquiring students. Small cooking schools…

See the original story in Japanese.

IntheStreet, the startup behind private lesson marketplace Street Academy, announced today that it has raised 40 million yen (approximately $420,000) from CyberAgent Ventures, Genuine Startups [1], and other angel investors.

The service gives users an opportunity to teach something to someone else. By listing the topic that you can teach, you can then easily create a page announcing your lecture. When you teach your lesson, you will receive a fee from the student, and pay 15% as a commission to the startup.

The startup’s CEO Takashi Fujimoto started his carrier as an engineer, and he was involved in major projects at an investment fund company. As AirBnB-like offline services have emerged, he wanted to launch a long-tail C2C business by himself. As he started exploring how he could execute his business, the learning community site Skillshare was launched in the US in 2011.

Mr. Fujimoto explains:

I thought this is it. We are told that the private lesson market is worth 2 trillion yen ($21 billon) in Japan. My wife provides a lesson where she’s teaching how to bake a cake, but she has a problem in terms of acquiring students. Small cooking schools still rely on distributing hand-outs for their promotion. This caused me to launch the startup.

In terms of marketplace sites connecting users with private lessons, Cyta.jp is still ahead of Street Academy. What’s the difference between the two services? Street Academy does not check whether teachers can provide the lessons/skills they claim. In contrast to that, Cyta.jp allows teachers to post the description after an interview, in an effort to verify the quality of lessons presented on the website. Fujimoto adds:

In terms of managing quality, our service relies on market principles, which is similar to what Tabelog (a Japanese restaurant review site) is doing. We understand it’s really hard to catch up with our competitors. However, we expect to overcome this by giving users more useful information such as what they have learned in the past, and what background a teacher has.

With these funds, the startup plans to intensify its marketing efforts with the goal of acquiring more than 10,000 students in a year.

Genuine Startups is an investment fund spun off from Tokyo-based startup incubator Movida Japan. ↩

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Kyoto startup unveils a simple alternative to Google Reader

Masaru Ikeda 2013.06.17

As many of our readers likely already know, Google will retire Google Reader on July 1st. More than a few startups and developers around the world have put forth alternatives to the dying de-facto standard. Which one will emerge as the new front runner? Kyoto-based startup Modelor today unveiled a new RSS reading app called Presser, which is available both on the web and for iOS. It will follow with versions for Android, Mac, and iPad soon. The Presser team is mostly comprised of students attending Kyoto University. In addition to the general RSS reading feature, the app will learn your preferences and recommend several news articles you may like every day. Modelor was founded by Kyoto-based UI/UX designer Yosuke Nishida. He previously co-founded and worked with Reventive, the startup behind Close, a social networking app. He recently decided to begin his own startup, as Reventive recently managed to secure funding from Mixi.

As many of our readers likely already know, Google will retire Google Reader on July 1st. More than a few startups and developers around the world have put forth alternatives to the dying de-facto standard. Which one will emerge as the new front runner?

Kyoto-based startup Modelor today unveiled a new RSS reading app called Presser, which is available both on the web and for iOS. It will follow with versions for Android, Mac, and iPad soon. The Presser team is mostly comprised of students attending Kyoto University.

In addition to the general RSS reading feature, the app will learn your preferences and recommend several news articles you may like every day.

Modelor was founded by Kyoto-based UI/UX designer Yosuke Nishida. He previously co-founded and worked with Reventive, the startup behind Close, a social networking app. He recently decided to begin his own startup, as Reventive recently managed to secure funding from Mixi.

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Japan’s Green Funding enables DIY crowdfunding for web publishers

Yukari Mitsuhashi 2013.06.16

This is part of our Crowdfunding in Japan series (RSS). Services like KickStarter have become a global phenomenon with the power to let creative individuals take their ideas to new heights. It’s happening here in Japan too. Below is one example. Green Funding is a service that can be integrated into websites, allowing anyone to create crowdfunding project pages. Tokyo Calendar is a well-known Japanese lifestyle magazine, and it has recently used the service to launch a website called ‘Tokyo Calender Fund’, which showcases original crowdfunding projects. The most recent project aims to bring back the once famous and now very scarce Sri Lankan coffee bean. According to the project page, the making of Sri Lankan coffee is a national project and the country plants 20,000 trees per year as part of the production process. Unfortunately the amount exported to Japan is very scarce at 700 kg per year. For this project, Tokyo Calendar plans to develop its own original Sri Lankan coffee blend, collecting funds starting at 1,000 yen (or about $10). The project will run until July 15th, with the target sum being 100,000 yen (or about $1,000). Other interesting projects from Tokyo Calendar includes things like developing…

This is part of our Crowdfunding in Japan series (RSS). Services like KickStarter have become a global phenomenon with the power to let creative individuals take their ideas to new heights. It’s happening here in Japan too. Below is one example.

Green Funding is a service that can be integrated into websites, allowing anyone to create crowdfunding project pages. Tokyo Calendar is a well-known Japanese lifestyle magazine, and it has recently used the service to launch a website called ‘Tokyo Calender Fund’, which showcases original crowdfunding projects. The most recent project aims to bring back the once famous and now very scarce Sri Lankan coffee bean.

According to the project page, the making of Sri Lankan coffee is a national project and the country plants 20,000 trees per year as part of the production process. Unfortunately the amount exported to Japan is very scarce at 700 kg per year. For this project, Tokyo Calendar plans to develop its own original Sri Lankan coffee blend, collecting funds starting at 1,000 yen (or about $10). The project will run until July 15th, with the target sum being 100,000 yen (or about $1,000).

Other interesting projects from Tokyo Calendar includes things like developing original wine glasses shaped like a flamingo, or importing 20 kinds of tequila to Japan. Green Funding has also been used by a popular fashion magazine Nylon Japan.

Traditional media in Japan has been experiencing decreased readership, but publishers can leverage Green Funding to publish books and magazines on demand, and thus be less dependent on advertisements. It will also allow publishers to support creators or artists that they have interviewed or written about.

Hopefully services like this one can have a positive impact for publishers in the country.

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Japanese news curation app Vingow boasts 250% growth in two months

Takeshi Hirano 2013.06.15

See the original story in Japanese. A recent survey by Japanese ad agency Hakuhodo indicated that consumers in Tokyo have very saturated contact with media these days. So perhaps it’s no wonder that online news curation services are getting lots of attention recently. The technology behind these services seems to be only getting better. Tokyo-based startup JXPress is providing one such service, a news curation app called Vingow. Earlier this week, the startup added an interesting new feature to its iOS app, pulling the lead portion of curated news articles, creating handy abstracts for users. The startup’s founder and CEO Katsuhiro Yoneshige explained: If you look at a service like Summly, they’re doing this pretty easily (creating abstracts from curated articles), because in English and they can detect which part of the article is the lead, by finding key nouns, verbs, and finding the frequency of spaces or finding a period in a sentence. However, this process is very difficult to do in Japanese. To solve this problem, they needed to use natural language processing technology. The team initially thought this would take a lot of time, but things proceeded far better than they expected. Some of our readers may…

See the original story in Japanese.

A recent survey by Japanese ad agency Hakuhodo indicated that consumers in Tokyo have very saturated contact with media these days. So perhaps it’s no wonder that online news curation services are getting lots of attention recently. The technology behind these services seems to be only getting better. Tokyo-based startup JXPress is providing one such service, a news curation app called Vingow.

Earlier this week, the startup added an interesting new feature to its iOS app, pulling the lead portion of curated news articles, creating handy abstracts for users.

The startup’s founder and CEO Katsuhiro Yoneshige explained:

If you look at a service like Summly, they’re doing this pretty easily (creating abstracts from curated articles), because in English and they can detect which part of the article is the lead, by finding key nouns, verbs, and finding the frequency of spaces or finding a period in a sentence. However, this process is very difficult to do in Japanese.

To solve this problem, they needed to use natural language processing technology. The team initially thought this would take a lot of time, but things proceeded far better than they expected.

Some of our readers may recall that Yahoo has recently acquired the aforementioned news curation app Summly, which was developed by a 17-year-old in UK. The Vingow app was developed by students attending Waseda University, and is very similar to the Summly app, not only in function but also in that it was created by young developers.

In order to prevent possible copyright issues (which sometimes occur with news curation apps) the team is discussing with their legal advisor and news media companies.

Since their launch back October of 2012, the app has been growing well, seeing a 250% increase in downloads over the last two months. Their users read as many as 22 articles at a time on average. Yoneshige adds:

In terms of duration of visits, a typical user will stay on general news sites for a few minutes. But on our app they stay for as long as 40 minutes. […] Since our launch last year, we’ve been tagging articles to improve accuracy, giving better recommendations to users. From now, we’ll focus on making it easier to find interesting articles. These two approaches will definitely help our users save their time.

JX Press was founded back in 2008, and introduced the first edition of the Vingow app in 2011. The startup has previously received investments from Cyber Agent, NetAge, Mitsubishi UFJ Capital, and others.

In the Japanese media landscape, they will definitely be one to watch moving forward.

news

Fujisoft holds contest to find new uses for its Parlo robot

Yukari Mitsuhashi 2013.06.15

Parlo, photo via Engadget The most famous robot in Japan might very well be Sony’s famous dog robot Aibo. It was first released way back in 1999 but was subsequently retired in 2005. But Aibo paved the way for other robots to invade the consumer market. One such robot is Parlo, a communication-robot developed by Fujisoft. First released back in March of 2010 as a product for educational institutions, the robot is 40 cm tall and weighs 1.6 kg. And since June of 2012, Parlo has been used in over 50 facilities nationwide, especially in nursing homes and day care centers. Parlo can communicate with seniors or even dance or play quizzes or other games. It will even turn when it hears your voice, and greet you as you approach. The company recently announced that it will hold a programming contest to gather ideas to better use robots in our daily lives. There will be two contests (one for ideas, and one for programming), with the themes being: “Parlo brings happiness to elders” and “What if Parlo was at your home?” Ideas will be accepted from June 15th to July 20th, followed by the programming contest which will run from…

Parlo, photo via Engadget

The most famous robot in Japan might very well be Sony’s famous dog robot Aibo. It was first released way back in 1999 but was subsequently retired in 2005. But Aibo paved the way for other robots to invade the consumer market. One such robot is Parlo, a communication-robot developed by Fujisoft.

First released back in March of 2010 as a product for educational institutions, the robot is 40 cm tall and weighs 1.6 kg. And since June of 2012, Parlo has been used in over 50 facilities nationwide, especially in nursing homes and day care centers. Parlo can communicate with seniors or even dance or play quizzes or other games. It will even turn when it hears your voice, and greet you as you approach.

The company recently announced that it will hold a programming contest to gather ideas to better use robots in our daily lives. There will be two contests (one for ideas, and one for programming), with the themes being: “Parlo brings happiness to elders” and “What if Parlo was at your home?” Ideas will be accepted from June 15th to July 20th, followed by the programming contest which will run from August 15th to November 20th.

The winners of the competition will be announced at the 25th National Japan Robot-Sumo Tournament which will be held on December 15th. Parlo is not available for consumers just yet, but the first place winners in the competition will get one, along with a cool 100,000 yen (about $1,000).

News

Japanese makeup tips and tutorials prove popular online

First Hacker News Nagoya meetup to take place this Saturday, June 22

Cinemacraft admitted into Turner Broadcasting’s Media Camp

A Unique View: Soko Aoki of PanoPlaza on the Opportunities in Panoramas

Japan-based design site Creatty launches e-commerce channels

Japan’s Street Academy raises $420,000

Kyoto startup unveils a simple alternative to Google Reader

Japan’s Green Funding enables DIY crowdfunding for web publishers

Japanese news curation app Vingow boasts 250% growth in two months

Fujisoft holds contest to find new uses for its Parlo robot

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