What’s the first thing you do when you grab your mobile phone? Slide to unlock the homescreen. Here in Asia, there is an app and an reward advertisement platform that capitalizes on this action. It’s called Latte Screen. The app was first released in Korea where it was downloaded over 2 million times in the first three months after its release. And now AppDisco Japan, the company behind the app, has announced that it will be expanding service to a total of 13 countries, including Australia, Spain, France, and Germany. According to the company, Latte Screen ‘hijacks’ (so to speak) [1] a user’s lock screen with advertisements. Users are shown the most recent advertisements (updated once every hour) and can receive points everytime they unlock their lock screen. These points can be exchanged for gift cards or even can be exchanged for cash. The company also plans to add coupons for stores and restaurants, as well as goods from Korean cosmetic brands or relating to pop stars. AppDisco released its first app in Japan, Ad Latte, back in December of 2011. The app gives out points to its users for watching commercials, answering questions, and participating in campaigns. The two…
What’s the first thing you do when you grab your mobile phone? Slide to unlock the homescreen. Here in Asia, there is an app and an reward advertisement platform that capitalizes on this action. It’s called Latte Screen. The app was first released in Korea where it was downloaded over 2 million times in the first three months after its release. And now AppDisco Japan, the company behind the app, has announced that it will be expanding service to a total of 13 countries, including Australia, Spain, France, and Germany.
According to the company, Latte Screen ‘hijacks’ (so to speak) [1] a user’s lock screen with advertisements. Users are shown the most recent advertisements (updated once every hour) and can receive points everytime they unlock their lock screen. These points can be exchanged for gift cards or even can be exchanged for cash. The company also plans to add coupons for stores and restaurants, as well as goods from Korean cosmetic brands or relating to pop stars.
AppDisco released its first app in Japan, Ad Latte, back in December of 2011. The app gives out points to its users for watching commercials, answering questions, and participating in campaigns. The two Latte apps are integrated, allowing users to collect points from both apps.
The app will be available to U.S. users starting this summer. Latte Screen can be downloaded over on Google Play.
In their announcement, the company used the word ‘hijacks’, perhaps for creative effect. Obviously this has a negative connotation in English, but in Japanese it reads ok.↩
Japanese web conglomerate Septeni Holdings (JASDAQ:4293) has established a new subsidiary that will focus on building a manga content e-publication platform. The group gets most of its revenue from online advertising and social gaming apps. But with this platform, it is looking to diversify its business beyond intellectual property. The new subsidiary, Comicsmart, will establish a website, as well as discover and train new cartoonists for its comic e-publication platform. The company also announced a program to supporting aspiring cartoonists, called Route M, giving them complimentary painting materials, production facilities, grants, and distribution channels for their works. On a related note, Japanese gaming company Spicy Soft recently announced that it has handed over Manga Get (a manga-focused, user-generated content site) to Septeni. The site has more than 900,000 amateur cartoonists and more than 40,000 cartoons. Some of our readers may remember that Gyao and GREE recently established an investment fund for the anime business. Since the beginning of this year, anime-related startps such as MugenUp or Anipipo have been attracting much attention among Japanese consumers and investors.
Japanese web conglomerate Septeni Holdings (JASDAQ:4293) has established a new subsidiary that will focus on building a manga content e-publication platform. The group gets most of its revenue from online advertising and social gaming apps. But with this platform, it is looking to diversify its business beyond intellectual property.
The new subsidiary, Comicsmart, will establish a website, as well as discover and train new cartoonists for its comic e-publication platform. The company also announced a program to supporting aspiring cartoonists, called Route M, giving them complimentary painting materials, production facilities, grants, and distribution channels for their works.
On a related note, Japanese gaming company Spicy Soft recently announced that it has handed over Manga Get (a manga-focused, user-generated content site) to Septeni. The site has more than 900,000 amateur cartoonists and more than 40,000 cartoons.
Some of our readers may remember that Gyao and GREE recently established an investment fund for the anime business. Since the beginning of this year, anime-related startps such as MugenUp or Anipipo have been attracting much attention among Japanese consumers and investors.
Production IG Tour, photo by Danny Choo, CC license
Photo via. TowerRecords Japan’s Radiko.jp is a website and mobile app (iOS and Android) that provides simultaneous broadcasts of radio programs over the internet. The service has maintained strong growth since its launch back in 2011 and has over 13 million monthly unique users as of April 2013. Over 68 commercial radio stations have joined the platform. Now Radiko has just announced that it will broadcast interviews of the top five winners of the AKB48 Election, a popular nationwide event that decides the center stage positions for the all-girl idol group. The event (sadly) might even exceed the country’s national election in terms of national interest. This 5th election is planned to take place tomorrow at Nissan Stadium in Yokohama. A total of 100 minutes interviews will be broadcasted beginning the night of June 8th and will be repeated the next day. There are over 246 members fighting for limited positions, and the participating members promote themselves on their blogs and on social media such as Twitter and Google+. The candidates speeches can be viewed on the official AKB48 YouTube channel. Fans can vote by purchasing CDs which (ingeniously) function as votes. This mega pop-culture event will surely attaract a…
Japan’s Radiko.jp is a website and mobile app (iOS and Android) that provides simultaneous broadcasts of radio programs over the internet. The service has maintained strong growth since its launch back in 2011 and has over 13 million monthly unique users as of April 2013. Over 68 commercial radio stations have joined the platform.
Now Radiko has just announced that it will broadcast interviews of the top five winners of the AKB48 Election, a popular nationwide event that decides the center stage positions for the all-girl idol group. The event (sadly) might even exceed the country’s national election in terms of national interest.
This 5th election is planned to take place tomorrow at Nissan Stadium in Yokohama. A total of 100 minutes interviews will be broadcasted beginning the night of June 8th and will be repeated the next day.
There are over 246 members fighting for limited positions, and the participating members promote themselves on their blogs and on social media such as Twitter and Google+. The candidates speeches can be viewed on the official AKB48 YouTube channel. Fans can vote by purchasing CDs which (ingeniously) function as votes.
This mega pop-culture event will surely attaract a wider range of fans for Radiko. Radio as a form of media is not exactly cutting-edge and has been going downhill in most places. But this old media form saw a revival in Japan when the Tohoku earthquake hit Japan in March of 2011. With so many things washed away after the tsunami, many people only had radio left as a way to connect to the rest of the world.
Japanese game publisher GungHo Entertainment and Finish publisher Supercell have just announced a joint collaboration that will result in the mutual sharing of content in each others games. To be clear, these are two giant games teaming up here; two of the biggest money makers in the mobile gaming space, working together to likely make even more money! What this means exactly is that we’ll see some Clash of Clans themed dungeons and monsters showing up in GungHo’s hit game Puzzle and Dragons. And likewise, we will see Clash of Clans and Hay Day display cross promotions for Puzzle and Dragons, in both the iOS and Android versions. Supercell’s CEO Ilkka Paananen commented in the announcement: We are very honored to work with GungHo and learn from the masters of free-to-play gaming. The more time we spend with GungHo, the more we realize how remarkably similar our two companies are. We are deeply committed to helping each other expand into new markets and equally committed to having an incredible amount of fun working together. GungHo has done collaborations like this previously for its Japanese version, but this is the first time (that I’m aware of) that they have made such…
Japanese game publisher GungHo Entertainment and Finish publisher Supercell have just announced a joint collaboration that will result in the mutual sharing of content in each others games. To be clear, these are two giant games teaming up here; two of the biggest money makers in the mobile gaming space, working together to likely make even more money!
What this means exactly is that we’ll see some Clash of Clans themed dungeons and monsters showing up in GungHo’s hit game Puzzle and Dragons. And likewise, we will see Clash of Clans and Hay Day display cross promotions for Puzzle and Dragons, in both the iOS and Android versions.
Supercell’s CEO Ilkka Paananen commented in the announcement:
We are very honored to work with GungHo and learn from the masters of free-to-play gaming. The more time we spend with GungHo, the more we realize how remarkably similar our two companies are. We are deeply committed to helping each other expand into new markets and equally committed to having an incredible amount of fun working together.
GungHo has done collaborations like this previously for its Japanese version, but this is the first time (that I’m aware of) that they have made such an effort for the English version of its game.
Serkan Toto has a great overview of how Japanese gaming companies use this collaboration strategy here, if you’d like to learn more.
For anyone who has yet to try out Puzzle and Dragons check out our demo video of basic gameplay strategy here.
Readers may remember a few months back when we told you about Bandai’s new Tamagotchi smartphone app, which just been released at the time. Here in Japan, the Tamagotchi smartphone app is a paid offering, but Bandai offered a localized free-to-play version for the US. It’s called Tamagotchi L.i.f.e. And the company has just announced that it has surpassed 2.5 million downloads since its initial release, a decent initial result for that market. The L.i.f.e. app (what were they thinking when they named this?) first became available on iOS on March 28, and the Android version followed on February 14. 1.5 million of the total downloads to date have been on the iOS platform. The paid Japanese versions of Tamagotchi for smartphone have performed much better (even though they are paid) with the iOS version ranking no lower than fourth in the ‘family’ category on the Japanese App Store since its release. Similarly over on Google Play, the paid app has been a top 5 mainstay in the casual category for months [1]. While all these numbers still relatively modest, it’s a promising start. For Bandai to leverage its older IP like this, it should serve as an example to…
Readers may remember a few months back when we told you about Bandai’s new Tamagotchi smartphone app, which just been released at the time. Here in Japan, the Tamagotchi smartphone app is a paid offering, but Bandai offered a localized free-to-play version for the US. It’s called Tamagotchi L.i.f.e. And the company has just announced that it has surpassed 2.5 million downloads since its initial release, a decent initial result for that market.
The L.i.f.e. app (what were they thinking when they named this?) first became available on iOS on March 28, and the Android version followed on February 14. 1.5 million of the total downloads to date have been on the iOS platform.
The paid Japanese versions of Tamagotchi for smartphone have performed much better (even though they are paid) with the iOS version ranking no lower than fourth in the ‘family’ category on the Japanese App Store since its release. Similarly over on Google Play, the paid app has been a top 5 mainstay in the casual category for months [1].
While all these numbers still relatively modest, it’s a promising start. For Bandai to leverage its older IP like this, it should serve as an example to companies like Nintendo who have yet to bring characters like Mario to the smartphone [2].
Bandai says that it plans to release an updated Tamagotchi Generation 2 this summer, with new features and characters. The company will also bring smartphone versions of Tamagotchi Angel in 2014. That’s not quite the blistering development schedule we’ve become accustomed to from modern day mobile developers – but it’s certainly faster than Nintendo.
This is according to app metrics company App Annie (iOS, Android). ↩
It should be a lesson for Nintendo, but as we all know, Nintendo has not been the best at learning such lessons of late. ↩
See our report on this in Japanese Stationary exercise bikes can be pretty boring if you have nothing interesting ahead of you. But here’s a fun hack from Tokyo-based KeyValue Inc that lets you take a virtual bicycle ride though various cities around the world. The system makes use if Google Streetview imagery, displayed on a screen in front of a stationary bike – hardly the real thing, but it’s certainly a fun way to make your exercise more interesting. Using a combination of their own homemade hardware, plus a bike, an iPad, and an external display, the group has created a way to cycle through real-world locations on Google Streetview. In addition to these basic visuals, they have added some other fun elements as well, including an electric fan that blows wind in your hair when you’re going fast. There’s also a fun steering mechanism whereby the rider wears a helmet equipped with an accelerometer, and merely tilts to either side when they wish to make a turn. I don’t quite understand all the technical details, but it seems that a magnetic sensor on the bike detects the rider’s pedaling motion, and conveys an estimated speed to the server,…
Stationary exercise bikes can be pretty boring if you have nothing interesting ahead of you. But here’s a fun hack from Tokyo-based KeyValue Inc that lets you take a virtual bicycle ride though various cities around the world. The system makes use if Google Streetview imagery, displayed on a screen in front of a stationary bike – hardly the real thing, but it’s certainly a fun way to make your exercise more interesting.
Using a combination of their own homemade hardware, plus a bike, an iPad, and an external display, the group has created a way to cycle through real-world locations on Google Streetview. In addition to these basic visuals, they have added some other fun elements as well, including an electric fan that blows wind in your hair when you’re going fast. There’s also a fun steering mechanism whereby the rider wears a helmet equipped with an accelerometer, and merely tilts to either side when they wish to make a turn.
I don’t quite understand all the technical details, but it seems that a magnetic sensor on the bike detects the rider’s pedaling motion, and conveys an estimated speed to the server, which then updates the Streetview display accordingly.
To see the system in action, check out the video overview and demonstration below.
Of course, there have been other examples of this sort of hack in the past. The earliest one that I know of is Aki Mimoto who did something similar way back in 2009. He implemented a head-mounted Vusix display though, which was pretty neat.
On a related note, I have my own iMac/bicycle mashup (aka ‘the desk-cycle’) at home. Perhaps I’ll use hyperlapse to make a virtual road, and open a window to get some wind in my hair!
I recently stumbled across a fun Japanese tower defense game mobile called Samurai Defender, which was developed by Tokyo-based Link Kit. I’m not familiar with any previous work from this company, but this title seems like a lot of fun so far. The game lets you play the role of an archer, tasked with picking off charging invaders one by one from your perch atop the castle wall. You can earn gold coins to upgrade your firing power and speed, fortify your castle, or invest in ‘schemes’ for your back-up army, which can be called upon at times in the game. So far I’ve been having a lot of fun with this game, as aiming and firing arrows can be lots of fun, requiring you to make the most of your shots before the enemies arrive at your castle walls. If you’d like to try Samurai Defender, you can get it for free over on the App Store or on Google Play. It is free to play, and is monetized with in-game purchases. If you’re in the market for other made-in-Japan tower defense titles, do check out my personal favorite Battle Cats, or even Gotcha Warriors. The title has been…
I recently stumbled across a fun Japanese tower defense game mobile called Samurai Defender, which was developed by Tokyo-based Link Kit. I’m not familiar with any previous work from this company, but this title seems like a lot of fun so far.
The game lets you play the role of an archer, tasked with picking off charging invaders one by one from your perch atop the castle wall. You can earn gold coins to upgrade your firing power and speed, fortify your castle, or invest in ‘schemes’ for your back-up army, which can be called upon at times in the game.
So far I’ve been having a lot of fun with this game, as aiming and firing arrows can be lots of fun, requiring you to make the most of your shots before the enemies arrive at your castle walls.
If you’d like to try Samurai Defender, you can get it for free over on the App Store or on Google Play. It is free to play, and is monetized with in-game purchases.
If you’re in the market for other made-in-Japan tower defense titles, do check out my personal favorite Battle Cats, or even Gotcha Warriors.
The title has been available in Japan since March, and just recently became available globally this week. For a better idea of how the game is played, see our video demo below.
Many Japanese people commute to work by train. This is the core time when they use their mobile phones. Due to extended use on trains like this, people often run down their battery, resulting a big need for portable mobile phone chargers. One popular charging device is the Cheero Power Plus Danboard version. The product has proven very popular, and is currently sold out. But it will be available again in mid-June 1. ‘Danboard’ means ‘cardboard’ in Japanese, and this particular danboard is a character that appears in a famous manga called Yotsuba&! named Danbo. This manga started 10 years ago in 2003 and so far has sold 10 million books. Readers may be familiar with Yotsuba&! since it has been translated into 13 different languages and sold in 23 countries. So Japanese or even non-Japanese manga fans may be familiar with the cute looking cardboard character. The Cheero mobile charger can recharge an iPhone 5 (or any other mobile phone) up to five times, and it takes about 11 to 13 hours for a full charge. It comes with a 75 cm micro USB cable and a linen bag. There are features to prevent overcharge and discharge, and there…
Many Japanese people commute to work by train. This is the core time when they use their mobile phones. Due to extended use on trains like this, people often run down their battery, resulting a big need for portable mobile phone chargers. One popular charging device is the Cheero Power Plus Danboard version. The product has proven very popular, and is currently sold out. But it will be available again in mid-June 1.
‘Danboard’ means ‘cardboard’ in Japanese, and this particular danboard is a character that appears in a famous manga called Yotsuba&! named Danbo. This manga started 10 years ago in 2003 and so far has sold 10 million books. Readers may be familiar with Yotsuba&! since it has been translated into 13 different languages and sold in 23 countries. So Japanese or even non-Japanese manga fans may be familiar with the cute looking cardboard character.
The Cheero mobile charger can recharge an iPhone 5 (or any other mobile phone) up to five times, and it takes about 11 to 13 hours for a full charge. It comes with a 75 cm micro USB cable and a linen bag. There are features to prevent overcharge and discharge, and there is also an automatic stop feature when temperature gets too high. There are two sockets, allowing users to charge tablets and some game consoles as well.
The Cheero Power Plus Danboard version is 3,750 yen (or about $37). But as previously mentioned, it is already sold out on Amazon. Such a mobile charger is good for everyday use, but it is also useful during earthquake or other natural disasters. Yostuba, the company behind the product has also released an Amazon branded version of its character Danbo in cooperation with an anime figure manufacturer Kaiyodo.
It seems that the product’s pre-order has ended already.↩
Mobile video has always been a somewhat perilous space for startups. I was a big fan of Seesmic back in 2008, which at the time proposed a sort of video equivalent of Twitter, with the capability of publishing short videos to a public timeline. Of course that service fizzled. But it looks like times have changed, with Twitter’s own video offering Vine racking up 13 million users in its first four months. One young startup hopes that there’s room for a mobile video messaging service too, and their app Unda is about to be released on the app store soon. But perhaps more interesting than the challenge that lies ahead of them is the story of how they got to where they are now. The startup was created by two Mexican and Japanese co-founders, a unique international collaboration that has led to Silicon Valley where they are now part of the 500 Startups incubation program. Oscar Yasser Noriega (from Mexico) and Nao Tokui (from Japan) originally met in Japan a few years ago. Eventually they decided that they wanted to do something together. Oscar had previously worked on a top Latin American video game site, but he liked the process…
L to R: Luis Lopez, Oscar Yasser Noriega, Nao Tokui
Mobile video has always been a somewhat perilous space for startups. I was a big fan of Seesmic back in 2008, which at the time proposed a sort of video equivalent of Twitter, with the capability of publishing short videos to a public timeline. Of course that service fizzled. But it looks like times have changed, with Twitter’s own video offering Vine racking up 13 million users in its first four months.
One young startup hopes that there’s room for a mobile video messaging service too, and their app Unda is about to be released on the app store soon. But perhaps more interesting than the challenge that lies ahead of them is the story of how they got to where they are now. The startup was created by two Mexican and Japanese co-founders, a unique international collaboration that has led to Silicon Valley where they are now part of the 500 Startups incubation program.
Oscar Yasser Noriega (from Mexico) and Nao Tokui (from Japan) originally met in Japan a few years ago. Eventually they decided that they wanted to do something together. Oscar had previously worked on a top Latin American video game site, but he liked the process of incubating new ideas within the company. Nao had been the founder of Qosmo, a mobile development company doing apps for big clients. Oscar proposed the idea of doing a video messaging app, but Nao was a little bit hesitant at first. Was there really room for this kind of product, especially as so many video startups had already failed so hard?
Taking the plunge
Eventually Nao came around to the idea. And when he did, he jumped in head first. He wanted to to meet up with Oscar, who was at that time in Mexico — so he flew straight over, and within two weeks had a prototype going. That was in December. And that’s when they thought that they might really be on to something.
After some interest from investors, the company’s third member and current chief creative officer, Luis Lopez, suggested that they should explore some more options. They took their idea to 500 Startups’ Mexico branch, and venture partner Cesar Salazar liked it a lot. Coincidentally 500 Startup’s founding partner Dave McClure had a talk in Mexico around that time, so they pitched the idea to him as well, and he loved it too. That was on a Wednesday, says Oscar, and they were on Silicon Valley by the following Monday. That was a little later than the most recent batch of startups, but great step forward for the young company.
As for the product itself, I personally have yet to see it. But from what I’ve heard, I’m optimistic. I’m told the UX/UI breaks with tradition, with no text, emoticons, or stickers — just video. They have focused on making the experience a good one even on slow networks. So of course while they plan to push this app in mature Asian mobile markets like Japan or Singapore, they will also target emerging markets in the region, as well as in Latin America — leveraging the advantage of having founders from both regions.
And hopefully unlike the video startup failures we’ve seen in the past, maybe the time is right for a service like Unda. Oscar explains:
Back around 2008 the timing was not right. Phones were fast, but not fast enough for a seamless experience. Networks weren’t so fast either, and there were less phones with front facing cameras. The timing was tricky for services back then. But now there are great examples of mobile video booming – not just things like YouTube and NicoNico Douga, but shorter format services like Vine, which is just six second videos. That’s a great signal that the market is embracing this right now.
So how will the market respond to Unda? It’s hard to say without seeing it first, but my initial impressions are that this is a pretty strong team, so I don’t think anyone should underestimate them. They did after all, make the cut for 500 Startups, a good indication that they’re on to something promising.
Recently I wrote a little about my favorite mobile writing apps, one of which was Poster, a beautifully designed iOS app that interfaces quite nicely with WordPress blogs. But there’s a similar app made here in Japan that almost made my list. PressSync Pro, while not as pretty as Poster is every bit as powerful, maybe more so. PressSync lets you do practically everything you can normally do with WordPress, with menu items to browse published articles, drafts, local articles, and media/images [1]. You can even edit things like the URL slug, the post’s featured image, and custom fields. PressSync does not access your entire archive of articles, but just the most recent ones. But you can adjust the setting to increase or decrease how many posts deep you’d like to dig into your archive if you wish. By default the font size in the PressSync editor is a little small, so you might want to bump it up a notch – and you can do so in the settings. There is snippet support for common HTML tags, and even Markdown. While this is handy, to me it requires a few to many button presses, and I will likely continue…
Recently I wrote a little about my favorite mobile writing apps, one of which was Poster, a beautifully designed iOS app that interfaces quite nicely with WordPress blogs. But there’s a similar app made here in Japan that almost made my list. PressSync Pro, while not as pretty as Poster is every bit as powerful, maybe more so.
PressSync lets you do practically everything you can normally do with WordPress, with menu items to browse published articles, drafts, local articles, and media/images [1]. You can even edit things like the URL slug, the post’s featured image, and custom fields. PressSync does not access your entire archive of articles, but just the most recent ones. But you can adjust the setting to increase or decrease how many posts deep you’d like to dig into your archive if you wish.
By default the font size in the PressSync editor is a little small, so you might want to bump it up a notch – and you can do so in the settings.
There is snippet support for common HTML tags, and even Markdown. While this is handy, to me it requires a few to many button presses, and I will likely continue to compose in another app, and maybe use an app like this one to publish. PressSync also has an AppLink maker function for bloggers who need to create affiliate links.
Overall I think it’s a pretty great app, and for anyone who needs to interface with WordPress on a mobile, its certainly worth the 450 yen ($4.99) price tag. You can get it over on the App Store.
I do have one complaint about tag input, which presents tag selection by listing all your tags (which can tag a while if you have many) with on/off sliders. Tags would be better input by simple writing them out separated by commas , I think. ↩
Yukari Mitsuhashi
Masaru Ikeda
Japanese web conglomerate 
Rick Martin
