THE BRIDGE

Startups

Japan’s wearable smart-toy Moff launches Kickstarter campaign, already near goal

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Yesterday we mentioned Japan-based OpenPool, an interactive billiards kit that’s currently raising funds on Kickstarter, coinciding with their exhibition at SXSW. There are a number of Japanese companies pushing their wares at the Austin conference, and another one is smart-toy maker Moff, who we spoke with earlier in the month. Like OpenPool, Moff has launched a Kickstarter campaign for its wearable wristband toy at SXSW, and as I write this, they’re almost at their fundraising goal, with more than $15,000 of their $20,000 goal raised. As part of their Kickstarter materials, Moff has laid out a development roadmap (see below) detailing plans to mass produce and ship their wristband this summer. Kickstarter backers who pitch in financially can get Moff wristbands as rewards, which certainly makes it worthwhile to support the project. If you’d like a more detailed overview of how Moff works, you can check out the Kickstarter promo video above.

Yesterday we mentioned Japan-based OpenPool, an interactive billiards kit that’s currently raising funds on Kickstarter, coinciding with their exhibition at SXSW. There are a number of Japanese companies pushing their wares at the Austin conference, and another one is smart-toy maker Moff, who we spoke with earlier in the month.

Like OpenPool, Moff has launched a Kickstarter campaign for its wearable wristband toy at SXSW, and as I write this, they’re almost at their fundraising goal, with more than $15,000 of their $20,000 goal raised.

As part of their Kickstarter materials, Moff has laid out a development roadmap (see below) detailing plans to mass produce and ship their wristband this summer.

Kickstarter backers who pitch in financially can get Moff wristbands as rewards, which certainly makes it worthwhile to support the project.

If you’d like a more detailed overview of how Moff works, you can check out the Kickstarter promo video above.

moff

A fun LinkedIn alternative, Japan’s Wantedly brings new features to profile pages

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Japanese startup Wantedly has today launched a few new profile features for individual users, letting them add things like projects and portfolio pieces to their profile pages, even tagging team members who they have worked with. You can see a preview of one such profile in the image above. Readers may recall that Wantedly just recently launched an iOS app, making their social recruiting service available on mobile. via CNet Japan

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Japanese startup Wantedly has today launched a few new profile features for individual users, letting them add things like projects and portfolio pieces to their profile pages, even tagging team members who they have worked with. You can see a preview of one such profile in the image above.

Readers may recall that Wantedly just recently launched an iOS app, making their social recruiting service available on mobile.

via CNet Japan

Bringing projection mapping to billiards, OpenPool is now on Kickstarter

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OpenPool, the very clever interactive DIY billiards kit from Japan that uses projection mapping, is currently on display at SXSW in Austin, Texas. Coinciding with the conference, they’ve launched a Kickstarter campaign to help promote their open source kit. The project has been nominated for the SXSW Interactive Award, and we’re looking forward to hearing about their experience when they get back to Japan. You can check out their video promotion below to see how it works.

OpenPool, the very clever interactive DIY billiards kit from Japan that uses projection mapping, is currently on display at SXSW in Austin, Texas. Coinciding with the conference, they’ve launched a Kickstarter campaign to help promote their open source kit. The project has been nominated for the SXSW Interactive Award, and we’re looking forward to hearing about their experience when they get back to Japan.

You can check out their video promotion below to see how it works.

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

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

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

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

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

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

DASH LABS, INC. SMARTPHONE APP

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


  1. I inquired with the company yesterday afternoon. ↩

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

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

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Gunosy CEO Yoshinori Fukushima

See the original article in Japanese

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This wearable smart-toy from Japan brings limitless play possibilities

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See the original article in Japanese An intriguing smart-toy dubbed Moff officially launched here in Japan last week, getting attention from several media outlets leading up to its release. It’s a wearable wristband device that lets kids play using physical motion to create sound effects for any object they might be holding. You can get a better idea for how that works in the video below. Moff is developed by a team organized at a local hackathon event in Osaka. The team participated in last year’s SF Japan Night where they pitched their product. At that time, Moff was a toy that attached to other toys, but after making improvements, they turned it into a wearable device. Moff CEO Akinori Takahagi came up with the idea when he was examining the way kids play with toys: Kids get bored with new toys so quickly. And parents just repeat buying and throwing toys away. It’s a waste of money. To solve this issue, I came up with the idea for a device that lets kids play in many ways depending on their imagination. The Moff wristband connects to a smartphone or a tablet device through BLE. When Moff turns on, the…

moff

See the original article in Japanese

An intriguing smart-toy dubbed Moff officially launched here in Japan last week, getting attention from several media outlets leading up to its release. It’s a wearable wristband device that lets kids play using physical motion to create sound effects for any object they might be holding. You can get a better idea for how that works in the video below.

Moff is developed by a team organized at a local hackathon event in Osaka. The team participated in last year’s SF Japan Night where they pitched their product. At that time, Moff was a toy that attached to other toys, but after making improvements, they turned it into a wearable device.

Moff CEO Akinori Takahagi came up with the idea when he was examining the way kids play with toys:

Kids get bored with new toys so quickly. And parents just repeat buying and throwing toys away. It’s a waste of money. To solve this issue, I came up with the idea for a device that lets kids play in many ways depending on their imagination.

The Moff wristband connects to a smartphone or a tablet device through BLE. When Moff turns on, the app on the connected device generates sounds corresponding to the motion of your hand. It could be sound effects, voices, or background music. So for example, it could be the sound of a guitar, a ray gun, or even a even a Star Wars lightsaber.

Moff uses a three-axis accelerometer and gyroscope. These sensors recognize your physical motion and generate sound accordingly. Data is accumulated in the cloud, and the team hopes to utilize this data to improve the device’s precision and complex motion. They are also considering offering a SDK and making a developer´s platform.

The device is covered with silicon and its battery is said to last for about 40 to 50 hours, and can be replaced by the user if it wears out. The wrist band can be adjusted for various sizes.

製品カラーバリエーション2

Takahagi explained about the pricing:

We are thinking to make it around 3000 to 4000 yen (or about $30 to $40). Regarding production, we decided to outsource to a factory that develops BLE equipment in-house. Normal factories purchase BLE equipment and use it to create products, which increases their costs. But we can reduce costs by working with factories that make BLE equipment on their own. We aim to minimize the cost and charge for content like extra sounds within the app.

Moff plans to show their product at events in March and April, such as at Mobile World Congress and SXSW. The company plans to fundraise for development in March through crowdfunding. Their first production lot is scheduled to be available in July or August of this year.

Can Osaka be a startup hub?

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This is an abridged version of the original report in Japanese. The HackOsaka 2014 conference recently took place here in Japan, with the aim of boosting the startup community in Japan’s Kansai region. This year Pebble CEO Eric Migicovsky and Berg CEO Matt Webb were invited as special guests. Pebble, of course, is the smart watch developer that was funded by Y-Combinator. Berg is based in London, offering an ‘Internet of Things’ cloud platform for third-party developers. Together with Masahiko Inada, the CEO of Kabuku [1], they participated in an panel discussion moderated by journalist Tsuruaki Yukawa. While many major companies in Japan have their headquarters in Tokyo, many CEOs are originally from Osaka. Yukawa explained a little about Osaka’s history of entrepreneurship: My father was a merchant. In fact, when I was a kid, all the parents except maybe one were merchants. Even though there are strong entrepreneurship roots in Osaka, the city is not the startup hub in Japan. Everyone goes to Tokyo. What should we do? Matt noted that the situation is similar to what London previously experienced: A lot of startups in London left for the USA. Because we didn’t have funds, there was no way…

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This is an abridged version of the original report in Japanese.

The HackOsaka 2014 conference recently took place here in Japan, with the aim of boosting the startup community in Japan’s Kansai region. This year Pebble CEO Eric Migicovsky and Berg CEO Matt Webb were invited as special guests. Pebble, of course, is the smart watch developer that was funded by Y-Combinator. Berg is based in London, offering an ‘Internet of Things’ cloud platform for third-party developers. Together with Masahiko Inada, the CEO of Kabuku [1], they participated in an panel discussion moderated by journalist Tsuruaki Yukawa.

While many major companies in Japan have their headquarters in Tokyo, many CEOs are originally from Osaka. Yukawa explained a little about Osaka’s history of entrepreneurship:

My father was a merchant. In fact, when I was a kid, all the parents except maybe one were merchants. Even though there are strong entrepreneurship roots in Osaka, the city is not the startup hub in Japan. Everyone goes to Tokyo. What should we do?

Matt noted that the situation is similar to what London previously experienced:

A lot of startups in London left for the USA. Because we didn’t have funds, there was no way to tie up with big companies. We didn’t have a community.

Of course, community plays an important role in any startup scene. And Eric stressed the benefits that the startup community provides in Silicon Valley.

hackosaka-2014-iot-ericWhen you develop a minimum viable product, you can get both positive and negative feedback from the community. Taking that feedback into account, and continuing development in a constructive manner is important.

At a large company, a CEO can get feedback from his or her board members. But at a startup, a founder often has to rely on himself or herself. Because of this, community support can be just as important as fundraising and market chance.

Matt said it is important to name a community if you want to develop it. The area around Old Street station in East London had been called Silicon Roundabout, but later the UK government named the area TechCity with the intention to invite more startups there. This has helped to raise public awareness. People started thinking about entrepreneurship, getting together in order to create a community.

Matt: Organizing events is important as well. In London, events related to hardware startups are held about twice a month. Job events and networking events are held almost every week.

Eric: People in Osaka have already started doing important things. This event has a pitch contest. This is quite important to help build a community.

TechCity in London took a much different path than Silicon Valley. In the same way, I’m optimistic that Osaka can develop it’s own unique startup culture, something different from Tokyo or Fukuoka.


  1. Kabuku operates 3D printing marketplace Rinkak.  ↩

Back to the Future: Interactive image timeline wins top prize at Photo Hack Day Japan

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Readers may recall that we have written much about Kyoto-based startup Qooq Inc, whose Yesterscape app provides a new and interesting way to view photos of the past. But viewing old photos according to location is just one way show images of the past. This past weekend at Photo Hack Day Japan [1], hosted by Aviary and Mixi, the winning project for the two-day hackathon was a similar solution to view photos of the past. But instead of narrowing the presentation by location, the ‘Back to the Future’ web app (as it was dubbed) grouped images by topic according to a keyword search. The project was created by Theeraphol Wattanavekin, a developer working here in Japan, and three other team members (Rapee Suveeranont, Yoonjo Shin, and Thiti Luang) who joined him remotely [2]. The app made use of the Getty Images API and used Leap Motion as an interface, in order to create a sort of walk through time experience. As you can see in the picture above, Theeraphol did a search for the term ‘computer’ with image results restricted to a time range of 1972 to 2012. Using Leap Motion, he could walk through the timeline by making a…

photo-hack-day-japan-13

Readers may recall that we have written much about Kyoto-based startup Qooq Inc, whose Yesterscape app provides a new and interesting way to view photos of the past. But viewing old photos according to location is just one way show images of the past. This past weekend at Photo Hack Day Japan [1], hosted by Aviary and Mixi, the winning project for the two-day hackathon was a similar solution to view photos of the past. But instead of narrowing the presentation by location, the ‘Back to the Future’ web app (as it was dubbed) grouped images by topic according to a keyword search.

The project was created by Theeraphol Wattanavekin, a developer working here in Japan, and three other team members (Rapee Suveeranont, Yoonjo Shin, and Thiti Luang) who joined him remotely [2]. The app made use of the Getty Images API and used Leap Motion as an interface, in order to create a sort of walk through time experience.

As you can see in the picture above, Theeraphol did a search for the term ‘computer’ with image results restricted to a time range of 1972 to 2012. Using Leap Motion, he could walk through the timeline by making a sort of stepping motion with both hands. Of course, it doesn’t take much to imagine possible applications for such a presentation. Aviary CEO Tobias Peggs mentioned that something like this would be interesting for kids to use in a museum, for example.

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Walk through the history of the computer using ‘Back to the Future’ web app

I was personally more impressed with the actual design of the timeline (above), and if you think about integrating more photo sources, especially rich sources like museums or historical archives or even news organization, then it could be really exciting. In a way, it looks like a more refined version of Timeline.js from Knight Lab, which has been popular among news organizations (we’ve used it here on The Bridge as well). I hope that the team can keep developing this project, or alternatively make it available in a way that is easy for people to use [3].

Back to the Future was chosen as the winning project out of the 23 projects that were presented, walking away with 300,000 yen as the top prize, the Leap Motion API prize of Leap controllers for all team members and a Unity3D license, and the Gettyimages Connect API prize of a 50,000 yen gift card. There were lots of other fun ideas developed over the weekend, and hopefully we can tell you about more of them soon.

If you’d like to see more photos from event, do check out the album over on our Facebook page.

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Theeraphol and his team also won the prize for best use of the Leap Motion API.

  1. In the interests of full disclosure, I should note that I volunteered to participate as one of the judges as a way of lending some support for this competition.  ↩

  2. I understand the three others are co-founders of Boonmee Lab, though Rapee and Yoonjo have worked in Japan like Theeraphol.  ↩

  3. Theeraphol has made his code available on Github (I hope he doesn’t mind me linking to it), and I managed to get it running myself, but not entirely functional due to the Chrome web security issue. (Note that it only runs on Chrome for now.)  ↩

Meet the Japanese startup developing a wearable solution to help the visually impaired

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See the original article in Japanese On February 7th, an Osaka-based startup pitch event called Shoot took place. Nine startups pitched in total, and perhaps the most remarkable one was Mimimiru, presenting a wearable device designed for the blind and visually impaired. Mimimiru analyzes image data and lets users know what’s in that image by reading information aloud. Tomoyuki Hisada is a software engineer and the CEO of Another Brain, the startup behind this device. He has been considering how he could support a visually impaired friend of his through IT. Observing a rising trend in wearable devices like Google Glass, he came up with the idea for Mimimiru. He tells us: When I saw wearable devices, I thought this could be a tool for disabled people. If I could inform blind and visually impaired people about what they see in front of them, their everyday lives could be much improved. He presented Mimimiru for the first time at the MA9 Mashup Camp Osaka web development contest, where the device won the top award and moved on to the second stage where it won the NTT docomo Award, KDDI Web Communications Award, and the TechWave Award. At the Docomo Wearable…

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See the original article in Japanese

On February 7th, an Osaka-based startup pitch event called Shoot took place. Nine startups pitched in total, and perhaps the most remarkable one was Mimimiru, presenting a wearable device designed for the blind and visually impaired. Mimimiru analyzes image data and lets users know what’s in that image by reading information aloud.

Tomoyuki Hisada is a software engineer and the CEO of Another Brain, the startup behind this device. He has been considering how he could support a visually impaired friend of his through IT. Observing a rising trend in wearable devices like Google Glass, he came up with the idea for Mimimiru. He tells us:

When I saw wearable devices, I thought this could be a tool for disabled people. If I could inform blind and visually impaired people about what they see in front of them, their everyday lives could be much improved.

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He presented Mimimiru for the first time at the MA9 Mashup Camp Osaka web development contest, where the device won the top award and moved on to the second stage where it won the NTT docomo Award, KDDI Web Communications Award, and the TechWave Award. At the Docomo Wearable Hackathon held last December, it won the Award for Excellence. The startup is currently developing a prototype using a Docomo character recognition API.

Technology for reading image data aloud is still under development, and it is expected that it will be a few years before it can be really put to use. So Hisada sought and found another solution by turning to crowdsourcing and social media. He explains:

A user takes pictures with a wearable device and post the image(s) to Twitter. And his followers can then reply and tell him information about the picture, which the device will then read aloud. It’s essentially five-second volunteer work that can really help the visually impaired.

He’s receiving support from a volunteer group on Twitter, and he hopes to develop a system by utilizing the activity of social welfare corporations and NPOs who create lists of visually impaired Twitter users and blocks mischievous users. They could also gain support from corporations as part of their corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities.

We’d like to keep our eyes on Mimimiru, one of many interesting wearable tech startups here in Japan.