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Mobile ad innovation and the Asia challenge

Rick Martin 2013.10.08

This is a part of our coverage of B Dash Camp Osaka 2013. In the second morning session on day two of B Dash Camp Osaka, we heard a panel on the latest developments in smartphone advertising. Included in the talk on stage was Ganesan Velayathan, CEO, Fun & Cool Ventures, and Sid Bhatt, CEO of Aarki Inc. Joining the talk via Skype was Brian Wong, the co-founder of Kiip. 22-year-old Wong was an especially interesting (and charismatic) addition to this panel, since Kiip actually refuses to be called an ad company, instead preferring the moniker of ‘rewards company’. He says they are trying to redefine brand engagement, as well as connections that brands have with consumers: Kiip came from our observation that people were already engaged in ‘moments of happiness’. When people got a high score in a game, there’s an emotion. But that moment of happiness would often be abused by an ad. We wanted to instead acknowledge and reward these moments. Kiip is currently included in about 1500 apps. They started out in games but they are now in six verticals, including fitness, music, to-do, and food. Many of the ad dollars that come their way would…

ganesan-velaythan-sid-bhatt — Ganesan Velayathan, CEO, Fun & Cool Ventures Inc., Sid Bhatt, CEO of Aarki Inc

This is a part of our coverage of B Dash Camp Osaka 2013.

In the second morning session on day two of B Dash Camp Osaka, we heard a panel on the latest developments in smartphone advertising. Included in the talk on stage was Ganesan Velayathan, CEO, Fun & Cool Ventures, and Sid Bhatt, CEO of Aarki Inc. Joining the talk via Skype was Brian Wong, the co-founder of Kiip.

22-year-old Wong was an especially interesting (and charismatic) addition to this panel, since Kiip actually refuses to be called an ad company, instead preferring the moniker of ‘rewards company’. He says they are trying to redefine brand engagement, as well as connections that brands have with consumers:

Kiip came from our observation that people were already engaged in ‘moments of happiness’. When people got a high score in a game, there’s an emotion. But that moment of happiness would often be abused by an ad. We wanted to instead acknowledge and reward these moments.

Kiip is currently included in about 1500 apps. They started out in games but they are now in six verticals, including fitness, music, to-do, and food. Many of the ad dollars that come their way would normally be spent on video, he explains:

They want the relationship with users to be a reciprocal one, starting such relationships “with a gift rather than yelling.”

We are now one of Hulu’s top three acquisition partners in the US. […] The bottom line is simple: As long as you have something relevant with a timely aspect to it, people will convert at a higher rate [than traditional ads]

Kiip is currently working with Yahoo Japan as one of their premier partners. They are also working with Lawsons, SMCC, Dell, with many more companies to come later. Japan is an especially fitting environment for a service like Kiip, as Wong explains:

Japan has a great mobile literacy. You can tap your phone and buy something, but that still science fiction in the US. In Japan, that science fiction is a reality. And I felt our platform would be accelerated there.

Like Kiip, Aarki Inc has been getting pretty creative in how it engages consumers on mobile devices. CEO Sid Bhatt showed off some really fun demos, including a rich media ad for Landrover. That ad let the user move their phone around to display a 360-degree view of the inside of a Landrover. Time spent in such rich media ads can be over two minutes, says Sid, and this is what advertisers are really looking for these days.

The traditional format, the banner ad, is quickly becoming obsolete. People still use it but it is definitely not the future.

And then there’s the Asia problem

Sid explained a little about their platform, which allows the creation of complex ads with drag and drop widgets, doing so in a better, faster, cheaper way.

He says that they are considering an office in Japan, but they are still trying hard to understand the market. What we build in the US may not be applicable in Asia.

Ganesan expressed this very same point as well, saying that In addition to the challenges that come with innovating new advertising technology, operating in the Asia region brings a whole new set of obstacles:

In Asia each country has its own style. Agencies still control the market in Japan.[…] Southeast Asia has many languages, many cultures, and different dominant market players. So [the challenge is] how to navigate that, and the agencies, and deliver the best results.

Ganesan, who operates an Asia-focused market place where developers and advertisers can connect, explained the value of their service by pointing out how it lets users choose the app where they advertise, rather than use an algorithm to select.

Moderator Tak Miyata from Scrum Ventures shared some figures to clarify the importance of the innovations these panelists have developed. Mobile ad spend, he says, was only 1 percent of all ad spend in 2011, but by 2017 it will represent about 17 percent – surpassing traditional media.

So while there will certainly be a payoff for companies who can figure out how to best engage consumers on mobile, those who can solve that riddle in regions across Asia have an especially big reward in store.

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Welcome to The Bridge

housekeeping

Rick Martin 2013.10.07

As we announced last week, today our team at SD Japan transitions to our new home on the web, TheBridge.jp. We still have a few things to take care of [1], but I thought I’d give you a quick update to let you know where things stand. The new website – as you can see – is now live, and we encourage you to look around and give the tires a kick. It was built with a mobile first approach, not because we’re hippies (we’re not, I swear), but because we’ve noticed that about half of you read on mobile devices. So we hope you like it. As for the formalities, the company name will be ‘The Bridge Co., Ltd’, and I’ll continue to lead the English edition as editor. My colleague Takeshi Hirano, the co-founder of the company (pictured above, bottom left), is the editor of the the Japanese edition. We’ll update our social presences shortly, and our weekly newsletter will remain relatively unchanged. As always, we’d love it if you could tell your friends about us. We’d like to say thanks to everyone who has supported our efforts under the flag of SD Japan, and we thank you…

As we announced last week, today our team at SD Japan transitions to our new home on the web, TheBridge.jp. We still have a few things to take care of [1], but I thought I’d give you a quick update to let you know where things stand.

The new website – as you can see – is now live, and we encourage you to look around and give the tires a kick. It was built with a mobile first approach, not because we’re hippies (we’re not, I swear), but because we’ve noticed that about half of you read on mobile devices. So we hope you like it.

As for the formalities, the company name will be ‘The Bridge Co., Ltd’, and I’ll continue to lead the English edition as editor. My colleague Takeshi Hirano, the co-founder of the company (pictured above, bottom left), is the editor of the the Japanese edition.

We’ll update our social presences shortly, and our weekly newsletter will remain relatively unchanged. As always, we’d love it if you could tell your friends about us.

We’d like to say thanks to everyone who has supported our efforts under the flag of SD Japan, and we thank you in advance for your patience as we step into this new brand.

You’ll notice there are still a few pages we need to translate. We’re working on it, so please bear with us! ↩

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Announcement: SD Japan to become ‘The Bridge’ on October 7

housekeeping

Rick Martin 2013.09.26

This site began in Japanese as Startup Dating back in 2010, since then bringing Asian tech news to readers in Japan. This year, I had to honor of joining the team to create a complementary English version, SD Japan, with the mission of bringing Japanese tech and startup news to the rest of Asia and the world. So now this bilingual site is a bridge that sends news in two directions. And I’m really happy to announce that we have some big plans to make it even better in the next few months. The first step will be a rebrand that reflects what we aspire to be for the tech and startup space. On October 7 we will evolve our work so far into a new media presence known as ‘The Bridge’. Check out our swanky new orange logo on the right. It’s rich in vitamin C. Without going into too many details, let me briefly say that this is far more than a simple rebrand. New features will be rolling out in phases, with a heavier focus on our database as well as a sort of scoring system that will guide our readers towards the hottest startups and trends…

This site began in Japanese as Startup Dating back in 2010, since then bringing Asian tech news to readers in Japan. This year, I had to honor of joining the team to create a complementary English version, SD Japan, with the mission of bringing Japanese tech and startup news to the rest of Asia and the world.

So now this bilingual site is a bridge that sends news in two directions.

And I’m really happy to announce that we have some big plans to make it even better in the next few months.

The first step will be a rebrand that reflects what we aspire to be for the tech and startup space. On October 7 we will evolve our work so far into a new media presence known as ‘The Bridge’. Check out our swanky new orange logo on the right. It’s rich in vitamin C.

Without going into too many details, let me briefly say that this is far more than a simple rebrand. New features will be rolling out in phases, with a heavier focus on our database as well as a sort of scoring system that will guide our readers towards the hottest startups and trends in the industry.

We hope to be more than media, and act as a service to connect startups and investors, not just in Japan but around Asia too.

There will be more updates in our regular weekly newsletter as things develop, so I encourage you to sign up.

In an age where news is information, technology news sites have a responsibility to create more than just a firehose of articles. You deserve better, and we’re going to try our best to deliver. That means more than just text. It means video interviews, timelines, app/game screencasts, and more ambitious big-picture projects like our Japan Internet Map that tie it all together.

If you’re an aspiring writer, media producer, or data nerd looking to develop your digital media chops, do get in touch if you’d like to get involved. And as always, if you are a young startup company or entrepreneur, we’d love to talk with you as well!

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Translation startup Gengo relocates its home base, has some changes in store

Masaru Ikeda 2013.07.19

Tokyo-based translation startup Gengo has recently relocated its head office to Shibuya, a district where many Japanese startups are based. The company held a press conference today to unveil how they expect to evolve the platform one step further. CEO Robert Laing, CTO Matthew Romaine, and VP of product management Hiroto Tokusei were all present at the conference, where they proudly introduced their new office where 26 people from 12 countries are working to give their users a better experience. In the presentation, the startup revealed that they are currently working on launching a new interface, which will probably go live next month. For crowdsourced workers who typically translate large volume of texts, the startup will provide an interface that helps you use the same terminology in an entire document and check for spelling or grammatical errors. For clients who order translation requests, the platform will be able to accept business document file formats such as Microsoft Word, Excel, etc., as well as plain text formats. The startup’s competitor Conyac also recently rolled out this feature on its platform back in February. To date, the service has been used to hire more than 8,000 crowdsourced workers, serving translation needs in…

Tokyo-based translation startup Gengo has recently relocated its head office to Shibuya, a district where many Japanese startups are based. The company held a press conference today to unveil how they expect to evolve the platform one step further.

CEO Robert Laing, CTO Matthew Romaine, and VP of product management Hiroto Tokusei were all present at the conference, where they proudly introduced their new office where 26 people from 12 countries are working to give their users a better experience.

hiroto-robert-matthew — From the left: VP Hiroto Tokusei, CEO Robert Laing, CTO Matthew Romaine

In the presentation, the startup revealed that they are currently working on launching a new interface, which will probably go live next month. For crowdsourced workers who typically translate large volume of texts, the startup will provide an interface that helps you use the same terminology in an entire document and check for spelling or grammatical errors. For clients who order translation requests, the platform will be able to accept business document file formats such as Microsoft Word, Excel, etc., as well as plain text formats. The startup’s competitor Conyac also recently rolled out this feature on its platform back in February.

gengo-office2 — The Gengo team at its new office in Shibuya

To date, the service has been used to hire more than 8,000 crowdsourced workers, serving translation needs in 38 languages. In the last three months, they’ve transacted more than 22 million translation requests from clients in Japan and around the rest of the world. By refining the service’s interface, they hope to transact more translation orders and enhance their revenue stream.

request-growth — Annual growth of translation orders using Gengo

Gengo originally launched back in late 2008, at that time under the name MyGengo. In 2010, the startup secured seed funding of $750,000 from 500 Startups, Last.fm co-founder Felix Miller, Delicious founder Joshua Schachter, and ex-Value Commerce CEO Brian Nelson. Subsequently, it received $5.25 million in a series A investment round from Atomico and 500 Startups. And then this year, it also received series B funding worth $12 million from Intel Capital (US), Atomico (UK), Iris Capital (France), Infocomm Investments (Singapore), STC Ventures (Saudi Arabia), and NTT Docomo Ventures (Japan).

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Inventor of Japanese P2P file-sharing software passes away at age 42

Masaru Ikeda 2013.07.08

Tokyo-based distributed computing company Skeed announced [pdf] yesterday that the company’s founder and chief innovation officer Dr. Isamu Kaneko has passed away due to heart attack on Saturday. He was 42 years old. Dr. Kaneko has been working as an assistant professor at the University of Tokyo, where he invented P2P file-sharing software Winny in 2003. In 2004, there were many file leak incidents at Japanese companies which may have been caused by people using the software. He was previously arrested under the suspicion of abetting copyright disputes despite the fact that he just invented the software. In 2011, the Japanese supreme court finally judged that he was not guilty. He recently co-founded Skeed, which focuses on developing P2P-based content delivery technology. His colleague recently pitched at ICT Spring 2013, an annual tech conference that took place in Luxembourg last month. Our thoughts are with his family and colleagues. Rest in peace.

Tokyo-based distributed computing company Skeed announced [pdf] yesterday that the company’s founder and chief innovation officer Dr. Isamu Kaneko has passed away due to heart attack on Saturday. He was 42 years old.

Dr. Kaneko has been working as an assistant professor at the University of Tokyo, where he invented P2P file-sharing software Winny in 2003. In 2004, there were many file leak incidents at Japanese companies which may have been caused by people using the software. He was previously arrested under the suspicion of abetting copyright disputes despite the fact that he just invented the software. In 2011, the Japanese supreme court finally judged that he was not guilty.

He recently co-founded Skeed, which focuses on developing P2P-based content delivery technology. His colleague recently pitched at ICT Spring 2013, an annual tech conference that took place in Luxembourg last month.

Our thoughts are with his family and colleagues. Rest in peace.

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The next step in augmented reality: Electrify your taste buds

Rick Martin 2013.06.21

This week I had a chance to visit Dr. Adrian Cheok and his students at the Mixed Reality Lab at Keio University. The research they’re conducting is based around the notion that in the future technology will shift from today’s ‘Information Age’ to an ‘Experience Age’. Dr. Cheok predicts that we will experience the realities of other people, as opposed to just reading about them, listening to them, or watching a video on a glass screen. Visiting the Mixed Reality Lab was a refreshing experience. I’ve come to associate terms like ‘Augmented Reality’ with things like Sekai Camera, or the fascinating human Pac-man game that his lab created a few years back [1]. But Dr. Cheok points out quite rightfully – and perhaps surprisingly – that one of the earliest examples of AR was Sony’s Walkman, the first device that allowed people to have their own personal sounds with them all the time. Beyond Sound and Vision Once we accept the idea that augmented/mixed-reality is not just limited to vision, then it opens up a whole world of possibilities. And these are the possibilities that Dr. Cheok and his students are researching. He explains: I became interested to see if…

This week I had a chance to visit Dr. Adrian Cheok and his students at the Mixed Reality Lab at Keio University. The research they’re conducting is based around the notion that in the future technology will shift from today’s ‘Information Age’ to an ‘Experience Age’. Dr. Cheok predicts that we will experience the realities of other people, as opposed to just reading about them, listening to them, or watching a video on a glass screen.

Visiting the Mixed Reality Lab was a refreshing experience. I’ve come to associate terms like ‘Augmented Reality’ with things like Sekai Camera, or the fascinating human Pac-man game that his lab created a few years back [1]. But Dr. Cheok points out quite rightfully – and perhaps surprisingly – that one of the earliest examples of AR was Sony’s Walkman, the first device that allowed people to have their own personal sounds with them all the time.

Beyond Sound and Vision

Once we accept the idea that augmented/mixed-reality is not just limited to vision, then it opens up a whole world of possibilities. And these are the possibilities that Dr. Cheok and his students are researching. He explains:

I became interested to see if we could extend augmented reality to other senses. To touch. At first I made a system for human-to-pet communication. We made a jacket for a chicken that allowed a person to convey touch to a chicken remotely. Then we made Huggy Pajama, which could be used to hug a child remotely [2].

While projects like this might strike us as a little strange — or even wacky — it’s important to note that such projects can be far more practical than you might think at first glance. A version of Huggy Pajama called T Jacket has been subsequently developed for for therapeudic purposes. So for example, a child with autism could be comforted remotely with hugs can be sent over the internet by smartphone.

Readers may recall that we previously featured another remarkable haptic communication project from the Mixed Reality Lab called Ring-u. The idea here is that vibrating messages can be sent over the internet, back and forth between a pair of rings, and there is also now a smartphone interface for the ring as well. This project has perhaps far larger potential in the consumer electronics space, and they’re speaking with toy companies and high-end jewelers about possibile future developments.

Taste the Future

But perhaps the biggest challenge for Dr. Cheok and his team is figuring out how to digitize the other two remaining senses:

Smell and taste are the least explored areas because they usually require chemicals. [But] we think they are important because they can directly affect emotion, mood, and memory, even in a subconscious way. But currently its difficult because things are still analog. This is like it was for music before the CD came along.

Amazingly the team has developed a prototype electric taste machine, and I was lucky to be able to try it out during my visit. The device in its current form is a small box with two protruding metal strips, between which you insert your tongue to experience a variety of tastes. For me some were stronger than others, with lemon and spicy being the strongest. It works by using electric current and temperature to communicate taste, and I experienced what felt like a fraction of the intended tastes – but very impressive. I’m told that in the future, this system could even assume a lollipop-like form, which would certainly be very interesting.

The lab is also collaborating with Japanese startup ChatPerf, which you may recognize as the company that developed a smell-producing attachment for smartphones. They will also conduct a formal academic study to see to what level smell can affect communication between individuals. But even with ChatPerf, the creation of smells is still analog, using cartridges of liquid to emit odors. Later on Dr. Cheok hopes to similate smells in a non-chemical, digital way, noting that it can be done via magnetic stimulation of the olfactory bulb.

So while experiments like these tend to cause lots of laughs and raised eyebrows sometimes, the work is quite important in expanding how we see technology’s role in our lives.

These are just a few of the great projects that the Mixed Reality Lab is working on, and we hope to tell you about others in the future.

It’s pretty amazing that they made this way back in 2009. ↩
For more information on this fun huggable chicken project, check out Adrian Cheok: Making a Huggable Internet over on IEEE Spectrum. A demo of Huggy Pajama can be found here. ↩

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Japanese restaurant site explains tough sushi terms in a handy graphic

Yukari Mitsuhashi 2013.06.20

See the full infographic on Gurunavi Here on SD Japan, we’ve written a few articles about how tech has been used to make sushi restaurants more efficient. There was even a very unusual drone helicopter sushi in London being used for marketing purposes. Speaking of marketing, today Gurunavi (sort of Japan’s answer to Yelp) released an infographic about the many sushi-related terms used at restaurants. Even though sushi is both a casual and more formal dinner option in Japan, there are many terms that people may not be familiar with or maybe they misunderstand them. Gurunavi released this infographic to promote a better understanding of the traditional cuisine (and likely for some self-promotion too!). ‘Gari’ (pink ginger on the side) or ‘Neta’ (ingredient) are common words heard at sushi restaurants, but the infographic dives into even more advanced terms like ‘Nigemono’ (I didn’t know this one, but it means cost-efficient ingredient) and ‘Debana’ (tea served at the beginning of meal). The term ‘murasaki’, which usually refers to the color purple, is apparently used to describe soy sauce at sushi restaurants. Bookmark this infographic to show off to your friends how much you know about sushi. Gurunavi was founded way back…

See the full infographic on Gurunavi

Here on SD Japan, we’ve written a few articles about how tech has been used to make sushi restaurants more efficient. There was even a very unusual drone helicopter sushi in London being used for marketing purposes.

Speaking of marketing, today Gurunavi (sort of Japan’s answer to Yelp) released an infographic about the many sushi-related terms used at restaurants. Even though sushi is both a casual and more formal dinner option in Japan, there are many terms that people may not be familiar with or maybe they misunderstand them. Gurunavi released this infographic to promote a better understanding of the traditional cuisine (and likely for some self-promotion too!).

‘Gari’ (pink ginger on the side) or ‘Neta’ (ingredient) are common words heard at sushi restaurants, but the infographic dives into even more advanced terms like ‘Nigemono’ (I didn’t know this one, but it means cost-efficient ingredient) and ‘Debana’ (tea served at the beginning of meal). The term ‘murasaki’, which usually refers to the color purple, is apparently used to describe soy sauce at sushi restaurants. Bookmark this infographic to show off to your friends how much you know about sushi.

Gurunavi was founded way back in 1989 and went public in 2008 as a local restaurant portal and search engine. The site’s direct competitor is Tabelog, which was launched in 2005. Tabelog’s parent company is Kakaku.com, and they recently launched a version of its site for New York in March of this year. The main difference between the two competitors is that Gurunavi is more store-oriented, providing exclusive coupons for special occasions or drinking parties. In contrast, Tabelog’s strength is its consumer-generated restaurant reviews.

Update: Here’s an awesome translation of the graphic from reader David. Pretty awesome!

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Celulo: Wizcorp connects the dots on a great puzzle game for iPhone

Rick Martin 2013.05.14

Last week Tokyo-based development studio Wizcorp unveiled a fun mobile game for iOS called Celulo. You’re presented with a grid of cells or circuit components, and the idea is create a continuous circuit connecting the left and right sides of the playing area. But in order to win big points, your circuit should be as long and winding as possible. And you should make as many circuits as possible within the given time limit. Simple right? Well, it initially took me a while to figure things out, but once you get over that initial hump, Celulo is really lots of fun. There are bonus items that you can use during your game to double your points, or to freeze the screen to give you extra time, for example. The game also provides Facebook integration, as well as weekly tournaments that you can partake in with friends. If you’d like a demonstration of how the game works, check out my short video demo above. I’m looking forward to playing it some more over the coming weeks. The folks at Wizcorp point out that this is a HTML5 game, “boasting speed and performance which leave many native apps in the dust.” Readers…

Last week Tokyo-based development studio Wizcorp unveiled a fun mobile game for iOS called Celulo. You’re presented with a grid of cells or circuit components, and the idea is create a continuous circuit connecting the left and right sides of the playing area. But in order to win big points, your circuit should be as long and winding as possible. And you should make as many circuits as possible within the given time limit.

Simple right? Well, it initially took me a while to figure things out, but once you get over that initial hump, Celulo is really lots of fun. There are bonus items that you can use during your game to double your points, or to freeze the screen to give you extra time, for example. The game also provides Facebook integration, as well as weekly tournaments that you can partake in with friends.

If you’d like a demonstration of how the game works, check out my short video demo above. I’m looking forward to playing it some more over the coming weeks.

The folks at Wizcorp point out that this is a HTML5 game, “boasting speed and performance which leave many native apps in the dust.” Readers may recall that it was about a year ago when Japanese gaming giant GREE announced its investment in Wizcorp, aiming to capitalize on that same HTML5 expertise.

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JapanTourist.jp partners with AllAbout.co.jp for multilingual travel content

Masaru Ikeda 2013.05.10

Japan Partnership, the company behind the user-generated content site JapanTourist.jp, and Japanese online resource site AllAbout.co.jp have announced they’ve agreed to jointly operate the JapanTourist site. As we have mentioned previously, JapanTourist.jp was launched last year by Tokyo-based Australian entrepreneurs Neil Butler and Terrie Lloyd, with aspirations to establish a useful information resource for foreign residents and travelers. They have about 1,000 article writers and 33 editors across the nation, most of whom are native English speakers. AllAbout.co.jp was originally launched in 2011 as a joint venture of US-based About.com and Japanese information service company Recruit. Subsequently the company was fully acquired by Yahoo Japan in 2004. It has previously partnered with Chinese travel portal sites such as Abang.com or Ctrip.com, encouraging Chinese travelers to visit Japanese travel destinations. With this partnership, JapanTourist.jp has started publishing articles in Chinese (both simplified and traditional) in addition to its regular English articles. It will add a Korean version this coming June, with more versions coming later for readers from Thailand, some Islamic countries, as well as South East Asian regions.

Japan Partnership, the company behind the user-generated content site JapanTourist.jp, and Japanese online resource site AllAbout.co.jp have announced they’ve agreed to jointly operate the JapanTourist site.

As we have mentioned previously, JapanTourist.jp was launched last year by Tokyo-based Australian entrepreneurs Neil Butler and Terrie Lloyd, with aspirations to establish a useful information resource for foreign residents and travelers. They have about 1,000 article writers and 33 editors across the nation, most of whom are native English speakers.

AllAbout.co.jp was originally launched in 2011 as a joint venture of US-based About.com and Japanese information service company Recruit. Subsequently the company was fully acquired by Yahoo Japan in 2004. It has previously partnered with Chinese travel portal sites such as Abang.com or Ctrip.com, encouraging Chinese travelers to visit Japanese travel destinations.

With this partnership, JapanTourist.jp has started publishing articles in Chinese (both simplified and traditional) in addition to its regular English articles. It will add a Korean version this coming June, with more versions coming later for readers from Thailand, some Islamic countries, as well as South East Asian regions.

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Big in Japan: 10 tech stories most popular with our Japanese readers

Yukari Mitsuhashi 2013.05.08

What’s big in the world of Japan technology these days? Well, if our Japanese language site is any indication, the following articles represent what our Japanese readers are most interested in over the last 30 days. Read on to find out more! And if you know of a tech story or a startup that’s big in Japan, be sure to let us know about it. 1. Japan loves Ginger Ginger is an personalized proofreader that checks your grammar and spelling, and it’s official launch in Japan was on April 24th. The service comes in the form of a Windows application or a browser extension, and our post about its launch had over 2,000 tweets and 5,000 likes, making it one of our most read articles ever. Read more in Japanese 2. Hero entrepreneurs, Ieiri and Horie Kazuma Ieiri is a serial entrepreneur known for being the youngest founder to go public on the JASDAQ securities exchange. Takafumi Horie is the former president of Livedoor, now a portal website operated by Line Corp. Horie is now on parole after spending 21 months behind bars having been charged with securities fraud (although he still claims innocence). The two are sort of entrepreneurial…

What’s big in the world of Japan technology these days? Well, if our Japanese language site is any indication, the following articles represent what our Japanese readers are most interested in over the last 30 days. Read on to find out more!

And if you know of a tech story or a startup that’s big in Japan, be sure to let us know about it.

1. Japan loves Ginger

Ginger is an personalized proofreader that checks your grammar and spelling, and it’s official launch in Japan was on April 24th. The service comes in the form of a Windows application or a browser extension, and our post about its launch had over 2,000 tweets and 5,000 likes, making it one of our most read articles ever.

Read more in Japanese

2. Hero entrepreneurs, Ieiri and Horie

Kazuma Ieiri is a serial entrepreneur known for being the youngest founder to go public on the JASDAQ securities exchange. Takafumi Horie is the former president of Livedoor, now a portal website operated by Line Corp. Horie is now on parole after spending 21 months behind bars having been charged with securities fraud (although he still claims innocence). The two are sort of entrepreneurial heroes for the younger generation, and they gave a talk at Ieiri’s book release party where they talked about developing new hardware together.

Read more in Japanese

3. Startups should work from home

This post comes via Charlie Custer who responded to Marissa Mayer’s decision that working from home was not the right path for employees at Yahoo. He asserts that startups should allow people to work from home remotely, noting that hiring pro-active people and quantifying work by actual results rather than just hours will yield many benefits.

4. Moneytree

Moneytree is a newly released app that allows users to manage all their financial assets. You just need to register your bank account and it will automatically show balance and spendings for your different credit cards all in a single page. The startup works out of Shibuya’s co-working space, Co-ba, and its founder is Paul Chapman from Australia.

Read more in Japanese, or check out our post on Moneytree in English

5. The travel industry is shifting from search to social

As we see change in consumer behavior, the travel industry is shifting accordingly. What is becoming increasingly important is not ‘where’ but ‘who’ – i.e. who among your friends have traveled to a given destination. As a result, the marketing budget for many travel companies is moving from Google to Facebook. The article cites TravelAdvisor as a good example of a company that does social well.

Read more in Japanese

6. If an engineer’s job is to make 0 into 1, a designer’s job is to make 1 into 100

Ikumi Katayama is a user interface designer at Cookpad, a major recipe website in Japan. In this interview she talks about the user interface designing process within the company and how it is all about iterating over and over by testing hypotheses and reading numbers.

Read more in Japanese

7. Using social game know-how in education

This post came out of the recent B Dash Camp 2013 event in Fukuoka. Surprisingly, many up-and-coming education startups came from the social games sector, such as Drecom and Quipper. Social gaming companies says that the features and techniques in social games (like operating events or connecting with friends) can be applied to education services as well.

Read more in Japanese or check out the article translated into English.

8. Base apps

E-commerce is getting a lot of hype in Japan recently, and Base is one of the more popular services out there, as it allows users to create their own online shop in a matter of minutes. The startups just launched Base Apps, which is a collection of plug-ins that can be added to shops created with Base. So far the app store includes an original domain, SEO, as well as shipping boxes for your merchandise – all for free. The startup plans to release a few plugins per week, attempting to follow Shopify’s monetization model.

Read more in Japanese or check out the translation in English.

9. Line China

Japanese chat application Line added another accomplishment to its growing list on April 8th, briefly nabbing the top spot in the Chinese App Store in the social network category. Line was released in Chinese back in December, needing less than four months to reach this milestone. At the time of the article, it ranked 7th among all free apps.

Read more in Japanese or see the original post on our English site.

10. Trends in Japan’s online ad space

Another report from the B Dash event in Fukuoka summarized a panel discussing existing problems in the domestic advertising business. Key players from the Japanese online advertising industry talked about the impact of social media on the industry, problems in leveraging personal information in ads, as well as the possibilities of rich media advertisements.

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