THE BRIDGE

tag hackathon

Aviary to host its Photo Hack Day in Tokyo, registration now open

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A few months back we wrote about New York-based Aviary, which at the time was making an effort to establish itself in Japan. And now this month, an upcoming event will be a big part of that effort, as Aviary’s recently announced hackathon, Photo Hack Day, is set to take place on the weekend of February 22/23. As we have noted previously, Japan is perhaps the most enthusiastic mobile photography nation, and we have covered an incredible amount of great photo applications that have been produced here. It’s not unlikely that many more fun apps will be created at this Japan version of Photo Hack Day, so if you are a developer that would like to participate, you can check out the Photo Hack Day site for more information on how to do that. Aviary’s previous Photo Hack Day took place at Facebook’s San Francisco headquarters, with over 300 developers and designers producing 63 mobile apps. The Japan event will take place at Mixi headquarters in Tokyo, with 300,000 yen as the first place award (about $3,000, out of $15,000 total in prizes). There are a number of API sponsors on board, with API demos taking place on the morning…

aviary-photo-hack-day

A few months back we wrote about New York-based Aviary, which at the time was making an effort to establish itself in Japan. And now this month, an upcoming event will be a big part of that effort, as Aviary’s recently announced hackathon, Photo Hack Day, is set to take place on the weekend of February 22/23.

As we have noted previously, Japan is perhaps the most enthusiastic mobile photography nation, and we have covered an incredible amount of great photo applications that have been produced here. It’s not unlikely that many more fun apps will be created at this Japan version of Photo Hack Day, so if you are a developer that would like to participate, you can check out the Photo Hack Day site for more information on how to do that.

Aviary’s previous Photo Hack Day took place at Facebook’s San Francisco headquarters, with over 300 developers and designers producing 63 mobile apps. The Japan event will take place at Mixi headquarters in Tokyo, with 300,000 yen as the first place award (about $3,000, out of $15,000 total in prizes).

There are a number of API sponsors on board, with API demos taking place on the morning of the 22nd before the actual hacking kicks off at 11:30am [1]. So if you’re a developer or designer who would like to get involved in what looks to be very interesting, and very focused hackathon, do drop over to the website for more information, or register here on Peatix.

Our readers may recall that Aviary recently launched the first international edition of its photo editor in Japan back in November. We briefly spoke with their CEO Tobais Peggs at that time, who gives a brief intro to his service in the video below.


  1. I should also note that I’ve agreed to volunteer at the event as one of the judges in an effort to help out. So if you’re in attendance, do come say hello!  ↩

Meet the Twilio Japan hackathon winners: 3 great ideas using the cloud telephony API

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See the original story in Japanese. As we reported previously, KDDI Web Communications has just announced the official launch of telephony API service Twilio in Japan. The tie-up will give users easier access to low-latency services and additional features which may fit local market needs. Here’s brief introduction of the three standout ideas that won prizes at Twilio’s hackathon event on launch day. Anpiru: a safety confirmation system for use in emergencies (Top prize and AWS Architect award winner: Takeshi Ambiru) The Anbiru system lets you to confirm the safety of your friends or family members in the event of a natural disaster or crisis. The service uses data from Japan’s Meteorological Agency and will start calling your people via Twilio. When they receive the call, they can indicate their safety by sending touch-tone signals. In contrast to conventional e-mail services, this might be easier for less tech savvy people such as elderly folks or children. Potential users are local governments, schools, and big companies. Guide Call: An easy, on-demand interpreter service for travelers (Award winner: Daisuke Ito) Japanese people often run into trouble when speaking foreign languages. When you’re traveling, Guide Call helps you find an available interpreter using…

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See the original story in Japanese.

As we reported previously, KDDI Web Communications has just announced the official launch of telephony API service Twilio in Japan. The tie-up will give users easier access to low-latency services and additional features which may fit local market needs.

Here’s brief introduction of the three standout ideas that won prizes at Twilio’s hackathon event on launch day.

Anpiru: a safety confirmation system for use in emergencies

(Top prize and AWS Architect award winner: Takeshi Ambiru)

The Anbiru system lets you to confirm the safety of your friends or family members in the event of a natural disaster or crisis. The service uses data from Japan’s Meteorological Agency and will start calling your people via Twilio. When they receive the call, they can indicate their safety by sending touch-tone signals.

In contrast to conventional e-mail services, this might be easier for less tech savvy people such as elderly folks or children. Potential users are local governments, schools, and big companies.

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Guide Call: An easy, on-demand interpreter service for travelers

(Award winner: Daisuke Ito)

Japanese people often run into trouble when speaking foreign languages. When you’re traveling, Guide Call helps you find an available interpreter using a crowdsourcing platform. By using the speaker phone feature on your mobile phone, you can have an interpreter join your conversation.

They expect to apply a per-minute charge system, and will consider selling it in partnership with travel agencies.

Annai Call: Easy-to-deploy multilingual hotline service for hotels and inns

(Winner of the Microsoft award: Kyoko Otagaki)

This service targets hotel management or inn owners, letting them present a designated phone number on your website to receive inquires or reservations from foreign language speakers. Any calls to the number will be transfered to an interpreter available on a crowdsoucing platform.


In the US, Twilio is being used by Uber, Airbnb and Hulu for customer support services. It will be really interesting to see what kinds of services will come out with the new telephony solution here in Japan.