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Best of 2013: Nohana finds opportunities printing photos from mobile

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As the year 2013 winds to a close, I thought I’d take a look back on some of the mobile apps and services that have really stood out. As a new parent, many of my favorite apps this year have been related to managing baby pictures. And here in Japan, Nohana is a must-have for any parent, letting them use pictures taken on their smartphones to create and print small photobooks, which are then delivered by mail. Users can order one free book per month, paying only a 90 yen shipping fee (or about $1). Additional books cost What’s perhaps most interesting about Nohana to me is how it can bridge the digital divide in families. It provides an option to send a second copy of your photo book to another address, which could be grandparents, or other relatives who might not be very adept with smartphone communication [1]. At the end of this year we saw Nohana roll out a Nengajo (or Japanese New Year’s card) creation app, representing another means of monetizing for the company. And I expect that it’s a far more lucrative stream than the regular Nohana photo service. Each new year card costs 88 yen,…

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As the year 2013 winds to a close, I thought I’d take a look back on some of the mobile apps and services that have really stood out. As a new parent, many of my favorite apps this year have been related to managing baby pictures. And here in Japan, Nohana is a must-have for any parent, letting them use pictures taken on their smartphones to create and print small photobooks, which are then delivered by mail. Users can order one free book per month, paying only a 90 yen shipping fee (or about $1). Additional books cost

What’s perhaps most interesting about Nohana to me is how it can bridge the digital divide in families. It provides an option to send a second copy of your photo book to another address, which could be grandparents, or other relatives who might not be very adept with smartphone communication [1].

At the end of this year we saw Nohana roll out a Nengajo (or Japanese New Year’s card) creation app, representing another means of monetizing for the company. And I expect that it’s a far more lucrative stream than the regular Nohana photo service. Each new year card costs 88 yen, with a minimum base fee of 1480 yen and then 525 yen for shipping.

It will be interesting to see if the company publishes other occasion specific apps in the coming year. I’m not sure if the folks at Nohana have any ambition to expand beyond Japan, but a Christmas card service would certainly come in handy in many countries.

In addition to Nohana, 2013 was a year that saw lots of fun photo apps emerge in Japan. This is proving to be an area of expertise for the country, with many startups innovating to compete for the country’s mobile photo market, and opportunities beyond.

nengajo-1 nengajo-2


  1. For me, I typically use an application called Notabli to share photos with my own parents.  ↩

Top 5: Great Mobile Apps For New Parents

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Having entered the ranks of fatherhood just this year, I’ve found that I’ve been experimenting with a number of applications that can help with parenting in general, as well as recording the most memorable moments of my baby’s development. As someone who lives in Japan, I’ve found myself using a mix of apps from abroad as well as a few homegrown applications. I thought I’d give a quick rundown of some of the mobile apps that have served me well so far. For any new parents out there, I highly recommend them all. 1. Notabli ¶ This is perhaps by far my most enthusiastic recommendation. Notabli is a private social network for parents with kids, letting you upload photos, short videos, and even audio updates, which are visible only to the people you want to share with. For me, that means my wife, my parents, and some close friends. It also lets you mark media as a milestone (like first tooth, first steps, etc), also another indispensable feature. There are numerous applications that I considered for photo management, but the primary reason why I chose Notabli is that it allows for full-resolution storage of photos, with the option to export…

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Original photo via makelessnoise on Flickr

Having entered the ranks of fatherhood just this year, I’ve found that I’ve been experimenting with a number of applications that can help with parenting in general, as well as recording the most memorable moments of my baby’s development. As someone who lives in Japan, I’ve found myself using a mix of apps from abroad as well as a few homegrown applications.

I thought I’d give a quick rundown of some of the mobile apps that have served me well so far. For any new parents out there, I highly recommend them all.

1. Notabli

notabli

This is perhaps by far my most enthusiastic recommendation. Notabli is a private social network for parents with kids, letting you upload photos, short videos, and even audio updates, which are visible only to the people you want to share with. For me, that means my wife, my parents, and some close friends. It also lets you mark media as a milestone (like first tooth, first steps, etc), also another indispensable feature.

There are numerous applications that I considered for photo management, but the primary reason why I chose Notabli is that it allows for full-resolution storage of photos, with the option to export them all at any time. This data-liberation feature is the most important function, letting me periodically ensure that I have local copies of moments that I really can’t afford to lose.

This is currently available for free on the App Store, although it is a service that I would happily pay for. I really can’t emphasize enough how great this app is.

2. Road Movies

road-movies

Videos on the afore-mentioned Notabli are restricted to 30 seconds in length, which is perhaps my only complaint about the app. But that makes Honda’s Road Movies, which I reviewed back in August, is a wondeful complementary video app.

Road Movies lets you create 24-second composite clips (the perfect length for Notabli) by combining short 1-second, 2-second, or 3-second clips that you record during your day. For me, I typically take 3 seconds of video of my baby in various situations, and then when they are assembled in Road Movies and mixed with the license-free background music, the result is amazing.

Perhaps Honda, the app’s creator, meant for it to be used in your car while on the road, but it’s great for recording moments with family too. You can pick up this made-in-Japan app over on the App Store.

3. DayOne

dayone

Taking a page from Gabe Weatherhead over at MacDrifter, who says he uses this journaling app to write letters to his daughter. I’ve begun doing the same, taking pictures and adding short notes now and then whenever I think of a message that my infant kid maybe can’t yet understand.

The app lets me write in Markdown, and syncing with Dropbox and/or iCloud assures me that my data is (relatively) safe.

It’s available for both iOS and Mac, for $4.99 and $9.99 respectively – although I have only bought the former, and that works for me just beautifully.

4. BabyCenter

baby-center

The folks over at BabyCenter have an assortment of great mobile apps, but the one that I’ve really found the most interesting is My Baby Today. After installing, you simply input your baby’s birthdate and it will then notify you with appropriate updates about your baby’s development.

The app has a photo album function, which I haven’t used at all. But the flow of information about caring for babies is incredibly useful for first-time parents, so I encourage you to check it out. It’s available for iOS and Android. (Thanks to D. for the recommendation!)

5. Baby Soothing Sounds

baby-soothing-sounds

You’ve all probably heard about people using white noise to sooth a crying baby. Well, this made-in-Japan app is a simple solution that gives you an assortment of white noise sounds whenever you need them. You can choose from things like hair dryer, TV static, running water, and even an unusual ramen slurping sound.

There are lots of apps like this on the market, but this one is free for iOS, and works really well. Try swaddling your baby and tucking your mobile into the folds of the blanket. It works like a charm for me, but it could be because my baby is so awesome. I’m sure your baby is cool too, but your mileage may vary.

Bonus: Nohana

nohana-app

I’m appending this app here as a bonus, since it is not available to folks who live outside Japan. But for those of you who do live in Japan, Mixi’s Nohana app is a simply awesome. We’ve written extensively about this mobile photobook printing service as it has developed, but let me sum it up briefly:

You upload photos from your smartphone, and Nohana will send you a free photobook. That’s it. Well, there’s a minor 90 yen shipping charge (about $1), but that’s a miniscule price to pay for the book they send you. Their business model appears to be based on the hopes that you will order additional books that can be shipped to grandparents (a big demographic in Japan) for the additional cost of 500 yen (about $5).

Nohana is available for free for both iOS and Android. Seriously, if you’re a parent in Japan, this is a service you should be using.

If you have any suggested additions for this list, don’t hesitate to let me know in the comments!

Japan’s Mixi motivated for mobile with these 6 apps

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Back in August, we wrote about Japanese social network Mixi and its Nohana photobook app. The service has seen rapid growth and was recently spun off as a wholly-owned subsidiary.When it comes to mobile apps, Mixi is taking a somewhat experimental approach with its Mixi Lab initiative. So we thought that it might be fun to take a look at the list of apps that the company has in line for us. At first glance, the following list of mobile apps doesn’t seem to indicate any unifying strategy. But having been the dominant social network in Japan for so long before Facebook and Twitter came along, Mixi really has lots of information about online communities. And thus, Mixi is now in a unique position to create many apps around those long established communities. In fact, there are over 2.7 million such communities registered on the social network, and some of its mobile apps can be thought of as being natural extensions of these. Read on to learn more about them! Nohana Nohana is a photo booklet printing service. Users receive one photo booklet for free (90 yen shipping cost not included) every month, and a second booklet on can be…

Back in August, we wrote about Japanese social network Mixi and its Nohana photobook app. The service has seen rapid growth and was recently spun off as a wholly-owned subsidiary.When it comes to mobile apps, Mixi is taking a somewhat experimental approach with its Mixi Lab initiative. So we thought that it might be fun to take a look at the list of apps that the company has in line for us.

At first glance, the following list of mobile apps doesn’t seem to indicate any unifying strategy. But having been the dominant social network in Japan for so long before Facebook and Twitter came along, Mixi really has lots of information about online communities. And thus, Mixi is now in a unique position to create many apps around those long established communities. In fact, there are over 2.7 million such communities registered on the social network, and some of its mobile apps can be thought of as being natural extensions of these. Read on to learn more about them!

Nohana

NohanaNohana is a photo booklet printing service. Users receive one photo booklet for free (90 yen shipping cost not included) every month, and a second booklet on can be purchased for 500 yen per book. Last month, Mixi revealed that the total number of uploaded photos amounts to 3.8 million, and there have been 100,000 photobooks published by 200,000 people.

Spinan

Spinan is the very first game app by Mixi, hitting the market today. It is a simple card game that works very similar to solitaire. In the given time of 90 seconds, your goal is to get rid of as many cards as possible. The results are not measured just by wins and losses, but it calculates the number of mistouches and the amount of time left, making the game more complex and addictive.

Plannah

PlannaThe most common place that mobile users go to look back on their photos is their photo library. But the more photos you take, more of a mess you make. Plannah can be a convenient app because it allows you to see your photos in albums. They can be organized by dates or themes, or be shared with selected friends.

PiqCole

PiqColePiqCole is a neat iOS app that lets you create photo albums as folders on your mobile home screen. The idea here was to create a service for moms that can be used daily. Just tap on the icon on your home screen and you can access your kids photos instantly. You can see how simple the app is in the video below.

Cheering

CheeringCheering is an app that — as the name suggests — encourages you by cheering. Users can chose a photo and a phrase, and every time they open the app, perhaps your dog or a friend or significant other will cheer you up. This was a little playful item that the team at Mixi created, and it was later made into this app. You can learn more about it in this interview on the Mixi blog.

Coscam

CoscamConsidering that there are many young people on Mixi, it’s only natural for the company to have a large community dedicated to cosplay culture. Coscam is an app made especially for this segment that lets users print name cards on their mobile phones. There are over 30 design themes available and you can print ten cards for 300 yen. The app can be used without user registration.

Minimo

Minimo is Mixi’s most recent app planned for release this fall, serving to match up hairdressers with models. Many hairdressers needs to practice haircutting with real people. Back in the old days, they used to find their models in the streets, since lots of regular people might be willing to get a hair cut for free. This activity of searching for ‘Cut models’ is one of the most actively used communities on Mixi – so popular that it seems that the company decided to spin it off as a standalone app.

Minimo

Mixi spins off popular photobook printing service as wholly-owned subsidiary

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One of my favorite made-in-Japan mobile applications is Mixi’s Nohana photobook printing service. Of course, being a new dad I’m somewhat biased towards applications like this. But still, the service has enjoyed some popularity in Japan lately, briefly becoming the number one free iOS app having been recently featured on national television. And now it looks like Nohana is being granted a little bit of room to maneuver from its parent company Mixi, as was announced today that it is being spun off as a wholly-owned subsidiary this coming September, to be known as Nohana Co., Ltd.. Mixi noted in its announcement that because Nohana has many customers right now, this change was made to ensure that the venture can operate and make decisions rapidly as it continues to grow. The incorporation will also mean that Nohana’s staff will expand from its current total of four to 10 or 15 [1]. For those not familiar with the service, the Nohana app lets you upload photos from your smartphone, assembling them into 20-page photo-booklets which are then printed and sent to your door. The first book you order in a month is free (except a shipping fee of 90 yen, or…

nohana-wide

One of my favorite made-in-Japan mobile applications is Mixi’s Nohana photobook printing service. Of course, being a new dad I’m somewhat biased towards applications like this. But still, the service has enjoyed some popularity in Japan lately, briefly becoming the number one free iOS app having been recently featured on national television.

And now it looks like Nohana is being granted a little bit of room to maneuver from its parent company Mixi, as was announced today that it is being spun off as a wholly-owned subsidiary this coming September, to be known as Nohana Co., Ltd..

Mixi noted in its announcement that because Nohana has many customers right now, this change was made to ensure that the venture can operate and make decisions rapidly as it continues to grow. The incorporation will also mean that Nohana’s staff will expand from its current total of four to 10 or 15 [1].

For those not familiar with the service, the Nohana app lets you upload photos from your smartphone, assembling them into 20-page photo-booklets which are then printed and sent to your door. The first book you order in a month is free (except a shipping fee of 90 yen, or about $1), but subsequent copies cost 525 yen. It seems the company is hoping that many parents will input their grandparents address as place to send second and maybe even third copies [2].

Mixi noted in the announcement that to date there have been more than 100,000 photobooks published by over 200,000 people, with a total of 3.8 million photos uploaded.

Nohana was originally launched back in February of this year as a product of Mixi’s internal Innovation Center.


  1. I had a chance to pop my head into their office when I visited the DeployGate team over at Mixi. It’s not a big room, so I expect they’ll be given a little more space as well.  ↩

  2. As a new parent, this is a feature I plan to use frequently.  ↩

Mixi’s photobook service gets the TV bump, is now Japan’s top app

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I’ve been pretty fascinated with Mixi’s efforts this year, in particular with those of its internal innovation team. This is the team that developed the Nohana photobook creation app, which initially launched back in February. Interestingly it has just become the number one free iOS app in Japan. I was curious this morning to know exactly why Nohana saw this sudden surge. Some quick Twitter research shows that the application received a big boost last night when it was featured on popular television show ‘A deep, life-changing story in one minute‘. Although it has been said before, this really underscores the value that television represents to any app or game in Japan [1]. Coincidentally, I had a Nohana photobook order delivered to me just yesterday, and the package included a handy little growth chart about the services first few months which you can see below. So far over 40,000 photobooks have been ordered, with 9860 printed in June. I’m still unsure as to whether Nohana can turn a profit with its “your first book is free, the second one is paid” model. But given Japan’s aging demographic, I’m sure that there are lots of customers who send second and third…

nohana-wide

I’ve been pretty fascinated with Mixi’s efforts this year, in particular with those of its internal innovation team. This is the team that developed the Nohana photobook creation app, which initially launched back in February. Interestingly it has just become the number one free iOS app in Japan.

I was curious this morning to know exactly why Nohana saw this sudden surge. Some quick Twitter research shows that the application received a big boost last night when it was featured on popular television show ‘A deep, life-changing story in one minute‘. Although it has been said before, this really underscores the value that television represents to any app or game in Japan [1].

Coincidentally, I had a Nohana photobook order delivered to me just yesterday, and the package included a handy little growth chart about the services first few months which you can see below. So far over 40,000 photobooks have been ordered, with 9860 printed in June.

I’m still unsure as to whether Nohana can turn a profit with its “your first book is free, the second one is paid” model. But given Japan’s aging demographic, I’m sure that there are lots of customers who send second and third copies directly to grandparents when they place an order [2].

Nohana also launched on Android earlier this month, so ostensibly that’s a sign that things are still going well enough to continue its efforts.

If you live in Japan and you still haven’t tried Nohana, do give it a try.

nohana-photo-books-sold
Photobooks sold, February to June

  1. For example, it played a huge part in the early success of Line, as well as popular games like Rage of Bahamut and Puzzle & Dragons. Serkan Toto explored this a little further in a post last year, specific to the social gaming industry.  ↩

  2. The app lets you save multiple addresses, making the process of sending a book to other family members very easy.  ↩

Mixi’s Nohana photobook service now available on Android

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Over the past year Japan’s Mixi has offered up a few interesting services coming from its innovation team, including its mobile photobook printing service Nohana. I’ve used the service a few times, and the books always turn out well [1]. And now the service, which initially launched on iOS back in February, is available for Android. Nohana lets you upload photos from your smartphone, creating a photobook which is then printed and sent to your doorstep. Or if you prefer, it could be sent another family member far away, like a grandparent for example. Users get to print one booklet (of 20 pictures) each month for free, paying a minimal shipping fee of 90 yen (almost a dollar). Subsequent orders cost 500 yen. According to Gamebiz.jp, over 40,000 users have uploaded more than 1.3 million photos to date, publishing 46,000 photobooks. And reportedly 12,000 people pre-registered for the Android app, which is certainly promising. The Android app went online quietly late last week, and is gradually climbing the photo app charts. It will be interesting to see if Nohana can afford to keep offering one free book per month if it becomes more popular later. But for now, I think…

nohana_photobook

Over the past year Japan’s Mixi has offered up a few interesting services coming from its innovation team, including its mobile photobook printing service Nohana. I’ve used the service a few times, and the books always turn out well [1]. And now the service, which initially launched on iOS back in February, is available for Android.

Nohana lets you upload photos from your smartphone, creating a photobook which is then printed and sent to your doorstep. Or if you prefer, it could be sent another family member far away, like a grandparent for example. Users get to print one booklet (of 20 pictures) each month for free, paying a minimal shipping fee of 90 yen (almost a dollar). Subsequent orders cost 500 yen.

According to Gamebiz.jp, over 40,000 users have uploaded more than 1.3 million photos to date, publishing 46,000 photobooks. And reportedly 12,000 people pre-registered for the Android app, which is certainly promising.

The Android app went online quietly late last week, and is gradually climbing the photo app charts. It will be interesting to see if Nohana can afford to keep offering one free book per month if it becomes more popular later. But for now, I think it’s still under the radar, so if you’re in Japan and you take lots of smartphone photos, it’s a pretty sweet deal and I recommend trying it out.

For now it appears as if the company is trying to grow a very targeted user base, even reaching out to local kindergarden schools back in May to promote its services, donating some Nohana credit to selected schools who can then use it to order books.


  1. As long as your photos are of a decent quality, your books will be about as good.  ↩

Mixi’s Nohana to donate photo books to local kindergarten schools

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Back in February we wrote about a new service from Mixi’s (TYO:2121) innovation team called Nohana. Using the Nohana smartphone app, users can create a photo book using snapshots taken with their mobile, and then received that printed book via mail. Users in Japan can receive one free picture book per month (not including a 90 yen shipping fee), but for each one after that they need to pay 500 yen (or about $5). According to the folks over at Venture Now, Nohana currently has 30,000 users, with over 8,000 photo books published since the February launch. And it was just announced a few days ago that Nohana would be donating pre-paid Nohana credit to selected nurseries and kindergartens. The specific establishments will be selected by lottery, and Nohana will donate 1 percent of its published book total to these facilities. So in other words, based on their 8,000 total books published thus far, eight facilities will receive prepaid cards for 5,000 yen Nohana credit, good enough to buy 10 photo books (or 80 in total). These child care establishments have expressed a need to share photos with parents, to give them a better indication of the child care environment…

nohana_photobook

Back in February we wrote about a new service from Mixi’s (TYO:2121) innovation team called Nohana. Using the Nohana smartphone app, users can create a photo book using snapshots taken with their mobile, and then received that printed book via mail. Users in Japan can receive one free picture book per month (not including a 90 yen shipping fee), but for each one after that they need to pay 500 yen (or about $5).

According to the folks over at Venture Now, Nohana currently has 30,000 users, with over 8,000 photo books published since the February launch. And it was just announced a few days ago that Nohana would be donating pre-paid Nohana credit to selected nurseries and kindergartens.

The specific establishments will be selected by lottery, and Nohana will donate 1 percent of its published book total to these facilities. So in other words, based on their 8,000 total books published thus far, eight facilities will receive prepaid cards for 5,000 yen Nohana credit, good enough to buy 10 photo books (or 80 in total).

These child care establishments have expressed a need to share photos with parents, to give them a better indication of the child care environment and activities. And from Nohana’s perspective, this is a good way to introduce more parents to their photo printing service.

Personally, I’ve already printed a couple of books with Nohana. And so far the service has been great. If you do try out the service for yourself, do make sure that the photos you select for printing are nice and sharp, because paper is far less forgiving than your smartphone screen.

[Via Venture Now]

Mixi tries again: New photo printing service ‘Nohana’ targets parents in Japan

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Japanese social network Mixi (TYO:2121) just launched a new photo service named Nohana (meaning ‘wild flowers’ in Japanese) targeting parents with small children. This move makes a lot of sense considering that the early users of the social network, which launched way back in 2000, are now a little older and likely to have children of their own. The app is surprisingly simple and is completely separate from Mixi proper. After signing up, you can invite your family members by entering their phone numbers. Once this is done, you can upload or take photos with the iOS app [1] and then every month users (in Japan) can receive a free (90 yen shipping fee not included) printed photo book. The first book of each month is always free, however each additional book costs 525 yen and there is free shipping for orders above 1,050 yen (about $11). Nohana is Mixi’s answer to our modern habit of frequent photo-taking, but never having enough time to organize and print them. With this solution, families can share their photos with grandparents or other relatives who may live far away. Mixi’s official total monthly active users was 14 million as of September 2012, with…

nohana_photobook

Japanese social network Mixi (TYO:2121) just launched a new photo service named Nohana (meaning ‘wild flowers’ in Japanese) targeting parents with small children. This move makes a lot of sense considering that the early users of the social network, which launched way back in 2000, are now a little older and likely to have children of their own.

The app is surprisingly simple and is completely separate from Mixi proper. After signing up, you can invite your family members by entering their phone numbers. Once this is done, you can upload or take photos with the iOS app [1] and then every month users (in Japan) can receive a free (90 yen shipping fee not included) printed photo book. The first book of each month is always free, however each additional book costs 525 yen and there is free shipping for orders above 1,050 yen (about $11).

Nohana

Nohana is Mixi’s answer to our modern habit of frequent photo-taking, but never having enough time to organize and print them. With this solution, families can share their photos with grandparents or other relatives who may live far away.

Mixi’s official total monthly active users was 14 million as of September 2012, with about 8.6 million of those on smartphones (see interactive chart below). And the most active users on the social network are people in the 20 to 24 demographic accounting for almost 30% of the total users. That’s followed by users ages 25 to 29 at 20%, and 30 to 35 at 14%. Ostensibly many users from these segments should benefit greatly from a service like Nohana.

Mixi currently runs two major business: its social network, plus the online job posting site, Find Job. The company recently shut down its short-lived subscription fashion commerce, Petite Jete, which was targeting young female users. Under what was likely the correct assumption that young female struggled to find casual work fashion, the company did succeed in gaining over a million users. However, the business was not as big as they expected.

In Japan, the photo book market is getting pretty crowded with competitors from Fujifilm and startups like Tolot. Lets stay tuned to see if this new venture, Nohana, will go as they hope — or suffer the same sad fate as Petite Jete.

Download image version of chart


  1. An Android version is coming later this spring  ↩