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Cooliris courts photo-crazed Japan with new localization

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Occasionally the folks from Palo Alto-based Cooliris swing through Tokyo as part of efforts to promote their photo sharing service in Asia. Our readers may recall that we spoke with them back in March, when they were making good progress in China with an early partnerships with social service Renren. So I was curious to see how Cooliris has progressed since then, both in China and Japan, and in surrounding Asian regions. CEO Soujanya Bhumkar tells me that China has seen particularly solid growth, with a 30% increase in downloads in the last quarter making the Middle Kingdom their number two install base after the US. They’ve made significant localization efforts in China, now with Sina Weibo on board as a connected service. Users can browse Weibo photos using the slick Cooliris interface, diving deep to explore pictures from various users, as well as those from people they follow or are followed by. Tencent Weibo and Baidu Yun are now also supported Cooliris services, having been added over the past year. Interestingly, India has been a new growth market for them thanks to increased smartphone adoption there, now suddenly a top ten country for Cooliris. Japan, which previously was Cooliris’s…

Occasionally the folks from Palo Alto-based Cooliris swing through Tokyo as part of efforts to promote their photo sharing service in Asia. Our readers may recall that we spoke with them back in March, when they were making good progress in China with an early partnerships with social service Renren. So I was curious to see how Cooliris has progressed since then, both in China and Japan, and in surrounding Asian regions.

CEO Soujanya Bhumkar tells me that China has seen particularly solid growth, with a 30% increase in downloads in the last quarter making the Middle Kingdom their number two install base after the US. They’ve made significant localization efforts in China, now with Sina Weibo on board as a connected service. Users can browse Weibo photos using the slick Cooliris interface, diving deep to explore pictures from various users, as well as those from people they follow or are followed by. Tencent Weibo and Baidu Yun are now also supported Cooliris services, having been added over the past year.

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Japanese interface

Interestingly, India has been a new growth market for them thanks to increased smartphone adoption there, now suddenly a top ten country for Cooliris.

Japan, which previously was Cooliris’s second biggest market, still remains one of their top five markets. But with the latest update of the Cooliris iOS app, Japanese localization has been added. I understand that the company isn’t going to be making significant marketing efforts, but the localization at least makes it more accessible here. They’ll continue to try to serve Japanese users in later versions.

Considering that Cooliris now supports integration with so many social services, the missing puzzle piece for the company here in Japan is obviously Line. The team couldn’t tell me too much on this point, but obviously users here would definitely like to see such an integration. So Line users should keep their fingers crossed, and stay tuned [1].

The Cooliris app has a few other significant changes recently, as Soujanya and his VP of business development Sebastian Blum (he’s the guy in the video above) inform me that the app’s group function is now the number one driver of user acquisition and user retention. Groups could be as small as just two people sharing photos privately, or it could be many more. Groups can be based around certain activities like weddings, vacations, with discussion happening on Cooliris even before that event takes place.

As I was speaking with Soujanya, I happened to have Yammer open on my Mac, as that’s one of the collaborative tools that we use here at The Bridge. He pointed out to me that while there are many corporate collaborative tools like this, there are few collaborate options for consumers. People’s photo experience is typically fragmented across multiple service and multiple friends, and Cooliris gives people a chance to bring them together in one place.

In total they have seen over 3 billion photos brought into the Cooliris app, and over 1 billion photo engagements [2]. And for those who share photos in many different online places, it will continue to be a useful service. Whether it can pick up some more steam in photo-crazy Japan remains to be seen, but this new localization is an encouraging first step.

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  1. I confess, I used Cooliris for a while this year, but eventually drifted away from it. My mobile photo use is primarily restricted to Notabli, a family-focused photo app. I use Flickr as storage for pictures taken with my DSLR, but the majority of them are private. But I can see the potential of Cooliris for people more social than myself.  ↩

  2. I understand that an engagement is when you tap on a photo and view it in higher resolution.  ↩

Kyoto-based startup gives us virtual glimpse of yesterday with time machine app [Video]

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Readers may recall a few months back when we wrote about Kyoto-based startups Qooq, and its very clever augmented reality app Yesterscape. At the time, we saw a brief bump in our incoming traffic when science fiction author William Gibson happened to re-tweet the article. I recently had a chance to speak with the creator of Yesterscape, and CEO of Qooq Inc, who goes by the name of ‘Hide Nu’. While chatting with me in his Kyoto office, he mentioned estaticly that he’s a huge fan of Gibson, saying he’s read all his novels, pulling one off the office shelf to show me. For those unfamiliar with the app, Yesterscape lets you take pictures and save them virtually in a specific location. Then, if you return to that location later, you can revisit your memory using your smartphone. The app surpassed the 100,000 downloads mark earlier this month, and they continue to build and improve it. The most recent additions to the service include the ability to get a notification when a picture of someone you know is posted nearby, as well as the option to let others see your photos using AirDrop or Line. They also hope to implement…

Readers may recall a few months back when we wrote about Kyoto-based startups Qooq, and its very clever augmented reality app Yesterscape. At the time, we saw a brief bump in our incoming traffic when science fiction author William Gibson happened to re-tweet the article. I recently had a chance to speak with the creator of Yesterscape, and CEO of Qooq Inc, who goes by the name of ‘Hide Nu’. While chatting with me in his Kyoto office, he mentioned estaticly that he’s a huge fan of Gibson, saying he’s read all his novels, pulling one off the office shelf to show me.

yesterscape

For those unfamiliar with the app, Yesterscape lets you take pictures and save them virtually in a specific location. Then, if you return to that location later, you can revisit your memory using your smartphone. The app surpassed the 100,000 downloads mark earlier this month, and they continue to build and improve it. The most recent additions to the service include the ability to get a notification when a picture of someone you know is posted nearby, as well as the option to let others see your photos using AirDrop or Line. They also hope to implement markerless AR in the future as well [1].

Nu tells me that they do plan to promote this service outside of Japan, and to that end, they will be headed to SXSW next year.

I also had a chance to meet with the company’s CTO, Mexican-born Oscar Peredo. He’s a very enthusiastic personality, with a deep love for Japan, and development skills to match. He told me that what they are trying to do is make entirely new products:

We try to create things that have not been created before. We specialize in developing things that are useful for daily life, that people can enjoy using. We also try to surprise them.

Initially, while I was a big fan of the idea of Yesterscape, I was skeptical about its business potential. But after speaking with Nu, it seems to me that a service like Yesterscape is almost certain to be a fixture in our future. When he mentioned that it could even be used by conventional digital cameras, I started thinking about how easy it would be for even wi-fi enabled compacts and DSLRs to implement something like Yesterscape. Ideally it could manifest itself as a hardware ‘Yesterscape’ switch on a camera, but more realistically it would be more like a social share to the web.

Personally, I really admire this project, especially the idea of executing it here in Japan where the elderly demographic is so huge. The possibility of old people’s memories dying as they die can be thought of as a sort of cultural crisis. And I really think that governments should be on board sponsoring something like this, getting their own archives transferred into Yesterscape.


  1. Markerless augmented reality uses parts of our environment as a tracking target, rather than some black and white graphic as we typically see in traditional AR.  ↩

Japanese photo app Qtiie boasts impressive make-up enhancement features

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With so many photo decoration apps available on the market, the hardest part for consumers may be choosing the best one to use. One recent trend among popular photo apps here in Japan is ‘purikura’ (or photo booths) features, such as whitening of skin and enlarging eyes. Qtiie, is a photo decoration app for iOS that was just released by a Japanese system integrations company Fujimic, a subsidiary of Fuji Media Holdings [1]. The app was developed to respond to the growing demand for Kawaii Japanese pop-culture from both inside and outside the country. The photo app comes with the obvious common features like stamps, frames, and brushes, but with a twist in ite design themes, or ‘tastes’ as the app calls them. These include location themes such as ‘Harajuku’, ‘Shibuya’, ‘Akihabara’, as well as themes like ‘Hime’ (or ‘princess’), Natural, Urban, and ‘’Wa-fu’ (Japanese style). One impressive feature of Qtiie is its make-up enhancements. Resizing the size of your eyes, changing the colors of your eyes and lips, smoothening of skin, and even changing your hair color. Many photo apps have these purikura features, but this app makes them especially easy to use, and the finished photo is pretty…

Qtiie-web

With so many photo decoration apps available on the market, the hardest part for consumers may be choosing the best one to use. One recent trend among popular photo apps here in Japan is ‘purikura’ (or photo booths) features, such as whitening of skin and enlarging eyes.

Qtiie, is a photo decoration app for iOS that was just released by a Japanese system integrations company Fujimic, a subsidiary of Fuji Media Holdings [1].

Qtiie-screenshotThe app was developed to respond to the growing demand for Kawaii Japanese pop-culture from both inside and outside the country. The photo app comes with the obvious common features like stamps, frames, and brushes, but with a twist in ite design themes, or ‘tastes’ as the app calls them. These include location themes such as ‘Harajuku’, ‘Shibuya’, ‘Akihabara’, as well as themes like ‘Hime’ (or ‘princess’), Natural, Urban, and ‘’Wa-fu’ (Japanese style).

One impressive feature of Qtiie is its make-up enhancements. Resizing the size of your eyes, changing the colors of your eyes and lips, smoothening of skin, and even changing your hair color. Many photo apps have these purikura features, but this app makes them especially easy to use, and the finished photo is pretty high quality with an authentic look. Some designer themes and certain eye colors can be purchased within the app for 100 to 200 yen (about $1 to $2).

Decorated photos can be shared with friends on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and of course Instagram. As its tagline says, Qtiie brings Kawaii to the plam of your hands.

The app is available for free on iOS.


  1. This unusual name is an example of what my colleague Rick Martin is talking about in his previous post titled “What’s in a name?”. Qtiie is intended to be pronounced as ‘cutie’.  ↩

Gateway to a ‘kawaii’ ecosystem: Japan’s Decopic has 30M downloads worldwide

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The purikura photo app ‘Decopic’ is one of the many apps that has won hearts of young ‘kawaii-hunters’ in Japan (‘kawaii’ meaning ‘cute’ in Japanese). Readers may recall that we previously put this app on our popular list of Japan’s Cutest Mobile Apps. Community Factory, the company behind the app, has just announced that it has reached the impressive milestone of 30 million downloads worldwide. That’s a whopping 20 million downloads in the span of about a year, since it was acquired by Yahoo Japan back in last September. In addition to Decopic, the company released six more apps this year alone. Our ultimate goal is to take over our user’s homescreen with our apps. Community factory describes Decopic (available on both iOS and Android) as “so cute that it makes you happy just to have it.” It’s super easy to use with no need for instructions. Many users of the app are from Asia such as Korea, Taiwan, China, and Thailand. There is a growing fan base in these countries, especially a strong community in Taiwan. According to Ryosuke Matusmoto, the CEO of Community Factory, many of their apps are downloaded by users outside of Japan even when only…

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The Community Factory team, creators of Decopic (photo appropriately decorated with Decopic!)

The purikura photo app ‘Decopic’ is one of the many apps that has won hearts of young ‘kawaii-hunters’ in Japan (‘kawaii’ meaning ‘cute’ in Japanese). Readers may recall that we previously put this app on our popular list of Japan’s Cutest Mobile Apps. Community Factory, the company behind the app, has just announced that it has reached the impressive milestone of 30 million downloads worldwide. That’s a whopping 20 million downloads in the span of about a year, since it was acquired by Yahoo Japan back in last September. In addition to Decopic, the company released six more apps this year alone.

Our ultimate goal is to take over our user’s homescreen with our apps.

Community factory describes Decopic (available on both iOS and Android) as “so cute that it makes you happy just to have it.” It’s super easy to use with no need for instructions.

Many users of the app are from Asia such as Korea, Taiwan, China, and Thailand. There is a growing fan base in these countries, especially a strong community in Taiwan.

According to Ryosuke Matusmoto, the CEO of Community Factory, many of their apps are downloaded by users outside of Japan even when only provided in Japanese. This is likely due to their simple user interface which effectively removes the language barrier. All the apps share the common qualities of being cute as well as offering many fun designs within one application, so users of one app by Community Factory are likely to download another.

Ryosuke elaborates on the recent milestone:

In addition to our growing user base in Asia, we saw younger Japanese girls, as young as middle school downloading our app. They probably got their first mobile phone, which is now almost always a smartphone and not a feature phone. We continue to focus on girls, and how much of their mobile time we can take up. We released six new apps this year, and plan to develop more in different categories. Our ultimate goal is to take over our user’s homescreen with our apps.

Decopic reaches out to many female users, and then other apps such as calendar or battery-efficiency apps provide utilities that enhances the app’s retention. Their collage app Petapic had five million downloads after eight months of its release, and Petat Calendar had one million downloads as of May of this year.

Decopic-screenshots

Line Camera photo app surpasses 50 million users

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Line Corporation announced today that its Line Camera application has surpassed 50 million users as of yesterday. That application was initially released back in April of 2012, and like all of Line’s other apps, it has ridden the popularity of the Line chat platform (or Line Channel) to reach a number of app markets around the world. To date Line camera has done very well, becoming a top 10 iOS photo app in 20 countries, and a top 10 Android photo app in 14 countries – primarily in Asia and South America. The app supports the main languages in those regions, including Japanese, Chinese, Korean, as well as Thai and Spanish which were added in the 5.0 update in August. The company will apparently be targeting female users with new beauty features are coming in early October to Line camera, including capabilities to adjust skin brightness and smoothness, fix skin blemishes, as well as functions to make your face smaller and eyes bigger. You can see these functions in screenshot below provided by Line. If you look closely there is also an ‘volume’ button with what looks like a breasts icon too. I’m not yet sure how I feel about…

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Line Corporation announced today that its Line Camera application has surpassed 50 million users as of yesterday.

That application was initially released back in April of 2012, and like all of Line’s other apps, it has ridden the popularity of the Line chat platform (or Line Channel) to reach a number of app markets around the world.

To date Line camera has done very well, becoming a top 10 iOS photo app in 20 countries, and a top 10 Android photo app in 14 countries – primarily in Asia and South America. The app supports the main languages in those regions, including Japanese, Chinese, Korean, as well as Thai and Spanish which were added in the 5.0 update in August.

The company will apparently be targeting female users with new beauty features are coming in early October to Line camera, including capabilities to adjust skin brightness and smoothness, fix skin blemishes, as well as functions to make your face smaller and eyes bigger. You can see these functions in screenshot below provided by Line. If you look closely there is also an ‘volume’ button with what looks like a breasts icon too. I’m not yet sure how I feel about this last feature.

For more information on the history of Line to date, check out our interactive Line timeline.

line-camera home

Forget food photos. Japan’s ‘Instapaper for Interiors’ raises $1M

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See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Tunnel is the startup behind RoomClip, a photo sharing service that lets you show off your room. The company announced today that it has raised 100 million yen ($1 million) from Femto Growth Capital. Coinciding with this funding, the investment firm’s general partner Tetsuya Isozaki will join the board of the startup. Tunnel was founded back in November of 2011. Previously it received seed investment of 10 million yen ($100,0000) from Samurai Incubate and Cyber Agent Ventures back in 2011. According to the startup’s CEO Masahiko Takashige, the service’s main userbase are females in their 20s and 30s. He observed many people sharing interior photos on Mixi and other social networking services even before launching the startup back in May of 2012. To date the RoomClip mobile app has seen 130,000 downloads and over 100,000 photos posted. I asked Takashige about what motivates users sharing those photos. For some users, they may not be so proud to show the inside of their home to others. So sharing such photos of your room can be a good excuse to clean up a little. Other users say it can be sort of addictive. In terms…

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See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based Tunnel is the startup behind RoomClip, a photo sharing service that lets you show off your room. The company announced today that it has raised 100 million yen ($1 million) from Femto Growth Capital. Coinciding with this funding, the investment firm’s general partner Tetsuya Isozaki will join the board of the startup.

Tunnel was founded back in November of 2011. Previously it received seed investment of 10 million yen ($100,0000) from Samurai Incubate and Cyber Agent Ventures back in 2011.

According to the startup’s CEO Masahiko Takashige, the service’s main userbase are females in their 20s and 30s. He observed many people sharing interior photos on Mixi and other social networking services even before launching the startup back in May of 2012. To date the RoomClip mobile app has seen 130,000 downloads and over 100,000 photos posted. I asked Takashige about what motivates users sharing those photos.

For some users, they may not be so proud to show the inside of their home to others. So sharing such photos of your room can be a good excuse to clean up a little. Other users say it can be sort of addictive.

In terms of user behaviors, 90% of users are viewing other user’s photos, and refer to interiors posted by the service’s most frequent users. This tendency leads to some monetization potential with e-commerce opportunities.

For typical interior fanatics, they hope to discover and buy items they really want. We see many furniture and specialty stores in town. But you select items and place them in your room very much according to your own preference. Our service lets you share this experience online.

The startup expects to add product details and links to e-commerce sites in the app, and examine how these efforts can help drive user traffic for monetization.

The company aims to eventually reach 2.5 downloads for its mobile app and acquire 2 million users.

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New Japanese iPhone app ranks the world’s cutest photos

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Kawaiit is a fun, social application from Japan that lets you submit, browse, and vote on kawaii (cute) pictures. It was launched just yesterday from the folks over at Jig.jp, so we thought we’d take a look. In the same spirit as Hot or Not, the application presents you with a stream of photos that you can approve with the ‘Kawaii’ button, or vote against with the somewhat strangely named ‘dis-kawaii’ [1]. There is a ‘top ranking’ area too where you can see the cutest photos from around the world. With a predominantly pink and pastel color scheme, the app is most definitely targeting a female demographic, with user-submitted photos organized into categories like Fashion, Nails, Hair & Beauty, Make[up] & Cosmetics and more. A Jig.jp representative told us why they think this app will appeal to users all over the world: We think most girls like cute stuff. Our app is for them. Without any language, they can communicate on the app through kawaii photos. She added that the app is based on the team’s experience developing communication apps and apps about Japanese culture. Their jigbrowser+ was previously released internationally, so they will build on that experience in order…

Kawaiit is a fun, social application from Japan that lets you submit, browse, and vote on kawaii (cute) pictures. It was launched just yesterday from the folks over at Jig.jp, so we thought we’d take a look.

kawaiit

In the same spirit as Hot or Not, the application presents you with a stream of photos that you can approve with the ‘Kawaii’ button, or vote against with the somewhat strangely named ‘dis-kawaii’ [1]. There is a ‘top ranking’ area too where you can see the cutest photos from around the world.

With a predominantly pink and pastel color scheme, the app is most definitely targeting a female demographic, with user-submitted photos organized into categories like Fashion, Nails, Hair & Beauty, Make[up] & Cosmetics and more. A Jig.jp representative told us why they think this app will appeal to users all over the world:

We think most girls like cute stuff. Our app is for them. Without any language, they can communicate on the app through kawaii photos.

She added that the app is based on the team’s experience developing communication apps and apps about Japanese culture. Their jigbrowser+ was previously released internationally, so they will build on that experience in order to help push this one abroad.

Despite my aversion for so much pinkness, I gave the app a quick test run, which you can see in the video above [2]. I uploaded a picture and within a few minutes there were already a bunch of people who had given it some Kawaii votes. There are handy photo decoration and filter options available as well if you’d like to enhance your picture’s cuteness.

If you’d like to give Kawaiit a try for yourself, you can download it for free over on the App Store.

This is part of our cute Japanese apps series (RSS), examining a trend of ‘kawaii’ apps and services emerging from Japan’s mobile space.

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  1. I motion that this button be renamed as ‘Not so Kawaii’  ↩

  2. I should point out that the initial sign -in process was somewhat difficult due to an invisible username field on the sign-in page (to the right of the pencil icon). But I’m told by a rep that they’re looking at it, and it may be addressed in a future update.  ↩

Japan’s Snapeee to host fashion event in Taiwan

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See the original story in Japanese. Snapeee is a Japanese photo-sharing app serving more than five million users worldwide. Mind Palette, the startup behind the app, announced today it that it is planning to hold a promotional event featuring runway shows and music live performances for its fans in Taiwan. The event is called Snapeee Fes and it will take place on September 14th at ATT Show Box, Taipei, Taiwan. In addition to serving individual users, the service has set up corporate accounts for apparel brands and fashion magazines. According to the startup, one of the most popular users has so far earned 1.3 million followers on the platform. The event will be the first chance for the startup to promote their service, which has a very distinct Japanese ‘kawaii’ flavor. They will invite popular Japanese models like Tina Tamashiro and Yuka Mizuhara, as well as prominent Japanese fashion brands like Vivi, Peach John, and WeGo. 70% of Snapeee’s users comes from Japan, Taiwan, and the rest of the Asian region, and they tend to be mostly female. In Taiwan in particular, the user base includes many fashion bloggers or models who are conscious about the Kawaii fashion trend. The startup…

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See the original story in Japanese.

Snapeee is a Japanese photo-sharing app serving more than five million users worldwide. Mind Palette, the startup behind the app, announced today it that it is planning to hold a promotional event featuring runway shows and music live performances for its fans in Taiwan. The event is called Snapeee Fes and it will take place on September 14th at ATT Show Box, Taipei, Taiwan.

In addition to serving individual users, the service has set up corporate accounts for apparel brands and fashion magazines. According to the startup, one of the most popular users has so far earned 1.3 million followers on the platform.

The event will be the first chance for the startup to promote their service, which has a very distinct Japanese ‘kawaii’ flavor. They will invite popular Japanese models like Tina Tamashiro and Yuka Mizuhara, as well as prominent Japanese fashion brands like Vivi, Peach John, and WeGo.

70% of Snapeee’s users comes from Japan, Taiwan, and the rest of the Asian region, and they tend to be mostly female. In Taiwan in particular, the user base includes many fashion bloggers or models who are conscious about the Kawaii fashion trend. The startup expects to keep organizing such kind of events in order to establish a solid brand image in the region.

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…

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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 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.  ↩

RoadMovies creates cool retro videos, is now Japan’s top iPhone app

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Here’s another intriguing addition to our growing list of Japanese camera apps. This time it comes courtesy of the folks at Honda, and despite the name of the app, RoadMovies, it’s not just for use while driving. Originally launched late last year, the app has been climbing the iOS charts ever since, and is now the top free app in Japan. It also tops the photo and video category in Korea right now too. The app allows you to shoot a collection of very short video clips – either 24 x 1 second, 12 x 2 seconds, or 8 x 3 seconds – which are then stitched together to create a composite 24 second clip. Of course, this sort of function would work especially well while driving on a long road trip, and there’s an interval camera function that can automate the entire process if you don’t want to press the shutter button manually. You can set the interval settings to record a short clip every minute, or every 60 minutes, or any value in between. There’s also a handy distance interval function that lets you record clips after you’ve moved a specified distance, although you’ll need a GPS enabled…

Here’s another intriguing addition to our growing list of Japanese camera apps. This time it comes courtesy of the folks at Honda, and despite the name of the app, RoadMovies, it’s not just for use while driving. Originally launched late last year, the app has been climbing the iOS charts ever since, and is now the top free app in Japan. It also tops the photo and video category in Korea right now too.

The app allows you to shoot a collection of very short video clips – either 24 x 1 second, 12 x 2 seconds, or 8 x 3 seconds – which are then stitched together to create a composite 24 second clip.

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Of course, this sort of function would work especially well while driving on a long road trip, and there’s an interval camera function that can automate the entire process if you don’t want to press the shutter button manually. You can set the interval settings to record a short clip every minute, or every 60 minutes, or any value in between. There’s also a handy distance interval function that lets you record clips after you’ve moved a specified distance, although you’ll need a GPS enabled device for this (i.e. it won’t work with an iPod Touch).

After you’ve shot your 24 total seconds of video, you can then opt to add one of eight available filters to give your composite clip some extra pop. The next step is perhaps the most fun, as you can choose one of 14 available background music tracks included in the app, all of which are pretty snazzy.

The overall effect is super retro, especially if you apply a filter. For a preview of the end result, you can see many examples of videos created with RoadMovies over on YouTube. Or you can check out Honda’s own promo video above which demonstrates how it works, with a sample video at the end.

If you’d like to check out RoadMovies, it’s available as a free download over on the App Store. From what I’ve seen of it so far, I recommend you pick it up.

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