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tag Photo Hack Day Japan

Vocagetty: Helping you remember words with pictures

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I’ve already mentioned a few of the top ideas that came out of Aviary’s recent Photo Hack Day Japan, including ‘Back to the Future’ and ‘Before the Filter’. But one of the other projects really resonated with me, as I’m a big user of flash card apps for language learning. Vocagetty was a clever sort of dictionary app proposed by the team of Atsushi Onoda, Hiroshi Kanamura, Shinichi Segawa, Yasushi Takemoto. It makes use of the Getty Images API to pull in pictures associated with the vocabulary you’re studying, and the Imagga API to generate smart crops of those pictures. The idea here is that the pictures will reinforce the word or idea, making for more a effective learning process. Overall Vocagetty impressed at the hackathon [1], taking third place and walking away with 100,000 yen (about $1000). I’m told by Atsushi Onoda that the group will continue to develop Vocagetty, with plans for an upcoming release in April. There are lots of similar learning services and apps already on the market. But it’s an interesting space because companies can choose to be either an all purpose study solution that can be used for any subject (see Anki or Memrise…

vocagetty

I’ve already mentioned a few of the top ideas that came out of Aviary’s recent Photo Hack Day Japan, including ‘Back to the Future’ and ‘Before the Filter’. But one of the other projects really resonated with me, as I’m a big user of flash card apps for language learning. Vocagetty was a clever sort of dictionary app proposed by the team of Atsushi Onoda, Hiroshi Kanamura, Shinichi Segawa, Yasushi Takemoto. It makes use of the Getty Images API to pull in pictures associated with the vocabulary you’re studying, and the Imagga API to generate smart crops of those pictures.

The idea here is that the pictures will reinforce the word or idea, making for more a effective learning process. Overall Vocagetty impressed at the hackathon [1], taking third place and walking away with 100,000 yen (about $1000). I’m told by Atsushi Onoda that the group will continue to develop Vocagetty, with plans for an upcoming release in April.

There are lots of similar learning services and apps already on the market. But it’s an interesting space because companies can choose to be either an all purpose study solution that can be used for any subject (see Anki or Memrise for example), or they can target a niche like Japanese language, medical terms, or the periodic table.

I was glad to see Vocagetty incorporate an image solution, because it was a good example of how a flash card or word study service can supplement text-based information.

On a related note, I’ve recently revisited the aforementioned Anki (after a long time away from it) because I wanted to test out its support for automated audio, which can accompany vocabulary by installing one of many add-ons [2]. While many services have a audio for pre-made flash card decks, this capability to bring audio to cards you add yourself is incredibly helpful.

But I think that the one process that many companies in this space overlook is the process of creating cards from vocabulary you find in your travels on the web. This kind of word or sentence mining is a process that I have get to see really well implemented in any flash card system [3]. Ideally it would take the form of a JavaScript bookmarklet (or bookmarklets) for mobile and PC browsers, which you could then use to add new words on the fly as you learn.

It will be interesting to see in what direction Vocagetty takes its service, so stay tuned for more about them later this spring. We’d like to feature comparable services soon as well, so stay tuned.

vocagetty


  1. I should disclose here that I volunteered to act as one of the judges for this competition, as a way to lend some support for a fun community event.  ↩

  2. The one that I added was AwesomeTTS.  ↩

  3. Except maybe the rather crude but cool Surusu, a SRS project from the guy over at AJATT.  ↩

Before the Filter: Improving mobile pics by improving the photographer

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Earlier this week we told you about the Back to the Future web app, which was the first prize winner at the recent Photo Hack Day Japan event, held by Aviary [1] . The second place winner from the event was perhaps an equally clever idea, shifting the focus from improving your photos with filters and effects to honing the user’s composition skills. It’s called ‘Before the Filter’, and it introduces users to basic photography concepts like the rule of thirds, showing some examples of that technique in use. It then uses a grid or template overlay on your phones’s screen/viewfinder to help you use the same technique yourself, providing editing tips after the picture is taken. Subsequent edits can be made using the Aviary editor, which the team implemented using the Aviary API. The pair of developers who made the app – Ben Watanabe and Antony Tran – managed to get a working app up on Google Play before the hackathon was even finished. I was curious to find out how the two could pull this off so quickly. So I got in touch with them by mail after briefly meeting at the event. Ben explains that it was…

Antony Tran and Ben Watanabe, with Shutterstock VP
Antony Tran and Ben Watanabe, with Wyatt Jenkins of Shutterstock

Earlier this week we told you about the Back to the Future web app, which was the first prize winner at the recent Photo Hack Day Japan event, held by Aviary [1] . The second place winner from the event was perhaps an equally clever idea, shifting the focus from improving your photos with filters and effects to honing the user’s composition skills.

It’s called ‘Before the Filter’, and it introduces users to basic photography concepts like the rule of thirds, showing some examples of that technique in use. It then uses a grid or template overlay on your phones’s screen/viewfinder to help you use the same technique yourself, providing editing tips after the picture is taken. Subsequent edits can be made using the Aviary editor, which the team implemented using the Aviary API.

The pair of developers who made the app – Ben Watanabe and Antony Tran – managed to get a working app up on Google Play before the hackathon was even finished. I was curious to find out how the two could pull this off so quickly. So I got in touch with them by mail after briefly meeting at the event. Ben explains that it was largely because of Antony’s ability to code for a quick paper prototype for Android:

Android is great for hackathons with just hours of review time needed to get on the store, compared to weeks (for iOS). Antony is a wizard with Android and is ridiculously fast at developing a UI. I had trouble designing in Sketch to keep up with his live coding.

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Antony is actually an Android developer at Origami, an up-and-coming Japan-based startup that we have covered on this site in the past. As for Ben, has produced his own iOS photo app Cobypic in the past, but he wanted to get more familiar with Android during this hackathon. Update: Ben clarifies he is the founder of a Tokyo startup called TenTen (TenTen Tech Ltd. in Japan with its parent company in Hong Kong.

The two also benefited, says Ben, from great photos contributed by his brother Alex, which Antony says “give [the app] a very polished feel […] that sets us apart from others.” Before the Filter won second place at Photo Hack Day, walking away with 200,000 yen (about $2000) in prize money, as well as $1000 from Aviary awarded for the best use of their API.

The idea of improving pictures at their very root, in the imagination of the photographer, is an intriguing and much overlooked notion in the currently mobile photography landscape packed with filter-stacking and sticker decorations. But now that smartphone cameras have improved to the point where they can produce quality images, it’s certainly a valuable service for any aspiring mobile photographer.

If you’d like to download Before the Filter, it’s available for free on Google Play.

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  1. In the interests of disclosure, I should note that I volunteered to be a judge for Photo Hack Day, as a way of lending my support.  ↩

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

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

photo-hack-day-japan-13

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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