On Friday, CNET Networks Japan[J] held this year's award ceremony of its annual innovation contest called TechVenture 2009[J] in Omotesando, in association with Tokyo-based seven tech-oriented venture capital firms.

Totally 15 companies and services are nominated for the prize awards.   Let's have a look at each of them and what they provide.

Atlantis[J] (Service: AdLantis[J])

Atlantis runs the cloud-sourced Internet advertising platform called Adlantis.  It is the web-based ad management tool and helps the content publishers to define when and which ads should be placed on their websites.

The service is free of charge.   The company plans to launch a marketplace of match-making between possible advertisers and the website owners selling ad spaces, and expects to earn revenue from its match-making fees.

Gumi[J]

Gumi develops the SNS platform for cellphone, which makes easier to develop a social mobile site supporting the standards of OpenSocial and OAuth by using Restful API.   Gumi's platform can be also installed on the clouds like Google App Engine.

The company has also its own SNS, where it provides Wiki, fortune telling and the more focusing on popular TV drama series for the younger generations.

CLON Lab[J]

CLON Lab develops the agent engine having the features similar to the artificial intelligence.   By interactively repeating Q&As between you and your agent running on the system, you can make your agent learn more about you.    That means you can set up your clone on the company's SNS, and let him or her grown up there.   The company's name comes from "clone" and Communication Laboratory on New Identity.

(semi grand prix award co-winner)

Geisha Tokyo Entertainment[J]

Geisha Tokyo Entertainment (GTE for short) was founded in 2006 by Tokyo University alumnus, game developers and consultants.   It develops Augmented Reality(AR) products, one of which allows you to control the behavior of a physically-existing cartoon character sculpture by clicking and dragging the character image appeared on your PC screen.   (See Akky Akimoto's article on Asiajin for more details)

GTE  also introduced an AR game for cellphones, in which you will receive a mission command e-mail that orders you to take a picture of a specific object.   By sending an e-mail including the picture to the game server, with the picture recognition technology, the server confirms if you have taken correctly what the server has ordered you.

Recently, GTE produced a flash-based animation series for TV broadcast "Sakuran BOY DT[J]", which is aired on the local TV channel in Yamagata.   Yamagata is the north-eastern part of Japan, and well-known for producing cherry or Sakuranbo, which is so frequently seen on the series.

(Clicking the image above takes you to the latest one of the series.)

(semi grand prix award co-winner)

Scigineer[J]

Scigineer provides a SaaS-based recommendation engine for large-sized e-commerce websites and SNS.    The service is deployed on to more than 30 sites in Japan and the overseas, including Online Bridal Store and @nifty Store[J].    Scigineer is a subsidiary of the Internet business incubator owned by Mitsubishi Corporation.

(semi grand prix award co-winner & special judge's award winner)

San San[J]

The company provides consultation services in CRM and SFA business segments, specifically by focusing on delivering solutions to arrange information collected by business cards being exchanged everyday.

Its service consists of a business card scanner rented for the client's office, outsourced human data entry of business card images scanned, and the SaaS-based CRM/SFA application developed by the company.   It makes sales personnels easier to find possible customers and to get in touch with them when needed.

30 min.[J] (Pronounced as San Zero Minutes)

It aggregates the messages about town attractions and restaurants posted on an enormous number of blogs, arrange them with location attributes and publish them as a town guide on the website.

The company also introduces a free location-based app for the iPhone/iPod users, specifically focusing on finding an ideal nearby restaurant for the lunch, with the combination of  GPS technology and the accumulated voices by bloggers.

StreetMedia[J]

StreetMedia develops a new way of billboard advertising platform by combining digital signage devices and cellphone-based contents delivery architecture.

In association with several shopping malls in the heart of Tokyo, where the company's head office is locating nearby, more than 20 LCDs are equipped at the storefronts across the malls, and they show commercial videos regarding the bargain sales at each shop in the malls and encourage the passers-by to purchase what they want.   Its specially designed LCD has a FeliCa device, which enables to transfer the video-related text information to the passers-by's cellphone handsets.   The video data and text information are carried through the data broadcast channel of the digital TV broadcasting service, not by the Internet.

(semi grand prix award co-winner)

Fillmore Advisory (Service: Vizoo[J])

Fillmore Advisory is a think-tank and consulting firm founded in California by Stanford MBA alumnus and Japanese IT investment experts.   It provides the investment advisory service for their corporate clients in the U.S., Europe and Asia.

Fillmore also develops their own visible approaches to solve financial problems for individual investors, and introduce them on Japanese famous Internet portal sites.

The company is developing the SaaS-based visualization platform allowing you to create a graph diagram on the web and to put it on your blog as a widget.   It is scheduled to be released in this coming May.

Brand Dialog[J]

The company develops some web application services including a cloud-sourced SaaS groupware called Gridy.   I covered the service in this articlehere on Asiajin.

Mash Matrix (Service: Afrous)

Mash Matrix  provides an easy-to-use web-based application development platform for the mash-up application developers who integrate one from multiple webAPIs.

The company's founder Shin-ichi Tomita previously worked for Oracle Japan and Salesforce.com.   While he worked for Salesforce.com, he developed a web-based presentation for demonstration, that was the origin of Mash Matrix.

Tomita's work was highly evaluated by CEO of Salesforce.com Mark Benioff, and Tomita was eagerly persuaded to remain in the company, but he quit it to found his own start-up to start a new business.

User Local[J]

User Local provides the SaaS-based access analysis solution showing you the access statistics by the heat map method, and it allows you to find which parts of your website are frequently seen at a glance.

The company's founder previously worked with Rakuten, where he was supervising a knowledge sharing website for job-seeking university students[J], which was launched when he was a university student.

The company also introduces some blog widgets including analyzing  geographical deviation of visitors to your website and showing it on the map.

(grand prix award co-winner)

Lang-8

Lang-8 was founded by a Chinese-Japanese and his classmates, both of who graduated from Engineering Dept., Kyoto University.

It launched a language learning SNS, where language-beginners and native speakers can learn foreign languages by shuttling sentence submissions and corrections between two sides.

Hiroumi Mitani contributed an article about Lang-8 last January.

Livesense[J]

Livesense runs pay-per-hire fee based recruitment websites  for the client companies which seek Japanese employee candidates and Chinese employee candidates living in Japan.

Livesense users will be never charged until they employ a candidate.

LoiLo

LoiLo was founded by two game developers and brothers at the incubation facility backed up by Keio University SFC.   It developed a video editing application software for Windows, enabling mixing videos and audios mostly only by drag-and-drop actions.   The software is specifically targeted on video sharing site uploaders who love YouTube, NicoNico Doga[J] and the like.

Tags: Event Report, Japan, New Service by Masaru IKEDA
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We all know that the Japanese love cameras. There are a bunch of manufacturers out there and new products appear on the market every month or so. As you can imagine, a typical Japanese tourist carries a couple of camera products at all times. But Sony, which holds the No. 1 share of the camcorder market in Japan, is far from satisfied with the way people use their camcorders. Most camcorder users only take movies on memorable days such as their kids' birthdays, school sports festivals, etc. Sony thought up the tagline “Every day is special” as the concept for their 2007 campaign.

Their new promotional web site called “Cam with me” is part of a campaign which is generating huge emotional feedback from internet users.

The “Cam with me” campaign started as a teaser in December 2008 in Japan and officially opened to the public in January 2009 with huge success and positive blogger feedback. Asiajin’s Yasuyuki Matsushita talked with Keiichi Motoyama, Interactive Planner at the Hakuhodo ad agency, Yohei Iwaki, Art Director and creator of the website, and Kaoru Chono, the producer, (the latter two are from a new company called 602 inc) to find out what happened behind the scenes of “Cam with me”.

Yasuyuki: Can you tell me the concept of this website ?

Motoyama: “Cam with me” comes as a result of our effort to render the “Every day is special” tagline in a very emotional way, rather than only literally. We chose the Internet because it can now be both a personal and interactive medium. Because of its interactivity, our content can touch viewers' hearts and they eventually feel this could be their own experience. The content starts with a baby girl growing and playing, from kindergarten to elementary school, then from a teenager to a beautiful young lady. Finally, she gets married, leaves home and then comes back with her baby for the holidays. This is constructed in a very emotional way.

Iwaki: I was in charge of these scenes, and all of the design details and interaction. All of the scenes were done with input from a movie director.

Yasuyuki: What was the most important part in its creation ?

Motoyama: I wanted it to be as emotional as it could, like those “We all shed tears” types of movies. We did a study of these types of movies for context, tone and manner. Another point was this should be as simple as possible to use.

Iwaki: The story is pretty simple. The movies start with a cute baby girl playing, growing to schoolgirl age, starting to work, falling in love and getting married, and taking her baby back home to see her grandparents. You can actually choose your favorite moments in the early part of the movies but you cannot do this once she becomes a bride and leaves home. Which is a metaphor for real life -- you can’t control your daughter once she becomes a woman. These scenes were very carefully created by our team.

Chono: We can’t say the exact number of actresses who auditioned but we did have huge a number of auditions based on actress profiles. We had 11 actresses in these movies. The phrase “Cam with me” just popped into Iwaki's head at the meeting. We needed a word that sounded like Handycam and which was easy to pronounce.

Yasuyuki: The site can be embedded as a widget in blogs which is quite unique. Why did you choose to do that?

Motoyama: Yes. Typical promotional sites only deliver the results of what you created, but our embeddable widget is a window into the whole experience. You can embed the entire site as a blog widget. This enables viewers to have exactly the same experience as on our campaign site. So the viewers feel that the site is interactive and is created by themselves. We wanted this to be the “Most emotional movie ever!!” type of content, just like a movie advertisement. This should happen by “word of mouth” on the net.

Iwaki: Another point is the sound and music. It is best not to play it with the mute setting on.

Yasuyuki: How about feedback ?

Motoyama: We had a good amount of feedback from a variety of people. We are happy to see that typical housewives wrote on their blogs that this is very emotional to watch with their husbands. These reactions are not from professionals, but common people who do not pay attention to net promotions, and these are the most valuable voices for us to listen to. Other feedback from international viewers, especially from Korea, was a nice surprise for us. I think the actresses resemble them most.

Iwaki: We also had a good reaction from bloggers which really caused a chain reaction. This is because anyone can create their own series of movies in the blog widget.

Yasuyuki: Have you had any requests for a “Boy” version of the story?

Motoyama: Yes, but the “young woman leaves home, gets married, and comes back to visit” story is a common thread in our society, which is really the backbone of this project. So a “boy” version is a bit difficult. We did have this idea in the early stages of the project though.

Iwaki: We had another idea which was a pet version, namely a dog. A girl leaving home and coming back with a baby is kind of a happy ending. But if it was a dog, the ending would be a “final” departure, which would be quite difficult to describe.

Yasuyuki: Oh, I agree. So this will be the last question. What are your overall comments on the project ?

Motoyama: It is good to execute buzz marketing for this campaign but without huge media exposure like TV commercials, it is hard to say gigantic buzz on real world cannot be achieved.

From a creator’s point of view, it is very important to find insight within our viewers. That was a great result for me.

Iwaki: I really want everyone to experience this site. To be honest, it wasn’t close to my heart at the very early stages of the project, but as we created the storyboard, it became dangerously emotional. As an ad creator, I can be very critical about any ad, but this still makes me shed tears.

Chono: This project was a great experience to work on. If there is any chance to make an international version, I’d love to try that.

This interview was done with lots of planning documents along with some laughter and jokes. I think the idea of not pursuing functionality or specs for the camcorder, but rather to create an emotional buzz on the Internet is a new type of marketing experiment. I hope that you were able to feel the emotion behind the scenes.

Tags: Event Report, Japan, Video by Yasuyuki Matsushita
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On the back cover of this issue of the weekly manga (Japanese comic) magazine "Weekly Morning" (which I fond of reading), Kosaku Shima from popular business manga series Kacho Kosaku Shima (Kosaku Shima the section chief) asked my help on Adobe's website.

Adobe and Kosaku Shima on Weekly Morning ads

Weekly Morning's printed circulation is over 410,000 copies every week [J], which is slightly out of top 10 among manga magazines in Japan.

Here is the site guided from the ad. Acrobat Magazine

You may click to go through into the interactive comic to some point by guessing without knowing Japanese. There are manga with some interactive gimmics.

After taking some quiz about Adobe products, a namecard, which is thought as your alter ego in Japan, with the title "section chief" was bestowed to me as a blog widget ("blog-parts" in Japanese).

You may take more and more quiz about Adobe and get promoted to manager, or even become an executive by finding a secret way which will be disclosed later.

Kosaku Shima recently got promoted to the CEO of huge electronic manufacturer Hatsushiba (which models after Matsushita/Panasonic) in his about 40 years work life in a single, huge company, and that news was, even it is fictional, covered by a lot of nation-wide newspapers and television. His first policy speech as CEO can be viewed on YouTube. Working for your fist company for whole life is still quite popular in Japan.

He realizes Japanese white-worker guys' dream by getting laid with a lot of ladies including his colleagues, wife of boss, industrial spy girl, singer, American and Chinese ladies, etc. still got huge business successes by accidentally seeing influential people like retired executives and a Howard Hughes-like billionaire. An extremely lucky guy.

He is a kind of succeeded big company worker icon for middle-aged Japanese male workers, who might be a decision-maker for purchasing software products. Well, maybe. That will be better than letting Dilbert sells software for enterprise.

See Also:

Economist covered Kosaku Shima

Kosaku Shima had a talk with Japan's prime-minister Taro Aso on weekly Asahi. [J]

Division Chief Kosaku Shima - bilingual version

Tags: Japan, Trend by Akky Akimoto
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RubyKaigi2009 now calls for presentations. Deadline is March 15th.

RubyKaigi2009 is the Japan's annual Ruby conference.

Previously, Dave Thomas and David Heinemeier Hansson gave key notes at the conference. Ofcourse Ruby's father Matz talks every year.

This year, the conference will be held from July 17th to 19th in Tokyo.

Don't miss the opportunity to promote your project to Japanese Ruby community. Also it is a great opportunity to meet with Ruby core developers.

Tags: Community, Japan by Shunichi Arai
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Due to the technical fault that occurred Monday at the weather data distribution center of  Japan's meteorological agency, most of weather updates have been suspended nationwide throughout the day.

The center has its primary system as well as the stand-by to avoid the service interruption, but the configuration file referred by both systems was corrupted accidentally, which caused the country's weather service outage for more than 17 hours.

More than 60 organisations including weather news broadcasters and popular portal sites use the center's data to bring weather maps and precipitation forecasts to their audiences and users, and they were forced to manually enter the data that had been faxed from the center during its suspension.

Earthquake Early Warning (EEW) is reportedly not affected by this fault.   EEW started its service in October 2007, and it is a new system that issues prompt alerts just as an earthquake starts, providing valuable seconds for people to protect themselves before strong tremors arrive.

Tags: Japan, News by Masaru IKEDA
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