We’ve come across a service by NTT Communications tentatively called “Health Enhancement Assist Service” [J], which unlike its name, is an incredibly interesting little innovation in the world of health management apps and web services. The smartphone app / web service allows people to keep track of their daily diet via their smartphone cameras, an extremely relevant innovation in a country where taking photos of your meal pre-feasting and sharing them on blogs or twitter is an everyday ritual. Simply take a photo of your food and upload it to the service, and the “Health Enhancement Assist Service” will not only help keep track of the things you eat, but it will even analyze and report back to you the amount of calories in your meal. The image analysis method is being developed by University of Tokyo researchers and FoodLog (patent pending), and it is now able to recognize many different types of foods.

Beyond what you eat, the service incorporates other trackers to help maintain a healthy lifestyle including a pedometer through the smartphone’s GPS functionality, a weight/height tracker, instructional exercise content developed by mega-gym chain Tipness, and a recipe book by Lively Networking with over 5000 recipes – all accessible via smartphone. Of course the service can be hooked up to your Twitter and Facebook, so feel free to gloat about your obsessively healthy lifestyle to all of your friends.

Users can login via any NTT account, or your Google, Mixi, or Yahoo! Japan OpenIDs. The app is currently accessible through PC and Android, with an iPhone app to be released in March.

Tags: Japan by Dominic K. Gallello
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Daily deal coupon search service Coupon.jp released [J] their February research on Japanese daily deal coupon service sales by calculating each site’s coupon prices and number of sold tickets.

On their chart, No.2 Pompare, run by Recruit, shows 30% growth to be about 70% of No.1 Groupon Japan’s sales.

It was about half in January stats by the same coupon.jp.

Osechi trouble damaged most players’ business, but Pompare and some others are quickly recovering from it. They may get some potential customers from Groupon Japan because of media bash.

Both companies have been said to spending a lot on promotion. Many of targeting ads on Japanese websites are occupied by either of them, which shows hard competition is happening between them.

Many bloggers wrote about an image of a lady who showed on the Pompare’s banner ad [J], which must be one of the most seen and remembered banner on Japanese web recently.

Some tried to identify who this girl is, but it turned out [J] to be a image from a stock photo service, who answered that even they could not find her name.

Tags: Japan by Akky Akimoto
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Have you ever wanted to buy your Twitter friend a drink as a way of saying “Thanks” or “Cheer up”? You could have opted for an Amazon or iTunes e-giftcard if you knew their email address – but that kind of digital money is just not the same as a fuzzy or warm drink that they can enjoy in real life. Micro-gifting service giftee makes it easier to show your online friends appreciation or encouragement, well, in this case, if you know their Twitter ID (Twitter DM/email options are planned for the future enhancement).

You need 3 things: the Twitter ID of the person you want to send the gift to, a few bucks for the gift you choose, and a credit card. The selection of the gifts cost around 400-1000 yen (5-12 USD) and are from cozy-looking cafes and bars. Take your pick from nicely photographed gifts such as a glass of draft beer, a cup of latte-art-adorned coffee, or a piece of cake with “Happy Birthday” message on it.

Welcome to giftee from giftee official on Vimeo.

The whole gift-giving process is pretty simple – it only takes a minute or so once you have an account and if you have your credit card at hand.

Once you purchase the gift, a tweet with your choice of custom message is automatically sent with @ reply.

The recipient can open the link on a mobile device with a web browser using her Twitter login. She then will show the code on the screen at the store to receive the gift.

What happens if your friend doesn’t care for the beer of your choice? No worries, the payments for unused gifts after 60 days will be sent to charities so both you and your friend can still feel fuzzy inside.

The talk around “social shopping” has been rather quiet lately – after all the buzz around the word and growth of Groupon service (& its clones) in 2010. Now, giftee may be able to contribute to another aspect of “social shopping” by nurturing new online purchase needs for non-virtual objects with its easy and simple service to send them to your friend.

See Also:

TechCrunch Japan [J], CNET Japan [J], greenz.jp [J]

Tags: Cellular Phone, Japan, New Service by Naoko McCracken
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CyberAgent announced today [J] the upcoming release of their new global iPhone social gaming platform GameWave. GameWave will be an iPhone only platform to be released by this spring as CyberAgent joins a growing list of Japanese social-gaming companies looking abroad for further growth potential. CyberAgent announced in their press release today that the GameWave platform will be initially US focused as part of their wider global strategy. The platform will be based upon Pankaku K.K.’s popular Pankia middleware (which has 5,000,000 users). CyberAgent went further to state their support for third-party game developers in developing billing strategies, social functionality, and marketing support for the games.

Tags: Japan by Dominic K. Gallello
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