As the first in its kind (for me at least), there will be a big three-day event in Fukuoka this weekend, which is called Myojo Waraku or just "MJ" in short, where a bunch of celebrities, geeks and techpreneurs from music, online video filming and start-up communities in the city come together.

For those who don't know much about the city, it's located in the south-western island of Japan and much closer to Shanghai and Seoul than Tokyo or the country's capital. That's why it's often considered as a gateway to Asian countries for Japanese, not only for its geographical reason, but also for a high reflection from Asian flavor in the city's local foods.

The city is a little bit away from Tokyo, however, it has a good enough population of techpreneurs and engineers because not a few large IT businesses have set up their headquarters there. So is it for the volume of its local tech start-up community, too.

The event is highly inspired by SXSW (South-by-South-West), a one-week-long festival that happens in March every year in Austin, TX and focuses on making great exposure opportunities for filmmakers, music artists and web media creators. MJ is led by Masanori Hashimoto, the co-founder of Fukuoka-based tech company NuLab, also known as the developer of collaboration-based drawing tool Cacoo, and Taizo Son[J], a serial entrepreneur, angel investor and a younger brother of Softbank Mobile's CEO, and aims at encouraging local start-ups to go more international and make their services spread out all across Asia.

Visit these webpages for a brief introduction about the event in English, Korean, Chinese and Japanese. Also for more updates, visit the event's main website at http://myojowaraku.net[J]. (sorry, the latter one is mainly written in Japanese).

As The First In Its Kind, Digital-Focused Event To Be Held This Weekend In Fukuoka

Startup Weekend is in the process of establishing itself as a "brand" and regular event in Japan's web and startup world, and following Tokyo in August, it's now time hold a Startup Weekend in Kyoto.

The so-called Startup Weekend X Kyoto Research Park event (Facebook page) will take place:
November 18 (Friday), from 6.30pm - November 20 at 10pm
Kyoto Research Park
京都市下京区中堂寺粟田町93京都リサーチパーク4号館

As with all Startup Weekends around the world, the goal is to "build communities, companies and projects" over the course of a weekend.

The winning team of Startup Weekend Kyoto will fly to Singapore and join DEMO Asia 2012 to represent Kyoto (along with the winning team of Startup Weekend Tokyo).

You can register for the event in Kyoto on this site.

Register For The Next Startup Weekend In Japan: November 18, Kyoto Research Park

In the next month, it will be the hottest summer ever which is filled with a number of start-up events.   Jonny Li, a Tokyo-based British start-up curator and also known as a partner for the Startup Weekend organization, announced he would hold its 54-hour weekend events in Tokyo, Kyoto and Fukuoka.  The events are to be operated by Mr. Li, Mr. Masanori Hashimoto of NuLab Inc.[J] who's well known for diagram-sharing web app Cacoo, and Kyoto Research Park.

• Aug 5 (Fri) - 7 (Sun) : In Kyoto, Kyoto Research Park
• Aug 19 (Fri) - 21 (Sun) : In Tokyo, Mixi Head Office
• Aug 26 (Fri) - 28 (Sun) : In Fukuoka, Kyushu University

Mr. Li expects sponsorship from several local tech companies in each of the cities, is currently working on it, and hopes to raise a 6 or 7-digit amount of cash (in Japanese yen) to the final prize winner.

Appointed judges who will watch and evaluate the pitches of participating developers include: Junya Kondo[J] from Hatena[J] (a Kyoto-based blog hosting company, see this for the company's related stories), Kentaro Sakakibara from Samurai Incubate and Mikihiro Yasuda[J] from Tokyo-based incubator Open Network Lab[J].  More great names are expected to be seated on the judging panel, so please keep your eyes on the website of the three-city events.

If you're interested in attending any of them and co-developing with great comrades, visit the website of the event in your city and complete your sign-up before all seats are sold out.

See Also:

• Startup Weekend Tokyo 2010: Picture Crop Tool Kachop Wins 1st Prize Among Nine Teams
• 10 Ideas From Startup Weekend Tokyo (Penn Olson)

August’s Startup Weekend Events To Take Place In Tokyo, Kyoto And Fukuoka

Picture courtesy: Flickr user edwin.11 (used under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license)

Singapore is very hot on tech throughout this week, since Echelon 2011, one of the largest tech conference in South East Asia, will be taking place at the National University of Singapore, where the region's best start-up companies and services will be chosen by well-known authorities. We will join it as a media attendee and bring you live coverage.

Following the event, on the Friday evening (June 17), a Singapore-based blog covering the Asian tech scene, Penn Olson will host a meet-up, and they give Japanese four tech start-ups a chance to pitch their innovative ideas to tech geeks, Internet celebrities and investors who will have come from all across Asia.  Applications for the meet-up have been already closed, but we're expecting to bring you a live streamcast or a live blogging from it.

Participating start-ups are:

• Fashion Style Japan: Yoshio Narita, CEO & Founder of Qomune (See this for more)
• Compath: Hiromichi Ando, CEO & Founder (w/ his colleagues)  (featured in this story)
• Moso: Shinji Murakoshi, CEO & Founder of Moso (featured in this story)
• Cacoo: Shinsuke Tabata, Managing Dir. & co-founder of NuLab, Inc. (See this for more)

Furthermore, on Saturday at 7pm (Singaporean time), at Hackspace.SG which is located at the heart of the country's Arabic district, we will have a casual meet-up with people of the hackerspace and the four start-ups mentioned above. I'm intended not to create an agenda nor time schedule.  But if you are interested in talking with these guys in person, please come and join us. (Plancast)   I'm looking forward to tasting great meals by Meng Weng Wong there, who is the hackerspace's director and also known for being very good at cooking.

See you all there.

See Also:

• Update: Asiajin To Host Reader Meet-up In Singapore On Saturday
• Echelon 2011: Applications For Asia’s Leading Launchpad Program Closing In Two Weeks
• Event Wrap-up: Asiajin Readers Meet-up in Singapore

Meet Japanese Start-ups on Fri and Sat in Singapore

A cross-post to Asiajin and Startup Dating.

SXSW is currently taking place in Austin, Texas.   Asiajin contributors Serkan Toto and Paul Papadimitriou are there for moderating panels on Japanese web services and social media.  A team of the moderators, the presenters and the panels are now joining forces to help the disaster relief efforts in Japan.

We just got a press release from Who's Free (an LBS for smartphone to find your friends nearby) and Tonchidot (known for its augmented reality app called Sekai Camera), and it says, the two companies expect to have an event titled SXSW Save Japan Fundraising Night on 14th local time, which is the morning of 15th Japan Time.   It will be officially announced at Japanese Mobile Leaders Forum, a sectional meeting of this year's SXSW.

The two companies has already held parties to save the efforts, and nearly 20,000 US dollars have been fundraised on their donation website. (as of 4pm, March 14th, Japan Time)

As well as Tonchidot, attending Japanese key social media players such as GREE, Geisha Tokyo Entertainment and Mixi will join the event and appeal for awareness and international assistance.

It is coincident that the massive earthquake has attacked just during this year's edition of SXSW.   Serkan and Tonchidot teams were forced not to leave Narita Airport but to stay for a while, but they fortunately arrived in Austin.

It is very important to tell what's going on in our country to those who will visit the event and to appreciate their consideration.  Furthermore, we would like the Japanese teams to tell the world that we will never give up however much difficult the situation is.

@fumi is attending the event individually, we found she had summarized tweets related to the campaign on Chirpstory.

The press release is as follows:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
MEDIA CONTACT
JD,CEO: (415) 425-8621

jd@meebee.com

“WHO’S FREE” SXSW SAVE JAPAN FUNDRAISING NIGHT
Fundraiser to help save Japanese earthquake victims at SXSW
** Official Announcement at Japan Mobile Leaders Forum Monday 14th, 11am, Hilton **

MARCH 13, 2011 - Austin, TX - Who’s Free, the new social location app that “lets you see your friends who are nearby & FREE to hangout” along with Japanese mobile leader Tonchidot, creators of Domo, & a selection of Japanese Social Media leaders will be officially announcing a SXSW Save Japan Fundrasing night on Monday 14th with Who’s Free founder, JD, Japanese TV celebrity & veteran of Japan.

At the SXSW Japanese Mobile Leaders forum set for 11am, Monday 14th at the Hilton, Japanese mobile thought leaders including: Gree, Mixii & Tonchidot, will announce the location & time of the SXSW Save Japan Fundraising night on Monday. Who’s Free founder, JD, will be in attendance to possibly help with the announcement of the SXSW fundraiser, where the night will be dedicated to help save the victims of the Japan earthquake & tsunami.

More info on the Japanese Mobile leaders forum, where the announcement will be made: http://schedule.sxsw.com/events/event_IAP8378 All funds raised at the SXSW Save Japan Fundraising night will be contributing to the American Red Cross relief efforts in Japan.

ABOUT WHO’S FREE
Just because you’ve checked in doesn’t mean you’re free to hangout! Launched by Australian startup MeeBee, a Techcrunch top 100 global startup & Red Herring Europe Winner, Who’s Free is the best, fastest way to meet up. Ready for SXSW attendees scattered amidst Austin, Who’s Free is bringing them together by bridging the gaps between online and physical, social worlds. No other app lets you know when your friends are free to hangout!

ABOUT JD
JD is founder and CEO (Creative Entrepreneurial Officer) of the NEW mobile app Who’s Free. An Aussie & Samurai at heart after 20+ years as a Japanese TV celebrity, he is a serial entrepreneur and Internet visionary having created numerous world firsts for the Internet and mobile market. JD is also author of 2 books, and has been an Internet pioneer since the mid 90′s. He’s climbed Mt. Fuji backwards in a Guinness World Record attempt. Always at the epicentre of where the Web meets Mobile & TV.

More: www.jd-profile.comRemember, before you go anywhere, see Who’s Free for …? WhosFreeApp.com

Who’s Free And Tonchidot To Hold Fundraising Party At SXSW To Help Relief Efforts

Last August, I was invited to attend Startup Saturday, a Hong Kong's first ever remarkable tech start-up event, by Takeshi Hirano, the editor and writer for TechCrunch Japan, during his one-month visit to the city.   Then I could meet young aspiring entrepreneurs from more than a dozen of great tech start-up companies.

One of those companies, Stepcase was founded in 2007 by ex-RedHat engineer Leon Ho who is also known as the founder of Technorati Top 100 blog Lifehack.org.   He's been in Tokyo during the last week in February, and there was a meet-up opportunity where Japanese techpreneurs and developers came together to listen to how he had developed a series of his popular photography apps for the iPhone and what he aims for in the next.

(Photo courtesy by: Dr. Yusuke Takahashi (@aerodynamics) from Individual Company[J])

Steply is the most popular app of his company, and it allows you to share location-tagged snapshots with the community friends of yours, by tapping on the iPhone screen.   It was introduced last year, and all of their photo-related apps including Steply have been downloaded by over 2 million users worldwide.   80% of the Steply users comes from Asia, Mr. Ho explained it is because Asian more eagerly want to take pictures in their daily lives than the people in the rest of the world.   Most of tech start-ups born in Asia aim to be highly evaluated in the western countries, but he said he would keep working harder for spreading his apps out among the Asian tech communities.

Steply uses Amazon EC2 and S3, some of attendees at the meet-up asked the founder if the service costs a lot for using the cloud storage in order to store such an enormous number of picture files, but he answered in the negative.   He visited Tokyo with his girlfriend Alice Lam, and she helped him promote the service among the attendees by distributing Steply's logo printed T-shirts and stickers.   As well as holding sufficient capital and skilled system developers, having an understanding girlfriend could be necessary for a single male entrepreneur to achieve his great success, I believe.

Steply is now looking for potential photo-related apps that can be integrated with its photo community network.   If you have developed your own apps for the iPhone and are interested to participate in the network, contact them via this form.   Furthermore, the company just released a new iPhone app called LabelBox a couple of days ago, which allows you to add your choice of picture-decorated labels on any of your snapshots and to publish it to Steply as well as other photo sharing services.

(Video courtesy by: Open Network Lab) This video has some audio drop-outs. Sorry for any inconvenience this may cause.

Steply: A HK-made Photo Sharing App Attracts iPhone Users, Especially In Asia

Japan Android Group[J], a Google Groups-originated tech community of Android developers and users in Japan, held their semiyearly general assembly called Android Bazaar and Conference(ABC) 2011 Winter[J] on Sunday at the University of Tokyo.

Starting with a keynote speech by Dr. Fujio Maruyama(@maruyama097), the chairman of the group and visiting professor at Waseda University, a number of the great names from Android-related industries presented what they are working on and foresaw the next step.  The group announced more than 3,500 persons had signed up for attending, and more than 2,500 persons had actually attended.

Dr. Maruyama at the conference (Source: Ustream Live by Japan Android Group)

Dr. Maruyama pointed out the recent rapid growth of Android handsets in use because Japan is currently ranked in the 2nd place in the number of uploading apps, and in the 5th place in the number of downloading apps.

At the venue for "Bazaar", Android developers had opportunities to exhibit their Android products and services.   Let's see some of them.

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RIC Android

RIC Android[J] welcomed all visitors coming to the exhibition venue.   The robot is working with a built-in battery and fully controlled by an Android terminal which is located within the mouth.

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Koto Free (named after "Kotoba (language)" free, intended for making the environment of language-barrier free)

Koto Free[J] is an app for making a map multi-lingual and intended to be adopted for the "Visit Japan" campaign being run by Japan Tourism Agency. It allows you to add description on maps or images, translate them and show them to foreign tourists in their languages.

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Social Audiobook

Para.tv[J], a Tokyo-based developer of the video distribution platform for cellphone, introduced a story teller app called Social Audiobook. By storing the elements of your voice in advance, the app can have your friends or children hear fairy tales as if you were telling.

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Dorokuri

Tokyo-based software developer Tao Software[J] introduced Dorokuri, a template-based Android app development environment requiring no programming skills.   You can try it here.

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Cyclocomputer

(Video source: Diginfo.TV)

Japan's leading consumer electronics manufacturer Pioneer is currently developing a cyclocomputer running on Android. Cyclocomputers are attached to bicycles to calculate their speed and distance traveled.   Because it has GPS, the company think navigation will be a key feature. They are expecting to add applications that include navigation technology.

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Domo

Tonchidot, well-known for its multiple-award winning AR (augmented reality) app Sekai Camera, unveiled they are currently developing a new service called Domo that helps you meet someone of the same interest at real events or places.  The company calls such an environment a "Transparent Society".  Domo is a Japanese casual greeting word for "nice to see you" or "thanks".

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Machipittan

Machipittan is an Android app that makes more fun when you wait someone at a meeting point.  Developed by Tokyo-based web system developer Analog Twelve[J].  Last year it won the Android Application Award ("A3" for short) which is annually presented by Japan's leading IT publisher Nikkei BP.  By entering e-mail addresses of you and someone you've appointed, the realtime locations of both are plotted on a map, and it also helps you find a good meeting point in conjunction with restaurant guides provided by the third party information providers.

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Such a large number of attendees to the conference meant Japan's android community has been heating up.  I look forward to the next conference which will be happening in June for experiencing much bigger things.

Android Bazaar & Conference: No Doubt The Community To Heat Up In 2011

(Continued from the previous post.)

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Category 4: Life and Task Management Tool of the Year

Vdisk.me[C] (微盘) is a Dropbox-like file synchronization and backup service provided by China's web business tycoon Sina.  It can be linked with your account of Sina's micro-blog service, which helps you easily share (a) file(s) with multiple contacts.   Up to 2GB storage for free.  Running on Sina App Engine[C]. (Meanwhile, Dropbox is running on Amazon Web Services.)

Dbank[C] (数据银行) is a cloud-based network storage that allows you to share documents among your different terminals and helps you share pictures with your friends.   Up to 5GB storage for free.

Qiangzuo[C] (抢座网) is an online tool for seat booking and ticket sales that helps event organizers.   (Similar to Amiando and Eventbrite)   You may customize an enrollment form as easy as using Google Form, collect and manage the data of event guests and keep them update if any change.  It also helps you let more people know your event activities through major social network services such as Sina (新浪), Renren[C] (人人网) and Kaixin[C] (开心网).

Hozom[C] (火种网) is a secure and convenient address book service.  It provides a great user experience and a user interface, backs up phone numbers of your friends, its contact list feature keeps you update with the realtime status of your friends, and the intelligent search function helps you add users to the list more easily.   Hozom's client software supports data synchronization with Outlook on your desktop.

"Navigation Desktop[C]" (航海桌面) is a cellphone app that provides the phone's desktop search, news and weather related information services, smart dialing and speed task switching.  It is available on Android, Symbian, Windows Mobile and Java-enabled handsets.

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Category 5: The Most Remarkable Mobile Apps

"Peapod Mobile Wizard" or Wandoujia[C] (豌豆荚手机精灵) is an Android cellphone management software that allows you to to back up and recover data to your desktop PC, manage address book, download music and video files.   In addition, it enables to download streaming videos from major Chinese video sharing sites such as  Youku.com[C] (优酷网), Tudou.com[C] (土豆网), and Sina Video[C] (新浪视频) and to transcode them for you to watch on your handset. Refer to this on Waybeta for more details.

Viva[C] is an Android e-book reader developed by Beijing-based Viva Co., Ltd(北京维旺明信息技术有限公司).   It allows you to subscribe to periodical e-publications, e-magazines and e-comic titles published in Mainland China and to easily read them on your handset.   Users can choose either way of reading online or reading offline (requiring downloading content files first).

UC Paradise[C] (UC乐园) is a leading social network platform for mobile and has been developed by UC Mobile Limited (优视科技).   Their Flash-based mobile games take the most advantage of your handset's location-detecting function, and it helps you communicate your friends locating near you and keep you update with what's happening in your neighborhood.   Popular social games like Jianghu Q Zhuan(江湖Q传), Sunshine Ranch(阳光农场), Car Race Championship (车王争霸) and Fun Aquarium (快乐水族箱) are also available on the platform.

Jiepang[C] (街旁) is a location-based mobile social network service.   In addition to common features for these services, such as updating where you are, who you are and what happens, it allows you to share your location as the forth key as to link your social networking activity to your real life.

Mojichina[C] (墨迹天气) is a free mobile app providing weather forecast for 2,488 cities in the country.  It has a variety of colors and designs, and only less than 2k bytes data traffic is required to update the information by their own data compression technology.

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Category 6: The Most Remarkable Mobile App Community

Engineers previously working with leading Chinese Internet companies like NetDragon Websoft Inc.(网龙), HIAPK[C] (安卓网), UCWeb and Sina (新浪) have come together and founded GOAPK[C] (安智网) in early 2010 for making the best mobile Internet service.  The company introduced GOAPK as their first service, which is an online forum and has earned a large number of users.   Then they introduced the Android app market called GOAPK Market[C] (安智市场) next, where 30 million users have downloaded apps and more than 2,000 users visit every day.

iPhone Chinese Network[C] (iPhone中文网) is an iPhone-related news portal of the country's largest smartphone news network PTBUS[C] (口袋巴士). It keeps you update with the latest iPhone-related news for 24 hours a day, recommends you a list of convenient and reliable iPhone apps.

Aimi App Store[C] (爱米软件商店) is the place to download Android apps for Chinese Android users.  It provides the users with high-speed app download, real-time app search, introduction to apps, fair evaluation on apps, rankings, and user-friendly interface.

GFan[C] (机锋网) is an online forum focusing on the Chinese Android community and has been previously known as Android Developers Forum[C] (Android开发者论坛) and Android Players Network[C] (中文玩家网).  Now it has more than 100 million registered members, and 100,000 new messages and 10,000 new topics are posted every day.   A total value of USD3.3M (RMB500,000) deals are trading in their app market section, and it is expected to be one of the most influential news media for the Chinese Android community.

WeiPhone.com[C] (威锋网) is the most popular Chinese iPhone community.   More than 60,000 users are participating in the forums categorizing in iPhone, iPhone 3G, iPod Touch, iPhone 3GS, iPad and iPhone 4.   It has more than 1 million visitors and 8 million page views every day.

Author's Note: Most of the online communities introduced in this category are running on Disquz[C], a web-based bulletin board software developed by Comsenz (康盛创想).

Via: Social Beta [C]

(To be continued to an upcoming post.)

Chinamode 2010: 45 Finalists Nominated For China’s Best Web Service Awards (2/3)

In Japanese new year's holidays, we enjoy having osechi-ryori or specially-prepared dishes to be eaten during the first three days of January.   Most dishes are cooked to be preserved for several days to a few weeks so housewives need not cook during the period.   The dishes have been traditionally cooked at home, but nowadays people purchase completely cooked products of them at department stores or by placing online delivery orders to popular Japanese restaurants.

Groupon Japan[J], a Japanese subsidiary that a U.S. leading daily deal service provider set up last August by taking over IVS-backed Q:pod, introduced the special new year's deal of the osechi meals, which is being unfavorably received on Japanese blogosphere during the holidays because almost of those who have ordered the meals are complaining that ingredients are so much differ from what have been introduced on the website.

Yokohama-based restaurant Bird Cafe introduced the deal of the osechi meals for four persons that allows you to purchase for a discount price of 10,500 yen each (regular price: 21,000 yen).   Seeing is believing.  In the pictures below, the upper one shows you what they have introduced on Groupon's website, and the lower one shoots what a customer has actually received.

Net no Ohanashi[J], a blog focusing on Japanese blogosphere and subculture trends, interviewed Mr. Kenji Mizuguchi[J] (@gaishokubunka), the president of the restaurant about behind the scene of this incident.

Interviewer (I): Why did this happen?

Mr. Mizuguchi (M): First of all, I'm very sorry for the inconvenience this might cause our customers.   We've been estimating 100 orders but actually got 500 orders.   We've not expected such a big echo up by a Groupon promotion.   We have rolled up our sleeves and forged ahead.

I: Why did you wade right into it?

M: We were unequal to the task.   We  should have cancelled the orders when we find out we can't serve them in an expecting way.  But we were too agitated to stop accepting the orders.

I: Did you find you would get complaints when you packed with such poor ingredients?

M: We were in two minds of canceling the orders and delivering packages (even if it's imperfect).   We thought the contracts with the customers are our first priority.   We thought it was important to deliver the packages.

I: Has Groupon Japan advised you of how the promotion will reflect your business?

M: Not at all.   There were no daily deal service dealing with the osechi meals, Groupon Japan says.   When we asked them for it, they showed us great interest in dealing with it.   We were too agitated.   I had no direct contact with a sales representative from Groupon Japan, but our sales manager discussed with them and got a good feeling.   I just made up my mind to get it through.

I: You mentioned you had been expecting 100 orders.   Did distributing ingredients for 100 packages to 500 cause the hollowness in a package?

M: We started accepting orders last November, and got into preparing on December 26th.   We just needed much time to pack it all than expected because we got more orders than expected.   But we never decreased the portion of dishes.

I: But the pictures of the dishes that were actually delivered look so poor, don't they?

M: Dishes were set in nine portions in the meal lacquer boxes.   But we couldn't have sufficient number of separators for making the portions, and changed them to four portions.

I: Do you mean the total variety and volume of dishes are almost same as planned regardless of the number of the portions?

M: The volume was smaller than what has been introduced with the picture on the website.   I'm very sorry.

I: This case caused a high sensation on the Japanese netsphere such as 2 channel bulletin board.   Did you check them out?

M: I did look them over and found what they say.

I: Just learned how it came out.  But have you put any apologies on your website yet?

M: We outsource our website maintenance and cannot update it during the holidays.  We did ask Groupon Japan to contact all the customers for refund.   We're very sorry that our customers had such an unpleasant thing on the New Year's day.

I: Thank you for talking with us.

After the interview, Mr. Mizuguchi announced he had stepped down as the president of the restaurant as of January 1st, 2011.

See Also:

• Groupon Japan's announcement and apologies to those who purchased "Birdcafe's osechi meals" (for refund)

[Update: follow-up articles]

Asiajin » Groupon CEO Andrew Mason Apologizes To Japanese Customers For Osechi Trouble

Asiajin » Groupon Slows Down After New Year Osechi Incident In Japan

Asiajin » Groupon Japan’s Osechigate Still Smoldering

Groupon Fails To Bring Happiness To Japanese New Year Holidays

Samurai Incubate, a Tokyo-based seed accelerator aiming to bring up many tech start-ups, had the second edition[J] of their annual showcase event in late November, which is called Samurai Venture Summit (for short, SVS) and showed us their investing portfolios and pitch presentations by CEOs of tech start-ups.   It was an one-day event using a several-story office building located in the heart of Shibuya, Tokyo, a number of entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, media reporters and more came together to see the team's presentations and discuss the future of Japanese start-up scenes.

Picture: Taizo Son(left) (@taizoson[J]), a serial entrepreneur and the chairman of GungHo Online Entertainment[J], making a keynote speech and Kentaro Sakakibara(right), the founder/CEO of Samurai Incubate.

Their pitch presentations, each of which is ruled to be completed in a few minutes, are called "shout", and start-up executives literally present very loudly what they are doing on their businesses and services.   It's a funny experience and might look so strange for Westerners, but shouting something in front of a large audience means the expression of presenter's hell-bent determination to make things happen.   35 start-ups pitched their presentations, I cannot cover them all but just pick up three excellent award winners in this story.

For those who are interested in watching the 35 presentations, check out our YouTube channel via this link.

3rd award winner: Granma

Tokyo-based start-up Granma, named after the yacht that was used to transport the fighters of the Cuban Revolution from Mexico to Cuba in 1956, develops a business for resolving poverty-related issues (causes) in South Asian countries and the rest of the world.   They recently launched a lodging facility called "Cause Village[J]" in Tokyo's suburb, where start-up companies can have their brainstorming camps for developing future business plans.

2nd award winner: Sassor[E/J]

"Sassor" is a Tokyo-based group specializing in interactive and service design.   They are working on developing the Energy Literacy Program, ELP for short, that can help control daily electric power consumption of each home appliances.  The service consists of modules, receiver and website, and it can visualize the electric power consumption of each home appliances for grasping data easily.

(Sassor also presented at Infinity Venture Summit 2010 Fall in Kyoto as Serkan Toto reported here on Asiajin.)

Energy Literacy Platform from sassor on Vimeo.

1st award winner: Aiia Corporation[J]

Aiia is a Tokyo-based company publishing puzzle magazines and managing apparel brands.  They introduced their brand new magazine "Chakra[J]", that earns more than USD100,000 ad revenue for an edition and brings readers their peace of mind, dream and happiness.   They've got a number of complaints from the readers that it has not helped to be happier. Aiia is currently seeking someone who is good at handling complainers. (Kidding us?)

Samurai Incubate was founded in 2008 by Kentaro Sakakibara (@samurai_ken[J]) who has previously worked with Shibuya-based web service conglomerate EC Navi (previously known as Axiv.com).

Samurai Incubate Holds Annual 1-Day Camp For Young CEOs