Have you ever felt ashamed by leaning on to person sitting next to you constantly while on train falling asleep?  Sure, I have.  Often.

LION[J], as a promotion for energy drink Gronsan[J],  released mobile alarm app[J] that could keep you away from this common situation you may find on commuting trains in Japan.

The app is claimed to vibrate and wake you before such situation occurs by detecting your body movement utilizing smartphone's gyroscopic sensor.  Wonder why such app is wanted?  Well, Japanese businessmen including me fall alseep on train so often (average 4.2 times per week!!) that they may welcome and appreciate such app for waking them up beforehand(survey done by LION[J], businesswomen not included).

This app also comes with wake-up call feature which generates "fake" incoming-call from gravure idols and, on answering such fake call, plays wake-up messages by them.

So if you ever encoutered such situation on train or wanted to be woken up by gravure idols, don't forget to give it a try and tell us how it works.

The iPhone app is in Japanese only.  Android version is to be released soon and other unique features should follow.

See also:

App Store - Otsukaresan Alarm[J]

LION Releases Unique Alarm App Which Prevents You From Being Ashamed On Train

Today took place the official presentation of the new social games company BDNA, a joint venture between Bandai Namco (75%) and DeNA (25%). As they announced in the previous report, the capital of the company will be 100M yen (1.3M$), starting operations next October 1st.

Shin Unozawa, COO & Vice President of Bandai Namco Holdings, will be the CEO of the new company. BDNA will be a consolidated subsidiary of Bandai Namco Holdings.

Isao Moriyasu, DeNA CEO (left), and Shin Unozawa (right) made the announcement. The name from the new company, BDNA, came from the acronyms of Bandai (BD), Namco (NA) and DeNA (DNA).

They shown the new logo as well:

Bandai Namco has the contents and the users, but they don't have the operational know-how for monetize them as DeNA/Mobage has. DeNA's objective is going global: they are expecting social games will reach soon the same quality as arcades and consumer games, so more and more people will use them.

Bandai Namco and DeNA collaborated before for developing Gundam Royale, a huge success with more than 3M users. Inside BDNA they plan to develop games from Macross series, Gundam series and Tamagotchi series.

[TGS2011] BDNA Officially Presented

FlutterScape, a social marketplace specializing in introducing "Japan-only" or "Japan-made" products for online shoppers outside the country, recently fundraised JPY60M (approx. USD750K) in their second seed-round from three VC firms, which are Japan Venture Capital (NVCC)[J], ngi group and Innovation Engine. In their first seed round, the company fundraised JPY25M (approx. USD310K) from Digital Garage, NetPrice.com and Aucfan[J] last August.

The service has engaged more than 1,500 buyers and 7,000 sellers since its launch in January 2010, and has more than 230,000 fans on Facebook as of this writing.  Takehiro Kakiyama, the CEO of FlutterScape, expects to enhance the service and allow users to share a list of their favorite products with navigation links to a shopping cart, which will be available very soon.

See Also:

• Japanese Social Marketplace Flutterscape Gets $300,000 Seed Money
• Social Commerce Platform Flutterscape Cooperates With Human Translation Startup myGengo

Japanese Social Marketplace FlutterScape Raises USD750K In Second Seed Funding

Tokyo-based tech start-up Vasily[J], who is known for running a fashion recommendation site called iQon, has fundraised JPY140M (approx. USD1.7M) from Itochu Technology Ventures and GMO Venture Partners.

iQon does not sell clothes online but recommends you a bunch of ready-to-wear collection of fashionable clothes, accessories and shoes etc. with links that take you to sales stands of online fashion retailers that the company has partnered with.  You can create a collection of your own on the site, which the other users may prefer, and the company will give away rewards to users whose collection particularly impress others.  Every time you purchase a piece of clothes through any of collections showcased on the site, the company can receive a commission from the retailer that you have actually purchased it at.  All clothing pictures on the site are being collected from the websites of the retailers.  They will use the raised money to develop smartphone apps that may encourage more customers to join the service, which is expected to be introduced this summer.

Vasily was launched two years ago by two men who had been previously worked with Yahoo Japan and been involved with development of their fashion e-commerce services[J].

Fashion Recommendation Site iQon Fundraises USD1.7M From Itochu And GMO

On Friday, GMO Venture Partners[J], an investment arm of Shibuya-based web juggernaut GMO Internet Group, launched a private equity fund specializing in investing in start-ups who are developing e-commerce and ad services to be provided on the Facebook platform (a.k.a. F-commerce), which is called Social Ad & Commerce Technology Fund.   It has a JPY57M(=USD670,000) volume as of its launch and can be grown up to JPY2B(=USD23.8M) in the future.

As their first portfolio, they invested in Aratana, a tech start-up based in Miyazaki, a southern coastal city of the Kyushu Island.  The company has introduced an easy-to-use shopping cart system integrated for Facebook, which is called Social Gateway, and has installed more than 1,000 on-Facebook commerce pages for Japanese SMEs in partnership with social commerce integrators such as Sakuragaoka Works Inc. (previously known as Arcarna)

Example: A "F-commerce" page developed by Aratana for Rice-made cosmetic manufacturer Rice Force.

See Also:

• GMO Co-Launches New Project To Incubate Social App Providers

GMO-VP Launches “F-Commerce” Fund And Invests In Platform Developer

Fast Retailing, also known as its brand name of Uniqlo, launched a Facebook integrated photo sharing community called Uniqlooks (available in seven languages) last Thursday.   It allows users to upload pictures of those wearing at least a piece of Uniqlo's products and share them with the other users for exchanging ideas on how to coordinate clothes for better looks.   Pictures uploaded by you will be stored in your personal page function called "My Looks", and that enables you to create a collection of pictures of you dressed up.   If the other users vote for your picture by pressing a "Like" button, it will be appeared on your Facebook page, and the highly ranked pictures according to the number of buttons pressed will be also appeared on the community's top page.  Uniqlo's logo is placed in the part of its product(s) in a uploaded picture, you will be taken to its order page by pressing it.

"We partnered with Facebook for having our branch at the world's biggest online community.", Tadashi Yanai, the founder and president of the company, explains.   "Not professional models but people in streets can be photogenic for promoting our products and developing new customers.", the leader in charge of managing the community, Rei Matsunaga says.

In mid-March, the company plans to introduce the iPhone app for it and hold a competition to choose the best dress-up by using Facebook "Like" button counts.

See Also:

• Uniqlo’s Lucky Line Campaign Makes It To The Twitter Trending Topics
• Uniqlo Runs Powerful Web Promos In Prior To Shanghai Real Store Launch
• Uniqlo Starts Online Sales in Mainland China
• Uniqlo’s Twitter Mashup Sportweet

Uniqlo Launches FB-Integrated Photo Community For Sharing Dress Experience

Tokyo-based Internet-enabled consumer electronics developer Cerevo[J], who is known for having introduced a series of Ustream encoder products for streamcasters, fundraised approximately USD3M (=JPY250M) by allocating new shares to Enova[J], Inspire Corporation and Neostella Capital.   Enova is a venture fund founded by several semiconductor manufacturers/retailers, Inspire is a VC-firm owned by Mr. Makoto Naruke who is the former president of Microsoft Japan, and Neostella is also a VC firm co-founded by Japanese three major life insurance companies.   Cerevo keeps USD1.5M (=JPY125M)  as a reserve capital and became worth about USD2.5M (=JPY204.6M).

Mr. Takuma Iwasa, the CEO and founder of the company, says, it intends to accelerate the development of new products and international marketing by using the fundraised money.

Via: TechCrunch Japan[J], CNET Japan[J]

See Also:

• Giving Characters To Camera Fits Anime Fans’ Taste?
• Cute Girl Duo Gets A Higher Attention Than What They Promote
• Cerevo’s New Encoder Box No Longer Requires PC For Ustream Livecasting

Cerevo Fundraises USD3M From Three Japanese Venture Funds

NHN Japan, the local arm of South Korean web giant NHN and operator of online gaming portal Hangame, is planning to seriously step up game development for smartphones, especially on Android.

Japan's biggest business daily, The Nikkei, is reporting that NHN in Korea has set up a 100-people team that's supposed to create the titles, for example action and puzzle games (see below). Japan is expected to see 10 new titles from NHN as early as spring this year, but the company is planning to have a whopping 100 games on the Japanese and Korean markets by year-end.

According to the Nikkei, the company is also planning to add social networking functionalities to the games, including multi-player options.

NHN has been offering games on the iPhone since summer last year, for example this one (Puchi Puchi Same Puzzle):

NHN Plans To Flood Japan With Smartphone Games

(photo by Chiho Komoriya)

Toyota Marketing Japan(TMJ)[J], a 100% subsidiary of Toyota Motor Corporation, announced it would have a contest on ideas of new apps integrating social network platforms which especially intend to make people interested in motor vehicles, in association with NHN Japan, GREE, DeNA, Mixi and Yahoo.  Presidents of those companies will serve as the judges of the contest.

The contest, Toyota Social App Award, accepts the ideas of new apps for PCs, featurephone and smartphone handsets. However, no stand-alone apps nor console games are allowed.  All applications are due April 28.   Award results will be announced in late May.  A million yen will be presented to the top award winner.

Mr. Hiroshi Takada, the president of TMJ, says, "Young people started getting less interested in motor vehicles ten years ago, but we couldn't stop it.  Social apps can attract people by connecting them online. We expect the apps help people share the joy of motor vehicles. We are working in the motor industry, which prevents us from inventing something new transcending our imagination. We're looking forward to great ideas from everyone.  We hope this contest may contribute to bringing good trends to motor, game and social app industries."

Via: CNET Japan[J]

Toyota’s Marketing Arm To Hold Social App Contest And Cheer Motor Industry

Tokyo-based tech start-up Anydoor announced today that it had completed the integration of its social translation service Conyac with Facebook and social rewards platform Badgeville, which allows potential users to join the service more easily and to motivate participating users to be engaged.

Conyac enables you to request a translation easily.  Users can ask for translations in exchange for a small amount of money and other users around the world can then translate the requests, receiving rewards in return.

Integrating Facebook enables any of Facebook users to become a Coynac user (translation requester or translator) without entering a bunch of user information, and integrating Badgeville enables them to earn rewards when finishing someone's translation request or evaluating someone's translation result.

Conyac has some 5,000 users.   The company's co-founder Naoki Yamada expects this integration will highly contribute to accelerating the growth of the users.   It aims for having 10,000 users in a month, and 200,000 users by the end of 2011.  The newly integrated version is currently running on beta, and it will be released officially in March.

See Also:

• Translation Tool: New Option Between Human Profession And Computer’s Imperfectness
• 140Trans: Now It’s So Easy To Tweet In Unfamiliar Languages

Social Translation Service Conyac Integrates Facebook And Badgeville