Posts Tagged ‘vizoo’
Infinity Ventures Summit In Sapporo: 12 Japanese Startups Set Out Their Pitches (Part 1: The Five Winners)
I am currently in Sapporo/Japan, attending the Infinity Ventures Summit (IVS) [this and many of the following links are in Japanese], a two-day event that takes place twice a year. Organizing VC company Infinity Venture Partners regularly not only attracts the cream of the crop of the domestic web industry but also a number of high-profile attendees from abroad. This time, these include RockYou CTO and founder Jia Shen (whose company is currently expanding to Japan), Admob CEO Omar Hamoui, (who today announced Admob’s foray into the Japanese market), Korean web entrepreneur Chang Kim (who recently sold his Seoul-based company to Google and writes a highly recommended English blog about Korea’s web scene) and Casee CEO Xin Ye (Casee is China’s answer to Admob).
The program also includes a launch pad, which just took place and gave a total of 12 Japanese start-ups the chance to present their wares onstage to a panel of judges and a crowd of about 300 people. But the word “Launch Pad” is a slight misnomer as IVS serves as a venue also for established start-ups to get their products in front of as many influential bloggers, VCs and entrepreneurs as possible. So unlike TechCrunch50, for example, the IVS concept doesn’t require companies to actually start businesses here.
In the end, a service called MotionPortrait won the title of best startup of the IVS Launch Pad.
You can read my thumbnail sketch of each of the five award-winning contenders below, along with my personal impressions. Please note some of the companies have yet to launch homepages in English.
Best of show went to Sony-backed MotionPortrait, whose technology makes it possible to generate a 3D face model based on a single 2D picture. The model can then be spiced up with various animations and graphical effects. You can make people dance, frown, laugh or even replace an actor’s face in a movie with your own.
MotionPortrait isn’t limited to human faces, as you can manipulate pictures of animals and objects in the same way (think dancing Easter Island statues or laughing leopards).
This may sound slightly goofy, but the technology is really impressive. MotionPortrait operates in a crowded market, but the technology is in my view more powerful than the one Israel-based Gizmoz offers, for example. Very cool stuff that can be used in games, virtual worlds, advertising campaigns or social networks.
Watch the video below for a demo.
Deqwas A recommendation engine called Deqwas came in second. Developed by Tokyo-based Scigineer, the engine is currently being used by over 30 e-commerce sites, blogs and social networking sites in the fixed and mobile web. The company also managed to license out its technology to US-based services, i.e. to this online bridal store. Deqwas is financially backed by cross-country (US and Japan) incubator Innovation Kitchen, a Mitsubishi subsidiary.
Vizoo I really liked the concept behind second-ranked Vizoo (there wasn’t a third prize this time), a YouTube for graphs. Developed by Tokyo- and Chicago-based Fillmore Advisory, the service will be available in English “in the near future”, as Vizoo representative Kosuke Mori told me.
Asked what the main difference between his service and American counterparts icharts or Swivel is, Mori said Vizoo offers users rich data bases they can immediately start working with. Graphs can be created using Vizoo or won data, tagged and commented on. The graphs can later be shared not only on Vizoo itself but also integrated into other sites and widgetized. Very useful for business analysts, journalists, scientists etc., but I see difficulties in monetizing the site. Still Mori is optimistic, saying by launching Vizoo, he wants to “destroy” established players like Bloomberg or Reuters.
Cerevo A new photo management service called Cerevo came in fourth at the show. The company intends to provide a double-sided solution for people wanting to send and share pictures online by not only developing a new photo management site but also manufacturing a digital camera completely from scratch.
The camera will automatically send pictures users took to Cerevo’s “online photo album” via Wifi. At the same time, users are notified through a message going to their inbox. You can then send pictures stored on Cerevo servers to friends or to various social networks using email. The big idea here is that the camera is only needed to take the pictures. Users don’t need direct access to the device or files in order to share pictures with others. Cerevo claims the concept is unique on a worldwide level.
CEO Takuma Iwasa said his company (that he established after leaving Panasonic - a rare move in big company-crazy Japan) plans to sell the camera worldwide starting this summer (the project is currently in prototype status). We will stay tuned.
Ameba Pigg The award for fifth place went to Ameba Pigg, a virtual world developed by Tokyo-based Internet giant Cyberagent. Ameba Pigg saw 350,000 registrations since its launch three months ago, with development taking just four months.
Ameba Pigg, which is available in Japanese only, is your typical teenager-focused virtual world with cute avatars, flashy settings and annoying sound effects. There are dozens of virtual worlds like this out there. Nothing special. Watch the video to get an impression of Ameba Pigg’s look and feel.
I will cover the seven other Japanese startups that presented at the launch pad in a separate post.
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Let’s Stop Picking On Those iPhone App Reviewers. Actually, Let’s Not.
I sincerely hope that a part of Apple’s WWDC iPhone announcement plans involves a complete overhaul of the application reviewing process. Because right now, quite frankly, it absolutely sucks. I’ve harped on this for a while, across multiple sites, but the fact remains that the process by which an app can live or die is completely random based solely on the app reviewer themselves. I’m not necessarily saying those people are bad at their jobs, but I’m saying they’re overworked, and Apple needs to alleviate the problem — pronto.
The latest incident is one of the most ridiculous. Apple has rejected the Eucalyptus eBook reader app because you can find the Kama Sutra on it. Are you kidding me? Not only can you easily find the sexually provocative book pretty much anywhere on the web in general — because it’s been around for hundreds of years — but if any kid walks into any book store across this country, they can find it and read it there.
Yes, the material includes explicit references, but you can already view it from apps like Stanza, Amazon’s Kindle app and yes, even mobile Safari. It’s so utterly ridiculous that Apple would ban one app on these grounds but allow all others to pass. The developer has been going back and forth with Apple over the past two weeks, trying to get the app approved, but they refuse. So I’m going to add to an already raging fire and attempt to get them to reconsider.
Apple: The goddamn book in question is a part of Project Guttenberg, which Eucalyptus scours for many of its other books. If you really expect the app to remove that one book from the entire project, you’re insane. Instead, you need to let this app pass, just as you have for the multiple other apps that can access this book in various ways and go about your day finding apps that are actually malicious in their intent.
At one point in the entire long back and forth with the developer, Apple suggests resubmitting the app once the parental controls are in place with the iPhone 3.0 software. Well that’s great. Why not make all developers who have been working their asses off to contribute to the huge success of the App Store wait a few months (likely until July) to be able to profit from their work? That makes a lot more sense than just fixing the idiotic process by which apps are approved.
Seriously, fix this Apple. While you may have not foreseen such problems, if you truly want to dominate this space, you need to adapt and do what is right by the developers. This does not include rejecting apps because they access publically available books that refer to rubbing a woman’s “yoni.” And if you really have a problem with that, ban all the apps that can access such material — including your own Safari app. Stop being such ridiculous prudes.
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