Sassor raises capital from Ubiquitous and others /Cnet Japan

Sassor announced to conduct allocation of new shares to Ubiquitous, DG Incubation, and Netprice.com. The company plans to develop products and market aiming at mass production of its Energy Literacy Platform collaborating with the three investors.

Energy Literacy Platform is a tool to manage electricity consumption at home. The tool consists of ELP module connected between outlet and electric devices, a receiver sending data measured with the module to Internet, a web site to check consumption of electricity, and a smartphone application.

Sassor started subscription sale of ELP Lite, light version of Energy Literacy Platform. in May and plans to provide within July.

Cnet Japan 7/15/2011

memo

• Sassor is one of the first teams from an incubation program, Open Network Lab in 2010.

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Softsign starts to provide the first social RPG in Vietnam partnering with local SNS, MOBA /Zaikei Shimbun

Softsign provides Linh Trieu Binh Ca, RPG type social game through R&S Mobile Technology Joint Stock Company which Softsign has 49% of stock. The local company operates mobile SNS, MOBA. It is the first RPG type social game for mobile users in Vietnam.

Zaike Shimbun, 7/14/2011

memo

• Softsign was founded in 2009 to export Japanese contents to overseas.

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GREE establishes local subsidiary in China /Venture Now

GREE announced to found a subsidiary in China to strengthen partnership with or support for local game developers. The company has developed partnership from its Beijing office launched in this Spring.  The subsidiary is called GREE Beijing, Inc.
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Venture Now 7/14/2011

memo

• Another giant mobile gaming platform, DeNA already has a subsidiary in China, which was former WAPTX acquired by DeNA. Also it established a local subsidiary in Korea last month.

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[Asiajin] Mobage And Gree Both To Bring Their Flash Games Into Smartphone

Two huge Japanese social gaming networks who are working on oversea expansion showed a new move to utilize their accumulated assets on Japanese feature phone world - Flash based games.

On June 30, Mobage company DeNA announced that they had purchased Broadtail, a Tokyo-based tech start-up, who developed a tool named "ExGame" to run Flash Lite 1.1 applications on smartphone(iOS and Android). Flash Lite is a light version of Adobe Flash, which is used on Docomo's feature phone. realized huge variety of Docomo's cellphone app store years before Apple's app store.
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Then today, July 11, Gree announced that they developed and are to provide a Flash-to-HTML5 converter, which makes feature phone Flash applications run on iOS, for Gree partners(their development partners).

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 Asiajin 7/11/2011

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[Dr. Serkan Toto] CyberAgent Invests In Hong Kong-Based Gaming Company EpicForce

CyberAgent, through its subsidiary CyberAgent Ventures (Beijing) Investment Consulting Co., made yet another investment: this time, the company acquired a 25% stake in smartphone game maker EpicForcc Entertainment.

Details of the deal weren’t disclosed, but CyberAgent was apparently interested in the fact that EpicForce is based in Hong Kong (meaning it’s close to the Chinese market) and that its games were downloaded over 12 million times so far. ...

Dr. Serkan Toto - Japan Web Consulting & Research 7/5/2011

memo

• CyberAgent Ventures accelerates investment in Asian startups. It has invested in Vietnamese listing ads agency, Clever Advertising, Taiwanese restaurant review site, iPeen, and Indonesian EC, Tokopedia in the last few months. 

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CyberAgent Ventures chooses teams to support for Startups 2011 spring /Cnet Japan

Startups is a incubation project to create new internet services with investing in startups. Over 120 teams or individuals applied for Startups2011 spring. Teams who passed the first screening have brush-up business plans for a month.

After final screening, seven teams are selected. CyberAgent Ventures plans to not only  capital support, but also help realize and expand the business plans.

Cnet Japan 7/4/2011

memo

• The first service from Startup 2010, Snapeee, has been successful not only in Japan but also in several Asian countries. The photo decoration and sharing application has over 300,000 downloads for just a month.

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AR application, Sekai Camera allows to view photos before earthquake on the spot /Internet Watch

Tonchidot announced enhancement of Sekai Camera, mobile application with AR technology. The application lets users to view pictures on East Japan Earthquake Picture Project of Yahoo at the location where the pictures were actually taken.

East Japan Earthquake Picture Project is a non-profit project to preserve landscape destroyed by the earthquake in pictures. Since the launch at April 8, over 18,000 pictures are gathered including photos capturing recovery from the disaster.

Tonchidot assents to the project by enabling to view those pictures using FILTER function of Sekai Camera. Users can choose "memory before disaster" or "record for recovery" on FILTER menu to view air-tags of pictures. Users can view pictures by tapping the air-tags. ...

Internet Watch 7/1/2011

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