SF New Techとは
主にインターネット関連のホットなスタートアップ企業を紹介し注目を浴び続けてきた、サンフランシスコで最も熱いITイベントのひとつ。SF New Techのメーリングリストには、5,000人以上が登録し、業界で話題を呼んでいる出席者達が目立つ各イベントは常に完売という大人気。月に一度の頻度で開催され、毎回厳しい選定をパスした4社がプレゼンをし、出席者からの質疑応答で盛り上がる。

大手メディアスポンサー
そしてそのイベント情況を、ＮＹタイムズをはじめJustin TV等の大手のメディアスポンサーが報道。アメリカから世界へ強力アピール出来る為、駆け出しのスタートアップ企業がここでプレゼンをしたことをきっかけに大ブレイクしたケースも多い。大手メディアによる報道のせいか、時折、ＧoogleやPayPalをはじめ、IT業界の大企業がスターットアップ企業と方を並べてプレゼンし、新規サービス又はプロダクトを公表をする場として活用していた例もある。

SF New Tech ＋ビートラックス ＝ 「SF New Tech Japan Night」
btrax(ビートラックス) は、米国市場を中心に海外向けWebコンサルティングを提供しているクリエイティブ・エージェンシー。　グローバル市場展開を検討している企業を、Webコンサルティングやメディアを通してだけでなく全面的に支援していきたいという念願から、SF New Techと共同企画し、日本の企業を米国市場に紹介するSF New Tech Japan Night というイベントを2010年10月13日に主催することに。

SF New Tech Japan Night参加企業の募集中
現在イベントで英語でプレゼンする参加企業が募集されていて、参加企業にとっての利点には：

• アメリカ市場へ強力アピール
• ネットワーキング
• パートナー企業の発掘
• VC・投資家の獲得
• 日・米のメディアからの注目
• 最新のWebトレンドに関しての情報収集
• 海外進出の足がかり

申込み期限
2010年8月末日が申し込み期限。ただ、参加企業が決まり次第締切の可能性大。迷っていてチャンスを逃しては惜しい。　あなたの海外進出の第一歩が、今、ここにあるかもしれない。

Tomi Brooks-AdLocal and Brandon Hill

Last night, we attended a Japanese Business Event, hosted by AdLocal on Howard & 2nd St in San Francisco.  The theme of the night was Mobile and Geo-location.

Ready for Location Based Text Messaging?

Imagine being near your favorite restaurant and up comes a 15% discount coupon on your iPhone or even better receive a text message from a business announcing a sale while travelling and getting directions to that establishment relative to your current geo-location.

AdLocal is on the marketing edge using geo-localization on mobile phones to target specific regional markets with advertisements.   “The advertisement can be plain text messages or Ad banners.  Specific targeting area can be as small as two football fields and as large as the state of Connecticut” says Tomi Brooks, Business Development for AdLocal.  Check it out

Golf Anyone?

From the country that loves golf,  ASAI Inc. developed a golf management software called YourGolf for the Android using GPS.   This software allows you to download course data , track your shot using GPS,  and display of shot on google map of the hole.

“About 70000 worldwide users on the Android version–released July 2009 and iPhone version due out later this month” said Yoshihito Ikeda, Application/Planning “Samurai” Manager at ASAI.



Social Mobile Fun

Because of the “keitai” or mobile phone culture, Mobile Social Gaming is ever-popular in Japan.  Success Networks provides social games on mobile networks in Japan like docomo, Softbank, KDDI under applications like Java, Flash and Brew.  Mobile games can use geo-location(team games), bluetooth, and two dimensional bar codes (QR code).  PC games are also supported as well.  Take a look.

We had a great time mingling with our friends from Japan. Otsukaresamadeshita. Thanks for working hard on this event to all.

Thank you AdLocal for the event. – Your friends from btrax, Inc.

August 23, 2010
btrax, Inc.
San Francisco, California, USA

Meet the Rising Sun

A first of its kind event is being held in San Francisco featuring Japanese Entrepreneurs on October 13, 2010.  This event named SFNewTech Japan Night is the vision of Brandon K. Hill, President/CEO of btrax, Inc – a San Francisco based digital consultancy agency.  “I wanted to help Japanese Entrepreneurs extend their market outside of Japan and broaden their market reach.  It is important for Japanese companies to have this kind of forum here in the US.  I have attended many SFNewTech events and decided to approach the organizers to collaborate on this event.  I am very happy to help partner with SFNewTech on this event-SFNewTech Japan Night” said Brandon K. Hill.

About six or so Internet venture companies from Japan will be presenting and discussing their web/mobile services or hardware in front of over 500 people. Which include venture capitalists, investors, entrepreneurs and tech enthusiasts.  So far, the event has selected GazoPa (Similar to an Image Search Engine), Lang-8 (Social networking service for language exchange), MyGengo (Social Translation Service) as participants.

There is a screening process for the prospective participants until the end of August. Here are some of the selection criteria:

• Visual impact – Will the product presentation captivate the audience?
• Utility – Will it be useful in the marketplace?
• Overseas expansion – Is the company expanding outside of Japan?
• Originality – Is the product unique?
• Japanese cultural feel – Is there a Japanese cultural feel to the product?

This event will be broadcasted live by justin.tv, and updated in real-time from the audience by tweeting out messages from the event using the hash tag #sfjn or #sfnewtech. Media coverage includes NY Times and Mashable.

We are looking for sponsors to help these entrepreneurs offset some of their costs.  If you are willing to sponsor please contact us.
SFNewTech Japan Night is going to be a great chance for Japanese companies that want to expand their business abroad, to gain the necessary visibility in our local tech community. Why don’t you mark your calendar and join us?

Send inquires to japannight@btrax.com

Silicon Valley is the place where Netscape lost its war. The competition of browsers is fierce and harsh here. But without fear, a new browser has entered the market. It was born in Japan. It is named Lunascape. It is very Japanesque when you see the design templates of the background which you can choose from. They have samurai and kimono color backgrounds.

Lunascape opens multiple windows vertically

Lunascape is the world’s first and only triple engine browser. It has been downloaded over 15 million times and it’s available globally in 11 languages. The download is free and you can open three different web design engines in one page and they are Trident (Internet Explorer), Gecko (Firefox), and Webkit (Safari and Google Chrome). They say they are very fast with the triple engine and triple add-ons.

Professionally, I enjoy it when I have to test sites with different browsers. All I need to do is to open all three of them in one page and compare the layout. All three pages can be displayed vertically or horizontally in one page. It is pretty convenient.

The question is how much market share Lunascape can get in this competitive market. Internet Explorer is dominating because Microsoft bundled with computers. Since Mozilla has Mozilla Foundation (non-profit) and Mozilla Corporation (for profit organizations) to support Firefox, the non-profit gets donations which are used by Mozilla Corporation. Firefox gets money from Google by having its search engine on the browser, but besides that it is said that they get donations.  And the strength of Firefox is that it is an open source browser. Everyone tries to fix the problems andmake it better. Lunascape is not an open source browser yet.

Black pins of Firefox Photo by flod

Since Google came out with its own browser, I doubt how much longer it will stay generous to other browsers. The competition will be fierce. But all browsers have passionate fans to protect them. It seems that Lunascape survival depends upon how many passionate fans it can create.

The Live Audio Recording Question
btrax often gets requests involving recording and publishing voice using a computer’s microphone – from people such as educators and musicians.

Given all the demand for tools to create, edit and distribute images or videos, it would seem a third-party solution for audio would already exist.

But amazingly no one seems to have tried since Odeo (previously run by the Twitter founders Evan Williams, Jack Doresey and Biz Stone) gave up on recording podcasts and reverted to being a multimedia playlist portal four years back.

Odeo used Adobe Flash technology, which has since become even more sophisticated.

Solutions Outside the English Sphere
It turns out my mistake was researching for solutions only in English. Once I started digging around search engines in Japanese I found a fantastic voice recording and publishing start-up called Koebu.com.

Koebu is more than a glorified online tape recorder, having created an engaging social network for people’s voices. As a site member you can broadcast your stories, sing songs, introduce yourself, or even just vent.

Imagine if you could publish a blogFaceBook with just your voice? Or publish your music on MySpace straight from your microphone? Or you can also use the site to search people’s voices through categories or theme, etc.

Japan’s Social Networking Habits
For Japanese audiences Koebu is not just a novel distraction – it has taken off in many areas with potential business applications. One example is for aspiring voice actors for Anime movies.

Many members record themselves reading lines from anime to use as their portfolio. Musicians are using it to record songs for auditions. This saves time (and money) on the aspiring side and those casting parts.

To give an alternate view of Koebu, I’ve attached one of their widget players:

Back to Privacy?
Another key aspect is that Japanese people like privacy. Few users of Mixi, Japan’s largest social network at 16 million users, put their real name on their accounts or even real profile details. The trend worldwide, however, has been toward verified identity and real user names.

However, there is some good sense in the Japanese approach – new paid tools like People Search allow anyone (bosses, potential bosses, ex-girlfriends, etc.) to extract photos and other data from your social networking profiles with little more than your email address as a starting point.

On the other hand, your voice doesn’t reveal anything about you except for what you sound like, which makes it palatable to Japanese users.

Koebu’s Quirky Background
Koebu is run by Kayac, whose formal legal name is “Omoshiro Hojin Kayac,” which translates into “The Interesting Company Kayac, Inc.”

The offbeat name matches their location – unlike the vast majority of Japanese companies and startups, which are headquartered in Tokyo or Osaka, Kayac is in the sleepy historical city of Kamakura. The town is mostly known for its giant Buddha statue and surfers.

In that sense, Koebu has more in common with the Bay Area’s well-known successful startups than their Japanese counterparts.