創新發現誌

Yu-U-Ki Pudding Succeeds in Creating Brand Value 

By Ch’ien Yen-ni 

In a tiny SOHO office about 15 square meters in size located in a back street in Taipei City, Yang Tzu-ch’ing is preparing an order of 50 cartons that he will be delivering to the employees of a leading mobile phone manufacturer the next day. Yang, who previously worked as a web designer, gave up a job in which he was earning nearly NT$50,000 a month to become an entrepreneur. In just over two months, he has sold over 6,000 of his “pudding” deserts on the Internet; “Yu-U-Ki Pudding” (“Courage Pudding”) has become one of the most popular online shopping products.  

Born in 1982, Yang Tzu-ch’ing worked as a web designer for 10 years. In 2006, Yang got a job with the social networking site i-Part, but he subsequently decided to start his own business selling pudding deserts, under the “Yu-U-Ki Pudding” brand. The brand value of Yu-U-Ki Pudding relates to courage. If an Internet user has an exam coming up, they need courage. If someone wants to tell someone that they have known for years that they are in love with them, they need courage. If you want to help someone to face up to a challenge bravely, then by sending them a gift of Yu-U-Ki Pudding you can do this without even needing to say anything, and it is guaranteed to re-double the courage of the recipient. 

Having a brand alone is not enough; the product needs to taste good, too. In May 2009, when Yang set up the Yu-U-Ki Pudding website and started taking orders as a sideline to his regular job, he found a recipe for pudding dessert on a Japanese website. Yang got a Japanese-speaking colleague to translate it for him. He followed the recipe to the letter for two months, using several hundred eggs in the process; concern about the risk of developing a high cholesterol level subsequently led him to switch to an egg-free diet for two months.  

Since Yu-U-Ki Pudding desserts formally went on sale on the Internet in May 2009, Yang has sold over 1,000 boxes, achieving sales revenue of over NT$200,000. To boost his production volume, Yang Tzu-ch’ing has recruited a former chef at the Grand Formosa Regent Taipei Hotel to develop more products that can be sold under the Yu-U-Ki brand, including Yu-U-Ki cake, Yu-U-Ki bread, and even Yu-U-Ki whole-grain rice, so as to leverage the brand to maximum effect.

The “Blogger Top 100” – Creating New Value from Content 

By Ch’iu Ching-ming 

Everyone has had the experience of trying to choose a good restaurant to go to. Most conventional websites will give you a long list of restaurants to choose from, but how do you know which ones are the best? Or what the restaurants’ best dishes are? A lot of people would say that you can find this information on blogs, but there are so many different blogs out there … The “Blogger Top 100” list, which was developed as a collaborative project between the III (Institute for Information Industry) and Chunghwa Telecom’s “Xuite” website, uses computer technology to analyze the online reputation that individual restaurants have built up, bringing together information that was originally scattered about in countless different blogs to help consumers make decisions! 

The III and Xuite organized the first Blogger Top 100 activity last year, analyzing content from over 100,000 Xuite blogs to find the real experts in various different fields, identify the special characteristics of different blogs and extract commercial value from them. The second Blogger Top 100, held this year, identified expert bloggers in three fields – restaurants, travel, and movies – and also compiled a list of bloggers’ most highly recommended 100 restaurants, based on 12,282 articles by the top 100 bloggers in the food and restaurant category over the period from March 2008 to March 2009, using online content retrieval technology to analyze the special features of the individual restaurants and make available the views of the top 100 blogger “layman experts” regarding each category of restaurant for the benefit of consumers.  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Want to play games? Ditch the Wii controller! 

By Liang Chun-ming  

Do you remember the brilliant scene in the film Iron Man (2008) in which the main character, played by Robert Downey Jr., creates a robotic arm device in his home laboratory, using 3D virtual reality technology to test the arm? 

In June 2009, Microsoft announced the launch of Project Natal, which it claimed marks the beginning of a new era in home entertainment. Microsoft’s goal is to move away from competition between rival game consoles; they have been telling gamers that Microsoft’s objective with Project Natal is not to take on Wii, but rather to provide a range of multimedia, gaming and networking applications for home entertainment use while avoiding a Wii-style product usage environment extension model in which first you buy the console, then you have to buy Accessory A, then you have to buy Accessory B, and so on.  

Microsoft’s slogan for Project Natal is “Use your own gear.” The idea is that, with Natal’s image recognition technology, gamers can turn everyday objects such as their own skateboard into part of the game. Microsoft’s intention is that Project Natal will lead users into a new era of home entertainment. However, Microsoft has to take account of the fact that using image recognition technology to create a new gaming experience will raise concerns among users that Microsoft may be recording their faces and what they are doing.  

The digital signage applications development team at the Innovative Digitech-enabled Applications & Services Institute, III (Institute for Information Industry), has been working on interactive technology for outdoor digital signage. As digital signboards have grown larger, the original kiosk-style touchscreen usage model is no longer adequate. The team has developed a new usage model that employs a single low-end web cam attached to the digital signboard. This web came is used to analyze the user’s face to determine their age, sex etc. Besides facilitating interactivity, it also makes it possible to identify the user’s personal characteristics and then provide advertisements suited to these characteristics. By linking back-end data analysis with a smart advertisement display system, the team’s research has created a whole new business model.  

The technology that the team has developed has attracted the interest of a number of digital signage companies, and several collaborative projects are already underway. The team’s mission is to raise the overall level of image recognition technology in Taiwan, using high-performance, lightweight core components and integration technology that ensures high software compatibility to integrate hardware and services, creating the potential for a wider range of applications that will encourage firms in relevant industries to adopt the technology. The team hopes that they can achieve an effect in the digital signage business similar to the interest that Microsoft’s Project Natal has aroused.  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

uSchool – a “Facebook for Elementary School Students” – Expands into International Markets  

By Ch’ien Yen-ni 

Facebook, the USA’s largest social networking site, has over 200 million members. In Taiwan, there is a “Facebook” for elementary school students, uSchool, which has been in existence for nearly 5 years and holds market share of over 80% in the elementary school student market in Taiwan. uSchool has replicated its successful experience in Taiwan by expanding into China, the U.S.A., and Europe; uSchool is determined to establish itself as the world’s Number One elementary school student social networking site.  

uSchool CEO Cheng Tzu-yu was sent by his parents to study in the U.S. at the age of 9. After graduating from university he borrowed US$50,000 from his mother (who was in the import-export business) to start up a website with his college roommate. They set up a virtual stock market simulator site, which was acquired by another company in 1999 for US$6 million, and listed on the stock market soon afterwards.  

Using the money that he had earned from his first start-up, Cheng Tzu-yu came back to Taiwan and founded uSchool.com, which began operation in the fall of 2005; towards the end of the next year, Cheng established the uBlog blogging platform. Within two years, uSchool had secured a 50% share of the elementary school student market, and by 2008 it was making a profit. Today, uSchool has a market share of over 80% in the Taiwan market.

Cheng Tzu-yu points out that, in the U.S., children in the 6 – 15 age group have combined direct purchasing power of US$40 billion, and indirect purchasing power of US$146 billion. Rather than trying to capture Taiwan’s 2 million children individually, it made more sense to focus on winning over the 2,600-plus elementary schools in Taiwan. After several years of hard work, uSchool now has over 1 million members, who provide an important foundation for the site’s ongoing development. uSchool is now moving away from a free content model, with the introduction of a “Premium Services” fee-based model. For example, site users who want to use the site’s online testing function have to pay to use it, and children who have already graduated from elementary school but want to keep their class web-page have to pay to keep it.