Japanese company Cerego, the brains behind the social learning platform iKnow!, has raised $3.4 million in a round of funding from NTT DoCoMo, Japan’s biggest mobile phone carrier. To date, Cerego has raised a total of $23.4 million in funding since its launch in 2000.
Cerego originally launched iKnow as an online service for Japanese people to learn English and then expanded the platform to allow users to learn content in any language. Cerego has developed learning algorithms based on research in the fields of cognitive science and neuroscience that power iKnow. The learning engine is unique because it lets users set personal learning goals and then plans a curriculum and strategy around these goals.
Cerego has launched a new Facebook app called Smart.fm Brainspeed, which basically scans the information in the profiles of all of your friends and then creates a quiz around their personal information (i.e. Where was Michael born?). Users who answer the most questions correctly about a particular friend, will “own” that friend until they are unseated by another friend.
The company says the app is more of a poof of concept to show that Cerego’s technology can leverage structured information to help educate across different verticals and platforms, such as Facebook. The fact that mobile subscriber NTT DoCoMo has invested heavily in Cerega suggests that perhaps the company’s technology will be primed for mobile apps phone in the near future.
Here’s a video about Smart.fm’s technology:
awesome service from an awesome company. I use it from time to time to study Japanese
An energetic news to all Facebook and FriendFeed users .Japan’s largest mobile phone carrier has given a Smart.fm Brainspeed app which is strictly used to develop the Memory power of an individual. It is quite Funny and scans the information in the profiles of all of the friends and then creates a quiz around their personal information through which we can easily test our Friendship.
this company could be worth $5 billion by web 2.0 valuations
good finance articles; http://iamned.blogspot.com
I used this during university when I was studying Japanese. It’s very good. These guys deserve it!
I use it as well. Very good for Japanese.
Very nice! My bro works there.. Tokyo was a lot of fun when I visted. btw, there’s a little typo in the article: “Cerega”
Smart.fm? Sounds like a revamped version of Wozniak’s method http://is.gd/37XSL
You know what they say in science, “standing on the shoulders of giants”. Bringing those concepts to life in ways that are useful to more people is always going to be more profitable than simply having good ideas.
Great company, great tools, I’d like to see them go far.
Congrats guys!
Been using iKnow/smartfm for Japanese study. The Brainspeed app is awesome.
Still waiting for the iPhone app to come out. They’ve been working on it with Adaptive Path.
A look at their dev process and app ideas: http://www.adap...tegory/smartfm/
Top site, but you have a further typo. “poof” maybe should be “proof”.
The only guys that on the right track! F-in awesome… Keep it up! I agree your name is silly… When I first heard one of your guys talking about it I kept thinking FM radio… it was really throwing my brain for a loop :p When I saw it, my jaw dropped and was like “YES!” EDUITu.com would be a very sexy name for your new platform… wink wink ;p Call me you have me number… kind of funny Japanese leading the eRevolution… http://bit.ly/15oi5J btw — gave you a plug on it!
Mike