OKWave, which has been providing the same name "OKWave(オーケーウェーブ)", Yahoo! Answers like Q and A community service, expressed its new USA-office plan.

The Q-and-A service OKWave started in 2000/1. It is the one of the biggest Q-and-A service in Japanese. OKWave also provides its system and user-bases to other players, such like NTT groups' portal site "goo", real-estate site "Homes", etc.

OKWave's competitors in Japan are "Yahoo! Chiebukuro"(based on Yahoo! Korea's Answers, its success followed by US Yahoo! Answers) and "Hatena Jinriki Kensaku"(One of the oldest and the most popular service in Hatena portal).

Tags: News by Akky Akimoto
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via CNET Japan

Online Video sharing/comment services Niconico-Douga will upgrade October 10th 6:00 p.m. (JST) with access/visibility related enhancement, from the owner company Niwango's release.

The release also includes that they will open Taiwan localized version of Niconico-Douga on October 18th.

Niwango's main area is cellular phone contents, but their started Niconico-Douga got popular as almost same as YouTube, especially for heavy internet users. Niwango is also known that it has business relationship with Hiroyuki NISHIMURA, the founder/owner of 2-channel, which is the biggest anonymous BBS in Japanese.

Tags: Japan, Taiwan, Video by Akky Akimoto
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via Impress Watch

Microsoft IE Blog opens that the Internet Explorer browser is now available on Windows Update so Windows users with Automatic Update on are going to get IE7 upgraded.

But that was not expected for Japan. Microsoft explained before that Japanese version of Windows will not have IE7 automatically until 2008. So this time distribution should have not occured on Japanese Windows.

Microsoft drew back the distribution after, at least, 5 hours and is going to have a special announce to whom already upgraded IE unwillingly.

Tags: Japan, News by Akky Akimoto
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