Asiajin

Weathernews Inc., the world largest private weather service company headquatered in Japan, is conducting the 5th year “Sakura Project (Cherry-blossom project)” with involving over 17,000 users around the nation via cellular phone browsers.

People, willingly registering this nation-wide CGM project on the Weathernews mobile site ( http://wni.jp/ , seems only available from Japanese cellularphone), are assigned to become a “Sakura Monitor”, who sets one specific cherry-blossom tree around their home, and send its information such like tree’s “address”, “age”, “how sun shines” and pictures (taken by cellphone).

Weathernews will respond to the infomation sender users to provide the tree’s flowering forecast within 48 hours, as they told. The company boasts that their 5 years collected data contributes to more accurate cherry-blossom forecasting.

In this season in Japan, many of portal websites, individual specialized sites competes to provide cherry blossom viewing spots info.

See also:

Yahoo! Japan category “Hanami”(Cherry Blossom Viewing) [J]

Author Information  Akky Akimoto is one of the first pro-bloggers [J] in Japan. As an individual he writes for Asiajin and his own Japanese weblog. He also produces web services including IvRead.com and Narabe.com. Twitter @akky

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