Asiajin

Even the Tech-savvy Japanese still love their print media. In fact, this country is one of the biggest markets for printed information in the world and the variety of magazines is sheerly amazing. At one time for example, there were eight periodicals specifically catering to homemakers who made a living by trading stock online! Also, in Japanese book stores you can read every magazine, newspaper or book you want and as long as you want. No clerk will come and harass you…

Now, Yahoo! Japan decided to launch a new service on June 23rd enabling users to read articles from a total of 22 printed magazines online and free of charge. The company said the selection covers periodicals for men, women and lifestyle in general. The magazines, published by Kodansha and Shogakukan amongst others, will also provide Yahoo!-exclusive stories, including video.

Yahoo! Japan’s rival (sort of) Microsoft Japan made their move already. In collaboration with publishing company Magazine House, Japanese users are able to view free magazines on a dedicated web site big M launched Thursday. Microsoft will only offer digitized backnumbers though. At the moment, the offering is limited to Tarzan (a lifestyle magazine) and Hanako, a periodical for women. The content can be viewed using the browser so a software download is – thankfully – not necessary.

Microsoft’s initiative isn’t really that exciting. But Yahoo! Japan’s announcement actually marks the first time for centralization of digitized content provided by top publishing companies on the web. The online revolution of the Japanese media landscape continues.

Tags: Japan, New Service by Serkan Toto
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Toru TAKASUKA, known as a very few Japanese entrepreneur challenging in US internet market by his Lunarr (covered on TechCrunch, Mashable, and a lot more), invites popular bloggers from US for one week Tokyo and Japan web technology meetings trip.

The invited bloggers are:

• Tom Foremski from Sillicon Valley Watcher
• Marshall Kirkpatrick, Read/Write Web
• Kristen Nicole, Mashable
• Bob Walsh 47 Hats / Web Worker Daily

Wow… Just wow.

I am luckily able to attend one of their meeting, because it was held at my workplace Cybozu Labs. There were 4 Japanese entrepreneurs had a chance to make a 10 minutes presentation each to those bloggers.

Utagoe

Tomonari SONODA, CEO of Utagoe, recently moved to San Jose, introduced their new frontend service Channel.is . Their P2P movie broadcasting system and its selling URL under channel.is as a short name of broadcasted movie page. Also, new live video RSS service is being released today.

Ubiquitous Entertainment

Ryo SHIMIZU, CEO of Ubiquitous Entertainment Inc. talked on his making Niconico Douga and iPhone application.

Sargasso

Ken SUZUKI from Sargasso introduced their services, Nota, CShirts.

Hatena

Hatena’s exective Yuichi KAWASAKI talked 3 services, Hatena Haiku (on Asiajin), Hatena Diary and Hatena Bookmark, their successful Japanese services.

Tatsuya KUROSAKA

Consultant Tatsuya KUROSAKA made a short speech around his activities, being a freelance in Japan and web future for long-term, etc.

Cybozu Labs

My Cybozu Labs colleague Kazuho OKU, who developped Xiino browser for Palm, made a jump-in presentation on Japanize/MyLingual, automatic menu translation services supported by user generated data.

Also, Pathtraq, web traffice analysis service was expained. Currently it is targetting Japanese web, and you get good hot news list on it which cannot be searched on traditional search engine (which does not concentrate on “emerging news last hours”).

Some of those services could be mentioned by those bloggers soon, I guess.

[disclaimer] Akky AKIMOTO works 3 days per week for Cybozu Labs as a company blogger (in Japanese). Lunarr’s Toru TAKASUKA is a former CEO of Cybozu, though he left Cybozu years ago with selling his all stocks to start Lunarr in Portland, Oregon USA. Akky AKIMOTO has been working for Cybozu group for years and has ever worked under him when he was in charge of Cybozu US development.

See also:

Co-organizer of the tour, Hisashi KATSUYA’s blog on CNET Japan

Yoshinori TAKESAKO’s report with Niconico Douga photo slide

Tags: Japan, News by Akky Akimoto
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Mixi (on Asiajin), the biggest Social Network Site in Japan, announced that Google Maps Japan now has an specialized Mixi button for users who wants to embed Google Maps on their users diary (Mixi Nikki).

Mixi has been having the “embed Google Maps” feature for a year which helps users to set Google Maps on their journal, but the user taking the code of the map was just instructed on Mixi page. However, this time the new bridge link is placed ON Google, and no other websites have such an integrated appearance on Google Japanese services.

via Internet Watch [J]

See also:

Mixi’s help page on this function [J][log-in required]

Tags: Japan, News, Technology by Akky Akimoto
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Over 700 web and web-related companies from all over world handed in an application for last year’s Techcrunch 40 event, organized by the famous Tech blog of the same name.

This year, the competition is called Techcrunch 50 and it is again organized by Techcrunch USA. It will be conducted from September 8-10th in San Francisco. Following the absence of Japanese web companies in last year’s event, potential participants from this country are encouraged to take part this year.

My friend Umihiko Namekawa from Techcrunch Japan asked me to publish the announcement on Asiajin as well, on top of his article he wrote today in his blog. Asiajin thinks it is a great chance for entrepreneurs in Japan to challenge such a competition.

In the light of the tight time schedule, professional support will be provided by Techcrunch Japan for all companies interested in this initiative.

More information (in Japanese) can be found here on the official site.

Tags: Japan by Serkan Toto
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Japanese copyright holders in the music, TV and movie industry are known to be very protective of their contents when it comes to distribution on the web. Youtube has been “cleaned” several times in the past after complaints filed by media companies from this country.

Now, for the 1st time for a major TV network, Japan’s public broadcaster NHK (aka Japan Broadcasting Corp.) started putting contents online on a NHK channel on Youtube. The channel is dubbed NHKonline.

The first video posted features Japanese super model Fujiwara Norika promoting NHK’s “Save the future” initiative. With the G8 summit in Hokkaido this year casting its shadows ahead, NHK says they would like to raise public attention on the global warming issue by bringing up environmental topics.

NHK will present a total of 20 hours of material, including dramas, music shows and documentaries focusing on the environment on its main TV channel from June 6th to June 8th. There will be some 30 clips shown on Youtube taken from those shows through late July.

This interesting move might pave the way for other Japanese TV networks to go the NHK way. The LDP, Japan’s most powerful political party, was a little faster and started a Youtube channel in December last year.

Tags: Japan by Serkan Toto
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