Niconico Douga welcomed “the father of the i-mode”
On Friday 4th July, Niconico Daikaigi 2008 (Daikaigi = Big meeting) was held by Dwango/Niwango at JCB Hall, Suidoubashi, Tokyo, with 2,000 atendees and over 10,000 users via broadcast.
This biggest event for Niconico Douga had a lot of new services/functions release, with a secret surprize.
Niconico Douga Update
New version code is “Niconico Douga (Summer)” [J].
- Nico-script(user scripting language for movie play handling) enhancement
- new Nicowari-questionnaire function
- Movie player internationalization plan to German and Spanish from July 25th (English is not planned to avoid big traffic surge, as said.)
- New Niconico-Market’s theme song
- H.264 format is now available to non-paid members
- New policy that parody/spoof/mash-up (so-called “MAD”) are removed if original rights-holder demands (which we already reported)
Niconicommunity
Niconicommunity [J] (Niconico + Community) is a new communtiy feature with which premium (paid) member can open a closed group. The group members can upload movies play and comments privately.
Niconicommons
Niconicommons [J] (Niconico + Commons) is a new web service to provide a registration based license declaration for copyright holders, planned to be released in August. Sounds like Creative-Commons but independent, probably different for targetting mainstream Niconico Douga users, who make parody and mash-up videos using Japanese animation, songs, etc. Social Networking Drawing Service “pixiv” will be the first external service who joins this Niconicommons.
Secret Guest: the “Father of the i-mode” joins Dwango
Takeshi NATSUNO, ex-director of NTT Docomo who led the world most successful mobile web network “i-mode”, appeared and was introduced as a new full-time advisor of Drango.
He talked “There are no other globally competitive contents than Niconico Douga. Most Japanese do not recognize that.”, “I am in charge of making it profitable.”, “I could not make i-mode worldwide because of each countries’ regulation around mobile. But the Internet has no such barriers”.
