Japanese portal site livedoor announced today that they started a new free hosting service EDGE co. Lab.

Developers/entrepreneurs can get hosted servers from livedoor and run their web service without charge. The conditions are;

• “Powered by EDGE” must be shown somewhere on the page
• livedoor OpenID and (if possible) livedoor Auth API need to be supported on the user application

The site running on the EDGE server may get traffic livedoor portal, which is one of the Japanese portal sites chasing the giant Yahoo! Japan. livedoor portal has some competitive web services like Blog, News, Shitaraba(BBS), Cure(Cosplay social network, Engish/Japanese) and Clip(Social bookmark). The accepted websites also get scalability and server management consultation from livedoor staff.

The service could be a developers’ version of good old Geocities, or Japanese friendly Google Apps Engine, YAP or Ning, with more flexible programming language choice. Sakura Internet and Agilemedia Network is offering similar service Bloglabs from blog and social media point of view, Mashupedia.jp(vector) tried to provide free web app hostings for API/Mashup fans but failed to end this spring. The portal boasting their datacentre and scalability technology joined this field will attract more individual entrepreneurs/developers who has good ideas/apps but need help on resource and promotion.

The service name “EDGE” is the word used in a company name when livedoor was founded, at that time, it was “On The Edge” and renamed it when they bought free internet provider livedoor.

Tags: Japan, New Service by Akky Akimoto
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Softbank Mobile announced today to release 1-seg digital TV tuner device for iPhone in the middle of December.   The 80-gram device provides the feature of TV over WiFi (converting TV signal received to IP-based data for iPhone) and doubles as a battery extender.   Three hours continuous TV viewing is available.   Price is not announced so far.

Compared to other celphone models models in Japanese market, it is said that iPhone has three faults of short battery lifetime, no 1-seg TV feature and no Emoji.   As reported previously here on Asiajin, Apple unveiled iPhone firmware 2.2 includes a new feature supporting Emoji icons.   Softbank Mobile CEO, Masayoshi Son confidently said, “the so called three complainments especially for Japanese iPhone users are perfectly solved, with this brandnew device and next firmware update.”

Additionally, Softbank Mobile opens in November its associate company’s operating WiFi service “BB Mobile Point” to iPhone subscribers, which means all the iPhone subscribers can use WiFi connection at 3,500 locations nationwide for a free of charge.
The device receives 1-seg signal from TV station, convert and re-transmit it to iPhone over WiFi.

The device works as a battery extender when plugged into iPhone 3G’s connector.

Tags: Cellular Phone, Japan by Masaru IKEDA
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Official Google Blog (Japanese) announced [J] that their gmail on PC now became capable to send Emoji, emoticon-like letters supported by Japanese cellphones. (receiving emoji-mail from cellphone has been supported already.)

Even in English mode of gmail, your “Rich formatting” mode has a new set of emoji selector.

I sent a mail with emoji-s from my gmail to cellphone. Most emoji are shown properly, though few letters are not. Maybe because emoji sets have few incompatibility among 3 carriers (NTT Docomo, KDDI au and Softbank Mobile).

When the recipient have Japanese cellphone, Google server converts them into emoji character codes. On regular mail client including gmail, the mail with emoji seems to be sent as a HTML mail with images.

It is explained that this new feature was lead by Google Tokyo team but worked globally.

[Update] The official English Gmail Blog followed to announce. Interestingly, there are no mention that the idea was from Google Japan (as Google Japan team claimed [J]), nor it was for Japanese mobile users. So it is explained “to help you communicate” for the rest of non-emoji world.

Tags: Cellular Phone, Japan by Akky Akimoto
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On Sunday, 19th October, Mashup Awards 4 , Sun Microsystems Japan and Recruit‘s [Recruit on Asiajin] web-service mashup development contest award ceremony was held at Recruit headoffice, next to the Tokyo station.

The contest, 4th this time, gathered 44 companies’ web service API from many of Japanese web companies such like Yahoo Japan, Google Japan, Rakuten, Mixi, Kakaku.com, Microsoft, Technorati, Salesforce, CyberAgent, etc. The API provider list is worth checking if you want to get

There were 259 applications filed, and 53 awards including 40 API providers’ awards were given.

The Grand Prix was, Chamap, which integrated browser chat, Google Map and several different shop/restaurant API with cartoon style interface. Chamap was developed by freelance creator Kentaro YAMA. 1 million yen cash award (around 10,000 USD) was also received.

I was invited as one of 4 external contest judges, following last year’s Yahoo! Japan’s API contest.

Besides judging Grand Prix and 4 high awards (from 259. tough work), I was given a chance of giving an award under my name. I chose “Akky Akimoto award” for Mimi-Kaki, English listening comprehension quiz using text-to-speech API.

After-party was crowded with around 300 developers/designers/entrepreneurs with great atmosphere. It is a great chance for startups and individual to promote their ideas and services. I hope to see 5th contest soon again.

Tags: Event Report, Japan by Akky Akimoto
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Canceling this year’s Web 2.0 Expo in Tokyo was considered a mild disappointment in the Japanese web world. But now it seems Digital Garage‘s New Context Conference 2008 [J], a 2-day event full of high-profile speakers from the Japanese and international Internet industry, can more than make up for it.

The event is being organized for the fourth time (some info on last year’s event can be found here [J]). This year, the conference takes place in Ebisu Garden Hall, Tokyo, from November 5 to 6.

The conference (slogan: “Open Networks come to life – post Web 2.0″) has these confirmed speakers [UPDATED]:

Jean-Marie Hullot, Founder and CEO at Fotonauts

Natsuno Takeshi, the mastermind behind NTT Docomo’s imode (now advisor for Dwango)

Tetsuya Mizuguchi, legendary game creator for Sega (now head of Q Entertainment）

Lisa Sounio, CEO of social travel site Dopplr

Andrew “bunnie” Huang, VP Hardware Engineering and Founder at Chumby

Matt Flannery, Co-Founder and CEO at social lending site Kiva

Teruhide Satou, CEO at netprice [J]

Spencer Hyman, COO at last.fm

Eric Young, CEO at social learning site iKnow!

Ellen Levy, Vice President, Corporate Development and Strategy at LinkedIn

Jiro Kokuryo, professor at Keio University (Faculty of Policy Management)

Loic Le Meur, CEO at Seesmic

Marko Ahtisaari, Brand and Design at mobile social network Blyk

Reid Hoffman, angel investor and founder at LinkedIn

Mitsuhiro Takemura, professor at Sapporo City University (Faculty of Design)

Hitoshi Ushiku, president and representative director at payment and E-commerce distribution service provider Econtext

Hiroyuki Watanabe, operating officer and general manager,  Nikkei Business Publications (Cross Media Promotion Bureau)

Mikihiro Yasuda, COO at price comparison site Kakaku.com

Joi Ito, venture capitalist and CEO of Creative Commons

I would say this is a very impressive list, and even more speakers may be added soon.

You can register for the New Context Conference 2008 here [J], for free (!).

Tags: Event Report, Japan by Serkan Toto
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