A Tokyo-based robot manufacturing venture ZMP [J] (pronounced as Zett-Em-Pee) developed a new tune recommendation service jointly with Dr. Yasufumi Takama, associate professor at Faculty of System Design, Tokyo Metropolitan University.

ZMP is well-known as manufacter of “Miuro” or a small robot on two wheels that can play tunes and follow you around the house.   Refer to Tech Planet’s report for more details about Miuro.   Dr. Takama is the lead of studying recommendation engine technology in Japan.

ZMP’s recommendation service distributes to every  Miuro user the tune list that he or she prefers, which is generated based on the history of tunes he or she played ever.

ZMP’s president Hisashi Taniguchi says, he would like the company to be the music concierge by improving the service usability much more.  (quoted from Sankei Shimbun)

Tune recommendation service is not a new idea, one of the famous examples is Genius introduced on Apple’s iTunes.    In order to use the Genius feature, we are forced to turn on our Mac and launch the application, which may cause the users to feel tiresome for standing by.   ZMP’s brandnew service takes similar technology approach to that of  Genius, but the point is we need no longer have any PC or Mac to listen in favourite tunes.

ZMP plans to sell its SDK to cellphone carriers and content providers, and it will cost around USD 25,000 to 50,000.

See Also:

ZMP’s Press Release:
Tokyo Metropolitan University and ZMP jointly studied the new-generation tune-list distibution service based on Robotics and Web Intelligence technologies [J]

Tags: Japan, New Service by Masaru IKEDA
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Japan’s biggest business newspaper, the Nikkei, is reporting that around 100 Japanese companies are planning to participate in an online shopping mall to be set up on the Chinese web next month.

According to the Nikkei, major electronics retailer Yodobashi Camera, drugstore operator Matsumotokiyoshi, children’s clothing retailer Narumiya and mail order company Cecile are among the candidates.

Buy-J.com (inactive as of now) will be run by Japan’s Sumitomo Mitsui Card and China UnionPay. Chinese buyers will be able to pay through China UnionPay online settlement system. There are 1.8 billion China UnionPay cards circulating. China UnionPay is the only credit card company

SBI VeriTrans, which is an SBI holdings company and based out of Tokyo, will reportedly handle the website and customs procedures in China. Chinese buyers are expected to receive all goods ordered within two days via air mail delivery and distribution through China Post.

SBI VeriTrans Co. (3749) is to manage the Web site of the online mall and handle customs procedures on the Chinese side, with China Post delivering the goods in China. A specialized distribution center in Japan will enable the delivery of products by air to Chinese consumers as soon as two days after ordering.

The mall will be the biggest of its kind in China, with initially 20,000 different Japanese products listed. However, it’s also the first such attempt so that with $45 million USD, the sales target for the first year, can be called rather modest.

Via Nikkei (registration required, paid subscription)

Tags: Japan by Serkan Toto
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Mixi launched Mixi Nengajou (Nengajou = new year greeting card), on which user can send a real(=paper) greeting card to your MaiMiku(My Mixi = online friend) WITHOUT knowing their real address. You may choose 400+ designs from 98 yen (48 yen with sponsors’ ads, more expensive designed cards are also available). Mixi works with the recently privatized nation wide postal service Japan Post.

When you order the card, Mixi will send it to the receiver. If the receiver had not registered their address on Mixi, they are asked either to give their address to Mixi, or refuse to receive the greeting card.

The service began on November 28th. At December 15th point, there were 300,000 cards ordered [J], which is not a lot when every year every Japanese people sends nearly 20 greeting cards averagely (around 3 billion in total).

However, as every year Japan Post has been losing users, especially young generation, because of e-mail, cellphone and such formality being thought uncool, it could be a good stimulus to regain this traditional custom (and their sales) for them.

See Also:

Mixi Press Release Mixi Nengajou [J]

The total number of nengajou sent on the 2007 new years day was 2.03 billion cards. [J]

Tags: Japan, New Service by Akky Akimoto
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For many Japanese adolescents, cellphone is inseparable partner of their lives, you might have heard. Different from PC, kids can have their own (not-shared with your family/siblings, not filtered by home-broadband), can bring it with you to school, outside, anywhere (it is important when your writing back within 5 minutes to your friend’s mail is the only way to prove your true friendship). The largest Social Network Mixi already got more page views from cellphone than from PC (and #2 Mobage and #3 Gree are mainly on mobile).

Some are said to write their college reports by e-mail on cellphone. (*1) (*2) (*3)

For those cellphone-adapted youth, PC’s QWERTY keyboard does not necessary be the best input device. They had to use PC keyboard fewer times on their computer class, however, 0-to-9 number pads are more familiar, even faster way for them.

If number pads in cellphone order is more convenient, some youth feel easier to use it even for PC. Yes, there are some solutions.

Keiboard+IE is USB external keyboard having cellphone-keypads, mouse-like joy pad and many short cut buttons (for IE, as its name implies).

The same company Mevael are going to sell the new and more compact version, Keiboard+C, with which you can also change 3 cards for PC-type 10 keys and mouse-like direction pad. It will be shipped in January 2009.

There is also a “software” solution. For example, the shareware Beru-Uchi changes your PC 10-keys into cellphone arrangement.

This supports regular cellphone input and pager-originated combined methods which some cellphone support as more efficient and rapid method.

If you are interested in how cellphone pads can be used for making Japanese text, this movie gives you outline.

Actually, these alternatives for cellphone youth are not so popular. One reason is they have no strong motivation to migrate to PC.

And even though cellphone is easier for them, at some point they have to get used to PC culture, when they need to write more complicated documents with images/drawings, spreadsheets and presentations, usually for their graduation thesis, and when applying their first jobs. That is so-called becoming an adult, at least in 2008.

I do not know if the future that office work are processed on cellphone happens or not.

(*1) Cellphone novel contest held in Hokkaido University (which is fairly good one) in 2005 already reported [pdf, J] there were few students submitted their report by cellphone e-mail.

(*2) Prof. Hideki Sunahara, who is also a board member of Mozilla Japan, told that university students send their report via cellphone mail [J] in 2007.

(*3) There are even a story of student who wrote up their graduation thesis via cellphone mail. This story often comes up in people’s conversations, but only source I could find are tabloid articles without school name given. Probably is this Japanese urban legend?

See Also:

Keiboard+C brochure [pdf, J]

Tags: Cellular Phone, Japan by Akky Akimoto
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India with its massive population of 1.1 billion people and nearly 300 million mobile phone users (second only to China) should be a natural target for any company that’s in the web or mobile web business.

But still, relatively few companies, for example from Japan, are seeing the subcontinent as a lucrative target market, at least for now. Nihon Enterprise, a Tokyo-based mobile content provider, however, already made its move.

The company, which is listed in the second section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange, chose Indian content distributor Astute Systems Technology as the partner for delivering its mobile video games to customers in that country (J, PDF).

The title of the first game is Psychic Spike (J, PDF), an action scroller made in 2004. The game will be available for download in English (price: 49 rupees/93 Yen/1 USD/0.75 Euro).

Nihon Enterprise says one new title will be offered in India every month. The company is already delivering content in China and Thailand and currently employs 160 people in total.

Tags: Cellular Phone, Japan by Serkan Toto
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