Japan’s third largest karaoke company Xing[J](pronounced “eksing”) started Monday the free karaoke service[J] on MySpace Japan(MSJ)[J], which enables to record your karaoke performance on video or audio.  Twenty five brand new tunes will be added to the lineups every week, the video recording your performance can be shared with your friends on the SNS.  In association with the business partners, MSJ plans to have a karaoke contest soon specifically designed for the MSJ users to mimic the artist performance.

MySpace Karaoke[J] (http://karaoke.jp.myspace.com)

Furthermore, Xing introduced the iPhone karaoke app in early March, which allows you to enjoy singing with seeing lyrics and background picture slides on your palm.  In this season, sakura (cherry blossom) will be in full broom very shortly.  The Japanese celebrate that time of the year with hanami (cherry blossom viewing) parties under the blooming trees in the parks, have alcoholic beverages and sing popular songs.  (Some parties bring a generator or battery kit for running the karaoke set.)

Karaoke iPhone App:  Joysound Karaoke Organizer
(Joysound is Xing’s service brand.  The app is available at Japansese iPhone AppStore – Link)

For the first time in Japanese history, you may witness the people in many parks, who sing songs with holding the iPhone in hand as though it were a microphone.

Xing Inc. was co-founded by the Nagoya-headquartered sewing machine manufacturer Brother in 1992.

Note: Due to the music copyright conditions applied, your access from outside Japan to the software and the website shown above could be blocked.   Karaoke company Xing has nothing to do with the German-based business SNS having the same name.

Tags: Community, Event Report, Japan, New Service by Masaru IKEDA
No Comments »

“Google Kyuujyoushou Waado (Hot Keywords)”, which was introduced on the Japanese top page of Google on February 5th to show users recent most searched keywords, has been removed from the top page and the former top page is back (Google Japan’s announcement [J]), except “more” localization done in March.

The Japan original feature, which itself seems to have no problem when Google Japan is chasing No.1 Yahoo! by servicing rather passive (fond of links-menus) Japanese users than proactive (search-centric) western users, however was involved with unfortunate promotion mistake (2), (3). This short time recall still can be decided by that feature’s performance measurement by failing to lure new users from Yahoo! Japan, but it is possible that Google rethinks their localization strategy should not be done by letting itself resemble with their competitor Yahoo!.

So here is the current top page.

As you see, it now again has the button “I’m Feeling Lucky”, which is in ENGLISH. I really cannot understand why Google Japan has been trying to force regular (if they want to beat Yahoo! Japan) users to read and understand English phrase.

Tags: Japan, News by Akky Akimoto
No Comments »