As you might hear from the news, the Japanese pop star Tsuyoshi Kusanagi（草彅剛, a.k.a. 초난 강 or Chonan Gang in South Korea）, a member of popular group SMAP[J], was arrested Thursday for public indecency after being found drunk and naked at a park near Roppongi, Tokyo.

On the popular video sharing site Nico Nico Douga[J], some curious onlooking videocast enthusiasts brought live pictures shooting TV crews and showbiz reporters who were at the crime scene for covering the story, and the others showed live images of the police building where Tsuyoshi was detained inside for an investigator’s examination.

Japanese government has used him as a promoter for digital terrestrial TV broadcasting (a.k.a DTV in the U.S.) which replaces analog broadcasting in 2011. They are afraid if his arrest may dampen the widespread use of digital TV sets in Japanese households, which may force them to postpone the transition deadline of Japanese TV industry’s road-map.

A screen-shot above was quoted from Nico Nico Live[J], a livecast category on Nico Nico Douga.

This livecast was performed by an onlooking guy in Thursday’s lunch break, he mimicked Tsuyoshi, took off his clothes and entered a pond in the park where the pop star had been found. An audience watching it expressed pros and cons while they ate lunch at their offices. The park is located next to Tokyo Midtown shopping complex, which was built a few years ago at the ex-site of Japanese Defence Ministry‘s Headquarters.

See Also:

• Tsuyoshi‘s fan and blogger traveling in Cambodia started a signature-obtaining campaign online[J]: 10,000 signatures expected to be submitted to mass media and Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications in the hope that they will show some leniency in his situation, by refraining from removing him from the leading roles.
• An another fan also started running a campaign online[J]: 100,000 signatures expected to be submitted to the prosecutor and Tsuyoshi‘s management office, by asking them to dismiss the case.

Tags: Cellular Phone, Community, Event Report, Japan, Korea, News, Person, Video by Masaru IKEDA
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Mixi [JP] (TSE:2121) held a conference to introduce their new service “Mixi Appli”. Mixi Appli provides an OpenSocial-based application platform for developers.

Mixi Appli is one of the three services provided on “Mixi Platform”. Mixi Platform provides Mixi Appli, Mixi Connect (OAuth) and Mixi OpenID.

CEO, Kenji Kasahara briefly introduced Mixi and Mixi Appli. And then CEO of Google Japan, Koichiro Tsujino gave a very short talk about OpenSocial. Kenji Kasahara emphasized that Mixi is going to be the world’s first social application platform which provides full features both on PC and mobile.

Hiroyuki Oyama, a technology advisor of Mixi, explained an API of Mixi Appli.

Mixi Appli has two user interfaces “Canvas” and “Feed”. Canvas is a full page canvas which works as a main screen of apps. Feed is a short text message which appears on the user’s homepage. Canvas is defined by Gadgets.xml of OpenSocial API, and pages can be written with HTML/Javascript/Flash.

Mixi Appli provides 5 APIs such as Person & Friends API, Community API, Activities API, Persistence API, and gadgets.io API.

Mixi is going to release Mixi Appli API for mobile on 24th April. Mobile version of Mixi Appli is only provided for approved developers.

Akinori Harada, SVP of Mixi Division, gave a detailed talk on Mixi Appli.

He predicted that the next generation of Web sites are going to be based on social graph. Social graph based sites are not “globally social” like Digg, Flickr or Youtube. Social graph based services have values such as “sharing”, “contextual” and “empathy”.

Mixi Appli provides two methods of monetization for developers. One is a Mixi official ad program which pays per pageview. Ad revenue starts from 0.01yen ($0.0001) per pageview, and the revenue increases proportionally with pageviews and uniqueusers. Another is a Mixi payment API. Mixi payment API supports micro-payment.

Harada announced Social Application Award, the award which is given to the best Mixi Appli. The winner receives a million yen ($10,000).

Mixi Appli will be officially launched on August 2009. Subsequently, Mixi ad program and Mixi Appli for mobile launches on September.

Harada also announced that Mixi formed “Mixi Fund” to fund Mixi Appli developers. Community Factory Inc. [JP] received the first investment of the fund. They didn’t disclose the amount of the investment.

Community Factory plans to release 3 applications, which are Dynamite Panic, Group Chat, and Moso Shopping.

CTO of RockYou, Jia Shen unveiled Mixi Appli version of their SuperPets application. Mixi Appli version has special Hello Kitty items for Japanese users. Harada commented that RockYou has a larger number of pageviews than Mixi.

Makoto Asanuma, an executive of Bandai Namco Games, said that they released an application called “Birthday Cake” which provides a special collaborative way to celebrate their friend’s birthday. Bandai Namco Games is already providing games and characters for existing Mixi services such as “PicoMiku”, “MikuCole”, and “Mixi Nengajo” (New year card).

Minoru Kimura, a head of Recruit Media Technology Labs, boasted their plan to launch 30 applications. He showed 3 applications as example. “Kin-en Marathon” (Quit Smoking Marathon) is a collaborative application to help quit smoking. “Senchaku Sama” (Mr. first-comer) helps users to do something such as party registration or simple giveaway in first-come-first-served basis. “Commercializer” [JP] is an online video editing service which enables users to create their own TV commercial.

Tags: Company, Event Report, Japan, New Service, Service by Shunichi Arai
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