Nico Nico Douga Introduces Its iPhone/iPod App
Niwango[J], the owner of Japan’s most popular video sharing site “Nico Nico Douga[J]“, released its iPhone/iPod appon Monday. The app is for free and available only at Japanese AppStore.
With 3G or WiFi connectivity, the app allows you to search/play videos and leave your comment on Nico Nico Douga, however it does not cover the livecast category called “Nico Nico Live[J]“.
According to the app’s developer lead Mr. Masahito Mizoguchi, the iPhone/iPod app is developed based on Nico Nico’s mobile edition which has been introduced for NTT DoCoMo / au / Softbank handsets since 2007. Unlike the mobile edition which were developed on Java based technologies, the iPhone/iPod app needs to be coded in Object-C language. Such a gap of the development environments caused the developer’s suffering in adjusting image quality on the app. Also, it seemed so hard for them to deploy the service’s symbolic feature that overlapped subtitles run on screen in synchronization with video.
Niwango started developing the iPhone/iPod app last November, and it already completed in early March. But the company was forced to take longer time than expected, to make it pass Apple’s approval to put on the AppStore. Niwango doesn’t disclose the reason why it has been delayed, but reportedly it seems to have violated AppStore’s guidelines especially in terms of how Niwango manages the video contents.
via CNET Japan[J]
Author Information Masaru IKEDA has co-founded several system integration companies and consulting firms in Tokyo. He has been contributing serial columns to nationwide newspapers and IT periodicals, also he's currently serving as tech consultant for several web companies. See this for more bio.
His private blog is here. 2 Responses to “Nico Nico Douga Introduces Its iPhone/iPod App”
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Live[J]“. According to the app’s developer lead Mr. Masahito Mizoguchi, the iPhone/iPod app is developed based on Nico Nico’s mobile edition which has been introduced for NTT DoCoMo / au / Softbank handsets since 2007.” Clickherefor the rest of the article and a few screen shots!
When I first ran across this article I was a little lsot as to how I could get the app. After quite a bit of searching I found how. I have made a simple guide for others to follow and posted it here: http://blog.warll.com/2009/how-to-download-the-nico-nico-iphone-application-outside-japan-for-free/