Asiajin

A Nagasaki headquartered SNS focusing on connecting classmates that you used to be together with has been closed since early May, which incites its 3.5 million users about possible personal data leak and forces them to lose ways to keep in touch one another.

The SNS is “Kono Yubi Tomare[J]” also known as “Yubitoma”, named after a Japanese traditional kid’s play custom: when a kid suggests an activity to his friends, he holds up his index finger and shouts: “If you want to do something, then grab my finger!”.

Yubitoma was founded in 1997 by a housewife in Nagasaki, specifically for encouraging alumni association activities by entering the name of the university or the school from which you have graduated so as to connect you with your classmates.

On May 2nd, without advance notice, Yubitoma announced it would keep closed for the time being due to critical technical faults caused.    Since the incident, some news media have been attempting to contact the service’s management to find out the situation, but nobody has yet succeeded to interview them.

Yubitoma is also known for the incident that its ownership has been taken over by gangsters while the company’s founder has been running for the Nagasaki prefectural governor.　(But she was defeated in the election.) The directors of the company’s board were entirely renewed last year, and the company used be heading forward to expand its business.

———-

May 31st, 2009 Update:

According to the website updated, Yubitoma’s owner company approved its ownership would be handed over to a third party, which is called Yubitoma Restructuring Committee, consisting of the company’s corporate partners and several numbers of individual Yubitoma-goers.    The company says, it schedules to re-open the service on June 14th and there is no possibility of personal data leak.

Tags: Japan, Service by Masaru IKEDA
No Comments »

This coming Sunday, Toei Animation, Shueisha[J] and Fuji-TV will start broadcast the popular Japanese TV animation series “One Piece” on the Internet for North American audience, in association with U.S. based largest Internet animation distributor, FUNimation Entertaiment (inaccessible from Japan). Every episode will be available just one hour after its original broadcast in Japan.

(c)Copyright Eiichiro Oda, Shueisha, Fuji-TV and Toei Animation
OnePieceOffical.com (Accessible only from North America in order to avoid international copyright conflict)

“One piece” is aired every Sunday at 9:30am J.S.T. on Fuji-TV and its affiliate nationwide network in Japan, and the same episode will be available on the series’ official website throughout the week starting at one hour after the broadcast in Japan. (Every Saturday, 9:30pm ET, 6:30pm PT in U.S. & Canada) You can enjoy watching both English subtitle-captioned edition and English-narrated edition of the title for free on major Internet video distribution networks including Hulu and Joost as well.

Meanwhile, last month, VizMedia, a U.S. local subsidiary of a well-known comic publisher Shogakukan, started the same day release of Rumiko Takahashi’s popular title “Rin-ne” on her official website. A new episode comes out every Wednesday, and her fans can sign up an account for free and enjoy reading it at any time.

(c)Copyright Rumiko Takahashi and Shogakukan
The Rumic World (Accessible only from North America in order to avoid international copyright conflict)

These moves are definitely good for manga/anime lovers. In exchange for distributing copyrighted materials to the public for free, manga and animation publishers are aiming at expanding their business opportunities and restraining pirate editions spread by releasing new episodes on the same day when its original edition comes out.

See Also:

• Corporate Release: Toei Animation, Shueisha, Fuji Television and FUNimation Entertainment Announce Online Simulcast of ONE PIECE (Toei Animation)
• Japan’s Weekly Shonen Sunday Magazine And Viz Media Transport Readers To The Rumic World With The Sumulnateous East-West Debut Of Rumiko Takahashi’s Newest Manga Series Rin-ne (Viz Media)

Tags: Company, Japan, New Service, Trend, Video by Masaru IKEDA
No Comments »

NTT DoCoMo announced today it would launch a new service providing corporate users with health advisory for preventing their employees from adult disease.

If a corporate user applies for the service, NTT DoCoMo will start collecting vital data from pedometer-enabled cellphone handsets owned by the company’s employees, they can be advised by health nurses and dietitians for improving eating habits.

Initial setup fee is almost USD230 for a corporate user, and the price of monthly subscription fee depends on the number of employees that apply for the service.

NTT DoCoMo’s sister company and the owner of popular portal websites such as Goo[J], NTT Resonant[J] also announced it would launch a new portal site[J] specifically focusing on diet support. The new site can accept the data from pedometer cellphones subscribing to the DoCoMo’s service. The new portal’s top page will keep you update with the vital data collected including the number of steps you have taken on that day.

NTT DoCoMo is also planning to introduce a new FeliCa-based digital health device this fall. FeliCa is a contact-less RFID smart card system, and basically it’s embedded on cellphone handsets and used for digital wallet, commutation pass and age-verifying for cigarette
purchase from vending machines.

These digital devices and solutions may work as tachometers which are usually installed on freight vehicles to check up their work performances since the devices can track how often you have taken a rest. If the personnel department of your company had deployed these services, it might not be for the purpose of assisting in keeping your health condition better, but for checking up your work performance at a glance on the web.

Meanwhile, an Osaka-based web app start-up focusing on health and medical-related solutions, Intelligence Technology[J] launched a new website[J] that shows you prediction of your body shape and weight of a decade later by entering foods you ate on the previous day, your current body weight and genetic obesity factors.

It is not clear how the company earns revenues from this service, but it would be useful to motivate you to struggle for improving your body state before your partner would be disappointed with you a decade later.

Tags: Cellular Phone, Japan, New Service by Masaru IKEDA
3 Comments »

On Wednesday, Two Tokyo-based mobile tech start-ups Ceres[J] and Orso[J] jointly launched a forest growing mobile game called “Morippy”.   In the game a user can virtually grow a forest by getting along with three characters representing animal, plant and fungi on behalf of all ecosystem factors.

You can earn reward points on the game in proportion to the size of the forest you have grown.   Every time you make a redemption of the points earned, the two companies will plant larch trees in Inner Mongolia Autonomous District, Mainland China, in partnership with a Yokohama-based ecological consultancy, Carbon Free Consulting.

As more users enjoy the game and consume more points, there will be more tree planting to restrain desertification and sandstorm as well as creating employment needs in the region.

Ceres was founded by the former chief of the president’s office for a well-known dot-com company Cyber Agent, and is a strong company in developing reward point-enabled mobile sites that allows redemption in real life.   Orso was founded by the former vice president of a cellphone ringtone publisher Cell, and has an expertise in developing flash-based mobile sites.

Tags: Cellular Phone, Japan, New Service by Masaru IKEDA
No Comments »

It seems Japan is getting more serious as far as cloud computing adoption is concerned.

Nippon Telegraph and Telephone, better known as NTT, is planning to invest about $470 million into cloud computing system-related R&D over the next three years. This decision may just right come right in time (or possible half a year too late) as Japan’s companies have to overcome drastic drops in earnings and might be all the more interested in cutting costs through boosting cloud computing usage.

Starting this year, NTT plans to invest about $157 million yearly till 2012, about 8 times more Japanese media speculate the company spent in 2008 for cloud computing research.

NTT says some Japanese companies still shy away from cloud computing, in fear of what to expect in the case of a disaster, security threat or quality issue. These fears are going to be addressed through making use of proprietary encryption technologies and improved anti-disaster measures.

Employing nearly 200,000 worldwide, NTT is one of Japan’s biggest corporations. The company is listed in the Tokyo, New York, and London stock exchanges, with the Japanese government owning about one third of all shares of the company.

Via Nikkei [registration required, paid subscription]

Tags: Cellular Phone, Community, Japan, News by Serkan Toto
No Comments »