Asiajin

It took 28 months, but now it has happened. Japan’s answer of sorts to American video platform Hulu, a content-on-demand service called acTVila, has racked up one million subscribers [JP, PDF].

acTVila is surely benefiting from the sharp rise in popularity of Internet-enabled TV sets, which are required to used the video-on-demand service. Users can download movies or TV series and watch them directly on their TVs without going through a PC first.

But in contrast to Hulu, for example, the service also comprises news, games, weather information and a lot of additional content that acTVila users have access to. Even Japan’s No. 1 online shopping site Rakuten, has a slot on the top menu. The service is designed to be more like a web portal (instead of a mere video-on-demand service), only optimized for consumption on a TV.

What I found interesting in the press release linked to above is that acTVila says 90% of customers are male and that the average age of their customers is 40.1 years. The service is a joint venture between Sony, Matsushita, Sharp, Hitachi and Toshiba.

Tags: Cellular Phone, Community, Japan, News by Serkan Toto
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Last weekend at Hachioji Campus of Digital Hollywood University in Tokyo’s surburb, “Make” magazine’s readers and gadget inventors came together and held an annual meeting titled “Make: Tokyo Meeting 03[J]“.   For readers who have never heard about Make:, the magazine is a quarterly magazine published by O’reilly Media and it contains articles on hardware hacking and technology-related DIY matters for hobbyists.

Mitch Altman, a San Francisco-based hacker who is famous for his work of The Brain Machine tuning up your brainwave, also participated in this meeting, he exhibited his machines and was chatting with other exhibitors in the venue.   These people sitting were trying the machine to have themselves put into a trance.

Near the venue entrance, there was a tournament competing how fast twined LAN cables can be untied.    A clothes dryer seen in the picture was used for making cables twined well for the match.

This is a science experiment kit designed not only for school pupils but also for their parents, in order to understand how electricity is generated and how electric pressure “looks” like.   The exhibited example showed us the kit in combination with an OLPC laptop (One Laptop per Child), which proves the kit can be also used for science classes even at schools in no-electricity area such as some African countries.

“Nihon Android no Kai[J]“, meaning Japan Society of Android App Developers, exhibited some examples of migrating the Android platform to other mobile devices including Sharp Zaurus[J] and Windows Mobile.

This machine set reads every message posted in the TV program related thread on Japan’s popular and largest bulletin board “2 channel[J]“, and it automatically controls a TV set to show you the program mentioned in the message.   This machine’s demonstrators hope, by enhancing this idea, the same technology can be used for remote controlled home automation applications in the future.

In recent days, though we usually look so much at web app stuffs, our future and innovation are created in concentration of hardware, software and the people who develop them.   I wish some of their inventions will be witnessed at storefronts worldwide and used in our daily life.

See Also:

• Make Tokyo Meeting 03: Adult’s DIY Craftworks Gathered In A Place (CNET Japan) [J]

Tags: Community, Event Report, Japan, News, Technology, Trend by Masaru IKEDA
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Lat Long Lab is an experimental services showcase by Yahoo! Japan’s map division (Alps-sha before Yahoo’s bought).

Their new service Tokyo decade shows you two maps of the same point in Tokyo, with current and 10 years ago.

The top page shows a good example, on the right, you see Tokyo Mid-Town (Roppoingi), where a famous pop singer got naked and arrested at its park, on the left, former Japan Defence Agency buildings are shown. The Tokyo Prefecture metro Oedo-line was under construction decade ago.

You may change the tab to “Fusion View”, on which you can see the past on the middle line and the current on the right on the single map. See Roppongi Hills!

There are some interesting points listed up where things have been drastically changed. If you have been, or visited Tokyo in last 10 years, it should be interesting.

• Shiodome Shiosite
• Akihabara
• New National Museum
• New and old prime minister’s office and residence
• Successful Tokyo Disneyland added Tokyo Disney Sea
• Toyosu, waterfront changed factories into offices, campus and shopping mall

Tags: Japan, New Service by Akky Akimoto
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