Drecom[J], a company developing blogs and web2.0 services, has released an AD service to seek design of web banners for mobile sites from public users, named as "Atsumete Banner-na[J]"(meaning collect Banner-na).

A banana-shaped character is used as a mascot for the service. Advertisers post themes for banners, then public users create banners and register them to the service. Posted banners will be published to measure the advertising effectiveness and the best effective banner will be chosen as  an official banner to be used widely. The creator of last winning banner will be awarded 50000 yen ( about $500).

This service is only limited for mobile, but there is also a similar service released by Recruit[E] former to this one. A service named C-team, is a crowd sourcing service for advertisement design for banners. Users who posted highly effective banners will be rewarded by cashable points. This service is not limited for mobile websites, differ to Atsumete Banner-na.

Drecom is gaining quite a good benefits from J-Ken[J], a ringtone download service selling ringtones made by public users.  There is also a prosperous service to crowd source ad movies, filmo, operated by Enigmo[E].

Japan is a country known by many talented creative amateurs so these kind of ad services for crowd souring might increase further.

Tags: Cellular Phone, Japan, New Service by Hiroumi Mitani
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McDonald's Japan[J] teamed up with Nintendo, and today it launches a new service allowing Nintendo DS users to download Pokemon avatars, evaluation copies of game software and discount coupon for the humburger meals for free via WiFi access points installed at 3,200 McDonalds shops in Japan, which is 85% of the entire fast food chain.

Both companies used to operate a free content distribution service for Nintendo DS users at limited number of Mcdonald's shops on experimental basis, and to investigate whether the service give them any benefit in teｒms of calling in more minor guests and raising the profile of the game device.   They judged it's ok to go and decided to switch the service into full-scale operation.

See Also:

• Nintendo Zone[J]

Tags: Company, Japan, New Service by Masaru IKEDA
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In July, Hot Source[J], a Tokyo-based start-up company, will start online comic distrubution service specifically designed for iPhone/iPod devices, in association with Sakura Cube[J] operating an Internet comic sale site.   Unlike similar services that other iPhone/iPod app-based content publishers provide by scanning paper-printed comics, Hot Source's new series are originally developed to be seen on iPhone/iPod screen, which won't require you to enlarge pictures to read speech bubbles.

The company will bring out five titles in its July release, including a new comic inspired by Japanese classical literature and a true story comic series drawn by a well-known host club owner based in Kabuki-cho, Shinjuku.   Every episode costs 315 yen (approx. USD3.20 including Japanese consumption tax).

All comic titles are to be translated into English, and will be available at various local editions of iPhone/iPod AppStores.   The company expects its titles to get spread among the world's manga enthusiasts.

Tags: Cellular Phone, Company, Japan, New Service by Masaru IKEDA
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GREE, a mobile social network only operating in Japan, is adding members at an incredible speed. In April 2008, the number of registered users hit 10 million members already, but GREE expects a whopping 2 million more as early as the end of this month.

GREE offers dozens of (essentially) free games to play on cell phones and is probably more of a social gaming site. And the company is printing money, it seems (via ads and, much more importantly, avatar-related and in-game item sales).

Here are some numbers GREE is expected to hit for the current fiscal year (that ends June 30 for the company):

- Sales: $138 million (4.6 times more than in fiscal 2008)
- Pretax profit: $76 million (7 times more)
- Net profit: $40 million (7 times more)

These numbers don't come from nowhere and exceed the company's own expectations. For the current fiscal year, GREE invested 3 times more in ads than last year. The $20 million promotion budget goes into web ads, offline ads (for example in commuter trains and public spaces) and TV spots.

Here is a GREE commercial featuring Japanese "idol" Yukina Kinoshita that's currently on heavy rotation on Japanese TV:

The stock market rewards this performance with a market cap that currently stands at a whopping $1.4 billion. GREE, which went IPO in December last year, dwarfs former rival Mixi whose market cap currently reaches just $700 million. (With 17 million members, Mixi is Japan's biggest social network, but it doesn't have gaming content and is much stronger on the fixed web).

And GREE itself is highly optimistic for fiscal 2010, too. The company expects sales to jump to $200 million and wants to boost ad spend to $40 million in that year.

Tags: Cellular Phone, Community, Japan, News by Serkan Toto
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May 21st, the father of Ruby, Yukihiro Matsumoto aka Matz, visited Shanghai to attend RubyConf China 2009, the first large Ruby conference in China.

The conference was an astonishing success. 450 people attended the event. All talks except keynote were given in Chinese.

Matz gave a keynote which reveals design concept and characteristics of the language. Matz emphasized human-friendly attributes of Ruby, as always he does in other conferences.

Richard Huang from Ekohe has described how the design patterns such as Singleton, Observer, Command, Iterator, are implemented in Ruby. And he explained that how are they different from Java implementation.

Robbin Fan of JavaEye [CN] told that his JavaEye website, which is the second biggest developer site in China, is written with Ruby on Rails. He explained many optimizing methods which he learned from the experience of running a popular site. It is a surprise for Chinese attendees that "JavaEye" is running by Ruby on Rails.

In afternoon sessions, Robin Lu pointed out some common mistakes in Ruby/Rails development. A guy from ThoughtWorks gave a talk called 'Ruby/Rails in enterprise development'. A guy from PinPoint told that Chinese government is already using Ruby on Rails in their purchasing system.

Joseph Wang from SAP gave a detailed talk about BlueRuby project. BlueRuby is another Ruby implementation which runs on SAP platform. With BlueRuby, Fortune 500 companies will be able to introduce the power of Ruby to their enterprise systems.

Koz Masumitsu, a Japanese entrepreneur based near Shanghai, introduced a Ruby industry development plan of Shimane prefecture where Matz lives. Shimane is one of the most remote area in Japan, and their local government is serious about Ruby.

Matz was treated like a rock star. Many attendees want to take a photo with him, or want his autograph.

Tags: China, Community, Event Report, Person, Software, Technology by Shunichi Arai
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