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Osaka-based catalog mail order giant Senshukai[J] is going to introduce an iPhone/iPod app allowing you to check up showcases filled with fashionable clothes.   It is now under Apple’s consideration for upcoming release and will be available at AppStore next week.

Senshukai has an experimental website, which is called Bellmaison Lab[J], developing and demonstrating new services for the new-generation mail order schemes.

The new app is developed by a tech start-up Yappa, and based on a platform which is also used for Sankei Newspaper’s iPhone/iPod app.   When you find something you wish to purchase, you will be connected to a sales representative on the phone by clicking an order button seen on the app screen.

I wonder why an ordering process cannot be completed on the app, and I suppose Apple might prohibit any kind of money-making transaction to be made through iPhone app platform, that’s why potential shoppers are forced to make a call for an order.   Leafing through the catalog and an ordering process are separated, which might be good for fashion shopping addicts in order to control their desires.

July 7th Update:

We learned that Apple had announced to support in-app purhase feature on iPhone OS 3.0 and its later.   As soon as the app supports the feature, you’ll be able to purchase an item without making a call to anyone.   But If a merchandiser uses the feature, it has to pay 30% of the purchase price of each item to Apple.
http://developer.apple.com/iphone/program/sdk/inapppurchase.html

Tags: Cellular Phone, Community, Company, Event Report, Japan, New Service, News, Service, Software, Technology by Masaru IKEDA
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Agile Media Network held a conference “Internet Changes Election?” [JP] on April 24th. Statesmen and NPOs discussed about the use of Internet for election in Japan.

Shin Itoh of Japan Initiative [JP] gave a 30-minutes talk on Japanese Election Law. He said that the law is unreasonably strict. Electoral campaign is only allowed during official election term. Requesting a vote to specific person is considered as electoral campaign.

Vote request can be done only by the methods specified in the law, such as:
* yell candidate’s name from car speaker
* send limited number of postcards.
* post posters to official bulletin boards.
* hold mass meetings.

Taro Kouno, a Representative of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), and Kan Suzuki [JP], a Senator of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), both agreed that the law is need to be changed, and campaign over Internet should be allowed too.

Kouno commented that Japanese statesmen are already using Internet very heavily. He thinks that Internet use is allowed except official election term.

“Someone sent me a Harakiri costume.”

However, Kouno worries that most bloggers and 2channelers don’t confirm the fact of their writings. Many bloggers wrote that the change of Nationality Law which is made by the Supreme Court is masterminded by Kouno, and someone who believed that threatened him.

Daigo Satoh is operating a NPO called “Dot jp” [JP] which sends students to statesmen’s office as intern. Suzuki said that most of the students have clearly negative feeling over statesmen, but after the internship, the students changed their mind completely. Suzuki feels negative feelings are caused by media bias.

Satoh is also a mastermind of Yahoo! Japan Politics [JP]. Yahoo! Japan Politics provides detailed database of statesmen and their policies.

Satoh emphasized that Election Law restricts not only politicians but also applied to voters too. He read all articles of the law one by one, and asked questions to Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications and the Board of Elections. The ministry and the board said that the law is too vague to reply a clear answer. They answered that the law is finally interpreted and executed by the National Police Agency.

Kouno admitted that many statesmen hesitate to criticize the National Police Agency, because the NPA will revenge on statesmen by arrest them for illegal campaigning.

CEO of Agile Media Network, Motohiko Tokuriki concluded that people can do nothing for election because the police is too terrorizing in Japan.

Kan Suzuki declared that the DPJ is eager to change election law, and ready to discuss with the LDP, the ruling party.

Tags: Cellular Phone, Event Report, Japan, Society by Shunichi Arai
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On Tuesday in Roppongi, Tokyo, Glocom (Global Communication Center, International Univ. of Japan) held a workshop focusing on how we can take advantage of Twitter for improving our politics.

Invited panelists are:

• Fumi Yamazaki(@Fumi), freelance researcher and former project manager for Joi Lab, Digital Garage.
• Daisuke Tsuda(@tsuda), freelance IT journalist and recently reporting on Twitter about undergoing developments about an event when attending it, and Japanese twitterers call that behavior “Tsuda-ru” (an Internet slang) after his name. Now it is a boom among people who use Twitter and frequently attend social events around the corners in Tokyo.
• Gaku Hashimoto[J](@ga9_h), known as one of two diet members who have their own Twitter accounts and often post Twitter messages about their perspectives and undergoing developments in the parliament house. A son of former Japanese prime minister Ryutaro Hashimoto[J](deceased).

Mr. Tsuda’s presentation was being reported by an audience on Twitter, in other words, was “Tsuda-rareru” (the passive voice of “Tsuda-ru“) at the event, but he seemed to have complaint about what it is called.

Twitter is originally intended for telling updates around its users to their friends, and it is so natural that every tweet reflects what they see and hear. I call the behavior not “report” but “live in text” since I want to emphasize a function of Twitter as media, which allows us to tell others something without subjective relief.

Ms. Yamazaki presented on how Twitter plays a role for Iranian protest against presidential election results, and introduced Twitter had shifted scheduled system maintenance to avoid hampering message posts by protesters.

It is said that Japanese diet members using Twitter are only two guys, who are Gaku Hashimoto from LDP (Liberal Democratic Party) and Seiji Ohsaka[J](@seiji_ohsaka) from DPJ (Democratic Party of Japan). Mr. Ohsaka is known because he has reported the debate between party heads on Twitter (Mycomi Journal interviewed him on this[J]). The extremely small number of diet members using Twitter easily reminds us why there’s no significant developments on the talks to revise the public officers election law as more suitable for the Internet-based community.

This report was abridged from Umihiko Namekawa(@namekawa01)’s article for TechCrunch Japan under their approval for the quotation.

“Twitter and Politics” event was organized by Masahiko Shoji(@mshoji), Chief Researcher for Glocom, International Univ. of Japan.

All tweets on the event are tagged with #twpo on Twitter[J].

Presentation slides used at the event are available below:

Twitter Overview (by Fumi Yamazaki)

Twitter and Iranian Protest (by Fumi Yamazaki)

Japanese Characterestic on Using Twitter (by Daisuke Tsuda)

Tags: Community, Event Report, Japan, News, Society, Trend by Masaru IKEDA
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On Tuesday, June 30th, two people from Twitter USA had an user meeting [J] with 200 Japanese users at Omotesando.

signboard

“t” and “tsu” (the first letter of “twitter” in Japanese) hat receptionists welcomed Japanese twitter fans.

Newly recruited Japan Country Manager Yukari Matsuzawa (@yukarim) and Head of Mobile Kevin Thau (@kevinthau) came down from San Francisco.

With @f-shin, who runs the most popular cellphone twitter front end service movatwitter, which must be thought as an important third party app for Japanese users, is also promoted on the Twitter Japan’s top page sidebar frequently, I asked Kevin if Twitter is thinking an official mobile site/app for Japanese cellphone. His answer is no. He explained to us that device specific sites/apps are expected to be made by third party by utilizing API, instead of Twitter themselves. That is somewhat disappointing for me because in Japan, many sites have more traffic on mobile than PC and there are a lot of things you can add by making cellphone specific apps and/or career official menu.

By the way, movatwitter obviously includes the trademark “twitter” in its service and domain, recent “tweet” trademark news reminds me.

Also, some users questioned to Yukari if the current search function which is simply broken and not working with Japanese language would be fixed in near future.

Current Twitter search takes keywords by using white space as a splitter, which makes no sense with languages like Japanese (and Chinese, Korean, etc. I guess). So the search results on twitter often becomes blank. Yukari said that they are working on the issue and it would be fixed soon in this summer by introducing tokenizer algorithm for Japanese.

Joi Ito’s speech as a board of Digital Garage, collaborating on Twitter Japan with Twitter

See Also:

Popular blogger @kengo’s report [J] has more photos.

Tags: Event Report, Japan by Akky Akimoto
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