Takako Kansai, a developer working at User Local,Inc.[J] has released a service to measure the popularity of tweets.

Takako Kansai's blog[J]

The service named ReTweeter!, shows how many users could have read your tweets from number of your followers and ReTweets.

ReTweeter!

Features of ReTweeter! are;

• You can check how many users can read your tweets (No. of followers and No. of followers of users ReTweeted your tweet)
• You can check what is the latest tweet ReTweeted by many users
• You can check who is the person most ReTweeted

At the top page, latest poular tweets are displayed. From the left top menu, you can check popular tweets, daily ranking for popular tweets, and ranking of popular twitter users.

You could aslo search popular tweets for a certain user (limited only for Japanse users now)

Ex: my popular tweets

Currently this service is showing only Japanese tweets, but Takako is planning to release English version soon.

There is also a similar service called Retweetist, developed and operated by Mike Sheetal who is the founder of the ad agency in Tokyo, UltraSuperNew. Retweetist looks more like a social news service and on the one hand, ReTweeter! is more feauring on users.

Retweetist

mikesheetal.com

We would like to inform any updates when we can introduce English version for ReTweeter! .

Tags: Cellular Phone, Event Report, Japan, New Service by Hiroumi Mitani
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Club T, one of the biggest online T-shirts seller (like threadless) in Japan, suggests 7 meters high T-shirt which fits the Odaiba real-sized Gundam statue.

The 7m x 4.7m T-shirt, which is designed to the real size Gundam, will be tailored and shipped after one month, though it fails to meet the end date of Gundam exibition, start with 300,000 yen (3,080 USD) as the lowest bid price.

As we reported before, photo right with the Odaiba Gundam was sold by 26,000 USD recently. The buyer Tatsuhiro Minobe's video report costed 26,000 USD from Gundam's shoulder (actually he could not get on the shoulder but the shoulder level) can be watched here.

There are definitely people who are glad to pay a lot for anything Gundam related. Well, is this T-shirt really related? There are no bidder appeared yet and the auction will end in 7 days on August 18th.

via IDEA*IDEA Thanks for suggesting us to write this @taguchi.

See Also:

Who is the guy bought the right to go up on the Gundam Shoulder? [J]

Tags: Japan, Joke by Akky Akimoto
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On Friday, Tokyo-based website development company Level-Q[J] launched a brand new webzine named "Tokyo Nylon Girls[J]" after the synthetic fiber symbolizing a girl, because it is finer than a spider's thread, more shiny than silk, and more solid than steel.

Rie Tomimoto[J], also known as Jibunya 24[J] (see this article), serves as the editor-in-chief of the webzine, and a dozen of girls living around the city contribute their small talks on it periodically (or not periodically).   The webzine specifically focuses on unveiling the real intentions and "ecosystem" of girls (meaning females in their 20s and 30s in this case) living in the city.

My guess is, the webzine's content seems like what Japanizing "Sex and The City" minus sex plus lies equals.

Meanwhile, several guys were highly inspired by the Tokyo girl's webzine and might launch a new one called "Cotton Boys Japan[J]" by the end of this vacation season.

Correction: In the first edition of this story, a guy from Kyoto-based social bookmark service company Hatena was introduced, and it said he would get involved in releasing the Tokyo girl webzine's expecting counterpart, but we learned he has nothing to do with that.   Plus, the counterpart to be published in inspiration by the Tokyo girl's webzine was introduced as the title of "Kyoto Cotton Boys" incorrectly.   We apologize your inconvenience that this may cause.

Tags: Japan by Masaru IKEDA
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Wayz Japan[J], a Tokyo-based tech start-up company which develops e-publishing platforms, recently released two services that allow old-fashioned publishers to switch themselves into digital as easily as 1-2-3.

Last week the company introduced an iPhone/iPod touch app allowing users to browse the latest issues of 400 magazines.   Without visiting a bookseller nor worrying about possibly being warned by a bookseller's clerk to stop your browsing, you can check out TOCs and thinned pages of your favorite magazines for free.   To avoid paying high commission of the iPhone/iPod in-app transaction, you can make no purchase to download the entire edition of what you wish to read, however by clicking a button prepared for each magazine on the app, you'll be redirected to e-hon[J], an online bookseller operated by Japan's major book distributor Tohan[J].

Meanwhile, the company also introduced a website[J] aggregating local newspapers being published around the country, and made us possible to subscribe to it both in digital and in paper-printed form.   Currently seven local newspapers are participating in this service, and the company expects to enlarge the variation up to 50 newspapers by the end of this year.   Each issue costs JPY100 (approx. USD1.10) without some exception, and it mostly equals to a newsstand price.

Tags: Cellular Phone, Company, Japan, New Service by Masaru IKEDA
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If you ever lived in Japan, you know that Japanese address system is uneasy for people who get used to the western system on which all streets have a name and name+number identify the single location.
In Japan, addresses are rather area name.

Two Giants Yahoo! Japan and Google have been working well with this different system and providing pretty good service to Japanese web users. Out of 4 nationwide map companies (Zenrin, Shoubunsha, Increment P and Alps-sha), Yahoo! Japan helped bankrupted Alps-sha and merged it in April 2008. Google Maps is supported by Zenrin's data.

However, Kyoto, the thousand-years-old former capital, has yet another different method of address notation besides the official postal address, and that casual ones are used daily and on travel guidebooks.

The newly released Geodosu ("-dosu" is a typical Kyoto dialect suffix) Kyoto Traditional Address Search, now supports both Japanese and English, offers what Yahoo/Google Maps cannot do, search by the addresses which Kyoto people are really using. Kyoto geocoder API is also provided.

The Geodosu project is run by Locazing Inc. and Annai LLC.

Tags: Japan, New Service by Akky Akimoto
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