Asiajin

For three years David Eun, Google’s VP of strategic partnerships, has been working on persuade Japanese media giants to join the team.   The key stations of Japan’s two nationwide private TV networks, TV Asahi and TBS (Tokyo Broadcasting System) made agreements with Google on Tuesday, and the both broadcasters started distributing their news video clips and TV show trailers on YouTube, as well as using it to allow TV viewers to upload their amateur videos and to participate in 2-way program production process.

The both broadcasters used to tend to be too nervous to do something with YouTube, because it could be the center of illegal video distribution.   Both companies tested Google’s new technology that enable to detect illegally uploaded videos, and they confirmed it works effectively enough.

TBS learned 80% of all illegally uploaded videos on YouTube that have been originally produced by the broadcaster were popular drama series, and 30% of them had Chinese subtitles, TBS content business unit manager Natsuhiko Uji-ie says.  YouTube is reportedly considering deployment of viewer subscription program and PPV (pay-per-view), he expected to work with YouTube to develop a money-making video distribution platform.

Ryuko Furukawa, Manager of Crossmedia Development for TV-Asahi, says, their first meeting with YouTube started with illegal video issue.   But Google accepted a number of TV-Asahi’s demands on improving the accuracy of detecting illegal videos,  finally the broadcaster understood YouTube’s improved content ID management system works effectively.

Now, when you find your copyrighted video has been unintentionally uploaded to YouTube by the third-party user, you can choose an option from the sets on how to respond it.   1) block the video, 2) pursue who has uploaded the video and 3) monetize the incident.

For example, there were an YouTube video titled “JK Wedding Entrance Dance” which were uploaded by someone, and American pop music artist Chris Brown’s tune was used on it.   This video earned 26 million PVs, and the tune’s copyright holder Sony Music chose an option of “3) monetize” and put a link to the purchase on iTunes.   As a result, Chris’ tunes got high ranking in the number of music file sales and downloading.

via Impress Internet Watch[J] and IT-Media’s At-mark IT[J]

See also:

• TV Asahi Channel on YouTube[J]
• ANN (TV Asahi’s News Network) Channel on YouTube[J]
• TBS News-i Channel on YouTube[J]

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

Japan’s exclusive iPhone provider Softbank, the 3rd largest carrier, announced [J] that they will introduce bandwidth limit for heavy users of their data plan from December, to keep network quality and fairness of network usage.

In case of using the Packet-Teigaku(fixed rate)-Full plan [J], which Japanese iPhone users usually depends on, if your monthly usage exceeds 10 million packets, your connection can be slowed down by Softbank.

A blog iPod touch lab estimates how much you can with the 10 million packets, by referring past Softbank’s explanation. 10 million packets is considered as 1.22 Gbytes, which roughly matches 300 songs download, 10 songs per day, when one song is 4 Mbytes (4 minutes).

This restriction may not affect to users who uses text data, like e-mail, twitter, etc. But may affect heavy YouTube and other movie viewing users on 3G network.

Tags: Cellular Phone, Japan by Akky Akimoto
1 Comment »

Puff! by BottleCube Inc. is a newly released iPhone application features 3 girls whose skirts you can blow-up (the mic) or flick-up (the touch panel).

screenshot from appbank

Demo movie on YouTube has a subtitle of the app, i-Panchira.

A lot more screenshot are on appbank’s review [J].

via appbank

Tags: Japan, New Service by Akky Akimoto
No Comments »

Tokyo Gundam could not move like this!

Singapore Navy also has a transforming battleship.

via 21th Century China News Blog [J]

See Also:

Critics on news Huanqiu.com in mainland China [Simplified Chinese]

Tags: Joke, Taiwan by Akky Akimoto
No Comments »

Japan’s biggest online shopping mall Rakuten (nearly 50 million registered users in Japan/Asiajin articles) today announced [JP] a capital and business alliance with Bangkok-based Tarad Dot Com [TH], Thailand’s leading e-commerce company. The move marks Rakuten’s first serious attempt to gain in a foothold in the country, which has an Internet population of 13.5 million people (data from May 2008).

Before today, the Japanese behemoth’s business activities in that country were limited to running a Rakuten Travel Thailand office in Bangkok. Rakuten invested about 300 million Yen (3.35  million USD/2.3 million EURO) to buy 67% from Tarad. Around 160,000 merchants are currently registered at the Thai service. 2 million people are registered as customers.

Here is the Tarad top page:

And here’s the site’s Google Trends chart:

Rakuten says it will send three executives to Thailand, one of whom will serve as the CEO. Tarad was founded in 1999 and has just 42 employees, which is quite amazing (Rakuten: 5,600 employees).

Tags: Japan, News by Serkan Toto
No Comments »