Official Twitter Japan blog [J] just wrote about their local partner Digital Garage’s announcement, which negates the news reported Twitter Japan will start paid account service.

In response to media reports stating that Twitter Japan will be launching a paid-premium accounts service on Twitter, we would like to officially state that this is not correct. To be clear, Twitter service in Japan is a free service and neither Twitter Inc. nor Digital Garage, Inc. (JASDAQ code: 4819, headquartered in Shibuya-ku, Tokyo, Japan, CEO: Kaoru Hayashi, henceforth DG) have discussed or have any plans for paid-premium accounts. Also to clarify, Twitter Inc. and DG enjoy a commercial partnership but do not have a joint-venture arrangement in Japan.

The recent media reports are likely a result of a misunderstood presentation by a DG subsidiary, DG Mobile, about potential business opportunities that it could explore as a third party. DG Mobile’s presentation was unrelated and separate from the Twitter and Digital Garage partnership.

Translated by Twitter from Digital Garage Release [J]

Digital Garage apologized (by DG Mobile) to mislead and took time for correction on the release.

When I saw the ITMedia’s first report, I thought that this is another service like Twinavi and Twicco (see below). Just a third party payment service like Super Chirp. But the mocked Twitter timeline page on the presentation seemed too integrated as an outside service, which might make the misunderstanding.

If you have been watching the history of Japanese Twitter “official” services, you may know that there are many services around the borderline of “official”-ness.

• Banner ads on the Twitter page in Japanese was confirmed by US Twitter as an experiment.
• Twitter Japanese cellphone version, was promoted a lot by Biz Stone’s attendance on its launch event. It seems official but they use another domain twtr.jp
• TwitVideo, video-sharing service by DG Mobile. This service accept twitter account/password so they should be able to access the main database of Twitter.
• Twinavi, “Japanese Twitter *Official* Navigator” shows “powered by twitter”, run by CGM Marketing, another DG subsidiary
• Twicco, Twitter Community Management Service by DG Incubation, another DG subsidiary
• @twj is supposed a Twitter Japan’s official Twitter account. But its profile does not have a web site link, and says “(I’m) helping Twitter Japanese Version management”. This account is listed on the Japanese suggested users, which has around 30 Japanese twitter users.

Even for Japanese readers it is not easy to tell which is official and which is not. Japanese official blog ( http://blog.twitter.jp/ if “twitter.jp” is official ) only had mentioned the cellphone site, few links to @twj but no other “subsidiaries’ Twitter related services”.

My impression is that what Twitter requires to Digital Garage and what DG wants to do in Japan are not the same, and DG uses its subsidiaries to chase more original activities.

That hastiness is somehow understandable for me, by seeing Twitter did not support Japanese cellphones more than a year after its break in English. When reports tell “twitter.com” traffic peaked now in US, Twitter in Japanese is still growing, but that is because Twitter is not such popular yet. And many other players (Mixi, Gree already. Cyber Agent and -maybe- Hatena soon) are starting competing microblog services for Japan market.

If you want to read more Twitter news, check here.

Tags: Japan, News by Akky Akimoto
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Last weekend at Ookayama Campus, Tokyo Institute of Technology, O’reilly Media‘s mechatronics magazine “Make” held the 4th meeting[J] and gave Japanese geeks the opportunities to present their gadgets to the public. Let’s have a look at some of remarkable and unique items which get us excited.

Tokyo-based tech start-up (founded by graduates from the University of Tokyo) TeamLab presented several items. Organoid is a combination of a webcam with an original PC application enabling to make a series of sound tones based on the color patterns printed on a paper. Just like a musical box disc, the gadget reads a music score painted in some colors and plays a song. But it has no motion device to roll out the paper, you should manually operate it and will have difficulty in keeping the same speed.

TeamLab showed us another entertaining presentation, and this is called Real Sketch Piston. When you draw a figure on a whiteboard, an overhead-mounted camera will detect it and gives it a motion on-screen according to the characteristics that the figure stands for. For example, if you draw a circle, that will bounce in the screen. If you draw a triangle with a rectangle (a rocket-shape), that will be lifted up and fly to the screen upside. Real Sketch Piston is exclusively developed for the event, and its forefather web-based edition, which has been developed for tablet manufacturer Wacom‘s brand new product promotion campaign, Sketch Piston is available here[J].

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Weekend gadget DIY’ers Alpaca Garage[J] presented a tweet cuckoo clock called Twiclock. If you post a message with the recipient name of @twiclock[J] on Twitter, the cuckoo will make an appearance and speech-synthesize what you’ve posted. Then the cuckoo will take a picture with a webcam placed next to her house, and send it back to you on Twitter, too.

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Gadget hacker Yojiro Uo[J] a.k.a. hwhack presented a twitter-enabled coffee maker having a girl’s personality with the name of Aoyama Misuzu (@misuzu_aoyama[J]). With the combination of an optical sensor and a wattmeter, the machine detects and tweets how many coffee cups it has served and how much the brewed coffee remains in the dripping jar. It is being used at a lab in Tokyo, and people working there just check up her Twitter messages when they have a coffee break, and they need not to come down to the machine to find how much the coffee remains.

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A collaboration work of DNP (Dai Nippon Printing) and 1PAC[J], “DNPAC[J] (pronounced Don-Pak)” presented a product called “Shashinki[J] (it means a mind projector and has the same pronounciation with a camera)”, which is a combination of the drawing tool app-installed-iPhone and a multi-touch table display. Choose a Chinese character expressing your emotion and draw it on the iPhone. Then put the iPhone on the table display. The software installed on the table device recognizes a character by stroke order, then you can locate the character wherever on the screen. In this demonstration, Japan’s satellite image is projected on the screen, and you may associate every single character with any part of the country based on your emotion. In accordance with the real-time weather condition, rainfall visual effects can be also added to the projected image, which helps you reproduce more clearly what you have in your mind.

* * * * * *

A spin-out from the University of Tsukuba and tech start-up in developing VPN software for the enterprise use SoftEther[J] and the University of Electro-Communications‘ spin-out Vivienne who won the grand prix of the student entrepreneur championship hosted by Tokyo’s prefectural SME promotion arm[J] with the invention of the 3-D hair style simulator in 2007, jointly developed a stuffed-bear-shaped motion capture product for individuals, it’s called Kooma (it copies “Kuma” meaning a bear in Japanese). Actually I asked them how it detects the motion, but they said no disclosure was allowed on its mechanism at that time, because their technologies might be under application for a patent. I suppose some kind of motion sensors are installed to every joint of the bear’s entire body.

* * * * * *

According to the organizer’s announcement, more than 140 exhibitors were attending the event.

FRISK MP3 Player

Starbucks Coffee cup-shaped audio amplifier and the imitation of Tokyu‘s LED station signboard telling you the next train departure (on the real time and the real timetable)

Event venue scene: Ookayama Campus, Tokyo Institute of Technology

See Also:

• Make Tokyo Meeting 03: Where You Can See Future, Magic And Junk In A Place

Tags: Community, Event Report, Japan, Technology, Trend by Masaru IKEDA
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Stickam Japan is a personal video streaming service, a Japanese version of US Stickam.com, which is said to be owned by Japanese.

Today on Stickam Japan, a girl whose handle is _mextli attempted suicide by jumping off her balcony, the 4th floor of apartment, during her live videostream, some watchers wrote on 2 channel BBS.

It seemed to happen around midnight November 28th Japan Time, police officers visit was watched by the program watcher net-users and reported on 2 channel. Those officers read up her farewell note and gave some sentiment in front of the webcam without noticing they were broadcasted, one watcher had recorded and uploaded that part on YouTube.

2 channel logs were summarized [J] on few 2 channel summary blogs and became buzzword among Japanese twitter users. No traditional media have reported on this yet at 5 a.m. Some 2 channel users wrote that she broadcasted slashing her wrist before on the same site and someone called police.

It is still unknown how she is. It is still possible that it is fake to get attention (I hope so).

There was another suicide attempt broadcast on NicoNico Nama Housou, popular movie site NicoNico Douga’s sub service for users livestream. Another girl cut her wrist a little on live [J], later she confessed that it was fake and the blood was red food colouring.

See Also:

Florida teen Abraham Biggs commits suicide broadcast online via webcam

Tags: Japan, News by Akky Akimoto
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