Google submitted a revised settlement to the NY Federal Court Friday seeking approval of an agreement that would clear the way for continuing operation of Google Books, Google's book retrieval and online sales service.   To avoid legal conflicts with publishers and authors in Japan, France and Germany, the settlement redefined the service so as to deal with books which have been published only in English-speaking countries such as US, UK, Australia and Canada.

Google, the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers reached the settlement to a copyright infringement suit, but International PEN, Japan Writers Association[J], Mystery Writer of Japan[J], China Writers Association[C], and other book writers' groups in several nations are standing against it.

Japan's Agency for Cultural Affairs has reportedly asked the U.S. government to handle this case in accordance with international copyright treaties and to provide Japanese copyright holders with sufficient information on the settlement.   Open Book Alliance, consisting of Amazon, Microsoft and Yahoo, has blamed Google that the settlement is superficial.

The NY Federal Court also announced it would hold a public hearing next February for giving the stakeholders opportunities to express their requests asking for further revision on the settlement.

See Also:

Press Release by Japan's Agency for Cultural Affairs:
Concerning about the lawsuit of Google Books in the U.S.[J, PDF]

Tags: Japan, News, Trend by Masaru IKEDA
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Tokyo-based mobile tech start-up developing photo recognition apps, J-Magic[J] is now said to shut down its business and office very shortly, some sources say. The company was founded four years ago by Mr. Takuya Miyata[J] (@takmiyata[J]), the former CEO of Santa Monica-based biometrics and photo recognition tech venture Neven Vision (acquired by Google in 2006, refer to this TechCrunch article for that), and it's well known for having developed a series of mobile application titles using Oki Electric's photo recognition technology, such as Kao-Cheki, AdPhoto and Magic Loupe.

• Kao-Cheki: By taking someone's portrait with a cellphone embedded camera, the app tells you which celebrities he/she resembles.
• AdPhoto: Unlike text-based search advertising services, the system finds what pictures are placed on a website and provides a series of appropriate ads to the website in accordance with the result of image analysis.
• Magic Loupe: Designed for the consumer use at bookstores, DVD rental stores and other street retail services. When you find an interesting title at the stores, you can find reviews commented on that by someone who has viewed it, just by capturing its cover or artwork picture. With this app, you no longer need to trace 2-D barcodes on the merchandise packages to find something.

Meanwhile, Mobile Factory[J], an Internet promotion service and mobile content provider and a subsidiary of JASDAQ-listed Internet ad agency Opt, announced it would take over Kao-Cheki including the service operating staffs who had been formerly employed by J-Magic.

J-Magic won the TechVenture 2008 award (refer to Asiajin author Serkan Toto's Tokyotronic), an annual tech start-up presentation contest which is hosted by CNET Japan (now, Asahi Interactive[J]). J-Magic is share-owned by Tokio Marine Capital, Mizuho Capital, Orix Capital, Olympus Optical and Rakuten Strategic Partners[J], and worth about USD350M. The company has made no announcement on the reason why it shuts down.

Tags: Cellular Phone, Company, Japan, News by Masaru IKEDA
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Japanese women are known to feel ashamed even by their sound of peeing listened by other buddies. Portable noise maker Eco Hime (= ecological princess), which saves you when you are in the public bathroom accidentally does not have the built-in noise generator, are now visually improved as well with popular characters.

The characters are, Mickey and Minny, Winny the Poo, Stich, Tinkerbell, Cheshire Cat, Alien, Betty Boop, Elmo, Hello Kitty, Gachapin and Rody. It's more fun to keep with youself.

These fake noise generator will refrain Japanese ladies from spending averagely 1-2 times of extra flush each time, which becomes 2,000-4,000 litres (500-1,000 gallons) in one month, as they say.

Tags: Japan, Trend by Akky Akimoto
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Although it is November, the season of 2009 ranking comes! Yahoo! Japan discloses their annual ranking by what keywords people searched in this year.
As always, all Japanese search engines and portals will follow, but Yahoo! Japan is the No.1 search in Japan, this ranking is one of the best to describe "regular" people's search behaviour, except the keyword "Yahoo".

PC search

As you see, most high-ranked keywords just stay the same positions.

Some notable changes

"HelloWork"(government job centre for unemployment) moving up from 20th to 13th may show that more people have bitter time this year.

Boosted web services:

• Kakaku.com(Price comparison service) 12th(from 22nd)
• Amebro(Blog hosting) 14th(-, out of top 50 in 2008)
• Han Game(online game) 15th(21th)
• Cookpad(recipe site) 20th(47th)
• "Zenryaku" for Zenryaku Profile(mobile profile site) 34th(-)
• Google Maps 42nd(-)
• Zozo Town(apparel mall) 46th(-)
• livedoor(portal) 47th(-)

Services Losing positions:

• Wikipedia 26th(19th)
• Gurunabi(restaurant guide) 53rd(35th)
• Rikunabi(job matching) 64th(37th)

None of "Twitter" or "Facebook" appeared on the top 100, yet.

Mobile search

On mobile ranking, 7 of 10 keywords remain from 2008 ranking. 3 bbs sites went away, one of them stopped the service.

As always, erotic words seem to be excluded from the rankings.

Tags: Japan, Trend by Akky Akimoto
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BitWallet, Inc. [J], a company has been running Edy [J] since 2001, will allocate new stocks to a third party at the end of this year, about 3 billion yen of which will be bought by Rakuten.

Rakuten group, centres the giant e-commerce mall Rakuten Ichiba, purchased KC Card, a credit card company in 2005 (renamed to Rakuten KC Credit Card), online bank E-Bank in 2008, Rakuten Securities in 2003.

Edy's device (boths card and chip in cellphones) have been issued over 50 million, which is bigger than any other digital money service in Japan. 6 out of 7 major convenience stores support Edy. So Edy is successful in terms of how widely to spread among people, but BitWallet has been recording red inc in 9 consecutive fiscal years.

See Also:

Rakuten's release [J, pdf]

Edy Chief Strategist Interview [J]

Tags: Japan, News by Akky Akimoto
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