NEC Electronics and Onryoku Hatsuden developed a prototype [J] of remote control which is powered by the movement of user's button-push actions.
User actions produce electrical energy, and enable the controller to turn on/off, change volume and switch channels without dry-cell batteries. Both companies are to promote the technology to TV set vendors, to realize it into practical use in 2011.
via Asahi.com [J]
Two manga-style news are launching within a month in Japan.
Manga no Shimbun(Manga Newspaper) is a website offers news in Japanese comic style, launched October 15th 2009 by KaBa Net [J].
News about US president Obama's Japan visit
Manga no Shimbun covers four categories, Politics/Economy, International, Society and Entertainment/Sports.
On the launch announcement [J], also in manga by (probably) the chief of editor, he says they have plans for cellphone sites, multi-language translation to English, French, Korean, etc.
Nihon IT Manga Shimbun (Japan IT Manga Newspaper) seems to start on November 12th 2009 by Trend Pro [J]. There are no official release found and the site tells "Open Beta".
News about Firefox 5th anniversary
This site, as the site title implies, only has IT related news, however, the top-right tabs, currently disabled says, "Economic" and "Politics" so these two other categories might appear soon.
In the country where huge number of comics are published, where not only kids but many adults read them, it is wise to reach people in manga style, I think.
KaBa Net launch release [J, pdf]
Tvitter [J] is a Twitter client widget for Sony LCD Television Bravia.
Some of latest versions of Bravia support AppliCast platform, on which user can program their own original widgets.
Bravia user can go on her/his Bravia to this URL http://www.jp.sonystyle.com/Taiken/Appli/ , install the widget, and check the latest tweets and post to twitter on your television in a living room. It seems only Japanese version is available with Japanese menu. If you want taste it, "No.0017" is the number of the application.
Japan's largest social networking service Mixi is showing KDDI au(No. 2 cellphone carrier)'s new cellphone mail flat-rate plan commercial on its log-in page to 17 million users.
Although Mixi is a membership service, as it is pre-login page, everyone can see it.
KDDI au recently started its fixed rate internet mail plan "Gangan Mail"(gangan is an onomatope expresses going vigorously), which makes users can send and receive unlimited mail, including photo and movie with 1,095 yen (12 USD). Other big players, NTT Docomo and Softbank Mobile quickly responded with similar plans.
KDDI au's TV commercial film,
Recently in Tokyo, there was a marriage fraud case that a woman is suspected of having murdered her several boyfriends. According to several news media, due to the effect of the case, Japan's e-commerce giant Rakuten had been planning to launch an online marriage hunting site, but they were forced to push back the release date.
In this recession, young people tend to save money for hanging out with their friends, and now web-based marriage hunting services are much popular among them to find their future fiances. But in the case, the suspected woman used those online services to find her boyfriends that she may have murdered, Rakuten is now working on redesigning menus and system architecture of the service to avoid possible provoking similar cases.
Incidentally, Rakuten took over Japan's largest dating agency O-Net[J] in 2007.
(Click to enlarge.)
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