Japanese mobile system/application developer KLab Inc. [J] announced that they had developed a clone of Kindle Developer’s Kit (KDK) and Kindle Emulator.

The official KDK has been available for limited beta developers since February. Klab release said that they could not wait approval so that they built the emulator from Amazon’s specification documents.

Currently, not all Java interfaces are supported, but two main classes which are needed to realize key input and screen rendering are implemented.

As testbeds, two popular games – Tetris and Load Runner – are made on it. Tetris’s source code is also provided.

Here is a movie how NES emulator is running on the KDK clone.

With the KDK clone, you may develop Kindle application before you can access official KDK. Although KLab does not mention it, Kindle applications may be able to run on this emulator (in your Java SE 6 on PC).

See Also:

KLab’s news release [J]

Tags: Japan, Software by Akky Akimoto
6 Comments »

Japan’s No. 1 social network Mixi [JP] just announced [JP] its member base surged past 20 million, meaning the site added 1.4 million users since the end of last year [JP] and 2.6 million registered users since June 2009 (the last time Mixi issued a press release about its member base).

By way of comparison: DeNA’s social mobile gaming site Mobage-town has over 17.25 million members (PDF/data for February 2010). GREE had 16.73 million users [JP, PDF] at the end of last year, but it’s very likely that it currently has more members than Mobagetown (GREE overtook rival Mobage-town (15.12 million vs. 15.10 million users) for the first time in October last year).

An interesting factoid is that while Facebook has managed to capture about 37.5% of the American population (116 of 309 million people) so far, Mixi’s member base of 20 million translates just to 15.7% of the Japanese population (internet penetration in both countries is almost identical at around 75%). Facebook opened up its site to all users in September 2006, whereas Mixi started its service in February 2004.

The Americans have entered Japan with a development base in February and are expected to launch a Japan-specific cell phone version soon.

Tags: Japan, News by Serkan Toto
3 Comments »