Japan No.1 social networking service Mixi, which recently passed 20 million users, announced that their friends invitation page now has "search friends from your gmail" function, in cooperating with Google Gmail with OAuth.
Some Japanese online media on China news reported that the opening theme of Expo 2010 Shanghai China, which is coming next month, is very similar with a Japanese pop song released last century.
A Japanese singer/songwriter Maya Okamoto's "Sonomama no Kimi de ite"(そのままの君でいて) in 1997.
Shanghai Expo Theme Song "Waiting you in 2010"(2010等你来) sung by Jackie Chan, Andy Lau and a lot of Chinese stars.
Both songs sound very similar for me. On the movie, lyrics and music are credited to another persons so this may not be a authorized cover song.
via Ascii.jp [J] and Searchina [J]
[Update 2010-04-18] AP reported that Shanghai Expo secretariat suspended use of the theme song.
[Update 2010-04-19] Japanese music news media Natalie reported [J] that Shanghai Expo officially took the original song of Maya Okamoto as the opening theme. It is so quick and fair. I appreciate all efforts to settle this down peacefully.
[Update 2010-04-22] Maya Okamoto's 15th anniversary best album was originally planned on May 10th without this song. However, by strong demands, Nippon Clown decided to dump the all pressed CD and re-press a modified version with this song on postponed May 26th. via Asahi.com [J]
The world's No.1 PC vendor Hewlett-Packard(HP)'s Japan branch is running a new campaign "Maid in Tokyo" [J], featuring two girls from Japanese idol unit Aidoringu(made up from "Idle"+"-ing") in maid costume, to appeal that the HP's PC are "made in Tokyo".
According to the HP site [J], since 1999 they have been producing PC in a factory in Akishima city, Tokyo, to lower the incipient failure, a fair amount of which is caused by vibration and shock during transfer. So shorter moving distance, more reliable their PC is, is their message.
On the campaign, you may apply for the prizes 1. Aidoringu live concert tickets, 2. alarm clock beeps with the idol's voice message and 3. note PC with idol's signature.
Writing chocolate message on pancake is Akihabara's new tradition at maid cafe.
One of the girl recommends you a quad-core AMD Phenom processor with 2TB HDD.
I do not know much how Hewlet-Packard promotes their PC in USA, but this maid thingy seems genuinely "do as the Romans do" style for Japanese geeks.
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).
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.
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