Twitnovels opened on 12th July by two Japanese companies, Heartrails and Marici, is a community based novel writing platform supporting Japanese and English "relayed" novels.

"Relayed Novel" is a form of online writing which you can sometimes see on Japanese forums like 2-channel. There a forum reader starts writing a short text, then someone continues, keep writing by group to finish, if they can. There has been many open source scripts for the "relay novels" and they were set up for years to decade.

Twitnovels offers a specialized platform only for this relayed novel writing, with Twitter account. You may pick up any existing unfinished novel and write a following story. You can also make a new branch at the middle of other novel, to change the direction of the story and create a new derived story.

Branching and Updating are notified to related authors. Feedback to each novel chunk can be commented, too. Those features encourage involved authors to keep writing on and group plotting/elaboration.

Japan is known by its "cellphone novel" culture. There is also a relayed style poet renga tradition lasting 700 years. Social authoring may generate something different from regular novels.

See Also:

English tutorial for Twitnovels on Twitnovels itself

Creative Writing Assignment

Tags: Japan, New Service by Akky Akimoto
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Cybridge[J], a Tokyo-based web service company supporting real shop and consumer businesses, launched an ASP-based deal-of-the-day outsourcing platform called Dadat[J] last Friday. The new service's name may come from a Japanese imitative word meaning pound-pound reminding you of the scene that many customers are rushing into your store. The service allows potential deal-of-the-day service providers to instantly launch their own flash marketing tools which are limited-offer programs provided by Groupon, Piku[J] (refer to this Asiajin story for more details about Piku), Kaupon[J] and the like.

For using the service, the service provider needs to pay 1.2 million yen initial installation fee and 5% brokerage of all purchases using issued coupons. The company also provides an option for shop owners as well as other deal-of-the-day services, its pricing is no installation fee with 10% brokerage of all purchases using the coupons (100% performance-based billing).

Cybridge says, major daily deal sites take 20% to 50% brokerage of transactions made, and can encourage shop owners to use Dadat because of its lower pricing.

The company also has a portal aggregating deal-of-the-day updates from a big variety of Japanese major service providers, which is called All Coupon Japan[J], and expects to navigate potential customers to Dadat from the portal as well.

Reference (Japan's major deal-of-the-day sites):

• Kaupon[J]
• Q-pon[J] (pronounced as que-pon)
• Minawari[J]
• Mincou[J]
• Nicopon[J]
• Piku[J]
• Goti*Tokyo[J]
• Q:pod[J](pronounced as que-pod)
• Prepon[J]
• GroupMALL[J]
• GRPI[J]
• GravyTokyo[J]

Tags: Japan, New Service by Masaru IKEDA
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On July 3rd, CA Mobile, Cyber Agent's mobile contents subsidiary, released an iPhone/iPod app "The Suppin."(Face without makeup). On the app, which features either Japanese gals or kyabajo-es(cabaret-club hostess. see Neo Japonisme's excellent article if you are interested in), you can scrub down their special makeup - "mori make" explained that high-stacked make-up on the release - by rubbing iPhone's touch screen to see their real faces. You can also see the special shots of them.

Gals version - featuring apparel shop-clerk gals and reader models of fashion magazine on Cute! Girls of town [J].

Cabaret hostess version title.

The price of the application is 230 yen($2.6) but discounted to 115 yen($1.3) by the end of July. Please do not ask me what on earth is so exciting on removing those thick mask.

Another make-up shock

At the same time on the Japanese web, one girl's surprising make-up video from Nico Nico Namahousou(=on-air live), which is a livestream section of Nico Nico Douga, shocked 2-channel boys [J] by showing their hidden techniques.

See Also:

CA Mobile's release [J, pdf]

Tags: Japan, New Service by Akky Akimoto
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Elecom Japan's new compact iPhone battery charger AVA-ACU01 series hitting on store this middle of July has a cute variation AVA-ACU01F1, face designed one.

The adapter takes Japan's AC100V and provide DC5V with USB socket, which your iPod/iPhone can be plugged.

Yes, that is cute. But a Japanese iPhone fangirl blog iPhone Joshi suggests to do it yourself.

Then you can get the one now at anywhere.

See Also:

Elecom release [J]

Tags: Japan by Akky Akimoto
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Sandwich chain-store Subway Japan [J] opened a new shop "Subway Yasai(=vegetable) Lab Maru Building Store" at very central Tokyo, in Marunouchi Building which locates just in front of Tokyo station. What makes the shop so unique is that there is a vegetable factory set inside the shop and it provides fresh lettuces for sandwich.

Pesticide-free lettuces are cultivated hydroponically at the "factory" placed at the centre of the store. 20 lettuces per week can be harvested, which unfortunately provides maximum only 5% of consumed amount, and costs doubly than regular lettuces you can purchase. But all vegetables brought in are also agrochemical free and the president of Subway Japan said [J] that they are trying to demonstrate their consciousness of food safety.

Subway Japan has been running Subway Yasai Lab (vegetable laboratory) [J] and the vegetable factory is researched with Leave a nest Co.,Ltd. The prototype of the factory was seen on this movie.

See Also:

Subway Japan's press release [J]

Subway Japan official Twitter account @subwayjp [J]

Tags: Japan, Technology by Akky Akimoto
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