On Wednesday, Tokyo-based social app provider Pokelabo[J] announced that they had fundraised USD12M from Silicon Valley-headquartered VC firm DCM and IncubateFund[J], an investment fund by DeNA owning social app and mobile game platform Mobage-Town.

Pokelabo was founded three years ago by the company’s CEO and his “Mixi[J]-mates”.  It has developed flash games for feature phones, such as Samurai Kingdom (war simulation game) and Yakyutomo (growing a baseball team).

Reportedly they plan to recruit new personnel to expand their business and take the top of this sector in Japan.   Besides, they want to develop new services for foreign users and grow up to USD1.2B worth in the future, they say.

Tags: Company, Japan, News by Masaru IKEDA
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(Photo by Hatena PR[J])

On the last day of August, Japan’s system development guru Naoya Ito (@naoya_ito[J]) announced on his blog that he had stepped down from CTO post of Kyoto-based web services company Hatena[J](as reported in this Akky’s post).   His fans and followers spent a day pondering what his next step would be, but it was cleared on the next day.

He joined Gree[J], needless to say, a Tokyo-based tycoons of a social network platform and feature phone Flash games, as executive manager & producer of the company’s social media development division.

He started his engineering carrier with the development of Cocolog[J], a Movable Type-based blog platform by Japan’s largest ISP Nifty[J], then joined Hatena in 2004 and had developed a variety of social web services including Digg-like Hatena Bookmark[J].

He seems to lead the team for developing the iPhone apps and the Android apps at Gree.

See Also:

• Hatena: a web company with geekish tastes

Tags: Japan, News by Masaru IKEDA
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Continued from (Part 2)

Referred pages are all in Japanese, unless otherwise stated.

• Yahoo! Japan’s First AR App Is Showing Gundam Rival On iPhone via MyCom. Y!J release
• Kansai-ben Windows Customizer Changes Your Windows In 19 Different Japanese Dialects – commentary
• In Aichi pref., a man who had collected information of new books arriving at a library by his crawling program was under arrest for suspicion of interfering the library’s duty – so-called #Librahack incident, Asahi.com’s librahack news author gives supplemental info on his Twitter.
• Flash Animation Company DLE Aiming Taiwan Stock Market. Nikkei reported
• Chinese Media Reports There Is A Japanese Company Forces Female Workers Naked via 2-channel summary site – the evidence seems a porn film
• Interlink, a 15 year-old ISP which is known for providing fixed IP address service for a discount rate, is being complained about a seven-hour service outage which is scheduled this Thursday.
• Japan Communication Inc. Announces iPhone 4 micro SIM Using Docomo Network
• Oniichan – iPhone App Plays 300 Patterns Of Voice Saying “My Brother” From Little Sister
• Kodak releases Cerevo-like camera
• Mixi Tracks Down The Cause Of Their Long Service Down – A Memcached Bug
• Google starts promotion Google Places in Shibuya.
• Livedoor To Switch To Naver Search From Google – as Livedoor is now a sibiling company of Naver Japan, it is natural move. Japan No.2 search engine position race will be very hard but at the very low points.
• Kyushu Electric Power To Sell Non-heated Iron In 2012 via Slashdot.jp
• Bijin Tokei Osaka Signage At Osaka Station
• Japan Twitter Academic Meeting Established As A Local Mayer Had Announced
• Cup Noodle Brand Discontinue Ceremony Turned Out To Be The New Product PR Only 4 Days Later
• Plastic Model Gundam Robot In Cup Noodle
• Gree Introduces “Like” Button. Planned To The Outside Of Their Network
• Popular Blogger 100shiki Begins Groupon Clone via idea*idea, his another blog
• Higawari – A New Groupon Clone For Female
• SourceNext Greeting Card Package Announced To Have AR Feature – Not the world’s first, but may be the first commercial package
• Twitter-Gathered 101 People Orchestra Gave Their First Concert
• Nagareyama-city gives Android phones to council members for bill votes. – Interesting. Current wired-system costing 2 million yen per year is also interesting
• 4-koma Manga Generator From Twitter Timeline
• MIT-EFJ Business Plan Contest Held – grand prize given to MyTracks.jp
• Togetter Releases iPhone Reader App
• Yahoo! Japan Officially Announces To Keep Yahoo! Category(link directory service) Even After Google Search Switch
• Many Shops At Local Shopping Street In Kobe Enbraces Twitter – printed on their free brochure
• New Groupon Clone Hitoshina.jp – This time Japan’s First “No Discount” Daily Deal
• Hatena’s Charismatic CTO Naoya Ito Resigns

If you want to know any specific news more, but unable to find them in other English blog/media, please let us know.

Tags: Japan IT Links by Akky Akimoto
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