Following to the cloud girl Claudia, Microsoft's Japan local branch tries to appeal their target by using a new character.
The Microsoft Virtualization campaign page suggests three Hyper-V solutions to Small and Med sized enterprise. The character name and other information are not disclosed but some anime fans already pointed out that it must be by an animator Ken'ichi Yoshida.
Microsoft Taiwan also updated its Silverlight promotion site for summer on July 20, with a free game to get their character's wallpapers. (via ITMedia [J])
Are you a Japan-based entrepreneur interested in taking part in a 7-day design thinking and innovation boot camp that will take place in October in California? Then you should head over to the website of the so-called Tofu Project.
What is the Tofu Project about? Founded by Tokyo Mango blogger, tech writer and book author Lisa Katayama, the goal of the project is to bring a total of 10 young entrepreneurs from Japan together with great minds in the San Francisco Bay Area, arguably the tech hotspot in the world.
For one week, people like Dave McClure, Joi Ito, John Maeda, and the founders of Kiva will exchange ideas with those Japanese entrepreneurs on how to "to re-imagine the future of Japanese innovation" in order to make "quirky, weird" tech from Japan globally relevant (the initial program outline can be found here).
The leaders of the Tofu Project have chosen a total of 9 entrepreneurs from Japan to go to the US so far, but here's the chance for everybody who is interested in the last spot: in cooperation with Japan's biggest social network Mixi, the Tofu Project is running a special video contest to select a lucky winner.
You have time from July 22-July 24 (JST) to submit an application to the Tofu Project, explaining (in English) why you think you are eligible to take part in the program and what fresh idea you can think of (a team of judges from Mixi and the Tofu Project will decide on who won at the end of this month).
You can find more information on the "mixi x Tofu Project" contest here and here.
This app can be used everywhere, but probably it is only needed in Tokyo.
Densha de Suwaru (sitting down on train) by Velc is a newly released free iPhone application to make your own database of passengers whom you commute with every morning and night.
On the app, for each other passenger you will make a list of features, on which line at what time train, on which days of week, from which station she/he rides on and which station she/he gets down, gender, age, colour of her/his cellphone, smartphone and bag, and more notes.
You can make montage pictures of your comrades on fully-packed train.
Taking photo may be easier but that is not recommended. Chinese proverb says "Don't tie your shoes in a melon field, and don't fix your hat under a pear tree".
After adding good number of data, you will be an expert to find who is the next leaving one from all seated passengers.
Takako Kansai[J] (@kansai_takako), a full-time engineer at Tokyo's web service start-up and also the best known tech geek girl in this country, just released her first iPhone app called Zaim on Tuesday.
Zaim, meaning "financial affairs" in the Japanese pronunciation, makes you possible to easily note where you have bought something, what you have bought, and how much you have paid for it, on the iPhone app. You are allowed to share your expense records with other users, that's why the app is subtitled as the social account book, compare the characteristics of using money with those who have a similar demographic profile with you, and find a better way to save your money.
She lives in Yokohama, a Tokyo's adjacent city, and she has been developing the app in her one-hour home-office daily commute, and spent three months to complete it, TechCrunch Japan reports. She has enhanced its functionality that allows users to handle up to 19 currency units both in English and Japanese, and expects it gain user traction from the world.
Mrs. Kansai is currently working with UserLocal[J] (See these stories for more about it), which is known for their visualized website access analysis solutions, and also represents a weekend/after-hours web development group called Tinymonks. She is now working on a third-party API for the app, which is expected to be published later this month, and her group mate is working on the Android app for the service.
In 2005, long before Foursquare and other LBS became available in the US and elsewhere, cell phone users in Japan were able to play a GPS game called "Coloni-na Seikatsu Plus" (Colony life☆PLUS” or Colopl) on their cell phones.
In the game, players build up a colony, which requires a virtual currency called Pura to be maintained and expanded (for example to provide resources to the colony's inhabitants). Users can earn Pura by moving around in Japan in the real world - the further they travel, the more Pura they can usually collect and invest into their colony (1 km=1 Pura).
Colopl picked up steam after 2005 (back then, Colopl creator Naruatsu Baba was the only man behind the service), Baba launched a company of the same name to professionalize the service in 2008, and managed to sell a 5% stake to mobile carrier KDDI for a whopping US$6.2 million just last month.
And today, the company officially announced that a total of 2 million users in Japan are playing Colopl (needless to say, it's the country's most successful service of its kind). What's interesting is that the game needed close to 5 years to hit 1 million users in April last year and just 15 months to add a second million.
More information in English on how the game works here and here.
