Saitoh-san(斉藤さん) by Yudo Inc. is a new iOS application which let any Mr. or Ms. Saitoh and Saitoh-fans connect over voice-chat and video chat.

# “-san” is a Japanese form of honorific title

If your surname is Saitoh, you may press “Saitoh-san is here” button and wait other’s call. If you want to chat with Saitoh, you press “talk with Saitoh-san”. Then the service matches two and they can talk for free.

Having a chat with any Saitoh-san will give you one stamp on a virtual card. You may collect more stamps by talking with more Saitoh-es, though the manual tells completing all slots will make nothing happend.

It itself sounds a bad joke application, however, according to ITMedia, this app is released as a test marketing of their system. Based on this app, Yudo is planning to develop industry-specific call-in applications such like “nurse-san”, “lawyer-san”, “pilgrim-san”, “cake shop-san”, “tax-accountant-san”, “bus tour guide-san”, etc.

If an user had installed such kind of applications, they may try to find an agent by it when they are outside and need help in hurry.

For your information, Saitoh is one of the most popular surname in Japan. Ranked in top 20 in several reseaches. Japanese has about 300,000 surnames, which is quite diverse when comparing with surnames in most other languages. There was even a parody song “Yokuaru Myouji Saitoh”(pretty common name Saitoh) based on “Play that funky music”, sang how common the surname is.

via ITMedia [J]

Tags: Japan by Akky Akimoto
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From Nico Nico Douga,

# Press the bottom-right icon to suppress Nico Nico users overlay comments.

OTL is a variation of orz [Wikipedia].

Tags: Japan, Joke by Akky Akimoto
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KDDI au, who shipped Fujitsu-Toshiba-made IS12T, the earliest shipped Windows Phone 7.5(Mango) around the world last month, made some strange commercial films.

parody of TV shopping program

Even if it is all in Japanese, I think you will get the point as the high-tension on the TV shopping should be universal.

I liked the line how easy “gorgonzola” and “paparazzi” can be typed on its Japanese input method feature.

Japanese hostess customer management and retention

Kyabajo (Kyabakura Girl, a hostess in girls’ bar) explains how she is using contact management app to handle lots of customers’ birthdays, etc. She found her guest drinking around by GPS, calls to visit her.

Gay Bar hostess

By 5 p.m., she works as a salesman and a heavy user of MS Office on WP7.5. She got a claim call from her daytime customer.

via Sumahon [J]

Tags: Japan, Trend by Akky Akimoto
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Continued from (Part 1). Middle part of August news which we did not write as a dedicated article. Continued to (Part 3)

Referred pages are all in Japanese, unless otherwise stated.

Mid-August news are few because of Japanese obon season.

• NetMile Employee Reported Hiring Interview Over Google+, Leaked. NetMile Apologies On G+ Livechat Of Hiring Interview. They claim that the interview itself was a make-up by this guy and there was no harassed interviewee.
• CyberAgent Ventures invests in FrogApps, a start-up that may focus on social apps for encouraging restaurant business.
• Johnny’s Web Android App. no photos of idles. via Ketai Watch and AppLab
  
• Morisawa To Start Japanese Web Font Service This Year
• Japanese TV explaining the London Riots

  

• DeNA Launches Mobage iPhone App for Japanese Market
• Acer Japan Boasts No.1 Sold Tablet Leading 6 Different iPad Variations via Hatena blogger id:wapa
• Media Jump, a web service arm of Japan’s second largest ad agency Hakuhodo, launches Kita-colle, an event recommendation engine.
• Boss is launching their latest canned coffee like a movie.
• EC Navi releases AppMom, a recommendation app for Android apps, that works based on your download history.
• i-Publishing launches J-Manga in association with Japan’s Digital Comic Association, distrubuting comic titles by Japanese brand new cartoonists to the iPhone/iPad users in North America.
• Yahoo! Japan Expands From Ketai To Android By Yahoo! Phone For Yahoo! Japan Heavy-Users
• Mixi Makes An Infographic Of Itself
• Navitime, a maker of GPS-based navigation apps for mobiles, releases the iPhone app that reports up-to-date crowdness state of a commuter train that you’re going to take.
• Japanese security specialist Mala Explains Why Mixi Needed To Stop Popular Footprint Function. He wrote Facebook has the same privacy issue but said that Facebook Japan did not respond to him
• NHK Reports Governmental Program To Train Young White-hat Hacker

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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According to Sankei Sports [J], DeNA, known by running a big social gaming network Mobage, is one the list of companies who are talking with TBS, a Japanese TV network company who owns Yokohama Bay Stars [J] of Nippon Professional Baseball(Puro Yakyu) [J] Se-League, to purchase the team.

TBS Holdings tried to sell the Bay Stars last year to Lixil group, but the talk collapsed over the issue that TBS requested to keep the team in Yokohama.

Sankei reports backroom deals are in the works with multiple companies including DeNA and H.I.S., a travel agency.

In 12 top teams in 2 Japanese professional baseball leagues, where many owners post their brand over the team (like Hokkaido-Nippon-Ham-Fighters, this case region name + brand + team name), having a team means that the brand name will be called on TV news, reported on newspapers. From IT/software industry, Softbank and Rakuten have teams.

DeNA PR denied the story. Weekly Toyo Keizai points out [J] that DeNA’s interest is now on oversea operations than domestic promotion, Bay Stars might be too small as a promotion for this cash-rich company.

Tags: Japan by Akky Akimoto
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