Japan’s second biggest telecommunications firm KDDI announced [JP] it has acquired an equity stake in French based Total Immersion S.A., an augmented reality (AR) software maker. Business daily The Nikkei says it has learned KDDI paid 100 million yen (US$1.3 million) for a 15% interest in the company.

Total Immersion has offices in North America, Europe, and Asia (their Japan office is located in Tokyo). The company was founded in 1999 and received US$5.5 million in funding from Intel and others back in March this year.

(So according to The Nikkei, Total Immersion’s valuation can be estimated to be somewhere around US$8.7 million, while TechCrunch reports that (before the money from Japan), the company collected US$11 million from investors over the years.)

In any case, KDDI says they are especially interested in using Total Immersion’s core technology, the so-called D’Fusion AR software platform, for smartphones. Subscribers can expect the first content based on D’Fusion to be rolled out in December (the picture below shows D’Fusion Mobile used as a marketing tool).

KDDI has also invested in Tokyo-based AR startup Tonchidot last year.

Tags: Japan, News by Serkan Toto
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Please follow this new Asiajin Mixi page if you have a Mixi account.

Continued from (Part 2). Last part of August news which we did not write as a dedicated article.

Referred pages are all in Japanese, unless otherwise stated.

• Dragonslayer Wedding Cake Cut Celemony

  

• Mixi Changes Its Logo. A blog Orange wrote [J] that the new logo becomes more similar to a fancy character Miffy punching you, which was often said even with the old logo

  

• KDDI au To Limit Data Usage On Flat-Rate Users
• Narita Airport Sign For Japanese Samurai

  

• The Japan Times Launches Daily Deal Service For Expats
• Findog – Dentsu Releases Product-Search Camera App For iPhone via release
• Ikea Japan officially answers they do not sells rocket launchers. – another new social media heroin with esprit and humor
• Transgender Boys Gathers At Local Festival With Homage To A Character Boy In An Animation

  

• High-school Baseball Players Who Won Japan’s Second Place Accsued By Drinking, Which Is Found On Past Blog
• How Not To Sleep Your PC – lifehack!

  

• Maeda Corp. Estimates Construction Cost For Thunderbird’s Island via Slashdot Japan
• Okite – Free iPhone Wake-up Alarm Posting Embarassing Tweets If You Don’t Stop It via Cnet Japan
• Yahoo! Japan Makes Partnership With JCB. Consumers Can Connect Both IDs.
• Gree To Redistribute Unity Game Engine For Free With Its Partners Exclusively via Markezine
• Google Adwords (Japan?) Fails To Receive Credit Card Payments By System Trouble, But Stopped Customers Ads. so many complainments
• Artifitial Vampire Tooths To Make Japanese Cute. not really IT but from 2-channel. of course, most Japanese do not imagine Vampire from such shape of teeth but see some cuteness. a good example of cultural difference on what is beauty.

  

• See-through Glass print Showing Different Ads To Different Direction Night And Day [pdf] On the day and night, different ads are displayed to different directions.

  

• Korean Vocaloid Character Design Revealed

  

• Life2Bits release the iPhone app called ‘OnSay’, which allows you to make an IP phone call to your Twitter follower without dialing his/her phone number.
• Baboo – Baby-Avatar Android Chat App via release

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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It has been 12 years since 2-channel serves Japanese net users. The gigantic anonymous bulletin boards are still kept simple without image/movie, all you type is texts.

You may post URL of images there, and many 2-channel viewer clients, which many users are now using, extracted to display in the posts for convenience. But still, many prefer to use so-called Ascii Art, drawing composed by letters and symbols.

There are a lot of Ascii Art dictionary sites (example [J]) and assisting tools. 2-channel users copy and paste an Ascii Art which shows their emotion.

On a certain thread on 2-channel, users tried to make an animated gif version of well-known Ascii Arts.

Here, the Japanese letters “Ban-ban-ban” in background means a sound you bash not PC.

ﾊﾞﾝﾊﾞﾝﾊﾞﾝﾊﾞﾝﾊﾞﾝﾊﾞﾝﾊﾞﾝﾊﾞﾝﾊﾞﾝﾊﾞﾝ
ﾊﾞﾝ　　　　　　　ﾊﾞﾝﾊﾞﾝﾊﾞﾝﾞﾝ ﾊﾞﾝﾊﾞﾝ
ﾊﾞﾝ（∩`･ω･）　　ﾊﾞﾝﾊﾞﾝﾊﾞﾝﾊﾞﾝﾞﾝ
　＿/_ﾐつ/￣￣￣/
　　　 ＼/＿＿＿/￣

Wake-waka-ran = I am in complete confusion.

　　ワケ　　　　　ワカ　　　　　ラン♪
　 ∧＿∧　　　∧＿∧　　　　∧＿∧
　（　・∀・）　　（　・∀・）　　　（　・∀・）
⊂　⊂　 ）　　（　Ｕ　　つ　　⊂__へ　つ
　<　<　<　　　　）　）　）　　　　　（＿）|
　（＿（＿）　　（_＿）＿）　　　 彡（_＿）

whew… uh.. yeah… I am really excited!

　　 ∩＿＿＿∩三　ー＿　　　　　 　 ∩＿＿＿∩
　　 |ノ　　　 　　三-二　　　 　ー二三 ノ　　　 　　ヽ
　　/　　(ﾟ) 　　　(ﾟ)三二-　￣　　 – 三　　 (ﾟ)　　　(ﾟ) |　　
　 |　　　　( _●_)　 ミ三二 – ー二三　　　　( _●_)　 ミ　ウオーオォーアッヒャアウオホーオオオ
　彡､　　　|∪|　　､｀￣￣三-　三　 彡､　　　|∪|　　ミ　　　　テンション上がってきた！！
/　＿＿　 ヽノ　　　Y￣)　三 三 　 (/’　　　　ヽノ＿ 　|　　　　　　テンション上がってきた！！
(＿＿＿）　　　　　　　_ノ　　　　　　 ヽ/　　　　　(＿＿＿）

These animation show well how Japanese are seeing action in few texts drawings.

There are more on a 2-channel summary site Kinisoku [J].

Tags: Japan, Joke by Akky Akimoto
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Japanese company M-trix launched its own Android Apps Market “M-trix Market”, which targets Japanese-style bishoujyo (Wikipedia) games.

The site has an age confirmation screen,

The games list looks like this,

Exdroid reported [J] that there were over 10,000 apps downloaded only for the launch day, though the number may include free apps.

The initial launch was in July [J], and they added another category “Rejected Apps Market” where they accept Android Apps which was rejected by the official market.

There seems to be already a porn-specific Android App Market in West for long. It might be a Japanese answer to it. With Android’s system which boasts more freedom than iOS App Store, it is natural that category app stores emerge.

via Famitsu

Tags: Cellular Phone, Japan by Akky Akimoto
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MIKUNOPOLIS in LOS ANGELES “Nice To Meet You, I’m Hatsune Miku” [Blu-ray] [J]

Sega [J] is releasing a Blu-ray/DVD as well as a Live CD of “MIKUNOPOLIS in LOS ANGELES `Nice To Meet You, I’m Hatsune Miku,`” in which Hatsuon Miku makes her first overseas performance held on July 2nd, 2011 at Nokia Theater in Los Angeles [J].

The Blu-ray/DVD is planned to go on sale on December 21st, and the Live CD will be available from November 20th, 2011.

The performance of “MIKUNOPOLIS in LOS ANGELES `Nice To Meet You, I’m Hatsune Miku,`” was part of with the yearly established Japanese festival “ANIME EXPO 2011.”

Tickets sold out, and on the day of the concert, over 5,000 audience members were in attendance. The Blue-Ray/DVD and Live CD being sold are complete recordings of this performance. Special features include the “making of” video and the opening act featuring the opening MC and two members of the dance unit “DANCEROID.”

MIKUNOPOLIS in LOS ANGELES “Nice To Meet You, I’m Hatsune Miku” [DVD]

Translation licensed by VSMedia

Tags: Japan, News by Chiho Komoriya
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