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Himasere: Geeky Home Screen Replacement App For Android

If you’re an Android user, consider yourself a geek, understand Japanese, and need an appropriate home replacement screen on your handset, consider downloading Himasere. The app was released on the Android Market earlier this week by Tokyo-based tech company Ubiquitous Entertainment.

The idea here is to make it as easy as possible to access technology-related news and information (plus a game portal), just by flicking through the following sites from a single app:

If you had enough of reading news, you can flick through to 9leap (background in English), a game portal that lets you choose between 500+ games, which can all be played right from within the app:

Himasere supports Android 2.2 and up and is available for free on the Android Market.

Here is Ubiquitous Entertainment’s official promo video for the app:

Tags: Android, Cellular Phone, Japan, New Service by Serkan Toto
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The First Top-Pro-vs-Computer Shogi(Japanese Chess) Match Was Won By Computer

(photo credit Japan Shogi Association)

The first top professional player vs computer Shogi(Wikipedia) match Dennousen (Battle of Cyber-King) was held at Shogi Kaikan (Japan Shogi Association building), Tokyo January 14, 2012.

Kunio Yonenaga, an ex grand-master (in 1993) and a chairman of Japan Shogi Association, who retired in 2003, played against a computer program “Bonkura-s”. Although he is a retired pro, it is the first time computer defeats top-pro.

In 2010, an women player belongs to the female-only pro-league lost a game against other computer program Akara 2010. The second Dennousen is being planned this year with 5 active pro players.

Japanese chess has the same origin as Chinese and Western chess, Chaturanga from India, and same as in computer chess in West, it has been popular research issue to make a strong computer program. In Western chess case, IBM Deep Blue first beat the world champion in 1996. However, Shogi having the rule of reusing captured pieces makes much more complexity on computing and so far the strength of the top computer-shogi programs were thought as top amateur level.

Japanese Shogi Association holds over 100 pro players. Most major newspaper have and sponsor their own leagues, and has Shogi news every day. The Top player is said to earn about 1.3 million dollars in a year.

Appropriate to the computer match, one of the sponsors of this Dennousen title is Dwango, who runs Japan’s YouTube rival Nico Nico Douga. Nico Nico Live broadcast [J] the whole game for 10 hours. According to Kunio Yonenaga’s Twitter, over a million Nico Nico Douga users watched the game, and 341,000 of them were paid subscribers.

https://twitter.com/yonenagakunio/status/158384657644257280

See Also:

If you are interested in play Shogi and have an Android handset, Android Shogi (you need the data app as well) is free and quite good. If that does not compete you, PC apps having the same Bonanza engine are stronger.

After the match interview on Kunio Yonenaga [J]

Nico Nico News [J]

asahi [J]

Sankei Sports [J]

Tags: Japan, News by Akky Akimoto
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Japan’s Web News Week 2

This week’s Japanese Web/IT related news which we did not write as a dedicated article.

Referred pages are all in Japanese, unless otherwise stated.

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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