On Wednesday, Tokyo-based social app provider Pokelabo[J] announced that they had fundraised USD12M from Silicon Valley-headquartered VC firm DCM and 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 // Add Comment »

(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 // Add Comment »

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 // Add Comment »

A Japan’s most popular Twitter user Gachapin, who took the most followed user title recently back from ex-prime minister Yukio Hatoyama who once passed him, is expanding his brand on two different geeks-loving products, Vocaloid and iPhone.

Gachapin is a 5-year-old dinosaur kid from a popular children TV program Hirake Ponkikki, who is also known as a blogger and a Twitter user(@GachapinBlog).

Gachapoid – Gachapin on Vocaloid

Last week, Osaka-based company Internet Co, Ltd. (great name!) announced that they adds a new product on their human-voice-synthesizer series based on Yamaha’s Vocaloid 2 technology with Gachapin’s voice, named Gachapoid. The package price is 15,750 yen (US$187).

# Popular virtual diva Hatsune Miku who once beat Lady Gaga in Japan by CD sales, who was emerged from Nico Nico Douga culture is another variation from another company on the same Vocaloid.

One Gachapoid’s sample song is available here for Windows Media.

GachaTwi – Gachapin on iPhone for Twitter User

GachaTwi is a iPhone/iPod Touch Twitter Client themed with Gachapin by Genesix and Fuji Television Kids Entertainment, Inc.

Besides the regular Twitter client feature, the app has a special page to see Gachapin’s Tweets only, which can be seen by one of four menu button.

GachaTwi is 350 yen but 115 yen ($1.36) until September 12th.

Gachapin himself tweeted that he can not use GachaTwi because iPhone’s touch panel does not detect his hands.

via AV Watch and MyCom Journal

See Also:

Gachapin Vocaloid news release [J, pdf]

Tags: Japan // Add Comment »

Tokyo-based Android app developer ACL Inc.[J] has kindly developed the Android Reader App for us, it has been just released today on the Android Market.   Following MotherApp’s iPhone Reader App which was introduced at the beginning of this year, now we have our exclusive apps for both of the two major smartphone platforms.

We wish to thank ACL’s founder Yasushi Iizuka (@YasushiIizuka[J]) for his great work and cooperation.

The Asiajin Android reader app is absolutely free, and you can download it from the Android Market by simply clicking on the banner which is appeared on the right sidebar of our website.

Tags: Announcement, Cellular Phone // Add Comment »