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.

• Cybridge Purchases Naked Technology From Mixi
• Buffalo USA Ships The World’s First 11ac WiFi Router Which Is 3X Faster Than 11n
• Flipboard Japanese Localization Announced [En]
• Yahoo! Japan Finance To Make Stock Info Realtime – first as a free service. currently it has 20 mins delay
• 2ch Founder Hiroyuki Defends 5,000 Ignored Delete Requests Not From Police but by a police affiliated organization
• Rakuten CEO And Docomo On The List Who Newly Invests Evernote
• 30% Of Japanese Think To Keep Using Facebook, Higher Than Mixi/Twitter Research research by Cross Marketing (n=2043)
• Mixi Amends Some Articles Of Incorporation – to handle money transfer, auction, rental and ticketing.
• Yahoo! Japan Provides Ads For Naver Matome – Naver Matome was banned from Google Adsense before likely because most contents were copied from other sites. Yahoo! Japan, stronger than Google in this country, might not think it is a problem.
• Food Photo Sharing Service miil Company FrogApps Gets 240 Million Yen
• Japan’s Rakuten Wins the Heart of Pinterest in $100M Funding Round [En] by AllThingsD
• Asiajin’s Serkan Toto and Akky Akimoto’s comments on reuters FB news
• Facebook-specific photo package for 6800 yen.
• Crowd Comic Reproducing Project Social Kingdom – redrawing 1,000 frames of the latest book of a popular manga series Kingdom, by fans (and a few professional guests)
• Decopic Passes 6 Million Downloads
• Consumer Affairs Agency officially states that Kompu Gacha violates their regulation [pdf] – 6 Social Game Platformers Announcement On Consumer Affairs Agency’s Release
• Satellite TV Card B-CAS Hacked
• PASMO Closes History Viewer Service
• Quipper Raises $3.6M For Its Fun Take On E-Learning [En] by TechCrunch – a company by DeNA co-founder

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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On the same day when Rakuten’s investment on Pinterest reported (Rakuten announced it officially on today May 18.), the Japan’s largest online mall also announced another domestic investment.

On May 15, Rakuten and Online pharmacy company Kenko.com (kenko = health in Japanese) jointly announced [J, pdf] that they agreed on business alliance, as well as Rakuten’s friendly take over bid on Kenko.com, which will make Rakuten as a top shareholder, 40.75%. Rakuten group already holds some stock so the total ownership would be about 51%.

Rakuten is planning to send 4 persons to the Kenko.com board on the next shareholder meetings planned on June 26.

Kenko.com, who has been leading health-related products e-commerce in Japan, has been fighting on court against government around online drug-selling regulation. They recently marked a big turn-over win at high-court that the original government regulation banning internet drug selling, though Health, Labour and Welfare Ministry(MHLW) has appealed to the supreme court.

Tags: Japan, News by Akky Akimoto
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When Japanese blogger @nekomura_otako posted her rough sketch of this Smartphone accessory idea on Twitter.

“I would like to have cat-shaped earphone-jack parts like this.”

She did not expect that so many people liked and wanted it. But the Twitter buzz promptly found a company who offers to make it production. The mock-ups have arrived now.

This design plan “Cat-type Plug Accessory(tentative name)” becomes “this” \(゜∀゜)/

Some people challenged to build at home, too.

Tags: Japan, Joke by Akky Akimoto
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I never saw this kind of Japanese font. All Chinese letter has stroke number by side, so if you set the font on your browser and OS, you may always check the right stroke order.

The sample text means “Chinese letter’s stroke order”

The font is avaiable here.

via Modern Syntax Blog

Tags: Japan by Akky Akimoto
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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.

• Amazon Japan Begins Video Games Trade-In. US Amazon’s one is since March 2009.
• Twitter Releases Feature Phone Client [En], 2.5 Years Later For Japan [En]
• “Hello Call” – Laundromat Washer Machine Calls You When It Is Done –

  
  

• Ministry of Foreign Affair Begins Twitter PR Targeting Youth
• Xevious x Sprite Game via Cnet Japan Wired [En]
• The World First Laser AR Head-Up Display(HUD) Car Navigation To Be Sold In July By Pioneer

  

• Hatsune Miku Version PS Vita [En]
• Virtual AR Mixed-sex Bathing App For Android Released

  via IT Media

• “I stole your iPod!”, @qoo9qoo saw when he woke up at school

  

  It turned out to be his birthday prank by his friends.

• Naver Line Takes In Celebrities – Starts With 7 Talents/Units
• NHN Japan’s LINE for Windows Has A Dreadful Bug To Remove Whole “Program Files” On Uninstall – when you had installed non-default folder. Bug fixed days later.
• Some Docomo Androids Listed As End Of Production Only Within A Year including Galaxy Nexus, Android 4.0 reference model
• Idol M@aster On Mobage Releases New Set Gacha After Kompu-Gacha Self Regulations News Rush
• Consumer Agency Defines Fake Reviews By Shopowner (so-called Stealth Marketing = Sutema) Is Bad – still not so restrict like US FTC
• Gree’s Doriland To Become Animation
• Google Bans Nifty’s Android App Which Cache YouTube And Niconico Video For Offline
• Actvila’s subscribers are 520,000
• Bic Camera to acquire majority in Kojima: Nikkei | Reuters [En] Nation’s #5 electronics chain-store purchases #6, becomes #2 next to Yamada
• KDDI Launches Flat-rate Music Service LISMO unlimited for iPhone. The service is not restricted within KDDI iPhone. non KDDI iPhone user can use it as well.
• Social Game Vendor Klab Uplisted To TSE First Section From Mothers – fastest upgrade in TSE history. Klab also announced to buy back 3.27% stocks
• Right To Be Projected On Tokyo Gundam Cockpit At Yahoo! Auction
• Accused Upskirt Photo Taker Eats Up His Memory Card Just Before Arrest, denied the charge

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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