Asiajin

Kendo is the Japanaese martial art of fencing.

A niche magazine for Kendo “Monthly Kendo Jidai (Age of Kendo)” has released a blog widget and made a shattering blow among Japanse blogsphere.

The latest issue of Kendo Jidai

Kendo Magazine Official BLog Widget

Once you set up this widget on your blog and push “Fight!” button, the samrai stands up and make a bow. Then he cuts a negative keyword in the blog article into pieces by the sword to smash your negative spirit.

The Samurai finds out a negative keyword and starts action…

Then cut the negative keyword into pieces….

Here is an English demonstration page to check with your own eyes.

Sample Weblog (English)

Terminate every negative keywords on your blog and reshape your spirt with this Samurai widget!

Thanks to idea*idea for suggesting us to write this in English.

Tags: Japan, Joke, New Service by hiroumi
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With the continual proliferation of QR Codes around the world (Robert Scoble recently wore a QR Code t-shirt at the NextWeb conference in Amsterdam), Japan continues to lead the way in the innovative ways of not only using the codes, but in creating them as well.

Recently, Cross Borders Inc. in Japan came up with the idea of QR-Code bots. This cute little service simply requests you to enter any URL and an army of tiny little bots will file unto the screen and assemble little squares neatly until they perfectly form themselves into a QR Code. Wow! The prepared code is ready to scan! Then, with a wave of the mouse, the bots scatter, only to be called again for their next assembly assignment. Cute! Cute! Cute!

Like most of the online novelty items from Japan, the cute factor is hypnotically entertaining as the bots “jump” into place like little perfectly ordered fleas.

On a more mature scale, the final QR Code created does actually work. If you take your QR Encoded camera and point it to the screen, your phone browser will in fact be directed to whatever URL you placed into the bot.

While highly entertaining, the reality is IF you have a QR Code enabled mobile phone (like most do in Japan) the browser will direct you to where you set it to go. If you don’t have a QR Code enabled phone (which includes most phones OUTSIDE of Japan), you’re out of luck.

While Scoble and others are trying to bring recognition to the QR Code standard on a global scale, the decision really does sit with the vendors such as Nokia, Motorola and Blackberry as to whether this should be brought to the forefront for consumers. Until that “aha!” moment happens, QR codes will remain “one of those things they do over there in Japan”. Sad.

Also, have a look at http://www.winksite.com if you are thinking of implementing your own mobile strategy to compliment your website. It allows you to not only create the QR Code, but the whole mobile site to be properly viewed on any mobile device. Most English computer websites and blogs DO NOT translate well onto mobile devices.

See Also:

Mobile barcodes:Huge success in Japan so far.

2D barcode tombstone

Tags: Japan, Joke, New Service by Robert Sanzalone
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Takigawa Lardux Christel Masami, born 1977, is a Japanese news anchor. She has become an internet phenomenon in Japan like Mélissa Theuriau.

A website called Gedo-style created a funny image generator called ‘Takigawa Christel generator‘ which creates a video capture image with a fake caption.

See Also:

1. A youtube movie of Christel Takigawa
2. A youtube movie of Mélissa Theuriau, voted most beautiful woman in the world.

Tags: Japan, Joke by shunichi arai
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Nounai-Maker is a joke-service smashed Japanese blogosphere in September, 2007 and still causing a boom among Japanese internet users.

What you need to do is simply enter your name to generate the image of “inside of your brain” (Nounai) ; having the same meaning as “inside of your mind”. The cartoon-style image is fulfilled by Chinese characters that represent what your brain is composed of; Love, Sex, Fun, Evil, etc. There is no scientific evidence for the result but it offered something that people can use for conversation in the bar. Becasuse the service was also accessable via the cell-phose. You can also enter English name to get the result even you may not undestand what Chinese characters say.

Below image is a result for ”Asaijin”. It is composed by Greeed, Sex, and Money .

At the beginning, the service was recoginzed by bloggers but soon users expanded to more general people in Japan after it was introduced by couple TV programs. Within 4 months after the release of the service, it earned more than 500 million page views and this number is still growing even faster than before. This became a little social phenomeon and recently it is selected as a most notable web service by Web of the Year 2007 in Japan.

Now, there is even a follower service in English; brainscannr.com althought the result is not seem designed well as the original.

It is not certain who created this servcie. What we just know is it is developed by an enigeer or few engineers out of a corporate activity.

Tags: Japan, Joke by hiroumi
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