Asiajin

UPDATE:
Over 3G, make sure to wait 30-60 seconds for the stream data to get cached. After that, you’ll notice a significant jump in picture and audio quality.

Japan has a plethora of TV channels, but the biggest battleship is NHK [JP], the country’s national public broadcasting organization. NHK itself operates a number of different channels, and one of them, NHK World TV, has just released an English app for the iPhone/iPod touch [App Store link].

NHK World is the international broadcasting service of NHK, offers programs in English and is primarily aimed at the overseas market. Their free app enables you to watch NHK World live, meaning you can access the channel’s entire program from anywhere in the world on your iPhone or iPod touch. (There are some exceptions for reasons of copyright.)

Just fire the app up and you can instantly start watching the program. This works even over 3G, even though you (obviously) get better video and sound quality via Wi-Fi (the app’s official description says that up to about 9.5MB of data can be received every 10 minutes via 3G). The app itself is just 2MB and includes a program schedule.

Japan’s large industry is notoriously anti-web, but NHK has been cautiously opening up to the web in recent months. It was the nation’s first major TV network that started putting contents online on an own channel on Youtube (NHKOnline). More recently, the broadcaster also announced it will live-stream events from the upcoming Winter Olympics NHK doesn’t show on TV on a dedicated website.

Tags: Japan, New Service by Serkan Toto
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Dentsu Inc., Japan’s largest advertising agency, announced that they started experimental coupon platform iButterfly with free iPhone application.

The application “iButterfly – Coupon Entertainment” can be downloaded for free until the end of March 2010 (requires iPhone 3GS).

On the mobile application, user can look through the iPhone app to the town and find butterfly flying around. By shaking iPhone like using butterfly net, user catches the virtual butterfly carries coupons and contents related to the location.

During the experimental period, three companies or shop group provide the butterflies.

• Tokyo Music Map Group – shops offering good back ground music provides discount coupon
• Yamada Denki – Japan’s biggest electric store chain will offer coupon at its Ikebukuro branch
• Tokyo Gas – regional gas provider will offer a coupon for free novelty at three showrooms

Chou (butterfly in Japanese) is used here in double meaning, with another same sound “Chou” which means “collection book”.

Dentsu is planning to add more “Chou” such like “Nationwide local mascot characters collection book”, “All Yamanote Line stations collection”, “Today’s Fortunetelling”, “iPhone App recommendation”, etc.

Tags: Cellular Phone, Japan, New Service by Akky Akimoto
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Japan’s second largest ad agency Hakuhodo DY Media Partners, Sony CSL’s spin-out specializing in developing location detection technology with WiFi signals Koozyt and the country’s second-ranked newspaper in its circulation the Asahi Shimbun jointly started a new ad service using the iPhone today.

The new service is named A-Clip, by installing the iPhone app and shooting an image of an paper-printed ad that you’re interested in, you can view videos and other extensive information associated with the ad.

The first ever ad enabling this service is placed on the Asahi’s morning edition of January 8th, and you don’t need to scan any 2-D barcode but just shoot an image of the ad itself. Koozyt’s image recognition technology built in the iPhone app will detect which ad you watch, it shows you a video associated with the ad on the iPhone screen.

See Also:

• Hakuhodo’s Press Release: Hakuhodo and Koozyt jointly develop a movie ad distribution service associated with newspaper advertising[J, PDF]
• Koozyt’s Press Release: Koozyt and Hakuhodo jointly develop a movie ad distribution service associated with newspaper adverising[J]

Tags: Cellular Phone, Japan, New Service by Masaru IKEDA
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On the first day of this new year, Kanagawa-headquartered funny web app developer Kayac launched a new service which allows you to decorate your Twitter icon with sushi items.

The service, which is named Twitter Sushi, works in conjunction with Twitter, you are allowed to choose a sushi from varieties such as a chunky omelet piece, natto (fermented soybeans), salmon, tuna, shrimp, sea bream and salmon roe.   Large fatty tuna can be chosen by the Twitter users who have more than 100 followers.

You may feel as though you had a seat at a revolving sushi restaurant.   In commemoration with the service, for those who apply for recruit from January 1st through 3rd, the company will kindly treat to sushi.

Tags: Japan, Joke, New Service by Masaru IKEDA
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Beijing-based serial entrepreneur Nick Yang (杨宁, see this ChineseSavvy.com article for more about him) got his third start-up Wukong Search (唔箜搜索) [C, mobile] go live in Mainland China.

In prior to the third start-up, he founded the popular web portal ChinaRen[C] for the younger generation in China, and succeeded to sell it to one of China’s best known portal Sohu (搜狐) in 2000.   After that, he launched a mobile content provider KongZhong (空中网) [C] and got it listed at NASDAQ in 2007.

Wukong’s idea was born in the process of developing ChinaRen, but we gave up to launch it and kept concentrating on adding new features to Chinaren including online alumni address book which makes the users easier to communicate with their ex-classmates.    Baidu[C] was still at early stage at that time, and no one knew what Baidu was.   I’ve never mentioned Wukong, this is the first time to talk about it.

Social network services and the Internet search will be two important keys for users to get information they want.   The mobile search service is entering the era of the personalization.  For the time being, Wukong focuses on providing young people with the mobile search, and will launch its PC edition next July.

In the interview with Mr. Yang, he unveiled the company was scheduled to fundraise a lot in the end of this year, but he pushed it back to the beginning of next year to get in time with the service launch.

In competing with other Chinese search services such as Google China[C] and Baidu, he believes Wukong Search will make good results since the mobile search market is still immature in the country.

Via: NetEase, Tech News Section [C]

Tags: China, Company, New Service, News by Masaru IKEDA
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