Japanese bishojo-game (pornographic interactive game with Japanese anime-style girls Wikipedia) maker Overdrive released a non-adult, all English, still Japanese-anime-style game which features foreigners Japan visit experiences, titled Go! Go! Nippon! (Nippon is how Japanese calls Japan in Japanese).

All texts are given both in English and Japanese, so it may be useful not only for people just to visit Japan but also interested in Japanese language.

The online download site selling the game told on its official Twitter account, "This probably marks history as the very first visual novel made by a Japanese company, for western visual novel and bishoujo game fans!"

The game runs on Windows PC. The price is $13.66 in US$ or €9.95. The game is not purchasable from inside Japan.

via Hevoluson [J]

Tags: Japan, Software by Akky Akimoto
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The Google+ iPhone App's huge but only affected for some countries has been fixed after about 10 days.

As we reported on September 26, Japanese (Chinese and Korean as well) Google+ user who updated the app found that they were unable to put in their native language letters.

The new version 1.0.5.2346 has come on October 4 with changes;

• Fixed bug with Chinese, Japanese and Korean
• Re-enable autocomplete when composing a post

It was quite a show-stopper for East Asians. I hope they will have test item with Asian languages before shipment.

Tags: China, Japan, Korea, Software by Akky Akimoto
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A Tokyo-based Internet ad solution company, Fringe81 [JP], revealed their new ad optimization software called Iogous [JP].

Iogous is a specialized tool for optimizing display ad creative. Iogous enables to try numerous combinations of designs, colors, and texts with statistical method.

Fringe81 says that the tool achieves few hundreds percent improvement of click-through-rate. It means they can give more than doubled revenue for display ad publishers.

Iogous is already adopted by 20 publishers and 26 advertisers. Many publishers and agencies endorsed the tool. It suggests that a quick reception of the tool.

There is a similar tool called Snapads in the market. That tool was already TechCrunched.

Tags: Japan, Software, Technology by Shunichi Arai
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Shinjuku-based web app developer Axsh Co.,Ltd.[J] introduced an open source software called Wakame-vdc(virtual data center) which allows you to develop a public cloud service of your own, by enhancing Wakame-fuel that has been originally developed for making it easier to configure server instances and network setting on Amazon EC2.   You may download it and use it for free for non-commercial use.

The company developed it with aiming at automating miscellaneous procedures at data center facilities, and it is expected to be adopted by three to four data center companies in a year.

Author's note: Axsh (or Akushu) means shaking hands with someone in Japanese.   Wakame stands for a kind of seaweed.

See Also:

• Wakame Project Page at Ruby Forge
• Introduction to Wakame [J]

Tags: Company, Japan, News, Software by Masaru IKEDA
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Japanese mobile system/application developer KLab Inc. [J] announced that they had developed a clone of Kindle Developer's Kit (KDK) and Kindle Emulator.

The official KDK has been available for limited beta developers since February. Klab release said that they could not wait approval so that they built the emulator from Amazon's specification documents.

Currently, not all Java interfaces are supported, but two main classes which are needed to realize key input and screen rendering are implemented.

As testbeds, two popular games - Tetris and Load Runner - are made on it. Tetris's source code is also provided.

Here is a movie how NES emulator is running on the KDK clone.

With the KDK clone, you may develop Kindle application before you can access official KDK. Although KLab does not mention it, Kindle applications may be able to run on this emulator (in your Java SE 6 on PC).

See Also:

KLab's news release [J]

Tags: Japan, Software by Akky Akimoto
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