Asiajin

Tokyo-based Internet ad agency Traffic Gate[J] and U.K.- and Silicon Valley-based speech recognition technology developer Novauris Technology jointly released an iPhone/iPod touch app allowing you to find the best route on Tokyo’s public transit using your voice, which is named “Koe-Tan” and available for free at AppStore.   If you are holding with bags and an umbrella so that you can’t use the iPhone’s on-screen keyboard, now you can easily find the best route(s) to your destination by just saying something like “Shinjuku kara Roppongi made”.  (“kara” and “made” are Japanese particles standing for from/to.)

Novauris Technology was founded in 2002 by the scientists who previously developed the well-known voice search software Dragon Search.  The company’s voice search technology supports American English, British English, Korean and Japanese, and it’s also used for Verizon Wireless‘ mobile search application “Get It Now Search“.

Traffic Gate’s ad module for iPhone/iPod touch is embedded in the new app, and the two companies have agreed to share the revenues earned from the banner ads which appeared on the search results.

(Proofread by: Sean O’Hagan)

Tags: Cellular Phone, Software by Masaru IKEDA
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Love Plus[J] is a virtual dating simulation game, which was developed by Konami for Nintendo DS and went on sale at the beginning of this month.   This game title attracts an enormous number of game geeks, especially among the “herbivorous“-typed boys, living around the country, and more than 47,000 packages were sold just in three days after its release.   It is the best hit for the game development industry for the first time in long years.

Unlike the other dating game titles ever introduced have been designed to entertain you by giving you a chance to seduce an avatar girl in the game, Love Plus is basically for experiencing events to be happened after being a couple with her.   In order to attract the players for long days, the game was intentionally designed as to make them enjoy daily routines with a virtual girlfriend, Konami says.

The player is set as a high school boy who just has moved to a city.   Then he will make friends with three scholar-athlete girls.   In synchronization with our “real” time of the day, the player will be allowed to enjoy daily events including dating with her.

A housewife posted a comment on a major newspaper’s bulletin board website last week, she complained her husband got addicted to the game.   “He’s always chatting with a virtual girl through a screen, as though he were dating with her.   As his wife, I can’t stand it any more.”   The game title is not specified in her post, but everybody supposes it must be Love Plus because of the date when it has been posted.

Some people says, they reply to an e-mail from an avatar girl of the game prior to doing so for their “real” girlfriends.   This game addict may accelerate the tendency to put off “real” marriage and cause lower birth rate in our “real” community.

Via: J-CAST News[J], Sankei Shimbun[J] and IT Media Gamez[J]

See Also:

• I’m confused since my husband is now so addicted to a dating game. (Yomiuri Shimbun Reader’s Bulletin Board) [J]

• Love Plus by Konami Digital Entertainment[J]

Tags: Community, Company, Japan, News, Software, Trend by Masaru IKEDA
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Osaka-based catalog mail order giant Senshukai[J] is going to introduce an iPhone/iPod app allowing you to check up showcases filled with fashionable clothes.   It is now under Apple’s consideration for upcoming release and will be available at AppStore next week.

Senshukai has an experimental website, which is called Bellmaison Lab[J], developing and demonstrating new services for the new-generation mail order schemes.

The new app is developed by a tech start-up Yappa, and based on a platform which is also used for Sankei Newspaper’s iPhone/iPod app.   When you find something you wish to purchase, you will be connected to a sales representative on the phone by clicking an order button seen on the app screen.

I wonder why an ordering process cannot be completed on the app, and I suppose Apple might prohibit any kind of money-making transaction to be made through iPhone app platform, that’s why potential shoppers are forced to make a call for an order.   Leafing through the catalog and an ordering process are separated, which might be good for fashion shopping addicts in order to control their desires.

July 7th Update:

We learned that Apple had announced to support in-app purhase feature on iPhone OS 3.0 and its later.   As soon as the app supports the feature, you’ll be able to purchase an item without making a call to anyone.   But If a merchandiser uses the feature, it has to pay 30% of the purchase price of each item to Apple.
http://developer.apple.com/iphone/program/sdk/inapppurchase.html

Tags: Cellular Phone, Community, Company, Event Report, Japan, New Service, News, Service, Software, Technology by Masaru IKEDA
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May 21st, the father of Ruby, Yukihiro Matsumoto aka Matz, visited Shanghai to attend RubyConf China 2009, the first large Ruby conference in China.

The conference was an astonishing success. 450 people attended the event. All talks except keynote were given in Chinese.

Matz gave a keynote which reveals design concept and characteristics of the language. Matz emphasized human-friendly attributes of Ruby, as always he does in other conferences.

Richard Huang from Ekohe has described how the design patterns such as Singleton, Observer, Command, Iterator, are implemented in Ruby. And he explained that how are they different from Java implementation.

Robbin Fan of JavaEye [CN] told that his JavaEye website, which is the second biggest developer site in China, is written with Ruby on Rails. He explained many optimizing methods which he learned from the experience of running a popular site. It is a surprise for Chinese attendees that “JavaEye” is running by Ruby on Rails.

In afternoon sessions, Robin Lu pointed out some common mistakes in Ruby/Rails development. A guy from ThoughtWorks gave a talk called ‘Ruby/Rails in enterprise development’. A guy from PinPoint told that Chinese government is already using Ruby on Rails in their purchasing system.

Joseph Wang from SAP gave a detailed talk about BlueRuby project. BlueRuby is another Ruby implementation which runs on SAP platform. With BlueRuby, Fortune 500 companies will be able to introduce the power of Ruby to their enterprise systems.

Koz Masumitsu, a Japanese entrepreneur based near Shanghai, introduced a Ruby industry development plan of Shimane prefecture where Matz lives. Shimane is one of the most remote area in Japan, and their local government is serious about Ruby.

Matz was treated like a rock star. Many attendees want to take a photo with him, or want his autograph.

Tags: China, Community, Event Report, Person, Software, Technology by Shunichi Arai
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On Thursday, Japan’s public broadcaster NHK released the iPhone/iPod app imitating its originally designed clock which used to be seen by almost all of Japanese people at the beginning of every evening’s news program.
(This link will launch your iTunes to download the app.)

As Japanese terrestrial TV broadcast switches into digital, broadcasters can no longer bring you the time signals telling accurate time, due to the time lag caused by video/audio compression and decompression processes especially required for digital broadcast and its viewing.

In response to the expectations of the clock’s  fans who has lost opportunity to see it, NHK has released several editions of the virtual clock app in forms of Adobe AIR-basd app, iWidget[J] (for NTT DoCoMo’s cellphone handsets) and blog widget for major blog platforms.

On the other hand, individual Macintosh software developer Mr. Nobuatsu Sekine developed and released the iPhone/iPod app a couple of weeks ago, allowing you to read and listen to news scripts provided by Radio Japan or NHK’s overseas broadcast in seven languages – Mandarin, Korean, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Arabic and Russian.
(This link will launch your iTunes to download the app.)

Since the app shows you the transcripts of news headlines and also makes you hear fluent story reading by native speaking news anchors, it would be a great tool for your daily-basis language learning, and the app developer hopes so.

Tags: Cellular Phone, Company, Japan, New Service, Software, Technology by Masaru IKEDA
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