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On Monday, a Mobile Monday Tokyo event themed “Mobile Browser UI Designs & Standards” took place in KDDI’s Designing Studio in Harajuku. The entrance fee was between 1,000 and 2,000 Yen and an impressive 150 people showed up.

While the venue itself was really cool, I am not sure if letting guests sit on stairs or stand for more than hour is a good idea. Maybe the organizers should reconsider their choice for next time.

Two presentations on Internet browsing on mobile devices were held, followed by an extensive networking part.

The Future of Web browsing

Michael Smith from W3C spoke about a number of topics on current and future trends in mobile browsing.

He predicted proxy browsers will be installed on mobile devices in the near future, replacing native software (like the i-mode browser for example). Proxied browsing is enabled by using software such as Opera Mini, Skyfire or Japan’s very own jig.

Mike also pointed to the fact that browsers on cellular phones already use the same web engines as desktop browsers as a fundament. For example, he made clear that Opera’s Presto engine is used as the basis of KDDI/au’s PC site viewer. Also Safari’s Webkit web engine is integrated in the browser of the iPhone.

According to Mike, millions of users are thus able to access the web via sophisticated software on their mobile phones now which was impossible in the past.

Mike made a number of other interesting points.

Mozilla Mobile Browsing

Jay Sullivan from Mozilla delivered a presentation on how his company views mobile browsing in the future. According to Jay, Mozilla was relatively inactive in terms of development of mobile applications until now.

He said though Firefox for mobile devices -which is in its core built on original Firefox code- is already established to some extent. The Nokia 810, for example, has Firefox preinstalled. Also Skyfire uses Mozilla software as proxy engine.

Jay also stressed Mozilla ultimately sees the web as a complete mobile platform. There should be no major differences between browsing the Internet on a mobile device as opposed to a PC.

These are just some key points of Jay’s presentation which seemed interesting to me.

Tags: Japan, Technology by serkantoto
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In Japan, mobile barcodes(QR Codes:local version of the 2D barcodes) has been widespread and acquired a stable position as one of the familiar media to provide a direct access to customers these days. They are mainly targeting mobile-savvy group of twenties to mid-thirties leading them to sales promotion sites for products such as snacks and beverages.

In Real Life of Japanese mobile user and Internet

69.23 million Japanese out of its 120 million population access Internet via mobile phones. It is about the same number of 66.01 million internet users via computers(According to the data of 2005). And almost all of the mobile phones in the market now have equipped with a barcode scanner by default.

http://journal.mycom.co.jp/news/2006/05/19/009.html
http://www.stat.go.jp/data/kokusei/2005/kihon1/00/01.htm

Popular usage of mobile barcodes

• product site for mobile
• sales promotion site
• personal contact info(Email and phone number)
• others
  • job recruting
  • online survey
  • online request for brochure
  • downloading standby image
  • downloading free ring-tone

Near-at-hand Barcode

More on jp.girl@flickr.

• Staff/Crew Recruiting Ad from MacDonald’s
  http://www.mcdonalds.co.jp/recruit/crew/
  
• Sales Promotion Site of Jagariko(Japanese popular snack)
  http://www.calbee.co.jp/newsrelease/071130.php
  

Mobile barcdes do move people closer to Internet/products

Internet and mobile phone have given great impacts on modern communication technology globally. Barcodes may become a smarter and quicker way to open a new door leading consumers to Internet in the next future as it is in Japan currently. In fact, with barcodes, lots of Japanese who don’t own a computer at home access Internet via mobile phone. In addition, even those who own a computer are using Internet from mobile phone for its handiness. The same idea can be applied in the U.S. and other regions.

If I point out the current bottleneck of barcodes service, it tends to become ad-hoc content service and does not provide further path to stimulate the consumers. Of course the service providers need to come up with an exciting idea to continue users attracted, however, at the same time, it is necessary to explore and improve UIs and others on mobile phone.

Tags: Japan, Technology by satoko
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This Tuesday, the 9th Tokyo2point0 event in Harajuku/Tokyo was held. As always, the venue was totally crowded. More info can be found on the Tokyo2point0 site, the Facebook group or on Mixi.

This month the event featured two presentations which left more time for networking. I had the feeling that the event was more fun and fruitful because of that. Also, both presentations were given in English and Japanese this time.

Recruit API

My friend Toshimasa Ishibashi delivered an excellent presentation about the latest developments in Recruit’s Internet business. The Tokyo-based company is a real powerhouse and employs 7,660 people. Recruit is active in a number of industries such as the Web, printing, publishing, education etc. etc.

The company operates over 50 web sites in which 13 categories of API are currently used. Toshi’s presentation was focused on that particular aspect. He aims at opening Recruit by using more API in the company’s web services, thus generating more traffic and profiting from the long tail of the web.

(all pictures in this posting courtesy of my friend Professor Ichinohe)

Toshi said he follows a user-centered concept by evangelizing the idea of API in his company. For example, people should be able to incorporate content from Recruit web sites into their blogs without hassle. The API approach makes it possible for users to customize the adopted content. For example, an API makes it very easy for bloggers to display their personal favorite restaurants from a Recruit restaurant information site in a flashy way.

Marketing in virtual worlds

Lance Shields was responsible for a very unique presentation which was heavily focused on digital art in virtual worlds, namely in Second Life. Lance -who is an artist also in the offline world but now works for a company- is active in Second Life via an alter ego called “Juria Yoshikawa”. Yes, he chose a female avatar due to problems he had when he first chose to be a male one.

Juria Yoshikawa is one of the most famous artists in Second Life and Lance spoke how he managed to get to that stage.

He identified 10 success factors:
- Be active in groups
- Take care of friends and associates
- Organize events
- Offer new content regularly
- Be active in communities
- Be honest
- Collaborate with people
- Spread the word everywhere
- Bring forward outstanding concepts and ideas
- Don’t harass people with too much activity

You can watch both presentations on video here (courtesy of the organizer, Andrew Shuttleworth).

Tags: Community, Japan, Technology by serkantoto
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Even hardcore geeks might have never dreamt of something like this: An umbrella which is connected to the Internet!

This gadget was developed by researchers at Tokyo-based Keio University. The “Pileus” umbrella looks ordinary from the outside but actually is a quite clever piece of hardware.

The umbrella is able to display web sites on the canopy’s underside while walking around. In addition to a mobile projector the Pileus is equipped with a camera, Wi-Fi, GPS and a digital compass.

When you make pictures, the gadget lets you upload them to Flickr within minutes. Tagging is also possible.

(pictures courtesy of Pileus LLC)

Besides Flickr, the Pileus is also meant to work well with Google Earth. If you are lost somewhere, the umbrella’s GPS function and compass come into play. The Pileus can then display your surroundings in 3D via Google Earth and help you find back the way.

The hardware is now in its 3rd generation. What began as an art project turned into serious business. The makers of the Pileus founded an LLC of the same name aiming at commercializing the product as soon as possible.

Tags: Japan, Technology by serkantoto
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Japanese television broadcaster Yomiuri TV has found a novel new way to recruit young new employees to their company. They utilize Skype chat and video to conduct the interview.

The thinking behind the process is not to only demonstrate how “hip” they are to new technologies but also to provide an opportunity for many applicants to appear before the interviewers without taking on the cost of taking a bullet train ride to Osaka… perhaps a large expense which may not even yield a job.

Though the positions applied for DID have an IT connection, the ability to use the online chat inherently demonstrated at least a minimal required knowledge of new media technology.

It’s interesting to see traditional, established “old school” type of companies attempt these types of technologies. Normally, only tech related companies have done so in the past. Let’s hope we’ll see more companies around the world do the same.

[Via RBBToday]

Tags: Japan, News, Technology, Trend by Robert Sanzalone
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* Numbers of job openings in USA and Japan were taken from indeed and Jobdirect, respectively. C language is omitted due to the technical difficulty.

Do you have any idea why C++ is popular in USA and PHP is popular in Japan?

* This article is reproduced from “yukoba no nikki” by Yu Kobayashi with permission.

Tags: Japan, Technology, Trend by shunichi arai
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On Tuesday, the monthly Tokyo2point0 event in Omotesandou/Tokyo was held for the 8th time. The venue was really packed. Andrew Shuttleworth (the organizer) told me he would love to see more people to RSVP before coming. Also, companies can contact Andrew directly for sponsorship to help the volunteers currently running the event.

You can sign up directly on the Tokyo2point0 site itself, go to Tokyo2point0’s Facebook group or get some information on Mixi.

Besides the (very important) networking part, the event mainly focused on three presentations. Two of them were English only. Judging from what I have seen, the Japanese people present were able to follow the speakers without problems though.

1) HTML 5
Michael Smith from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) delivered a detailed speech about HTML 5. Mike talked about the changes the fifth major revision of the Web’s main language will bring.

(all pictures in this posting courtesy of my friend Professor Ichinohe)

The core issue HTML 5 addresses is the problem of interoperability between browsers. The W3C is working to determine conformant user agent/Web browser behavior to overcome one of the biggest obstacles Web developers are faced with nowadays.

The new HTML version is still a draft. Michael was expectedly not able to predict precisely when all advantages HTML 5 delivers will come into effect.

(This presentation was off-the-record so the video will not be published.)

2) ONGMAP
Yuki Naotori from Open Associates/7ns presented his Award-winning Google maps mash up “ONGMAP”.

ONGMAP is thankfully also available in English. The service is describing itself as being the sum of “Google Maps+Web API+Tons of Geo Data”. Yuki said he wanted to create a very easy-to-use Web site.

Users can click on an area of interest on ONGMAP and the service scrapes various info about that particular place from external sources. Depending on the country, this info may include:

- weather
- WiFi spots
- local events
- hotels, restaurants, schools, convenience stores, beauty salons (!) and much more
- videos
- etc. etc.

Yuki also talked about his new project called “Japaaan”. In essence, Japaaan is a social network for people interested in discovering Japan’s “hidden” and cool tourist spots. Moreover, members will also meet offline and actually travel to selected sites. Gaijin and Japanese people are invited to join.

You can view Yuki’s presentation slides here.

Watch his presentation here.

3) Trendmap
My Swiss friend Oliver Reichenstein from Information Architects caused a great stir last year in the Web world with what inititally was a joke. His company basically used the Tokyo metro map as a design background to display the relationship between Web services worldwide. Oliver told me he wanted to use this idea for the company name cards and later was overwhelmed by the huge international interest in his concept!

The map illustrates popularity, success, importance and other factors of about 200 Web sites from all countries. You can download the second version (from July 2007) here for free (PDF).

Oliver explained the yet-to-be released third and updated version of the Web trendmap. This time, Information Architects decided to go for an isometric approach.

Watch his presentation here.

Tags: Community, Company, Japan, Person, Technology, Trend by serkantoto
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There is an impressive number of search engines specializing in blogs. Internationally speaking, Technorati and Google’s blog search are the most prominent examples. There is also a localized Japanese version of Technorati.

Kizasi (pronounced “kizashi”) is a Japanese blog search service which was started in January last year by kizasi Company, Inc.

This is kizasi’s translated top page (click to enlarge - accessed January 8th, 2008, Japanese time):

Under “Tools” on the top row you can find a kizashi widget, information about the kizasi API, RSS etc. “Lab”means applications by kizasi which are still in beta-phase.

The container on the left features the following topics:
All, society, sports, stars, entertainment, life, fun, moving/impressive news, surprising news, sad news, scary news and hateful news.

Kizasi crawls Japanese blog texts for words and analyzes connotations and usage patterns in order to point out structures and frequently used terms. As of today, kizasi takes into account blogs from 5,816,944 people who are ressponsible for a whopping 139,229,585 entries.

The service ranks key terms by genre and also analyzes pictures related to the words in question. Kizasi refreshes rankings every 10 minutes.

After clicking the current No. 7 search term which is “F2008″, the following page appears (click to enlarge):

The frequency of the word “F2008″ appearing in Japanese blog texts over the past year is shown as a graph on the top right, along with a tag cloud on the left which corresponds to the term. Kizasi also previews the newest blog entries containing the word “F2008″ and retrieves videos from Youtube related to the search term.

The use of a time scale and frequency of site updates distinguishes kizasi from its competitors. Current consumer tastes, general trends and the buzz in the Japanese blogosphere can be spotted in a structered way and at an early stage.

Kizasi is mainly owned by the CAC group (88%). Yahoo Japan bought a 5% stake in kizai in summer 2007.

Kizasi’s successful penetration especially in the Japanese mass media was followed by Blogwatcher, Inc., launched by Recruit and Titech. The company established a blog analysis service called Shooti in July 2007. Wadaino is another domestic player in the Japanese blog search market mimicking kizasi’s ranking concept but based on different categories.

Tags: Company, Technology by serkantoto
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via atmark IT

At Rakuten Technology Conference 2007, Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto, a Rakuten fellow who also designed Programming Language Ruby, told about their projects “Roma” and “Fairy” to let Rakuten have its own Distributed Processing System (Web OS) like Google, Yahoo and Amazon have.

“Roma” is a on-memory distributed hash storage which “concept is similar to Amazon Dynamo” as he said. “Fairy” is a Ruby implementation of MapReduce argorythm.

Rakuten-group is now holding about 1,100 developers and aiming 3,000 developers in 3 years, told by Akio Sugihara, Chief Produce Officer.

[related]

TechCrunch: Amazon Takes Another Step Towards The Web OS With Dynamo (the word “Web OS”)

Tags: Technology by Akky Akimoto
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