[Update 2011-08-01] Some emoji-s may cause troubles by bugs. NAOI reported [J] folder with emoji-s categorized in specific section could disappear.

Japanese blogger NAOI pointed out how Lion, the new version of Mac OS X, added more support of color emoji on its system level.

Gmail has been known its emoji support, but that support was done by displaying those emoji characters with converted images. On Lion, the color emoji-s are available as regular letters on operating system level, which means you can create color-emoji folders,

and files,

Some applications can not show them in color. Your sending those strangely named files to older Mac OS, Windows or other OS may cause issues.

Tags: Japan, Trend by Akky Akimoto
No Comments »

Disney Mobile announced [J] to release new Android 2.2 smartphone in February.

Disney Mobile is one of few successful MVNOs in Japan. Since 2008, they sell Disney feature phones [J] using Japan #3 Softbank Mobile network.

This time they have not opened on which carriers the Disney smartphone works yet. But the silhouette seems to be the same as Sharp's Galapagos 003SH [J] for Softbank Mobile. Both also are 3D-enabled, One-seg TV, Felica e-wallet.

Users may use an e-mail address under disney.ne.jp domain, which is the same as current Disney Mobile feature phones. And of course, you can use Disney characters emoji and decome(decoration mail).

You may get one of 6 original "cool & cute" design cases on a first-come-first-served basis.

Tags: Cellular Phone, Japan by Akky Akimoto
No Comments »

Japanese cellphone is the birthplace of emoji - emoticon as a single letter. Now they are usable outside of Japan on Gmail and iPhone. By Google's and others effort, October 11, 2010, they were included in the international standard, Unicode version 6.0. So now those pictogram are supposed to be used for communication among anyone using Unicode capable computers.

However, on legacy system, i.e. Japanese cellphone, three carriers adopted emoji separately, left some incompatibilities. A Japanese blogger Nakamura001 verified a case which sometimes had been rumored, musical note emoticon gets unintended conversion to a poop character.

He tested if it really happens, and if so under what situation. The one combination he found was sending single note emoji from Docomo cellphone,

will be converted to poop on Gmail on iPhone,

As you see, the second letter, three notes on Docomo, was also changed into a flower letter. The third one, a musical note in regular letter (not a new emoji) stays the same.

Some emoji before Unicode standard is not compatible among carriers, and there are gateways by Softbank Mobile and/or Gmail to take care of converting them, it looks like a mapping bug.

Japanese use musical note letter a lot in casual mail, to show cheeriness emotion. Nakamura001 wrote there could be many bad conversion happened. For example,

"I love you(poop)"
"Thank you(poop)"
"You can do it(poop)"
"Yummy Curry(poop)"

Tags: Japan, Joke by Akky Akimoto
1 Comment »

You might have heard about that Gmail and iPhone has added Japan originated emoticon, Emoji, set. You may know that Google has been promoting those "letters" into Unicode standard.

Filing those drawings as new letters is, though Chinese letters were made from drawings thousands years ago, not acceptable for all people, some says it is useless in other areas, culturally biased, too childish, violation against Unicode compatibility policy, etc.

But it is true that those Emoji-s are widely used on Japanese cellphones already, and Japanese population and market are not ignorable for those world-class internet companies including Google, Apple and others, it is understandable Google and companies need a standard way of handling those Emoji-s.

3 major Japanese cellphone carriers leaves incompatibility of those Emoji-s deliberately for their customer retention, which Google and others also try to solve by this standardization. This is so good for Japanese web developers because converting Emoji-s among carriers is one of the most hated tasks they have to do here.

Google successfully got agreement at Unicode Consortium after a great struggle, and now they are proceeding to the next level, ISO Working Group (WG2).

On the WG2, Ireland and Germany national bodies suggested an alternative, to make it more universal. They proposed more "universal" emoticons set. (citations to the original set)

On it, they also modified Emoji-s' glyphs to what they thought more common. However, Japanese researchers think that some of emoticons' expressions came from Japanese manga expressions, from which most Japanese can easily understand what emotions they conveys, but hard to guess if you are not familiar manga.

If you are interested in what argument around Emoji, Manga and Japanese culture are happening in Tokyo this week, please take a look at Katsuhiro Ogata's proposal [English and Japanese, side by side].

See Also:

A Proposal to Revise a Part of Emoticons in PDAM 8 [pdf]

絵文字が開いてしまった「パンドラの箱」第5回--絵文字と日本マンガの親密な関係:コラム - CNET Japan">Emoji opened Pandra's box - relation between Emoji-s and Japanese Mangas - CNET Japan [J]

Mojino Namae - Katsuhiro Ogata's blog [J]

Tags: Japan, Technology by Akky Akimoto
1 Comment »

Official Google Blog (Japanese) announced [J] that their gmail on PC now became capable to send Emoji, emoticon-like letters supported by Japanese cellphones. (receiving emoji-mail from cellphone has been supported already.)

Even in English mode of gmail, your "Rich formatting" mode has a new set of emoji selector.

I sent a mail with emoji-s from my gmail to cellphone. Most emoji are shown properly, though few letters are not. Maybe because emoji sets have few incompatibility among 3 carriers (NTT Docomo, KDDI au and Softbank Mobile).

When the recipient have Japanese cellphone, Google server converts them into emoji character codes. On regular mail client including gmail, the mail with emoji seems to be sent as a HTML mail with images.

It is explained that this new feature was lead by Google Tokyo team but worked globally.

[Update] The official English Gmail Blog followed to announce. Interestingly, there are no mention that the idea was from Google Japan (as Google Japan team claimed [J]), nor it was for Japanese mobile users. So it is explained "to help you communicate" for the rest of non-emoji world.

Tags: Cellular Phone, Japan by Akky Akimoto
6 Comments »