Asiajin

One of Japan’s major television network Fuji TV announced and called for beta testers for their new online community site “Kimi to Fuji TV” [J] (“Kimi Fuji” in short) on March 15th. “Kimi to” means “with You” in Japanese.

At beta, the site offers few social games which themed on their popular TV programs like “Nepu League” and “Idoling”.

On FAQ, it is explained that the virtual point “Gold” will be introduced at the official launch, which you can purchase for some paid games and virtual items.

There are not much games at now, and it is only for PC so it cannot be a serious contender of big 3 (Mixi, Gree and Mobage-Town). However, terrestrial TV networks still have huge influence and drawing-power in Japan, then this needs to be watched how much Fuji TV will give priority this web activitiy.

via Famitsu.com [J]

Tags: Japan, New Service by Akky Akimoto
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News on the latter half of January 2010 which we did not write as a dedicated article. Part 1 is here.

Referred pages are all in Japanese, unless otherwise stated.

• METI Lottery In Exchange For Used Cellphone Campaign Collaborates Hatsune Miku
• Chinese Guy In Saitama Arrested By Providing Proxy Servers For Chinese Gamers To Play (and earn by RMT) Japanese Online Game
• Harlequin Novels On Nintendo DS
• Kobe-based sports tabloid Daily Sports to start publishing e-edition.
• “Onsei Ninshiki Fusen ST”, iPhone App to Memo by speech-recognition
• Mekiki’s Patent Lawsuits Against Facebook Explained By American Lawfirm
• Sekai Camera’s Tonchi Dot and 5 companies Runs St. Valentein Day’s AR Event at Shibuya
• KDDI says 10 million cellphone sale this fiscal year will be difficult, at 3Q report
• Transcosmos Sells DART Business To Google, Lawsuit To Be Dissolved
• Twitter Japanese Mobile Site Adds Cellphone-mail-to-tweet function
• Nifty Lanches Cloud Service
• Sending Thousands of Origami Crane to Haiti Project On Mixi Causes controversy on Japanese web
• Over 200km Freekick Machine
• Kakaku.com launches Android app
• Two Fishing Boats In Tokyo Bay Starts To Tweet 1 2
• Mobage Open Platform begins, 92 apps by 40 companies at the launch day
• TV Tokyo’s Documentary Went Too Far On Taking Sony Walkman’s (one month) Takeover Against iPod
• Digital Garage Makes Another Investment To Twitter
• Dentsu purchases Innovation Interactive [English]
• University of Tokyo associate professor complained on Google Japan’s Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) applied to students during the recruitment
• Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications starts the internet contents self-rating experiment
• January Forbes Asia Cover Features Gree Yoshikazu Tanaka
• A blogger counts how many common apps on Mixi Appli and Mobage Appli platforms. 36 out of 86 Mobage Apps are also on Mixi
• CyberAgent CEO admitted (their Twitter Clone) Failed to investors, but he has not given up
• Softbank Continues Free iPhone 3GS Plan
• KDDI, Hakuhodo DY Media Partners and Hokkaido Broadcasting To Hold An AR Event At Sapporo Yukimatsuri
• Docomo President Shows Interest In iPad At 3Q Fiscal Report Meeting
• Thanko’s 80 ports USB Charger
• A new Japanese font Kazuraki fully-proportional in both writing directions
• Asahi writes about Twitter user reports from Stopped Shinkansen train

Please let us know if you think we should write details on any news above.

Tags: Japan by Akky Akimoto
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Last week our RSS subscribers passed over 5,000, which is a good milestone. Twitter followers also increased to 400. Following @asiajin also will notify our latest articles. Thank you so much.

Here is the first half of January Japanese IT/Web interesting news links we did not take as a dedicated article. (part 2 is here)

Referred pages are all in Japanese, unless otherwise noted.

• Cellphone Shipments In Japan Drops The Lowest Level In 5 Years – 2009 3Q
• Liberal Democratic Party launches Internet video channel, J-Channel
• Bijin Tokei 2D (2-dimensional, Anime) version collaborated with Pixiv
• Bijin Tokei goes on TV in Kansai, 5 minutes program
• Bijin Tokei Voice Actress Version released
• New Service Namings Name What You Often Experience But Does Not Have Name
• Nippon TV (channel 4 in Tokyo) had Twitter teaching program on new years holiday
• Tweeting National Diet Member (and ex-fashion model) Renho asked how to use Nintendo DS illegal dongle for her son
• Love Plus AR cards were sold by 100,000 yen on Yahoo! Auction
• Ameba Celebrities’ password were posted in Excel on their blogs
• CyberAgent release on their Ameba password leak incident [pdf]
• A maid hair salon was opened in Taipei (Not Tokyo)
• Anime “Eden of the East” AR events are held in Tokyo
• Nippon TV will broadcast a new entertainment program interacts with Twitter users
• Mixi Introduced MySpace-like Personal Page Decoration Feature For PC
• CyberAgent starts illustration mashup community AmebaPACO
• MSN Sankei News starts enabling users to reproduce the news footage pictures on their blogs without permission.
• Rakuten, Yahoo Japan, Mixi and more teamed up for promoting e-commerce industry.
• Motion Portrait introduces HourFace, the iPhone app allows you to see how you will look like when you get older.
• Niconico DVD – NicoNico comments overlay on Your Watching DVD
• A Japan’s real estate portal releases a GPS-enabled iPhone app showing the average price of apartment rent cost classfied by town.
• NTT Docomo started mobile cartoon service for India’s Tata DoCoMo cellphone subscribers.
• Yahoo! Japan phishing suspects arrested.
• NTT Communications invests in Swiss online language learning site.
• Latest i-mode browsers are reported to cause security leak with old-style mobile site
• CyberAgent released the iPhone app allowing you to browse Ameba blog posts.
• Bikini Liquor Shop.
• OGC2010 Web/Game Conference Feb 17th
• Mr. & Mrs. Ukigawa, who are well-known for having invented a Japanese front-end processor(FEP), quit the company they’ve founded and launch a new company to develop user-friendly application platforms.
• Livedoor launched TechWave, an IT-oriented blog moderated by former Jiji Press tech correspondent Tsuruaki Yukawa, and Market Hack, an alternative investment-oriented blog by financial expert Takao Hirose.
• Naver’s Storage Service N Drive
• YouTube announces the grand prix winner of YouTube Video Awards Japan 2009.
• Kenko.com launched an English-language version.
• Contactless smardcard “FeliCa” for the iPhone to be introduced in Japan. Flight System Consulting, Focal Computer and Morphie are jointly developing it. [pdf]
• Flight System Consulting just released the iPhone app enabling your tweet by speech.
• Programmers’ friend Potechi-no-te – magic hands for potato tips
• Ascii-Art assist service for Twitter AA Hoshu
• NTT Docomo announces its own Android App Market for the coming new Sony Ericsson device
• GMO Payment Gateway to start Payment Service for Social Apps
• Navar Japan N Drive adds iPhone and Mac support
• Evernote opens Japanese site and declares Japanese localization is under way
• CoroPura Starts Another Location Based Social Game on Mobage Town
• Taiko no Tatsujin Goes On iPhone
• David Meerman Scott interviews @masakiishitani about Japanese Twitter scene
• Web game company AQInteractive aquires LinkThink(WebKare)
• Yahoo! Japan and others’ guide for children internet usage recommend parents to allow PC first
• iPad page on Apple Japan does not have iBooks

If you want to know any specific news more, but unable to find them in other English blog/media, please let us know.

As you see, we know a lot things to write but contributors time are limited. So we are looking for authors. We will help Japanese research/reading part so do not worry if your Japanese is not perfect.

We also want sponsorship to keep this group blog. Ideal if from Japanese companies because our initial motivation was to introduce them to non-Japanese web. Problem is we only write in English and they do not check English sites If you know them please suggest us to them!

Tags: Japan, Trend by Akky Akimoto
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The largest mobile social network Gree announced [J] that their new GREE Connect (tentative name) platform starting this April 2010.

Mixi Appli, an OpenSocial specification based API was officially introduced [J] on the biggest social network Mixi in August 2009 after a half year closed beta.

Mobage Town by DeNA, the second mobile social network also started [J] their OpenSocial API and game API opened to third party developers in September 2009. As Mobage Town (Gree as well) is the mobile centric service, they implemented Open Social API on the limited Japanese cellphone browsers well.

After the phrase “Mixi Tsukare”(tiresome on Mixi) was said by some long term users and growth slowed, Mixi’s traffic was reported to ride on upstream trend again by their Mixi Appli.

Now, all three competing social network services (none of them has been getting the dominating position if you imagine No.1 is like Facebook in many countries) can tell their developer users that they can make and possibly earn on their platform, instead of learning Facebook platform, which is not predictable to worth supporting in Japanese market at this point. The level of openness and seriousness are different among those big three, but they need to show their fighting pose against Facebook invasion.

Tags: Japan, News by Akky Akimoto
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Today, J-Magic[J] CEO Takuya Miyata[J] (@takmiyata[J]) unveiled that he had joined Japan’s largest social network service company Mixi[J] as an employee working with the Mixi business department.

As reported here on Asiajin, J-Magic handed over their breed-winning business of the face recognition mobile app to Mobile Factory last month, and they have been said to shut down all business very soon.   CNET Japan asked them how they would be running themselves[J], but no comment was given on that.

Here’s an English translation of what he has posted on his blog:

Besides having announced in our press release that we handed over our mobile app business to our partners, we decided to cut down or close the other all business.   We all thank our shareholders, our partners, our clients and all whom may be involved for their support.

And please excuse me my impoliteness that I tell you suddenly that, I joined Mixi.   Needless to say, Mixi is no longer just a social network service operator, but now leading this country’s entire Internet economy.   By making the most of my experience that I’ve been working in Japan and abroad, I will do my best for the company’s further success.   I appreciate your support.

Tags: Japan, News, Person by Masaru IKEDA
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