Asiajin

Google held “Google Developer Day 2009“, an annual conference introducing a number of technology trends that the company had recently developed, in Yokohama on Tuesday and started with a keynote speech made by its Tokyo office president Koichiro Tsujino[J].

Following Tsujino’s expressing his appreciation for a large participation in the event, the company’s senior product manager explained how important the newer version of Google Chrome will be, by corresponding to the HTML5 standardization, in terms of its capability of browsing dynamic websites without installing any rich Internet application such as Adobe Flash technology and Microsoft Silverlight technology.

Accompanied with a representative from NTT DoComo, Google’s counterpart to deploy Android cellphone handsets in Japanese market, Tom Moss, the head of developing Android-related business at Google Asia-Pacific, also had a session and encouraged the participants to develop more number of Android applications. Google gave away an Android handset to each of all the participants in the event, just same as it had done at Google I/O Developer Conference in San Francisco last month.

“Google Wave“, a new technology that the company intends to release this summer, was also demonstrated and its three developers showed one of the technology’s enabling new features, which is called “Hosted Conversations”.

Kenji Kasahara, the president of Japan’s largest SNS Mixi[J], was invited as a guest presenter, and he emphasized Mixi would be the best platform where social application development can be boosted up since Mixi is absolutely OpenSocial compatible.

Via Maikomi Journal by Mainichi Communications [J]

Tags: Cellular Phone, Community, Company, Japan, News, Technology by Masaru IKEDA
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On Wednesday, Infinity Venture LLP[J] announced it would launch a new fund targeting investment on mobile start-ups in Japan and Mainland China.

The Fundraisers for this are founders and presidents from tech-startups including DeNA (Mobile SNS) , Mixi[J] (SNS), Opt (web advertising agency) and P&A (investment firm founded by Rakuten’s former CTO), who have made success in their financial aspects such as their companies having been listed on a major stock exchange.     Its fund size is approximately USD12.5M as of May, and expected to be USD52.1M by the end of this year.

Tags: Announcement, Company, Japan by Masaru IKEDA
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Mixi [JP] (TSE:2121) held a conference to introduce their new service “Mixi Appli”. Mixi Appli provides an OpenSocial-based application platform for developers.

Mixi Appli is one of the three services provided on “Mixi Platform”. Mixi Platform provides Mixi Appli, Mixi Connect (OAuth) and Mixi OpenID.

CEO, Kenji Kasahara briefly introduced Mixi and Mixi Appli. And then CEO of Google Japan, Koichiro Tsujino gave a very short talk about OpenSocial. Kenji Kasahara emphasized that Mixi is going to be the world’s first social application platform which provides full features both on PC and mobile.

Hiroyuki Oyama, a technology advisor of Mixi, explained an API of Mixi Appli.

Mixi Appli has two user interfaces “Canvas” and “Feed”. Canvas is a full page canvas which works as a main screen of apps. Feed is a short text message which appears on the user’s homepage. Canvas is defined by Gadgets.xml of OpenSocial API, and pages can be written with HTML/Javascript/Flash.

Mixi Appli provides 5 APIs such as Person & Friends API, Community API, Activities API, Persistence API, and gadgets.io API.

Mixi is going to release Mixi Appli API for mobile on 24th April. Mobile version of Mixi Appli is only provided for approved developers.

Akinori Harada, SVP of Mixi Division, gave a detailed talk on Mixi Appli.

He predicted that the next generation of Web sites are going to be based on social graph. Social graph based sites are not “globally social” like Digg, Flickr or Youtube. Social graph based services have values such as “sharing”, “contextual” and “empathy”.

Mixi Appli provides two methods of monetization for developers. One is a Mixi official ad program which pays per pageview. Ad revenue starts from 0.01yen ($0.0001) per pageview, and the revenue increases proportionally with pageviews and uniqueusers. Another is a Mixi payment API. Mixi payment API supports micro-payment.

Harada announced Social Application Award, the award which is given to the best Mixi Appli. The winner receives a million yen ($10,000).

Mixi Appli will be officially launched on August 2009. Subsequently, Mixi ad program and Mixi Appli for mobile launches on September.

Harada also announced that Mixi formed “Mixi Fund” to fund Mixi Appli developers. Community Factory Inc. [JP] received the first investment of the fund. They didn’t disclose the amount of the investment.

Community Factory plans to release 3 applications, which are Dynamite Panic, Group Chat, and Moso Shopping.

CTO of RockYou, Jia Shen unveiled Mixi Appli version of their SuperPets application. Mixi Appli version has special Hello Kitty items for Japanese users. Harada commented that RockYou has a larger number of pageviews than Mixi.

Makoto Asanuma, an executive of Bandai Namco Games, said that they released an application called “Birthday Cake” which provides a special collaborative way to celebrate their friend’s birthday. Bandai Namco Games is already providing games and characters for existing Mixi services such as “PicoMiku”, “MikuCole”, and “Mixi Nengajo” (New year card).

Minoru Kimura, a head of Recruit Media Technology Labs, boasted their plan to launch 30 applications. He showed 3 applications as example. “Kin-en Marathon” (Quit Smoking Marathon) is a collaborative application to help quit smoking. “Senchaku Sama” (Mr. first-comer) helps users to do something such as party registration or simple giveaway in first-come-first-served basis. “Commercializer” [JP] is an online video editing service which enables users to create their own TV commercial.

Tags: Company, Event Report, Japan, New Service, Service by Shunichi Arai
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Eye-Fi, makers of the wireless memory card for cameras and Mixi has partnered to support automatic upload of photos to Mixi.

Eye-Fi SD share-card (2GB) utilizes mixi-Connect, Mixi’s application API to automatically upload photos over WiFi connection to the user’s Mixi’s account. As Mixi’s press release states [JP]: “Uploading Photos becomes easier”.

Eye-Fi supported applications:

and required Mixi-Connect application approval:

This announcement is another important milestone of Mixi-Connect and the long awaited open application platform.

Tags: Announcement, Company, Japan by Avi Telyas
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Ngi Group, one of the most active venture capital firm in Japanese web industry, also known as their successful early investment to the Japan’s largest social network Mixi, declared their downsizing plan in February.

When the rationalization plan [J, pdf] was reported at first by Nikkei Net, it was said that they were asking solicit voluntary retirement to all of their 58 employees and expects 80% of them to leave.

Shortly after the plan disclose, another release [J, pdf] reported that 32 out of 58 people (55%) applied the program to leave at the end of February.

Ngi Group, former Netage Capital, is remembered as an advocate for “The Bit Valley” concept which named Shibuya (which Chinese letters can mean “bitter” and “valley”) and around area as a Japanese Silicon Valley in 1999-2000, has been incubating a lot of web ventures in Japan.

Although Ngi Goupe said that this re-organization will not affect their business operation, it is pity that they had to announce and execute this kind of re-structuring.

See Also:

Tokyo’s Valley of the Netrepreneurs - 1999, 10 years ago!

Tags: Japan, News by Akky Akimoto
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Mixi holds “mixi Appli Conference 2009” [JP] to promote their new app service on April 23rd in Shinagawa, Tokyo.

Speakers are:

• Kenji Kasahara, CEO of Mixi Inc.
• Akinori Harada, VP, Mixi Division, of Mixi Inc.
• Koichiro Tsujino, President of Google Japan.
• Makoto Asanuma, VP of Namco Bandai Games Inc.
• Minoru Kimura, Head of Media Technology Labs at Recruit Co., Ltd.
• Jia Shen, CTO and Founder of RockYou, Inc.

Mixi has already disclosed their app service API for companies under the NDA from November 2008.

In early April, they will launch a beta version of Mixi Appli. Also they will release the API for personal developers too.

Tags: Company, Japan, News, Service by Shunichi Arai
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Social network service Mixi banned users from dating.

Mixi changed their terms of policy on December 1st, in accordance with the “Dating site regulation act”. They are now prohibiting users from “using Mixi mainly to meet with strangers of the other sex”.

Recently, Mixi has deleted many groups which hold group dating or offline meetings.

The decision might also have been influenced by the recent lowering of the minimum age limit for users from 18 to 15.  To be certified as a  “safe site” which can be used by minors from a cellphone without filtering, they had to delete all dating groups from the site.

Japan has already been suffering from very low birth rate, but the National Police Agency wants Japanese to refrain from dating. Very very silly. Is it constitutional to restrict people from dating online?

via J-CAST [JP]

Tags: Japan, Society by Shunichi Arai
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Investment arm of a Tokyo-based Internet venture Cyber Agent Group, Cyber Agent Investment LTD.[J] announced to organize a business plan competition called “START”, for the purpose of discovering innovative and potential tech start-up, in cooperation with  Cyber Agent, Mixi[J], Yahoo Japan[J], EC Navi[J], CA Mobile, netprice.com, DeNA and Microsoft Bizspark.

Award winning plan may get funding of 100 million yen (approx. USD 1.1 million) at the maximum from Cyber Agent Investment.   Additional funding and business partnership may be provided by the cooperators.

The competition is open to all individuals who are older than 18 years and so, and to all corporates which founded in less than three years.   Its competition entry is open from January 8th through March 11th this year.

 Website of business plan competition “START” [J]

Tags: Japan, News by Masaru IKEDA
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Mixi Nengajou (new year greeting card) is not the only emerging service tries to turn online friendship into real items delivery.

This is too much of a coincidence that Mixi, Softbank (owns 40% of Yahoo! Japan) and au(KDDI)-DeNA(runs Mobage Town) launched virtual to real shipping services in last 2 months.

Softbank Puchi Gift

November 4th, Softbank enhanced their “Softbank Gift” service with its mobile variation “Softbank Puchi (pettit) Gift“.

Softbank Gift has been letting you to purchase and send flowers/gifts/foods by giving your friends e-mail address on PC/mobile. Softbank Gift asks the receiver’s address so recipients do not have to tell their home address to presenters.

On new Puchi Gift, presenters can send 7 items (initially. Coca-Cola, Hagen Daz, canned iced coffee, blotting paper, etc.) at a nation-wide convenience store chain Seven-Eleven Japan. Then recipient got an e-mail with bar-code, and the code is a coupon for the item at any branch of 12,000 Seven Eleven shop.

Mixi Nengajou

We already covered Mixi’s New Year Greeting Card service. This is a combined service with the No.1 Social Network service Mixi and the semi-national (recently privatized) gigantic company Japan Post.

This service was announced in Nov 2008, released in the same month, sold 700,000 cards by January 5th [J].

MobaDepa/au Shopping Mall

Dec 19th 2008, DeNA, the largest mobile social network “Mobage Town” provider also runs several shopping/auction sites, adds a new feature by which users can send a present to receivers whose real address is unknown.

DeNA introduced the same function to the online shopping mall au Shopping Mall, which is co-operated by KDDI and DeNA. KDDI’s au is the No.2 cellphone carieer in Japan.

DeNA’s online mall is integrated with Mobage Town. At the beginning, 1500 items including Isetan, Senbikiya and Godiva Japan are listed.

See Also:

DeNA and KDDI let users to send a gift via e-mail - Nikkei NetMarketing [J]

Softbank Gift starts - MyCom Journal [J]

DeNA and KDDI co-operate E-commerce site on which you can send gifts to person whose address is unknown - nikkei BPnet [J]

Tags: Japan, New Service, Trend by Akky Akimoto
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Japan’s most popular SNS “Mixi” introduced new two feature deployments today, especially on so-called “footprint” feature.

You may have your own site on Mixi, and Mixi’s footprint feature allows to show you on the list when and which other Mixi users have visited your site.   With today’s system renewal, new icons are prepared for “My Mixi of My Mixi” etc., that means your friend’s friend on Mixi.   Previously the system had only an icon of “My Mixi” meaning your friend on Mixi, there was nothing marked for the visitors other than your “My Mixi”.

Mixi says, the brandnew icons make you easier to find how the relationship between you and every visitor to your site is.

Additionally, newly introduced “Footprint of My Own” shows you the nickname list of Mixi users whose sites you’ve visited.    Just in case for unintentionally you’ve visited a stranger’s site, you may remove your record from the stranger’s footprint log.

Legend of Icons prepared for Mixi’s Footprint Feature

Sample Image of “Footprint of My Own” containing  Brandnew Icons on the Nickname List

Tags: Japan, News by Masaru IKEDA
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