Asiajin

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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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An interview to the president of Yahoo! Japan Masahiro Inoue (photo) by Nikkei Business Magazine with a catchy title “Google? I think none of their services are cool.” is getting huge attentions in Japanese web.

To answer the interviewer’s comment “By comparing Google’s services such like Street View and Book Search, Yahoo! seems not to generate surprising services”, Inoue said “Google’s those services are nothing impressive for me. There are tons of things you would do if there are no laws and rules. If you abide laws, your options are restricted. You should not do what you are not supposed to do.”

He continued, “Those Google’s services surprised people are all in gray zone. Advertising on search result was copied from Yahoo!, Street View is kind of peeping, Book Search is violation of copyright law, lots of YouTube traffic are illegally uploaded. You may say that those are cool. But can established company behave like that? In Yahoo! those projects should be stopped by legal section.”

Overall, reactions to the article from Japanese blogs, tweets and social bookmarks are negative to the president. Net-savvy people have been loving No.2 search engine Google and its enterprising spirit. Many comments tell that they have never used Yahoo! in several years.

However, majority of Japanese net users never express their opinions on those social media, or never knew what social media is, and visit huge Yahoo! portal every day, click ads and buy things online. National clients also prefer Yahoo! for their ads maybe because Yahoo! Japan is such a conservative company.

Yahoo! Japan goes oversea?

The interviewer Kei Ogasawara also asked if Yahoo! Japan expands to oversea markets.

Inoue answered that Yahoo! brand is licensed for their activities within Japan, and Japanese web market is promising enough to get more.

Interestingly, he revealed that they were suggested to go abroad by US Yahoo! before, which Yahoo! Japan disagreed with and was not realized.

He also talks on their original developed “Interest Match” ads system, and a plan to license it back to US Yahoo! in future.

Tags: Japan, Person by Akky Akimoto
3 Comments »

As reported on Google Help Forum in Japanese [J], some Japanese search users who searched on Google by “yahoo.co.jp” was taken to a site which has a strange domain “twakuwakuland.info”, but shows the totally same contents as Yahoo! Japan.

People usually search Yahoo! Japan by “Yahoo” but not “yahoo.co.jp” (well, I don’t know why people even search “yahoo” on google but…), but when Google Toolbar assist auto-complete, some people just let the toolbar search by “yahoo.co.jp” then they may type their Yahoo password on the phishing site.

Yahoo! Japan support answered off-the-mark comment (“please do not access such site”), and Google’s Help Forum seems not a place where Googlers answer, an user sent a tweet to Matt Cutts. His reply was “it’s been reported here and I think people will look into it. Thanks for mentioning it.”

The problem was likely caused that Yahoo! Japan does not check third party points their site domain to Yahoo’s server address. I don’t know how Google crawled and indexed the phisher’s site at the top of the search results instead of Y!J.

It seems fixed now, though it is not known who fixed the issue.

Tags: Japan, News by Akky Akimoto
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The dominant portal/search Yahoo! Japan is testing a customized portal for office workers.

On Yahoo! Japan’s top page, which is the most viewed page in Japan by the way, a new button “Office Version” is showed up at the best position on the top banner menu.

Once you clicked it, your Yahoo top page is switched to the office version, which has sombre colour and simpler design.

The regular version looks like this,

Many “Not good for work” menus are removed. Removed links are Shopping, Auction, Leisure Trip, Sports and Entertainment news, TV, Movie and Gyao!(online movie), Job search , Real estate, Automotive, Forum, Blog, Apparel, Dating, Game, Fortune telling, Kids. Movie and Product search are also removed from search tabs.

So this is the portal having only things which employers want to show their employees in Japan, at least Yahoo! Japan thinks so. As both the regular and office version have the same URL, seems switched by browser cookies, and each user can easily switch between them by pressing button, companies cannot filter the regular version usage.

But in some offices your boss may peek which version of Yahoo! you are using over your shoulder in future.

About office portal, Cyber Agent and Cybozu’s joint venture Cybozu.net [J] runs “only business” portal. Although it does not exclude contents for fun so strictly as Yahoo!’s office version, the portal seems to be acknowledged and encouraged in some companies.

This office version will be out of beta in next spring in Yahoo! Japan’s plan.

[disclosure] Akky is hired by Cybozu’s subsidiary as a tech blogger.

See Also:

Yahoo! Japan PR blog entry on this beta test [J]

Tags: Japan, News by Akky Akimoto
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Although it is November, the season of 2009 ranking comes! Yahoo! Japan discloses their annual ranking by what keywords people searched in this year.
As always, all Japanese search engines and portals will follow, but Yahoo! Japan is the No.1 search in Japan, this ranking is one of the best to describe “regular” people’s search behaviour, except the keyword “Yahoo”.

PC search

As you see, most high-ranked keywords just stay the same positions.

Some notable changes

“HelloWork”(government job centre for unemployment) moving up from 20th to 13th may show that more people have bitter time this year.

Boosted web services:

• Kakaku.com(Price comparison service) 12th(from 22nd)
• Amebro(Blog hosting) 14th(-, out of top 50 in 2008)
• Han Game(online game) 15th(21th)
• Cookpad(recipe site) 20th(47th)
• “Zenryaku” for Zenryaku Profile(mobile profile site) 34th(-)
• Google Maps 42nd(-)
• Zozo Town(apparel mall) 46th(-)
• livedoor(portal) 47th(-)

Services Losing positions:

• Wikipedia 26th(19th)
• Gurunabi(restaurant guide) 53rd(35th)
• Rikunabi(job matching) 64th(37th)

None of “Twitter” or “Facebook” appeared on the top 100, yet.

Mobile search

On mobile ranking, 7 of 10 keywords remain from 2008 ranking. 3 bbs sites went away, one of them stopped the service.

As always, erotic words seem to be excluded from the rankings.

Tags: Japan, Trend by Akky Akimoto
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