Month: August 2009

Microsoft Innovation Award 2009: Five Tech Start-ups Nominated As Finalists

Microsoft announced the finalists of Microsoft Innovation Award 2009 last week, and there were a judging committee for the award at the company’s annual conference for system engineers in Yokohama, Tech-ED Japan 2009[J]. Microsoft assists the finalists in marketing, engineering and international business development.   In 2007, tech start-up known as web browser developer Lunascape won… Continue reading Microsoft Innovation Award 2009: Five Tech Start-ups Nominated As Finalists

CJIC2009: Internet-Enabled Home Appliances Come Together To Foresee Our Future

Today at Roppongi Hills, a skyscraper located in the heart of Tokyo, CNET Japan[J] held an annual tech conference called CJIC 2009 (CNET Japan Innovation Conference) where two tech-startups, Panasonic and Sony presented their new services and products to more than 350 attendees. As the first presenter of the conference, Atsuki Ishida[J], CEO of FreeBit,… Continue reading CJIC2009: Internet-Enabled Home Appliances Come Together To Foresee Our Future

Sharp’s Pocket-sized netPC: Ten Hour Lifetime Gives You No Fear About Dead Battery

On Thursday, Sharp introduced a brand new pocket-sized netPC terminal named “NetWalker[J]“, which is expected to go on sale in late September for USD460 each (estimated street price).   It has ten hour battery lifetime, Freescale Semiconductor‘s multimedia application processor as a CPU,  a 512MB memory and a 4GB flash memory.  The terminal’s 409 gram (14.4oz)… Continue reading Sharp’s Pocket-sized netPC: Ten Hour Lifetime Gives You No Fear About Dead Battery

Mixi Finally Shed ‘Beta’ With Mixi Appli

Mixi [J] (Asiajin articles), the biggest social network service in Japan, starts their OpenSocial compliant application platform Mixi Appli officially opened to every Mixi user on PC. Mixi Appli Mobile is planned to follow next month. Mixi announced its OpenSocial platform last year and has been running closed beta test with third party developers for… Continue reading Mixi Finally Shed ‘Beta’ With Mixi Appli

Virtual Singer Application Vocaloid Played Her First “Live” for 25,000 Fans

One of Japan’s most popular video sharing Nico Nico Douga‘s driving force in its early stage, Miku Hatsune, a virtual girl character attached to a PC application Vocaloid performed her first “live” concert in front of an audience of 25,000 people at an anime event in Saitama prefecture, Japan. (Someone’s upload this on Youtube, the… Continue reading Virtual Singer Application Vocaloid Played Her First “Live” for 25,000 Fans

Event Wrap-up: 400+ Geeks Applaud Web Innovators At WISH2009

More than 400 Internet users joined the event on Friday evening in Tokyo.   Tokyo-based blog marketing agency Agile Media Network (AMN)[J] held Japan’s first conference having a number of tech start-ups in comprehensive perspective, titled WISH2009 (Web Innovation SHare)[J].   More than a dozen of innovators had opportunities to present their works, and Japanese tech media… Continue reading Event Wrap-up: 400+ Geeks Applaud Web Innovators At WISH2009

IVP Fund Invests In China’s Largest Mobile SNS

Infinity Ventures LLP[J], a Tokyo-based independent venture capital unit investing in tech start-up companies, announced today it had invested approximately USD2.1M (JPY200M) in WAPTX (registered in Cayman Islands) running China’s largest mobile SNS called tx.com.cn(天下网)[C] (pronounced as tiān-xià-wǎng). The service owns 9 million users as of July 2009, and Tokyo-based mobile SNS company DeNA announced… Continue reading IVP Fund Invests In China’s Largest Mobile SNS

Unidentified “Floating” Objects Are Introduced In Osaka This Summer

In commemorating the series of water-oriented events which are now underway in Osaka, NTT Facilities, a property management company of NTT Group, developed two solar-powered and UFO-shaped water purifiers, which are to be installed in Dotonbori[Wikipedia]-canal running through the center of the city, and in a moat around the Osaka Castle. That machine is a… Continue reading Unidentified “Floating” Objects Are Introduced In Osaka This Summer

Mixi ex-CTO Helps Singaporean Mobile Startup Xsago

Batara Eto, who suggested to make a Japanese social network to his boss in late 2003 and programmed Japan’s biggest social network Mixi, let the company (E-mercury) to change their primary business and rename (to “Mixi”, of course) with the huge success, then left his CTO job in 2007 [J], is reported to invest to… Continue reading Mixi ex-CTO Helps Singaporean Mobile Startup Xsago