Year: 2009

Japanese Manga/Anime: Simulcast and Same Day Release On Two Sides Of The Pacific

This coming Sunday, Toei Animation, Shueisha[J] and Fuji-TV will start broadcast the popular Japanese TV animation series “One Piece” on the Internet for North American audience, in association with U.S. based largest Internet animation distributor, FUNimation Entertaiment (inaccessible from Japan). Every episode will be available just one hour after its original broadcast in Japan. (c)Copyright… Continue reading Japanese Manga/Anime: Simulcast and Same Day Release On Two Sides Of The Pacific

Is It For Monitoring Your Performance, Or Preventing You From Adult Disease?

NTT DoCoMo announced today it would launch a new service providing corporate users with health advisory for preventing their employees from adult disease. If a corporate user applies for the service, NTT DoCoMo will start collecting vital data from pedometer-enabled cellphone handsets owned by the company’s employees, they can be advised by health nurses and… Continue reading Is It For Monitoring Your Performance, Or Preventing You From Adult Disease?

Earn Points In Mobile Game, Plant Trees In Chinese Desert

On Wednesday, Two Tokyo-based mobile tech start-ups Ceres[J] and Orso[J] jointly launched a forest growing mobile game called “Morippy”.   In the game a user can virtually grow a forest by getting along with three characters representing animal, plant and fungi on behalf of all ecosystem factors. You can earn reward points on the game in… Continue reading Earn Points In Mobile Game, Plant Trees In Chinese Desert

NTT pumps $470 million into cloud computing by 2012

It seems Japan is getting more serious as far as cloud computing adoption is concerned. Nippon Telegraph and Telephone, better known as NTT, is planning to invest about $470 million into cloud computing system-related R&D over the next three years. This decision may just right come right in time (or possible half a year too… Continue reading NTT pumps $470 million into cloud computing by 2012

NTT DoCoMo To Start Cellphone Banking Service, While KDDI Runs A Year Ahead

NTT DoCoMo and Mizuho Bank are reportedly planning to launch a micro payment banking service using cellphone handsets. By using the bank agent system that permits non-financial companies to deal with financial services, the cellphone giant will launch the service in this summer as soon as Japan’s monetary authority approves it. The new service allows… Continue reading NTT DoCoMo To Start Cellphone Banking Service, While KDDI Runs A Year Ahead

Japan’s No.1 TV web portal acTVila tops 1 million subscribers

It took 28 months, but now it has happened. Japan’s answer of sorts to American video platform Hulu, a content-on-demand service called acTVila, has racked up one million subscribers [JP, PDF]. acTVila is surely benefiting from the sharp rise in popularity of Internet-enabled TV sets, which are required to used the video-on-demand service. Users can… Continue reading Japan’s No.1 TV web portal acTVila tops 1 million subscribers

Make Tokyo Meeting 03: Where You Can See Future, Magic And Junk In A Place

Last weekend at Hachioji Campus of Digital Hollywood University in Tokyo’s surburb, “Make” magazine’s readers and gadget inventors came together and held an annual meeting titled “Make: Tokyo Meeting 03[J]“.   For readers who have never heard about Make:, the magazine is a quarterly magazine published by O’reilly Media and it contains articles on hardware hacking… Continue reading Make Tokyo Meeting 03: Where You Can See Future, Magic And Junk In A Place

Kenko.com and Wellnet Sues Japanese Government around Drug e-Commerce Ban

Today, two online pharmacy stores Kenko.com and Wellnet had a press conference to announce that they had filed a lawsuit against Japanese government. They claims that the ban of online and postal drug sale, which is going to be effective from June 1st, is against the constitution. After we reported Rakuten, Kenko.com and others claimed… Continue reading Kenko.com and Wellnet Sues Japanese Government around Drug e-Commerce Ban

We waited so long: Hot-girl-gadget Bijin Dokei gets an iPhone app

My personal favorite web concept of 2009, the Bijin Dokei (Hot Girl Clock) gadget, which I was happy to introduce in March, gets an iPhone app (App store link). Finally. The clever people from PHIRIA Design offer the gadget worldwide for $2.99/2.39 Euros (they even provide a German description in the German App Store). Similar… Continue reading We waited so long: Hot-girl-gadget Bijin Dokei gets an iPhone app