Year: 2009

Will Mobile Medical Services Save Japan From The Global Economic Downturn?

Economists point out that expanding domestic demand and encouraging consumption are the highest priorities in getting us out of this economic downturn. IT Strategic Headquarters, the arm of Japan’s Cabinet which oversees which IT platforms will most benefit the country in the future, has suggested a three-year stimulus package including further deployment of broadband applications… Continue reading Will Mobile Medical Services Save Japan From The Global Economic Downturn?

NTT DoCoMo Halted Brand-New BlackBerry Sales, While Sankei Keeps Distributing Its 1st Newspaper App For The Phone

Japan’s largest mobile operator NTT DoCoMo started selling the brand-new smartphone BlackBerry Bold (BBB) from Research In Motion(RIM) recently, but the operator halted[J] sales after only a week since its introduction, because the handset has reportedly overheated while the battery is being recharged. By the way, we covered a couple of  stories about newspaper apps… Continue reading NTT DoCoMo Halted Brand-New BlackBerry Sales, While Sankei Keeps Distributing Its 1st Newspaper App For The Phone

Run Virtually In Tokyo If You Lost The Draw To Attend The Real Marathon

This year’s Tokyo Marathon is scheduled to be held on March 22nd and marks its 3rd anniversary. The expected number of participating runners continues to increase every year. More than 250,000 people entered this year, but only 35,000 were lucky enough to win the draw to run. That means almost 85% of all the applicants will… Continue reading Run Virtually In Tokyo If You Lost The Draw To Attend The Real Marathon

Yahoo Japan Diggs Deeper Underground, While Google Covers More Narrow Streets Nationwide

Yahoo Japan[J] is planning to release its new underground mapping service on Thursday, which shows the details of underground shopping malls in 49 locations nationwide. Yahoo Japan’s map service[J] gets approximately 700 million page-views a month, and the new feature is expected to further increase that number. Similar to Google Maps Street View, by clicking… Continue reading Yahoo Japan Diggs Deeper Underground, While Google Covers More Narrow Streets Nationwide

Engineers Salary and Life in Japan – from PHP Study Meeting

Hello Asiajin readers, I, Yusuke ANDO (aka yandod), was asked by Asiajin to write about my presentation on PHP developers’ and other software engineers’ salaries and communities at the 40th Monthly PHP Study Meeting Kanto (Tokyo and surrounding area) this month. 20090214 Phpstudy View more presentations from yandod. (tags: japan php) I referred to some… Continue reading Engineers Salary and Life in Japan – from PHP Study Meeting

Two Osaka Start-ups Bring Crime Prevention Apps To iPhone And Android Handsets

On Wednesday, Osaka-based start-up and iPhone developer Feedtailor[J] introduced a new iPhone app (clicking this link will launch iTunes), which allows you to see a map of street crimes in Osaka for the purpose of raising people’s attention and preventing further possible crimes. Feedtailor’s partner and Osaka-based tech start-up C-LIS[J] also released on Monday its… Continue reading Two Osaka Start-ups Bring Crime Prevention Apps To iPhone And Android Handsets

New $20 Car Navi iPhone App Heading To Top Of Paid List

ZENRIN DataCom’s[J] new application is a valiant push toward a genuine GPS car navigation system for the iPhone 3G. It’s currently sitting at No. 4 on the App Store’s Top Paid list and it only(!) costs 1,800 yen (at the time of writing, just under US$20). The application’s name is いつもナビ 地図＋ルート (apologies if this… Continue reading New $20 Car Navi iPhone App Heading To Top Of Paid List

Serversman Serves Its 10,000th Man

We recently covered Serversman (by FreeBit) on Asiajin, a free iPhone/iPod file/web server application available in the Japanese App Store. About ten days after its release, FreeBit announced that it had passed the 10,000 registrations mark (MyCom article here[J]). Serversman (opens in iTunes) is similar to other file server apps like Files (opens in iTunes),… Continue reading Serversman Serves Its 10,000th Man

Apologies to Google: CyberBuzz Is Not Pay-Per-Post (so they say)

After top Japanese online tech news sites CNET Japan, ITMedia and Internet Watch reported Google Japan’s ambiguous apology, CyberBuzz (the agency hired by Google Japan to have bloggers place links to Google Japan’s blog widget campaign) announced a press release on February 12th. In the release, CyberBuzz states, contradicting what’s been reported, that their CyberBuzz… Continue reading Apologies to Google: CyberBuzz Is Not Pay-Per-Post (so they say)