KDDI And Weathernews Introduce New Style Of Weather Updates For Cellphone

Japan’s second largest cellphone operator KDDI and the world’s largest meteorological company Weathernews jointly announced that they had launched a new weather update service by using Stevenson screens built on about 100 cellphone base stations in the Tokyo Metropolitan Area, which is named Soratena after sora (meaning ‘sky’) and antenna.   The service is available… Continue reading KDDI And Weathernews Introduce New Style Of Weather Updates For Cellphone

Tweeted Wishes Are Projected On Public Bath Chimney And Deliver Hopes

Sony has been running an ad campaign to promote their computer product brand Vaio since the beginning of this month, which is titled Vaio Assist Torch Project[J].   In the campaign, the company started to project words of people’s thankfulness and encouragement to a chimney of a public bath in Tokyo.   After the sun sets,… Continue reading Tweeted Wishes Are Projected On Public Bath Chimney And Deliver Hopes

Play Tag, Sharing Tweets Among Train Passengers – Keio Students Unveil Unique Social Apps At Their Showcase Event

Keio University SFC (Shonan Fujisawa Campus), known as a technology hub for Japan’s Internet community in academic field, had a two-day event called Open Research Forum 2010[J] last week, where 142 research teams showcased their development results and works. As one of them, “Densha Now” is a third-party Twitter app that shows you tweets by… Continue reading Play Tag, Sharing Tweets Among Train Passengers – Keio Students Unveil Unique Social Apps At Their Showcase Event

ex-Google Japan President Starts A New Company Alex

Koichiro Tsujino, who served as Google Japan’s president, which was an exceptional position in Google, resigned this April, has just begun his new venture, Alex [J]. On the Alex’s board member, there is an interesting name, ex-Sony CEO Nobuyuki Idei (cf. Forbes). Tsujino led VAIO and other products in Sony before Google. On the new… Continue reading ex-Google Japan President Starts A New Company Alex

Facebook Japan Covered By Japanese TV First Time

November 9th, small hour of the morning on NTV, one of the largest commercial TV key station, broadcast a program featuring Facebook Japan office first time ever. The “IT information” program called iCon, was aired from 1:29 a.m. to 1:59 a.m. (usually described 25:29-25:59 on the day before in Japan). NTV published the edited version… Continue reading Facebook Japan Covered By Japanese TV First Time

Hit List: Japan’s Top 20 Products In 2010 (And 2011)

What are Japan’s top products in 2010? That’s a question Japan’s (and one of the world’s) biggest advertising agency Dentsu recently asked in a survey [PDF] it has been conducting since 1985 (n=1,000). For the first time, Dentsu has also compiled a “hit list” that’s supposed to shine a light on what’s going to be… Continue reading Hit List: Japan’s Top 20 Products In 2010 (And 2011)

LovePlus Followers Assaulting Cellphone, Gree And Mobage Town

Virtual Dating Game LovePlus on Nintendo DS was a smash hit, let Konami themselves publish a sequel LovePlus+(Love Plus Plus) [J] (feature limited), iPhone version and coming arcade version. Two gigantic social gaming networks, Gree and Mobage Town, who have been adding new games every day, of course ride on this trend. On the same… Continue reading LovePlus Followers Assaulting Cellphone, Gree And Mobage Town

Japan’s Top Search Keywords in 2010 By Yahoo! Japan

It is a year-end buzzword ranking season. Yahoo! Japan, Japan’s most popular search portal, though the backend search engine has been gradually switching to Google’s one (everyday more people report that their search results are the similar with the Google’s results), eventually gets the highest number of search volume in Japanese. Yahoo! Japan just released… Continue reading Japan’s Top Search Keywords in 2010 By Yahoo! Japan

Yahoo Japan And Online Fashion Store Zozotown Announce Tie-Up

Yesterday, Japan’s biggest website Yahoo Japan announced a tie-up with Chiba-based Start Today, operator of popular online fashion store Zozotown. Under the agreement, Yahoo has listed around 100,000 items from Zozotown’s catalogue in its Shopping category. As you can see on the screenshot below, big Y already began promoting Zozotown on its shopping site. If… Continue reading Yahoo Japan And Online Fashion Store Zozotown Announce Tie-Up