51% Of Japanese Have No “Close Friend” On Their Social Network Friends List

Microsoft Advertising reported that a social media usage research conducted by Microsoft in Asia-Pacific(APAC) 11 countries and regions. According to about 3,000 answering online to the questions (375 of them are Japanese), average APAC users are using 3 social networking services. They think only one-forth of their friends list are their close friends. 51% of… Continue reading 51% Of Japanese Have No “Close Friend” On Their Social Network Friends List

Samurai Incubate Holds Annual 1-Day Camp For Young CEOs

Samurai Incubate, a Tokyo-based seed accelerator aiming to bring up many tech start-ups, had the second edition[J] of their annual showcase event in late November, which is called Samurai Venture Summit (for short, SVS) and showed us their investing portfolios and pitch presentations by CEOs of tech start-ups.   It was an one-day event using a… Continue reading Samurai Incubate Holds Annual 1-Day Camp For Young CEOs

DeNA Exports Mobage In Alliance With Samsung

Yesterday issue of The Japan Times, on my monthly article I reported two social gaming network giants DeNA(Mobage Town) and Gree competition. And the competition between the two rivals is set to continue beyond their desire to be Japan’s leading social network as both companies are seeking another growth possibility — international markets. In the… Continue reading DeNA Exports Mobage In Alliance With Samsung

Virtual Social Dating Game For Ladies To Cheat Your Virtual Fiance

Kakeochi(Elopement in Japanese) (URL, only available on Japanese feature phone) is a new social game by Index Corp. on Japan’s No.1 social networking service Gree. In the game, you play a female university student, who has a fiance elected by parents. One day you attend a high-school alumni association party, and meet 5 attractive guys,… Continue reading Virtual Social Dating Game For Ladies To Cheat Your Virtual Fiance

Groupon Japan To Land KDDI Cellphone Official Portal

Groupon Japan, a subsidiary of the international leading flash coupon service Groupon, announced their new alliance with Japan’s No.2 cellphone carrier KDDI on 14th. According to the KDDI’s release [J], KDDI will open “au one coupon”, coupon-only portal site under its official cellphone portal site “au one”, which is available on all KDDI au feature… Continue reading Groupon Japan To Land KDDI Cellphone Official Portal

Kanazawa Mayor Candidate Challenges Twitter-Banning Japan’s Election System

On November 28th at Kanazawa city, Ishikawa prefecture, Japan there was a mayor election. The two leading candidates, incumbent Tamotsu Yamade [J], 79, and Yukiyoshi Yamano [J], 48, competed closely, gained 56,840 and 58,204 votes respectively. Only 1,364 difference. The things causing a fuss is, the young winner Yamano’s team reportedly had been using Twitter… Continue reading Kanazawa Mayor Candidate Challenges Twitter-Banning Japan’s Election System

How To Play FarmVille Japanese Version “FarmVillage”

Zynga Japan released its flagship social game “FarmVille” in Japan under the name “ファームビレッジ(FarmVillage)” on December 1. Why is it Village not Ville? According to Zynga Japan general manager Shintaro Yamada’s tweet [J], “Because the pronunciation of FarmVille and Biru(Building in Japanese, from English) are the same in Japanese and will confuse people”. SoftBank financed… Continue reading How To Play FarmVille Japanese Version “FarmVillage”

Ahhh! Girls Give You Virtual Candy On iPad

Halls Eater is a free iPhone/iPad app to promote Halls candy. The app is developed by Kamakura-based Kayac Inc (Asiajin). The app seems English/Japanese bilingual. You can move your two fingers like your lips biting the virtual candy given by one of four beautiful Japanese talents. Participating Talent (in order of appearance in app) ・… Continue reading Ahhh! Girls Give You Virtual Candy On iPad

Cellphone Java App Emulator On Javascript/HTML5

Before smartphone, there were feature phone applications. Java MIDP is one of the application environment used on Softbank/Wilcom/KDDI au in Japan, and also on Motorola feature phone, etc. Android is known to use Java-derived environment. Google made different virtual machine Dalvik with avoiding using Sun’s(and now Oracle’s) Java, but Java/CLDC profile MIDP is authentic standard… Continue reading Cellphone Java App Emulator On Javascript/HTML5

Sending Emoji Musical Note May Result In Poop Mark On Japanese Cellphone

Japanese cellphone is the birthplace of emoji – emoticon as a single letter. Now they are usable outside of Japan on Gmail and iPhone. By Google’s and others effort, October 11, 2010, they were included in the international standard, Unicode version 6.0. So now those pictogram are supposed to be used for communication among anyone… Continue reading Sending Emoji Musical Note May Result In Poop Mark On Japanese Cellphone