Ready For: A New Crowd Fundraising Site For Artists Launches

Ohma Inc., a Tokyo-based tech start-up known for semantic web-based who’s-who app Spysee[J], released a Kickstarter-like crowd fundraising service called “ReadyFor?[J]” this week. The service intends to giving fundraising opportunities to amateur filmmakers, musicians and artists who would like to publish their works. If you invest in someone’s plan to develop his/her work, in return,… Continue reading Ready For: A New Crowd Fundraising Site For Artists Launches

TwitVoice Allows You To Leave Instant Voice Messages Via Twitter

Tokyo-based tech start-up Pido[J] unveiled the company’s first iPhone app today, which is called TwitVoice[J] and allows you to leave your voice messages via Twitter.   It’s a free app, and you can tweet with your real voice recorded within fifteen seconds.   The company expects to add some features in the future to attract the… Continue reading TwitVoice Allows You To Leave Instant Voice Messages Via Twitter

Social Illustration Service Pixiv Hits 3 Million Members

Japan has quite a few “social drawing services” that let users upload self-drawn images and connect with each other. But Pixiv is the biggest of them all. The eponymous company behind the service has announced that Pixiv hit 3 million members on March 29. The number of users doubled since January last year, when we… Continue reading Social Illustration Service Pixiv Hits 3 Million Members

Kinect Driven “Ghost in the Shell” Cyberspace

Kamakura based web/app company Kayac reproduced a cyber space in a popular anime series “Ghost in the Shell – Stand Alone Complex(S.A.C.)” at Parco Part 1 department store, Shibuya, Tokyo. By using kinect input device with big screens, visitors can experience to chase and catch out Tachikoma, an AI tank (Wikipedia) in the virtual space.… Continue reading Kinect Driven “Ghost in the Shell” Cyberspace

Weekly Comics Shonen Jump Makes One Issue Free Online By Quake

Shoeisha made a 2011’s 15th issue of Weekly Shonen Jump, the most popular Japanese manga(comic) magazine which is sold 3 million copies every week, online for free on Yahoo! Japan [J] and Nico Nico Seiga [J]. “Seiga” means static image, opposite to “douga”(movie). Nico Nico Seiga is a service to share images run by Nico… Continue reading Weekly Comics Shonen Jump Makes One Issue Free Online By Quake

2channel Founder’s 10 Million Yen Donation Rejected By Groupon Japan

Groupon Japan, local operator of successful digital coupon company Groupon, which drew cold stares by the new year’s trouble, was one of the fast web companies who started the earthquake victims saving program. Their “matching gift” donation collected 100 million yen by March 20th, and Groupon Japan added their own 100 million yen on top… Continue reading 2channel Founder’s 10 Million Yen Donation Rejected By Groupon Japan

Wiki Covering 11 Countries: Digital Media Across Asia

Here is some recommended reading, probably of value for just about everybody reading Asiajin: in 2007, Students at Singapore Management University have created a wiki called “Digital Media Across Asia”, which now covers a total of eleven countries (in English), namely: Australia China Hong Kong India Indonesia Japan Malaysia Singapore South Korea Taiwan Vietnam On… Continue reading Wiki Covering 11 Countries: Digital Media Across Asia

More Anonymity! Nottotter.jp Shuffled Members’ Twitter Account, Blocked Promptly

Nottotter.jp is a new web service using Twitter account to exchange your writing rights with other Nottotter members for 5 minutes. In other words, registered user on Nottotter can tweet on some other user’s account for 5 minutes. A Hatena blogger id:hitode909 developed and released [J] this Nottotter, which means “I’ve taken it over.” in… Continue reading More Anonymity! Nottotter.jp Shuffled Members’ Twitter Account, Blocked Promptly

This me Lets You Create A Social Profile Page In 5 Minutes

Generally speaking, social profile editors are a dime a dozen. In the last few months, for example, about.me, flavors.me or Follr have cropped up in the US, allowing users to pull information from various social networks together to build a single online identity. But none of these services have a Japanese UI or integrate Japanese… Continue reading This me Lets You Create A Social Profile Page In 5 Minutes

EC Navi Establishes “EC Navi Ventures”, Plans To Invest In Japanese And Asian Startups

Things haven’t been looking good for many Japanese VC firms lately, but that didn’t stop Tokyo-based e-commerce company EC Navi, which today announced the establishment of a VC arm called EC Navi Ventures. EC Navi Ventures is set up as a separate company (also based in Tokyo), which is 100% owned by EC Navi. The… Continue reading EC Navi Establishes “EC Navi Ventures”, Plans To Invest In Japanese And Asian Startups