Author: akky

Niconico Douga SP1 and its expanding reach

Niwango hold a press conference about its Niconico Douga‘s update release “SP1” (upgraded from “RC2”) on March 5th 13:00 (JST). Current statistics of Niconico Douga provided by director Seiji Sugimoto: 5.6 million registered users 1.14 million of users using cellularphone version 189 thousands paid users listed on NTT Docomo’s i-mode official site Ads sale in… Continue reading Niconico Douga SP1 and its expanding reach

Mixi will set up China subsidiary

Japanese Social Network Giant, Mixi Inc. announced that they will establish a 100% subsidiary in Shanghai, China, to enter the Chinese market this April or May 2008. Most of Mixi’s revenues now come from its social network service for the PC and cellular phones. Mixi says they think China is promising because of the increase… Continue reading Mixi will set up China subsidiary

Asiajin Meeting Tokyo #1 on 26th(Tue), Feb.

We are going to hold our first readers’ meeting on 2/26 (Tue) night. Asiajin Meeting Tokyo The meeting will include 5-6 English presentations about 1. popular net services in Japan, or 2. their project/product. Those presentation will be in English by Japanese web entrepreneurs/developers, all of whom heavily use Japanese net services everyday at their… Continue reading Asiajin Meeting Tokyo #1 on 26th(Tue), Feb.

Fastladder RSS Reader is now Open Source

Fastladder, an English localized version of the Japan’s most popular web-based RSS Reader “livedoor Reader” becomes Open Source today. Codes written in Ruby on Rails/Javascript are available on Google Code. The lincense is an MIT license. The installable binary package is also downloadable from fastladder.org. For Windows/Mac/Unix. It is still the same web-based (and “fast”,… Continue reading Fastladder RSS Reader is now Open Source

Some Niconico-douga videos available without registration

Niconico douga, the 2007 biggest hit in Japanese web, is a video sharing community service with enhanced overlay comments feature. Although it is popular among Japanese users, there are not many non-Japanese videos and comments, mainly because it requires user registration and it does not offer English menu. If you want to try it by… Continue reading Some Niconico-douga videos available without registration

Hatena Haiku English version released

Hatena Inc., USA subsidiary of Hatena Corp, one of the web-geek community center in Japan, released its Hatena Haiku‘s English version today. It’s clearly influenced by microblogging platforms like twitter, but adds its own unique functionality. One is the drawing tool on comment forms, where users can post messages via handwriting. Another community oriented feature… Continue reading Hatena Haiku English version released

Twitter Japan dev team showed some plans

On the twitter Japanese localization news, newly-opened Twitter Japan development blog explains what items are on their task list on localization process. In their current plan, They are making Japanese version on top of current (running) system. Japanese users and world users belong to the same account space. They do NOT make another Japanese version… Continue reading Twitter Japan dev team showed some plans

twitter goes into Japan assisted by Digital Garage

Digital Garage Inc. announced its capital and business tie-up with Twitter inc.. Digital Garage makes some disclosed amount of investment not more than 100,000,000yen(about $915,000), and also helps Twitter’s localization development in Japan. Digital Garage and Twitter will launch Japanese microblogging service for both PC and cellularphone browsers by this spring 2008. # It is… Continue reading twitter goes into Japan assisted by Digital Garage

Japan’s No.1 blogger declared to stop her blog

Famous actress Chinatsu Wakatsuki, age 23, whose weblog boasts over 80 million page views per month, announced an end of her blog yesterday. Last month she once implied about her blog’s end and caused a lot of reactions from her readers and media, which ended up to her apology for confusion, but it became real… Continue reading Japan’s No.1 blogger declared to stop her blog