Dial Phone Number To Get To Website

NTT Mediacross (NTT-MC)[J], an NTT group company specifically focusing on providing TV broadcasters with several solutions to make their programs more interactive with program viewers, introduced a new service enabling to navigate the viewers easily to a website that a broadcaster would like to present in synchronization with program broadcast.   The service is scheduled… Continue reading Dial Phone Number To Get To Website

Translation Tool: New Option Between Human Profession And Computer’s Imperfectness

Today, in Japan, it seems that there is a boom in launching a new business category called “Social Translation”. Last week a Tokyo-based tech start-up Anydoor[J] launched a web-based new translation service, which is named Conyac, allowing participating members to do translation work. Japanese translation industry has annually USD2B worth of its market volume. Basically,… Continue reading Translation Tool: New Option Between Human Profession And Computer’s Imperfectness

Is It For Monitoring Your Performance, Or Preventing You From Adult Disease?

NTT DoCoMo announced today it would launch a new service providing corporate users with health advisory for preventing their employees from adult disease. If a corporate user applies for the service, NTT DoCoMo will start collecting vital data from pedometer-enabled cellphone handsets owned by the company’s employees, they can be advised by health nurses and… Continue reading Is It For Monitoring Your Performance, Or Preventing You From Adult Disease?

Earn Points In Mobile Game, Plant Trees In Chinese Desert

On Wednesday, Two Tokyo-based mobile tech start-ups Ceres[J] and Orso[J] jointly launched a forest growing mobile game called “Morippy”.   In the game a user can virtually grow a forest by getting along with three characters representing animal, plant and fungi on behalf of all ecosystem factors. You can earn reward points on the game in… Continue reading Earn Points In Mobile Game, Plant Trees In Chinese Desert

NTT pumps $470 million into cloud computing by 2012

It seems Japan is getting more serious as far as cloud computing adoption is concerned. Nippon Telegraph and Telephone, better known as NTT, is planning to invest about $470 million into cloud computing system-related R&D over the next three years. This decision may just right come right in time (or possible half a year too… Continue reading NTT pumps $470 million into cloud computing by 2012

NTT DoCoMo To Start Cellphone Banking Service, While KDDI Runs A Year Ahead

NTT DoCoMo and Mizuho Bank are reportedly planning to launch a micro payment banking service using cellphone handsets. By using the bank agent system that permits non-financial companies to deal with financial services, the cellphone giant will launch the service in this summer as soon as Japan’s monetary authority approves it. The new service allows… Continue reading NTT DoCoMo To Start Cellphone Banking Service, While KDDI Runs A Year Ahead

Japan’s No.1 TV web portal acTVila tops 1 million subscribers

It took 28 months, but now it has happened. Japan’s answer of sorts to American video platform Hulu, a content-on-demand service called acTVila, has racked up one million subscribers [JP, PDF]. acTVila is surely benefiting from the sharp rise in popularity of Internet-enabled TV sets, which are required to used the video-on-demand service. Users can… Continue reading Japan’s No.1 TV web portal acTVila tops 1 million subscribers

Softbank Mobile Gives Away iPhone 3G To Univ. Students

Softbank Mobile, Japan’s only cellphone operator dealing with iPhone 3G,  and Aoyama Gakuin University announced on Friday that they would distribute the handset to all students studying at the university’s school of social informatics[J].    The students are allowed to use it for attendance reporting, lecture podcasting and having online examination. When a student submits his/her… Continue reading Softbank Mobile Gives Away iPhone 3G To Univ. Students

Avex and NTT DoCoMo Launch TV Station Exclusively For Cellphone Users

On Friday, a joint venture of the Tokyo-based emerging music company Avex Group and Japan’s largest cellphone operator NTT DoCoMo, Avex Broadcasting & Communications Inc. launched a TV service called BeeTV[J], which is fully designed for cellphone handsets viewing. Unlike 1-seg TV service using a segment in terrestrial digital broadcast wave to carry visual and… Continue reading Avex and NTT DoCoMo Launch TV Station Exclusively For Cellphone Users

Be More Punctual And Smarter With NHK

On Thursday, Japan’s public broadcaster NHK released the iPhone/iPod app imitating its originally designed clock which used to be seen by almost all of Japanese people at the beginning of every evening’s news program. (This link will launch your iTunes to download the app.) As Japanese terrestrial TV broadcast switches into digital, broadcasters can no longer… Continue reading Be More Punctual And Smarter With NHK