$8.70: Emobile Introduces Japan’s Lowest Monthly Phone Fee

Emobile, the No. 4 major cell phone carrier in Japan, said Wednesday that it will introduce a new cell phone price plan on February 7, which is the most attractive in Japan – at least if you aim for the lowest possible prices. For an almost unbelievable basic fee of 780 Yen ($8.70/6.80 Euros), Emobile… Continue reading $8.70: Emobile Introduces Japan’s Lowest Monthly Phone Fee

Rakuten to start PHS service in April

Rakuten[J],  Japan’s largest e-commerce player, unveiled that it is planning to start a PHS (personal handy-phone system) service as an MVNO (or mobile virtual network operator) for its corporate users this coming April. Jointly with Fusion Communications, and under a roaming agreement with Japanese PHS operator Willcom, Rakuten intends to provide free mobile phone service… Continue reading Rakuten to start PHS service in April

Teenager Prefer Cellphone Keypad to PC Keyboard

For many Japanese adolescents, cellphone is inseparable partner of their lives, you might have heard. Different from PC, kids can have their own (not-shared with your family/siblings, not filtered by home-broadband), can bring it with you to school, outside, anywhere (it is important when your writing back within 5 minutes to your friend’s mail is… Continue reading Teenager Prefer Cellphone Keypad to PC Keyboard

Japanese company expands to India, will sell mobile games there

India with its massive population of 1.1 billion people and nearly 300 million mobile phone users (second only to China) should be a natural target for any company that’s in the web or mobile web business. But still, relatively few companies, for example from Japan, are seeing the subcontinent as a lucrative target market, at… Continue reading Japanese company expands to India, will sell mobile games there

Suginami Ward Proposes Removing Google Street View Images

A ward in the residential area of the Tokyo Metropolitan Special District, Suginami Ward Authority started introduce on the ward’s newsletter and the website how to request the deletion of Google Street View images to Google. Google Street View started last August here in Japan, it is convenient to find the route to the destination, but some… Continue reading Suginami Ward Proposes Removing Google Street View Images

The Next Innovation on Web Services will be out from Asia: Open Web Asia’08 Event Report

Why it is difficult for European and U.S. companies to advance into Asia. At the event to discuss about the future potential of the Asian Web “Open Web Asia ’08” held in Seoul, a lot of hot discussions were held. George Godula who is the founder of Web2Asia – a full-service market entry partner and… Continue reading The Next Innovation on Web Services will be out from Asia: Open Web Asia’08 Event Report

Softbank Mobile to Release 1-seg TV tuner for iPhone

Softbank Mobile announced today to release 1-seg digital TV tuner device for iPhone in the middle of December.   The 80-gram device provides the feature of TV over WiFi (converting TV signal received to IP-based data for iPhone) and doubles as a battery extender.   Three hours continuous TV viewing is available.   Price is not announced so… Continue reading Softbank Mobile to Release 1-seg TV tuner for iPhone

GMail supports Emoji for Japanese Cellphone

Official Google Blog (Japanese) announced [J] that their gmail on PC now became capable to send Emoji, emoticon-like letters supported by Japanese cellphones. (receiving emoji-mail from cellphone has been supported already.) Even in English mode of gmail, your “Rich formatting” mode has a new set of emoji selector. I sent a mail with emoji-s from… Continue reading GMail supports Emoji for Japanese Cellphone

Tomorrow’s Rainbow: 86-year old Japanese nun writes cell phone novel

Novels and poetry written, bought and read on cell phones are nothing unusual in mobile phone-crazy Japan. Now it came to light that Jakucho Setouchi, a 86-year old Buddhist nun has written a long-running cell phone novel series (keitai shousetsu in Japanese) without disclosing her real name for several months. Setouchi is an accomplished writer… Continue reading Tomorrow’s Rainbow: 86-year old Japanese nun writes cell phone novel

Daily Portal Z: Social learning platform iKnow! cooperates with nifty

Tokyo-based social learning platform iKnow! and Japanese telecommunications and web powerhouse nifty (most famous in the web space for its portal of the same name) are cooperating. The companies have set up the “Owarai eigo dojo” (Funny English Training Hall), giving Japanese iKnow users the possibility to translate funny stories from nifty’s mega popular “Daily… Continue reading Daily Portal Z: Social learning platform iKnow! cooperates with nifty