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

30% Japanese Sends E-Mail First To Ask If They Can Make Phone Call

Internet research company Ishare reported [J] that new phone call “manner” emerging, especially among young women in Japan. 40.7% of female and 19.9% male answered that they ask if they can call others by cellphone e-mail. (n=556) So, those people make an appointment for telephone call by e-mail. The reasons they do that are; to… Continue reading 30% Japanese Sends E-Mail First To Ask If They Can Make Phone Call

Mixi Unveils SocialPhone For Softbank’s Androids

Mixi, one of Japan’s biggest social networking services, which is the most similar with Facebook among three, announced their new smartphone application plan with the third largest cellphone carrier Softbank Mobile. The trademarked “SocialPhone” is an Android application service which utilizes phone data like phone number data with Mixi’s social graphs. The service is planned… Continue reading Mixi Unveils SocialPhone For Softbank’s Androids

Earthquake Warning For Japanese Cellphone Works Well

In Eastern Japan, around 5 p.m. on 29th (Japan Standard Time), massive number of people in office and home got different than usual sound on their cellphones. It was one of the latest function on Japanese feature phone, Earthquake Early Warning (EEW) system. The earthquake itself, which happened in Fukushima prefecture, northern Japan, recorded 5.8-magnitude,… Continue reading Earthquake Warning For Japanese Cellphone Works Well

Asiajin Android Reader App Debuts

Tokyo-based Android app developer ACL Inc.[J] has kindly developed the Android Reader App for us, it has been just released today on the Android Market.   Following MotherApp’s iPhone Reader App which was introduced at the beginning of this year, now we have our exclusive apps for both of the two major smartphone platforms. We wish… Continue reading Asiajin Android Reader App Debuts

Softbank Sends 6 Walking WiFi Ninja To Comiket To Cover Up Cellphone Demand

The 78th Comiket(Comic Market), the world’s largest self-published comic book fair, was held again this summer in Tokyo bay side. This summer, there were 35,000 groups had booths and 560,000 people visited the fair for 3 days. As such many people gather in a huge but single conference hall, logistics are always problem. Convenience stores… Continue reading Softbank Sends 6 Walking WiFi Ninja To Comiket To Cover Up Cellphone Demand

Smartphone Ad-optimizer Nobot Partners With Singapore-based Network BuzzCity

Nobot, a Tokyo-based tech start-up who has introduced a smartphone ad-optimization SDK called AdMaker that enables to display the best set from multiple ad networks for the iPhone/Android users, partnered with Singapore-headquartered smartphone ad network BuzzCity last Thursday.   App developers using Nobot’s SDK will be allowed to distribute BuzzCity’s ads without language barriers and currency… Continue reading Smartphone Ad-optimizer Nobot Partners With Singapore-based Network BuzzCity

KDDI Promotes Brand New Products And Collects User-Generated Parody Songs

Japan’s second largest mobile operator KDDI’s au introduced several new lineups for their design-oriented feature phone series last month, and they have been running a promotion campaign collecting user-generated parody songs via Twitter. When you post a set of lyrics consisting of five-seven-five syllables (which has a similar rhythm to Haiku or Senryu) via Twitter… Continue reading KDDI Promotes Brand New Products And Collects User-Generated Parody Songs

NICT Introduces iPhone App Interpreting What You Speak Or Type

NICT, Japan’s National Institute of Information and Communications Technology, introduced the iPhone app called VoiceTra which interprets what you speak.   It allows voice input (original) in five languages of Japanese, English, Mandarin, Indonesian and Vietnamese, voice output (interpreted result) in these five languages and text output (interpreted result) in 16 languages of Arabic, Brazilian… Continue reading NICT Introduces iPhone App Interpreting What You Speak Or Type

KDDI To Acquire Stake In AR Start-up Tonchidot

The Nikkei, or Japan’s economic journal, reported today that Japan’s second largest telecom giant KDDI announced it would invest in Tonchidot, the Tokyo-based tech start-up who is well known for augmented-reality(AR) smartphone app Sekai Camera.   Tonchidot plans to allocate new shares to KDDI to raise approximately USD530,000 in order to develop social games using Sekai… Continue reading KDDI To Acquire Stake In AR Start-up Tonchidot