Mainichi Newspaper, which is considered to have Japan’s longest newspaper history, and its English edition, Mainichi Daily News (MDN) set up accounts for Twitter, and started tweeting news developments every minute. Furthermore, the company put a twitter link button at the bottom of each story on the news portal site, which encourages visitors to quote… Continue reading Mainichi Starts Tweeting Following Asahi
Category: Community
Users groups, meet-ups, conferences, unconferences, community-disputes, etc.
Explore Japan With Your Favorite Driving Video-streamers
Currently, there’s a boom that many geeks install wireless-enabled video cameras on their cars, and that they publish captured on-board video movies on video sharing sites such as Nico Nico Douga[J] (link to videos tagged with on-board camera view, requiring username and password) and Ustream. The videos can make you feel as though you were… Continue reading Explore Japan With Your Favorite Driving Video-streamers
Check Up Supermarket Prices At Station With Your Mobile
People say two key reasons why they subscribe to daily newspaper are for checking up TV program’s time table and free standing inserts provided by local supermarkets. The inserts are very important items especially for housewives who have to manage the family budgets. On Friday, it became possible for them to check up the latest… Continue reading Check Up Supermarket Prices At Station With Your Mobile
Mobile social network GREE adds 2 million members in 3 months, makes lots of money
GREE, a mobile social network only operating in Japan, is adding members at an incredible speed. In April 2008, the number of registered users hit 10 million members already, but GREE expects a whopping 2 million more as early as the end of this month. GREE offers dozens of (essentially) free games to play on… Continue reading Mobile social network GREE adds 2 million members in 3 months, makes lots of money
Report of RubyConf China 2009
May 21st, the father of Ruby, Yukihiro Matsumoto aka Matz, visited Shanghai to attend RubyConf China 2009, the first large Ruby conference in China. The conference was an astonishing success. 450 people attended the event. All talks except keynote were given in Chinese. Matz gave a keynote which reveals design concept and characteristics of the… Continue reading Report of RubyConf China 2009
Manga Mode: DoCoMo brings e-manga to European cell phones
Japan’s biggest cell phone carrier NTT DoCoMo and major publisher Shueisha have teamed up and plan to launch an e-manga delivery service for cell phones in Europe. Dubbed Manga Mode and launched yesterday, the service already lets manga enthusiasts in France choose between about ten different titles. Certainly the manga with the biggest potential is… Continue reading Manga Mode: DoCoMo brings e-manga to European cell phones
Honda Launches Ranking Site To Encourage Owners To Compete In Fuel-Efficiency
Today, Honda Motor launched a page, titled “Eco Grand Prix”[J], on its corporate website, which shows realtime ranking in fuel-efficiency of the company’s brand new hybrid vehicle “Insight” being driven nationwide in Japan. A fuel-efficiency optimization system installed on each of the vehicles will automatically transmit data to Honda’s information analysis center, and it ranks… Continue reading Honda Launches Ranking Site To Encourage Owners To Compete In Fuel-Efficiency
Google Developer Day 2009 Yokohama
Google held “Google Developer Day 2009“, an annual conference introducing a number of technology trends that the company had recently developed, in Yokohama on Tuesday and started with a keynote speech made by its Tokyo office president Koichiro Tsujino[J]. Following Tsujino’s expressing his appreciation for a large participation in the event, the company’s senior product… Continue reading Google Developer Day 2009 Yokohama
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
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