Dentsu Inc., Japan’s largest advertising agency, announced that they started experimental coupon platform iButterfly with free iPhone application. The application “iButterfly – Coupon Entertainment” can be downloaded for free until the end of March 2010 (requires iPhone 3GS). On the mobile application, user can look through the iPhone app to the town and find butterfly… Continue reading Dentsu iButterfly Experiments AR and Location Based Coupon Service
Category: Japan
iPhone Final Fantasy Targets Oversea Market
Square Enix, who holds two best selling Japanese role playing game series, Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy, announced on Facebook their Final Fantasy I and II are being ported to iPhone/iPod Touch. In Japanese cellphone market, Square Enix has been offering downloadable early Final Fantasy. Final Fantasy Mobile [J] on three major carriers offered the… Continue reading iPhone Final Fantasy Targets Oversea Market
Cellphone Geo-Location Game CoroPura Gets 750,000 Users
By seeing Foursquare and Gowalla mentioned a lot on blogs and twitter, I noticed that Asiajin has not introduced how geo location mobile services are doing in Japan, where GPS capable cellphones are there for years. CoroPura, which was originally named “Coronii-de-purasu”(Colony de Plus) and now the abbreviation became an official name, is a Japanese… Continue reading Cellphone Geo-Location Game CoroPura Gets 750,000 Users
[Update: recording now available] January 20: Ustream discussion panel “Social Media Predictions 2010”
Quick announcement for a Ustream event that’s going to take place this week: Tokyo-based Beat Communication, widely regarded as being one of the pioneers in the Japanese social network industry, is organizing a discussion panel (in Japanese) on the development of “social media” in 2010. Beat Communication CEO Ryo Murai asked me to be one… Continue reading [Update: recording now available] January 20: Ustream discussion panel “Social Media Predictions 2010”
Spysee’s web campaign: Collect 1 million Yen for Japan’s Paralympics ski team
Here’s a news item of a different kind: The next Winter Paralympics, basically the Winter Olympics for athletes with physical and visual disabilities, will be held in Vancouver between March 12 to March 21, 2010. Japan is sending a few different teams, and one of them, the cross-country ski team, is now counting on the… Continue reading Spysee’s web campaign: Collect 1 million Yen for Japan’s Paralympics ski team
Tokyo No Pants Train Ride Calls Police Cordon
By Asahi Shimbun’s report [J], I came to know this Japan version of the famous internet prank had been planned. It is not a subway but a JR Yamate line train, on January 10th Sugamo police department had caught the information that there would be “No Pants Subway Ride” held. They sent 60 police officers… Continue reading Tokyo No Pants Train Ride Calls Police Cordon
Gree To Open Social Application Platform
The largest mobile social network Gree announced [J] that their new GREE Connect (tentative name) platform starting this April 2010. Mixi Appli, an OpenSocial specification based API was officially introduced [J] on the biggest social network Mixi in August 2009 after a half year closed beta. Mobage Town by DeNA, the second mobile social network… Continue reading Gree To Open Social Application Platform
Asiajin Meets Chili: Akky Presents Japanese Tech Scene At Taipei’s Tech Community
Nii-hao, Taiwan! Asiajin co-founder Akky Akimoto is now in Taiwan. On Saturday, he was invited to have a presentation on Japanese social media and tech scenes at Chili Ideas Party, a serial meet-up organized by Taipei-based Chili Consulting[C] who has been serving Taiwan’s tech community. Asiajin co-founder Shunichi Arai and author Masaru IKEDA also visited… Continue reading Asiajin Meets Chili: Akky Presents Japanese Tech Scene At Taipei’s Tech Community
Hakuhodo And Koozyt Introduce iPhone App Adding Video Extension To Paper Ads
Japan’s second largest ad agency Hakuhodo DY Media Partners, Sony CSL‘s spin-out specializing in developing location detection technology with WiFi signals Koozyt and the country’s second-ranked newspaper in its circulation the Asahi Shimbun jointly started a new ad service using the iPhone today. The new service is named A-Clip, by installing the iPhone app and… Continue reading Hakuhodo And Koozyt Introduce iPhone App Adding Video Extension To Paper Ads
“Google Is Nothing Special” Yahoo! Japan President Brags Their Supremacy
An interview to the president of Yahoo! Japan Masahiro Inoue (photo) by Nikkei Business Magazine with a catchy title “Google? I think none of their services are cool.” is getting huge attentions in Japanese web. To answer the interviewer’s comment “By comparing Google’s services such like Street View and Book Search, Yahoo! seems not to… Continue reading “Google Is Nothing Special” Yahoo! Japan President Brags Their Supremacy