Google is running a temporary cafe `iGoogle Art Cafe’ in Tokyo to promote Artist iGoogle, iGoogle skins created by artists. The cafe is located in Roppongi Hills building until April 24th. iGoogle Art Cafe offers foods and drinks which resembles Google logo colors. Couleur de Google: 1,000yen (subject to availability) * Vegetable Pilaf * Gravlax… Continue reading Google opened a cafe to promote Artist iGoogle
Category: Japan
Japan exempts programmers’ jury duty because they are “too busy”
According to Mainichi, for new citizen judge system planning to be introduced in May 2009, Japanese supreme court developed guidance that what kind of jobs are excusable to decline jury duty summons. The jobs list, having over 10 jobs and situations as initial draft, includes System Engineer (often said “SE”, a bit different from the… Continue reading Japan exempts programmers’ jury duty because they are “too busy”
ai sp＠ce – Metaverse meets Otaku culture
ai sp@ce(pronounced “eye space”) is a newcoming Japanese virtual world service raised its curtain on 8th. ai sp@ce production committee formed by Dwango(cellularphone contents, parent company of Niwango, Niconico Douga), Headlock(online game), Bushiroad and three R-18 game companies, Visual Arts, Omega Vision and Circus, are targetting 2008 summer release. View of the virtual world is… Continue reading ai sp＠ce – Metaverse meets Otaku culture
Tokyo2point0 event: Venture Capital in Japan and blogging/Ecommerce platform LIMS
This month’s Tokyo2point0 event drew a huge crowd this week on Tuesday. Again, two presentations were held between and before networking sessions. Venture Capital for Tech Startups My friend Aki Ohashi from ngi capital, the investment arm of ngi group (an investor in and operator of -mostly Asian- Tech companies) spoke about the current state… Continue reading Tokyo2point0 event: Venture Capital in Japan and blogging/Ecommerce platform LIMS
QR-Code Bot – Cutest Little 2D Generator Ever!
With the continual proliferation of QR Codes around the world (Robert Scoble recently wore a QR Code t-shirt at the NextWeb conference in Amsterdam), Japan continues to lead the way in the innovative ways of not only using the codes, but in creating them as well. Recently, Cross Borders Inc. in Japan came up with… Continue reading QR-Code Bot – Cutest Little 2D Generator Ever!
Getting new-old photos: Bakumatsu Koshashin Generator
April Fool’s 2008 in English had a photo service for future, whilst Japanese has less exciting but more and more useful new photo service from past. Bakumatsu Koshashin Generator. “Koshashin” means “old photo”. “Bakumatsu” is literally “end of feudal era”, the end of Edo shogunate era (circa 1860), when the whole country was facing to… Continue reading Getting new-old photos: Bakumatsu Koshashin Generator
Google Translate Tricked Cubs Fans Unintentionally
Former Chunichi Dragon’s baseball player Kosuke Fukudome made an inpressive debut at Major League Baseball opening game at Chicago. Strange thing is, many fans at the ballpark were raising Japanese signboards “偶然だぞ”, which means “It was lucky” (or you can read it as “It was accidental”). The game was also broadcasted in Japan on NHK… Continue reading Google Translate Tricked Cubs Fans Unintentionally
research: 40% of Japanese blogs are spam
Nifty Laboratory, a marketing research section of Nifty, which owns one of the biggest ISP in Japan @nifty, also provides big blog hosting service Cocolog, announced its new splog(spam blog) filtering technology combining several different splog finder methods. They also applied the filter to Japanese blog articles, sampled 100,000 for each month from their 450… Continue reading research: 40% of Japanese blogs are spam
Multilingual video search engine from Japan: Fooooo
I admit to being a net video junkie. More often than I probably should, I find myself spending time on sites like Youtube, Nico Nico Douga or Veoh. As there are hundreds of services of this kind on the web now, search engines specializing in digging up videos started emerging in the past months. One… Continue reading Multilingual video search engine from Japan: Fooooo
YAPC::Asia 2008 registration starts on March 25th
YAPC (Yet Another Perl Conference) Asia 2008, one of the biggest hacker conferences in Asia, will start attendee registration on March 25th. Seats will be sold out really soon. YAPC is a bilingual (Japanese/English) conference and expecting many international speakers and attendees. YAPC will be held in Tokyo on May 15th-16th. Larry Wall gives a… Continue reading YAPC::Asia 2008 registration starts on March 25th