Category: Japan

Bounen Kaigi 2007 report (2)

The first part of Bounen Kaigi report is here Hosts’ topics Co-hosts talked which net services they are interested in recently, their own project plans for 2008. Sponsor corner From all attendee’s votes for “The Kanji letter of 2007”, Yahoo! Japan guys chose a letter “Warai”(langh, smile). The 4 voters for “Warai” played “Janken” (Rock,… Continue reading Bounen Kaigi 2007 report (2)

Bounen Kaigi 2007 report (1)

The 5th annual year-end conference “Bounen Kaigi 2007” was held at Yahoo! Japan meeting room, Tokyo Midtown, Roppongi, Tokyo. This year’s sponser is Yahoo! Japan. Bounen Kaigi, which name is an original word made from “Bounenkai”(year-forgetting party in Japanese) and “Kaigi”(meeting, conference) started in December 2003, by Gen Taguchi, the owner of the most influent… Continue reading Bounen Kaigi 2007 report (1)

Niconico douga

Niconico douga is a rapidly growing video sharing site in Japan. Site’s feature is not very different from Youtube, but one cool difference gained big attraction. The difference is a comment feature which enables users to write timely comments on the video screen itself. The feature allowed users to share ‘experience’ with other users. Niconico… Continue reading Niconico douga

eBay shakes hands with Yahoo! Japan

Yahoo! Japan, the Japan biggest portal, has partnered with eBay in online auction services. eBay Inc. once tried to open its popular auction service under its subsidiary eBay Japan established in 1999, retreated March 2002 without getting market share against “Yahoo! Auction” (so-called “Yafuoku”). Yahoo! Auction users will have translated eBay items listed by March… Continue reading eBay shakes hands with Yahoo! Japan

Drecom: next scandal or …?

Drecom is a public company, specialized in making a blog tool. Drecom is viewed as a Web 2.0 company. Because they provide many RSS related services. Also they sponsor ‘Drecom Award on Rails’ which awards good Rails’ applications created by many participated developers. Recently, Drecom’s financial activities are questioned by bloggers. Drecom has IPOed with… Continue reading Drecom: next scandal or …?

Mobage town – a mobile social network for teens

Mobage town has been started in 2006 by Tomoko Namba, a Mckinsey alumna. “Mobage town” is short for “mobile game town”. So, Mobage provides numerous small games and a social network service for mobile phone users. Essentially users are using Mobage as a social network service. The service has 7.4 million registered users and 13… Continue reading Mobage town – a mobile social network for teens

Twitter founder’s talk in Japan

According to Nikkei IT-Pro, Evan Williams, co-founder of twitter had a talk session with Tim O’Reilly at Web2.0 Expo 2007 in Tokyo and told localization plan. In the session, Williams disclosed that the 20% of twitter users are from Japan. He also said that localization to different languages is “the first priority task”, and that… Continue reading Twitter founder’s talk in Japan

Jun-ichiro “itojun” Hagino dies at 37; IPv6 developer and evangelist

Jun-ichiro “itojun” Hagino who as a core developer of the KAME project which enables IPv6 on BSDs, died Oct. 29th 2007. He was 37 and was living in Tokyo, Japan. He was a hacker. A distinguished hacker. He served as a member of Internet Architecture Board which makes decisions on Internet specifications (RFCs). Itojun was… Continue reading Jun-ichiro “itojun” Hagino dies at 37; IPv6 developer and evangelist

Rakuten: online shopping monopoly

Rakuten is a giant. Rakuten group has an Internet shopping mall ‘Rakuten‘, a hotel reservation site ‘Rakuten Travel’, ‘Rakuten Securities’, ‘Rakuten Credit Card’ and so on. Rakuten has $1.72 billion annual sales. The mall and the travel agent has the biggest share of their markets like Amazon did on the book market. Mikitani started his… Continue reading Rakuten: online shopping monopoly