Category: New Service

From TechCrunch50 in San Francisco: Gazopa delivers a great presentation on their image search engine

As Japan’s third company, Gazopa, a Hitachi-backed search engine for images, presented at TechCrunch50 today (the final day). Hideki Kobayashi, project leader at Gazopa, did a great job explaining the service, which makes it possible to look for images on the web similar to images you can upload to Gazopa or right-click on (on any… Continue reading From TechCrunch50 in San Francisco: Gazopa delivers a great presentation on their image search engine

From TechCrunch50 in San Francisco: Sekai Camera provides social tagging for the iPhone, delivers strange presentation

Tonchidot, a Tokyo-based start-up, was the second Japanese party presenting at this year’s TechCrunch50 conference that currently takes place in San Francisco. Their presentation today was probably the most talked about of day 2 (tomorrow is the last day of the conference) but in my view, this is because of the wrong reasons. As stated… Continue reading From TechCrunch50 in San Francisco: Sekai Camera provides social tagging for the iPhone, delivers strange presentation

Greasemetal – Google Chrome Greasemonkey

Greasemonkey is a popular Firefox AddOn which enables users to insert customized Javascripts on top of websites, to extend website functionality. Greasemetal is a Greasemonkey-like user Javascript inserter extension for Google Chrome. It is only a week after Google Chrome release, and done without having extension capability provided. By this Greasemetal, you may add any… Continue reading Greasemetal – Google Chrome Greasemonkey

From TechCrunch50 in San Francisco: Japanese company Rinen presents Opentrace

I am at the TechCrunch 50 conference in San Francisco right now (you might know I am a writer for the TechCrunch network). The Wifi was off so my report is a little late, sorry: Yesterday, a start-up from Tokyo called Rinen presented their product, Opentrace, to the 1,700-people crowd. Rinen has neither a company… Continue reading From TechCrunch50 in San Francisco: Japanese company Rinen presents Opentrace

Two Japanese startups launch at TechCrunch50

OpenTrace is a service that “Traces items through the supply chain and adds them together to show the impact of products on the environment” (from TechCrunch). OpenTrace is run by Rinen Inc, which is owned by Hirofumi Manganji and Hiroaki Shimachi. Rinen has received a Japanese government grant called Exploratory Software Project which is given… Continue reading Two Japanese startups launch at TechCrunch50

Japan’s national TV station NHK makes a leap forward in mobile broadcasting

Japan’s national TV station NHK is not just a broadcaster but also quite active in technology development. For example, the organization is driving forward the Ultra-HDTV format (7680 x 4320 pixels, also known as Super Vision), which is to be deployed in Japan 2015. On the web, NHK first expanded to Youtube and starting today,… Continue reading Japan’s national TV station NHK makes a leap forward in mobile broadcasting

Oshaberi TV: Like Nico Nico Douga (almost) for digital TV programs

After 2 years of development, a new communication service called Oshaberi TV went into Public Beta this month (Oshaberi means talkative in Japanese). Oshaberi TV is not a TV station or program but a mix of a new technology reminiscent of Nico Nico Douga‘s super-successful “chat over video feed” function and community/forum. Essentially, Oshaberi enables… Continue reading Oshaberi TV: Like Nico Nico Douga (almost) for digital TV programs

In Japan, Yahoo! does “Google Knol”

In English Web, No.1 Google tries to erode Wikipedia‘s territory by Knol. In Japan, interestingly, the champion portal Yahoo! Japan starts wiki based annotation service “Editable Related Info Area”(Kanren Johou Eria [J]) on their news site annex Yahoo! Japan News Topics. Here is the topic of “Beijin Olympic 2008” screenshot. You can see more than… Continue reading In Japan, Yahoo! does “Google Knol”

Ugokuhito – a mobile access analysis service

Ugokuhito, an access analysis service for mobile website in Japan, has been released in August 2008. We can see many types of analysis tools for PC website, but there were few mobile-version tools especially free services. Almost all of Japanese mobile browser can’t read javascript so Ugokuhito uses HTML tags and this can analyze mobile-internet… Continue reading Ugokuhito – a mobile access analysis service