Nekore: Webservice for the Japanese fashionista with no time

The Japanese are known to be one of the most fashion-conscious people in the world. And rumor has it they are the busiest. Their purchasing power is very high. Moreover, Japan boasts one of the largest markets for print magazines in the world. Combine these elements and out comes a web site like nekore. The… Continue reading Nekore: Webservice for the Japanese fashionista with no time

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

Cherry Blossom Frenzy hits mobile CGM

Weathernews Inc., the world largest private weather service company headquatered in Japan, is conducting the 5th year “Sakura Project (Cherry-blossom project)” with involving over 17,000 users around the nation via cellular phone browsers. People, willingly registering this nation-wide CGM project on the Weathernews mobile site ( http://wni.jp/ , seems only available from Japanese cellularphone), are… Continue reading Cherry Blossom Frenzy hits mobile CGM

Backlog: a web-based issue tracking software

Hi all. Today I introduce a software from Fukuoka, the city where I’m living. Backlog is a web-based issue tracking software created by Nulab, a software company based in Fukuoka. Backlog has a similar functionality to Trac, but its user interface is much more friendly. Backlog’s features are: issue tracking, wiki, subversion support, and webdav… Continue reading Backlog: a web-based issue tracking software

Niconico Douga SP1 and its expanding reach

Niwango hold a press conference about its Niconico Douga‘s update release “SP1” (upgraded from “RC2”) on March 5th 13:00 (JST). Current statistics of Niconico Douga provided by director Seiji Sugimoto: 5.6 million registered users 1.14 million of users using cellularphone version 189 thousands paid users listed on NTT Docomo’s i-mode official site Ads sale in… Continue reading Niconico Douga SP1 and its expanding reach

SonyEricsson and Nokia integrate Mixi Mobile access into cell phones

Japan’s largest social network Mixi announced that a total of three mobile phones made by Sony Ericsson and Softbank/Nokia have integrated direct access to its mobile version. These are the Cybershot SO905iCS, the Cybershot W61s and the Nokia N95. The Nokia model is delivered in Japan as the SoftBank X02NK. It was announced that users… Continue reading SonyEricsson and Nokia integrate Mixi Mobile access into cell phones

Fastladder RSS Reader is now Open Source

Fastladder, an English localized version of the Japan’s most popular web-based RSS Reader “livedoor Reader” becomes Open Source today. Codes written in Ruby on Rails/Javascript are available on Google Code. The lincense is an MIT license. The installable binary package is also downloadable from fastladder.org. For Windows/Mac/Unix. It is still the same web-based (and “fast”,… Continue reading Fastladder RSS Reader is now Open Source

Some Niconico-douga videos available without registration

Niconico douga, the 2007 biggest hit in Japanese web, is a video sharing community service with enhanced overlay comments feature. Although it is popular among Japanese users, there are not many non-Japanese videos and comments, mainly because it requires user registration and it does not offer English menu. If you want to try it by… Continue reading Some Niconico-douga videos available without registration

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