Google Developer Day 2009 Yokohama

Google held “Google Developer Day 2009“, an annual conference introducing a number of technology trends that the company had recently developed, in Yokohama on Tuesday and started with a keynote speech made by its Tokyo office president Koichiro Tsujino[J]. Following Tsujino’s expressing his appreciation for a large participation in the event, the company’s senior product… Continue reading Google Developer Day 2009 Yokohama

Dial Phone Number To Get To Website

NTT Mediacross (NTT-MC)[J], an NTT group company specifically focusing on providing TV broadcasters with several solutions to make their programs more interactive with program viewers, introduced a new service enabling to navigate the viewers easily to a website that a broadcaster would like to present in synchronization with program broadcast.   The service is scheduled… Continue reading Dial Phone Number To Get To Website

Translation Tool: New Option Between Human Profession And Computer’s Imperfectness

Today, in Japan, it seems that there is a boom in launching a new business category called “Social Translation”. Last week a Tokyo-based tech start-up Anydoor[J] launched a web-based new translation service, which is named Conyac, allowing participating members to do translation work. Japanese translation industry has annually USD2B worth of its market volume. Basically,… Continue reading Translation Tool: New Option Between Human Profession And Computer’s Imperfectness

Make Tokyo Meeting 03: Where You Can See Future, Magic And Junk In A Place

Last weekend at Hachioji Campus of Digital Hollywood University in Tokyo’s surburb, “Make” magazine’s readers and gadget inventors came together and held an annual meeting titled “Make: Tokyo Meeting 03[J]“.   For readers who have never heard about Make:, the magazine is a quarterly magazine published by O’reilly Media and it contains articles on hardware hacking… Continue reading Make Tokyo Meeting 03: Where You Can See Future, Magic And Junk In A Place

Avex and NTT DoCoMo Launch TV Station Exclusively For Cellphone Users

On Friday, a joint venture of the Tokyo-based emerging music company Avex Group and Japan’s largest cellphone operator NTT DoCoMo, Avex Broadcasting & Communications Inc. launched a TV service called BeeTV[J], which is fully designed for cellphone handsets viewing. Unlike 1-seg TV service using a segment in terrestrial digital broadcast wave to carry visual and… Continue reading Avex and NTT DoCoMo Launch TV Station Exclusively For Cellphone Users

Be More Punctual And Smarter With NHK

On Thursday, Japan’s public broadcaster NHK released the iPhone/iPod app imitating its originally designed clock which used to be seen by almost all of Japanese people at the beginning of every evening’s news program. (This link will launch your iTunes to download the app.) As Japanese terrestrial TV broadcast switches into digital, broadcasters can no longer… Continue reading Be More Punctual And Smarter With NHK

Major Publishers Co-launch Non-UGC Encyclopedia Site

Asahi Newspaper, the Internet portal company EC Navi[J] and major publishers like Kodansha and Shogakukan jointly launched Thursday an online encyclopedia containing 430,000 words, which is called “Kotobank[J]“.   The service is provided for free, and the joint venture expects to earn USD1M in FY2009 from Overture[J] ads appeared on the result pages of Kotobank. The… Continue reading Major Publishers Co-launch Non-UGC Encyclopedia Site

Weather On Desktop: Expert Perspectives, Weather Blogger’s Eyes And Idol’s Loveliness In One App

The world’s largest meteorological company, Weathernews Inc., will launch next Monday its 24/7 live show channel, with its Adobe AIR-based client application, bringing weather updates to your PC desktop every minute. The new service is named “So LiVE 24[J]” (So-La is similar to So-Ra in Japanese pronunciation, meaning sky), eleven weather girls and meteorologists are… Continue reading Weather On Desktop: Expert Perspectives, Weather Blogger’s Eyes And Idol’s Loveliness In One App

Another Way To Have Mobile Broadband, It’s Neither WiMax Nor HSDPA

Japan’s only PHS operator Willcom announced today it would start trial of new high-speed mobile data service next week, which is called XGP and enables logically 20Mbps Internet access not only in downstream but also in upstream. Starting on April 27th, the trial will be in operation until the end of coming September, and the… Continue reading Another Way To Have Mobile Broadband, It’s Neither WiMax Nor HSDPA

Osaka-based Tech Start-up Launches A “Meddlesome” SNS

The Osaka-based tech start-up Qript Inc. launched Friday its eccentric SNS called “Tsutsunuke [J]“, which has several features to avoid its user’s long silence to the service. Note:  “Tsutsunuke” means a situation where the thin wall deprives you of any privacy, and you can hear the tone of your neighbor’s voice in a typical type… Continue reading Osaka-based Tech Start-up Launches A “Meddlesome” SNS