On Tuesday in Roppongi, Tokyo, Glocom (Global Communication Center, International Univ. of Japan) held a workshop focusing on how we can take advantage of Twitter for improving our politics. Invited panelists are: Fumi Yamazaki(@Fumi), freelance researcher and former project manager for Joi Lab, Digital Garage. Daisuke Tsuda(@tsuda), freelance IT journalist and recently reporting on Twitter… Continue reading Twitter & Politics: Can Tweets Change Our Society?
Category: Trend
Do Animated Tourist Guides Boost Local Economy?
Tokyo-based animation studio FanWorks[J], which is well known for a famous title “Yawaraka Sensha ” or “Soft Wartank”, tied up with animators and TV broadcasters in Toyama (a Honshu island’s prefecture facing the Sea of Japan), and launched a project to promote the prefecture’s sightseeing business by creating original animation titles[J/E/F/C/K] which are intended for… Continue reading Do Animated Tourist Guides Boost Local Economy?
Ezo Red Fox May Also Celebrate Firefox’s Upcoming Release
Mozilla Foundation is now working on the final phase for FireFox 3.5 official release which has a development codename of Shiretoko. The codename was named after a popular forest area and a national park located in the north-eastern end of Hokkaido island, also registered as a World Heritage. In connection with the meet of the… Continue reading Ezo Red Fox May Also Celebrate Firefox’s Upcoming Release
Mainichi Starts Tweeting Following Asahi
Mainichi Newspaper, which is considered to have Japan’s longest newspaper history, and its English edition, Mainichi Daily News (MDN) set up accounts for Twitter, and started tweeting news developments every minute. Furthermore, the company put a twitter link button at the bottom of each story on the news portal site, which encourages visitors to quote… Continue reading Mainichi Starts Tweeting Following Asahi
Explore Japan With Your Favorite Driving Video-streamers
Currently, there’s a boom that many geeks install wireless-enabled video cameras on their cars, and that they publish captured on-board video movies on video sharing sites such as Nico Nico Douga[J] (link to videos tagged with on-board camera view, requiring username and password) and Ustream. The videos can make you feel as though you were… Continue reading Explore Japan With Your Favorite Driving Video-streamers
New Law Approved To Permit Nonbank Remittance And To Accelerate E-Commerce Deals
New legislation (its proposal draft[J]), which allows nonbanks to deal with payments and money transfers, was approved by the Lower House of Japan today. It will accelerate competition in reducing remittance charges among banks and potential service agents in this market. In order to protect consumers from damages caused by possible bankruptcies of remittance agents,… Continue reading New Law Approved To Permit Nonbank Remittance And To Accelerate E-Commerce Deals
Japanese Newspaper Finally Tweets
For the first case in Japanese newspaper’s history, Asahi Shimbun, one of the country’s nationwide major papers, set up an account for Twitter[J] today, and is running play-by-play tweet about the scene of a preliminary match for this year’s football world championship, Japan vs. Qatar, which is now being played at Nissan Stadium in Yokohama.… Continue reading Japanese Newspaper Finally Tweets
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
Japanese Manga/Anime: Simulcast and Same Day Release On Two Sides Of The Pacific
This coming Sunday, Toei Animation, Shueisha[J] and Fuji-TV will start broadcast the popular Japanese TV animation series “One Piece” on the Internet for North American audience, in association with U.S. based largest Internet animation distributor, FUNimation Entertaiment (inaccessible from Japan). Every episode will be available just one hour after its original broadcast in Japan. (c)Copyright… Continue reading Japanese Manga/Anime: Simulcast and Same Day Release On Two Sides Of The Pacific
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