Groupon Japan, a subsidiary of the international leading flash coupon service Groupon, announced their new alliance with Japan’s No.2 cellphone carrier KDDI on 14th. According to the KDDI’s release [J], KDDI will open “au one coupon”, coupon-only portal site under its official cellphone portal site “au one”, which is available on all KDDI au feature… Continue reading Groupon Japan To Land KDDI Cellphone Official Portal
Kanazawa Mayor Candidate Challenges Twitter-Banning Japan’s Election System
On November 28th at Kanazawa city, Ishikawa prefecture, Japan there was a mayor election. The two leading candidates, incumbent Tamotsu Yamade [J], 79, and Yukiyoshi Yamano [J], 48, competed closely, gained 56,840 and 58,204 votes respectively. Only 1,364 difference. The things causing a fuss is, the young winner Yamano’s team reportedly had been using Twitter… Continue reading Kanazawa Mayor Candidate Challenges Twitter-Banning Japan’s Election System
How To Play FarmVille Japanese Version “FarmVillage”
Zynga Japan released its flagship social game “FarmVille” in Japan under the name “ファームビレッジ(FarmVillage)” on December 1. Why is it Village not Ville? According to Zynga Japan general manager Shintaro Yamada’s tweet [J], “Because the pronunciation of FarmVille and Biru(Building in Japanese, from English) are the same in Japanese and will confuse people”. SoftBank financed… Continue reading How To Play FarmVille Japanese Version “FarmVillage”
Ahhh! Girls Give You Virtual Candy On iPad
Halls Eater is a free iPhone/iPad app to promote Halls candy. The app is developed by Kamakura-based Kayac Inc (Asiajin). The app seems English/Japanese bilingual. You can move your two fingers like your lips biting the virtual candy given by one of four beautiful Japanese talents. Participating Talent (in order of appearance in app) ・… Continue reading Ahhh! Girls Give You Virtual Candy On iPad
Cellphone Java App Emulator On Javascript/HTML5
Before smartphone, there were feature phone applications. Java MIDP is one of the application environment used on Softbank/Wilcom/KDDI au in Japan, and also on Motorola feature phone, etc. Android is known to use Java-derived environment. Google made different virtual machine Dalvik with avoiding using Sun’s(and now Oracle’s) Java, but Java/CLDC profile MIDP is authentic standard… Continue reading Cellphone Java App Emulator On Javascript/HTML5
Sending Emoji Musical Note May Result In Poop Mark On Japanese Cellphone
Japanese cellphone is the birthplace of emoji – emoticon as a single letter. Now they are usable outside of Japan on Gmail and iPhone. By Google’s and others effort, October 11, 2010, they were included in the international standard, Unicode version 6.0. So now those pictogram are supposed to be used for communication among anyone… Continue reading Sending Emoji Musical Note May Result In Poop Mark On Japanese Cellphone
9 Out Of 10 Japanese Mobile Users Disinclined For Using Real Name
According to the research [J] by Tokyo-based MMD Laboratory, 89.1% of mobile web users are reluctant to disclose their real name on the web. 88.2% does not like to upload their portrait, 90.8% for contact, 84.9% for company name, 69.8% for location information (by GPS). They also asked if the user uses real name on… Continue reading 9 Out Of 10 Japanese Mobile Users Disinclined For Using Real Name
November 2010 Japan IT Links (Part 3)
Continued from (Part 2). Last part of November news which we did not write as a dedicated article. Referred pages are all in Japanese, unless otherwise stated. Hatsune Miku Fans And A Popular SiFi Author William Gibson’s Discussions On Tweets [En] Hot Rodder’s Hatsune Miku Motorbike Deloitte Japan Technology Fast 50 Announced. Sony Requests Users… Continue reading November 2010 Japan IT Links (Part 3)
Google Zeitgeist 2010 Japanese Ranking
Following to Yahoo! Japan 2010 ranking, Google’s Zeitgeist 2010 has been disclosed on all of their languages including Japanese. Although Yahoo! Japan Search switched its backend to Google’s one, people searching on Yahoo! japan and people searching on Google will keep using the same frontend, and will show the similar trends in 2011. The most… Continue reading Google Zeitgeist 2010 Japanese Ranking
Chirpstory: Japan’s Best-known Service For Curating Tweets Goes International
Togetter[J], a web service for curating tweets by hashtags or containing keywords, has introduced its English version called Chirpstory on Thursday. As well as Togetter (Japanese version), Chirpstory allows you to make a “story” curating all tweets about a specific topic only by drag and drop of several tweets for defining the topic. It’s Twitter… Continue reading Chirpstory: Japan’s Best-known Service For Curating Tweets Goes International