Samurai Weapon – Blog Destroyer Widget

[NB: Sound is on by default] Samurai Weapon is a bilingual(Japanese/English) blog widget provided by a big Japanese game vendor Koei, as a promotion of their new Nintendo DS game “Kunitori Zunou Battle/Nobunaga no Yabou” (Strategic Battle/Nobunaga’s Ambition). On the widget, Samurai Warrior with his full armors will get irritated by your mouse touch. He… Continue reading Samurai Weapon – Blog Destroyer Widget

Web2.0 is dead in Japan

It sounds like a joke, but the Japanese company “Web2.0, Inc.” turns out to be in deadpool in coming September 2008. Web2.0 Inc. was established by Digital Garage, the nation leading event-ticket seller company Pia and the No.1 online price comparison service Kakaku.com on November 15th 2005 and offers Social Bookmark service PingKing. With the… Continue reading Web2.0 is dead in Japan

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”

Mobage Town forays into PC web from mobile

Mobage Town, the Japan’s largest mobile social networking service(SNS) launched their “PC version” website on July 24th 2008. Mobage Town has made a totally new field “Cellularphone Social Network based on free games” and that success called many followers like GREE mobile, Puchige(Petit Game) Friends, Daishugou NEO, etc. PC SNS leader Mixi, has been providing… Continue reading Mobage Town forays into PC web from mobile

Open Web Asia ’08 conference announced

Open Web Asia ’08 conference has been announced to be held on 14th October 2008 in Seoul, Korea. 後ろに日本語の案内があります。 — “The first pan-Asia web technology event bringing together executives, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists from throughout Asia” October 14 2008, Sheraton Grande Walkerhill, Seoul, Korea in association with the 9th World Knowledge Forum Open Web Asia… Continue reading Open Web Asia ’08 conference announced

Mixi released its OpenID API

Mixi has released “mixi OpenID” API to public users. It enables developers to use mixi ID for authentication. Also the API has “my mixi authentication” and “community authentication” features. Developers must follows OpenID Authentication 2.0 standard. Also it enables mixi users to use their ID on many existing websites which accept OpenID. “my mixi” is… Continue reading Mixi released its OpenID API

Video Authoring on cell phone launched

If people writes novel (ketai shosetsu) and graduation thesis (*1) on cell phone, some people must be really patient with small display and small keypad. This is another new service which was not supposed to do on cell phone, editing movie. Softbank Creative, DeNA and Ubiquitous Entertainment launched a new service on DeNA’s huge cellular… Continue reading Video Authoring on cell phone launched

Japanese SNS/virtual world/game platform “meromero park” goes Taiwan

MicroAd, a subsidiary of online advertising giant CyberAgent ($880 million market cap) yesterday announced they released a localized version of meromero park for the Taiwanese market. meromero park is an ultra-cute mix between a social network, a virtual world and a pet-rearing game. Although the service was only available in Japanese until yesterday, 20% of… Continue reading Japanese SNS/virtual world/game platform “meromero park” goes Taiwan

Glam Media enters Japan’s online ad market

First News Corp., now Glam Media. The world’s largest female-oriented online advertising company will enter the Japanese web market as early as this month. The Japanese subsidiary will be helmed by Yukihiro Yamamura as CEO. Yamamura-san was president of Excite Japan until June this year. Glam Media Japan plans to start full operations this fall.… Continue reading Glam Media enters Japan’s online ad market

Japan’s Top 50 blogs

The following list of Japan’s most popular blogs is based on information from Technorati, which is not super-reliable, we know, but it’s a yardstick at least. All blogs are Japanese only but I added a short description in English to all of them. The Japanese titles are converted into Romaji (the Latin alphabet) whenever necessary.… Continue reading Japan’s Top 50 blogs