What Blockbuster Video is to the USA, Tsutaya is to Japan. The company is currently operating over 1,300 video rental stores in this country and boasts 27 million members. Now, Tsutaya finally came to realize their future is the web: The company now wants to transform into this country’s Netflix – at least kind of.… Continue reading Japan’s Blockbuster Video wants to to become Japan’s Netflix
Japanese company rebuilds old Tokyo in Second Life
I have not seen a lot of crowd pleasers at the Virtual World Expo [ja] I attended last week but Second Coa‘s booth was actually a heavily frequented one. The company did a great job in reconstructing Edo in Second Life. Edo is the old name for Tokyo. I suggest you just have a look… Continue reading Japanese company rebuilds old Tokyo in Second Life
Japanese TV star is the world’s most popular blogger by Guinnes Records
Cyber Agent, free blogging service Ameba(Ameblo) provider, announced that their holding celebrity blogger Yusuke KAMIJI‘s weblog is certified by Guinness World Records as the “MOST UNIQUE USERS ON A PERSONAL BLOG IN 24 HOURS” who is read by the 230,755 unique visitors in one day. The daily page views is 5-6 million, the highest 13,171,039… Continue reading Japanese TV star is the world’s most popular blogger by Guinnes Records
iPhone sold from the 3rd player Softbank in Japan
Softbank announced that they agreed with Apple to sell the iPhone in Japan. SOFTBANK MOBILE Corp. today announced it has signed an agreement with Apple® to bring the iPhone™ to Japan later this year. Masayoshi SON, president of Softbank and investor of Yahoo! Japan, Alibaba, etc. attended the conference during Steve Jobs announced the iPhone… Continue reading iPhone sold from the 3rd player Softbank in Japan
Apply for Sun Microsystems / Recruit’s Mash-up award in October
Since today Japan-based web companies are welcome to send in applications for the 4th Mash-up awards jointly organized by Sun Microsystems Japan and Recruit. The first prize is 10 million Yen (approximately $10,000). Applications will be accepted until September 16th, while the awards show will be conducted on October 19th. Last year, Yuki Naotori from… Continue reading Apply for Sun Microsystems / Recruit’s Mash-up award in October
YAPC::Asia 2008 report: day 2
I’m impressed by a session called ‘memcached in mixi’ by Masahiro Nagano. He detailedly explained their effort to scale the Japan’s biggest SNS with memcached. They are using more than 100 dedicated memcached servers for caching. All of machines has 4GB of memory with Pentium 4 or D, which are too weak for database servers… Continue reading YAPC::Asia 2008 report: day 2
Google copies icon from Japanese portal goo (maybe not)
You might notice that Google changed their favicon image which you see on your browser addressbar this week. Here is NTT Resonant’s portal site “goo“‘s icon, goo is one of the biggest portal in Japan, though the gap to the leading Yahoo/Google is big, goo is ranked at 10th among Japanese websites in Alexa traffic.… Continue reading Google copies icon from Japanese portal goo (maybe not)
Kiseki – Cellularphone lifelog service starts
NTT Resonant, who is doing the portal site “goo”, released a mobile lifelog service “Kiseki” integrating GPS automatic recording and mobile/PC diary/blog in greater Tokyo area on 29th May, 2008. With supported cellularphone (FOMA 905i/904i/903i series having GPS) in Tokyo/Kanagawa/Chiba/Saitama prefectures, Docomo users can download a free i-appli (mobile application) and set it as a… Continue reading Kiseki – Cellularphone lifelog service starts
Gal-Moji: leetspeak for Japanese highschool girls
If l33t is an English phenomenon mainly among Geeks, “Gal-Moji” (“Moji” = letters) is the counterpart for Japanese cellphone users, especially teenaged girls. As with leetspeak, Gal-Moji users replace a standard Japanese character with a different but similar-looking character. This is made more chaotic, however, by the fact that the Japanese language has 3 different… Continue reading Gal-Moji: leetspeak for Japanese highschool girls
Japanese magazines start to go online and for free
Even the Tech-savvy Japanese still love their print media. In fact, this country is one of the biggest markets for printed information in the world and the variety of magazines is sheerly amazing. At one time for example, there were eight periodicals specifically catering to homemakers who made a living by trading stock online! Also,… Continue reading Japanese magazines start to go online and for free