twitter goes into Japan assisted by Digital Garage

Digital Garage Inc. announced its capital and business tie-up with Twitter inc.. Digital Garage makes some disclosed amount of investment not more than 100,000,000yen(about $915,000), and also helps Twitter’s localization development in Japan. Digital Garage and Twitter will launch Japanese microblogging service for both PC and cellularphone browsers by this spring 2008. # It is… Continue reading twitter goes into Japan assisted by Digital Garage

Nounai-Maker: depicts what your brain is composed of

Nounai-Maker is a joke-service smashed Japanese blogosphere in September, 2007 and still causing a boom among Japanese internet users. What you need to do is simply enter your name to generate the image of “inside of your brain” (Nounai) ; having the same meaning as “inside of your mind”. The cartoon-style image is fulfilled by… Continue reading Nounai-Maker: depicts what your brain is composed of

Japan’s No.1 blogger declared to stop her blog

Famous actress Chinatsu Wakatsuki, age 23, whose weblog boasts over 80 million page views per month, announced an end of her blog yesterday. Last month she once implied about her blog’s end and caused a lot of reactions from her readers and media, which ended up to her apology for confusion, but it became real… Continue reading Japan’s No.1 blogger declared to stop her blog

Toughbook: Japan’s favorite notebook

Q: What is the favorite notebook brand with Japanese developers? MacBook? maybe. Vaio? no. It’s Toughbook. Toughbook business laptops are marketed with ‘Let’s note’ brand in Japan. This ultra-light notebook has a surprisingly large share amongst Japanese developers. If you are looking for light (940g~1.5kg. 2lbs~3.3lbs), tough (water resistant) and long battery life (>6hours) notebook,… Continue reading Toughbook: Japan’s favorite notebook

Community: Japan PHP Users Group

Nihon PHP User Kai(Japan PHP Users Group) is a community about PHP, open source script language and environment. It aims to, contribute to the development of PHP further research and share PHP related info promote communication and technical exchange amongst PHP users In order to make PHP more friendly to the Japanese Web Development community,… Continue reading Community: Japan PHP Users Group

Mobile phone companies to filter web content for minors

Mobage town, a social network and gaming site for mobile phones, is now in deep crisis. From December 10th, the Japanese government has requested mobiles phone companies to filter web content for minors. The filtering policy is very strict. It prohibits minors from accessing web sites in ‘communication’ criterion. ‘communication’ means all web sites with… Continue reading Mobile phone companies to filter web content for minors

Kin-en-style: Smoke-free restaurants directory

Kin-en-style (禁煙スタイル, smoke-free style) is a restaurant listing site which only lists smoke-free places. Japan’s smoking regulation law is not as rigid as the USA or European countries. They can smoke at almost every bar, restaurant and cafe (except Starbucks). The Japanese smoking rate is 30.9%, a very large figure. Not everyone is happy with… Continue reading Kin-en-style: Smoke-free restaurants directory

Mixi’s CTO to step down

Mixi, No.1 Social Networking Service in Japan, today announced that Batara ETO will leave his CTO job at the end of December, 2007. Eto, who is originally born in Indonesia recently naturalized (his former name was Batara Kesuma), is well know as a person to suggested Social Network Service in E-Mercury, the former name of… Continue reading Mixi’s CTO to step down

Bounen Kaigi 2007 report (2)

The first part of Bounen Kaigi report is here Hosts’ topics Co-hosts talked which net services they are interested in recently, their own project plans for 2008. Sponsor corner From all attendee’s votes for “The Kanji letter of 2007”, Yahoo! Japan guys chose a letter “Warai”(langh, smile). The 4 voters for “Warai” played “Janken” (Rock,… Continue reading Bounen Kaigi 2007 report (2)