Softbank Mobile, exclusive iPhone seller in Japan, today announced their new IC-Card(FeliCa) products for iPhone 4: IC-Card stickers. iPhone not having FeliCa, RFID smart card, is one of lamentations for users who can not give up their e-wallets function on their Japanese cellphone. One of the reasons that half of Japanese iPhone users still keeps… Continue reading Softbank Mobile To Transform iPhone4 IC-Card Enabled… With Stickers
Undercover Cops Dispatched To 1,500 Cellphone Shops To Check If They Explain Kids Filtering Service
Jiji reported [J] that Japan’s National Police Agency is planning to send secret agents to 1,500 cellphone shops nationwide, to check if shop clerks ask a customer who will use the cellphone, and if s/he says it is for their children, then if they introduce kids filtering service and explain what bad things could happen… Continue reading Undercover Cops Dispatched To 1,500 Cellphone Shops To Check If They Explain Kids Filtering Service
Mixi Releases Android App
Mixi, Japan’s leading social network, already offers a decent mobile web site for smartphone users (Mixi Touch, which was launched in September). And today, the company finally announced an app for Android users (you can pretty much forget their much older iPhone app). The new app makes it possible to use Mixi’s main features, including… Continue reading Mixi Releases Android App
Bijo Linux – Photo Site Where Girls Are Displaying Linux Commands
Bijo Linux [J] is a new website offers Tokyo girls holding up a signboard showing one Linux command. The Japanese word “Bijo” means “beautiful lady”. Every time you reload the page, a different girl with a different Linux command will be shown up. Each photo comes with the girl’s nickname, dob, blood type(how important!), occupation,… Continue reading Bijo Linux – Photo Site Where Girls Are Displaying Linux Commands
December 2010 Japan IT Links (Part 2)
Continued from (Part 1). Middle part of December news which we did not write as a dedicated article. Continued to (Part 3) Referred pages are all in Japanese, unless otherwise stated. Firefox/Chrome Extention To Change YouTube Like Nico Nico Douga ex-Mixi CTO Batara Eto’s Company Launches Feature Phone Photo Sharing Service Pikubo, release KDDI Invests… Continue reading December 2010 Japan IT Links (Part 2)
Google Japanese Input Drops Beta Tag, Does Even Fortune-Telling
If your language has much more letters, say 3,000 characters, than multiple times (shift/crtl/alt) of number of keys on keyboard, you need an input method environment(IME) to tell computers what letter you want to type. There are many IMEs exist for Traditional/Simplified Chinese and Japanese. These days operating systems have those IME bundled, on Windows,… Continue reading Google Japanese Input Drops Beta Tag, Does Even Fortune-Telling
Report: Smartphones Account For 50% Of Current Handset Sales in Japan
Goodbye, Galakei feature phones: according to Tokyo-based market research firm BCN (published in The Nikkei today), smartphones accounted for 49.8% of the total number of handsets sold between December 13 and 19 in Japan. Sure, this is just a snapshot, but there is a clear tendency to be observed here, and the smartphone segment in… Continue reading Report: Smartphones Account For 50% Of Current Handset Sales in Japan
Kinect + Head Mount Display = Virtual Reality (And Hatsune Miku, As Always)
Although Xbox360 is not so popular here in Japan, some Japanese seem to love and hack Kinect. After the first interesting one to connect Kinect with virtual 3D figure dance authoring free tool Miku Miku Dance, which was originally developed by fans of Vocaloid, human voice singing synthesizer software represented by pretty popular virtual diva… Continue reading Kinect + Head Mount Display = Virtual Reality (And Hatsune Miku, As Always)
World Sound Mix – Feel The World By Sound/Noise
The World Sound Mix By 43d is “a web based sound mixing engine that generates a location based Ambient sound from varied sounds from all over the world” (from their website). The sounds are colored by categories – green for nature, blue for city/town, yellow for voice/song and red for instrument. Sounds from different part… Continue reading World Sound Mix – Feel The World By Sound/Noise
Physical iPhone/Android Test Robot From US$70,000
Quality Commander [J] from Japan novel Corporation [J] is a gadget test automation robot which combines an industrial robot with camera and software. A blog S-max reported [J] their demo at Embedded Technology 2010 conference at Yokohama. The robot touches the device’s screen, by program and/or repeating a human’s first operation. The software will capture… Continue reading Physical iPhone/Android Test Robot From US$70,000