IBM Research Lab in Tokyo Develops Technology to Control Reading Flow

Researchers at IBM Research – Tokyo is working on a way to easily arrange the reading flow of screen readers and mobile devices. With the visual editor technology they are developing, webmasters can drag-and-drop the connected arrows that will lead the screen reader in an arbrary order. You can even adjust the granularity of the… Continue reading IBM Research Lab in Tokyo Develops Technology to Control Reading Flow

Buddhist Sutra Chanting Distribution On Cellphone

Ryoho-ji Temple [J], located at west suburb of Tokyo, is known on the web as its “Moe“-based proselytization. This time the chief priest Nakazato, a person of ideas, introduced new mobile movie service. After purchasing a pre-paid card, user can read QR-code on its back and access to the movie on which Nakazato chanting Buddhist… Continue reading Buddhist Sutra Chanting Distribution On Cellphone

Twitter Japan Teasing Special Mobile Site For Japanese Cellphone

Twitter Japan’s official twitter account tweeted to give an URL under their official twitter navigation site twinavi.jp. It looks like that this teaser page is for newly coming Japanese cellphone compliant mobile website for 3 major carriers, NTT Docomo, KDDI au and Softbank Mobile. Months ago Twitter Japan announced that they would develop a special… Continue reading Twitter Japan Teasing Special Mobile Site For Japanese Cellphone

New iPod nano Caused Expected Upskirt Movie Taker’s Arrest

This week in Kobe, 30 years old male was arrested [J] by taking unsolicited movie of high school girls upskirt in bookstore. He set it in his shoes, under the shoelace and tongue. The new iPod nano, when it was released on September 10th, many people pointed out (on bbs like 2ch.net) that it is… Continue reading New iPod nano Caused Expected Upskirt Movie Taker’s Arrest

Google Japan’s In-Train Ads Asks Cellphone Users To Search By “Google”

In Tokyo Metro train, I noticed small ads by Google Japan. The ads are for Google Mobile Search promotion. This one suggests to search Google by “Shibuya Movie” when you want to know if the film “Taken” can be watched from now in your location (Shibuya). So Google Japan wants more cellphone users to use… Continue reading Google Japan’s In-Train Ads Asks Cellphone Users To Search By “Google”

Mixi ex-CTO Helps Singaporean Mobile Startup Xsago

Batara Eto, who suggested to make a Japanese social network to his boss in late 2003 and programmed Japan’s biggest social network Mixi, let the company (E-mercury) to change their primary business and rename (to “Mixi”, of course) with the huge success, then left his CTO job in 2007 [J], is reported to invest to… Continue reading Mixi ex-CTO Helps Singaporean Mobile Startup Xsago

R25 Mobile Ceases Because Advertisers Avoids Mobile

Recruit (on Asiajin) announced their R25’s mobile site shutdown on July 30th. (Mobile version of R25 has not been closed yet but may give you an error page. It seems to limit visitors by browser user agent and/or IP address, which is common to Japanese mobile sites. The PC site is here [J].) Their PR… Continue reading R25 Mobile Ceases Because Advertisers Avoids Mobile

Japanese Mobile Design Showcase

Mobile Design Archive is a new blog where over 400 Japanese cellphone websites screenshot are collected. Because of historical and security reasons, many mobile websites are not accessible from PCs in Japan, some are blocked by browser IP address, others are referring cellphone unique id. So taking screenshots of mobile sites are not easy as… Continue reading Japanese Mobile Design Showcase

A report of ESPer2008 conference

ESPer2008 conference has been held with 100+ attendees in Shinagawa, Tokyo at 14th September 2008. ESPer is a conference held by alumni of the Mitoh software grant (Exploratory Software Project) (in English). The Mitoh is a grant by Japanese government which is given to individual software developers. There are around thousand Mitoh alumni in Japan… Continue reading A report of ESPer2008 conference

iPong on multiple iPod Touch devices

Ryo Shimizu, CEO of Ubiquitous Entertainment Inc. (also active as a blogger under the handle name “shi3z”), introduced iPong, his researcher buddy Mr. Kondo‘s toy application for the iPhone/iPod Touch. Not much by way of explanation is provided, but multiple iPod Touches seem to be connected wirelessly and serve up a virtual game of Pong.… Continue reading iPong on multiple iPod Touch devices