Asiajin
Web Services/Companies/People Reports from Asia



Waseda University opens campus in Second Life (Jul 3)
On Tuesday, one of Japan’s most renowned universities, Waseda Daigaku, opened a virtual campus in Second Life. Waseda aims at making it easier for their students to cooperate with those from Princeton University, which has opened a campus on an island in Second Life last year. Waseda says it wants to explore the possibilities of conducting [...]


Nico Nico Douga forced to delete copyright-protected video material (Jul 3)
It was inevitable and actually long overdue: Mega-popular video-sharing site Nico Nico Douga, Japan’s answer to Youtube, announced it will remove movies and anime clips infringing on copyrights held by various Japanese companies. The move was triggered by a request coming from the Association of Japanese Animations (AJA), the Japan Video Software Association and the Motion Picture [...]


Japanese super train Shinkansen with full Wi-Fi between Tokyo and Osaka (Jun 28)
On Thursday railway operator JR Toukai announced they will offer full Wi-Fi on the N700 Shinkansen bullet train between Tokyo and Osaka. This route is the most important one in Japan. Travellers will be able to access the web in all seats for the first time in Japan. The Wi-Fi connection is even supposed to work [...]


Firefox3 Release Party Tokyo (Jun 26)
Celebration of new Firefox 3 launch was held at a hotel in Shinagawa, Tokyo, with over 300 people, Mozilla Japan staff, developers, translators, web designers, engineers, bloggers and others. Contributors, Mozilla’s new CEO John Lilly, Mozilla Japan chairperson Satoko Takita Firefox Ice Trophy Foxkeh!!, Japan made mascot to appeal Japanese internet users The next Firefox 3.1 (planned late 2008) [...]


Mobile Party - mobile wedding party assistant service (Jun 23)
Mobile Party is a website which supports Japanese wedding celemony afterparty, by utilizing atendee’s cellularphones. In Japan, usual wedding day goes with the celemony (one of Shinto, Buddism, Christian-style, etc. no matter what their religion), formal reception and casual after-party. The first two usually involves families and relatives with few close friends (the size depends on [...]


Online video and music rental deal worth $5.3 million announced in Japan (Jun 21)
Movie and music rental store operator Geo said yesterday they plan to buy all outstanding shares from Posren (post rental), Livedoor’s online DVD rental service for 560 million Yen ($5.3 million). The deal is supposed to take place July 1st. Geo tries to close the gap to market leader Tsutaya, which operates Discas for renting DVDs [...]


Firefox3 Release press conference (Jun 17)
Firefox 3 release press conference was held at Takanawa Prince Hotel, Tokyo Japan. Satoko TAKITA, chairman of Mozilla Japan gave the first announce of Firefox3 release in the morning at 2:00 a.m. 18th June (in Japan Standard Time), with looking back how they have been updating Mozilla products for years. Mozilla Japan’s two missions Firefox occupies 11.8% of [...]


Lunascape opens subsidiary in Silicon Valley (Jun 16)
Following Fenrir’s announcement of internationalizing their Sleipnir browser just a few days ago, now Japan-based Lunascape announced today they opened an office in the USA to promote their web browser of the same name more efficiently overseas. Lunascape, Inc. with a capital stock of 300,000 USD will be located in Silicon Valley. Founder and CEO Hidekazu [...]


RubyKaigi will be held this week (Jun 16)
The Japan’s biggest conference on Ruby, RubyKaigi 2008, is going to be held on 20th(fri)-22nd(sun) June. Tickets for main sessions are already sold out. However you can attend to sub-sessions, poster sessions without ticket. I will give a talk as a part of sub-session on 21st (in Japanese).


The Happy Web Weekend (Jun 15)
On Sunday, 15th June, The Happy Web Weekend, the event around microformats/Web Standards event was held in Ochanomizu, Tokyo, with John Allsopp, microformats authority and microformats book author from Australia. Semantic Microblogging / Masahide KANZAKI Masahide KANZAKI, who is well-known by his web standards and RDF infomation website The Web KANZAKI, which has been providing useful web [...]