@yoski tech note

I have no idea what is the best "English" off-line source for the non-Japanese people.

However, I sometimes see those free papers and/or magazines at the restaurants owned by non-Japanese owner.

J@pan Inc might be a good magazine for you to subscribe, provided that you are mainly focused on the small to mid-size businesses.

seekjapan offers a free paper named "Japanzine."
Japanzine has full of ads, so this might be a good source for you to keep track on what's happening in Japan.

Of course, there are plenty of web sites for non-Japanese (English spoken) people, but sometimes "off-line" media works better than online.

If you have any recommendations, I'd happy to know that :)

Posted by aka at 6:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Yammer is now famous for being a winner of the TechCrunch 50.

However, I have no idea what the challenging point of this service is.
It is just a twitter for a company. That's it.
There are many twitter clone products out there, and why now yammer?

For me, GoodGuide looked more interesting.

Their presentation was great, and the concept of the service is very clear, though I hope we could live in a safer world that doesn't need this kind of service :)

Posted by aka at 7:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Softbank had sold almost 200,000 iPhones in Japan, but after the "festival", they seems to be having a hard time to sell out their tons of iPhones in stock.

Here's my question: what will you do if you get iPhone?

The answer is: Check the Email!

Or, you'll say "See the map", "use twitter" or "do facebook (mixi, in Japan)". Yes, that can be true.

But does these activities on iPhone will change your life? I guess no.

As all of these activities are already possible on the well-developed cell phones in Japan.
So iPhone here in Japan is a kind of an expensive toy for the geeks.

When I lived in Palo Alto, it is reasonable that most of the people are enthusiastic about the iPhone, as cell phone is just for "talks" not for the "internet".

I understand iPhone will change your life dramatically, if you do not live in Japan.

P.S.
It is also true that nearly 80% of the iPhone sold in Japan (mostly Tokyo) is always "active".
We just wait to see what will happen in the mobile market :)

Posted by aka at 7:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Google Chrome put a significant impact on the browser market right after it has launched a week ago.

It is said that it took more than 1 percent of the share in the browser market immediately.

However, as I check the traffic of my "most non-technical" web site, it's share is still 0.5% and it does not change AT ALL for these 5 days.

We can see google chrome on the TOP page of the Google Japan, but it seems like most of the people are just "watching" the new browser.

In Japan, IE is still too strong. It's share is almost 90%, and Yahoo! is still taking advantage of the Google in the sense of the web traffics.

I guess it will take some more years for Google to take advantage of the browser shares in Japan.

Posted by aka at 6:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)